AMC Cinemas, America’s second largest theater chain, has filed to sell more stock shares to raise money in the face of the Covid Collapse of movie going. The stock price is running further as a result
Deceitful red state governors like the one here in Florida may be pushing the narrative that the pandemic is over, nine months in. But moviegoers aren’t buying it and film distributors are pulling product accordingly. I’ve been to a few movies in the past month and been almost all by myself in the multiplex each time.
It’s a damned death spiral for cinema thanks to incompetent and malevolent contagion mismanagement and the gullible who keep listening to the murderous toddler in charge. So sure, thanks for that.
“Beastie Boys Story” is a TED Talk with swearing, tales of (faux) debauchery from a couple of 50somethings remembering making music that started as a joke and morphed into something with staying power.
Spike Jonze directed it and it was Emmy nominated, so there’s a little more to it than that. But the format is totally TED Talk, and it works…about as well as your average TED Talk.
The scripted-rehearsed gags, the polished (with seemingly-planned “technical difficulties”) anecdotes, scanning the all-too-familiar pop-star-career arc are all packed into the format of the last of a live series of New York stage shows in which the two surviving members of the trio — Michael Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) — remember the good times.
Adam Yauch, the third member, died of cancer in 2012, and the guys pay affectionate tribute to him every where they can and lots of archival interview footage with him is cut into the show.
In between jokes. In between ancient TV appearances, and in between endless photo montages of these “party bro” punks-turned-rappers. In between jokey chapter headings.
“Chapter 3: The Record that Changed Everything. “Chapter 8: The Record that Changed Everything.”
The pre-history and early years are the fun parts of any such story, and the most informative, especially here. Meeting as early teens, forming a punk combo with friends who included John Berry (who bailed) and drummer Schellenbach (kicked out when they became hyping butch rappers).
As Horovitz admits, in the film’s single-sentence mea culpa — “How f—–d up is that?”
All is quickly forgiven by the King Theater audience’s nostalgic 50something fanbase, so no worries, right?
What was most fascinating to me, who casually let the Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence (“MCA” Yauch’s acronym for BEASTIE) sort of pass by as MTV/”Soul Train”/”American Bandstand” background noise, was all the recollections of their joint rise to fame with future super producer Rick Rubin, who became “our weird cool older brother” in college when they were still in their mid-teens and none of them were famous.
Old TV footage of Rubin hyping his “creation” is hilarious, and flies in the face of the inscrutable bearded guru he became.
Their Russell Simmons/Rick Def Jam years are amusingly recalled, complete with Russell impersonations, the guys marveling at their luck, the off-the-cuff creative process in those earliest years, opening for Madonna (a mistake), and then their idols Run-DMC made them.
Anarchic music videos, taking on the guise of rude jerks during their ’80s heyday, becoming the “ass—–s” they felt they were mocking in songs like “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)” is sober and middle-age reflective.
The bite of Def Jam’s “breach of contract” accusations, and Simmons admitting to them that he “just needed three white rappers so that he could get (Def Jam) on MTV” is allowed to sting, but not smother the feel-good/feel-nostalgic/sentimental-over-Yauch vibe.
Yeah, they went kind of broke, for a while. And then they had a comeback.
But “Story” plays out a bit like the band itself. It peaks early, hits its giddy stride during the blur of sudden fame, notorious personal appearances and all-for-a-goof excesses, and then fizzles out utterly.
Proving themselves “legitimate” in later years is vindicating, but dramatically dull.
And a sometimes charming “victory lap” Brooklyn theater run doesn’t erase the faint odor of privilege and cultural appropriation that always hung over them — punk-rap mashup or not.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, profanity
Cast: Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz and the late Adam Yauch
Credits: Directed by Spike Jonze, script by Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond. An Apple TV+ release.
The unemotive animation makes the faces in the “babies with superpowers” comedy “Fe@rless” look like CGI botox. And the disinterested “Has the check cleared?” voice acting seems to match in this cartoon quicky made for Netflix.
It’s an incredibly dull “Incredibles” variation with British origins and a video game framework that adds little, and doesn’t distract from the “Southpark” construction-paper cut out (digitally mimicked) backgrounds or “story.”
A “gamer” with the online moniker “Fe@rless” is master of the online contest “Planet Master.” Reid (voiced by Miles Robbins, who sounds bored) manipulates the hero Captain Lightspeed (Jadakiss, who sounds like Danny DeVito taking his first voice-acting job) upward, level after level.
Oddly, Captain Lightspeed has to contend with dropping his toddler off at deep space day care in one game level. Entry to the next level feeds Fe@rless Reid a warning.
“Do you accept the consequences?”
Sure. Ok. But just as science project partner Melanie (Yara Shahidi) shows up, the game’s villain Arcannis (Miguel no-last-name, bland) kidnaps three superpowered babies, they escape through a wormhole and show up at Reid’s house.
Worlds collide, aliens invade and super-strong baby mayhem ensues, with the military getting involved in the person of General Blazerhatch (Gabrielle Union, disguising her voice big time) on the case.
“Send those diapers to the CDC!”
Teen search histories, baby drivers, toddler sing-alongs and the mellow sounds of Lionel Ritchie are tossed our way in search of laughs.
The action isn’t particularly noisy or attention-grabbing.
Still, the disinterested voice actors won’t be a bother to the teeny-tiny target audience for this pablum. They need a nap, anyway.
Robbins’ moment of “realization” speech line-reading in monotone would put anybody to sleep.
“The whole Earth is doomed, and it’s my fault.”
MPAA Rating: TV-Y7, “ripe” diaper jokes
Cast: Miles Robbins, Yara Shahidi, Jadakiss, Gabrielle Union and Susan Sarandon.
Credits: Written and directed by Cory Edwards. A Netflix release.
Another vacation gone-wrong tale, with murderous and supernatural elements. Luke Hemsworth, older brother of Chris and Liam, co-stars with Maggie Q as the husband who might have murdered her (his wife) the night before.
“Saws” sequel director Darren Lynn Bousman directed this Oct. 2 release.
My stars and garters, I cannot remember a generally thoughtful science fiction film going completely go off the rails in its finale the way “LX 2048” does.
What begins as a gloomy commentary on a world dialed-in and “tuning out” reality, a reality in which atmospheric damage and sunspots have rendered going outside in daylight toxic and the cost of people living “virtually” in human emotional terms, ends in a long, loopy scene that can only be described as clone camp.
And even that’s missing the one thing that camp cannot live without. It’s not funny.
James D’Arcy (“Dunkirk”) stars as Adam Bird, a highly-strung VR firm vendor/planner/consultant who disconnects from the goggles everybody lives behind to visit his doctors in “daylight hours” and actually show up at staff meetings in the company conference room.
No one else bothers to come. They’re all there virtually. So all his shouting is via VR goggles. All his dire warnings that their pricey specialty business, providing the gear that gives people access to “The Realm,” and its “real buddies (friends)” and avatar lovers is about to become obsolete because “chip” is coming, promising everybody implanted instant access and thus instant escape, and providing that service much cheaper.
Adam is raging against the machine, and against public compliance. But his doctor (Gina McKee) has bad news. His heart’s giving out. This insurance policy “Premium 3” promises that he’ll be replaced by a clone, who’ll continue supporting his estranged wife (Anna Brewster) and three kids. But what’s that do for Adam?
He’ll track down this genius scientist (Delroy Lindo) who might be able to give him some answers. Donald Stein shows up with a pistol, crazy eyes and a dark vision of the world they’re in and how its promise may have missed a few things — “instinct,” “compassion,” a soul, etc.
As Adam’s virtual lover Mia (Gabrielle Cassi) puts it, her “five senses” test out fine. She just can’t “feel.”
Writer-director Guy Moshe (“Bunraku”) sets all this up well enough. Sure, the scientist introduction is comically abrupt, but Lindo’s Donald Stein is convincing at getting across the “existential dread” of our current (future) times, all while being Delroy Lindo cool.
Wait, you can smoke? How? (Must’ve been banned.).
“I’ve got a guy who’s got a guy.”
D’Arcy slings an American accent and does quite a bit of shouting here. You’d think the guy was dying, running out of time, too impatient to worry about hurting the feelings of clone-doctors.
“I just can’t relate you people…your kind.”
Brewster, of TV’s “Versailles,” gives a performance of eccentric, theatrically metallic line-readings — not just an angry ex-wife, but one down the digital rabbit hole of “The Realm” so deep that she sounds like a clone.
The picture’s got a vivid vision of the future — vivid on a budget. Adam’s defiance includes driving his Mercedes with the top down — in his haz-mat suit. Everybody else gets around via elevated pneumatic tube-trains. When they bother to go out at all.
This “virtual” instead of “real” world, with its toxic environment and compliant, drugged and plugged-in populace, feels insanely topical at times.
But damned if “LX 2048” doesn’t go completely crackers at the end, with D’Arcy there as both eager participant and appalled eyewitness.
MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, some nudity, sex, profanity, alcohol, smoking
Cast: James D’Arcy, Anna Brewster, Gina McKee, Juliet Aubrey, Gabrielle Cassi and Delroy Lindo
Credits: Written and directed by Guy Moshe. A Quiver release.
You can tell, almost on sight, that they’re brother and sister — and couldn’t be anything but that.
Sarah (Katherine Fogler) is impatient and getting more so, waiting at this chilly train station in the middle of nowhere, in the gathering gloom.
Her impatience is for brother Aaron (Douglas Nyback) to DO something — ask for directions, transport, to ask if that ancient Russian car with the stout woman sitting in it is a taxi. “Use your POLISH,” Sarah kvetches, betraying a lifetime of practice. As if her brother’s quick “study” of the language will get them anywhere. As if the timid Aaron will actually go and ask ANYbody for help.
Here they are, a couple of not-that-tight siblings, Canadian Jews in “The Old Country” on a fool’s errand for their “bubbeh” (grandmother).
“The Dancing Dogs of Dombrova” is a feather-weight “film festival” comedy layered with menace but buoyed by the built-in whimsy of that most reliable of comic formulas.
Not knowing the land or the language, blithely ignoring Poland’s infamous reputation for Anti-semitism, especially during the Holocaust, they are two Canadian Gefilte fish out of water, strangers in a strange land.
The “menace” here begins with that cabbie (Doroftei Anis), a silent, stoic type who putters along in her car and it’s overwhelming odor of gas (design flaw), stopping for a wedding party, never speaking as they call out directions and ask where they’re going.
“What’s the Polish number for ‘911?'”
Grandma’s old address is hard to pinpoint, and the locals seem sketchy, if not downright hostile.
They’re delivered to “the only (hostel) in town,” where pregnant Karolina (an earthy and radiant Silva Helena Schmidt) interrupts her arguments with a neighbor who she says fathered her child to take them in.
“You are being some Canadians?”
Tuck them into rooms, serve them sausage and potatoes — “Probably not even kosher.” “Who’s kosher?” The next day, here’s a map. Yes, there are many “Birch Streets.” Try the town hall, and good luck!
Director Zack Bernbaum (“And Now for a Word from Our Sponsor”) and screenwriter Michael Whatling immerse our two travelers in a world where even the English speakers are reluctant to reveal that fact right away. Feigning a communication barrier is easier.
The cabbie’s teen son (Stefani Vizireanu) deadpans his solution to every obstinate bureaucrat, property owner or priest who might help them find their bubbeh’s old house, but won’t.
“I will say he (or she) touched me ‘down there.'” Immovable objects are only moved by threats in historically backward places like Dombrova.
The siblings bicker — Sarah’s guileless optimism smashing up against Aaron’s “get on with it” pessimism. Their secrets explain their relationship, just as the town’s secrets get in the way of their quest.
There’s a light dose of “Everything is Illuminated” in “Dancing Dogs,” the North American Jewish outsiders returning to a place their family was chased out of and finding screwballs, petty corruption and lethargy, but also more charm than they have any reason to expect, considering. Simple houses, many of them hovels, are all the place ever could boast of — and an ancient synagogue and seen-it-all rabbi, and an equally ancient church where the priest (Adrian Matioc) isn’t exactly Mr. Popularity.
Not much happens here, even when “the mob” emerges and a firearm comes out. The moral of the story is obvious but sweet. And eventually, we get a dose of why this fish-out-of-water tale is thus-titled.
These “Dancing Dogs” get by on recognizable characters and stereotypes that even those stereotyped embrace when it suits their purposes, especially the “Rocky & Bullwinkle” accents.
“Always ending what starting” is a motto even Boris and Natasha would endorse.
MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity, alcohol, sexual situations
Cast:Katherine Fogler, Douglas Nyback, Doroftei Anis, Silva Helena Schmidt, Stefan Vizireanu, Adrian Matioc
Credits: Directed by Zack Bernbaum, script by Michael Whatling. A Film Movement+ release.
“GIMS: On the Record” is a quick-study immersion in the French pop hero of the moment, Maitre Gims, a singer-rapper born in the Congo, raised in Paris, with an “operatic” voice that separates him from his contemporaries at home and abroad.
Famous for his omni-present sunglasses, for hits such as “Caméléon” and “Brisé” and for selling lots of records and dominating French radio in recent years, “On the Record” promises a peek behind the glasses, or at least a superficial gloss on his carefully constructed public persona.
This documentary tracks GIMS (how he’s billed sometimes) from France’s big music NRJ awards show of 2017 to a 2018 career-pinnacle concert at the vast Stade de France, outside of Paris.
We see him cope with fans, work on songs, show off his manga (he likes to dabble in comics), sing in the studio and in concert, chill at home in Marrakech (where he now lives) and travel by private jet in this “business sprinkled with fantasy” life “in a cage” that he leads.
Friends and colleagues, like his singing protege and younger brother Dadju, talk of the “two Gims,” the one everybody sees and the ones only his family gets to see — the one who isn’t in sunglasses all the time.
“Will we get to see his eyes?” Gims jokes (in French with English subtitles) to the camera, giving his documentary a little mystery.
He started out as a rapper, and realized “he had a legitimate voice,” one management team intimate explains. That gave him “an advantage over everybody else” in French pop and rap, certainly. As the son of a fairly famous Congolese singer Djanana Djuna, a vocalist in Papa Wemba’s band and a favorite of the late Congolese dictator Mobutu, of course he had voice.
Dad, shown in old clips and interviewed fresh here, says that he fell afoul of the Mobutu regime and that’s why they moved. When the family split up, as a boy Gandhi Bilel Djuna (his birth name) was homeless, a squatter with his siblings, for a time.
About that birth name, Gims jokes, “Dad was a (Gandhi) fan,” and “The Congolese are the best with names!”
The guy comes off as utterly charming and disarming, perhaps the secret to his great success. The French, one record exec mentions, rarely take to “arrogant” wealth-flaunting pop stars, which holds back many rappers. The “masculine aggression” so associated with rap here and there isn’t an issue with Gims.
But as Gims warms up backstage with a little art song (opera), as we see him in a hoodie with the English slogan, “I am NOT a Rapper” emblazoned on it, we realize we’re not dealing with some mere mortal here.
“Just because you’re a rapper doesn’t mean you can’t sing,” says no less than Sting, the English rock star who never found a “new” singer from an exotic culture that he wouldn’t want to duet with. (He did.) “Just because you’re a singer, doesn’t mean you can’t rap.”
“On the Record” treats us to Gims’ peak — a joyous return to Congo (he moved away aged two), and the Stade de France show, fussed over by his mate and image consultant and fellow sunglasses fan, Demden every step of the way.
We hear him speak of his quick embrace of French art, culture and values as a child, plan an awards show appearance that will be “the second most expensive (single song) performance (after Rihanna),” and show a little competitive side about his brother doing well in the awards department, “maybe someday surpassing me.”
And then he leads Demden down a boulevard in Cannes, acting as “security” for his “Beyonce,” barking “NOT allowed” at the parade of paparazzi that accompany them, snapping away, goofing on all this fame nonsense even as he dutifully stops for plenty of selfies with fans along the way.
“Wonder if there are American singers and rappers watching this?” you think. “Are they worried about him learning English? Maybe they should be.”
MPAA Rating: TV-MA
Cast: Gims, Djuba, Sting, Vitaa, others
Credits: Directed by Florent Bodin. A Netflix release.
My favorite line, in all of classic adventure cinema, comes early in the 1950 version of “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Most other screen adaptations of the Edmond Rostand 19th century play leave it out, but maybe that’s because no one else could pull it off with the panache of the great José Ferrer back in 1950.
Cyrano (Ferrer) has already busted up a play which wasn’t up to his liking, fought a vigorous duel with a noble swell who takes umbrage in the notion that “Everybody’s a critic” and takes his best shot at making fun of de Bergerac’s nose.
And he’s been warned to help a political gadfly/poet and baker friend (Arthur Blake) about to be beset by “a hundred” goons hired by the royal authorities. Cyrano escorts the man home, and damned if the goons don’t set upon them at the front entrance to the bakery.
“I have been ROBBED,” Cyrano fumes, counting the armed brigands surrounding them. “There are no HUNDRED here.”
This movie is just gorgeous to look at — all deep shadows and brightly-lit swordfights. Cinematographer Franz Planer (“Roman Holiday,” “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”) ensured that if you’re ever channel surfing and stumble across it, as I often do, there’s no mistaking it for any other musketeer-era period piece of its day.
Dmitri Tiomkin serves up a romantic and swashbuckling score.
The swordfights (there is some doubling) are first rate, among the best of the era.
The story, the “ugly” romantic swordsman helping a lesser wit Christian (William Prince) properly woo Cyrano’s lovely cousin Roxanne (Mala Powers) hits its well-worn marks.
But it’s the rapier-sharp wit (sorry) that the play and film are famous for, and Ferrer’s peerless performance of those snobby sneers that make this classic timeless.
“I carry my adornments only on my soul, decked with deeds instead of ribbons. Manful in my good name, and crowned with the white plume of freedom.”
“Sir, I will not allow you to insult me in this manner.” “Really? In what manner would you prefer?”
“Watching other people making friends, everywhere, as a dog makes friends. I mark the manner of these canine courtesies and think, here comes, thank Heaven, another enemy!”
It all adds up to a classic, like “Robin Hood” is as notable for its look and fun as it is its action, one like “The Big Sleep,” whose real pleasures are in just wonderful lines wonderfully played.
And it’s so quick and quotable than when it slows down, shortly after the coached courtship begins, it’s like too much air has been let out of the balloon.
Cast: José Ferrer, Mala Powers, William Prince
Credits: Directed by Michael Gordon, script by Carl Foreman, based on the Brian Hooker translation/adaptation of the Edmond Rostand play.
“Sno Babies” is a grim, unblinking look at the horrors of drug abuse, a “Scared Straight” for teens facing that first oxy tablet, that first dabble with the needle and the spoon.
It’s as heavy-handed as a faith-based sermon on the subject, with a Catholic setting, teen pregnancy and heroin tearing through a family. The affluent parents are too inattentive to see the signs, a Princeton-bound daughter lured into a secret life and addiction by a boy, and then a best-friend who got there before her.
The graphic depictions of “cooking,” of needles going in between infected toes, of date rape, an unwanted pregnancy and the many f-bombs in the dialogue seem to rule out Christian bookstore sales of this title.
We meet Kristen (Katie Kelly) in a lurid extreme close-up, the night her boyfriend offers her that first pill.
“What’s that?” “It’s oxy.” “What’s it do?” “Makes all your worries and problems disappear…”
Fifteen months later, Kristen is getting tutoring from Valerie (Meryl Jones Williams) to help her bump her SAT scores. But she’s spending a lot more time with Hannah (Paola Andino), who has pushed her into that transition from pills to needles.
It makes no difference that upper middle class suburban Catholic schoolgirls have “worries and problems” most of us would love to swap for our own. This is a partying crowd. Everybody’s buzzing. Some are throwing up.
When you’re that young, shooting up on a bed in the middle of a party must seem like no big thing.
We see the date rape coming long before Kristen does. She’s that far gone. And before long, she’s pregnant. Rather than share her shame with her distracted realtor-mom (Shannon Wilson), she lays all this on her sympathetic but reluctant tutor.
In a parallel story, Anna (Jane Stiles) and Matt (Michael Lombardi) are desperate to get pregnant. But he’s saddled with the nature preserve his dad passed down to him and his “Let’s SELL this” sister. The place is “hemorrhaging money,” and he can’t even prevent a coyote from killing all the other wildlife therein.
Director Bridget Smith and screenwriter Michael Walsh give us scattered bits of detail — Kristen’s adoring little sister, who gets nightmares and sleeps with her, Matt’s struggles with his conscience about selling the preserve, Anna’s laser-focus on having a baby, Kirsten and Hannah passing drug baggies off in line for communion at church.
There’s not a lot of subtlety in the ways they hammer these disparate stories elements into a single plot. When even a drug dealer preaches at pregnant Kristen, “subtlety” isn’t what you’re going for.
The date rape is somewhat graphic, the drug purchases and shooting-up scenes, even a police strip search, are pretty much step-by-step explainer scenes to show, in detail, the mental and physical degradation you’re buying into when you take up drugs.
That message has value. The acting’s good, too.
But the implausible twists in their plot dull the impact of their “Here’s what heroin will do to you” sermon. The sexuality is played up in ways that feel exploitative. The shifts in scene, characters and tone are abrupt and contrived.
I see that Smith and Walsh and some of their rep company have a Christmas movie in the works, which suggests that maybe they are working the faith-based side of the film business. If so, “Sno Babies” is the roughest entry in that genre that I’ve seen in years.
As somebody who’s long complained that faith-based dramas need a firmer footing in the real world, and maybe a little edge, it pains me to complain that “Sno Babies” takes such things entirely too far.
MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic drug abuse, rape, profanity
Cast: Katie Kelly, Paola Andino, Michael Lombardi, Shannon Wilson and Meryl Jones Williams.
Credits: Directed by Bridget Smith, script by Michael Walsh. A Better Noise release.
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