Movie Nation

An American watching the Dutch war parable “The East” can’t help but see it through a Vietnam War lens. This film is about European soldiers fighting a phantom enemy and battling for “hearts and minds” in Indonesia, not Southeast Asia. And it takes nothing from the film to notice a little “Apocalypse Now” here, “Casualties of War” and “Platoon” story arcs and even a hint of “The Green Berets” there.

The Dutch commandos here even have their own green berets (like the British before them) to distinguish themselves from ordinary infantry.

Like Vietnam, The Netherlands experience fighting a different foe in different jungles was bathed in arrogance and racism. But as this bloody, unsettling and somewhat mythic combat thriller from musician, DJ and actor turned director Jim Taihuttu points out, there were distinctly Dutch failings and scars in play here.

Martijn Lakemeier stars as Johan DeVries, a volunteer in the corps shipped over to the former Dutch colony which Japan conquered in World War II. Johan and his comrades in arms are there to “restore order” to the islands of Java, Celebes, et al, governed out of Batavia, the city now known as Jakarta.

Their commanding officer declares “The disgrace ends with your arrival here” (in Dutch with English subtitles), which is the most psychologically telling line in the movie. Holland was invaded and occupied by the Germans in World War II. The queen under whose name these soldiers were sent to “fight peasants with swords and spears” spent that war in comfort, in London. And it’s not like she’s here, either.

Add to that national “shame” the stark reminder that some soldiers in this unit fought with the Resistance, but most assuredly did not.

They’re in country, taking up positions at remote jungle outposts, just as “the Japanese Nazis” are forced out at gunpoint. The ethnically and religiously diverse country is teetering on the brink of civil war, with the “terrorist” Sukarno fighting a guerilla war aimed at uniting them all in independence. This “war” is a series of patrols out of those bases, interrogations of civilians in the countryside. The attacks they face are ambushes, their reprisals include atrocities.

Sound familiar?

Johan throws himself into the routine, studying the Indonesian phrase book, thinking along the lines of what the American Pentagon later labeled “winning the hearts and minds” of the locals.

But Johan won’t be the classic “white savior,” the above-it-all “observer/watcher/narrator” of this story. He’s very much a participant. Just how much so becomes clear when he hears a tip from a local about a rebel cadre holed up in a nearby village, and his condescending commanding officer (Mike Reus) dismisses the idea of action.

Johan takes that tip to a soldier with the air of lethal, commanding mystery about him, The Turk. Marwan Kenzari plays his Greco-Dutch commando with bravado and self-righteous cool, a mustachioed man among men, the one some whisper “should be in charge of this war.”

He is ruthless and unwavering in his pursuit of the rebels, unflinching in the summary extra-judicial “justice” he metes out. He is Sgt. Barnes in “Platoon,” Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now,” a monster lauded for his results, abhorred for his “methods.” Johan will become his (somewhat) devoted student.

Taihuttu tells this story along two compelling timelines. We follow Johan through his introduction to Indonesia, his “blooding” in combat and his immersion in local culture.

But as the opening image of the film is that of an older, weathered Johan returning home to Holland to protests, there’s a fictive present set after his service. “The East” is about what Johan did there, how it scarred him and what he brought home with him from that war.

The racism expressed by the soldiers for the “brown monkeys” they’ve traveled there to fight is jolting, and also a pre-Vietnam echo of the demonized, dismissed and under-estimated Asian “other” the United States and a few allies fought decades later.

And Taihuttu isn’t shy about revisiting other Vietnam elements with this fictional story. When the flame thrower comes out, we know what’s going to happen, the old “destroy the village in order to ‘save’ it” nonsense.

He lets us see the war lost exactly the same way Vietnam was lost almost 30 years later.

If the American legacy of Vietnam, echoed in film, history and literature of the war, was “going in like John Wayne” and realizing out that sort of simplistic heroism heedless of geopolitics exists only in that draft dodger’s movies, some 150,000 Dutch troops shipped East to fight to atone for what they, their parents and their leaders didn’t do from 1940-45.

The filmmaker isn’t above tumbling into the same “traps” filmmakers of the lesser Vietnam films succumbed to. Of course there’s a cocktail party. Of course The Turk is into opera. Of course there’s a hooker — played by Denise Aznam — whom Johan falls for.

But Taihuttu’s created a fascinating twist on the “reckoning-with-our-ugly-past” war film. By building it on a shamed national psyche and having that reflected in the characters, he’s found dark new explanations for how things happened, and why.

MPA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, sex, smoking, profanity

Cast: Martijn Lakemeier, Marwan Kenzari, Jonas Smulders, Coen Bril and
Denise Aznam

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jim Taihuttu, additional material by Mustafa Duygulu. A Magnolia/Magnet release.

Running time: 2:21

A family vacation goes wrong thanks to two “drifters” in this September thriller.

“A Savage Nature” sets some sort of new slow-poke standard for thrillers, a lurching stiff with no pulse to speak of.

“Inspired by” a true home invasion a title tells us was in Virginia in August of 2007 (I can’t find evidence of this), it’s a twisty, twisted and theatrical melodrama about a waitress (Joanna Whicker), her deputy sheriff combat vet (Steve Polites) whose awkward anniversary celebration is interrupted by two thugs in a pickup (Jon Hudson Odom, Joseph Carlson).

It starts with a rough, grabby encounter in the diner where Beth (Whicker) works and escalates once the sheriff (Frank Riley III) roughs up the two when he spots them later.

That’s on the remote dead end dirt road where Beth and Pete live, and events conspire to put them all in that house, where everything is not what it seems and agendas are not necessarily what you’d expect.

The writing is often clumsy and unnatural, even when the thugs are reaching for laughs. On hearing Pete’s “in law enforcement,” one thug cracks “Looks like we’re in a complimentary field.” When said thug starts extemporizing on Socrates, it isn’t just the scripted mispronunciation of the Greek philosopher’s name that sounds wrong.

The “reasons” why characters seem guarded and wooden has an explanation, but that doesn’t begin to cover how slow-footed and creaky these performances are.

Surprises are no substitute for suspense and the lack of urgency in situations and character’s facing life-and-death peril never gives this film the chance to demonstrate its “Savage Nature.”

MPA Rating: unrated, violence and sex

Cast: Joanna Whicker, Steve Polites, Jon Hudson Odom, Joseph Carlson, Frank Riley III and Rayanne Gonzales

Credits: Directed by Paul Awad, script by Kathryn O’Sullivan and Paul Awad. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:22

Pardon me while I spend a few paragraphs gushing about “Vivo,” which for my money is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s best musical outing of the summer.

Miranda, aka “He can do no wrong,” makes the first-ever Sony Animation musical a bubbly, tuneful, Cuba-centric/Florida flattering kiddie romp that surfs along to the lilting crooning of Gloria Estefan and “Buena Vista Social Club” alumnus Juan de Marcos González, and just bounces when Miranda’s English language Latin hip hop kicks in.

The man even makes auto-tune fun.

“Vivo” (Miranda) is a kinkajou who duets with organ-grinder/guitarist Andres (González) on the plazas of Havana, a Central American transplant who plays the flute, the bongos and the timbales. And if Andres can’t literally “understand” what the monkey is singing, at least he’s in tune and they’re in sync.

News that Andres’ long-long love, the singer Marta Sandoval (Estefan), who used to sing with him and then left for Miami, is giving her farewell concert, hass them making plans. He’s invited to the Miami show, and he’ll sing a song for her, “Para Marta,” and finally let her know of his love.

When Andres dies, Vivo makes delivering that song his mission. And in Andres’ irrepressible granddaughter, Gabi (Ynairaly Simo, a pistol) he has a co-conspirator, or would if her mother (Zoe Saldana) didn’t have a “no more pets” policy.

Vivo stows away with them to Key West, and when Gabi finds him (little girl SCREAMS of delight are just the best) and her grandfather’s song, she schemes to get them to that night’s concert.

Plan A, B, C and D go by the boards as they battle a bus driver and Burmese python, nature-protecting Sand Dollar (girl) Scouts and encounter just enough of Florida to scare off the tourists.

Miranda’s hand in the lyrics is everywhere, when the plucky kinkajou sings “All I have to do is sing louder than my fear,” laments to his lost friend Andres “You fell asleep humming music,” and when Gabi gets her sugared-up hip hop on for her big number, the (kiddie) club-ready romp “I BOUNCE to the beat of my own DRUM!”

The animation is lively, varied in technique (a fantasy 2D flashback has a romantic postcard feel) and brightly-colored, very much on brand with Sony Animation’s house style.

The script is a little thin, getting giggles out of Vivo stumbling into Gabi’s “petting zoo,” a graveyard of all the critters she’s had for pets and let die. Key West is cute and cruise-ship-infested. A little more Florida weirdness and wackiness on the way to Miami was in order.

The python chasing them through the lower Everglades is menacingly hissed by Michael Rooker, the daffy, lovelorn roseate spoonbills are voiced and sung byBrian Tyree Henry and Nicole Byer. And the nature-obsessed Sand Dollars let the screenwriters get in all sorts of shots at the Girl Scouts and their “cookies” without having to apologize.

But this sinks or swims on its songs, and Miranda as a busking/hustling/rhyme-spitting monkey makes it swim.

“Yeah, I’ve adapted to my habitat…If y’all like that, won’t you pass the hat?”

MPA Rating: PG for some thematic elements and mild action.

Cast: The voices of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Gloria Estefan, Zoe Saldana, Ynairaly Simo, Brian Tyree Henry, Juan de Marcos González and Michael Rooker

Credits: Directed by Kirk DeMicco and Brandon Jeffords, script by Quiara Alegría Hudes, Kirk DeMicco, music by Lin-Manuel Mirada and Alex Lacamoire. A Sony Animation film for Netflix.

Running time: 1:38

Dwight Yoakam is well paired with the Old Man of the Cinema in this September 17 release.

A September 3 musical with Camilla Cabello, Billy Porter, Idina Menzel and damnation, the only Irishman who can’t carry a tune, ear Pierce Brosan. Ok

“Nine Days” is the sort of indie drama that makes you appreciate the wonder that is the actor’s heart as much as the actor’s art. A collective of rising stars and famous supporting players took a flier on first-time feature director Edson Oda’s dive into existential theatricality, and their presence made the movie a reality.

It’s the sort of thoughtful, human-condition-pondering picture that makes a head-snapping contrast to normal summer cinema fare. Of course, this isn’t a “normal summer,” so all bets are off.

And I can’t decide if I like this or even appreciate what Oda was trying to do. But perhaps by the end of the review, at the bottom of the page, just above the as-yet-undecided “star rating,” I’ll know, as will you.

It’s about a seaside desert safe house for souls auditioning for life on Earth. Candidates meet with an exacting interviewer (Winston Duke of “Us” and “Black Panther”), someone who talks up their chance at “the amazing opportunity of life.” But they have nine days of tests and exercises ahead of them and must pass muster with Will, this pedantic fussbudget whose top collar is always buttoned, a careful man who wears not just suspenders, but a belt, too.

Will monitors the lives of those he “passed” via a wall of old cathode ray tube TVs, seeing their lives through their lives. He keeps meticulous notes, and videotapes key moments. And all of this he files, in this house with filing cabinets that must hold infinity itself.

He isn’t the only one doing this, or interviewing new souls ready to be assigned to life, or rejected, in which case they’ll cease to exist. But he is the “star” of this system, a bit unorthodox, as his boss/friend (Benedict Wong) admits, yet thorough.

Among those he interviews in this latest group are sensitive Mike (David Rysdahl), more sensitive Maria (Arianna Ortiz), blunt Kane (Bill Skarsgård), callously glib Alexander (Tony Hale) and oh-so-thoughtful Emma (Zazie Beetz).

Over those days, they watch human life play out on those TVs and keep journals. Will puts them through role playing exercises, serving up moral and ethical dilemmas of a “Sophie’s Choice” sort, barking “What would YOU do?” in each situation.

“I’ll start a story, you’ll tell me how it ends,” he offers, jotting down every answer, deciding everyone’s fate, but “kind” enough to — as consolation — offer the failed souls a simulation of the “life” based on a moment they saw on one of the screens that they’re watching, one that was “truly meaningful.”

Everybody plays along, more or less seriously. But Emma is given to answering questions with counter-questions, puncturing the premise of Will’s “test” and, to be frank, the premise of the movie as well. Or they would if her responses generated any dramatic heat at all.

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question.”

The “tests” don’t progress in difficulty or anything else. Winston’s quiz questions are awfully arbitrary, as are his let’s-get-real “punishments.”

“This is pain, and what you’re feeling right now is nothing compared to what people feel when they’re alive.”

The story’s arc has to do with letting go of loss, moving on from mistakes and finding a way to “live” the life one’s been gifted with. Will was once alive, and he needs to learn this as much as anyone he’s passing judgment on.

Oda gives the film a marvelous mystery as it opens, zeroing in on Winston’s solitary work in this Purgatory-by-the-Sea setting. But as that evaporates and the film settles into the “rules” and logistics of the work, I lost interest.

The “deserve to be alive” premise is wholly undercut by the unpleasant arbitrariness of the lives we see play out — a playful childhood leading to a musical career, then death, or bullying that invites interviewee suggestions of fighting back or passively just taking whatever life dishes out.

That in itself is intriguing, the idea that “Would we choose to be born if we had enough information to make an informed decision?”

Hale, playing a blend of distracted smarm and contempt, stands out in the cast. Beetz is, at most, mildly interesting as “the questioning one.” Skarsgård’s brittle character seems to fly in the face of the viewer’s sense of who passes and who fails and Duke’s Will never escapes the confines of being a “type,” emotionally shut-off after his one shot at life, traumatized by a “star” selection who died too soon.

Whatever each actor saw in her or his character that made them sign on, the profound (ish) speeches and musings didn’t do enough for me in terms of illuminating the human condition or engaging me in the story.

It’s all a tad dreamy, which seems to go with that “existential” territory. But thinking of all the films that have covered similar ground, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” made us cry, “Truman Show” made its poignant points with humor and “Waking Life” mesmerized and touched and connected, albeit at arm’s length.

“Nine Days” made me feel nothing save for the passing of time.

MPA Rating: R for language (profanity)

Cast: Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Benedict Wong, Bill Skarsgård, Ariana Ortiz,
David Rysdahl and Tony Hale

Credits: Scripted and directed by Edson Oda. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 2:03

Jack Kilmer, Val Kilmer‘s son, reads his dad’s voice-over narration in “Val,” the autobiographical documentary he produced and which co-directors Ting Poo and Leo Scott assembled out of half a century of Kilmer home videos and movies.

Val lost his voice, perhaps permanently, to throat cancer, and speaks in a metallic rasp that requires subtitles or, if you’re meeting him in person, very careful attention to every bend of sound.

He’s 61 and can’t tour with the “Citizen Twain” one-man show he dreamed of turning into a feature film. And although his career isn’t over — he plays a mob boss/throat injury survivor, to good effect, in “The Birthday Cake” — he has reached something like the end of the line of his acting life, something acknowledged by this film and the charming autobiography, “I’m Your Huckleberry,” he published last year.

That makes “Val” a bittersweet outing, a movie about a man who was once a great screen beauty, who admits “I don’t look great” and “I’m selling basically my old self, my old career” by signing autographs and posing for fan photos at conventions and special screenings of his greatest hits — “Tombstone,” “Top Gun,” “The Doors,” “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.”

It’s a vanity project that washes away the vanity, a faded star who spent time in the tabloids being mocked for weight gains and letting himself go and a “difficult” actor, a diva who wasted a lot of his life explaining that away, or why he quit Batman after one movie, on chat shows over the years.

So while the film is largely in his words and entirely from his point of view, and the music rights budget (The Doors, Dylan, Donna Summer) could finance many a cheaper documentary, Kilmer owns up to who he is, where he’s been and what he’s become. And he explains things — acting, the movie star’s life and lot, and himself, how he got this “reputation.”

“I’ve lived in the illusion as much as I’ve lived without it,” repeating the familiar refrain that a character is part fictional, and partly “me.” “I have behaved poorly, I have behaved bravely.”

As he noted in his book, he was shaken to his core by the early death of his older, artistic and aspiring filmmaker brother Wesley, whose DIY movie parodies (“Teeth” was a goof on “Jaws”) they made together as children.

But what the movie does that the book could not is let us see clips of Val on movie sets in which he’s given his character’s room artwork created by Wes, who drowned at 15. Kilmer was an early and enthusiastic videographer, recording his easy interaction with the other pre-stardom Young Turks of Acting, Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn, backstage in their New York breakout play “The Slab Boys.”

We see snippets of his Juilliard work, rehearsals, his first film (“Top Secret”) and many of those that followed, videoing backstage and on-set footage, seeing the U.S.S. Enterprise (“Top Gun”) for the first time, chatting with co-stars and worshipping British actress Joanne Whalley in Danny Boyle’s “The Genius” at the Royal Court Theatre after each day’s filming on “Top Secret.” They later worked together on “Willow,” and married shortly afterward.

The wedding footage here is terribly touching, especially in light of the marriage ending during the making of “The Island of Doctor Moreau.”

Kilmer tells stories and talks about acting, the “soap opera” level posing that being clad in the restrictive Batsuit calls for and what you “really” do when you verbally agree to something that turns into a contract and then an obligation to make the movie.

It’s “your life that you’re agreeing to forfeit,” opinions, liberty, the works suborned to the studio’s needs.

We’re shown snippets of his many TV interviews where he was challenged about being “difficult” and “a perfectionist,” and see archival interviews with “Kiss Kiss” co-star Robert Downey Jr. and “Doors” director Oliver Stone defending the artist and his technique.

But there’s also unflattering footage where Kilmer kept videoing on the set of the “doomed from the start” bomb, “The Island of Doctor Moreau.” The replacement director John Frankenheimer, one of the greatest ever, was “just trying to get through” the picture that had become a lost cause, and Kilmer baits him with the video camera and indulges and idolizes Marlon Brando (who often sent a double to the set) backstage, the bloated star in his hammock asking Kilmer to “give me a shove” (so that it would swing).

We’re given the sense that co-star David Thewlis was Kilmer’s co-conspirator on “Moreau,” struggling to humor Brando (who switched off and all but shut down production), to collaborate and “write” better scenes each night off set. But even Thewlis slams the door on that notion in a later Kilmer clip, plainly irritated at what the two big-names were doing to make a bad situation unbearable.

Nobody came off looking good after that one. And including Kilmer’s calmly aggressive custody arguments on the phone with his unheard ex-wife Whalley, and seeing his childish silly string prank when she accompanies him to deal with his just-died mother’s corpse is another way the “vanity” is stripped away.

The portrait that emerges isn’t far off from the one journalists have picked up on from our chats with Kilmer over the years. He’s very smart, wonderfully thoughtful and articulate, gets deep into character and doesn’t suffer those who don’t respect the art and the effort it takes to make it. He’s still serious about the Christian Science Church his family raised him in. But arrogant? Oh yes. Asshat-level full of himself.

What “Val” shows us is that artist is still there (he paints and makes collages, now), enfeebled by the illness that turned the slow decline of his career into an abrupt halt, humbled but philosophical and grateful about all he’s gotten to see and do.

MPA Rating: R, some language (profanity), a little nudity

Cast: Val Kilmer, Jack Kilmer, with Joanne Whalley, Nicole Kidman, Robert Downey Jr., Oliver Stone, Mercedes Kilmer and Marlon Brando.

Credits: Directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott. An Amazon Studios release (Amazon Prime)

Running time: 1:48

Frank Grillo, Alexis Louder and Toby Huss also star in this Sept.17 thriller.

The irresistible off-the-cuff Canadian quips of Ryan Reynolds are unleashed in an inside-video-game comedy from the director of “Night at the Museum,” “Free Guy,” an amusing variation on what is by now a well-worn plot.

The new twist here? Our “Tron/Wreck it Ralph/Ready Player One” hero doesn’t know he’s in a game. And gosh, he’s fine with that, until that moment when he wonders if there might be “something more” to this life of same blue shirts, same espressos at the same cafe and work at the same bank, which is robbed multiple times every day because that’s what happens in your more violent video games.

“Free Guy” traffics in tired gamer/gaming types — that too many of “them” live with their moms or congregate in super-spreader-sized Asian game rooms, glued to their screens, addicted to both their favorite games and those enterprising nerds who’ve made online careers out of playing and commenting on others playing, making a living off fans who “watch” them online.

And as such its another commentary on gaming’s downside, the predatory nature of online game operations which, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, hunt for that perfect algorithm that gets us addicted, and keeps us logged in.

Nametag-wearing Guy (Reynolds) is a digital watch-wearing dork, relentlessly upbeat, chums with the security guard (Lil Rel Howery) who cowers on the floor with him during every robbery at the Free City bank where they both work.

“Don’t have a good day, have a GREAT day,” Guy gushes to one and all, which may be the most Ryan Reynolds line ever, delivered with an extra helping of sugary maple syrup.

But maybe one day he wants a different coffee drink. Maybe “normal” isn’t what he thinks he is. And maybe accepting that Free City is full of villains and heroes in sunglasses, and bystanders/victims like himself, has an expiration date.

He’s about to learn he’s living in a hellscape of a game, and learn what an NPC is, a “non-playable character.” He’s about to don…sunglasses.

Naturally, it’s a hottie heroine in a faux Tomb Raider get-up who triggers this epiphany. MolotovGirl is her online handle, a pretty cool avatar for Millie (Jodie Comer), who is shooting and punching her way through Free City with an agenda all her own.

Pretty soon Guy is a spanner in the works, a “trash-assed noob” thwarting robbers, disarming trigger-happy mass shooters and generally mucking up everybody on the outside’s games, game strategy and gaming life.

Guy’s epiphanies are many, some imparted by the puzzled MolotovGirl, who can’t figure out what he is, some which he arrives at all by himself.

“Life doesn’t have to be something that just happens to us,” he muses. And this AI creation is growing a soul, something the gamers themselves prefer to abandon once they log on.

“I’d never hurt innocent people.”

The script cuts between Guy’s new eyes on the mayhem all around him (often invisible, without the game character glasses) and the players themselves, profiled as “sociopathic manchild” types, and intrigues at the game corp where Millie once worked, Soonami. Her former partner and game developer Keys (Joe Keery) is still there, trouble-shooting this “noob” who is somehow mucking up the game and getting global attention for doing it.

Director Shawn Levy has done a lot of comedies, but “Night at the Museum” is the right comparison here. He stuffs the screen with game action, game characters and game tokens. He . and Reynolds recruited legions of cameos, some of whom you’ll recognize, some only here as a voice.

Listen for somebody Levy directed in “Date Night” and somebody Reynolds has an epic celebrity feud with.

Comer, of TV’s “Killing Eve” and various series in her native Britain, makes a reasonably convincing badass in Free City, and a winsome idealist in her quixotic battle with Soonami and its manic man-child owner (Taika Waititi).

Whatever its loftier existential ambitions, “Free Guy” is never much more than big screen eye candy with Reynolds’ grinning deadpan anchoring it with his amusing over and under reactions to all that befalls Guy.

And if you love Reynolds — And seriously, who doesn’t? — that’s enough.

MPA Rating: PG-13, (fantasy) violence, language (profanity)

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Lil Rel Howery, Joe Keery, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Taika Waititi, along with many cameos.

Credits: Directed by Shawn Levy, script by Mark Lieberman, Zak Penn. A 20th Century release.

Running time: 1:55