It opened on over 1800 screens, as not every theater is open. And they all are supposed to have social distancing measures in place, to keep crowds small.
“Unhinged” got mixed reviews, a middling zeitgeist thriller starring Russell Crowe gone to seed.
It still managed $1.4 million Friday, heading to a $4.2 million weekend.
From Exhibitor Relations.
Timing is everything, and if ever the time was right for a sunny, shimmering, dizzy and diversity-embracing adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield,” this is it.
Armando Iannucci conjures — the only word for it — “The Personal History of David Copperfield” out of Dickens’ universal truths, and the man’s unmatched ear for dialect and way with words.
Iannucci, who gave us “The Death of Stalin,” “Veep,” ” In the Loop,” and who got his start with the dark, droll and ridiculous “Alan Partridge” TV series with Steve Coogan, does two things “to” Dickens and his eponymous hero here.
The “color blind” casting underlines the master’s universality. Copperfield’s struggle to escape his past is not a white man’s journey, it is EveryJourney from poverty to gentility. And casting people of many ethnicities highlights what’s already in the book, and easily ignored. He’s not just “the hero of my own story,” we all are. And none of us make that journey alone Every heroine or hero in life and in the novel struggles, tries to make something of him or herself while maintaining dignity and returning to kindness, even when you catch yourself straying from it.
And the co-adapter/director just wallows in Dickens’ words. By framing this within young Copperfield’s similarities to his creator’s biography, Iannucci has created a Dickens adaptation that elevates the writer (if that was possible) to the very top of the list of Greatest in the English Language. This is a Dickens that compares to Shakespeare, not just in characters and emotions and plotting, but in the realm of words.
“She’s a human mangle, that woman!” “What a world of gammon and spinach!” “I regret that I missed the wedding — and the chance to meet you at the peak of your beauty.”
Yes, “The words have skates, and skim away” in this “Copperfield,” a movie that leaps to its feet and sprints away on a carpet of colorful dialect, incisive description and hilariously witty turns of phrase.
“You should write that down,” little David (Ranveer Jaiswal) is told, any time somebody in his orbit says memorable. And so he does.
We see his birth, and see and hear older David (Dev Patel, wonderful in the part) “photo bomb” the moment he came into the world, “narrating” his story as he does.
The nurse Peggoty (Daisy May Cooper) is the first quotable “Dickensian” David meets. His childhood of adoration and love in the bosom of an indulgent mother and a lot of time with Peggoty and her Yarmouth brother and kin, living in a house built out of an upside down boat hull, has David conjuring up stories as soon as he can scribble them down.
But widowed mother’s (Morfydd Clark) marriage to the cruel Murdstone (Darren Boyd), under the influence of his even more-cruel sister (Gwendoline Christie, an epic villainess) hurls David into a life as a child-laborer, working at Murdstone’s London wine-bottler.
“What lies before YOU is a fight with the world,” Murdstone declares.
That puts David in the care of the always-broke, always needing a hand-out Mr. Micawber (Peter Capaldi) and his equally destitute and relentlessly upbeat wife ( his wife (Bronagh Gallagher)
David eventually rebels, rejoins his eccentric, hard-edged aunt (Tilda Swinton) and her daft cousin, Mr. Dick (Hugh Laurie) and is sent off to Mrs. Strong’s (Anna Maxwell Martin) school to become “a young gentleman,” where he befriends the snob Steerforth (Aneurin Barnard) in making fun of their “inferiors,” chief among them the obsequious servant Uriah Heep (Ben Whishaw).
David falls for the ditzy Dora (Morfydd Clark) even as he confides in the more intellectually challenging Agnes (Rosalind Eleazar), daughter of the tipsy investor (Benedict Wong) whom his sister relies on to keep the family estate, which she is manic about maintaining as “a donkey-free zone!”
Yes, there is the occasional anachronism in “The Personal History” — “Wait for it. WAIT for it!”
Yes, there are too many colorful characters, some warm and many venal, to name, all splendidly cast with the full breadth of British character actors — white, black, South Asian and Asian.
And yes, it all works, the funny bits — “I don’t care for whimsy. Sorry.” — and the poignant ones.
Iannucci’s wrangled the novel into a brisk and breezy film, which brilliantly underscores Dickens’ role as a Social Justice Warrior. “Copperfield,” with its callous, entitled and class-obsessed rich — “Your family, are you any one?” — and scrambling, shamed and morally-compromised poor, is “class warfare” from a time before the Fat Cats convinced their lemmings it was a dirty phrase, as dirty as that filthy word “socialism.”
Patel, of “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Lion” and “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” makes the most of this once-in-a-lifetime chance to break free from “Indian” roles, and connects himself with the put-upon but plucky character, and connects this truly universal character with all of us.
Whishaw makes Uriah Heep’s “anti-hero’s journey,” from pitiable and needy to cunning and cruel, a delicious turn.
And Swinton, Wong, Eleazar, Cooper, Clark, Christie, Capaldi and Laurie make their mark on some of the most indelible characters in all of Dickens, with a couple (Laurie and Capaldi) defining them for a generation.
Iannucci’s cleverest touch may be that casting, giving a wonderful cross-section of British acting the chance to say those wonderful words, reclaim Dickens from the “Masterpiece Theater” swells.
His “Personal History” is indeed that, taking “Copperfield” into “as told-to” Dickens autobiography territory. And it reminds us of Dickens the writer, and Dickens The Man in Full — entertainer, storyteller, master of dialogue and dialect, and preacher and advocate for tolerance, kindness and social justice in a world that has always struggled to accept such sermons.
MPAA Rating: PG for thematic material and brief violence.
Cast: Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Ranveer Jaiswal, Rosalind Eleazar Peter Capaldi,, Benedict Wong, Bronagh Gallagher, Ben Whisham and Hugh Laurie
Credits: Directed by Armando Iannucci, script by Peter Blackwell and Armando Iannucci, based on the novel by Charles Dickens. A Fox Searchlight release.
Running time: 2:01
This long awaited Dickens adaptation, “freely adapted” by Armando Ianucci & Co. finally earns wide (ish) release Aug. 28.
Where’d I put that sherry? Nothing like it for a Dickens adaptation.
Who would have guessed that Danny Glover and Maya Rudolph would make pleasant traveling companions for a tour of rural, backroads Mexico in pursuit of the perfect place to park his prized pig?
Actor and sometimes director Diego Luna, that’s who. With “Senor Pig (Mr. Pig)” he’s conjured up a pleasantly predictable time-filler if patently-absurd road comedy, more sentimental than silly. It’s up to Rudolph, playing things utterly straight, and the Glover at his most grandfatherly to make this work.
They never quite do, even as we get a glimpse of the Mexico old Ambrose Eubanks (Glover) remembers, a “beautiful country” or “good food” and “nice people.”
We meet Ambrose at the end of his tether, creditors nipping at his heels, his San Bernadino farm a cluttered, bankrupt shell of what it once was. Not that he gives that away to daughter Eunice (Rudolph) whenever she calls.
He’s 75, a sickly, broke and soon-to-be-homeless alcoholic who has just one asset free and clear, his beloved Howard, a pig. He flees town in a battered minivan, with a pocketful of just-received credit cards and a pig in the back, driving, sleeping on the side of the road and keeping the fact that Howard is undocumented and maybe a little sick himself from the authorities.
Until he hits Mexico. A little bribe keeps them going, but the place he’s selling the pig to, run by the son (José María Yazpik) of a long ago compadre, is this vast, gated complex of covered, crowded pens and a state-of-the-art abattoir. Howard just can’t do it.
“Imagine spending all your life in a little four by six pen, not able to even see the sun.”
Seventy-five is a little late for a pig farmer to grow this sort of empathy, but there it is. He can’t leave Howard there, can’t get him back across the border, can’t tell Eunice what he’s up to. But she finds him anyway.
And they’re off, driving from Jalisco to Guadalajara, hunting for Howard’s new home, a place where a breeding boar can have a life of porcine comfort.
The sweetness so informs the picture that you kind of wish Luna had taken the leap, cleaned it up and gone for something family friendlier than this. Howard’s drunken, profane tirades are abrupt and jarring, and don’t add a damned thing to the movie.
And something needed to be added. There aren’t enough incidents along the way, and what few there are we can see coming from a long way off.
Rudolph goes for “real” here, and that turns Eunice into somebody a hundred other actresses could have played. It’s a dull character given nothing special by putting a great comic in the role.
Glover has grumped through versions of Ambrose in scores of movies since his “Lethal Weapon” days. He’s charming, engaging to watch. But he alone, chattering away at a pig, is not enough to make the movie worth 100 minutes of your time.
The few samples of Mexican working class charm we’re treated to hint at a better movie that might have come from this idea, beginning with the better script that would have required.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, much alcohol abuse, much swearing, much smoking.
Cast: Danny Glover, Maya Rudolph, José María Yazpik and Joel Murray.
Credits: Directed by Diego Luna, script by Diego Luna and Augusto Mendoza. A Canana release on Netflix.
Running time: 1:40
“Freak Show” is a sentimental satire of the “gay boy makes good at his new school” variety, a campy, cliche-ridden calypso not through “coming out,” but rather the “deal with it” part of that rite of passage.
Narrated, ad nauseum, by our stereotypically flamboyant, narcissist pronoun-neutral hero, it just goes to show what a mamma’s boy with fashion sense and an unlimited wardrobe can do to a private school where tolerance begins and ends in the African Americans they allow in to play for their football team.
Yes, Billy Bloom (Alex Lawther) “isn’t in Connecticut any more,” not in the boozy comforting company of his mother Muv (Bette Midler), who has left him in the care of his rich father in suburban New Orleans. “You’re in a Red State, now,” warns housekeeper/chauffeur Florence (Celia Weston, in rare form). He’d better lose the Boy George/Marilyn tributes and try to fit in.
Instead, “the ride that I call ‘My Life'” is a veritable Sherman’s March through Ulysses S. Grant Academy, as much as out-and-proud affront to the simple, happy natives as the idea of a school named for the Yankee general would be in Tulane territory.
Billy isn’t bending. He dons a fencing uniform and helmet to fend off the spitballs, and a Bride of Death dress to the near-fatal beating we know is coming.
If it wasn’t for Billy’s ready wit, the first straight “sidekick” (AnnaSophia Robb) who sidles up to him and the protection and friendship of “The Compassionate Jock (Ian Nelson) who is secretly into Jackson Pollock and Oscar Wilde, our Billy would never Bloom.
I didn’t take an instant dislike to “Freak Show.” It earned my disdain, the longer it carried on, through the romping “just friends” montage with quarterback Flip (Nelson) set to “a Plane Pour Moi,” the Muv flashbacks where Billy’s mother lectures him that when life kicks him, “You kick HIGHER,” the endless Oscar Wilde quotes and Billy’s assertion that “I didn’t choose to be fabulous, fabulous chose me!”
It’s not so much an assertion of “free to be me” as insufferable, where “edgy” is casting, oh, John McEnroe as the raging athletic coach or transgender icon Laverne Cox (“Orange is the New Black”) as the local TV reporter mean girl homecoming queen wannabe and raging homophobe Lynette (Abigail Breslin) vents to about Billy.
Girl. Please.
Actress turned first-time feature director Trudie Styler, who took over the gig at the last second, gets the first 45 minutes to dance by, and turns the last 45 into a slog, with no trite situation from an earlier teen or teen and gay dramedy left unrecycled, no costume change outrageous enough to truly outrage.
It’s not terrible, just irritating. “Freak Show” is too busy flying the white flag, surrendering to the obvious, to ever let its freak flag fly.
MPAA Rating: violence, sexuality, alcohol abuse
Cast: Alex Lawther, Abigail Breslin, AnnaSophia Robb, Ian Nelson, Celia Weston, Richard Pine and Bette Midler
Credits: Directed by Trudie Styler, script by Patrick Clifton and Beth Rigazio, based on the book by James St. James. An IFC release.
Running time: 1:31
David Arquette heads the cast of this horror heist tale. This one comes our way Oct 2.
Bills Rashida’s Dad, the one who figures her husband must be cheating on her in this Apple Films production for A24, or is it the other way around?
It’s melodramatic in the extreme, with lots of low lighting and women in emotional turmoil. But Argentinian drama “The Crimes that Bind (Crímenes de familia)” is dryer and quieter than your average movie-length soap opera.
Lacking even the emotional queues that music provides for most of its length, one can praise the glossy production design and courtroom scenes rendered as dull as real life, and that’s about it.
This latest feature from the director of “El Patron” weaves a tale of two crimes and one family so deliberately that by the time the twists and emotional payoffs in the third act arrive, we can be excused for being long past caring.
It’s a vehicle for Cecilia Roth, an Argentine screen legend (She was in Pedro Almodóvar’s second film, “Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom.”), who plays a Buenos Aires lady who lunches.
But the chats and meals with her closest friends have taken a turn when we meet her. We know why when she gets that collect call from the prison. Her son Daniel (Benjamín Amadeo) is in the slammer, domestic violence charges, or “assault aggravated by kinship,” as its called (in Spanish with English subtitles).
Daniel has drug problems, and an ex who won’t let him see their little boy. Alicia believes Daniel when he talks of being “set up.” Her husband, Ignacio (Miguel Ángel Solá) isn’t buying it.
They have a maid who provides a further source of stress. Gladys (Yanina Ávila) is a “simple” country woman in her early 20s, with a little boy, no social skills and the cowering manner of someone who feels out of her depth in any conversation. But Alicia keeps her on the job, and dotes on the little boy Gladys is seemingly unqualified to raise on her own.
The first twist in the plot is a bending of timelines. We get to know both Daniel and Gladys in court. She, too, has a charge against her “aggravated by kinship.” Eventually. Her trial comes after Daniel’s, even though the two court cases and Alicia’s struggles with them (She testifies in one.) are edited to seem concurrent.
We’re treated to long, semi-passionate harangues in the form of opening statements byt the accused and the prosecution to the three-judge panels. The difference between US and Argentine courts are interesting, up to a point. But these scenes, sans music and being only vague descriptions of the crimes, are “He said/She said” at their most boring.
Only one crime will be elucidated through flashbacks. Eventually.
Roth is a fine actress and gets a few heated moments to play. But in a film where much is withheld, including emotions, even she seems muted — muzzled. Her character’s journey is predictable, and even her Big Realization arrives with little fanfare or fireworks. Understated.
The title may fool you into thinking this is some sort of Argentine mob family saga, but don’t fall for that. This is a courtroom telenovela with better makeup and lighting, and fewer dramatics.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, descriptions of violent crimes
Cast: Cecilia Roth, Miguel Ángel Solá, Sofía Gala Castiglione, Benjamín Amadeo, Yanina Ávila
Credits: Directed by Sebastián Schindel, script by Pablo Del Teso, Sebastián Schindel A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:39
This November release repairs the “Man of Steel” Kent parents, Diane Lane and Kevin Costner, for a story of ranchers who set out to rescue a grandchild living “off the grid” (Survivalists? Cultists? Druggies?) in the Dakotas.
Anything starring two of my favorite actors is already on second base. This Focus Features “awards season” release looks good.
It happens often enough that it’s worth pointing out this neat bit of role-reversal in “The Unfamiliar.” Our heroine, Izzy Cormack, turns to her husband Ethan and says, “Stay here and call the police.” Or “Wait here, I’ll find” Emma or Tommy or Lily, whichever of their children is missing, taken by demonic spirits.
Izzy, played by Jemima West, is not just the protagonist here. She’s “wearing the pants” as we used to say — fixing their busted Mercedes, taking charge in a crisis, fighting back at whatever’s attacking her and her family, even if it’s all in her head.
Because Izzy is a British Army doctor, fresh back from Afghanistan. PTSD is very much on her mind as things go “bump,” her son Tommy (Harry McMillan-Hunt), husband (Christopher Dane) and teenage daughter (Rebecca Hanssen) act strange and all ANYbody can ask her is “Did you take your pills?”
The movie around this take-charge heroine is rubbish, with Hawaiian “spirits” stirring up stuff in a plot straight out of “The Brady Bunch.” There’s rarely a chill and only a scene or two in the third act that get across any sense of peril.
And you have to take off some of the points you give the script for making a woman the center of the action for laugh-out-loud moments of cultural appropriation. But aside from that…
Izzy comes home from a combat tour to a family that seems a little wrapped up in college-professor-husband Ethan’s latest project, either a non-fiction book on the Tiki gods and spirits of Hawaii, or “a children’s book,” complete with horrific illustrations, that uses those gods and monsters in a kid-friendly story.
Teen Emma (Hanssen) is still studying piano, but kind of remote. Son Tommy (McMillan-Hunt) is precociously tinkering with a short wave radio of his own design.
But the static out of that radio is sinister, Tommy keeps insisting he uses it to “talk to Dad when he’s asleep.”
Pictures fly off the walls, and Izzy is hallucinating deathly injuries her children incur. We see her visit a shrink, but don’t go into the session. Because there’s a fellow (Ben Lee) in the waiting room who seems to know her, reassures her that she’s “not mad,” and well, he has a BUSINESS card.
Why not bring him and his partner in for a seance?
Izzy’s efforts to “get to the bottom of this” include CCTV cameras, even though everybody knows demons don’t show up in HD. Ethan’s solution is a family holiday, back to Hawaii where his “research” began.
West never takes Izzy off the deep end — she is ENGLISH, after all. It’s a performance that shows us curiosity and concern, and the odd moment of shock. But Izzy isn’t given to panic, weeping or unalloyed terror.
That’s a justifiable approach to the character, but one that robs the movie of pathos and urgency. Because nobody else picks up the scream-in-fright slack.
What is the DEAL with these kids, this husband? So unconcerned. That mystery drives the story, and frankly isn’t enough to force the viewer engage with it.
The whole affair, with its posh accents, country house in England and absurdly roomie “jungle” rental in Hawaii, is entirely too prissy to scare anybody.
And the one good action beat — SOMEbody is allergic to bees, and is thus tormented by them by the demon — comes too late to make any difference.
MPAA Rating: Unrated, graphic violence, much of it involving children.
Cast: Jemima West, Christopher Dane, Harry McMillan-Hunt, Rachel Lin and Rebecca Hanssen.
Credits: Directed by Henk Pretorius, script by Henk Pretorius, Jennifer Nicole Stang. A Dark Star release.
Running time: 1:29
Movie Nation 