Will it be as good as “Watch the Skies” (review here) or more on a “Surfer” level?
Gotta be better than “Juliet & Romeo.” Then again, maybe not.
Some days, one feels the need to catch up with a few titles high maintenance dogs, farms, aged parents etc. kept you from catching on opening weekend.
One “Clown” I hope to get around to. Sometime. IFC never pitched it my way, alas.
If I hadn’t seen it in a cinema packed with children, I’d have never believed “Chicken Run” was a kids’ film.
The conceit, the jaunty Englishness of it all, the very dated references and the homages are all elements only adults could get.
And yet here it is, an Aardman animated marvel that turns 25 this year and becomes what those of us who saw it in 2000 realized in an instant. It’s a classic.
The “Wallace & Gromit” folks looked at Britain’s decades-long obsession with WWII movies, especially POW tales, and sent them up by turning the POWs into chickens and the “escape” into a high-stakes get-away from an egg farm about to transform into a chicken pot pieworks.
It’s ingenious, twee and jolly good fun all around.
Ginger, voiced by Julie Sawalha (the long-suffering daughter on TV’s “AbFab”), is the plucky ringleader, a hen determined to lead a breakout of the concentration camp known as Tweedy’s Egg Farm. She takes her shot with one “plan” after another, conspiring with the Scottish Mac (Lynn Ferguson) to tunnel, climb the fence or trick her way out, leading dizzy Babs (Jane Horrocks), blunt Bunty (Imelda Staunton) and the rest to freedom.
The huffy old RAF veteran rooster Fowler (Benjamin Withrow) cheers them on and insists on “discipline,” “order” and “morale” in the ranks, “What what?”
But every time she fails, Ginger is tossed into the coal bin, “the cooler,” where she bounces a tennis ball off the walls (Steve McQueen style) awaiting her next release. The Tweedys (Miranda Richardson and Tony Haygarth) can’t kill and eat her. She’s too productive as a layer.
But egg farmer Tweedy has his suspicions.
“They’re organizing! I KNOW it!”
Things are dire enough as it is, with any hen who isn’t laying enough destined for a head-lopping. Then the machinery arrives for Mrs. Tweedy to transform a struggling 1950s egg farm into a profitable chicken pot pie factory.
That’s the perfect moment for a rooster, hurtling overhead, to drop into their laps. If he can fly, he can teach them to, or so the reasoning goes. How does Rocky Rhodes (Mel Gibson) manage it? And can he be trusted? He’s a Yank, after all.
“Overpaid, oversexed and over HERE” Fowler huffs, repeating the best British WWII joke describing U.S. troops in the U.K.
Rocky, the “lone Free Ranger,” is hip, cool, a hustler escaped from a circus and all about entertaining the hens as he leads them through pointless flying lessons, calisthenics and the like.
“Flying takes THREE things — hard work, PERSEVERANCE…and hard work!”
They’ll need the help of some POW camp scavengers, packrats Fetcher (Phil Daniels) and Nick (Timothy Spall). Radio, tools, disco lights? Whatever you need, guv’nah.
The glories of the stop-motion animation of Aardman are the sight gags and slapstick tumbles, and attention to hand-animated details — dizzy Poppy (Horrocks) always figures any hen missing (and dead) just went “on holiday.” We always see her knitting with real wool.
Rocky and Ginger have to survive getting caught in the comically complex chicken pot pieworks machinery. Hens in a panic looks exactly the way you’d expect — sans feathers (hard to make out of plasticine).
And then there’s the Britishness of their best films. Here, they rip off “The Great Escape,” give a nod to “Stalag 17” and remember the punchline to “The Colditz Story,” a famous prison escape story that involved wings.
Vintage “Star Trek” Scottish jokes, a morale-boosting dance to “Flip, Flop and Fly” and Mel Gibson riffing on being a roguish flirt and fraud, with a tendency to get punch “drunk” after tumbles both date the film and give it a timeless nostalgia.
It’s more complex than the simple elegance of the “Wallace & Gromit” films, a chattier, more plot centric version of their escape-prone “Shaun the Sheep” comedies.
And for a film buff, the laughs come quickly and often at all the riffs, references and gentle jabs on Britain, Britishness and the singular obsession with “their finest hour,” especially stories about the ingenuity and (pardon) pluck of those trapped in the clutches of sworn enemies who mean to put an end to them.
Long before the requisite 25 years had passed, the ruling was already in on “Chicken Run,” an “instant classic” if ever there was one.
Rating: G
Cast: The voices of Julie Sawalha, Imelda Stanton, Jane Horrocks, Miranda Richardson, Benjamin Withrow, Lynn Ferguson, Timothy Spall, Phil Daniels. Tony Haygarth and Mel Gibson.
Credits: Directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park, scripted by Nick Park, Peter Lord and Karey Kirkpatrick (additional dialogue by Mark Burton and John O’Farrell). An Aardman production, a Dreamworks release on Amazon Prime, other streamers.
Running time: 1:24
The fake trailers for this MGM/Amazon project have flooded the Internet this year.
Nicolas Cage in the Spidey suit, with a fedora and trenchcoat. This 1930s set alt universe Spider features Li Jun Li, Brendan Gleason, Lamorne Morris and Jack Huston.
Eight episodes, 2026 on Amazon Prime.
The germ of a halfway interesting story is lost in a cornucopia of cliches and coincidences in “Bound,” an indie drama about fleeing abuse only to wind up in the supportive arms of a slew of open-hearted New Yorkers.
Sure. You can laugh at that. I did.
Writer-director Isaac Hirotsu Woofter’s debut feature is off the festival circuit and facing the real world, where indulgent, confused “fever dream” storytelling, stereotypical characters and a grungy fantasy version of being homeless in New York isn’t as easily forgiven.
It’s kind of a mess, kids.
Alexandra Fate Sadeghian plays Bella, a haunted, traumatized 20something whose dreams of New York art school have been denied her by her drug-using, drug-dealing stepdad, Gordy (Bryant Carroll).
Her abused, drunk-addicted mother (Pooya Mohsen) is too stoned or passive to escape. Finding her hidden acceptance letter to the New York City Art Academy is a final straw for Bella, who packs up her eyeliner and pet chipmunk, shoots her way to freedom and escapes to New York.
She has some crystal meth, which helps her find a “tribe,” if only for as long as that lasts. Impulsive, desperate Bella finds herself broke, homeless, with nothing but her wits to sneak her into places to squat, a job and sustenance.
That “acceptance letter” is pretty much forgotten, BTW. Any metal sculpting she does will be for pleasure or necessity.
Luckily for Bella, traumatized vet Owais (Ramin Karimloo) takes her on as a barrista at his coffee shop. Barmaid/bar manager Marta (Jessica Pimentel) lets her stay, even adopting her squirrel Bandit as a “mascot.”
And clothing clerk and aspiring designer Standrick (Jaye Alexander) is here to look the other way as she shoplifts, and give her the cliched gay BFF advice that the movies have trotted out since the Edward Everett Horton ’30s.
“You need to food. You need sleep. You NEED a new perspective. And you need to stop acting like a b-itch!”
The “plot,” such as it is, reguires chasm-spanning coincidences in order to bring worlds and characters into conflict with one another. Whatever rural Meth Belt America hamlet Bella flees, it’s got to be close enough to New York for Gordy to make regular treks there.
That bar Marta runs? Gordy’s an owner, or at least the face of ownership for shadowy Bigger Fish in the Drug Trade. What’re the odds, right?
The nuts and bolts of surviving homelessness in New York are skimmed over without much regard for reality. And Bella’s back story is more interesting than her present circumstances, despite the dire straits she finds herself in when she resolves to “rescue” her mother from the slob she shot to escape.
The one joke here might be dressing the sexually abusive Gordy in a cap that reads “I (Heart) STDs.”
The dialogue, save for the alternately fiesty and florid declarations of Standrick, is bland. The early scenes work better as we’re forced to piece together the story without much in the way of any dialogue at all.
The players aren’t bad, but this script is thinly developed and kind of slapped together in the editing, which doesn’t help the “coherence” thing.
That’s why “Bound” needs those coincidences and splashes of melodrama. Not that they help all that much.
Rating: unrated, violence, substance abuse, profanity
Cast: Alexandra Faye Sadeghian, Ramin Karimloo, Jessica Pimentel, Pooya Mohsen, Jaye Alexander and Bryant Carroll.
Credits: Scripted and directed by
Isaac Hirotsu Woofter. A Freestyle release.
Running time: 1:41
A “strictly family time” vacation with the kids, wife (Connie Nielsen) and Christopher Lloyd along for the ride?
Sharon Stone and Tom Hanks’ kid as villains? Beating your way through a tsumani of rural America carnies?
Mark me “PRESENT.”
Michael Ironside, John Ortiz and Colin Salmon are here to lend support.
August 15.
“Nonnas” is a heaping helping of cinematic Italian-American comfort food, a family rom-com where the romance is in the food and the comedy is in the scrappy little old ladies who prepare it.
Director Stephen Chbosky (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”) serves up Vince Vaughn at his most sentimental in a Staten Island story of an eatery opened with the idea of keeping the memories of dead loved ones alive through the dishes they brought over from the Old Country.
The “Nonnas” (grannies) of the title are played by the likes of Lorraine Bracco (“Goodfellas”), Talia Shire (“The Godfather,” “Rocky”), Oscar winner Susan Sarandon and Brenda Vaccaro, who dates back to “Midnight Cowboy.” As the cooks recruited by Joe Scaravella (Vaughn) to make the dishes at Enoteca Maria, a restaurant he opens with the inheritance from his beloved mother, this quartet shows us how old school “chemistry” was supposed to work in “80 for Brady,” “The Book Club” and other comedies about groups of ladies of a certain age.
They set the tone for a movie that, like their performances, doesn’t try too hard. “Nonnas” may be predicable and sentimental right up to the edge of schmaltzy. But it never crosses that line because the fractious foursome at the heart of it won’t allow it.
Scenes from the ’70s establish childhood Joe’s attachment to his mother and grandmother, the sort of boy who’d rather hang in the kitchen and watch the magic in action at big family gatherings.
Joe may have grown up to work as a bus mechanic for New York’s MTA, sentenced to doting-son singlehood for reasons we can speculate about. But his heart and his palate belonged to mama. When she dies, he takes the words of his lifelong bestie Bruno (Joe Manganiello) Bruno’s wife Stella (Drea de Matteo) to heart.
“Find something that makes you really happy, that honors her.”
A restaurant was NOT what contractor Bruno had in mind. But Joe spies an abandoned one on Staten Island, home to a colorful Italian street market. And he remembers what his own Nonna said.
“One does not grow old at the table.”
He dives in, out of his depth, with no sane business plan. He recruits nonnas to be cooks by posting an ad “in the List of Craig” (this story has an early 2000s setting). His aunt in assisted living, Roberta (Bracco) will be his fiery Sicilian anchor-cook. Antonella (Vaccaro), the elderly neighbor of Joe’s onetime prom date (Linda Cardellini) is the Bolognese balance to Roberta’s fire. And Teresa (Shire), former cook at a convent, is here to keep the peace.
Who’s on desserts? That would be Mom’s hairdresser/bestie, Gia (Sarandon), who makes cannoli to die for.
The Italian dishes served here are generally more obscure than your standard Italian-American restaurant fare. Risotto Aranchini, zepolle, parmigiano reggiono and capuzzelle are cooked, burnt and debated by the cooks and the restaurateur, who is moved to the edge of tears by the many variations of “gravy” (red sauce) these aged spitfires serve up.
“Don’t cry in front of the teamsters,” is pal Bruno’s advice, as the grand opening of Enoteca Maria (Maria’s Wine Bar) approaches, with a minefield of obstacles — inspections, etc. — facing it.
One of the most charming things about Chbosky’s direction and Liz Maccie’s script is the “Big Night” notion that the story doesn’t need for the restaurant to open and become a wish-fulfillment fantasy smash for “Nonnas” to work. The stumbling, good-hearted attempt, the collision of personalities and the many fish-out-of-water obstacles point to bankruptcy being just as entertaining as a Michelin star finale.
Keep an eye out for the most conspicuous extra in the dining scenes, the older guy with the long, white and unruly hair. That’s Jody Scaravella, whose story inspired the film.
As for other inspirations, look for a co-director and co-star of the classic New York Italian eatery period piece “Big Night” in a chewy cameo.
There’s a slice of many a “food means family” dramedy tucked into this script, from “Big Night” to “The Feast of the Seven Fishes” to “Chef” (starring Vaughn’s old running mate, Jon Favreau) on down through the many courses the Hallmark Channel has served up in the genre.
But the “Nonnas” are the stars and the hook that makes this one work.
Vaughn, dialing down the wise-cracking hipster that became his brand, makes a terrific reactor — to the four “nonnas,” to Mangeniello’s Bruno and Bruno’s “Sopranos” alumna wife — taking every body blow to his character’s dream personally.
Vince Vaughn goes sentimental and makes it all go down easily. Go figure.
Rating: PG
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Lorraine Bracco, Brenda Vaccaro, Talia Shire, Drea de Matteo, Linda Cardellini, Michael Rispoli, Joe Manganiello and Susan Sarandon.
Credits: Directed by Stephen Chbosky, scripted by Liz Maccie. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:54.
“The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Rome” star, the ostensible love interest for this June 27 release, sets out the stakes and the “team sport” nature of Formula One racing.
You’ve got a plot that was clever enough to land veteran character actress Veronica Cartwright (“Sideways,” “Alien,” “The Birds”).
Shooting and editing your film, you can’t wait to get to the third act where you can “explain” its cleverness to death.
And then you kind of give away the game by titling your picture “The Ruse,” implying that things are not at all what they seem. Clever.
Writer, director, producer and editor Steven Mena’s latest is a tepid, sleepwalking tale of a home health care nurse (Madelyn Dundon) stuck in a not-that-spooky lakeside house with a haughty, demented and ill-tempered retired orchestra conductor (Cartwright) who is sure her late husband Albert “visits” her.
Was Albert behind the previous nurse’s (Kayleigh Ruller) disappearance? What we’ve seen in the opening scene suggests as much.
But even though Nurse Tracy vanished without quitting or even saying goodbye, Nurse Dale needs the “second chance” this ordeal-of-a-job promises. She’s ever so eager to get back to work after something unfortunate happened on her last assignment.
Her controlling live-in boyfriend (Drew Moerlein) disapproves. She’s ogled by the delivery guy (T.C. Carter) who tries a tad too hard every time he shows up with food or whatever at the remote home in rural Maine. Then there’s this single-dad neighbor, Tom (Michael Steger), who shows up at the darnedest times — in the middle of a blackout thunder storm, for instance — to “just see if you needed help.”
His little girl (Nicola Jeanette Silber) is the only blunt, cards-on-the-table character in this world.
“I give you three days, tops,” she chirps. The place is “haunted,” she insists. She’s seen the “ghost.” And when she leaves, she doesn’t tell Dale “Good bye.”
“Nice knowing you” is the best line in the script.
Cartwright is in fine form as an invalid who boasts of her full life, insults Dale’s underachieving (by comparison) 28 years and has been labeled “OCD” by an earlier nurse, in addition to her respiratory and dementia problems.
But she’s not scary by herself. And this movie slow walks its away through no real jolts at all before backing into a third act built around a rural Maine cop (Michael Bakkensen) who is a regular Sherlock Holmes at leaping to the wrong conclusion, leaping again and tumbling into some solution that he insists the police are entirely too clever to “miss.”
Writer/director Mena (“Bereavement,” “Brutal Massacre: A Comedy”) has made half a dozen films now, and a few people might actually see this one, as it stars Ms. Cartwright.
The production values are good even if the performances surrounding Cartwright are a tad tentative, low-heat and low-energy. And as he edited this, the funereal pacing is on him, too.
Still, if your thriller’s quick enough and cryptic enough, viewers won’t notice it’s not remotely as clever as you thought it was. But when you title your ghost story “The Ruse,” you’ve already given away that.
Rating: R, violence
Cast: Veronica Cartwright, Madelyn Dundon, Michael Steger, Drew Moerlein, Kayleigh Ruller and T.C. Carter
Credits: Scripted and directed by Stevan Mena. A Seismic release.
Running time: 1:40
This Cannes competitor is a 1940s period piece with a heavy dose of magical realism in the plot.
Aswan Reid has the title role, with Deborah Mailman in the supporting cast.
Tiny distributor Vertical has this, so we’ll all have to hunt to find it when it hits theaters. “Soon?”
A tale of kinky Southwest Christianity and an “accident” that wasn’t. Along with other violence.
Qualley the high-heeled detective in a ’72 Chevell convertible, Evans a pastor who with a taste for dangerous sex and Plaza the guardian of the evidence locker.
Ethan Coen directs and co-wrote it. No Joel Coen to be found.
August 22, this hits theaters.
Movie Nation 