We call films that try telling a story in a different way “innovative” or “experimental” when they work, “gimmicky” when they don’t.
“Lone Wolf” is an Australian thriller about police infiltration and documentation of an anarchist protestor group, what goes wrong and who covers up what. It’s told through accumulated closed circuit TV, police surveillance mini-cam and cell phone video footage.
That creates a mildly-chilling “found footage” vibe, emphasis on “mildly.” But despite a reasonably consistent visual strategy — most scenes have a “Here’s where the camera is, and this is why it’s there” logic — it manages no suspense, and zero “thrills.”
It’s gimmicky. The revolution may still be televised, but it still needs violent action to come off.
Much of the story is related through a large video file that a police investigator (Diana Glenn) makes her two superiors (Hugo Weaving and Stephen Curry) sit through. It’s related to a crime that they’ve all been investigating, an “incident” from when Australia hosted a G20 summit.
We see traffic control camera footage of Melbourne street scenes, and hacked CCTV security footage from inside a book store and “marital aids” shop, Night Watchman Books. Winnie (Tilda Cobham-Hervey of “Hotel Mumbai”) runs the register and keeps an eye on her slightly younger brother.
Stevie (Chris Bunton of “Relic”) is “on the spectrum,” high-functioning but labeled “diminished capacity.” He’s sensitive to loud noises and shouting and is fond of recording cell phone video of the people in his life and strangers on the street, narrating his observations about these strange animals called the human race in imitation of his favorite TV presenter, Sir David Attenborough.
“Do they even know they’re being watched?” Stevie wonders. Indeed.
Winnie’s an animal rights activist living with musician and anarchist Conrad (Josh McConville of “Fantasy Island”). Conrad may wear the T-shirts with the anarchist “A” symbol on them, and work in a shop that sells “The Anarchist Cookbook.” But he prefers the label “minarchist.” That explains the name of the shop. They’re minimal government liberatarians advocating a mere “night watchman state.”
They muddle along, not selling enough books or what have you to make rent, with Conrad meeting up with his co-conspirators Hippy Karl (Tyler Coppin), Father Michaelis (LawrenceMooney) and the shallow, rich gigolo Alex Ossipon (Marlon Williams) to pointlessly debate this or that, and do nothing about it.
They aren’t a “cell,” no matter what they might be capable of. Stevie, who collects “collective nouns,” provides the right word to describe them. They’re a “whoop” of gorillas.
Then a mysterious man of money and motivation named Vladimir throws money at Conrad to stage something during the G20.
“To truly influence public opinion, you need to commit an outrage.” He has in mind a “victimless atrocity.” Conrad won’t bite, but Vladimir (Karlis Zaid) knows that Conrad’s a police informant, and now so do we. “If word of that got out” is great blackmail.
We get the dynamic of this “family,” go an hour between the opening and again seeing the police watching all this captured footage in the office of the corrupt, cynical minister of public safety (Weaving). In essence, writer-director Jonathan Ogilvie (“Emulsion”) misses most of what would have made this “thriller” thrilling.
The limited camera point of view narrows down what we get to see. Ossipon hitting on Winnie, Stevie joining them for a trip to the beach, our “minister” captured on video call having sex with his “rent boy,” etc.
The most interesting CCTV moment is an earlier animal rights stunt, activists disguised in wolfshead masks, free baby chicks, herding them out of frame and into the camera’s field of vision. That’s the movie “Lone Wolf” could have been.
Little of the planning and none of the prep for the “atrocity” is seen. The script has reasons for that, “twists” at the tail end of the picture. By then, the quiet, action-starved and static shots of actors mostly under-acting for CCTV or surveillance cameras (some black-and-white) has robbed “Lone Wolf” of any suspense or urgency.
The film manages to be intriguing but seriously dull.
The earliest antecedent for this sort of picture might be Sidney Lumet’s “The Anderson Tapes,” a 1971 heist picture reconstructed through secret police recordings of those involved. Lumet knew that you can’t cheat the viewer of action, violence, suspense about what will happen and to whom, just to serve your stylistic approach.
Otherwise, all you’re left with is just a gimmick.
Rating: unrated, violence, sex, profanity
Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Josh McConville, Diana Glenn, Chris Bunton, Marlon Williams and Hugo Weaving.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Jonathan Olgilve. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Black and white, foggy and soundstagy, this looks a bit like the Orson Welles “Macbeth” of the ’40s.
This holiday treat (Dec. 25 in theaters, Jan. on Apple TV+) comes from A24 and Apple.
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“Baggage” some call it. “Complications” is what it is. The longer you live, the more experiences you’ve had, bad and good, and the more your pile of memories, traumas, triumphs and tragedies dictates how you respond to the world and to the people you encounter in it.
Here’s a delicate British melodrama that resides on the melancholy side of the tracks. Two seniors, “OAPs” (old age pensioners) meet, warily circle each other and eventually reveal their baggage during “23 Walks” with their dogs.
Dave (Dave Johns of “I, Daniel Blake” and “Fisherman’s Friends”) is the outgoing one, chatting with a friend he sees on his daily walks, doting on his aged Alsatian Tilly.
Calling Fern — played by Alison Steadman of Mike Leigh’s “Life is Sweet,” Mrs. Bennett of the classic TV “Pride & Prejudice” — “wary” is an understatement. Her first greeting, in a narrow path hemmed in by fences, is “Put your DOG on a LEAD!”
Making peace is going to be a chore with the lady walking the yappie Yorkie Henry.
“Can I give him a treat?”
“I don’t THINK so.”
Each chance encounter in the park is a tad on the fraught side.
“Ok if we walk with you?”
“It’s a free country!”
This Paul Morrison (“Little Ashes”) film takes its time letting us know character’s names, takes its time setting up the budding relationship “23 Walks” is about and takes its time piling on complications, the “secrets” and “baggage” these two bring, along with their dogs on these “chance” encounters.
For starters, the bump-intos aren’t chance at all. Dave is interested, patient and persistent. Fern is so testy and tetchy, he has to be.
Over the course of those 23 walks, they will grow closer and tear apart, reach a rapprochement and abruptly shut-down once again. Hard won experience and hard-moments of hurt come back to the surface for each of them.
Both Steadman, who not only worked with but was married to the great chronicler of British working class realism Mike Leigh, and Johns, a comic actor on TV who had a later-life breakthrough in film working with Ken Loach on “I, Daniel Blake,” are throwbacks to the “kitchen sink realism” of British theater, which endures in British film thanks to filmmakers they’ve worked with.
The “issues” with this possible relationship range from a messy divorce and eviction to adult children and an aged dog. And those are just for starters. At times it seems Morrison is tossing everything but the kitchen sink at these two.
These get to be a bit much for us, and for Fern, the divorced one who does most of the breaking up.
“It’s all got too complicated.”
But the grace notes carry these “23 Walks,” which range from parks to the countryside surrounding London and include impromptu Spanish lessons — he learned it from a cleaning lady, she needs to understand it for a daughter’s wedding in the Canary Islands — and a sing-along to fondly-remembered comic ditty about wallowing in the mud from their youth.
And there’s a grand rapport between our stars, something warmer than mere “chemistry” — a shared history, despite the fact that the characters have only just met. The retired nurse and former showgirl’s banter has an easy familiarity.
“Sing me a song.”
“Oh Dave, you don’t know what you’re asking!”
“Pretend you’re in the bath!”
“I was never a STRIPPER!”
The sadness that courses through this uneasy and deliberate courtship won’t be to every taste. But for the brave, for those experienced enough to know about “baggage” and that no one gets out of here alive, this tale of finding a surprise connection in the twilight years, overcoming shrinking horizons and the burden of grief, disappointment and melancholy will resonate.
Rating: unrated, sex, profanity
Cast: Alison Steadman, Dave Johns
Credits: Scripted and directed by Paul Morrison. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Today’s Around the World with Netflix presentation lets us know that rich, womanizing douche-bros in Brazil are every bit as contemptible as anywhere else.
But with the title “Rich in Love (Ricos de Amor),” you have to know that the heel, the scion of a tomato empire, is redeemable.
That’s the story here, a born-rich party boy from Paty de Alferes dabbles in switching identities with the son of a servant and takes his stab at winning a job he’d be handed on a silver platter under his own name. And maybe he’ll win a love who won’t be after him for his money if she thinks he’s charming and poor.
Deep. And here and there, almost cute.
Danilo Mesquita plays Teto, heir to the Trancoso Tomato products empire run by his widowed dad (veteran character actor Ernani Moraes). The kid’s lazy, selfish and spoiled, and he’s pretty much bedded every young woman in town.
If it wasn’t for Igor (Jaffar Bambirra) he wouldn’t have any real friends. But Igor’s the housekeeper’s son, one hoping to get to college so that he can make something of himself. Fat chance with Teto taking up all his time, making Igor drive home any woman who wakes up in his bed and winning all these “bets” that somehow one suspects Igor has to let the rich kid win.
“You need to grow up, Teto,” (in Portuguese, with English subtitles, or dubbed) is the general consensus.
A bet is how Igor is forced to tag along as rich boy picks out the Land Rover convertible he wants for his birthday. Igor isn’t even on “the list” for Teto’s lavish Tomato Festival birthday party, which shames rich dude enough to switch IDs with “my brother” Igor for the night.
That “tomato prince” ID does a little for Igor. But passing himself off as Igor gets complicated for the real “prince” Teto when he meets the lovely med school student Paula (Giovanna Lancellotti) from Rio, in town for a bachelorette weekend.
Gosh, our two “small town party guys” have to go to Rio, under their switched identities, so that Teto can continue his pursuit. Igor? He can enroll, with Teto, in the company’s new young executive recruiting program, where nobody knows what the boss’s son looks like, save for the smart and sharp young exec Monique (Lellê) who was laid off to create the upcoming opening Teto has been groomed for.
The comedy’s candy-colored/tomato-pasted facade covers a half-hearted effort to jam some social commentary in here. Monique lives in the favela, the “dangerous” poor neighborhoods high on the hillside. Teto will need her help “winning” the job since he’s posing as Igor, “a regular guy” with no special name and privilege.
It makes little sense that Monique would help, but she is “moved by your rich boy problems” and does.
Another slice of searing social commentary is Paula’s struggle to land the only residency at the hospital where she’s been studying. She is the sharpest intern in the class, but damned if her supervising physician (Caio Paduan) isn’t all over her. Her good looks are her ticket to harassment.
Igor also finds himself targeted by his fetching internship supervisor, Alana (Fernanda Paes Leme), who kisses up to the boss’s son, and who doesn’t want to stop at kissing.
“Rich in Love” is just a series of limp mistaken identity mixups and even lamer protect-that-mistaken-identity gags. There’s barely a laugh in this, and even the “sweet” moments play as patronizing, boons granted by the rich to the lesser folk.
The script shortchanges Igor’s agenda so much that I couldn’t figure out, at times, why he was going along with any of them.
Frankly, I think they could a lot more with the whole tomatoes thing.
The cast is uniformly sexy, but the romances presented don’t spark, mostly owing to how unnatural and artificial they feel. At the end of any rom-com, you like to think “she belongs with him/he belongs with her,” and here that just isn’t true.
Plot complications are painted over to such a degree
Rating: TV-14, drinking and drugging and hooking up
Cast: Danilo Mesquita, Giovanna Lancellotti, Jaffar Bambirra, Ernani Moraes, Fernanda Paes Leme, Caio Paduan and Lellê
Credits: Directed by Bruno Garotti, scripted by Júlio Uchoa. A Netflix release.
The French documentary “Savior for Sale” came out in France before the very fine theatrical documentary “The Lost Leonardo” hit theaters.
As the films are about exactly the same subject — the “discovery,” epic resales and scandalous politicking involved in trying to bums-rush the authentication of a painting labeled “The Male ‘Mona Lisa'” — the filmmakers interview many of the same subjects, cover much the same ground and lean on many of the same visuals in telling this story of the insular world of high-end art, “full of people trying to make huge amounts of money out of (very very) rich people.”
We see the same Christie’s Auction House video montage (a different sample) of wide-eyed/teary-eyed visitors, members of the general public, awed in the presence of this “lost masterpiece” about to be auctioned off in New York. The filmmakers — Andreas Koefoed for “Leonardo,” Antoine Vitkine made “Savior for Sale” — even use the same graphics in tracking the travels of this tale of how this damaged, “paint-over” painting of Jesus, perhaps painted by Leonardo Da Vinci himself, perhaps assisted by or wholly painted by his workshop, perhaps neither, came to sell for $450 million, including commission.
If you saw “The Lost Leonardo,” as I did, you probably don’t need to stream or catch “Savior for Sale.” They’re damned near identical. But the French film is more thorough, more blunt, has more edge and takes a firmer stand on the “Lost Leonardo” than “The Lost Leonardo.”
To recap, this very old and damaged painting was “discovered” in New Orleans, exhibited in London, sold to a Russian oligarch, re-sold to the murderous Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) for a staggering sum and negotiated into an exhibition at the Louvre, which declined to authenticate it or give it standing alongside their most prized painting, the “Mona Lisa.”
The arc of “Savior” throws the British endorsement of the painting by the “ambitious curator” of the National Gallery in London (Luke Syson) into sharp opposition with the French officials who “courageously” who rebuffed it and questioned its authenticity.
“Savior” comes off as more jingoistic, as if the French, Guardians of World Culture, are refighting the Hundred Years War and Napoleonic Wars all over again with those gauche Brits and their American offspring. Monty Python would certainly see it that way.
But Vitkine interviewed the heir of the Louisiana owner, and shows where the painting was hung in the family’s New Orleans home. He got an actual interview with the Russian oligarch, Dmitri Rybolovev, who was talked into buying it by his slippery Swiss go-between, Yves Bouvier.
Vitkine labels the various principals, aka “usual suspects” (my term), “The Expert,” “The Curator (Syson),” “The Journalist (New York Times reporter Scott Reyburn).” One art historian, a Belgian advisor (Chris Dercon) to the Saudis, who envision the world beating a path to their blood-stained museum doors, is even labeled “The Mercenary.”
He laughs a lot in the film. Let’s hope he laughed at that description.
“Lost Leonardo” spends a lot more time on the restorer (Dianne Dwyer Modestini), who may have “restored” the work to look more Da Vinci-like, perhaps inadvertently. “Savior” spends more time on the 17th century Wenceslaus Hollar etching that is supposedly based on it, and gives voice to a leading academic skeptic (Matthew Landrus) who is asked about any trepidations he might have about speaking out about how this probably wasn’t painted by Leonardo Da Vinci.
“Savior” has two interviewees speak behind masks or in shadow, Louvre experts talking about French doubts as to the painting’s authenticity and true value and Saudi efforts to bribe “Salvator Mundi” into international acceptance.
Because MBS has already shown a willingness to have his critics murdered.
Having reviewed “The Lost Leonardo,” I was going to pass “Savior for Sale” by. But I found the French film (Was it made for French TV?) engrossing and more informative, “Leonardo” more touching and poetic. You can see and feel why people got swept up in the presence of a painting of Jesus by the great Renaissance polymath in “Leonardo.” That business that art expert Martin Kemp, an expert extensively interviewed for both films, speaks of as “the presence” of a “real Leonardo,” comes through much more clearly in that film.
Kemp, whose early endorsement played a key role in pushing a painting purchased for $1175 one year into selling for $127.5 million, then $450 million a couple of years later, gets more of a roughing up in “Savior for Sale.”
If you’re limiting yourself to one film on the subject, I’d suggest the more thorough “Savior.” But you come away from either documentary with the same smirking dismay of how gullible and stupid the stupidly rich let themselves be in the presence of the denizens of The World of Fine Collectible Art, who may live by the ethos “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but say the phrase with the poshest (British, French or Italian) accent imaginable.
Rating: unrated
Cast: Robert Simon, Scott Reyburn, Martin Kemp, Luke Syson, Dianne Dwyer Modestini, Matthew Landrus, Chris Dercon, Yves Bouvier, Dmitri Rybolovev, Loïc Gouzer
Credits: Directed by Antoine Vitkine. A Greenwich Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:38
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I had vowed to leave you to your Uwe Boll II business lest it seem I’m on some personal vendetta against a guy who, let’s face it, should be traveling the country, doing seminars at film schools.
Because Justin Lee gets movies made. Legions of talented filmmakers struggle and scrape by and dream and network and get nowhere in Hollywood or New York. Lee lines up “Dr. Drew” Pinsky and wrestler Randy Couture, Lance Henriksen or Oscar winners Mira Sorvino and Wes Studi, James Russo and Bruce Dern and, in his latest, Thomas Jane and Lee’s mascot, Trace Adkins, and cranks out another movie.
Film students far and wide would pay to have him teach a master class on how he manages it.
The movies are, to a one, crap. Lee has no flare for storytelling for the screen — writing, or directing. And Trace Adkins is to acting what Norm MacDonald was to country music. And just as animated, in Norm’s current state.
“Apache Junction” is another static, artless and pokey Western with an aimless, scattershot script, a few horses, a little gunplay and nothing that does any credit to the acting profession. At all.
Scout Taylor-Thompson plays a pretty reporter from the San Francisco Examiner come to the middle of nowhere, Arizona, to write about the lawless “sanctuary” Apache Junction, basically a free fire zone that is the Russian-financed NRA’s wet dream for America.
She is protected, after a fashion, by the gunslinger Jericho (Stuart Townsend), the Native American Wasco (Ricky Lee) and the pipe-puffing saloon owner, Al Longfellow (Jane). But Miss Annabelle Angel (Jesus H, where does he find these names?) is no dainty thing, “lady” or not. She doesn’t ride side-saddle and it being 1881, she totes a gun.
That’s handy because the Junction has bad hombres — the murderous card cheat Oslo Pike (Ed Morrone), assorted cutthroats, and the rapey Blue Bellies, U.S. Army troops meant to keep order and deliver justice, but led by cynical, drawling do-nothing Capt. Hensley (Adkins).
Why would you name a character Oslo and not suggest, “Hey, he’s a Norwegian immigrant, like everybody John Qualen (“The Searchers,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”) played in John Ford’s Westerns?” I mean, get him to do an accent. SOMEthing.
The Sante Fe locations are properly sage-brushed and weathered. But the wardrobe department ensures that every character in this looks freshly dry-cleaned, as was the fashion of the day, I guess.
Scene after scene opens slowly, staggers to a pause, and dies in its tracks.
The dialogue is recycled saddle slang — “He’s jus’spent too much time in the sand and snakes to know how t’treat a respectable woman.”
The acting is colorless, with even the grizzled veteran Jane failing to wring anything out of a moment or scene. Well, when Miss Angel asks “You’re who this establishment belongs?” he chuckles and repeats the agrammatical line, as if daring his writer-director to do another take.
Was the entire feature cut from first takes? It looks it, and Clint would be proud, if not entertained. No one else will be either.
One thing you do when you’re stuck reviewing films by people who can get movies made but only make bad ones is look for signs of learning, polish and improvement from film to film. From Cheech & Chong to Adam Sandler and Tyler Perry, I’ve looked for “progress” in the work, even if I found most of it garbage.
But I’m not seeing that here. Seriously, Mr. Lee, get a mentor, study classic films SHOT BY SHOT, scene by scene. Sign up for online “Master Classes” on shot composition, screenplay basics and directing actors.
Better yet, become a producer and help filmmakers with talent get their better scripts cast, financed and filmed.
And there’s always that seminar idea. Because the world doesn’t need any more proof of Trace Adkins’ limitless limitations in front of the camera or yours behind it.
Rating: R, violence
Cast: Stuart Townsend, Scout Taylor-Thompson, Victoria Pratt, Lorena Sarria, Trace Adkins and Thomas Jane.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Justin Lee. A Saban Films release.
There’s not much doing any business these days other than the latest money-making marvel from Marvel.
“Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” did another $21.7 million. It’s now over $320 million worldwide and still cleaning up.
“Free Guy” has been the comedy sensation of the summer, high concept and effects packed and video gamer friendly and all that. It managed another $5.1 million. Over $108 million as of tonight.
Clint Eastwood’s funereal and dull “Cry Macho” wasn’t a complete bust. It finished second and earned just under $5 million on a boatload of screens. His audience has aged out of cinema-going, so perhaps it did well on HBO Max. But only comic book movies are impacting streamers’ bottom line and subscription numbers. So many not.
Movie Nation 