Movie Nation

“The Binding (Il Legame)” is an Italian horror tale that doesn’t play by the rules, that defies every expectation it sets us up for.

Does that heighten the frights or amp up the suspense? Not really. But it’s a puzzling bit of cinematic horror bait and switch that could hold your interest.

A couple (Argentine actress Mia Maestro and Italian star Riccardo Scamarcio) travel to the South of Italy to visit his mother. Emma and Francesco are about to marry, and her pre-teen daughter from an earlier marriage, Sofia (Giulia Patrignani) is along for the ride to a remote villa where weird things are afoot.

Francesco’s mother Teresa (Mariella Lo Sardo) is no Mother Teresa. She’s all about incantations, herbal remedies and weird ceremonies. We can see that because we saw the prologue where a young woman was held down and cut in some blood ritual.

Emma starts picking up on it from the strange whispers in the house, the oddly nosy folks who visit for a group meal welcoming Francesco back, all ready for her “to become part of this world, and this family.”

Sofia sees ancient, overturned trees, hears Teresa’s claims of a magical ability to heal those trees, and screams in the night at what’s under her bed. A spider, for starters.

One bite later and Sofia’s in peril, her mother picks up on it even as Francesco and everybody else tell her “You’re over-reacting” (in Italian, with English subtitles). She isn’t.

But what we’ve been set up for, some ritualistic Southern Italian cult taking possession of the child, isn’t what’s going on. The villains aren’t necessarily the ones we finger. And the story stumbles toward a resolution that doesn’t seem to fit the facts we’ve been immersed in.

Everything, including the doctor in town who treats the bite (after Teresa’s application of herbs), seems to be “in on it,” this “binding” (evil eye curse) thing.

Emma’s rising paranoia and determination to get her kid out of there are reasonable responses, we think. But do we have all the information we need to know what’s coming?

No. We don’t.

Putting a child in jeopardy and subjecting her to horrors (with their accompanying shrieks of terror) is usually a foolproof set-up. This take on that left me cold, with a few mild frights and only a vague idea of who we should be rooting for or rooting against.

Not playing by the horror rules means “The Binding” avoids becoming “Rosemary’s Baby.” The trouble is, it doesn’t become anything else, either.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, bloody violence, sex

Cast: Mia Maestro, Riccardo Scamarcio, Mariella Lo Sardo, Giulia Patrignani, Raffaella D’Avella

Credits: Directed by Domenico Emanuele De Feudis, script by Daniele Cosci, Davide Orsini and Domenico Emanuele De Feudis. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

There won’t be any theaters open to show this, but…

Strange, dark and dystopian. Very Alan Moore. He’s in it, too. Coming sometime this fall.

There’s pretty good evidence that famous outlaw Butch Cassidy spent a little time on Brokeback Mountain. Contemporaries spoke of his sharing-the-blanket days on the trail, in prison and what-not.

And heaven knows he spent an inordinate amount of space in his letters that survive — talking up his whore-housing good times — “overcompensating,” one might say. This has been “out there” in outlaw lore for decades. So make what you will of Paul Newman’s casting in the iconic role in the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

Sundance and Butch did overdo the dynamite thing when they blew up safes on railcars, and yes, they ran into the same UP rail clerk, E.C. Woodcock, guarding the darned things on more than one robbery. Just as you see in the movie.

They didn’t head straight to “Bolivia” after their “last job” (one of many “one last score” robberies). No, they spent years ranching and failing at it in Argentina first.

The movie, like much of the “legend” around the duo? Let’s just say that the great “Nobody knows anything” screenwriter William Goldman wasn’t big on “research” and “historical accuracy.”

Actually, let’s let Charles Leerhsen say it, which he does in an amusingly flip and snarky new Butch bio out this year. A onetime Sports Illustrated and then People mag editor who wrote a pretty good book on Ty Cobb and books on the Indy 500 and famous horses and ghost-wrote one for a famous jackass (“Trump: Surviving at the Top”) turns his attention to reexamining the historic “Butch Cassidy” for his latest, “The True Story of an American Outlaw.”

Leehrsen paints vivid portraits of Butch, born Robert Leroy Parker, to a Mormon family in rural Utah, and New Yorker Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, who earned his “Sundance Kid” moniker in a one-horse town of that name that came along long before Robert Redford slapped that label on a film festival, a TV channel and the like.

Butch had a colorful career that included rustling and horse thievery, but was every bit the well-read “gentleman bandit” of lore and the George Roy Hill (script by Goldman) movie. His “Wild Bunch” or “Hole in the Wall Gang” didn’t kill victims (leaving witnesses), didn’t rob ordinary folk — just railroads, banks and once or twice, a general store.

Sundance was the “sullen” tougher one. Butch was “the charmer,” albeit one who kept the company of rougher types, bad influences who drew the law to him, all his relatively short life.

In the parlance of our times, not his, Butch wasn’t particularly “binary” in his sexuality. The whole “love triangle” with the mysterious Ethel or Etta “Place” has maybe a hint that Etta wasn’t who he wanted on his handlebars. Place is a Longabaugh forebear’s surname, because she married The Kid, by the way.

Leerhsen punctures a few of the storied names in the Outlaw Scholarship industry, visits a LOT of the places named in the newspaper accounts and later eyewitness histories (the reliable ones) and paints a richer portrait than the 1969 movie, which stands the test of time, despite inaccuracies and filmmaking blunders (see “Thomas, B.J.”).

“To feel just how soft and find the atmosphere is above your head, feel it with both hands at once” isn’t as pithy as “REACH for the SKY!” But apparently, our colorful caperers were given to waxing a tad poetic on the “stick’em up” basics.

Leerhsen paints a picture of a scene that seems worth a movie all on its own, an Outlaw Thanksgiving in which the duo served as waiters and cooks for a feast for their fellow highwaymen, surely a raucous affair if anybody’s account is to be believed.

It’s been over 50 years since the movie that defined them, and while nobody much makes Westerns these days and few would dare tackle remaking a classic, there’s plenty of stuff in this brief and breezy biography that suggests an altogether different spin on the story than the Newman/Redford one many of us know and love could be filmed.

Anybody option “Butch Cassidy” yet?

“Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw,” by Charles Leerhsen, Simon & Schuster, 253 pages. $7.99 and up (eBay, Amazon) hardcover

Cineworld doesn’t the largest share of Regal locations in the US, but the UK and Ireland are about to have something like a complete cinema shutdown. Again.

The content isn’t being released and theaters aren’t regarded as safe. So this might be a sign of a complete shutdown here as well. Idiot governors be damned. People who aren’t Republicans know better.

https://variety.com/2020/film/global/cineworld-close-us-regal-uk-cinemas-no-time-to-die-james-bond-1234791728/

The 1970s singer-songwriter Harry Chapin won awards, more after he died in 1981 than while he was alive. Now, there are awards named for him — songwriting and humanitarian honors coveted by generations of performers who have followed.

A montage of movie and TV sitcom scenes in the moving new documentary about him makes the case that this “storyteller” cast a giant shadow across the culture, creating a kind of shorthand for poignant memories of roads not traveled, personal compromises made and absentee parenting.

“Friends” to “The Simpsons” to “Shrek the Third” to “Modern Family to “Black-ish” made variations of the same teary-eyed joke about the guilt of knowing you weren’t being there for your kids. Generations of Americans get the “Cats in the Cradle” reference. Still do.

“Taxi,” “WOLD,” “I Want to Learn a Love Song,” we hear how these classics came about, how Chapin hiring a cellist for his band, adding stringed pathos to the music, made him the distinctive “troubadour” of his day.

But “Harry Chapin: When in Doubt, Do Something” is about the man in full, a singer, husband and father, and a performer who dove into human rights the way he threw himself into everything else. Hunger became his issue, and Rick Korn’s film is packed with testimonials about his relentless commitment to this cause, which superseded his career and all but took over his life.

He was on his way to another benefit show when he was killed in a car crash in 1981.

“I want to matter,” he said in interviews, generously sampled here. He lobbied presidents and Congress, and all but turned over his performing life to charity. Half of his concerts in a given year were benefits, often small and intimate even though he was a big star and could have done fewer, bigger shows that drew bigger crowds and raised more money.

“He never said no,” friends and colleagues remember, often to his detriment. But “always for the greater good” was his motto.

“He was like a saint, to the point of being a martyr,” one bandmate recalls. .

Legions of stars and activists give testimonials to how ahead of the curve Chapin was and the example that Chapin set, among them Sir Bob Geldof, recruited to do something about world hunger after Harry’s death.

“What a lovely man,” Geldof remembers. “And how RIGHT was he?”

Here’s Kenny Rogers, who did his share of fund raising concerts to to end hunger, saying Chapin “may have been the single most unselfish person I’ve ever met in my life.”

Bruce Springsteen tells onstage funny anecdotes about Chapin, a famous talker, working him, inspiring him and eventually compelling him to get behind the same cause.

Billy Joel opened for Chapin at the beginning of his career, and used to have people ask him if “Piano Man” was a Harry Chapin song, and always took it as a compliment.

Joel breaks down “Taxi,” about a cabbie picking up on an old girlfriend the driver realizes gave up her dreams and married money, and the power of the song’s punch-line — “‘Harry, keep the change.’ That’s real life. And that’s such a cool line.”

And intercut through all of the tributes, there’s Chapin singing — in concerts, on TV shows, an infectious smile and sense of drama in his voice, drawing listeners in and later, leading sing-alongs to songs people knew by heart then, and many remember still.

“Harry Chapin: When in Doubt, Do Something” premieres in theaters and online on Oct. 16, World Hunger Day.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Harry Chapin, Tom Chapin, Pat Benatar, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Harry Belafonte, Sandy Chapin, Bob Geldof, Pete Seeger, Tom Chapin, Robert Lamm, Bruce Springsteen, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Josh Chapin, Michael Moore and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels.

Credits: Directed by Rick Korn. A Greenwich Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:34

Let me tell you about this repellent Mexican comedy titled “Ahí te Encargo (You Got This)” but which should have been called “Two Selfish Jerks and a Baby.”

It’s a romance that tries to flip gender roles in a way Hollywood comedies did back in the ’80s, built around characters no sentient person could tolerate and a baby nobody seems to want to take care of.

It’s a movie that frowns at a young woman (Esmeralda Pimentel) hellbent on following her career wherever it takes her, and about her husband (Mauricio Ochmann), who barks, more than once, “Why won’t you give me what I want –a baby?”

It’s in Spanish with English subtitles, naturally. As if we couldn’t tell otherwise that this shiny, polished rom-com wouldn’t have been made, north of the border, any time after “Baby Boom” (1987).

Alejandro is a graphic designer for an ad agency with babies on the brain. Cecilia is a rising star at a global architectural engineering firm, with a chance to make partner and take over some day.

Events conspire to put a baby in his care “for a few days.” He’s offered a cute waitress and single mom free babysitting as a way of jumpstarting the maternal instincts in Ceci.

Which she plainly doesn’t have, and repeatedly reminds him that this is the case. So it’s no wonder he doesn’t tell her that he’s had the baby imposed on him, and hides the toddler from her.

She, on the other hand, can’t tell him about her possible dream promotion because they’re constantly fighting because “I want to have a baby and you won’t let me.”

Somehow, the bebe doesn’t seem like their biggest problem.

The gags here include Alejandro hiding the baby at work with the aid of his put-upon colleague (Matteo Giannini), both of them desperate to keep their loveless female boss, nicknamed “Mussolini,” from finding out. There’s a diaper disaster, or course.

“Yuck! Don’t let him eat it!”

Alejandro takes on a responsibility he’s not as prepared for as he thinks. Vintage VW Beetles with no child seat are no place for a toddler.

And Cecilia is already looking for apartments they can transfer to, in Hong Kong, without having that conversation with her husband.

Can this marriage be saved? Can this movie? Even with a squishy “things get serious” third act?

No. Nothing before that turn towards the darker aspects of life is the least bit funny.

Pharmacists “shaming” Rafa (Giannini) when he buys diapers, colleagues making the toddler their mascot, finding out the boss has found out what everybody calls her?

Not funny, not funny at all and give me a break.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, profanity, adult situations

Cast: Mauricio Ochmann, Esmeralda Pimentel, Matteo Giannini

Credits: Directed by Salvador Espinosa, script by Tiaré Scanda, Leonardo Zimbrón A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:51

No, “low information voters” won’t see this. But they should if they want to see what a disaster they have put the country through. 10/13 and 10/20 this rolls out.

The Oscar winner Gibney is pretty unimpeachable as a source of fact-based documentaries. Unlike Trump.

Once and always “Black Dynamite” Michael Jai White deserves better than Hollywood ever gave him. Seeing him in a C-movie, still able to do the stunts but with filmmakers unable to hide the fact that much of this looks like fight rehearsals — walk-throughs — proves that.

This slow-footed, jokey, half-assed remake of Jean Claude Van Damme’s “Sudden Death,” is better than it has any right to be, mostly thanks to White. That’s still not very good, alas.

“Welcome to Sudden Death” jokingly references the Ur Text of all such thrillers, “Die Hard,” but it’s no joke. They all lean on that “one man” with “particular skills” who foils a murderous hostages held for ransom tale.

White is Jesse Freeman, who still has flashbacks to his combat exploits in the Middle East. Now, he’s on the security squad for a Phoenix basketball arena that’s attacked an elite squad of killer Bitcoin fans.

Alpha (Michael Eklund) wants to extort digital cash from the arena owner (Sabryn Rock). One novel twist? They smuggle 3D printers in to MAKE guns to use in the attempt.

Jesse stands in their way. And guess what? It’s take your kids to work day. Nothing like a couple of tweens to elevate the level of discourse.

“I can’t wait.” For what? “To watch my Daddy kick your ass!”

The comic-relief sidekick is goofball Gus (Gary Owen), the guy who keeps cracking that he should’ve called in sick, serving set-up lines for the leading man/hero.

Don’t go there, man. It’s suicide!

“Then I’m committing it saving lives!”

When your plot is over-familiar, the way to compensate for that is by sprinting through the action. Writer-director Dallas Jackson ignores that. This picture lacks urgency, with the fights slow and the bits between the fights even slower.

Even working from formula, White (his wife Gillian White plays a murderous minion of Alpha) delivers decent value in a couple of fights — the ones that don’t look like walk-throughs. I had to stop streaming and rewatch his disarming of one bad guy, he does it so fast.

Otherwise, there’s nothing welcoming about this “Sudden Death.”

MPAA Rating: R (Language|Some Bloody Violence)

Cast: Michael Jai White, Michael Eklund, Sabryn Rock, Gillian White, Gary Owen

Credits: Written and directed by Dallas Jackson, based on a script by Gene Quintano. A Universal Home Video/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:20