An awful lot of twitterers are awfully cavalier about their use of this phrase.
Can’t be bothered to read what they have a complaint about if there’s a chance to pile on, based on some Summer’s Eve’s eagerness to misunderstand plain English.
But hey, infants gotta infant, trolls gotta troll…
Veteran producer (“An Ideal Husband,””Wayne’s World”) and sometime director Barnaby Thompson had to know what he was looking at when his son Preston pitched him his screenplay for “Pixie.”
A murderously dry Irish action dramedy with priests, drugs, scenery and slang and gun battles?
Throw in Brendan Gleeson and you’ve got a movie by Ireland’s Martin (“In Bruges,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) or John Michael McDonagh (“The Guard,””Calvary”).
But there’s no Gleeson and none of the suspense or moral ambiguity and little of the wit and gory gusto of the McDonaghs in this film. Still, it’s got a good enough cast, a couple of twists and enough brute force to it that it’s worth taking in on its own terms.
Those terms being “We’re imitating the McDonagh Brothers, so what?”
Olivia Cooke slings an Irish accent in the title role, that of an aspiring artiste and young woman who knows what she wants, and being tied down to her corner of western Ireland isn’t it.
She is legendary among the lads roughly her age in her corner of the world.
“She won’t just break your heart. She’ll take a Kalashnikov to you!”
But, well, she’s a reddish-haired Irish-accented version of Olivia Cooke. What’s a boy to do?
That’s what lures mates Frank (Ben Hardy) and Harland (Daryl McCormack) into her world and its promise of sexual “adventure” and photography.
But Pixie’s got one ex-boyfriend (Rory Fleck Byrne) we’ve already seen murder people. And then there’s her Dad — “STEPdad” (Colm Meaney) — and step-brother Mickey (Turlough Convery), who’re plainly into the gang thing.
Do Pixie’s two new fanboys have any clue what they’re getting into? Once that is, they’ve taken note of the drug deal interrupted by slaughter — in a church, no less — that was the opening scene and left four “priests” dead and put Father McGrath on the tele, warning the TV news audience that “The Lord will have his vengeance!“
As Father McGrath gives us the gimlet-eyed Alec Baldwin squint when he says this — because he’s played by Alec Baldwin — we know he bloody-well means business.
Cooke, of “Sound of Metal” and “Thoroughbreds,” steps out of her comfort zone here, and there’s something a little lacking in her hard, ruthless and determined Child of the Mob character. Pixie is deliberate and calm, even when threatened, toughened up in ways we can only guess. Cooke gives us the cunning without really selling the brutishness.
Yes, Pixie might feel untouchable, being a mob boss’s son. But the dynamics of that family and simple presence of immediate danger don’t register. She’s quick to arrange violent risks for others. Is she capable of it herself?
Still, the situations she gets them all into, the screwy incongruity of it all — Visiting Catholic “priests” from Afghanistan? — give “Pixie” a kick.
As does the dialogue, corrosive banter and threats, every guy she meets kind of going gooey in the mouth trying to talk to Pixie. Her armed-and-dangerous ex-Colin (Rory Fleck Byrne)?
“We ‘re on a BREAK. Just a bit of a wobble!”
A drug dealer greets Pixie and pals as “Harry, Ron and Hermione.”
Pixie defends her stepfather’s sensibilities. “Just because you kill people doesn’t mean you can’t be into Wagner?
It all comes off as watered-down McDonagh Brothers, to get back to our original thesis. But as we’re given a taste of Irish mob torture, as we watch another poor sod digging his own grave at gunpoint in the grey gloom of another remote Irish backroad, as we spy the Irish vanity license plate that spells out “Feckin Eejet,” I’m inclined to shrug off the absurdly convenient and contrived finale and endorse this.
It’s not the McDonaghs, not either one of them or them both together. But it’s a fair enough imitation until they go back to Sligo and stir something fresh up themselves.
MPA Rating: R for violence, language, drug content and some sexual references
Cast: Olivia Cooke, Ben Hardy, Daryl McCormack, Olivia Byrne, Turlough Convery, Colm Meaney and Alec Baldwin
Credits: Directed by Barnaby Thompson, script by Preston Thompson. A Saban Films release.
Running time: 1:33
African American gangsters play power games with Italian American mob.
Lance Gross stars in this March 12 release.
Nothing more instantly-dates an animated film for children than over-earnest efforts to contemporize the dialogue, to render it slangy and to-the-minute current.
That’s all over the script to Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon,” where a lot of effort was put into making the dragon, in particular, sound flip and hip.
She’s voiced by the comic actress Awkwafina, so the pale blue dragon lets us know “I’m gonna be real with you, I’m not the BEST dragon,” that “I got water skills that kill!” and “I gotcha girl. WHO’S your dragon?”
“Super sketchy,” if you asked me. “BOOM goes the dynamite,” which even the kids have moved on from, thank heavens. The strain shows, and slang is no substitute for actual humor — sight gags or funny lines.
That said, “Raya” is a pleasant enough kids’ adventure — “Raiders of the Lost Ark” meets “Mulan” who is now a “Tomb Raider.”
The story is a made-up mash-up of Pan-Asian/Southeast Asian myths hanging on learning to “trust” people again, and features a plague that has decimated the land and a heroine whose lifelong pal is a pet pangolin, the pill-bug armadillo which the Chinese government blames for the global pandemic COVID-19.
Timely? Sure. Accidentally a tad on-the-nose, and eyebrow-raising in theme? Oh yes.
We meet Raya, voiced by Kelly Marie Tran (the recent “Star Wars” trilogy), apprenticed to her Guardian of the Dragon Gem father (Daniel Dae Kim). It’s kept in a temple in the land of Heart, one of the five nations of the land that was broken when the last dragon died defending against the Droon (a vividly visual rendition of a plague).
But the gem, a reminder of the dragons’ sacrifice, is coveted by the other states — Fang, Talon, Tail and Spine — which broke up and took the names of the parts of a dragon.
Raya is tricked by the Fang girl Namaari, leading to the stone shattering. Namaari grows up to be a nemesis voiced by Gemma Chan. Five states each keep a shard from the stone, Droon returns to devastate the land and Raya makes it her life’s mission to figure out if there’s a surviving dragon, and if she can piece the stone back together and end the plague.
Raya, riding her pangolin-ish pillbug steed, searches the rivers for the dragon, and finally finds Sisu. But with all the mistrust and treachery, can she and her shape-shifting dragon (Awkwafina) put their world to right?
Their quest puts Raya into many magical martial arts fights, has her stumble into a “con baby,” a cute street hustler and thief in league with thieving monkeys, just one of the legions of orphans in a land wiped out by Droon. There’s a hustling teen “Shrimporium” proprietor (Izaac Wang) and a wizened, one-eyed warrior (Benedict Wong) who have their roles to play.
As thin as the story and themes and comic relief moments are, “Raya” has redeeming dollops of heart — the way even the quarreling five states are awed and religiously respectful at their first encounter with a creature of legend, or the graveyard where so many of the creatures were turned to stone.
And the action sequences, derivative of many a martial arts combat film that they are, dazzle.
“Hand-to-hand, or sword?” “BLADES all the way!”
The film borrows animation tricks from the “Kung Fu Panda” movies — animated rod puppets and shadow puppets illustrate the flashbacks to the “legend” that the movie purports to revive.
“Kung Fu Panda” spawned a recent run of animated films set in Asia, but none — aside from the Jack Black voiced martial arts comedies — have really clicked with me. “Over the Moon” and “Abominable” and “Raya and the Last Dragon” are big on message, one that seems Chinese government-sanctioned (or at least tailored not to offend that government), light on entertainment. This may be pitched as Southeast Asian, but the lands (deserts, snow) aren’t. Vague on purpose?
Younger kids won’t necessarily recognize what they’re missing, but the distinct lack of “Disney magic” shows in “Raya and the Last Dragon.” There’s more of that in the bouncy, touching and lightly charming Disney short “Us Again” attached to “Raya.”
MPA Rating: PG, action violence
Cast: The voices of Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Benedict Wong, Gemma Chan, Daniel Kae Kim, Izaac Wang, Sandra Oh and (maybe) Betty White.
Credits: Directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada, script by Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim. A Walt Disney release.
Running time: 1:45
May is a self-help author who’s having trouble getting a deal in place for that next book. She can be excused for thinking her agent is patronizing her when he sugar-coats the lack of enthusiasm she’s getting from publishers.
No, she hasn’t been “Lucky” to have female-empowerment books like “Go it Alone” published. She puts in the work, she insists.
She has a brittle but functional marriage, which should be a comfort. But even her husband can seem a tad patronizing. And then she sees a masked man in their backyard in the middle of the night. That crashing sound means he’s broken in.
Ted is slow to awaken, and a lot more blase about picking up his 3-wood and heading out to confront the intruder.
“May, get up. We have to fight for our lives now,” he yawns.
His dispatches the masked man, but there is no body — “Same as the last time.” He’d like to get back to bed, but heck, got to call the police “again.”
May’s shock and fear is replaced with an expression that means the same in the U.S. and Canada, where “Lucky” was filmed.
“What the HELL?”
Screenwriter-star Brea Grant (“12 Hour Shift”) conjures up an intriguing and engrossing horror parable with dashes of feminism and shots at “going it alone,” a story of a writer tormented by the same stalker, night after night.
With a variety of weapons, in varying venues and intervening in murderous scenarios involving this killer menacing her publicist/assistant (Yasmine Al-Bustami) and sister-in-law (Kauser Mohammed), May must fight this demon, who gives a new manifestation to the term “personal demon.”
What’s going on here? May’s husband (Dhruv Uday Singh) takes umbrage at her understandably fraught response to what seems to her to be a new threat in her life, and moves out. That leaves her alone, with golf club or baseball bat, knife, hatchet or hammer, to beat off each fresh assault.
As in other stories where a perceived, persistent, nightly menace makes you and others question if this is all in May’s head ,”Lucky” makes you chew on what’s at the root of this. This cops are quick to tire of her crying “Wolf!” A social worker is brought in.
And yet, like Huple’s cat sleeping on Hungry Joe’s face every night in Joseph Keller’s “Catch-22,” we know that May has to take this seriously. It’s a matter of life and death, symbolically or otherwise.
This “explanations” for all this are less interesting than the mystery, a masked “stranger” (maybe) testing May’s ability to “go it alone,” a woman not taken seriously by men at every turn, and women (the social worker, the sister-in-law) connected to the men in her case, a woman heroically and capably defending herself, night after night, never getting credit for slaying the beast because the body disappears.
What do you think’s going on? You don’t have to be “Lucky” to decode that. But Grant and director Natasha Kermani (“Imitation Girl,””Shattered”) package their “message” into a pretty clever if not all that ambitious thriller, with Grant our stoic heroine, fighting the good fight, night after night, plainly able to “go it alone” but maybe wondering if it’s worth it.
MPA rating: unrated, graphic violence
Cast: Brea Grant, Hunter C. Smith, Dhruv Uday Singh, Kausar Mohammed, Yasmine Al-Bustami
Credits: Directed by Natasha Kermani, script by Brea Grant. A Shudder release.
Running time: 1:21
Sure. It pretty much always was.
But a couple of things add an asterisk to the already unconventional “Wisdom” of the Golden Globes.
The latest investigative reminders of how corrupt and disconnected from Hollywood and America the HFPA is might have cowed the group into some of their “voted” wins.
Still, Chao becomes the second woman ever to win best picture and director there.
Lest you get too carried away, remember the first. Streisand. “Yentl.”
Andra Day seems a long shot for the best actress Oscar, but she’s the best thing in “United States vs Billie Holiday,” very good in a middling movie. Anybody who remembers Marion Cotillard’s Oscar has to think this Lady Day has a shot.
Pixar’s “Soul” might have been headed to dominating the awards season animated buzz, but with cries of “racism” in the air, the Globes didn’t dare pick last year’s best animated film, “Wolfwalkers.”
The best actress favorites? Still McDormand and Mulligan and Viola Davis.
Daniel Kaluuya? Certainly a contender. Jodie Foster? Probably not.
Does anybody seriously think “Borat 2” is an Oscar contender?
Will “Mank” and “Da Five Bloods” be left out of Oscar contention, with reduced profiles, the way they were at the Globes?
They should be, and I’d leave “One Night in Miami” out, too. Middling script, pedestrian direction, underwhelming cast etc. But you’ve got to have 5 or 10 contenders, so…
Is “I Care a Lot” an outsider with a shot? Late entry “U.S. vs Billie Holiday” isn’t getting any buzz, but with Chadwick Boseman love spreading, “Ma Rainey” is looking a lot better. “Minari” hype may be about to bear fruit.
It’s a thin year for Best of the Best, and “Nomadland” and “The Father” and “Ma Rainey” and “Another Round” and “News of the World” might seem like sure things. Maybe “Promising Young Woman” and “Minari” can elbow their way in
But remember “Green Book.” That Best Picture field is going to seem padded, no matter what. And once you’re in actual Oscar contention, anything could happen.
And as entertaining as the hosts always are, paying no attention to the Golden Globes gets easier, year by year.
One name and artist stood out while watching the new HBO Black History Month doc, “Black Artists: In the Absence of Light.”
Jacob Lawrence, who died in 2000, worked in abstract realism and created this vivid, almost animated impressions of African American life.
Perhaps my snooping Facebook algorithm saw my mention of Lawrence on that review (search box on the right side of this site’s page), because all of a sudden I was bombarded with online ads from the St. Petersburg (FLA) Museum of Art. They have some Lawrences on display, as well as a few other notable African American artists’ work. These are on loan and are in their permanent collection, should you — like me — use films as tips on where to visit, what to read, what to see.
The top painting is “In the Black Belt,” a large cross section of life whirled into a single painting.
The second is “The Migrants Arrive and Cast Their Ballots, @1920.
Here’s Randall Dave
y’s portrait of the great baritone and actor Paul Robeson.
George Luc’s “The Musician “
And Fletcher Martin’s “The Undefeated.”
Lot of money on the screen in this trailer.
Anja looks pained, stricken. And Tomas picks up on that as they take their coats off at a Christmas party.
“If it gets tough, we’ll stick together,” he offers. It’s already gotten “tough.” And he isn’t just talking about this dinner party. She has cancer. Her prognosis is awful.
But as we’ve seen the state of their relationship, we wonder — as she must — if he’s as good as his word or if he’s just expressing platitudes of “Hope.”
Norway’s short-list contender for the Best International Feature Oscar is an intimate drama in which two stars, Andrea Bræin Hovig and Stellan Skarsgård, put on a clinic of how to play people used to deadlines, pressures from all sides, facing the worst thing any of us face — the end.
Anja is a famous choreographer, Tomas is a playwright. They’ve been together for years, have three children together with three others from his first marriage. But work has dominated their lives and thoughts, especially with him. He wasn’t there for her latest opening night. He even skipped out on his assignment for the evening, child care, “letting the older ones look after the younger.”
And now she’s gotten a callback on the MRI she went in for about her persistent, unshakeable headache. For once, Tomas has to drop everything and show up. He is the one who weeps at the news.
Christmas is two days off. Then New Year’s. Getting medical treatments in the works, even medical advice, is tricky. How will they tell the kids? Her elderly father, who lives with them? They want counseling for that.
There are parties planned, New Year’s is coming, and giving everyone “a nice Christmas” passes back and forth between them.
As they maintain their best poker faces and scramble to hit their medical marks, start medication and “jump the line” for possible surgery, there’s barely a moment to consider the blunt “I’m sorry” they get from the few on-duy medical professionals who cannot help them, much less wholly absorb that unblinking diagnosis from her oncologist.
“It’s incurable.”
Screenwriter-director Maria Sødahl paints a picture a big family in the dark and two parents who don’t communicate well in the best of times rushing into action, between consultations, scrambling to find a way and a moment to tell their family and friends this awful news. When they finally find someone who can guide them, his advice resonates with sound psychology and empathetic common sense.
“I often say you should give your children 10% more hope than you give yourself,” he advises (in Norwegian, with English subtitles).
The estimable Skarsgård shows us a man who has to shed some of his self-absorbed tendencies, just this once. The looks on his face tell us he’s not sure he’s up to it. For a moment here and there, we see Tomas wounded and deflated by everything he’s ever done to let Anya down, a string of petty inconsiderations that pile up as this logjam of half-a-dozen days unfolds, with more and more “events” packed into them as they go.
Veteran Norwegian actress Bræin Hovig rushes through the Stages of Death and Dying, giving up and regaining “Hope,” losing her temper at Tomas and callous medicos who aren’t as polished at showing concern over her situation as she needs them to be. The film isn’t a full-bore “weeper,” but she has a couple of absolutely gut-punching scenes dealing with her personal crisis and trying to leave something with meaning to their fragile, impressionable 16-year-old daughter (Elli Rhiannon).
As their lives, their relationship and their family closes in around them, will they “stick together,” with or without “hope?”
Bræin Hovig and Skarsgård take us into their confidence as they make these choices, decisions, promises and compromises. The wonder of “Hope” is how much of that they do without dialogue, just with a look, a gesture, a silent scream of despair or teeth grinding in resignation.
MPA Rating: unrated, adult situations, nudity, smoking
Cast: Andrea Bræin Hovig, Stellan Skarsgård, Elli Rhiannon and Gjertrud L. Jynge,
Credits: Directed and scripted by Maria Sødahl, A KimStim/Picturehouse release opening April 11.
Running time: 2:008
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