Movie Nation

Udo Kier takes a tragi-comic victory lap in his storied career with “Swan Song,” an old man’s odyssey long walk into twilight, revisiting and even reliving past glories as he does.

In cinema buff shorthand, it’s David Lynch’s “The Straight Story” without a riding lawnmower, and in which the hero is anything but “straight.”

Mister Pat he still calls himself, uncomfortably ensconced in assisted living, not interacting with the other residents much at all, listening to his Judy Garland concert LP in private.

He’s got all the hallmarks of old age — compulsions he never outgrew, a hint of hoarding, a grim grip on old vices (More cigarettes) — but with a dash of style and a splash of bitchy rebellion. Back in the day, he was rust belted Sandusky, Ohio’s hairstyling hero.

His lone comfort these days is a long-silent, wheelchair-bound little old lady whom he sneaks smokes with, wordlessly, occasionally regarding her hair as if there’s something he could do with it, or much that he once did with that very hair in the past.

A surprise visitor– a lawyer he holds in light regard — interrupts this long day’s journey into night. A former client has died, the doyenne of Sandusky society (snort). Can he forget his grudge against her (Linda Evans of “Dynasty”) and do her hair one more time? You know, like this photo on her front page obituary in the local paper?

“Split ends, as well?“

Yes. He’s gay. And still quick. But no. He’s not interested.

“I haven’t pulled hair in years.”

The movie would be over if Pat didn’t find a reason to change his mind, so of course he does. Thus begins his journey — sneaking out, walking and accepting rides — into town and through his past. We hear of his great love, who died of AIDS. He walks the floorplan of his long-demolished old house and visits the salon he used to rule over, a queen with her court.

It’s an African American beauty parlor now, and the sassy, compassionate ladies there are one of many grace notes this Todd Stephens film finds in Mister Pat’s odyssey.

A running gag? Everything has changed, and Mister Pat, who doesn’t watch TV, doesn’t realize it. The haircare products that he’d need to work his magic were discontinued and banned as dangerous. Every business is different, even his beloved More cigarettes are a hard find these days.

Kier, a legend of European and American indie cinema (“Dogville,” “Soul Kitchen”), B-movies (“Halloween,” “Bloodrayne”) and TV (“The Kingdom”) takes this rare leading role and strolls through it like a man who never changed even as the world around him did.

Meeting up with a contemporary who still haunts a local park men’s room (Ira Hawkins), they marvel at the gay couples playing catch with their son or toting babies around that very park.

“I wouldn’t even know how to be gay anymore,” Mister Pat sighs.

And in a rare dramatic turn, Jennifer Coolidge (“American Pie,” “Two Broke Girls”) shows range, wit and meanness we never knew she had in her as a former protege who isn’t Mr. Pat’s favorite old acquaintance.

Shoplifting, a visit to the drag bar he used to haunt on weekends, an extraordinary moment of kindness and some tipsy epiphanies about what gay men of his generation have to reconcile themselves to in their dotage makes for a simple yet sweet and at times deeply moving day of “swanning” through scenic Sandusky.

And Kier makes a most companionable tour guide for us as the day gently, sadly and amusingly makes its way to the long night to come.

MPA Rating: unrated, profanity, smoking

Cast: Udo Kier, Jennifer Coolidge, Ira Hawkins and Linda Evans

Credits: Scripted and directed by Todd Stephens. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:45

A “Blade Runner” set in an ever-closing-in future, a world where machines become the new Tinder/Grindr, and murderous stuff is going down? Sept. 3.

Sept. 17, get CAGED.

Sofia Boutella and Nick Cassavetes are among the co-stars of this “legendary” tale about the one man who can break a curse and free a kidnapped young woman.

Sometimes, it can seem that the only reminder that Netflix didn’t always own the teen rom-com market at the movies is the presence of Molly Ringwald as the Mom in the “Kissing Booth” movies.

The first film, back in 2018, announced the streaming service as the new King of the Teen Pic Mountain, with Joey King as their queen.

“The Kissing Booth 3” is, as you’d expect, one trip too many to the well that kept on giving with “Kissing Booth 2.” Everybody’s gotten older. The formula — affluent kids having affluent fun as they live it up before “college” and “growing up” — has been watered down.

Like the last years of TV’s “Friends,” they’ve kind of run out of ways to entangle and disentangle Elle Evans and her BFF Lee (Joel Courtney) and their separate-not-equal love lives.

And yet, here we are.

Elle is hung up on whether to follow beau Noah (Jacob Elordi) to Harvard or childhood chum Lee to UC-Berkley. Tough call. Either way, “I’ll make one of my two favorite people unhappy,” she narrates.

So she pretends she’s “wait-listed,” lies and prevaricates, decides and undecides.

And as Lee’s family is giving up their tony beach house, she and Noah and Lee and his girl Rachel (Meganne Young) shack up there for the summer, leaving time for Lee and Elle to live out a childhood “bucket list” that they discovered in all the packing up.

The bulk of this candy-colored, bikini-clothed overlong amble through the last days of “childhood” consists of parties, old rivalries and romances bubbling up and a string of musical montages accompanying “#14, Go cliff jumping,” “Learn to Juggle,” “Win a pie-eating contest,” or most amusingly, race go-karts while dressed as Super Mario Brothers, flinging balloons filled with Nickelodeon-grade “slime” at each other.

After three years of such movies, the audience for this trilogy has probably aged out of the story, and the third film isn’t really good enough to convince today’s 15 year-olds to check out the first two installments.

But it’s still good, clean “fun” and as harmless as it is high-tone and, by now, tone deaf (a world where money is no object and COVID does not exist). At least they have the good grace to officially wrap it all up in a way that leaves no room for sequels.

Or DO they?

MPA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Joey King, Joel Courtney, Jacob Elordi, Molly Ringwald, Taylor Zakhar Perez and
Maisie Richardson-Sellers.

Credits: Directed by Vince Marcello, script by Vince Marcello and Jay s Arnold, based on the novels by Beth Reekles. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:54

I doff my fedora at any indie filmmaker with the wherewithal to take a shot at making a period piece with little or no money, rather than going the slasher/spatter film route like everybody else.

But if you’re letting actors complain, in a 1933 gangsters-in-the-sticks thriller, about “Bogarting” a bottle of Virginia Dare wine, if you’re not just leaning on voice-over narration as a crutch, but as a genuine FDR vintage wheel chair, if you’re pretentious enough to name your slow-talking, slow-moving movie “Whelm,” maybe slasher is the safer way to go.

When a character labels another a “more of a pencil, he’s not the muscle,” and gets chewed out, take your own scripted criticism to heart.

“What’re you writing, a play? Nobody talks like that.”

“Whelm” is a reasonably good looking thriller about rural brothers getting mixed up in a nasty cat and mouse game between a famous gangster and his biggest fan, a pompous, pitiless fanboy who spells his name out so all will know who is messing around with bad boy “Jimmy.”

“Alexander Aleksy,” he (Delil Baran) intones. “Spelled A.L.E.K.S.Y.”

That sets the tone for this portentous, obscurant and meandering movie that skirts the edges of the Dillinger legend. We are not at all surprised when Alexander starts speaking German, not Russian, to a woman whom we’ve heard ID herself as “Edie” and “Polly” at various points.

Just picking up on who is named what is a chore in this laborious “film festival movie.”

And it’s also no surprise when Alexander gets his hands on a fencing mask and an épée, which becomes his weapon of choice later on.

“Jimmy” (Grant Schumacher) is our gangster, a guy with some cash stashed in the safe of a rural Midwestern inn. Alexander gets to that cash first in the most bizarre and pointless way, a talkative robbery that involves torture, a big block of ice and an old innkeeper (Mark Hoover).

The brothers, who are mixed up in moonshining, are bearded tough-guy August (Ronan Colfer) and the fellow who does most of the not-quite-constant sleepy narrating Reed (Dylan Grunn), whose name I didn’t pick up until very late in the picture, not that it matters.

Reed drawls through florid narrated passages meant to illuminate the proceedings and flesh out the other characters, but make you wonder if ol’Tennessee — Williams, or Ernie Ford — is takin’ his mint julep on the VERANDA in the cool of this evening.

“He had a way of wrapping you in words so tight, you didn’t know which way was up.”

Indeed.

“Our man was a Grade A mystery, but he had a shine for low company.”

There’s a little gunplay, a lot of walking and a lot more talking in this tale that unfolds in thirteen slowly slow-walked chapters.

Odd twists aren’t wholly explained, relationships are uncertain, characters flip from antagonists to trusting confidantes with no more motivation than the expediencies of the script. Most of the performers struggle to find their footing, and when in doubt, walk even slower and talk even slower still.

But praise be, a Ford Trimotor airplane is trotted out among the period-correct firearms and motorcars and Virginia Dare win. It’s still a shame “Whelm” is a period piece gangster “thriller” that drowns in its own murk.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, sex and profanity

Cast: Delil Baran, Dylan Grunn, Ronan Colfer, Grant Schumacher, Mark Hoover and Francesca Anderson.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Skyler Lawson. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:56

Netflix has this different spin on 9/11, a movie about the quantifying of the value of a life that went on after 3000 Americans were murdered by Saudi financed hijackers while George W Bush napped.

“Ema,” the latest film from Chilean director Pablo Larraín, is about interpretative modern dance, so naturally it’s “open to interpretation.”

The director of “Jackie” and “Neruda” has conjured up a fever dream of tragedy, the “monster” who feels responsible for it, egos and fire. And if I can’t say it comes off in any simple, fulfilling way, it’s quite the lovely, sexy show and leaves you with a lot to chew on.

Chilean actress Mariana Di Girólamo turns dancer for this film, the bleached blonde gamine at the center of a company run by her choreographer husband, Gaston (Gael García Bernal). And when we meet them, they’re coming apart.

They had a child, a boy. But Ema, twelve years his junior, flatly notes that “You’ll never give me a son, a real one,” (in Spanish with English subtitles). And Gaston’s response to this cruelest of accusations about their briefly-adopted boy Polo, gets at the nature of their rift.

“I gave you a son, a REAL one. And you threw him away.”

This self-described “bad mother” turned their child back over to family services after an act of violence, a fire. The victim was her sister, and it’s just like this movie to ignore discussing “motivations” for the boy or any sense that he was responsible for awful this thing he did.

It’s just “He’s sick” and “Polo’s parents don’t love him any more” and the dance that Gaston choreographed, inspired by this gutting set of circumstances.

The company performs it despite “hating” Ema, she is convinced. “I’m evil.” Plenty of others chime in on her rash act. A social worker who screams “f—–g psycho” might be on the money.

And with her marriage ending, she does what characters do in movies about the gaping hole guilt leaves in their hearts. She has sex with anything on two legs — female or male, her lawyer or a virile firefighter, fellow dancers, whoever. She accepts the blame, but her self-punishment involves acting out, orgasming her way to a solution to this empty, guilty space in her heart.

That’s “punishment,” “atonement?” Hey, I said “open to interpretation.”

She toys with a flame thrower as part of this interpretive dance, but only loses herself when she and her corps are cutting loose to reggaeton, which is sexy and well within our star’s dancing skill set even if her soon-to-be-ex dismisses it as “prison music.”

The big emotional moments in this come from supporting characters, as our leads are emotionally-stunted (her) or shocked and dismayed (him).

The film has no conventional heroine/hero whom we can “root for,” as even the boy — barely glimpsed until the third act — plainly needs “help” and not unconditional forgiveness (we see the victim’s burns).

The dance is pulsating and fun, well-staged and beautifully shot. The sex is dancer-athletic, titillating and mostly packaged in a montage sure to be a widely-shared Reddit clip any day now.

But the whole is rather an empty experience, something I confess it shares with other Larraín films. “Ema” is pretty, provocative and surprising in ways that are more interesting to chew on than satisfying to experience.

MPA Rating: R for strong sexual content, nudity and language

Cast: Mariana Di Girólamo, Gael García Bernal, Santiago Cabrera, Giannina Fruttero and
Paola Giannini

Credits: Directed by Pablo Larraín script by Guillermo Calderón, Pablo Larraín and Alejandro Moreno. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:47

Ady Barkan first gained national notoriety during the 2018 midterm elections, campaigning cross country in Republican-held Congressional districts, going to war over a single issue — health care, and the GOP’s efforts to “destabilize the entire health care system” to finance tax breaks for the wealthy.

His #BeAHero” campaign was very personal. He was just a couple of years into his ALS diagnosis, a lawyer and lifetime activist (Fed Up) watching his body and then his voice fail, while unaccountable “bought and paid for” Republicans busied themselves with gutting Obamacare and stacking the courts with judges just as beholden to their super rich sponsors.

After helping flip the House and turn the tide against Trumpism, Barkan vowed to “give my last breath to save democracy,” badgering Democratic presidential candidates into online interviews with him about the issue that for him and millions of others, was literally about “saving my life.”

“Not Going Quietly” captures Barkan’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” moment, when he met campaign consultant and advisor Liz Jaff just as they were about to board an Arizona-bound flight that just happened to also carry then-GOP Senator Jeff Flake. Flake’s grudging and damning “meeting” with Barkan, filmed on board that flight, went viral. And a political star was born.

“Not Going Quietly” lets us see a fierce, and dying, advocate for health care show us what John Lewis meant by “Good trouble.”

Barkan’s messaging about health care rights was simple. His image — that of a dying man first on a cane, then in a wheelchair, first speaking publicly, eventually requiring a voice-synthesizer to testify to Congress — instantly burned into the national conscience.

The film is both a moving and intimate portrait of a passionate political animal in decline, the mundane struggle to just stay communicative enough to carry on, and a fascinating study of what “grass roots” organizing, attention-grabbing and issue-galvanizing can look like in an era of paid GOP “crisis actors,” dark money “Astro turf” politics and assaults on voting rights aimed at securing permanent minority rule by the rich.

Spokespeople with debilitating illnesses or sick family members are coached in the civil way to respond to attempts to keep them from speaking up (politely, firmly, when it’s their turn) at town hall meetings.

Fearful Congressional staffers call the cops when protestors show up, with TV cameras, to confront the unconfrontable and unaccountable. And Congressional careers go down in flames.

The film gives “the other side” its say, but exposes Supreme Court-stacking, tax-cutting for the rich and Republican health care callousness as it does. Even Barkan’s foes — some of them, anyway — express admiration for his zeal and compassion.

All that’s missing from this jeremiad is a visit to another Arizona senator, the one who isn’t giving her “last breath” to save democracy, or even one day of her vacation.

Through it all, Barkan and we see his little boy Carl grow from infant to toddler, his wife Rachel bravely soldier on and his cause resonate with voters similarly trapped in an embattled health care system and a seriously corrupted political one.

MPA Rating: unrated, some profanity

Cast: Ady Barkan, Rachel Barkan, Liz Jaff, former Senator Jeff Flake

Credits: Directed by Nicholas Bruckman, script by Nicholas Bruckman and Amanda Roddy. A Greenwich Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:36

Creepy looking head-games horror, this festival darling comes our way from Shudder on August 26.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Mosquito/CqMvqmWTjKtDqMkHFSLVfNMdVMGbNKZFzgFSMnjrtRwNzSFZGxGsJdjbDksnHZVWGdfjcBcNxRL?projector=1

“Geez & Ann” is a high school to college romance among young Indonesian Muslims, a movie whose sharp production values can’t compensate for the woefully incomplete love affair it tries to capture.

To Western eyes, at least, this kiss-less, years-long courtship of rich Geez (Junior Roberts) and working class honor student Ann (Hanggini) can seem chilly, almost bloodless. Giving it a quasi-tragic undertones feels pointless. There’s little obvious (again, to a Western outsider) “spark,” much less “heat” to this romance.

Ann organizes and runs the school talent show, where Geez and his band play (Nickelodeon lip-synching, circa 1997) and where the handsome, bespectacled Geez first sets his cap for Ann.

He leans in. He tries to man-splain/dismiss her competence at getting the power back on when they trip a breaker.

The fact that she falls off a chair into his arms reinforces the patriarchal culture’s take on “romance.”

There’s a proposal later in the film where a young man proffers a ring and offers to “be the one who leads you in life.”

Feel free to bristle at that, but remember, that’s why we travel “Around the World with Netflix.” To see other cultures, their mores etc.

Ann’s posse includes girls in hijabs, but they’re all super-enthusiastic about the attentions of the “most famous alumnus” of their school. He’s just dreamy, as he pursues Ann, stalking her on the bus, etc.

Amusingly, she’s not having it. She puts down his band and his music. But as he follows her to the park where she volunteers as an English lessons tutor for less&advantaged kids, he starts the whole “bowl her own with gifts and attention” thing.

Buying all the kids ice cream gets her on his scooter for a romantic ride.

But Geez has a secret. His controlling, demanding divorced mother (Dewi Rezer) is prepping him to go to school in Berlin, where she studied. He will live out HER dream, make HER “investment” pay off. He will NOT “waste time with music,” like his (implied) no-good father.

He can’t let Mom know about his new “distraction” too soon, can’t introduce Ann to her, even after he’s met and charmed Ann’s parents.

And this goes on for over an hour of the film’s 105 minutes.

The little slices of life are more interesting than the tepid puppy love at the heart of “Geez & Ann.” Teen and college age kids attempt stand-up comedy, and by the time they’re in college, it gets racy enough to include bits about catching your girlfriend “red handed,” etc. And when Geez heads to Berlin, he leaves a friend behind as “periscope,” to keep an eye on Ann, look to her needs and it is implied, spy on her.

Geez has to meet Ann’s parents to show his seriousness and somehow state his intentions. But he’s too gutless to confront mean old Mom, and Ann is too smitten and invested to bail, no matter how obvious it is that she should.

I found the leads cute but bland, with at least some of that attributable to cultural differences. Geez’s “emotional” range is restricted. Maybe “real men don’t get emotional” over there.

Nobody in the supporting cast is fleshed out, save for the mother character. Five screenwriters adapting a Rintik Sedu novel, 105 minutes of screen time, and this “Pretty in Pink” basically boils down to two and a half characters.

That makes “Geez & Ann” nothing more than a cultural curio, an artifact illustrating the wide gulf in Eastern and Western populaces and religions and mores and mores that can’t possibly be closing nearly as slowly as this movie makes out.

MPA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Hanggini, Junior Roberts, Dewi Rezer

Credits: Directed by Rizki Balki, script by Bonky, Amit Jethani, Cassandra Massardi, Muthia Khairunissa and Adi Nugroho, based on the novel by Rintik Sedu. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45, ,