“Funny Boy” tells a compelling “growing up gay” story in a country few of us know about, set against the turmoil of Sri Lanka’s bitter, decades-long civil war.
In adapting a novel by Shyam Selvadurai, director Deepa Mehta (“Water”) has created a melodrama both intimate and sweeping, an “epic on a budget” with characters and dilemmas that speak to us all in a violent political situation that would test anyone any where and at any time in human history.
As if the violence of that ethnic conflict (the war didn’t end until 2009) wasn’t challenge enough, young Arjie (Arush Nand) grows up fascinated with his mother’s clothes, preferring the company of girls and bad at sports.
We see the blood drain out of the face of his father (Ali Kazmi) when he sees his seven year old in lipstick and a dress, playing the bride in a mock wedding he and his friends are staging.
“Looks like you’ve got a funny one here,” an elderly uncle chuckles.
Arjie’s mother (Nimmi Harasgama)? It’s time for her to stop letting him put on her jewelry for her, she decides.
But Arjie has a savior. It’s the 1970s and hip Aunt Radha (Agam Darshi) blows in from Canada, where she’s been attending college. She’s a free spirit in cut-off shorts and Westernized attitudes who figures this little boy out in a flash. Dressing up, “Does it make you happy?” That’s all she needs to know.
“You are different, precocious and wonderful!”
Together the kid and his cool aunt audition for “The King and I,” and Arjie has a co-conspirator. Radha’s facing an arranged marriage with a Tamil man from Canada, but this last summer in Colombo, she falls for the attentions of a Sinhalese co-star in the show.
Little Arjie becomes the go-between for this Tamil/Sinhalese Juliet and Romeo, the “beard” on their outings, but too little to understand the ancient hatreds that make that a doomed affair.
Arjie’s family is rich, as her many of his relatives. They are a largely-Christian minority in India and on Sri Lanka. The venom he overhears in the arguments with Sinhalese all but curdle his ears. An aunt explains their plight to him and to the non-Sri Lankan viewer.
“We’re the Jews of Asia!”
As Arjie grows up (Brandon Ingram plays him in his teens and older), he absorbs the fact that homosexuality is illegal that, endures a lifetime of judgement, abuse and betrayal from his sports-addict older brother Diggy (Hidaayath Hazeer), faces discrimination in his new school and discovers his gaydar. Shehan (Rehan Mudannayake) is his first clue that “people like us exist abroad, where’s it’s not illegal to be like we are.”
They bond over “the esteemed Mister Wilde,” Western music by Bowie and The Police and oh, by the way, Shehan’s Sinhalese.
The script is a tad too on-the-nose for its own good, with its parallel tales of “forbidden love” and unhappy “boring” conventionality. The background moves to the foreground so often and to such a degree that the love stories evaporate, minimized in a culture where chaste screen romances remain the rule, even as laws and mores change.
Darshi (“Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”) is the life of this party, but Ingram, a writer making his screen debut in this Canadian production, holds his own with more experienced players.
But what’s fascinating here is the story that’s told, the place where it’s set and the point of view it gets across. The Western media reflected Indian (Sinhalese) coverage of this conflict and the endless terror campaign by the Tamil Tigers guerilla group. “Funny Boy” is eye-opening just for showing us the other side, with its own schisms — rich Tamils wishing their working class revolutionary Tigers would back off.
It’s not “Doctor Zhivago,” not the most original story or original treatment of love-in-a-time-of-war as a theme. But “Funny Boy” is valuable in letting us see this world and this history through different eyes.
MPA Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity, slurs
Cast: Brandon Ingram, Arush Nand, Rehan Mudannayake, Hidaayath Hazeer, Nimmi Harasgama, Ali Kazmi and Agam Darshi
Credits: Directed by Deepa Mehta, script by Deepa Mehta and Shyam Selvadurai, based on the novel by Shyam Selvadurai. A Netflix release.
A young man visits a sick friend at home in his big, nearly empty family estate where the friend’s supposedly sick but reclusive sister also dwells.
They are the last in their line, isolated, with no prospects for or interest in extending it.
The bones of “The Bloodhound” are a straight borrowing of Edgar Allen Poe. It’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” only set in some Mid Century Modern house, a glass and steel multi-story affair perched on a hillside in Southern California.
But that classic tale is but the framework for the surreal creepiness first-time writer-director Patrick Picard serves up here.
That title suggests the nature of the threat to this declining family in their isolation, a creature out of the dreams of heir Jean Paul Luret (Joe Adler of “Grey’s Anatomy” and the recent “Twin Peaks” reboot). Some person, face obscured by a cloth hood, is seen crawling along a creek and then into this house, as if sniffing the floor, tracking a scent.
“JP” relates that dream among many others to his old friend Francis (Liam Aiken, who played the son in “Road to Perdition”). Francis takes them all in and tries to make sense of them all, the family predicament and his own in this seriously stylized spin through Poe Country. Not that he lets us in on his theories.
JP is rich, soft-spoken and understatedly eccentric. Please remove your shoes.
“I always get anxious when people wear their shoes in the house. It feels like they’re about to leave.”
He wonders if Francis is homeless, confesses to not having “set foot outside this place in two years.”
He weeps at sentimental black and white war movies, suggests they slip inside sleeping bags –upside down — and have a sort of worm wrestling match, gets in a fistfight with the pizza delivery guy and summons a singer and pianist for a command performance of art songs and operatic arias.
And JP steers Francis away from his sister, Vivian. Repeatedly.
“Don’t bother her.”
What’s the visitor to do when she visits him — in warning — late at night?
“Get out of here. You’ll die with the rest of us!”
Was Francis awake for this, or sleep-walking? Did he finish the night by wetting himself? JP not recalling any of that just heightens the paranoia.
Thumps from Vivian’s room, inside the closets and walls, almost go unnoticed. Perhaps it is “grandmother, who died here. Every now and then you can hear her sigh.”
And every so often, there’s a “visit” from whoever that is in the masked face, crawling, sniffing around, making a mess.
“The Bloodhound” is a cryptic story of sudden entrances and exits, of deadpan lines that have a random feel but sometimes comic effect.
“I don’t want to act like a crazy person” sounds that much crazier when the line is delivered with the flat calm we hear here.
Knowing the film’s Poe origins doesn’t unravel the mystery, but Picard’s deliberate pacing and chilly tone tend to obscure it.
A descent into madness, with a “bloodhound” sniffing out their secrets and their family decay? A “homeless” friend trapped amidst this wealth and weirdness in a house stuck in what looks like 1964?
“What was this, Francis? How did we get here?”
“You mean us, right here, or in general?”
Why not launch into a history of Evolution? Makes as much sense as anything else in “The Bloodhound.” Knowing Poe’s original story isn’t much help in gleaning the meaning of this willfully obscure “horror” tale.
Picard has woven an elaborate web, with every strand just so — story, design and performances, a film with visual coherence a soundscape that matches the tone of everything else.
But what was this, Francis?
MPA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity
Cast: Liam Aiken, Annalise Basso, Joe Adler
Credits: Scripted and directed by Patrick Picard. An Arrow release.
A more enlightened cinema started producing a lot more sexual-flowering/coming-of-age rom-coms from a female point of view a few years ago. And to prove “how far we’ve come” from “The To-Do List,” we now have “Banging Lanie.”
The title’s far less subtle, and that ravenous beast of comic screen sexuality Aubrey Plaza is sorely missed. But basically it’s the same movie with a few pop culture wrinkles updating it.
Writer-director Allison Powell has the title role, an awkward teen in the post-“Big Bang Theory” model — smart and awkward to an “on the spectrum” degree.
She’s “the smartest person in our school,” determined to get into MIT, solicitous of her teachers, especially Dr. G. (Lisa Kaminir), who teaches biology. It’s her classmates she has no time for.
“I have no friends.” That’s not a complaint.
Steven (George Whitaker) she indulges with math tutoring. But like her, he’s 18. Unlike her, he’s A) gay and B) hormonal, all about make-out sessions and such. Lanie is more inclined to beg Dr. G. to get out of “classic” Sex Ed day in biology class.
“But I’m not having sex…EVER.”
Her widowed Mom (Virginia Reece) hangs on tightly, tries to convince her of the need for a more balanced life and to not be all worked up about the future when the present has so much to offer.
That’s what sends Lanie to Google in search of “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” That’s where she sees “sex” (reproduction, actually) at the bottom of that famous pyramid chart. It’s “basic,” like food, air and water.” And that’s what sends her to almost-a-friend Steven for tutoring, coaching and guidance in all things social (“friendship,” because she’s not mastered that) and sexual.
That’s how she begins a crash course in dating and mating, something she’ll document (“I always take notes. How else can you learn?”), because she’s starting “literally” at Square One.
“You’d better go on a date first. Try THREE.”
But “don’t guys want to have sex all the time?”
“That’s a terrible stereotype that needs to die!”
A likely candidate (Damian Alonso) is selected, a “Queer Eye for the Nerd Girl” makeover ensues, and here we go.
Lanie is a generic but lightly amusing character in a generic locale (Las Cruces, New Mexico with little local color) “robotically” ticking items off her list, seeking tutoring when she gets in over her head.
“Are you asking me for masturbation advice,” bi-more-than-curious Kylie (Daniela Rivera) wants to know?
“The best scientists go to experts in their field!”
The dialogue can be quick and snappy, but the over-familiar ground makes the picture plod along. The players are pleasant, but a tad on the bland side across the board.
This feels “made for Netflix,” which wouldn’t be a bad fate for the film (VOD now). But lacking sizzle, edge and the spark of a Joey King — the teen sex comedy “It” girl of recent years — “Banging Lanie” tries to get by on “nice” and “true to life.” It’s a PG-13 movie with PG ambitions and R rated reality.
And it’s true to life if life is rife with teen sex comedy cliches, the adults are all sympathetic and even the “mean” kids aren’t that mean.
When the edgiest thing about your teen sex rom-com is the title, the best you can offer in praise is “that’s a nice first effort.”
MPA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, profanity
Cast: Allison Powell, George Whitaker, Daniela Rivera, Damian Alonso, Virginia Reece and Lisa Kaminir.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Allison Powell. An Indie Rights release.
The organizing principle of “Vinyl Generation,” a 2016 documentary about music and culture in Czechoslovakia during its Iron Curtain years, and just after it, is that the rebellious act of buying and listening to Western rock music on vinyl LPs and 45s created the Czech culture that flowered after the “Velvet Revolution.”
The country went from days when you’d try to score the new Lou Reed or Frank Zappa LP on the down low, worried that you were buying from “police informants” or undercover state security police, from artist making music under the thumb of their Soviet overlords to experiencing freedom. And many of those rebels went on to become artists, art critics, promoters and club owners.
This before-and-after Vaclav Havel’s “Velvet Revolution” is covered more briefly, authoritatively and thrillingly in the opening chapter of Alex Winter’s definitive new Frank Zappa documentary biography, “Zappa.”
The Russians labeled rock in general under a generic “Zappa” label, so that film reminds us. “Decadent,” “subversive,” etc., all came to be associated with Frank, so much so that he was invited over to give a joyous “freedom” concert when the Bolsheviks were finally ushered out.
“Decadence” has been the byword for organizing art exhibits and even naming bands in the post-“Velvet” Czech Republic, Slovakia having split off for good measure some time later.
But the film, as rushed into release here shows, is nothing but a hustle, promising “rare” footage of Reed, Zappa — and heck, even Mudhoney.
Anybody who knows the legalities of “fair use” knows what that entails in Keith Jones’ film — no music rights, just a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance, Frank talking from the stage, Mudhoney starting a song, Lou warming up.
The rest of the movie may have a worthwhile intent (director Keith Jones did “Punk in Africa”) as assorted alumni of this era in their country’s history show us old show bills, recordings and share their memories of former venues on a walking tour.
But it’s subtitled tedium itself. You want the flavor of what went down, stream “Zappa.” “Vinyl Generation” looks positively shabby and half-assed in comparison.
MPA Rating: unrated
Cast:Veronika Bromová, David Cajthaml, Václav Havelka, Otto Urban, Ondrej Struma, Marcel Hrubý
Credits: Directed by Keith Jones. A Dark Star release.
Vampire flick aficionados should definitely drop in on “Climate of the Hunter,” a stylish, chatty and camp blood-sucking homage to “Dark Shadows” and the pretentious British films in the genre from the 1960s.
Prolific Oklahoma indie filmmaker Mickey Reece even managed to make this period piece look as if it was shot on grainy celluloid.
But it’s most valuable as a tutorial on the difficulties of creating “camp,” as this film festival favorite is the sort of airless enterprise you end up with when camp doesn’t quite come off.
The first hints you have that this isn’t all that serious come from the characters with what look like spray-on tans. An homage to George Hamilton in “Love at First Bite,” perhaps?
Alma (Ginger Gilmartin) and Elizabeth (Mary Buss) are two sisters with 40 fast receding in the rear view mirror, competing for the attentions of this older man they’ve known for years. Wesley (Ben Hall) is a well-heeled, well-traveled writer, prone to pontification, dropping Goethe and Baudelaire into dinner conversation.
He’s also dapper, rolling up to their vacation home in the woods in a 1970 Mustang convertible, leisure-suited, his spray-tan and dye-job varying just enough from scene to scene to suggest “vanity.”
Elizabeth works in DC, and Alma is more wrapped up in “aging gracefully.”
“How’s that?” her sister cattily wonders.
One of the sisters’ name was on a mental hospital report in the film’s opening image. But here, that’s not a disadvantage.
“He’s clearly into sick women.”
Over the course of a couple of days, they chat and flirt and take strolls with Wesley. Alma’s married daughter Rose (Danielle Evon Ploeger) comes in, gripes a bit and distracts Wesley. And his resentful son, aspiring writer Percy (Sheridan McMichael) shows up and drops a lot of hints.
“Mom’s gone, you’ll live forever and I’ll never have children.” The ladies speak of Wesley being “a little long in the tooth,” but Percy is even less kind about “his twilight years, or whatever these are to him.”
Alma has vivid dreams about vampires gathered for poker games. That could be a byproduct of hanging with local “character” and aged pothead BJ Beavers (Jacob Ryan Snovel).
It’s a film of long dinner chats with classical music warhorses playing in the background, Wesley dropping Pere Lachaise cemetery anecdotes and Percy serving dear old-or-ageless Dad a salad.
“Is there GARLIC in this?”
The tidbits above are the lightest moments in this, although I was amused by Dad’s endorsement of Percy’s prose, “though it lacks subtlety, taste and style” and a random flash of nudity in one dinner chat. Insert shots, with narration, of ’70s style dishes being served, like other “comic” attempted comic touches, left me cold.
Gilmartin’s Alma is the centerpiece here, and while a perfectly natural actress, she looks just enough like Molly Shannon that one is disappointed when nothing all that funny ever comes out of her mouth. Hall (he played an FBI agent in the abortion drama “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer”) is properly oily, and overall, the cast is as intentionally arch as the material demands.
But for all its virtues — the ’70s take on “pretentious” is spot-on — it didn’t amount to many laughs, any frights or much of all that would provoke more than a “Look at that apparition in a Nosferatu mask” and other DIY low-budget novelties.
Yes, Reece has been doing this for years and his films have taken on a nice polish. And I dare say this one would “play” in the right group setting, with proper alcoholic lubrication.
But from its nonsensical title to the inconsequential plot behind that title, “Climate for the Hunter” doesn’t have enough to offer to make it worth recommending, save for members of the vampire camp cognoscenti. And even they might prefer seeing it tipsy.
MPA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, nudity
Cast: Ginger Gilmartin, Mary Buss, Ben Hall, Jacob Ryan Snovel, Danielle Evon Ploeger and Sheridan McMichael.
Credits: Directed by Mickey Reece, script by Mickey Reece and John Selvidge. A Dark Star release.
Netflix’s efforts to steal Hallmark Channel’s “Christmas wish-fulfillment romance” thunder get a boost from “A California Christmas,” a pleasant little nothing that would be right at home among Hallmark’s holiday flirtations-over-fruitcake romances.
It’s the seriously good-looking stars of “Roped,” now married in real life, in a sweet, obvious little fish-out-of-water romance set in California ranch country. And if it’s only marginally better than much of the holiday-oriented fare of Netflix or Hallmark, that just means it fits right in.
Co-star Lauren Swickard, doing farmwork in full makeup, cut-off shorts or yoga pants, model-actor-husband Josh Swickard managing a shirtless moment or two?
She’s the bitter, loveless ranch daughter, struggling to hang on without her late father, with her mom (Amanda Detmer) struggling with cancer. He’s the rich, playboy son of a real estate tycoon (Julie Lancaster) sent north to “get her to sign,” only to be mistaken for a ranch hand, do his first-ever “manual labor,” getting his first callouses, getting into his first honky-tonky fistfight?
This thing writes itself, or would have if Lauren Swickard hadn’t managed it. I mean, it’s got no pace, but that’s the way of these holiday rom-coms. The laughs are a bit thin, but that’s a given, too.
If Netflix hasn’t signed these two to do a holiday movie a year until yoga pants are out of fashion, I’ll eat my cowboy hat.
The laughs here come from almost entirely from two supporting players. Ali Afshar plays Leo, the driver for love’em and leave’em Joseph, the “fixer” who, when Callie confuses him for this ranch hand her mother hired sight unseen, has to find the “real” Manny (David del Rio) and pay him not to show up.
But Leo ends up having to room with Manny in a rental house while Joseph, given “one last chance” by his rich Mommy to close this real-estate deal, tries to cozy up to Callie, using what his mother figures is his only “skill, getting young women to do whatever the Hell you ask them to.” They need Manny around, because Joseph has no idea what to do on a dairy farm, these “chores” and what not.
“What is ‘muck the pens?”
Manny, sleeping late, zoning out on video games, will be Joseph’s life coach.
Del Rio scores laughs playing a goofball with hidden skills only oenophile Leo can appreciate.
The leads are pretty and a tad bland, a curse of this genre of rom-com. The “holidays” barely figure into anything. It doesn’t snow in that part of California, for starters.
And the plot gives away the game entirely too easily for this thing to run on and on getting to a finale we see from miles off.
But if you’re looking for something to watch with older relatives, something with a smidgen more edge than say a faith-based holiday romance, you could do worse.
MPA Rating: PG-13, some sexuality
Cast: Josh Swickard, Lauren Swickard, Amanda Detmer, Ali Afshar, David del Rio.
Credits: Directed by Shaun Paul Piccinino, script by Lauren Swickard. A Netflix release.
There are outtakes at the end of “Skylines,” aka “Skylin3s,” cast members crack up at all the silly, pithy, cliche one-liners common to the sci-fi action genre.
That’s fitting, because there’s no sterner test than keeping a straight face while delivering the following.
“No rush. Just the end of the world.”
“We’re not in Kansas any more!”
“Wormhole travel is extremely dangerous!
“Oh, so you have HALF a plan!”
“No one’s talking to YOU, honey!”
“Death or glory, corporal!”
“Brace yourself! HOLD ON!”
The third film in this decade-old franchise is slow. So slow. It’s a joked-up mash-up of “District 9” and “Starship Troopers.” The buggy “harvesters” who invaded, and whose “pilots” split from them in “Beyond Skyline” to live with us on Earth and help keep the harvesters at bay, must be dealt with one more time. They’ve got to be attacked on their home planet.
Let’s call it “Cobalt One,” because it’s so blue.
The human/alien hybrid Rose (Lindsey Morgan) who “froze” in mid-attack during “Beyond Skyline” is tracked down to add to this combat team. The object is retrieving “the core drive” something-or-other which will keep the pilots from dying off, and lashing out to “harvest” the planet again as they do.
Complicated? Enough. But there’s more. Rose has “powers.” And she has a full-on alien brother, thanks to the way their dad (Frank Grillo, seen in flashbacks) rolled. Rose and bug pilot Trent are on the team together, classic bickering siblings.
“Need a hand? I brought thumbs!”
While this team, led by General Radford (Alexander Siddig) with Col. Owen (Daniel Bernhardt) providing the boots-on-the-ground firepower, transits the wormhole and hunts for the magical talisman, Dr. Mal (B-movie queen Rhona Mitra) is living among the starving masses, working on a serum that would, apparently, accomplish the same thing. No wormholes needed.
Huh.
Say it with us, Doc. “I just need…a little more time!”
So the away team shoots, slashes and flame-throws its way towards The Core Drive while Dr. Mal and pals (James Cosmo, Naomi Tankel) try to fend off the “pilot sprawl” attacking them in the blasted wasteland of suburban London.
The players give it their best, as tedious exercises like this are rarely the fault of the cast. The fight choreography rises to “adequate.” The effects are OK — mostly — a planet overrun with “pilots,” another filled with semi-visible alien versions called “shadow creatures.
But there’s so much exposition, and writer-director Liam O’Donnell (“Beyond Skyline”) has little sense of how to pick up the pace and amp up the urgency aside from adding new tech, new “powers” or many, many pauses for one-liners.
The best of which has to be an ad lib, directed at “Beyond Skyline’s” one holdover character (aside from Grillo), Morgan’s Rose.
“I really like what you’ve done with your hair!”
MPA Rating: R for violence and language
Cast: Lindsey Morgan, Alexander Siddig, Rhona Mitra, Daniel Bernhardt, Cha-Lee Yoon, James Cosmo and Frank Grillo.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Liam O’Donnell, based on previous “Skyline” screenplays. A Vertical release.
In “Tiger Within”Edward Asner plays a Holocaust survivor who takes an interest in and eventually takes in a runaway, a Midwestern teen punk who drew a swastika on her leather jacket for shock effect.
The product of a broken home, Casey (newcomer Margot Josefsohn) was told the Holocaust is a “myth” by her drunken, disinterested mother. So old Samuel is here to teach her otherwise, and share a few 90something profundities with the obnoxious, angry-at-the-world 15 year-old.
“Your Mom is wrong,” is the first. “Nazis make bad company” is another.
She spies his tattoo, so at least “that’s something we have in common.”
Her utter ignorance of Jews, the Holocaust and history in general suggests she’s not just been kicked out of every school she attended back in Ohio, but that she’s been under a cultural rock her entire life.
That makes “Tiger Within” something of an R-rated primer, an “After School Special” on some very serious subjects — aimed at a teen audience. And like much of this stumbling, wrong-footed effort, it’s just…off.
The entire enterprise, written by Gina Wendkos and directed by Rafal Zielinski, begs the question, “Did you folks think this through?”
-An opening title suggests the time frame is “a number of years ago.” That feels like an afterthought, like something a film distributor gave them as a reason for not picking it up. Making a period piece involves more than visiting a vintage punkwear store and taking away everybody’s cell phones. The cars are modern. They didn’t shoot this as a period piece.
But that’s the only way to make this Midwestern punk runaway with a swastika on her back run into a Holocaust survivor who lost his children in the Death Camps. Samuel would have to be 100+ for that math to work in the 2010s.
We see the kid put on a train and sent to her father, but she departs from an Amtrak station in the sun-kissed mountains of the desert Southwest, not far from Los Angeles.
There are little grace notes in Asner’s German-accented performance, truisms in the dialogue.
“You heading to church?” “Temple, yes.” “Sorry. I keep forgetting the difference.”
“So should everybody!”
The scene where they meet, a kid with a swastika on her jacket curled up against a tombstone Samuel visits to lay a rock on the memorial to his wife, should have been a winner. It falls flat.
Josefsohn makes a perfectly plausible crude, unfiltered and clueless teen. But cutting straight to her job in as a sex-worker is jarring. No friends, never had a boyfriend, never heard of the Holocaust but she figures out to land a “safe” sex work job in massage, at 15? OK.
Casey, like the film itself, feels out of her time — an early ’80s torn-fishnets, tattoo-covered jerk (again, 14 or 15) who’d be a lot more naive about everything, not just history and Jews (“I’ve never met one before.”), no matter what magazines she’s read.
Samuel gets her into school, and being the first person to take an interest in her, makes Casey more open to other people. So let’s graft a first junior-high crush onto this, the most “After School Special” touch of all.
But again, we’ve already seen her as a punk sex worker. So…
Whatever its scattered virtues, “Tiger Within” never shakes that “didn’t think this through” vibe, poor choice of titles included.
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