I’ve seen more than a few Tony Leung films, because he’s been around a pretty long time.
He was on “Hero” and “Red Cliff” and “2046” and kudos to Marvel for casting an overlooked demographic for this latest superhero tale — guys pushing 60.
I missed earlier preview showings of this to catch “Reminisce” and “The Protege” as previews. I know, right?
Better late than never.
With the pandemic shutting down live performances for over a year and better-informed/cautious fans still leery of festival seating or moshing their way back into venues, alt rock/arena rock/pop rockers Shinedown decided to remind fans they’re out there — or will be soon — with an old school “video album.”
“Attention Attention,” their most recent studio LP (another is due out this fall, according to what I’ve read), is another chart-challenging smash from the quartet. They hired Marilyn Manson’s favorite video director, Bill Yukich, to turn the 14 tracks into quasi-arty “performance” videos, again pretty old school.
As such things go, it isn’t bad. It isn’t remotely as interesting as a good “in the studio to cut a record and having a hard time of it” documentary, some of which have been known to capture a “Eureka” moment of creation. It’s not a mediocre or epic concert film, not a “get to know the band” doc either.
But for what it is, it’s not awful, kind of MTV @1989 — only post-grunge.
See the band lip-sync and thrash about in matching black ensembles, or matching (nearly) suits, dolled up as their favorite glam or whatever performers (Elvis, Elton, etc). Check out the flames, lots and lots of flames, as songs are rendered into fiery or monstrous nightmares, or semi-sexy dreams (model/actress Francesca Eastwood appears, among many others).
The occasional arresting image aside, the collected videos are seriously run-of-the-mill. They’re symbolic and/or literal, soundstage-bound or out of doors, always with dreadlocked drummer Barry Kerch whaling away, Eric Bass keeping time on the instrument he’s named for, Zach Myers power-chording his guitar and Brent Smith sing-shouting in that heavily-overdubbed and harmonious Offspring, Fuel style some seriously dark, and occasionally upbeat lyrics.
“I was sent to warn you, the Devil’s in the next room.”
“When your Mom is a burnout and you Daddy is a pyro, set fire to the family tree.”
Yes, actors playing a biker and biker moll and a lot of flames figure in that one. Another is set in a plastic surgery clinic. They could be playful in the hands of a director/editor with a lighter touch, but that would be off-brand.
In between the tracks we hear Smith, in voice over, intoning that “Wanting things to change is not the same as making things change.”
“Everything is so important, until it’s not.” “You can’t go back. You can’t rewind. It just is.”
Sometimes quoting Springsteen or Shinedown is the only “pretentious/vapid” comment necessary.
The artier touches include a snippet of the band glimpsed in reflection in (Digitally-created) water, and that vamped up glam sequence.
In “Special,” Smith sings “You’re not special,” which has a whiff of self-mockery about it. I’ve heard these guys on alt-rock radio but never listened enough to be able to separate them from the many sound-alikes in their various formats.
But I can see and hear why they’re chart-toppers. They’re more positive than negative, the tunes are catchy and high energy. And the lyrics, while nobody’s idea of serious profundity, aren’t bad either.
“Keep your eye on the prize and your feet on the ground…This human radio is playing your anthem.”
The “movie?” Probably for fans only.
Rating: unrated, some profanity, disturbing images, nudity
Cast: Brent Smith, Barry Kerch, Eric Bass, Zach Myers, Francesca Eastwood, Melora Walters and Raelynn Harper.
Credits: Directed by Bill Yukich. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Running time: 1:03
Cops, pinned down and outnumbered…
But did they get vaccinated? Oct 8.
Spare, intense and deeply unnerving, “Anne at 13,000 ft” an indie drama that manages to keep the viewer on tenterhooks by concentrating on the bare essentials — an unbalanced young woman who is never more than one bad day from having a complete breakdown.
Toronto filmmaker Kazik Radwanski (“Tower”) keeps his camera hand-held and tight on his leading lady. And Deragh Campbell, in that title role, is relentlessly unsettling, an actress who lets us see a disconnection that borders on madness behind Anne’s eyes.
Twentysomething Anne works in a Toronto day care, and picks up a little extra cash on the side babysitting for the parents of some of the kids there. She’s popular with the children, probably because she’s childlike herself.
She laughs, self-consciously, is unfiltered and inappropriate at times. She’s prone to being inconsiderate or downright rude, only to brush it off as her own personal “joke.”
She has a hard time following instructions and taking orders. And in a licensed Canadian day care, that can be a problem.
We meet her as she skydives, in tandem with an experienced professional. Yes, she Tom Cruises it — doing the stunt herself. She seems to black out in ecstasy, losing herself in the moment
Because that’s where Anne lives. But could anyone live with her, deal with her manic mood swings, her refusal to stop doing something when someone else corrects her, her constant laughter, even when she’s letting us see a flash of temper?
Anne is a truly cringe-worthy heroine, and not the fun “Office” type. Radwanski has made such folks something of a specialty.
We fear Anne, and we fear for her as she meets a possibly-nice/possibly predatory guy (Matt Johnson) at a wedding and cannot stop drinking any more than she can stop with her borderline-upsetting bridesmaid’s toast. She reminds us, at every turn, that she’s being left in charge of people’s children, and that’s just plain alarming.
Campbell (“Project Ithaca,” “Possessor”) effortlessly holds down the film’s endless succession of close-ups. She is never over-the-top, even as Anne flirts with outright mania, melting down with her mother (Lawrene Denkers), snapping at sales clerks (“Can you stop following me?”), forever wrong-footing poor Matt.
“You’re a weird little girl, you know that?”
It’s a compact, nearly perfect performance of a character who leaves you exhausted even though we only spend 75 minutes with her.
You bail out of “Anne at 13,000 ft” fretting for her future and wondering if there’s a med she’s off or a treatment she’s refused to undertake. Because eventually, the wincing, worrying and the cringing would wear down anybody stuck in her company.
Rating: unrated, alcohol abuse, profanity
Cast: Deragh Campbell, Matt Johnson, Lawrene Denkers
Credits: Written and directed by Kazik Radwanski. A Cinema Guild release.
Running time: 1:15
“Saving Paradise” is another old fashioned, sentimental take on work, workplaces and their value in an America that has ceded control of such things to Wall Street, and watched as Main Street paid the price.
Yes, thirty years after “Other People’s Money” — the play and then the film — and industries are still “shipping jobs overseas” leaving behind gutted factories, gutted towns and diminished lives in their wake.
It’s a cloying, cutesy and feel-good fable about the way these stories always grope around for a happy ending that an unsentimental America never seems to provide.
William Moseley (“The Courier,” TV’s “The Royals”) stars as Michael Peterson, the somewhat ruthless 30something Wall Streeter summoned home when his father dies.
The old man (Lawrence Pressman) was a beloved figure in tiny Paradise, Pennsylvania. He’s kept the last factory in town — Peterson’s Pencils — in business, employing a diverse workforce of older “lifers” and minorities including the differently-abled, giving rusting, foreclosing Paradise a pulse.
Now, he’s gone, the loan is due and that workforce is worried about their future and belligerently skeptical that this heir turned corporate raider has their best interests at heart.
Like nobody there’s ever seen “Gung Ho!”
The Van Billet script is strictly a cut-and-paste collection of cliches and “types.”
Christmas is coming, and their loan due-date will fall right on top of it, potentially putting people out of work for the holidays. The factory is antiquated. There’s little margin for profit selling the world pencils.
The late Mary Pat Gleason finished her career of loud, put-out Everywomen by playing mouthy plant manager Mary.
George Steeves is “on-the-spectrum” mail boy Walter, who can rattle off cascades of “facts” about pencils, and the factory’s productivity. Paul Dooley (“Breaking Away,” “Hairspray”) is his dotty, retired grandfather and Shashawnee Hall (“El Camino Christmas”) is the grumpy plant maintenance guy.
There’s a tarty office flirt (Valeria Maldonado), and of course, “Miss Right,” the “gal he left behind.” That would be the cute CFO Charlie (Johanna Braddy) who knew Michael when he was “Mikey” and hung out with him and his long-dead older brother, seen in flashbacks.
The debates between Michael and Charlie take on unnatural escalations as the script rushes them and us into crisis mode.
“It’s all about the BOTTOM LINE, isn’t it?”
“What other ‘line’ IS there?”
At some point, these two (cute together, and decent performers) are going to “click.” At some other point, somebody is certain to shout, “Go ahead, run away! IT’s your SPECIALTY!”
Seriously, screenplays like this aren’t so much composed as composted — recycled.
Director Jay Silverman (“Off the Menu,” “Girl on the Edge”) could have bent this edge-of-insipid story in a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie direction, fully capitalizing on all the sentiment. Instead he lets our leads, and a few others, pepper the tale with real world profanity.
As “Saving Paradise” is never more than a corny, old-fashioned working world wish fulfillment fantasy, that’s unfortunate. Maybe they’ll re-cut it when Hallmark asks.
Rating: unrated, alcohol abuse, some profanity
Cast: William Moseley, Johanna Braddy, Mimi Kennedy, Mary Pat Gleason,
Shashawnee Hall, Lawrence Pressman, Bill Cobbs and Paul Dooley
Credits: Directed by Jay Silverman, scripted by Van Billet. A Vertical release.
Running time: 1:41
Sure, you had me at “Yakuza Princess.” But was there ever a more ponderous gangland saga set in the Japanese mafia than this?
It has a novel setting – the Liberdade neighborhood of Sao Paolo, Brazil, home to the largest ethnic Japanese enclave outside of Japan itself. And any yakuza story is going to pack gangland slaughter, gunplay and samurai swords wielded by over-tattooed, bellowing thugs.
But that’s about it. The Japanese-American singer Mazumi makes a sturdy if not particularly compelling lead. Jonathan Rhys Meyers was cast to give it a “name” in a role not really all that important to the plot.
And that plot! Whatever made the graphic novel this was based on worth a look steadily fades from view as our heroine, transplanted to Sao Paolo and raised there, visits first this person, then that one, and on and on, each of them sadly shaking her or his head because “I am not the one who can give you answers” but “This OTHER person you must find,” perhaps they can.
Akemi was the lone survivor of the slaughter of her grandfather’s entire clan back in Osaka. She was too little to remember what happened, whisked away to Liberdade where a collection of teachers and relatives raised her to work in a gift shop and train with a sensei in his dojo.
“Let DISCIPLINE shape your spirit and mind,” her teacher (Toshiji Takeshima) intones. “Let NOTHING come between you and your sword.”
On the day she turns 21, this American or Englishman (Meyers) , the doctors can’t decide which, wakes up in a Sao Paolo, his face and body covered in bandages hiding the stitched-up slashmarks, his memory gone.
The only thing that might trigger its return is the sword the cops say he was traveling with. Nope. Doesn’t tell him a thing. But he affects an escape and, not speaking a word of Portuguese, grabs that sword and stalks about Liberdade, a cut-up foreigner in a hoodie, toting a Katana sword on his back. Looking for…answers? Inconspicuous.
Back in Japan, Akemi’s secret has gotten out, and a grizzled yakuza (Tsuyoshi Ihara of “Letters from Iwo Jima” and “Thirteen Assassins”) hops on a plane to track her down.
The film’s first big action sequence has the yakuza, the American and a gang of local goons with a beef against Akemi all colliding, bloodily and terminally, in her apartment.
The fights are shot with more style and fury than anything else — lens flare (Digitally added?) and blood on the lens at every turn. The players are reasonable convincing in these brawls, even if we’re confused by the action and conflicting loyalties of most involved.
There are displays of torture, murder and finger-lopping yakuza loyalty tests, and the things these swords can slice off are sliced off, and often.
But our heroine takes forever to figure out what should be obvious early on, that grandpa wasn’t a “harmless old man,” even after the American asserts that “There ARE no harmless old men.” And even the twists that give Meyers’ character a reason to be here don’t pass that “Raiders of the Lost Ark” conundrum test. The story would essentially be the same without him here — the odd rescue and extra hand in a fight notwithstanding.
Mazumi’s handling of the fight choreography aside, it’s hard to see this as any great advert for her talents and future in film. She’s pretty, athletic but dull.
Not that “Yakuza Princess” fails on her account. It’s no great credit to anybody here, chiefly director and co-adaptor Vicente Amorin (Viggo Mortensen’s “Good” was his career peak), who has no feel for the material, no deep appreciation of the genre.
Rating: R for strong bloody violence, some language and graphic nudity
Cast: Masumi, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Eijiro Ozaki and Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Credits: Directed by Vicente Amorin, scripted by Vicente Amorin, Kimi Lee, Tubaldini Shelling and Fernando Tose, based on a graphic novel by Danilo Beyruth. A Magnet release.
Running time: 1:51
Beware the writer/director/star filmmaker who imagines his character as irresistible catnip to the ladies. Call it the “Edward Burns Delusion,” because it’s a good rule of thumb, and a cautionary one worth taking into account if you’re writing yourself into your movie.
Justin Etheredge trips over that, and a few other things, in his sweet but uneven and not particularly graceful “Good,” his second feature, after 2016’s “Get Out the Way.”
As Payton Poitier (“No relation.”), he is an aimless no-real-prospects Atlantan who misses his grandma, has an ex desperate to talk to him, a higher-class fiancée” and eventually a third woman tempted to throw herself at him.
In Etheredge’s dreams, anyway.
“Good” is about the old man he meets at his late grandmother’s favorite diner.
“We all end up alone,” Gregory (the great Keith David) pontificates. “At least somebody loved you.”
Gregory a regular, as well. He’s also well put-together, plainly somebody who has some money. And he’s not buying the “grandma” spiel Payton dishes out.
“I’m an old man. Old men EAT at diners. YOU’RE the lonely bastard” in this conversation.
A lift home leads to the first abrupt plot shift. Gregory’s daughter (Nefetari Spencer) makes Payton an over-the-top offer to become her dad’s caregiver, almost on the spot. As he’s just lost his previous temp job, and he’s hoping to marry the upscale Shannon (Kali Racquel), sure, he’ll take it.
But those voice mails from his ex, Jeneta (Christen Sharice)? They’re about exactly what you’d figure they’re about. She’s pregnant.
“Good” is about a guy who claims he learned “how to be a man” from his grandmother avoiding his adult responsibilities and getting chewed out about it by a character played by Keith David, who specializes in Old Testament cussing outs.
“Another young BLACK man making babies he won’t raise,” Old Gregory fumes.
At least he cools off whenever they watch “In the Heat of the Night.”
“You DO look like your daddy,” the old man cracks. He’s forgetful, might even have forgotten “the kid” assured him he wasn’t one of “those” Poitiers.” Or maybe he’s just having some old man fun at the hapless younger man’s expense.
Etheredge the director and co-writer brings in plenty of complications — Payton’s shaky status and need to placate his spoiled, wealthier bride-to-be, his inability to shake off Jeneta’s insistence on having a baby she insists is his.
He’s not ready “to throw my whole life away because you decided to have a baby.”
And then there’s Gregory, his half-estranged daughter Barbara, who runs his development empire and has little use for the father who wasn’t the “Father” Gregory nags Payton to be.
However familiar its situations and obstacles, “Good” passes the time easily, with Etheredge having a little chemistry with his booming, blustering co-star. But their scenes, like virtually every story element in “Good,” feel unfinished, ready for another re-write. The humor doesn’t quite pop, the pathos is more a notion in the film’s prospectus than anything the co-writers (Nathan Allen is the other) were able to deliver.
The transitions are abrupt, starting from that first one I mentioned. “Health” issues are introduced by the entrance of a doctor who seems to run his practice out of an Atlanta hotel room (Not a house call, not a doctor’s office, must be the Marriott).
That makes “Good” more likeable than polished, more “almost” or “nice try” than “Good.”
Rating: unrated, lots of profanity, homophobic slurs
Cast: Justin Etheredge, Keith David, Nefetari Spencer, Kali Racquel and Christen Sharice
Credits: Directed by Justin Etheredge, script by Justin Etheredge and Nathan Allen. Gravitas Ventures release.
Running time: 1:20
Manchurian atrocities in 1940, intrigues, a moral dilemma in a fascist state.
Kino Lorber has this film fest darling coming out on Sept.17.
“Really Love” invites you to tumble into its sophisticated milieu, the Washington, D.C. of African American art and artists, aspirational affluence and a romance that crosses classes.
The tony galleries, early career ambitions, beautiful people doing beautiful things set to a silky smooth jazz score all do their best to atone for a script seriously thin on originality or conflict and flat performances that generate a little heat, but no “real” feeling of romance.
Isaiah (Kori Siriboe of “Girls Trip”) is an artistic “young blood,” struggling to get his start and make something of his MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts) degree and all the promise he left school with.
Stevie (newcomer Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing) is an upper middle class Georgetown law school student, aiming her affluence and education at America’s housing inequities.
They meet at a gallery show. He’s forward, fingering her necklace. She makes a lot of eye contact and allows it.
When it turns out she’s friends with the wife of his best friend, they stumble into each other again. A no-stress, laid-back courtship ensues.
But ambition is sure to get in the way of that. And her parents (Suzzanne Douglas and Blair Underwood) aren’t about to let their plans for their daughter be dampened by waiting for a promising artist to get rich and famous in his own right.
Michael Ealey plays a wonderfully salty mentor to Isaiah, making even simplistic dialogue sing.
“Your ass need to get inspired!”
Our leads kind of glide through this, from well-appointed townhouses gallery openings and Alvin Ailey dance company shows to “Southeast” front stoops, where Isaiah gets the “That ain’t no real job” and “Let me FIND out you like being broke” bromides from his dad.
There’s an elegance about the look and feel of “Really Love” that the screenplay — by first-time feature director Angel Kristi Williams and “Grey’s Anatomy” staff writer Felicia Pride — is always letting down in a variety of the most obvious ways, from the story’s conventional arc to the often-clunky dialogue.
“So how do you know when a painting’s finished?”
“How do you know when you’re making love to someone?”
That’s a come-on that needs a rewrite, and that goes for the movie as well.
Rating: TV-MA, sex, nudity, smoking and some profanity
Cast: Kori Siriboe, Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing, Uzo Abuda, Suzzanne Douglas, Michael Ealey and Blair Underwood.
Credits: Directed by Angel Kristi Williams, scripted by Felicia Pride and Angel Kristi Williams. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:35
“The Madness Inside Me” is a lukewarm-at-best psychological thriller about a widowed crime victim who engages in sexually charged games with the man who killed her husband.
The added twist? Madison (Merrin Dungey) is a forensic psychologist. She knows the criminal mind, and learns a little more about it every time she visits an inmate she is counseling and evaluating for possible parole.
Writer-director Matthew Berkowitz opens with the aftermath of a murder, takes us back to set it up and then forward to see how Madison reacts when she sees the man (Devon Graye) who killed her husband and assaulted her.
But recognizing him in the police lineup doesn’t lead to her to identifying him for arrest. No. She has something more interesting in mind.
It begins with stalking and that leads to coffee with the killer.
“I can’t sleep because of you,” she confesses. Mr. Pitiless and Crazy-eyed is curious about her work, her success rate in reforming or “curing” a convicted criminal.
“How do you change someone?
“You can’t.”
But Madison has changed, and her story shows just how much this killer has gotten into her head and what that does to her psychologically and sexually.
Dungey, of TV’s “Big Little Lies,” “Star Trek: Picard,” “American Horror Story” and many other series (and the movie “Greenland”) has to make do with a script that shortchanges Madison’s grief and rather muddles our sense of what she’s going to do to fill up the void in her life, the rage she must feel for the killer.
There are erotic undercurrents to her reasons for getting to know this guy. But they don’t make a whole lot of psychological sense.
The whole sexual kick out of breaking and entering thing may be explained by the psychologist, but the way it’s handled drains much of the drama and secret, kinky thrills out of Madison’s experience and our experience of her experience.
Berkowitz’s story has plenty of promising threads and false leads. Madison is anxious to help a convicted killer (Scotty Tovar) out of prison, bears grudges against her in-laws, etc. Night club pickups, meltdowns at work, sexual acting-out all are introduced. But they don’t weave together in any compelling way.
Our writer-director boils this down to a two-person tale, but the characters and performances of them aren’t substantial or intriguing enough to pull us in.
Rating: unrated, violence, sexual situations, profanity
Cast: Merrin Dungey, Devon Graye, Jennifer Gelfer, Thomas Q. Jones and Anthony DeSando.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Matthew Berkowitz. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Running time: 1:29
Movie Nation 