Movie Nation

You might remember this little Kickstarter-funded feel good story of a few years back. Two Providence, Rhode Island “bros,” both born with Down’s Syndrome, rally their families, the city and some movie biz folks to make a movie they conceived starring themselves as “bionic brothers” who fight “zombies, demons and demon zombies.”

“Spring Break Zombie Massacre” they called it, a 45 minute movie conceived by and starring Sam Suchmann and Mattie Zufelt. They showed it at film festivals hither and yon, got coverage from local, national (“PBS Newshour”) and international media, and even took their act onto “Conan.”

“Sam & Mattie Make a Zombie Movie” is a 100 minute+ “the making of” documentary by Sam’s film biz brother, Jesse. One hesitates to call it “sweet,” because helping these two realize their dream, when that “dream turned out to be an extremely violent and questionable zombie movie,” but that’s what this is.

It’s not “Batkid Begins,” the best comparison for “special” people bringing out the generosity and kind indulgences of others to realize a dream. But it puts us in the company of two genuine characters, unfiltered, foul-mouthed lads in Kevin Smith shorts, and the mountains their friends and family move to let them realize “their vision.

Jesse narrates the film, and we hear him on the phone or off camera reining in that “vision.”

“And there’re girls COMPLETELY NAKED” Mattie pitches, with Sam adding that “We can shoot them from the waist up!“

“I think that’s out,” Jesse decrees. He’s the guy who set up their Kickstarter, helped them shoot their amusingly amateurish pitch video for the fundraising website and who spent years of weekends coming home from New York supervising grinding story meetings to get a script they could realistically shoot, a movie made for under $100,000. And he’s got to draw the line — many lines — somewhere.

The boys are easily distracted, grandiose in their ambitions. But they’ve been acting-out scenes from their imaginary action film together since they were tweens. Sam’s dad is here, showing us snippets of earlier videos — genre parodies, apparently — that they starred in and he shot.

We see the endless takes of getting them to pretend to be punk rockers in their movie, a band named American Mind Freaks. We gasp at the gross, over-the-top bloody detail of their dual birth scenes.

“Two mothers, same dad,” Peter “Dumb and Dumber” Farrelly marvels. “I’ve never seen that!” Farrelly, the most famous Providence filmmaker of them all (with his brother Bobby) consults on the script, and after a readthrough with the boys gives them a pep talk, a little cheerleading, and the suggestion that “You must respect the women in it.”

For one of the Farrelly Brothers to have to point out that the “guy’s fantasy” they’ve concocted needs to be a little less sexist, well the mind reels.

Effects? Somebody says “You broke my HEART,” only to have the organ yanked out of her chest with “You HAVE no heart!” as a comeback. There’s a lot of that.

Truth be told, this overlong documentary, which includes the entire short(ish) film they made, is a bit grasping. All this came to a conclusion five years ago when the film made the festival rounds and the guys turned up at those festivals and on TV talking it up. This is a way to try and get a little more mileage out of that material.

But there are funny bits here, playing up the guys’ natural exhibitionist tendencies, the grimmest days of working on a movie in the heat of August and a few words with long-suffering script supervisor Charmeka Fox, who tries to keep track of all the ways they’ve strayed from the script as the filming progresses

There’s also a local librarian who reveals Mattie’s movie rental habits.

“He gets a lot of ‘Jersey Shore'” DVDs, she reveals, “which I find hysterical.”

Mattie’s idol is on the show, and Pauly D even turns up in the movie.

Though the film drags, and the geysers of blood at this beheading or that neck-biting get to be a bit much, it’s always heartening to see how generous people can be when given a chance to do something nice for a couple of kids with a dream, no matter how twisted that dream might be.

MPA Rating: unrated, bloody effects, zombie movie violence, profanity

Cast: Sam Suchmann, Mattie Zufelt, Conan O’Brien, Jesse Scuchmann, Suzy Beck, Pauly D and Peter Farrelly.

Credits: Directed by Robert Carnevale and Jesse Suchmann. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:44

A farm, an accident, a community tries to rally.

It’s not easy work, not that safe either. OSHA isn’t around, and farmers? They take risky shortcuts like everybody else.

“Silo” comes our way from Oscilloscope Labs (a mark…of EXCELLENCE) on May 7.

“Sky High” aka “Hasta el Cielo” is a generic Spanish “gangster’s rise and fall, and maybe rise some more” tale with a “Fast and Furious” subtext — the cars, not the “we’re family” nonsense.

A slick but seriously dull “Scarface” that bounces from Valencia to Madrid to Ibiza, night-clubbing and knocking over jewelry stores and armored cars, it wastes a pretty good cast on a formulaic and soapy script whose twists aren’t interesting enough to be labeled “surprises.”

Miguel Herrán (“Money Heist”) stars as Angel, the short but muscular mechanic-turned-gangster whom everybody calls “Angelito,” mostly to insult him.

Angel falls for dark and sexy Estrella (Carolina Yuste of “Carmen & Lola”), which sets up his run-in with her man, Poli (Richard Holmes). And in the nonsense logic of this picture, their brawls/rivalry leads to Angel’s recruitment into Poli’s gang, which steals cars and uses them for smash-and-grab late night jewelry store robberies.

Angel does time, connects with unscrupulous lawyer Mercedes (Patricia Vico), re-connects with Poli when he’s released from jail, and starts ingratiating his way up the food chain, with “Sky High” being his goal. And if that means cozying up to the Big Boss (screen veteran Luis Tosar, most recently seen in “The Vault”), then sure, he’ll hit on and pursue Don Rogelio’s hot daughter (Asia Ortega).

He becomes Poli’s blood-rival, carries out robberies and alters his business plan. Two-timing Angel is in and out of jail every step of the way on his way to “Sky High,” with the forever one-step-behind-him cops (Fernando Cayo) seemingly picking sides in gangland to suit the whims of Mr. Big.

Even the film’s most ingenious heist, armored cars on a ferry, isn’t handled with the sort of snap, crackle and pop you expect from a thriller these days. Every other robbery is perfunctory, fresh only to young folks streaming their first-ever heist picture.

The back and forth with cops and the legal system feels real enough, but that part of this “true story” is too boring to dig into.

The biggest problem hanging over the film is the low stakes. We’re meant to root for Angel and against others, but we don’t fear for their lives, in spite of the double crosses and fisticuffs.

Even the love triangle plays as stale. And if you don’t know how to film and edit a ticking-clock car theft, breaking into a dealership to steal seven Audis isn’t a way to “fix” that shortcoming.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex, profanity

Cast:  Miguel Herrán, Carolina Yuste, Asia Ortega, Luis Tosar, Richard Holmes and Patricia Vico.

Credits: Directed by Daniel Calparsoro, script by Jorge Guerricaechevarría. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:02

We like to think the actors know good acting when they see it. And the Screen Actors Guild is the largest voting bloc in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

So does SAG savvy outweigh every other pre Oscar awards indicator in 2021?

I think so. In a year where inclusion and diversity are on everybody’s mind, last night’s wins for Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Daniel Kaluuya and Youn Yuh-jung make a statement. But they also underscore much of what cineastes have recognized or should have seen when we were watching the nominated films.

As Viola Davis acknowledged in her acceptance speech, Hollywood finally diving deep into August Wilson is one of the great ways to end the idea that “Oscar So white.” The greatest African American playwright was simply the best American playwright working over the last 40 years.

Viola winning over Frances McDormand wasn’t an upset. She had great words to speak and a great role to work with.

Boseman had his best ever role and won for a worthy picture, a sentimental posthumous win for one or the two or three best films of last year.

Kaluuya’s bigger Oscar boost might have come from a charming, disarming and dazzling hosting gig on “SNL.”

I think “Minari,” touching as it is, is one of the more over praised pictures of the fall and winter of awards season, but it’s so well acted Yuh-jung’s win is much more than a vote for “inclusion.”

I saw half a dozen more worthy films from Greater Asia last year. But then, I think Mads Mikkelsen gave the best lead performance by an actor in “Another Round.” Awards attention is a fickle thing.

“Trial of the Chicago Seven” steps into the limelight where it belongs.

Lesser films with buzz along the way such as “Promising Young Woman,” “Da Five Bloods” and the heavily nominated bore “Mank” recede.

Sentiment for old pros like Glenn Close counts for little. McDormand could be the New Meryl Streep, pulling a nomination and/or win out of every performance and perhaps facing a little resentment over that. And Carey Mulligan may have to accept that being too dainty, posh and sweet was too big a hurdle for her to clear in “Promising Young Woman,” as some critics said, some less gracefully than others.

Spike Lee? When Jordan Peele rings again, take the call.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/2021-sag-awards-winners-list?__twitter_impression=true&s=09

My money’s on Christopher Walken. I mean, he’s got Christina Ricci and Zach Braff in his corner in this April 30 release, based on a true story. https://youtu.be/PVK_Ol3VFa0

A big weekend for the big fellas, King Kong and Godzilla, $32.5 million. A big opening week, over $48 million. Big turnout at IMAX theaters, over $4.5 million in tickets sold.

That makes Kongzilla the biggest movie of 2021 already.

Globally? $285 million and counting.

“The Last Right” is an Irish comedy of no great consequence and endless charm. A road picture with an engaging cast traversing the length of Ireland wrapped in wintry grey, it plays as cinematic comfort food — cute people on a daft quest muttering those three words that cover the full breadth of Irish irritation.

“Fer feck’s SAKE!”

The first character to use it has his reasons. Daniel (Michiel Huisman of “Game of Thrones”) is an expat, a New York lawyer just trying to fly home, but not “for the Christmas,” as his seatmate, the ancient Padraig (Jim Norton) speculates. No. He’s going home to bury his mother.

But as he’s named Murphy and Padraig’s named Murphy, Padraig talks Daniel’s ear off.

“What’re the chances?” “Pretty high.” Even the pilot making the landing announcement is Captain “Murphy.” Padraig’s on a funeral mission too, bringing his brother “in the luggage” home for a proper burial, “the last right” thing he can do by him.

Padraig impulsively jots down Daniel as “next of kin” on his customs card, and promptly dies in his seat. And there’s no convincing the “Fer feck’s SAKE” shouting stewardesses or customs or the local Garda officer “in training” that the old man screwed up.

Daniel’s got his own issues. He’s got deadlines. Bury mother Sarah, fetch brother Louis (Samuel Bottomley) and jet back to New York.

But Louis is autistic, 18 or so and locked into his routines. He doesn’t want to leave. He insists “Sarah” wouldn’t have left the old man with no one to claim him at the airport. And really, Daniel would be doing Ireland a favor, tidying up this “next of kin ” business by delivering the body for a double funeral presided over by Father Reilly (Brian Cox), who knew both brothers.

Where was Padraig headed? To Rathlin Island. Fine. Body in a cardboard coffin, stick it in — or on — the car, and we’ll run it up there. But Rathlin Island is in NORTHERN Ireland. Damned if the Garda in charge (Colm Meaney, perfect) doesn’t foresee “an international INCIDENT, fer feck’s sake!” He’s got to stop them.

And then there’s the helpful sister of the mortician, who needs to tidy up an untidy love affair with a man in Ballyskenagh. Mary (Niamh Algar) will “help wit’th’drivin'” and perhaps with Louis, whom she knows, if she can just hitch a lift.

A couple of “fer feck’s SAKES” later, they’re off. What could go wrong?

Huisman isn’t a natural at comedy, but does a fine job of staying out of the way of the laughs here.

Algar, quintessentially Irish and at home in dramas (TV’s “The Virtues”) and comedy, turns on the salty, disarming charm here. She’s got the “Minnie Driver role,” a little Irish contrast to the wound-too-tight New Yorker. Making jokes about the “Rain Man” nature of the journey, more tolerant of Louis’ many phobias and tics, can Mary keep the peace long enough for them to fulfill their sacred quest? Maybe keep the Garda at bay, because they’re giving chase?

And “help wit’th’drivin’?” Oh, you know how these things work.

As we learn more about the grey scale of autism, movies and TV grow more fast and loose with such characterizations. Louis is more Sheldon Cooper than “Rain Man,” and that makes his place “on the spectrum” play more as a convenient screenplay affectation. It blows up at the worst possible moments — “Dark soon. BED time!” — or the funniest.

Louis has a “song of the day” that he downloads and plays to death. For this trip with his self-absorbed brother, he’s picked Denis Leary’s greatest hit.

Mishaps and miscommunications abound as our trio tries to trek north, with many a “fer feck’s SAKE” at every turn. I’m guessing the phrase pops up 77 times here, and it’s a laugh line every damned time it does.

Cox and Meaney add a wee twinkle here, a touch of “crusty” there.

And contrived as it often seems, “The Last Right” is just unpredictable enough to pass muster, just cute enough to charm and just romantic enough to get by.

MPA Rating: unrated, adult situations, smoking, lots of profanity

Cast: Michiel Huisman, Niamh Algar, Samuel Bottomley, Colm Meaney and Brian Cox.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Aoife Crehan. A Level 33 release.

Running time: 1:43

The meaningless “mashing meat” that sex is reduced to for prostitutes is ably illustrated in “Madame Claude,” a slow and soulless French biography of France’s most infamous modern “madame” — Fernande Grudent.

Serve up enough “mechanical,” mercenary intercourse and gratuitous nudity, and even the dangerous and “kinky” stuff bores. It’s a good thing the “erotic” moments here feature disrobing that strips off jewelry, too. Because otherwise, I’ll bet the cast would have been looking at their watches, waiting for quitting time.

Writer-director Sylvie Verheyde (“Sex Doll”) serves up a sexual/political debacle and its after-effects in a perfunctory if not entirely pointless film. It’s a French “Scandal,” for those who recall that long-ago film about a 1960s British political dust-up involving prostitutes and state secrets.

Madame Claude, given a surface polish and brutish edge by Karole Rocher (“The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “Sex Doll”), presides over a stable of “200 exceptional girls” in the swinging ’60s and oversexed ’70s. She survives political scandals and a long, far-reaching murder investigation — “The Markovic Affair” — that entangled politicians, gangsters and French film star Alain Delon,

That investigation is the leverage that forces the underworld-connected Claude into partnerships with French police and intelligence services.

“From now on, you serve France,” one minister huffs. All Claude has to risk is prison. Her “girls,” the ones whose “safety cannot be guaranteed” in some of these blackmail/arrest or worse scenarios?

“You’re not too badly beaten up,” she coos. As if that helps.

That’s the “thriller” element to this tedious film. Much of it is just Claude, going through her routine, tightrope walking between rival mobsters (Roschdy Zem plays one) from Corsica, France and Italy while her “star” protege, posh child of privilege Sidonie (Garance Marillier of “Raw!”) watches and learns the ropes.

“Never say ‘client,'” Claude instructs (in French, with English subtitles, or dubbed). “Say ‘friend.'”

To serve those high-end “friends,” Claude interviews new recruits, studying their walk, their naked form and even how “mother taught you hygiene.” She pays-off mobsters, tips the cops when the gangs get out of line and breaks her own rules about drinking, dating and falling in love. Sidonie sees it all.

Verheyde skips through this life story, having Claude endlessly narrate her tale to fill in some of the blanks, but mainly just touching on her early years and details like the pampered daughter ashamed of Mom’s place in the World’s Oldest Profession, and the “intelligence” intrigues.

Nothing feels wholly fleshed-out, dramatic possibilities are frittered away left and right and nothing here makes us feel tense, aroused or “involved.”

Madame Claude has been the subject of several French films, one that even spawned a sequel. But judging from reviews, none of them has had a hint of heart or viewer appeal.

As Hollywood learned with its attempts to film “The Happy Hooker,” about Xavier Hollander, getting a compelling story out of something this transactional and unemotional isn’t easy, even if you’re dropping names (“Clean this place up, Marlon BRANDO is coming!”) and hinting at “patriotism” as you do.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug abuse, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Karole Rocher, Garance Marillier, Roschdy Zem

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sylvie Verheyde. A Wild Bunch production on Netflix.

Running time: 1:52

It’s distressing, but not the least bit shocking, to realize that the “casting couch” is Hollywood’s ugliest “gift” to world cinema. The Taiwanese thriller “Nina Wu” is a surreal take on how such a practice might impact and trigger the young women subjected to its humiliations, the emotional cost of getting your “big break.”

Nina, played by Ke-Xi Wu, who co-wrote the script, is an actress flirting with 30, struggling to get by in Taipei. She’s been there eight years, she tells her agent (Lee Lee-zen). We’ve seen how she gets by — living in a tiny apartment, running an “internet celebrity” hustle that she tries to keep PG-13, despite the horny guys who make up her “fans.”

And now she’s been offered an audition for a big movie, a 1960s period piece titled “Romance of the Spies.”

But they want nude scenes. There’s sex in the script. And demure, provincial Nina isn’t sure she’ll go that far.

“If you’re really concerned,” Mark sighs (in Mandarin Chinese with subtitles), “don’t even audition.”

She takes the audition, endures the judgement of the creative team and hears the contemptuous “No real professional would turn down a good role because of nudity.”

And somehow, despite a shaky audition, despite limited small-town theater skills, she gets the role. That’s when Nina’s nightmares literally begin.

Nina feels, with good reason, that everybody on the set is out to get her. The increasingly-irate director (Ming-Shuai Shih) has to micro-direct her performance, and do it in front of the crew. Retakes break her down, and when that doesn’t work, slaps and shouting egg her on. There’s a roach in her craft-services meal. Put there on purpose?

And that’s just what we see for ourselves. The stress she’s under and the things on set that trigger her don’t stop during a holiday filming break over New Year’s. Her family seems caught up in her celebrity. But her nightmares point to trauma and her fears are that her family will disintegrate and none of this will be worth it.

Massages, spa treatments, everything she experiences she sees through a paranoid lens.

Director Midi Z and his muse (Ke-Xi Wu is in most of his films, including “The Road to Mandalay”) take us on an increasingly fraught and stylized trip down the rabbit hole of “big break” success and the guilt and emotional scars that linger from what Nina might have endured to get there.

“Nina Wu” can be quite hard to follow as we wonder about her slipping grasp on reality and discover other components in her background that “explain” how unhinged getting this role, acting in this film and coping with “celebrity” (press conferences) has made her.

Wu is quite good at getting across the fear and uncertainty in Nina’s situation, an actress in over her head in an alien environment where she can’t even trust these strangers to not kill her in a stunt that goes carelessly wrong.

The situation has hints of the cult classic, “The Stunt Man,” but with little of that film’s overt, mustache-twirling camp villainy.

Midi Z puts Nina in empty hotel hallways of crimson and neon, an audition where we see, in a faint misty background, silent screen actors showing her connection to being an acting “professional,” violent encounters with a “rival” (Kimi Hsia) that could all be in her head, and glimpses of a simpler, happier past with a community theater co-star (Vivian Sung), a sounding board who doesn’t want to hear from her after she’s run off to the big city.

But that hotel room she keeps going by in her dreams? You know from the number on the door that something horrible happened there, even if John Cusack isn’t involved in this room “1408.”

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Ke-Xi Wu, Vivian Sung, Kimi Hsia, Ming-Shuai Shih

Credits: Directed by Midi Z., script by Wu Ke-Xi, Midi Z. A Film Movement+ release.

Running time: 1:42