Movie Nation

Traditionally, and by long-established cultural cliche, it’s cats that “little old ladies” hoard. Or dogs.

But it can be pigs. And in extreme, but seemingly more readily “diagnosed” cases, it can be tigers — large cats kept, by and large by rural, disabled hoarders.

“For the Birds” is about an Upstate New Yorker who developed a passion for living with farm fowl — turkeys, and as the song goes, “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry” when visitors to Kathy Murphy’s trailer and mini-farm in Wawarsing, N.Y.

But “visitors” are plainly rare in Kathy’s world. We may meet her and husband Gary in old home videos in the film’s opening scene, cooing over a lost duckling they’d had to take in. Ten years later, the place is overrun with animals that she’s bought and hatched, adopted or picked up — hundreds of them.

“Found a little duck in the yard one day, and that was all she wrote,” Kathy grins.

She loves her birds, gives each a name and picks up and hugs this duck or that rooster to underscore that affection. But she’s “overwhelmed,” others note. The county has taken notice. Husband Gary Murphy is scheming behind her back to get the birds moved elsewhere — some of them, ANY of them.

Richard Miron’s film doesn’t pretend to psychoanalyze Kathy’s mania for mallards, wood ducks, geese and the rest. She’s caring for them, but not all that expertly. She’s doing better by the fowl than she is for herself. Her teeth are a wreck. She’s estranged from their daughter over this, and Gary’s got to know where Kathy’s priorities are, and resent them.

“He knows that I would chose them over him!”

It is the way of such documentaries that things start out looking cute, quaint, eccentric and sweet, even if we see the words of the police report that underscores the trouble on the horizon.

Reasonable, patient, well-intentioned people from the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary pay a visit and ever-so-gently persuade Kathy to let them take some of the more malnourished or eye-infected ducks and chickens to their big farm. Ulster County leaves this “problem” up to them. For now.

But something in Kathy’s cooperative, sympathetic yet increasingly manic manner tells us this is the easiest it’s going to be, relocating some 150 fowl from a place that might more comfortably hold a dozen.

Miron’s film sets up our characters, Kathy with her “Who cares?” what other people think attitude, Gary with his indulgent, “indifferent” and remote attitude towards the whole thing, a guy whose fondest “wish is that they was a little…bit further away.”

Her “hobby,” the reason she gets up in the morning, “It’s interesting, to say the least.”

We meet Scottish Sheila from the Sanctuary, and Elana and other volunteers, delicately negotiating the release of two turkeys, finding Kathy increasingly difficult to deal with, calling Gary inside the trailer (by phone) begging for him to intervene.

She gets angrier and angier, Gary turns more and more remote — “You think you’re going to grow old with someone…” and then a heavy handed SPCA coordinator with the county shows up, barks “I own this property right now. OFF the property!” and the film crew are chased off, a folksy but tactless “old country lawyer” named Bill brags about how she “takes better care of those chickens than Col. Sanders, or Tyson” and a boy prosecutor who hasn’t shaved yet face off in court.

The closest this charming films gets to “revelatory” is when the lawyers bicker over the label “hoarder.” Is there not one person who can point to what’s really going on here? Kathy seems reasonable enough, sane enough. Is this, pardon the pun, a dark turn in an “empty nest” syndrome situation?

Of course, there are no pat answers in a single-case/single person profile film like this. Films I’ve reviewed about Big Cat collecting visit scores of people, almost all on disability, filling some “control” and “strength and power” hole in their lives by keeping tigers and lions.

Maybe it’s as Kathy says, she just fell in love with them and had to have lots and lots of each species. But as “For the Birds” unfolds its increasingly bittersweet story and we see the problem and the destructive nature of the solution to it, one can’t help but wish there’d been a tad more attention paid to “What’s going through the bird lady’s head?”

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Kathy Murphy, Gary Murphy

Credits: Directed by Richard Miron. A Dogwoof release.

Running time: 1:32

An overnight shift in professions, outmoded or newly in demand, the power of agents and the simple metrics of what constitutes cinematic success is about to roil Hollywood, on top of the changes already on progress.

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/hollywood-changing-fast-can-film-industry-lifers-change-too-1202145060/

Like most early but not “earliest” adapters — I found Jackie Chan’s action comedies at the insistence of friends into Asian cinema.

A top tier stunt man, martial artist and Keaton-esque clown, it took a while, a few tries and then some, for him to break out in the West. But once he did, Asia’s biggest action star became the world’s darling, an impish dynamo who wore his working class roots with pride, and never palmed off a stunt on others he wasn’t gutsy enough to do himself.

The outtakes at the end of every Jackie Chan movie showed just how often those stunts could go wrong.

He lists the major injuries he’s suffered to every part of his body in “Never Grow Up,” his second autobiography (the first was “My Life in Action.). From his back to his neck, cheekbones to teeth and all points in between, Jackie Chan has broken, wrenched, concussed and dislocated them all.

The new book is an “as told to” autobiography, built around his decades of anecdotes, the mealtime/drinks-after-work conversations he has with his large entourage and overheard by his longtime publicist, Zhu Mo.

So “Never Grow Up” isn’t a researched and verified biography, but more a “How I remembered it/What I learned in life” recounting of his upbringing, his harsh martial arts schooling, rough and tumble crawl to stardom and how he used and misused that stardom over the decades.

The former Chan Kong-Sang is 65 now, sanguine about his shortcomings and forthcoming in ways aimed at a “Learn from my mistakes, kids” narrative.

I’ve interviewed him several times over the years, and always found him to be a star seeking to come off humble, but prone to bragging (with cause), relentlessly cheerful but not shy about the hard life and hard falls he took to get where he is.

Not bitter, but still a guy with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, which he freely admits in this new autobiography.

“Never Grow Up” has him questioning, again, his lack of enthusiasm for elementary school, which landed him in a martial arts/acting-tumbling China Drama Academy for ten years.

He was functionally illiterate for much of his life, and even now says he freezes up at autograph sessions in China (tougher write than English).

He was scared to death at many of the stunts he and his team cooked up for him, and once he had control of his screen projects, would put off dangerous falls and the like for days and days, working up the nerve.

He’s always loved gambling and drink, and wasn’t always the nicest guy to date, and owns up to it all freely, though one suspects he’s protesting a bit too much here.

He mistrusted his Taiwanese movie starlet wife, the mother of his son. But he was the one caught cheating.

He spent money freely, and confesses to being petty and greedy and acquisitive in the extreme for much of his life — holding grudges against shops that wouldn’t serve him when he was poor, lavishing presents on friends, family and colleagues, building schools in China with his charity foundation.

There’s a bit of star worship in reverse here and there — Stallone confessing “Whenever we run out of (action beat) ideas, we watch one of your movies,” reciting, at length, his honorary Oscar presentation (Tom Hanks honored him that afternoon).

He doesn’t name names much — avoids insulting those who treated him badly in his early years, when Hong Kong was hellbent on making this smiling joker “The New Bruce Lee.” He skims past his biggest global hits, so no fun or digging Chris Tucker or Owen Wilson anecdotes.
He befriended Stallone, visited Cameron and Spielberg on the sets of their blockbusters, but continued to do his work with lesser lights, cashing the checks as he did.

There are blurbs on the back of “Never Grow Up” with those directors and producers, and those co-stars singing his praises.

That’s where Zhu Mo’s book of “listening” to Jackie Chan shows us how it falls short. Too much of a tough life is handled with kid gloves, there’s too little about working out the stunts, etc., taking a shot at working with very young John Woo EARLY on (some of it covered in “My Life in Action”).

There are too few confirming or contradictory voices laying out the “real” Jackie Chan — insecure, driven, brave and canny (Chinese filmmakers always have to worry about how their words will play back home, and with the overlords in charge).

At least he doesn’t trot out his weariest anecdotes — the one about how he was supposed to be filming, hanging off the side of the World Trade Center as a window washer on 9/11, etc.

“Never Grow Up” (Simon & Schuster, $26) is thus a pretty good book, but more a stepping stone for a better book which somebody not quite in awe of their subject will be the one to write.

An all star cast featuring The Best of Britain (men, anyway) — Cumberbatch, Firth and Mark Strong are among those on board for this Spielberg production directed by Bond very Sam Mendes.

Bit late to be getting in on all the Great War hooplah, but we are intrigued.

https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/filming-begin-spielberg-blockbuster-being-16337531

From the “Bill & Ted 3” Twitter Feed

“Bill & Ted Day is totally two weeks from today! Hosting a public event for it? Let us know, dude. Events are currently scheduled to happen in multiple locations in the UK and US. And, no matter where you party on, join us online!”

https://t.co/B6fssFeIjE #BillandTed #BillandTedDay https://twitter.com/BillandTed3/status/1132742782320336898?s=17

Scorsese knows The Stones. Scorsese knows Dylan. This new doc on BD hots the streamkng service in mid June. http://www.brooklynvegan.com/bob-dylan-rolling-thunder-revue-documentary-is-out-in-june-see-first-stills/

Cycling buddy comedy? That could find an American audience. https://deadline.com/2019/05/the-climb-movie-cycling-comedy-sony-classics-deal-cannes-1202622085/amp/

We’re still in Kansas, Dorothy. But with “Brightburn,” we’re not in Smallville any more.

It’s a twisted take on the “Superman” origin myth, an alien baby adopted by humans in rural America, raised on “wholesome rural values,” and yet when puberty hits, he’s a monster, not an icon of “Truth, Justice and the American Way.”

How’d this happen?

OK, his parents, the Breyers (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman) swear. A lot. And Dad hits the local bar. But Mom is full of reassurances that “You’ll always be my baby boy.” Can she turn him around once all this omnipotent power has gone straight to his 12-year-old head?

It’s a Screen Gems movie. What do you think?

If Screen Gems was ever going to do the “Evil Superman” picture, it was always going to be a horror film. And yeah, it was going to be cut-rate.

“Brightburn” is a blood-spattered wallow in extra-terrestrial cruelty, a child who has it pretty good discovering he dropped to Earth in a spaceship, and thus is even more “special” than he thought. That moment he figures out his super-strength, that he can’t hurt his hand in the running lawnmower he’s just tossed two football fields away, little Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn) has his mission.

“Take the Earth.”

Brightburn, Kansas? Well a boy’s got to start somewhere.

There are parables aplenty just dangling here — low-hanging fruit for screenwriter/brothers Mark and Brian Gunn, not the only Gunns in the movie-writing business, but certainly the ones with the least to offer (“Journey 2” was their big credit).

They do nothing with the notion of entitled, indulged kids, or ADHD kids, or rural Red State values imprinted on a new Superman, who brings down destruction upon us all, or great power handed to the worst possible character to wield it.

That’s all here, but not developed.

All we’re given is instance after instance of unspeakable, gruesomely-detailed cruelty — drawn out small town murders carried out by a boy whose initials match those of his town and obsess him; a boy who can fly, shoot laser beams out of his eyes and who has no compunction about using those powers to answer every slight or perceived slight.

I guess we’re lucky he doesn’t tweet.

“Brightburn” is a generally humorless affair, with the only “laughs” given a sadistic edge, with paint-by-numbers frights and cut-and-paste “big emotional moments” that even the formidable Banks cannot make pay off.

Another horror movie about a soul-dead child who excuses monstrous behavior with “Sometimes bad things happen to people for a good reason” is nothing to to buy a ticket for.

The scares are built out of how fast the little Dickens is, the creepy mask and cape getup he comes up with, the “powers” he has. But editor-turned-director David Yarovesky doesn’t give them any juice, and can’t be bothered to make more than one of them a surprise.

It’s not hatefully bad, just inert. Botched. Dull. Pointless.

MPAA Rating: R for horror violence/bloody images, and language.

Cast: Elizabeth Banks,  David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Emmie Hunter and Gregory Alan Williams

Credits: Directed by David Yarovesky, script by  Brian Gunn, Mark Gunn. A Sony/Screen Gems release.

Running time: 1:31

It’s a widely embraced truism that it’s a bloody miracle any of us who grew up in the ’70s got out alive. It was as true Down Under as it was here in the Northern Hemisphere.

It wasn’t just the banana hammocks, leisure suits, sideburns, deathtrap cars, promiscuity, booze, saccharine in our soft drinks, saccharine pop music, drugs and disco that menaced us.

“We were the first generation to wear fully synthetic fabrics,” an all-wise narrator reminds us. “We were also…the last,” he adds, showing off the burn scars he and a 14 year-old friend wear. Thanks to such “progress,” and bad parenting, “Melly and I were ‘the flammable children.'”

“Swinging Safari” is an unruly, unsettling and shambolic romp through a ’70s childhood in Australia. It’s from the director of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” and if it’s not autobiographical, that can only come as a relief. Not that his protagonist, an aspiring tweenage filmmaker named Jeff (Atticus Robb), remembers this near-disastrous experiment in free-range parenting, ‘safety not guaranteed” child’s play and “swinging” that way.

Stephan Elliott conjures up the lost world of Wyong Place, an idyllic split-level slice of Aussie suburbia on the edge of Nobby’s Beach. It’s where three families and their kids played, drank, experimented and somehow cheated the impending death that seems to hang over their every activity.

“Wedged in time somewhere between ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Wall Street,'” (circa 1975, I figure), we meet the “House of Hall,” “There’s No Place Like Jones” and “Life on Marsh” families in postcard screen-caps from little Jeff’s super eight movies.

Hey, if you wanted to learn to make “foreign cinema” like “Jaws” in the ’70s, you had to have a “super power,  super weapon, super eight camera.” And Jeff isn’t just capturing the chaotic home life and cringe-worthy play of these families. He was making movies under his “Death Cheaters” banner — DIY credits, DIY effects (papier mache volcanos) and all-too-real DIY stunts.

Mini-bikes, trampolines and unsupervised fireworks aren’t enough. Jeff’s camera gives him the power to talk other kids into doing pretty much anything he wants. Neighbor boy Gerome (Jesse Denyer) already has a full Evel Knievel suit. Douse him with gas for a fire stunt?

“It’s perfectly safe!”

“Ready when you are, CB!”

The movies they’re making; “Jaws 2, Humans 0,” “The Revengers” and “Dead Sorry in the Morning” among them, are a cringe-worthy hoot. We keep waiting for somebody to blow up, burn to death, drown or at least poke an eye out.

“You aren’t gonna get burned, Gerome is!”

What the parents are doing instead of paying attention to their kids is amusingly appalling. Neighbor mom Kaye (Kylie Minogue) is all but confined to their house, drinking. “Agoraphobia, like skin cancer and political correctness, hadn’t been invented yet.”

Her husband (Guy Pearce) is trying to house, feed and entertain his brood selling Funk & Wagnall’s Encyclopedias door to door, or by phone, holed up in the basement where he keeps his porn magazines.

“Yes, I’m a wanker! And I’ve got the dirty magazines to prove it!”

Radha Mitchell, slinging her native Oz accent for a change, and Julian McMahon are the high-flying, pill-popping, over-spending, one-upping Joneses. Their rambunctious kids include one shrinking violet, Melissa (Imogen Hess). She’s sensitive, “invisible,” and only sensitive Jeff really sees her.

Jeff’s own parents (Asher Keddie, Jeremy Sims) are merely the best of a very bad lot, and that’s not taking into account the absurdly promiscuous teenage daughter (Chelsea Glaw) they’re not-quite-raising.

Elliott is a filmmaker drawn to the extravagant, and “Swining Safari” is overstuffed with it, from the mayhem of the movies Jeff makes to the violent play of the “rumpus room” where kids were confined during parties, and on to the “swinging” that takes place downstairs, among the seemingly consenting adults.

The film takes its title from the “Swingin’ Safari” LP German orchestra leader Bert Kaempfert and his biggest flute-trio hit had in the ’60s. That’s a pun for the “key party” swinging that the couples turn their fondue party into, with Kaempfert’s gloriously square instrumentals contrasting with the destructive behavior they’re set to.

As for symbolism, well Nobby’s Beach has a great blue whale wash up on it, “trapped here, rotting, just like us” Melly assures Jeff. They have to get out, and they’re the only ones who know it.

There’s a bemused dread hanging over “Swinging Safari” (opening in the US June 21), with everything from leaving kids to bake in a hot car to “teach a lesson” to them to dangerously pointy beach umbrellas to every insanely dangerous thing “my stunt man” is put through for Death Cheaters productions.

The kids are amusingly crass and clueless, stepping on jellyfish for kicks, cruelly misusing each other and having accidents with their pets. But the great pleasure in the picture is the way Pearce, Minogue, McMahon and the other adults hurl themselves into the vulgarity of it all.

The only big laughs are sight gags, with Mitchell’s insults hurled while she’s wearing one of those Vita Master Exercise Machine belts standing out.

“Do-o-o-on’t ma-a-a-ke me la-a-a-augh!”

But Elliott has fun, as we do, snickering and rolling our eyes at the insane nonsense we believed, practiced and indulged in way back when.

When another kid cracks, “Geez, I wish I had parents like yours,” Elliott and his fellow survivors can only grin and shake our heads.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and some underage drinking

Cast: Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue, Radha Mitchell, Julian McMahon, Asher Keddie, Jeremy Sims

Credits: Written and directed by Stephan Elliott.   A Blue Fox Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:36

SOMEbody got off cheap. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48393721