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
Posted inReviews, previews, profiles and movie news|Comments Off on Movie Review: “Blade Runner?” “Westworld?” “Altered States?” Forgettable “Reminiscence” recalls its betters
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.
“Overrun” is 109 minutes of every action pic cliche under the sun, and a heist set in a mausoleum, which I have to admit I’ve never seen before.
There’s a safe in the mausoleum. It’s guarded by inattentive Russian mobsters, the best kind, and a sassy tech nerd is the body cam “eyes” our hero uses to break in. So we’re back to “cliches” in a flash.
“You gotta love the Russians!”
It’s a picture populated by Bruce Dern, playing a Russian mob boss without a hint of the accent or language facility his son has. That’s the son (Nick Benseman) who’s killed by mobster Ray (Robert Mianno), who then pins it on this ex-military “extraction expert” Marcus (Omid Zader) he blackmails into robbing that guarded mausoleum for him.
There are comically “colorful” hit men (Noah Felder, Michael Wayne Foster, Kevin Makely) and women (Monette Moio) sent after Marcus. William Katt, Johnny Messner, Haley Strode and Chris Kallman play jokey, incompetent cops.
And then there’s the reason Marcus is blackmailable. The mob has his sister (ChelseyGoldsmith).
Zader is a lump of a lead. But we also see actors playing cops and pulling the trigger for the first time in their screen acting lives. We hear them reaching for cornball one-liners.
“Have fun dying, Dobbs!” “You can’t kill a cop!” “Oh no? Watch me!”
“You’re not dead, kid!”
And there are not one but TWO tech helpers, New School Augy (Jack Griffo) and Old School Doc (Nicholas Turtorro), guys who direct Marcus into and out of jams.
“On your right. No, your other right.”
Ok, THOSE two are kind of funny.
The rest? Even the “bad guy’s BRIEFCASE” is a cliche.
Rating: unrated, graphic violence
Cast: Omid Zader, Johnny Messner, William Katt, Jack Griffo, Robert Miano, Chelsey Goldsmith, Haley Strode, Nicholas Turturro and Bruce Dern
Credits: Directed by Josh Tessier, script by Roberto Ahumada, Victoria González and Craig R. Key. A Strike Force release.
The trick that television plays on viewers hit me one day in the ’90s after wrapping up an interview with “Family Ties” star Michael J. Fox.
He was touring in support of his aging-well romantic comedy “Doc Hollywood,” and was at the end of his day of meeting various members of the Southeastern entertainment press As I was walking out, I turned on my heels with the thought “Wonder if he’d want to grab a drink?”
That has never happened before or since, something you can put down to Fox’s disarmingly open screen persona, and the fact that people of his generation watched the Canadian grow up on TV. We feel we “know” him.
That affability served him during a long acting career, and gilded his private image as well. I ran into him later as he watched his wife, Tracy Pollan, co-star in an out-of-town tryout of Neil Simon’s play “Jake’s Women” (with Alan Alda), still absurdly approachable in the lobby of Winston-Salem, N.C.’s Stevens Center.
His public disclosure that he’d been diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s hit his fans hard, stifled his career and as he discloses in his latest memoir, “No Time Like the Future,” has finally led to a second and this time “permanent” retirement.
The author of “Lucky Man” and “Always Looking Up” is still “looking up” in his latest, even as his world shrinks around him a little more each day.
He writes of ending his first “retirement” when his old friend Bill Lawrence custom wrote him into “Scrubs,” leading to Emmy winning and Emmy nominated appearances in “Boston Legal,” “The Good Wife” and the like. His hilarious turn on Larry David’s “nothing is sacred” series “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is recalled with self-mocking glee.
He speaks of the difficulties in reinventing himself — a broadly physical and facially/vocally expressive actor — into something else. He writes lightly and emotionally about his family, his health struggles and the “uncles” like Bill Murray and others who dragged him onto the golf course, a sport he took up long after his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
Fox doesn’t apologize for his privilege, the profile that let him not only start a very successful foundation aimed at studying the illness that hit him but didn’t stop him, but gave him legions of famous friends, posh vacations among the elite, a safari to Africa and a documentary about his visit to the “gross national happiness” paradise, the mountain kingdom of Bhutan.
The real value in these memoirs is in his simple, uncluttered eloquence in describing the progression of his disease, the pratfalls he takes and grueling therapy he is subjected to just to keep going. I can’t imagine anyone, freshly-diagnosed or well into the Coping with Parkinson’s Wars, not taking some inspiration or at least solace in his story, identifying with the difficulties anyone — rich and famous or humble and alone — faces, first among them, the idea that your mortality is staring you in the face every minute of every day.
He’s still available to his public, still raising money by maintaining a profile, so don’t hesitate to say hi. But as he’s related many times over the years, and in all his books, he’s long on the wagon. There’s no point in trying to buy him a drink.
NO TIME LIKE THE FUTURE: An Optimist Considers Mortality. By Michael J. Fox. Thorndike Press. 363 pages.
Movie Nation 