Movie Nation

Anthony Mackie plays a robotic super soldier who develops an agenda of his own in “Outside the Wire,” a generic and draggy thriller built on firefights, digital effects and bad robot jokes.

‘”Did your motherboard freeze?” Stuff like that.

Damson Idris of TV’s TV’s “Snowfall” is a drone pilot in the not-that-distant future who watches Marines engaged in peacekeeping shoot-outs in Ukraine while chewing Gummy Bears. He’s focused, but dispassionate. And yet he countermands orders to save a couple of platoons at the loss of two Marines, pulling the trigger on a Hellfire missile too early.

That’s what gets Harp sent from Nebraska, where he sits in a trailer and flies remotely all day, to the conflict zone. That’s why he has to report to Captain Leo.

“Experientum auctoritati” it’s called, a little on-the-ground learning the “authority of experience.”

“I don’t have any specialist training” the Air Force drone pilot whines.

“Don’t worry,” the Captain says, peeling off his shirt. “I’m special enough for both of us.”

Get a load of the captain’s technobody. He’s a cyborg of sorts, a one-man mission who travels behind enemy lines procuring weapons of mass destruction from the Russian backed warlord (Pilou Asbæk)making all the mayhem. Harp is about to get his feet wet and his hands dirty.

The threat of global destruction hangs over their mission, and the mistrust of the smart pilot for the machine he’s subordinate to. This 2036 war zone has combat robots engaged on both sides, “Gumps” that look like “Star Wars” battle bots. Leo is just the next generation of that.

But he’s an African American robot because that’s less menacing, with a face strangers “trust” that helps de-escalate tense situations. He’s helpful to aid workers like Sofiya (Emily Beecham), and doesn’t mind entering those life-threatening scenarios because he’s not actually alive.

Of course, that lowers the stakes in every firefight in this thriller by the Swedish director of the John Cusack horror dramedy “1408.” Mikael Håfström may make good use of a effects with decently choreographed stunts. But the dialogue is heavy on the exposition and explication, all these “Here’s how I’m programmed to make decisions” stuff mixed in with bad robot jokes.

“Who programmed you to curse so much?”

Idris doesn’t give us a character arc that the screenplay half leaves out, this callous kid-pilot nicknamed “Gummy Bear” learning this new thing — “It’s called compassion.”

Mackie always gives fair value, but this seems silly and beneath him, even though he’s done time in the Marvel universe.

Every action film that doesn’t come off shares the same shortcoming — pace. Pace denotes urgency and in a slack picture like this, slashes the running time and raises the stakes. But when digital gadgets are doing most of the shooting and the actors are here just for lame one-liners…

The prosecution rests.

MPA Rating: R for strong violence and language throughout

Cast: Anthony Mackie, Damson Idris, Emily Beecham, Michael Kelly and Pilou Asbæk

Credits: Directed by Mikael Håfström, script by Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:56

It’s a miracle when anybody gets their first feature film made, a miracle that anybody not born into the business or with a silver spoon film school degree on their resume even gets a shot.

If you knew the hell first-time filmmakers endure– a hell sometimes repeated several times before they A) go broke and give up or B) make that first, second or third film and nothing happens and give up or C) break through– you’d never look at any film without a measure of compassion and pity again.

Of course, that doesn’t count for critics. We can’t take the struggle into account. We can’t grade on the curve just because of what it took to get you here.

“Clapboard Jungle: Surviving the Independent Film Business” is a documentary about a filmmaker’s five year journey to get a feature film made. It’s of its moment, because there have been books and object lesson articles about how Steven Soderbergh got “sex, lies and videotape” into Sundance, how George A. Romero used his Pittsburgh TV connections to make “Night of the Living Dead,” how Robert Rodriguez got his mom to cater his no-budget breakthrough “El Mariachi,” Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” story and how “Slacker” inspired Kevin Smith to make a convenience store comedy, “Clerks.”

A bunch of guys working in video editing and other jobs around the periphery of production cobble together a film festival horror movie and “The Blair Witch Project” becomes a phenomenon.

The model for how every single one of those iconic “How I got myself a career in the movies” stories was shattered long before a pandemic shuttered most of the world’s cinemas. And “Clapboard” will be out of date in its observations of “The way the business works now” before you know it.

We don’t really know Justin McConnell’s financial background or bonafides, just what he tells us in his film. He grew up in Haliburton, Ontario, started tinkering with movies early on, moved to Toronto — where they hold one of North America’s premiere film festivals — and started the struggle to get money, skills, contacts and everything else it takes to get his ideas for movies made.

He finished one, here and there. No, you’ve never seen them. He takes the Amazon reviews of these efforts hard. But he’s still at it. And with all this access to cameras and all the filmmakers who show up for the Toronto Film Festival — panel discussions and interview opportunities — he started collecting tips, hints, career advice on how to get one of the projects on his “slate” (among them a novel adaptation) financed and in production.

Legions of legends trot across the screen in “Clapboard Jungle,” from Guillermo del Toro to Romero and Garris and Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, along with indie filmmakers engaged in the same struggle like Jenn Wexler and Noburu Iguchi. All are full of often contradictory advice about how to go about it, how to navigate “the wild west of streaming,” direct online sales via Amazon or Youtube, boutique distributors such as Dark Star, Shudder and the Canadian “We’ll release it if no one else will” co-op that released “Clapboard,” IndieCan.

McConnell, who films himself and flatly narrates throughout, is the latest to remind us that “the business” is still a place where “the reality doesn’t match up to the dream.”

At the outset, he wants to make a $275,000 project that he’ll get to direct and faces the difficulty getting that “first dollar,” the “first money in.” He’s told “get the letter of intent” (LIO) from your stars first, then raise money off that. Then “get the (first in) money first,” then start luring talent. Which direction do you take?

Writers, producers, journalists, publicists and actors (Michael Biehn, Dick Miller) whom he grabs a little time with (or films from the audience at panel discussions) gripe about the “content pipeline” that is every distributor/streamer’s bottom line concern these days. They all need something fresh for people to watch every time they log onto Topic, Netflix, Film Movement, Amazon Prime or Hulu. Filmmakers don’t like the “pipeline” connotation because of its connection to “oil, or sewage,” taking the art and connection with the audience out of their work. But that’s the Brave New World.

Filmmakers watching this will get lots of tidbits of usable advice about making a “proof of concept” short film, prepping a slick illustrated book that sells your script in storyboard/comic book fashion and the like.

I don’t think he mentions this, but an entertainment lawyer is more important to have than an agent.

But everybody looking at this mountain she or he has to roll that boulder up is facing the damning odds that “Taxi Driver” screenwriter and “Cat People” director Paul Schrader warns about, the “tsunami of content” being generated because generations have been indulged in the delusion that this is a viable career option for them, with their pluck and their families propping them up.

There’s all this content out there, most of it is no-budget horror, most of the people making it have the skill level of guys like McConnell. Most of what they create is crap. And even if the new Welles is in their ranks, nobody will find their handiwork.

Most critics can’t be bothered with IndieCan’s product, can’t dive deep into Shudder or Dark Star, Anchor Bay (McConnell is dealing with them in “Clapboard.” Are they still around?) or even the movies that turn up on the lower levels of Netflix, on Tubi, Pluto TV’s specialty channels or elsewhere.

Making money out of your efforts is nigh on impossible in this environment. The gatekeeping that studios and networks used to provide almost promised a rewarding career, if the few — the exceptionally talented, the connected, the related — who got through that gate had the drive to use that access to make movies or TV that people wanted to see. But that’s gone.

Filmmakers could watch “Clapboard Jungle” and see McConnell’s struggles and learn from them. Will they take the lesson, that he gets a film made and pretty much nobody sees it, to heart?

Probably not.

As for anybody else watching this, you’ll miss the drama and melodramatics of “Project Greenlight,” and the (limited) entertainment value. And you might just recognize how representative and sadly unexceptional this story is. There are thousands and thousands of McConnells. Luck, talent, skill, pluck or originality, they all lack something that kept them from realizing their dream.

Whatever drama and arc there is to his story is mostly suggested (depression, ballooning in weight for a time), is stuff that happened after he got his first feature made years BEFORE he started making this movie. The clips and boilerplate, unemotional on-camera narration of “Clapboard Jungle” seems less interesting than what he’d already been through.

Like most filmmakers, he’s not a natural on-camera talent. Kind of grating after a while. And the endless blur of on-camera snippets of filmmakers making single sentence points is a drag, cinematically.

As Lloyd Kaufman lectures him, nobody gave him a break, nobody figured he was entitled to distribution, and Lloyd didn’t whine…much. Why should anybody else taking the same longest of long shots be any different?

MPA Rating: unrated

Cast: Justin McConnell, George A. Romero, Jenn Wexler, Guillermo del Toro, Lloyd Kaufman, Daisy Hamilton, Mick Garris, many many others

Credits: Written and directed by Justin McConnell. An IndieCan release.

Running time: 1:38

A broke traveler has to take a job for a night, and all hell breaks lose at the theme park.

Gonzo Nic Cage is the Nicolas Cage for me. Feb. 12 VOD.

This is the way it used to work, the image we used to be famous for.

An accused man is locked up on suspicion of his involvement with the 9/11 hijackers. Lawyers hear about him, locked up at the prison on Guantanamo Bay, not charged, and take up his case.

Because as a country that the world expects to operate under the rule of law, you don’t keep somebody locked up for years, interrogated above and beyond the pale without someone getting outraged, without somebody crying out for justice.

“The Mauritanian” is about an infamous case from the post-9/11 Bush years. Mohamedou Slahi was approached at a family party by his country’s police, told “the Americans” wanted to question him…and disappeared. For years.

Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) has directed a factual, well-acted and somewhat laborious look at his story, a detailed movie that runs out of time rather abruptly at the two hour mark and shoves a summary finale in that skips over years of Obama administration involvement.

So it’s fascinating but flawed, more truncated than thorough.

Tahar Rahim (“A Prophet,” “The Kindness of Strangers”) plays Slahi, a guy we see just enough of to wonder about his innocence. He lives in a country where the police are feared, but does what he can to protect himself when they come calling.

He’s allowed to change clothes, which allows him to erase his phone’s contact list and call history. And he gets to drive his own car to the station.

It’s November of 2001 and we’re not given a lot of information. “Would they let me drive my car if I wasn’t coming back?” he reassures his mother (in Arabic).

But clearing one’s phone seems suspicious.

Jodie Foster plays Nancy Hollander, an Albuquerque attorney who’s “been fighting the government since Vietnam.” She’s a bit of a ball-buster — older, her name’s on the firm, and she’s not shy about taking on an ACLU case. It’s been over three years and this guy’s family wonders what happened to him. He might be among the 7-800 detainees at “Gitmo.”

Calling around only gets her a “He’s not not here” answer. That’s great detail, showing just how hidden from the world these prisoners were and how hard it was to even learn who was there.

With a young associate (Shailene Woodley), Hollander gets on a plane to Cuba, struggles to win the trust of this man who doesn’t trust anything associated with America, and becomes his lawyer. She will fight for a writ of habeas corpus — a demand to know what the government has on him and if it has the right to keep holding him without charge.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has decided to pursue legal precedents that allow them to put Slahi on trial for his Colonel assigned the job of prosecuting Slahi, whom they accuse of helping recruit the 9/11 hijackers.

“Rough justice, that’s what this administration wants,” he’s told. Get it for them.

As each side digs into the case, facing “classified” and “redacted” material at every turn, Slahi writes a long account, over several long letters to his lawyer, telling his story. Flashbacks from those letters recreate his life — a bright kid given a scholarship in Germany, outrage over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, traveling there.

Macdonald, working from a three-credited-writers screenplay (with one writer taking the name of “Treasure of Sierra Madre” scribe B. Traven), may struggle to wrestle this into a compact narrative. The film has a geographical and sociolinguist disconnect. It never really feels like we’re watching an American story playing out in the US. That’s jarring, but by design.

The performances, the scenes recreated, the dialogue and the detail immerse us in this case even if we get lost here and there.

“Even in Mauretania we have watched ‘Law & Order’ and ‘Ally McBeal,'” Slahi says at one point. But the legalese here, the blizzard of legal and military acronyms, scenes of wholly-redacted paperwork in a top secret government archive, is enough to test even lawyers watching this.

Scenes of what Slahi went through — endless interrogations, torture — aren’t as rough as many films depict them. But the process and procedure as seen here is fascinating. Two questioners and an interpreter all play “good cop,” at first. And then one by one they turn hard.

Foster gives Hollander a brusque, clipped demeanor, impatient with anyone who blows her off or minions who can’t keep their feelings out of the case. Call her a “terrorist lawyer” and this woman has the perfect comeback.

Woodley, collecting credits with every Oscar winning actress under the sun, holds her own. Rahim has some nice moments, but his character doesn’t have enough scenes to properly engender sympathy. And Cumberbatch does a good job with Couch’s soft Southern accent even if there’s not enough screen time to develop the man’s faith-backed decision making.

The players make the whole enterprise watchable and worth taking a look at, just to remember that the erosion of America’s “rule of law” reputation didn’t start with the outgoing administration in Washington. It’s been withering under three presidents.

But the screenplay needed more work and the film in the can a lot more editing to make “The Mauritanian” worthy of the talent on the set.

MPA Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch and Shailene Woodley

Credits: Kevin Macdonald, script by Michael Bronner (M.B. Traven), Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani. An STX release.

Running time: 2:08

This March 23 release was a big hit in China, where they can see movies in theaters again.

They never really met like this, debated these issues and foreshadowed their futures this overtly. But if the new heavyweight champ Cassius Clay, on his way to becoming Muhammad Ali, and Malcolm X and singer Sam Cooke and football legend-in-the-making Jim Brown had met, that “One Night in Miami” probably would have set off more sparks than this.

Blessed with a good cast, a passable script based on a play that won’t make anybody forget the poetry of August Wilson’s similarly theatrical/”historical” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” and solid if not dazzling direction, we’re left with a somewhat stagebound movie that works and yet only comes close to thrilling just once or twice.

Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”) delivers chills as doomed pop singer Cooke, and does it in flashbacks that take the movie out of its Miami hotel room setting, showcasing Cooke’s voice and electric stage presence.

Oscar-winner Regina King steps behind the camera and when she “opens the play up,” with a long and terrific prologue introducing Cooke, Clay (Eli Goree), Brown (Aldis Hodge) and Malcolm (Kingsley Ben Adir), she ably sets up the context, builds anticipation and raises expectations.

The movie that follows is just too damned conventional for its own good.

Goree (TV’s “Riverdale”) gives us a Clay who is swagger and braggadocio incarnate, joking around with his cornermen in a fight he will win, but not without having some fun (and almost blowing it) as he does.

Hodge (“Brian Banks” and TV’s “Underground”) brings out Brown’s presence, his simmering, self-assured cool. But even he has to grit his teeth through a “homecoming” meeting with an old backer (Beau Bridges) on his native St. Simon’s Island, Ga., a drawling Antebellum mansion dweller who thinks nothing of reminding Brown he’s also a dyed-in-the-wool racist.

British actor Ben-Adir (“Peaky Blinders,” High Fidelity”) gets across Malcolm’s self-control and discipline as a man on the cusp of breaking with the Nation of Islam over the infidelities and indiscretions of “The Messenger” and leader, “the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” But when Brown reassures Cooke after an argument that “You know Malcolm. He’s all ‘fire and brimstone’ about everything,” we have to rely on our memories and the charismatic leader and speaker’s reputation. This Malcolm is so buttoned down you kind of wonder what the fuss was about.

They gather in Miami to watch the Feb. 1964 fight with Sonny Liston that won Clay the title. Goree doesn’t disappoint, floating and dancing away from punches in the ring, more joking with his “team” in the corner.

“I TOLD you he’s ugly,” Clay blusters, wide-eyed. “You should see him UP CLOSE!”

Recreating the controversial win and Clay’s riotous bragging from the ring — “I’m the GREATEST! I’m PRETTY!” — the guys gather at Malcolm’s hotel room — Cooke arriving with a guitar and a Ferrari 250GT, Brown with expectations and Clay with Malcolm. At least two of the guys thought they were showing up for a “party.” But no.

Malcolm has an agenda, a concern and maybe a little desperation about his situation. He needs something from all of them.

But high-living Cooke is gently chastised and not-so-gently challenged — “You’re not doing enough for the CAUSE” — by Malcolm. Clay wonders if he’s about to make the wrong decision, coming out as a Muslim with a title belt in his hands. And Brown reveals that he’s just made a movie, is about to make more and isn’t all that interested in Islam.

“Have you TASTED my Grandma’s pork chops?”

Malcolm’s “you bourgeois Negroes” lectures don’t change many minds, but he’s a little off his game. He’s worried about how one “leaves” the Nation of Islam. His desperation doesn’t show, but his powers of persuasion don’t either.

Odom lights up the screen as Cooke, with Hodge and Goree never less than convincing or compelling in a script that doesn’t have much in the way of fireworks.

Ben-Adir’s less inspiring Malcolm seems upstaged by most everybody here. The serene righteous menace Lance Reddick brings to a bodyguard and aide almost washes Ben-Adir off the screen.

Playwright/screenwriter Powers (he co-wrote Pixar’s “Soul”) serves up light skimmings of African American history, color-lines (“You light-skinned cats end up being so militant!”), competitive songwriting and the financial-moral implications that Clay had to take into account before making his gutsy stand.

But for a movie with this kind of awards hype, I was underwhelmed. Watching this after seeing the sometimes spine-tingling “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” make “Miami’s” shortcomings pop out.

It’s not bad. King could develop a more stylish hand as director and Powers could achieve the next level in screenwriting fame — in TV would be my guess.

But as a movie, this “One Night in Miami” is more promising than polished, more righteous than riveting viewing.

MPA Rating: R, boxing violence, profanity, smoking

Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr., Joaquina Kalukango, Michael Imperioli, Beau Bridges and Lance Reddick.

Credits: Directed by Regina King, script by Kemp Powers, based on his play. An Amazon release.

Running time: 1:53

The children of Korean immigrants try to escape the trap their parents have set for them in this drama. This hits theaters Feb. 5.

As an exercise in making a reasonably entertaining movie in the middle of a pandemic, “Locked Down” is something of a triumph.

Limited sets, a stellar “socially-distanced” cast, some shooting their own footage in ill-framed cell phone video, screen-freezes and Oscar winning fashionista Anne Hathaway playing a boss with business sharp blouse and jacket combos worn over pajama bottoms in Zoom meetings? It’s a terrific artifact of life in these times, in “this situation,” this locked-in, isolated “land of the walking dead.”

The caper comedy it eventually becomes? Strictly an afterthought, and one that should have been discarded, seeing as how badly botched it is on a very basic genre level.

Director Doug Liman is the guy who wants to film his “Edge of Tomorrow” star Tom Cruise in space as his next stunt. I have no doubts he’ll manage it, even if the movie comes out like the rest of his filmography (“Fair Game,””The Wall”), more interesting in concept than execution.

You could do a lot worse than hiring the fellow who scripted that Tom Hardy, on his cell in an SUV talking drama “Locke,” Steven Knight. He comes up with a LOT of things for people to muse over, confess, debate and complain about, and co-star Hathaway handles all that verbiage at a staccato screwball comedy pace — a blur of words, many of them funny, biting and close to perfect in summing up city life in COVID.

“How are you?” “Terrible. You?” “Just awful.“

Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor are a London couple waiting until “this madness is over” to complete their break up. They’re cohabiting as a survival mechanism. She works for a multi-national promotions/event managing company of some sort, and on the day we meet her, Linda Zooms her entire staff in to lay them off.

Her now-ex partner Paxton (Ejiofor) is antic and verbose, regaling their city block with poetry recitals before the nightly banging of the pans (Remember those?).

“I write poetry! I could BE someone!”

Except he isn’t. He’s a delivery truck driver, and he a bad-boy-on-a-motorbike past that was catnip to Linda. Once. How’s her day going?

“I just had some bad news…nothing…compared to…EVERYthing.”

They keep their distance, barely communicate and when they do, they erupt in duologues — either talking over each other or not paying enough attention to what the other is saying. His family (Jaymyn Simon, Dulé Hill) are upset at hearing about the breakup via Zoom. We figure out why when Linda walks in on him on his motorcycle in the garage.

“Why is the hose in the exhaust?”

His boss (Ben Kingsley, in and out of his cell phone camera frame) needs to fudge Paxton’s ID to get him higher security clearance for deliveries of items from posh department store Harrad’s — in the middle of a pandemic. Her German boss is ready to move her back to the States, and her US counterpart (Ben Stiller, very funny), chilling with his teens and wife in Vermont, may be threatened by that.

“Do you have a temperature, Linda?” That’s the COVID version of “Is it that time of the month?” Not nice. Then again, she’s not even keeping her omni-present wine glass out of camera range.

Eventually, these two intolerable work situations force our splitting up couple to find common ground and purpose — a heist.

That twist in the picture arrives well after the point where one has stopped summarizing the movie’s plot, an after-thought. It’s introduced clumsily and executed without much suspense, wit or urgency.

It doesn’t break “Locked Down,” which needs judicious trimming in the first two acts as it is. But it robs us of most of the elements that make a caper comedy/heist picture fun — the planning, the logistics. We don’t know enough to know when to be worried they might get caught.

All that other talk and they couldn’t squeeze the basics in?

Ejiofor is OK, somewhat underwritten as a biker “poet.” Hathaway is in top form but could stand to lose every line that isn’t funny or doesn’t advance the plot.

Some of the cameos — Kingsley, Stiller — are funnier than others (Mindy Kaling has nothing funny to play). The use of Harrad’s and Zoom was inspired, details like druggies eyeing the poppies they have growing in their garden plot — hilarious.

But in the end, we’re left with a gimmick movie that doesn’t come off, an accurate-enough artifact of the global lockdown of last spring that will be remembered for that, and little else.

MPA Rating: R for language throughout and some drug material

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ben Kingsley, Jaymyn Simon, Ben Stiller

Credits: Directed by Doug Liman, script by Steven Knight. An HBO Max release.

Running time: 1:55

No filmmaker made me cry more often than Michael Apted.

He could handle most any genre, directed multiple Oscar nominated performances, with Sissy Spacek winning best actress for his Loretta Lynn bio pic, Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

Apted, who passed away last week at the age of 79, did biographies and a Bond film, but was never happier than when he could “put something real, something true” up on the screen. Native American issues were important to him, and he made docs and a feature film touching on that.

“Thunderheart,” “Enigma,” “Amazing Grace,” “Nell,” “Gorillas in the Mist,” “Chasing Mavericks,” “The World is Not Enough” and many other titles put him in rare company as a director — not among the immortals of the top tier, but right below them.

But his true claim to immortality is a classic of British sociology, his “7 Up/28 Up etc.” series, documentaries that caught up with a cross section of British kids every seven years, starting when they were seven, exploring how their childhood lives, upbringing and opportunities, shaped their adulthood.

Those films, made original for British TV, were remarkable lessons in social mobility and immobility, and never failed to bring tears. The last one, “63 Up,” catching us up with people who endured the struggle of life with varying degrees of success, is a life affirming experience.

I interviewed him several times over the years, here’s a link to our first chat. Fascinating man who worked with his heart on his sleeve, often as not.

Based on the graphic novel, Motherhood and Metallica and Rob Brydon figure in this mid Feb. Release.