Movie Nation

Yes, Craig is healed up enough to continue filming. Fingers crossed!

Yes, we are spending stupid amounts of time making our “choice,” and we’re not even bothering to check the “New to Netflix” (Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc.) menu.

The upshot? Thousands of choices and we’re still letting Big Network/Streaming service pick FOR us. Just like the 70s, only now they’re using algorithms to “anticipate” what we want to see next, which is what jumps on screen before the credits of the last thing we watched have passed.

So…This is why I review Netflix releases aplenty, and Amazon on occasion, and HBO. Because all this “choice” is overloading us all. And lots of what they’re creating or picking up on the cheap to steam — documentaries, et al — are crap.

Via Deadline.com and A.C. Nielsen.
“Streaming Overload? Nielsen Report Finds Average Viewer Takes 7 Minutes To Pick What To Watch; Just One-Third Bother To Check Menu” https://t.co/P6c5IutZ0m https://t.co/J5lftjmyj4 https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1145634547779829760?s=17

In a previous life in newspapering, I’d often profile stand-up comics, sometimes hanging out with them between sets at a local club.

They’d give ruthless, off-the-record play-by-play commentary on the other comics as they went through their routines. And when things went bad, these comics, to a one, would say — “Oooo, dying DYING, ‘d–k joke! D–k JOKE!'”

It was and remains comedy’s lowest common denominator, a reference that never fails to land as a zinger, drawling belly-laughs from the great unwashed.

There are two laugh-out-loud moments in the tame Spanish comedy “A pesar de todo,” which translates as “Despite Everything.”

Both involve a libidinous artist, played by Carlos Bardem, Javier Bardem’s older brother. And both are sight gags of the male member, something a painter who specializes in nudes works into any self-portrait he paints, because he can’t add it to the many, many naked women he’s painted over the decades.

Si, the character Pablo lands laughs with, as the Spaniards say, a “broma de la polla.”

“Despite Everything,” in Spanish with English subtitles, is about four sisters who are sent on “a scavenger hunt” for their biological father after their mother’s death.

Mom, played by Marisa Parades, an alumna of several Pedro Almodódar, tells her girls her big secret in one of those video farewells that serve as “wills” only in the movies.

“Pedro is not your biological father.”

Their dad (Juan Diego) has a few screws loose, something exacerbated by the funeral. He cannot know. But they cannot collect their inheritance from mom until they “find out who your father is yourselves.”

She gives them names, via her lawyer, and the four pile into a car — reluctantly hurled together on this quest none of them wants to undertake.

They’re all stylish, striking, liberated Spanish women, and this is “a bad joke” to each and every sister.

Sara (Blanca Suárez) is a TV news magazine editor living in New York, who left behind Dad’s favorite TV actor (Maxi Iglesias), also Dad’s favorite among her old boyfriends when she moved away.

But “Dad” isn’t her real father, and she’s not interested in renewing the relationship with Alejandro, the star of TV’s My Life Without You,” so she’s got time to interrogate potential biological fathers.

Lucia (Macarena García) is the youngest, vivacious and so sexy that she can only get her fill in threesomes.

Sofia (Amaia Salamanca) is a lip-pierced lesbian artist who’s not told the others about her girlfriend of one year. lejandro’s show “My Life Without You”

And Claudia (Belén Cuesta) hasn’t revealed that her husband left her months ago, and that she’s medicated to the gills as a coping mechanism.

Argentine co-writer/director Gabriela Tagliavini uses a few actresses from Almodóvar’s Madrid repertory company, but a filmmaker whose biggest hit was “Cómo cortar a tu patán” (“How to Break Up With Your Douchebag”) isn’t operating on the same level as Mr. “Women in the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

The lack of subtlety isn’t an issue, but if you can’t wring laughs out of prospective papas who include a blind priest, maybe it is.

Tagliavani stages car-ride sing-alongs, which follow the shared “peace pop” (marijuana) and accompany the sibling rivalry — Which sister has it worst? — banter of the drives.

The sister/actresses each have a little to play with, but can’t make sangria out of a script that left out the wine.

Bardem is the first prospective dad they visit and earns the most promising character and best lines — “I don’t believe in science,” “Death and I don’t get along” and “Your mother was a being of light.”

“Oh, Carmen! She makes me laugh from the afterlife!”

But even his scenes aren’t hilarious, save for the giggling schoolboy penis jokes I mentioned earlier. And nothing that follows has even that much life.

Tagliavini scored some of the sexiest sirens of Spanish language cinema for “Despite Everything,” but all she’s done for them is make them “Women on the Verge of Being in a Funnier Movie.”

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, sex, painted nudes, pot use and profanity

Cast: Blanca Suárez, Macarena García, Amaia Salamanca, Belén Cuesta, Maxi Iglesias, Carlos Bardem

Credits: Directed by Gabriela Tagliavini, script by Eugene B. Rhee, Helena Rhee, Gabriela Tagliavini A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:18

An Oscar winner is protesting big oil’s involvement with Britain’s most esteemed theatre company.

He doesn’t just play men of principle on stage and screen.

https://t.co/KNjIydsMw7

The trailwrs to this one have delighted from the first, which aired during the Super Bowl? Am I remembering that right?

They changed their release date, moving into Jason Statham Territory — August, shark movie season.

Still looks like fun.

There’s not a lot of novelty to the “angry kid masters battle rap” formula. But give the rappers British street accents, dropping consonants like they drop rhymes, and you’ve got something worth hearing out.

Even if, you know, you have to play it with the subtitles on.

“VS.” follows Adam, a tantrum-tosser who is the terror of Southend’s foster parenting system.

Adam (Connor Swindells of “The Vanishing”) doesn’t have anger management problems. He has rage-control issues.

We don’t need his social worker (Nicholas Pinnock) telling him “You’re not a kid anymore.” It’s obvious. Growing up without parents has left him broken, scarred for life.

A last-chance placement with Fiona, played by veteran British Earth Mother character actress Ruth Sheen seems to be postponing the inevitable.

Then he meets the testy cashier at the arcade. Makayla (Fola Evans-Akingbola) isn’t buying what White Boy’s selling.

“Baby-sittin’ you stoners itn’t paht of the JOB description, izzit?”

But that’s catnip to a lad like him. He talks her into taking on a task — securing him some weed — and she talks him into showing up for the flash mob rap battles she co-hosts. “Project Battle” is all the viral rage...on Southend, at least.

The social worker’s edict, “No more fighting,” has an implicit “Use your WORDS” to it. Without even planning it, Adam lets Makayla talk him into a new outlet.

“Metaphors, punch-lines, multi-syllabic rhymes, young kids expressing themselves without the use of violence?” It’s all good, she insists.

And when he’s drawn in, she takes it on herself to teach him the art form.

Director Ed Lilly and co-writer Daniel Hayes then have Makayla do something no rap battle feature film has done, and I can’t recall a documentary on the subject covering the ground either. We see her teach Adam the basics — “content and delivery” — the importance of aggression, enduring someone “getting up in your face. Can you keep your composure?”

This is no academic breakdown of styles, tropes and crutches of the genre, it’s a “How do you get up there and try this without getting ‘Slaughtered’ (the King of local rappers)?” primer.

The tentative, miss and hit nature of Adam’s learning curve is cute, as they stop to consult a dictionary, tap out ideas and full couplets on his phone, “livin’ large, spittin’ bars.”

And even though he’s rougher than 120 grit sandpaper when he takes his first shot — forgetting his rhymes, stumbling and hesitating —  he finds his groove, as is the way of such movies.

It’s a little tiresome, the way these pictures emphasize sportsmanship, supporting one another “like a proper family,” Contestants of Color always propping up the white boy just starting out in “their” art form, getting good, getting confident — “E’s awright, innit?” “Awright awright, Cassius. I get it!”

But there’s a rawness to this world, and the rapping always crosses into the personal, as “Adversary” (Adam’s MC name) catches it for being “an Emo kid who got changed into Posh Spice.”

When they reach for “Mum jokes,” though, it’s on. Adam’s Mum gave him up and he’s lived his life on edge about that.

The most tense and touching moment in “VS.” is Adam showing up, unknown and unannounced, getting a buzzcut from a hairdresser (Emily Taaffe) who doesn’t realize she’s his birth mother, but he does.

The formula may be worn from a dozen or more Hollywood pictures covering the same ground. But the novelty of the setting and the working class characters and accents — “D’y-knowhutImean?” — are fresh.

And the charismatic young leads — Swindells, Evans-Akingbola, Jovian Wade and as the bullying kingpin Slaughter, Shotty Horroh — give “VS.” enough of a lift to make it worth your while.

MPAA Rating: TV-18, violence, sex, profanity aplenty

Cast:nFola Evans-Akingbola, Connor Swindells, Joivan Wade

Credits: Directed by Ed Lilly, script by Daniel Hayes and Ed Lilly.  A BBC Films/Altitude release.

Running time: 1:39

The first cool image of “Cold Blood” comes after “the girl” has had her snowmobile accident, after she’s crawled, battered and bleeding-out, towards a remote cabin.

Feet come up to her, and from her point of view, looking up from her belly, she sees the man those feet belong to. He is Jean Reno, the hawk-featured French action star of “La Femme Nikita,” “Leon: The Professional” and “Ronin.”

And he’s not looking down at her, tending to her injuries, whispering words of help and hope. He’s turning, looking into the distance, offering her and us first one profile and then the other. He’s wondering if somebody dropped her here, if she’s the bait for yet another trap.

The stubble may be white, the piercing eyes have hollowed out over the decades. But the black stocking cap is still there, and the intense focus. He may call his character “Henry,” and be smarter, or at least deeper than the hitman/savant, the “cleaner” of Luc Besson’s “La Femme Nikita” and “The Professional.” But he’s still the last guy you want to run into in a steam room at your “club.”

That’s what sets events in motion in this convoluted thriller from first-time writer/director Frédéric Petitjean — a murder in the steam.

“Cold Blood” is a Franco-Ukrainian production, which explains the snowy wilderness, the struggling bit players and extras trying to manage something like a New York or Spokane accent.

There are traces of such popular thrillers as “Hanna” and “The American,” though both of those manage more suspense, more harrowing action and make more sense.

The “girl” is Melody (Sarah Lind of “The Exorcism of Molly Hartley” and TV’s “True Justice”), and when she awakens she has a few questions to answer — or dodge — starting with the obvious.

Him: “Why are you here?”

Her: “I’m sorry. I’ll leave as soon as I can.”

He gets testy, asking why he shouldn’t just toss her in the frozen lake so that “they can fish you out with the salmon, when the snow melts.”

He doesn’t want her there, and she seems to know why.

Meanwhile, an obsessive cop (British actor Joe Anderson) who recently transferred from New York is badgering his partner (François Guétary) about that New York steam room hit, months ago. The murdered man was rich and buried in Washington State. These cops watched the ceremony.

“According to the manual, the killer should be watching the victim’s funeral.

“‘According to the manual‘…You’ve been watching too much Netflix.”

Indeed.

We’re slipped a few clues as to what twists are coming, and led astray when one of those doesn’t pan out.

Mainly, “Cold Blood” is all about two things, Reno’s menacing screen presence, and locations.

All it takes to fake America in the movies is shipping in a Mustang, a Dodge and a Harley, and beating the bushes to find English speakers to play waitresses, fellow cops and “locals.”

Reno has, over the decades, positioned himself as the French Samuel L. Jackson, Liam Neeson or mid-career Clint Eastwood — badass, hard, not as verbose or profane as Jackson, violent without bothering to make many threats (unlike Neeson).

His character here is saddled with that saddest of “hit man movie” cliches, quoting “The Art of War,” by Sun Tzu, to Melody. That’s been old hat in B-movies since the Golden Age of Wesley Snipes.

Reno  gives us the odd hint that wherever his career has gone in recent years, he’s still above this, still able to give a line the proper Gallic flair. Don’t tell Henry that “There’s nothing here.” He takes it personally.

“Waaall, eef nothing means no cars, no noise, no Starbucks, nothing USEless…”

Which explains why I’m still a big fan of the actor, not much of a fan of “Cold Blood.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Jean Reno, Sarah Lind, Joe Anderson, Ihor Ciszkewycz and Samantha Bond

Credits: Written and directed by Frédéric Petitjean.  A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:31

Interesting. “Free” is always better than paid subscriptions, but some streamers are looking for a ot business models for delivering video content.
From The LA Times
The online video giant is pivoting away from the subscription streaming marketplace.
https://t.co/vtic4c9VEh https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1144985138079698945?s=17

Thrillers are a genre best served in the fall.

A very British mystery thriller, with a cast experienced enough to know how to do it properly.

Ian McKellen’s “Gods and Monsters” and “Mr. Holmes” director Bill Condon was behind the camera for “The Good Liar,” about the con artist who makes an attractive widow — Oscar winner Helen Mirren — his next pigeon.

Nov. 15, we find out who’ll do what to whom.

“Riverdale” star Camila Mendes shares the screen with Adriana Barraza, a screen veteran best known north of the border for her role in Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell.”

“Coyote Lake” hits theaters Aug. 2.