This thriller stars Anson Mount as a shooter who creates “collateral damage,” Abbie Cornish as a waitress he’s sweet on and David Morse as a nosy cop.
“The Virtuoso” is an April 30 release, and reminds us that roles like “The Father” don’t come along often, even for the very best actors alive.
Christopher Lloyd is 82 years young, still getting laughs with the wild hair and his way with a punchline.
Jean Smart? The “Designing Woman” is 69, and still getting the guy.
William Shatner has them both beat. He gets online just long enough to thank fans for birthday wishes, and damned near breaks Twitter. He turned 90 just the other day. And yes, he’s still a headliner.
“Senior Moment” is a thin, faintly amusing spin in the late life romance lane, a Palm Springs rom-com about a guy finally finding a woman he loves more than what looks to be a ’59 Porsche 356. It’s one of those movies that’s more “Well, thank heavens somebody made a movie for that demographic” than entertaining, but we don’t pick on stars chasing Betty White past 90.
Shatner’s Victor Martin, a retired Air Force major who likes his freedom and loves his trophy Porsche. He and pal Sal (Lloyd) tool around town, ogling women who’d be too young to date their grandsons, if they had grandsons.
“Like two hard-boiled eggs doing the salsa,” Victor purrs at one young lady entirely too young to be caught dead using a crosswalk in Palm Springs.
Victor’s a character around town, a “host” at their favorite piano bar and a guy the cops keep giving warnings, because 80something or not, he’s still a speed freak.
But one stoplight joke-off with a “cholo” in a lowrider later, all that goes away. The car’s impounded and license-free Victor’s stuck in Ubers, taxis, on foot or traveling by bus.
“Only losers ride the bus.”
Naturally, that’s Victor stumbles into Cuckoo Cafe owner Caroline. As he drops his groceries, fends off heat stroke by sticking his head in the supermarket ice cream cooler and tries to find his mojo without the car he always thought of as a you-know-what magnet, Victor has an epiphany.
He’s sweet on Caroline.
Sure, “I like fast cars and you like tortoises (desert tortoises, which she’s trying to save).” He’s into junk food and she’s Ms. Organic.
“I thought ALL wine was organic!”
But maybe, is this artist-rival for her attention (Esai Morales) can be fended off, they can find a middle ground. Maybe there’s time for a little romance and a bed where she can share a joint with him and he can force down a little blue pill.
There are a few jokes in the script, but even though director Giorgio Serafini is no old hand at comedy (he’s a veteran of B-movies like “The Good War” and “Game of Death”), he has to realize he left a lot of laughs one the table.
There’s a bit of goofy fun in the shyster lawyer, driving test instructor and “life coach” Don McManus prepping Victor to re-take his driving test with a video game, two-on-two basketball and playing three-card monte at poolside, where Victor has to fight the “distraction” of young women in swimsuits.
Profanity and sexual joking around aside, “Senior Moment” suffers from that “It’s harmless enough” label easily slapped on too many “comedies for seniors.”
The lecherous old guy stuff may play to Shatner’s demo, but feels kind of winded and out of date here.
There’s some cute bonding with the “cholo,” Pablo (Carlos Miranda) who tricked Victor into the drag race that cost him his license. And a sentimental story about a cuckoo clock in Caroline’s cafe isn’t quite the groaner it almost becomes.
But giving Lloyd too little to do, and not having funnier players in Victor’s posse are both lost opportunities. Smart can still hit a punchline and isn’t given anything amusing to play or say here.
And when Victor is introduced at Captain Hook’s piano bar, we face the biggest comic letdown of all. Nobody begs him to sing.
If there’s anything an old trooper like Shatner knows, it’s how hilarious the culture thinks his singing is. Come on, Bill, give the people what they want!
MPA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, profanity, marijuana, alcohol
Cast: William Shatner, Jean Smart, Christopher Lloyd, Carlos Miranda and Esai Morales.
Credits: Directed by Giorgio Serafini, scripted by Kurt Brungardt, Christopher Momenee. A Screen Media release.
Running time: 1:32
Good Friday will be VERY good for horror movies this year.
At least in terms of volume. Here’s another April 2 release.
April 2 this one, which also stars Michelle Monaghan.
April promises a horror tsumani, with this April 2 thriller coming in with the tide.
This April 15 release, a horror period piece, landed a few famous British character actor faces — Jessica Brown Findlay, John Lynch, Sean Harris among them. Shudder has it, so we’ll see what they’ve come up with. I prefer my horror British period piece oriented.
“The Yinyang Master” is a fantastical, fanciful new sword-and-sorcery franchise from China. It doesn’t matter that it’s a violent, hilariously wearying and cluttered collection of tropes, character “types” and action beats. Its sequel has already come out (“Dream of Eternity”) and is on Netflix, too.
So, in for a fen, in for a yuan I guess.
There’s a lot to take in — flying martial artists, spectacular brawls, “Scale Stones” and sigils, fantastic beasts, CGI demons in the Demon Realm and a villain with a transgender edge.
I think that maybe the dismembered hand monster is my favorite, although the cuddly Red Ghost, sort of Hellboy as Sumo Wrestler, is a close second.
The plot? Um, where does one begin?
The emperor of the demon realm wants the Scale Stone, badsass Qinming (Kun Chen) and his ferret minions steal it from Captain Boya (Chuxiao Qu) of the Imperial Guards. Chief Baini (Xun Zhou) of The Defenders considers Qinming a traitor. But as they used to be a couple, maybe there’s more going on there.
Boya is disgraced for losing that stone, and to recover it and arrest Qinming he teams with the first fighting pixie (Shen Yue) to tell him he’s “full of s–t!”
There are fights with the Red Ghost and Raven Hound Twins, this startling, black-hooded four-armed warrior with a porcelain face mask turns out to be ferrets standing on each other’s shoulders inside a cloak, and the Snow Queen (Cici Wang) flings ice darts and fights dirty.
The dialogue is redolent of every other fantasy tale, East or West.
“You will help me return to the mortal world. That is your destiny!” (in Mandarin with subtitles, or dubbed into English).
The occasional flash of humor helps lighten this smorgasbord of sword-and-sorcery. “I can’t watch you fall any more. So for now, I think we’re done.”
A lot more could be done with that, but maybe the translation is leaving that light touch out.
“I used to get my demonic goods from Yanyan Le,” is a line George Lucas could have concocted to show a very old “universe” where business is business.
It doesn’t matter where films based on video games come from, they’re always most fascinating to players of the game –this fight getting you to that “level,” and so on. This has a “only for fans of the game” vibe. Even by origin story standards, it’s a mess.
The rest of us have to sit through two hours of endless “Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings” exposition, a parade of creatures, characters, talismans, spells, old grudges held by dark forces, flashbacks that pointlessly add a backstory, and challenges.
Outsiders can dive into this colorful, splashy mayhem for the costumes, critters and set pieces. But while the acting is competent, the only moving “death” is an animal’s and the only interesting performance is by the villain expressing his character’s feline-feminine side.
MPA Rating: TV-14, bloody violence, profanity, fart gags
Cast: Kun Chen, Xun Zhou, William Wai-Ting Chan, Shen Yue, Chuxiao Qu, Cici Wang
Credits: Directed by Li Weiran, script by Chialu Chang and Evan Jian, based on the “Onmyoji” video game. A Netflix release.
Running time: 2:01
Hulu is the one streaming service whose wares I struggle as I try to cover and review, emphasis on the word “try.”
Rarely do they pitch anything. They expect press folks to visit their website constantly and see what’s coming up and request review versions. Or they expect you to buy subscriptions, I guess, and see it the way everyone else does.
Hulu is alone among the many streamers to have this “sit around and wait for requests” approach to publicity, but whatever. At least Disney+, Amazon, Netflix etc. are on the ball.
The bigger issue with them is subscription business practice. They are, like some online subscriber sites and assorted other “FREE, but give us your credit card number” online come-ons, prone to shenanigans.
We all know what Netflix does. Sign you up for a “discounted” service, then jump you up to their standard, pricier level when you aren’t paying attention.
I tried Hulu for a month to catch up on their product (one potential Oscar nominated film) in late Dec., canceled the service the first week in Jan., and what do I see on a March credit card statement?
They didn’t charge for Jan or Feb., but March they magically “forgot” I canceled, and snuck a charge in there.
Contact them to fix this, and they’re “We don’t correct mistakes that work out to our advantage, call your bank.”
So basically I have to get a credit card company to dispute and block all charges from here into infinity for a service I canceled two and a half months ago, because Hulu can’t be bothered to deal with people who complain about their scummy business practice. That means canceling a card and getting a new one.
All because of an unscrupulous streamer.
Thanks, Hulu. And adios.
The intensity of the “twins connection” is explored, to great dramatic effect, in the German/Swiss film “My Little Sister.” Gripping performances by Nina Hoss and Lars Eidinger map out the close bond and interlocked fates sister and brother display as one of them faces a terminal illness.
Lisa (Hoss, of “A Most Wanted Man” and “The Audition”) is a playwright struggling to write from the backwater Swiss city where her husband (Jens Albinus) is the headmaster of an exclusive boarding school for the children of potentates and oligarchs. But the move there and raising two small children are relatively minor distractions. Her twin brother, Sven (Eidinger, of “High Life” and “The Clouds of Sils Maria”) has been sick.
We meet them as she picks up her brother after a Berlin bone marrow transplant. He has lost much of his hair, so she provides a wig. And being theater folk, their first stop is a rehearsal. Sven was to play “Hamlet” again for a famous director who also happens to be Lisa’s ex (Thomas Ostermeier). Only a much younger actor is rehearsing the part.
“I didn’t get a transplant to watch my understudy,” Sven pleads, in German with English subtitles.
Lisa presses his case because she sees how much her brother needs this, needs a reason to push through to some sort of recovery. Herr Direktor equivocates, because “no one wants to see that.”
Lisa’s got a plan. She’ll stay here, maybe the entire family will move back to Berlin. Plainly their scattered mother (the great Marthe Keller) can’t take care of him.
“I can’t take care of myself,” she grouses, perhaps a little tipsy. “And look at you! You give me the creeps!”
Sven leans on “My Little Sister” (born mere minutes later) Lisa literally and figuratively as she tries to plan their way out of this.
But nothing is settled in Berlin and there are complications back in Switzerland, which bringing her brother into won’t help.
Hoss lets us see Lisa’s surface control and barely hidden panic in the early scenes. As events conspire to disrupt her “plan,” she starts to lose it. As her marriage suffers and family is shoved aside in her all-consuming attempt to help her brother physically and psychologically, she breaks down in fury and despair.
Eidinger adeptly captures a man who is putting it all in his earnest and intrepid sister’s hands, but who collapses into panic attacks as he enters those famous Kubler Ross “five stages,” realizing the limits to his sister’s support even if he barely thinks of her in his own worsening state.
The acting fireworks of “My Little Sister” flare up, but co-writers/directors Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond give their stars a glorious moment of grace, storyteller Lisa calming panicked Sven by telling him the tale of Hansel and Gretel, spicing it up a little for entertainment value.
The way these two play that scene, in a movie where dialogue is spare and emotions raw, tells us everything about their characters’ relationship, letting us see in a moment that this can’t be the first time she’s done that, because even though she’s the “younger” sibling, plainly she is the rock among the two.
“My Little Sister” may tell a simple, sad story, but it has everything we treasure in great screen performances. And Hoss, acting a full range of emotions in three different languages (German, French and English) moves herself front and center into the ranks of the best screen actors of her era.
MPA Rating: unrated, nudity, sex, profanity
Cast: Nina Hoss, Lars Eidinger, Jens Albinus, Thomas Ostermeier and Marthe Keller
Credits: Scripted and directed by Stéphanie Chuat, Véronique Reymond. A Film Movement+ release.
Running time: 1:40
I hear this line so often that I’ve decided that it’s a screenwriter’s mark of confidence in her or his work, or at least a statement of chutzpah.
“Can’t this all be over?”
You have to know that late — TOO late — third act zinger could blow up in your face if your movie’s a chore to get through. But hell’s bells, here it is again.
“The Arbors” is a creature feature every bit as exciting as its title, akin to “watching trees grow,” as the joke goes.
It’s a somber, SLOW movie about a locksmith (Drew Matthews) trapped in this drab, “dreary small town,” so goes the plot description on IMDb.
“Hey,” I say to myself. “Those ugly 1970s ranch-style subdivisions, that dumpy Mayflower Seafood restaurant? Got to be Winston-Salem!”
Did co-writer/director Clayton Witmer write that publicity description himself? Because just before I moved there, forgotten hack director James Orr referred to the place as “a Hellhole,” after filming “Mr. Destiny” with Michael Caine and Jim Belushi. Witmer’s diss barely registers compared to that.
Ethan the lump of a locksmith seems totally adrift and “stuck,” working an on-call job, losing his close connection with married-with-a-kid brother Shane (Ryan Davenport), a loner and such a loser that even the teenaged son of a neighbor feels OK bullying him.
But there are these guys he’s seen in the middle of the night, poking around with flashlights while wearing Hazmat suits.
OK, they’re body shop paintbooth suits, with Harbor Freight goggles and barely-Corona-proof masks. Budget-smudget. Nothing says “Giant Government Coverup” like six guys in paintbooth suits piling out of a 1998 Jeep Cherokee.
Their “monster detector” appears to be a weed whacker with an LED light stuck on the end. Cool.
A dead deer gives Ethan an idea of what they might be looking for. SOMEthing is eating it from the inside. Naturally, he brings the dead deer home, tries to keep this oversized, toothy spider in a pet carrier, and when it chews through that…
“I…I just found something,” he wants to show to his brother. Brother’s too busy for that.
The first blood spilled is Ethan’s. A mere flesh wound…that never heals! The damned thing gets out after that, and all these people who cross him start to disappear.
Ethan’s paranoia makes him avoid the cops and avoid the ex-girlfriend (Daryl Munroe) who’d like to lure him out of town. Instead, he gets mixed up with his brother’s vigilante who think some pervert must be grabbing their kids.
As if mousy, oddball working odd-hours Ethan wouldn’t be their first and last most likely suspect.
Matthews wears the same blank, empty expression, pretty much first scene to last. A couple of the creepier acquaintances who hassle Ethan make stronger impressions, if only for a scene or two.
Trying to tie all monster chomping to something in Ethan’s increasingly paranoid and put-upon psyche seems an intellectual overreach.
And as this weary, unfunny and unfrightening slug of a thriller slides ever-so-slowly to its nearly-two-hours-away finale, an actor utters that defiant line that any karma-conscious screenwriter should recognize as tempting fate, or at least tempting the audience to laugh in ridicule at what has unfolded before us.
“Can’t this all be over?”
MPA Rating: unrated, violence
Cast: Drew Matthews, Ryan Davenport, Daryl Munroe, Alexandra Rose, Tony Hughes
Credits: Directed by Clayton Witmer, script by Chelsey Cummings, Clayton Witmer. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Running time: 1:56
Movie Nation 