Movie Nation

Damned considerate of Netflix to trot out this German “X-Men” knockoff just as the latest and perhaps last for a good long while Marvel “X-Men,” “New Mutants” is in theaters.

And damned sporting of Netflix not to stream “Freaks: You’re One of Us” LAST week, killing any reason for audiences to go to a quarantined cinema to be reminded of how played out that franchise and this concept — that there are “superhumans” among us, and they have to hide because we’re so afraid of them we’ll HUNT them — really is.

“Freaks” is practically a commentary on the whole sci-fi superhero genre. But as “German” and “comedy” are still tricky to park in the same sentence, it’s not the send-up of the caped comic-book characters it could have been. Without that, it’s entirely too cut-and-dried to add anything new to the “mutants among us” genre or the conversation.

Wendy (Cornelia Gröschel) was spotted as “special” as a child. We meet her, huddled in a corner of a school she’s just emptied and done major structural damage to, hiding out listening to Roxette on her portable CD player.

As an adult, Wendy is a working-class wife struggling to get by. She’s a cook at the service station diner (Chop Heaven Patio?), desperate for a promotion and hike in pay. Because she and security guard husband Lars (Frederic Linkemann) have a house they’re about to lose and a tweenage son to take care of.

Wendy is dismissed by her boss and ill-mannered customers, harassed by skinheads on her nightly walk home, and medicated at bedtime — four “little blue pills.” All that starts to change when a homeless guy (Wotan Wilke Möhring) tells her (in German, with English subtitles) “You’re one of us!”

Marek (Möhring) has answers that her lifelong shrink, Dr. Stern (Nina Kunzendorf) does not. 

Throw those pills away, he pleads. “See who you really are.”

Wendy does, and we know without her saying, “There’s going to be some CHANGES around here” and every punk who crosses her or her bullied kid is about to get schooled.

And damned if a rich guy she works with, Elmar (Tim Oliver Schultz) isn’t “one of us,” too. Wendy has no idea what to do with her new strength, other than settling scores and getting some quick cash. Elmar’s into comic books. He’s in the mood for a caped costume. He’s hunting for a name.

“Ich bin ELECTRO MAN,” he says, which is sillier in German than it is in English, if that’s possible.

Gröschel, who got her start playing “Heidi” because of course she did, gives a nice working-class pluck to Wendy and takes a shot at giving her an internalized moral struggle over what she does with this “power.” That’s barely in the script, though.

Screenwriter Marc O. Seng (of Netflix’s “Dark”) has nothing new to say here, nor do his characters. The “What do we do with this power” question doesn’t automatically lead to “origin story” vigilantism. The villain is a tad too obvious, and the story arc borders on trite.

I like the way director Felix Binder keeps some of the Feats of Strength off camera, minimizing the on-camera violence.

But after “Chronicle,” after ALL these “X-Men” movies, every comic book superhero origin story put on film, anything less than a reinvention of the genre, or ridiculing of the whole film fad is just treading water.

Which is all “Freaks” ever does. 

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Cornelia Gröschel, Tim Oliver Schultz, Frederic Linkemann, Wotan Wilke Möhring and Nina Kunzendorf.

Credits: Directed by Felix Binder, script by Marc O. Seng. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

Yes, I pointed out in my review that actors trying to make themselves heard through masks was a “thing” with Christopher Nolan. Practically a fetish.

Yes, there are plenty of other places we can’t hear what the characters are saying to each other. Best reason to wait and watch it at home, really the only reason, is closed captioning. It’s a big movie, needing a big screen. But don’t expect to make out every line. Nolan must be embarassed by his way with dialogue.

Here’s Variety reporting that “Tenet” audiences are complaining “that the dialogue is inaudible. Is Christopher Nolan making an artistic choice or is it a mistake?” https://t.co/vvRFzNbyc1 https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1301155332660563968?s=20

Andrea Riseborough stars in this tale of cooperate assassin’s using brain imprint tech to convert associates of their targets into proxy killers. October.

The latest leggy bombshell female assassin is a redhead and hits theaters and streaming Sept. 25.

The way various TV chat shows have coped with quarantine during the pandemic has been fun to watch play out, with Seth Myers and Samantha Bee thriving, Bill Maher and John Oliver barely missing the live audience and the rest basically lost in the ether, making little or no impression for weeks and months at a time.

So I was intrigued at the Disney/Jim Henson Co. pitch “Earth to Ned.” It’s a special effects and puppet-centered chat show, with a single guest each week, lots of produced bits, and is thus somewhat more scripted than spontaneous.

Unlike say, “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast” or “Mystery Science Theater 3000” or even “The Muppet Show” or “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (puppet-happy),” it’s aimed at kids. There’s no edge, no innuendo, just very adult guests and the occasional zinger — some off-the-cuff — that will fly over the heads of the intended audience.

Chat shows in general always take a while to hit their groove, and one where there’s a lot of technology is sure to have its human-connection hiccups.

But one truism that comes to mind watching “Animaniacs” voice actor Paul Rugg, as the titular reptilian host “Ned,” and his anteaterish alien sidekick Cornelius (Michael Oosterum) interact and hunt for laughs, is that networks put in ALL that time trying to line up the perfect host for a reason.

And they cast stand-up comics, female or male, black or white, Asian or Scottish, because being quick-on-one’s feet is JOB ONE, even when you’re sitting at a desk with a four-armed alien puppet as your avatar.

There are moments when Rugg is interacting with horror director Eli Roth, or “Get Out” funnyman Lil Rel Howery, or Gillian Jacobs or Andy Richter,  Rachel Bloom, where something funny comes out. Talking about music with Bloom, Ned, from a species that typically invades and takes over planets it has an interest in, laments that there is “No music, no art, no lacrosse, nothing” entertaining on the planet where he’s from.

Bloom, pretty far removed from TV’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” explains the 12-tone musical scale (It’s an educational show, kids!) and Ned comes back with “I’m sort of an alto, with a baritone rising.”

He tries to make jokes over the culture clash (the set is an environment “buried deep in the Earth’s crust”), or being as ill-informed as say, Zach Galifianakis in “Between Two Ferns.” Gillian Jacobs is “a woman of a thousand voices.”

“I don’t do impressions…at all.”

And they try to make a game out of her impersonating his favorite alien entities. Are there crickets in space? You’d hear them during that bit.

Asking a star “How much money do you make?” seems unrehearsed, as Jacobs bats that away as if she’s teaching the kids at home, and the childish or at least new-to-Earth host, “it’s rude” to ask that.

Richter, Conan O’Brien’s sidekick, is the first episode’s guest and advises sidekick Cornelius (there’s also a female computer voice/CGI screened “mask” face) on what’s required in the job.

“Only swing at the pitch that you think you can hit.”

Roth lists his reasons for getting into horror, his favorite scary movies, and  jokes that aspiring filmmakers in the audience need to master “the point” and “The Claw.” Those are the two gestures every director has to make the most on the set, pointing to something that needs to happen, giving notes to actors making this “claw” shape with your hands, as if you’re molding your words into the clay sculpture you want them to become.

The guests talk about “formulaic” college drama programs, how to make any name sound sinister (Hiss-whisper it, “Jesssssssssicaaaaaaa!”) and other tidbits about pop culture on Earth.

“Oh, is that sarcasm? Teach it to me!”

The special effects are more polished than is absolutely necessary. Cheapness and obvious fakery is always funnier. The recorded bits have the occasional Disney Channel (“High School Musical” the latest iteration) plugs, as indeed is Roth’s first “scary” movie experience (“Pinocchio”). 

But far too much of the banter is of the “Sorry, sir. I’m still getting the hang of this” variety. The educational material, teachable moments, stand out more than the comic ones. Not that there are many of those, either.

The last time I interviewed Frank Oz we talked of whether those old “Muppet Shows” would play to new, 10-and-under audiences. He didn’t think so. And the last version of “Muppets” to make it on the air, via Disney/ABC and “adult” in tone, was a bust.

“Earth to Ned” may click with kids. But are they really going to sit still for a chat show? Even if the not-that-kid-centric guests have something interesting to say? Even if there are rubbery or computer-generated aliens interacting and attempting wisecracks with them?

I doubt it. If this was a regular network and the first shows landed with the thud that these do, there’d be panic and a mad hunt to recast. Round up a list of funny stand-up comics who might be willing to work a puppet. Josh Robert Thompson (“The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson”) can’t be the only one.

Cast: Paul Rugg, with Gillian Jacobs, Eli Roth, Taye Diggs, Lil Rel Howery,

Credits: A Disney+ release.

Running time: Episodes @:23 minutes each.

“Sputnik,” for those who’ve forgotten their Space Race history, is the Russian word for “companion.” It was cute that the Bolsheviks chose to name the Earth’s first satellite that, a tiny radio-transmitting metal ball launched into space, Earth’s first man-made “companion.”

It’s also the perfect name for a space travel creature feature. What’s the last thing a cosmonaut wants to bring back to Earth after a mission in orbit? An alien “Sputnik,” it turns out.

Director Egor Abramenko’s debut feature is a Soviet era thriller abot what happens when a couple of cosmonauts go into space in 1983, and they bring back a third passenger, probably the one that rattled them by scratching on the hatch of their capsule after they uncoupled from the Soyuz space station they’d been working in.

It’s a bloody scene a Kazakh horseman comes upon when they land on the steppe in the dark. Only one cosmonaut, Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodorov), survived. The other fellow’s head was bitten off.

Tatyana (Oksana Akinshina), a risk-taker among the Soviet state’s hidebound psychotherapists, is summoned by Col. Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk) to a base on-lockdown. That’s where they’ve been trying to get Konstantin to talk.

The expert on duty (Anton Vasilev) can’t get the guy to submit to hypnosis. Maybe Tatyana can get through to him.

“PTSD” is her snap judgement. She even thinks he killed his co-pilot.

Ah, but Comrade Doctor Tatyana Klimova. There is more to tell you. Slowly. OK, not so slowly. Come by again after dark. That’s when the “Hero of the Soviet Union” leans over the side of his bed and upchucks giant gekko with the multi-eyeballed head of a cobra. He lives inside our “hero” during the day, and only comes out at night.

Akinshina — you might remember her from a late Bourne movie — gets across the shock of this realization, going slack-jawed and weak-kneed. Then, training and instinct kicks in. It’s her job to get this “parasite” or “symbiote” to leave the cosmonaut for good, and do it without killing Konstantin.

Her colleague (Vasilev) may smell “Nobel Prize.” “Go back to Moscow while you still can,” he warns (in Russian with English subtitles). She wants to help people, and save Konstantin.

“Sputnik” is an intellectual exercise in its early scenes, with the doctor trying to draw out her patient, figure out what secrets he’s hiding and what he knows or doesn’t know. It shifts into shock and horror as we see the slippery thing that will kill, if it gets a chance. The third act becomes all about Soviet era intrigues — what everybody’s REAL motives are, what further horrors they could lead to.

I found the jump into the third act a stretch, not quite buying into character motivations, not believing Semiradov’s shifting attitudes and security concerns. Perhaps some of that is merely East vs. West mindset, but you’d think “The Andromeda Strain” concerns would kick in, even in the Byzantine Soviet system, where paranoia ruled and “public safety” rarely figured into considerations.

But we still get a pretty entertaining thriller out of what’s here, no matter how the finale sets up and how the picture resolves itself.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic, bloody violence

Cast: Oksana Akinshina, Fedor Bondarchuk, Pyotr Fyodorov and Anton Vasilev

Credits: Directed by Egor Abramenko , script by Oleg Malovichko, Andrei Zolotarev. An IFC Midnight release.

Running time: 1:53

He does what college kids do. He looks to Apple for help.

“Hey Siri,” he says (in Chinese with English subtitles). “Turn the screen light up to the brightest!”

But Siri can’t save him.

He calls out for flashfight function and frantically tries to text. But his iPhone can’t save him, either.

No, not when he’s forgotten that one thing, that one instruction he was given before climbing the stairs to “The Female Ghost Bridge.”

“Never turn your head on the stairs. The ghost might be right behind you!”

“The Bridge Curse” is a tepid ghost tale with some pretty good effects, a couple of decent twists in its meandering “Ways to Die on a College Campus” plot and a stylistic conceit that it abandons too quickly.

The conceit is thrown out after a nervy, almost-gripping opening. Five college kids at Tung Hu U. are live-streaming a “courage challenge” on “The Female Ghost Bridge,” a haunted lake-crossing span that a coed once threw herself from and drowned some while back. In cell-phone tight compositions, the kids tease, prank and goad one another as they act out and video this adventure.

But darned if that kid doesn’t forget the “Don’t turn around” rule. He counts the steps up, pranks his pals, and then forgets that rule, takes that 14th step on a 13-step bridge, and it’s “pick’em off, one-by-one” time — starting with him.

The kids — some of them makeup students, one an IT major and a couple from mass communications department, are tight enough that they’ve dated each other, silly enough that they keep separating in that “You wait here” way that horror movie characters do.

The screenplay sets up rules, ways this calamity plays out, and then forgets those rules. The original victim, the “ghost” who haunts this bridge, drowned. The victims are supposed to drown — in a mop bucket, in the film’s most memorable murder. But that’s abandoned.

There’s also this TV reporter (Vera Yen) and her camera guy (JC Lin) trying to find out what happened, if there’s been a coverup of other times that it happened, and just what those flickering images and that white shadow might be on the CCTV or streamed videos posted online.

An elevator whose digital numbers go wonky as it never seems to take those riding it to the correct floor, a dash down a “Vertigo” inspired never-ending stairwell, attacks by a ghost who — like most ghosts in Asian horror — has that “Ring” hairstyle, characters yanked out of the frame, dragged across the floor or lifted into the air — standard issue visual tropes of modern movie ghost stories.

The concept is solid, and the characters — hard to identify by name as the subtitled names don’t jibe with the closing credits names — generally give us believable reactions to a supernatural threat.

That would be shrieking, pants-wetting hysteria, even the girls.

But “The Bridge Curse” never jells, never comes together and rarely delivers. The whole point in putting “rules” in your screenplay is so that the audience can see the threats before the characters do, and the characters can try to reason their way out of their predicament.

Set up rules that you promptly abandon, and just following your random, rambling and generally-unidentified coeds becomes a chore. You don’t let us identify with them, step into their shoes and fear for their safety.

For direector Lester Hsi, “The Bridge Curse” becomes a bridge that fails.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: JC Lin, Vera Yen, Ning Chang

Credits: Directed by Lester Hsi, script by Keng-Ming (Ken) Chang and Ps-Hsiang (Alain) Hao.

Running time: 1:27

Some years back, the Smithsonian got into trouble in planning an exhibit around the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber whose crew dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which helped end World War II. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII, and the controversy stemmed from America’s greatest historical museum’s decision to narrow the focus to that event alone and its morality or amorality.

You’d think a crew of America’s elite historians would see that, revisionism or not, you can’t discuss the end without providing context, the carnage of the months leading up to that fateful decision, the undeniable fanaticism of an intractable enemy and the civilian slaughter to come.

That’s not a problem with “Apocalypse ’45,” a new documentary from Abramorama that will make its way to the Discovery networks at some point. Here’s the footage of the hellish combat leading up to the A-Bombs of August, the slaughterhouses of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Here are eyewitnesses and survivors, the last living Americans who fought in the Pacific, relating the awful things they faced, the friends and comrades they buried and the Japanese immovability even after the firebombing of Tokyo.

Yes, the United States is still the only nation to use an atomic bomb in war. Yes, there were good reasons for doing it if you dive deep enough into the context of the times.

Hearing a Marine recall a saying in the ranks after Iwo Jima, “Golden Gate in ’48, breadline in ’49,” drives it home. They knew “luck” was the only thing that was keeping them alive on these killing grounds. They had a hint that Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese main islands, was to begin that November.

They had the best sense of all of just how long the war would drag on with an enemy determined to fight “until every last (Japanese) man, woman and child” was dead. They’d seen civilians, willing or at the gunpoint of the fascist Japanese Army, hurling themselves off cliffs rather than surrender.

Director Erik Nelson gives us a sobering tour of the four years of footage. He has his interview subjects summarize Pearl Harbor, young men on the homefront realizing “It screwed my whole life up from that moment on” — a draft, the trauma of combat, hardship and terror, survivor’s guilt and the remorse that came later, future plans deferred for years. And those were the lucky ones, the survivors.

Then we’re immersed in footage — much of it familiar if you’ve ever channel surfed by The History Channel — of that last year. We revisit the island assaults, the grim flame thrower and grenade attacks, napalm bombs and the kamikaze strikes. Nineteen forty-five was a year that exposed servicemen on the beaches and volcanic hills, on board ships under air attack and fighter and bomber crews taking the war to Japan, to “the reality of total war,” up-close, personal and wrenching.

“Apocalypse ’45” is a cut above the boilerplate docs whipped up for the various “World War II” channels on TV. The footage is silent, and every now and then a sound effect blunder pops up — a single-engine plane is heard taking off while we watch the biggest American bomber, a B-29, which took off with a rumble and roar all its own.

In the film proper, Nelson identifies only one witness, a Japanese Hiroshima survivor, just 15 when the bomb hit. He sings an ancient lament for the city.

But the closing credits show us everybody else who testifies, very old men in their ’90s now, a rare breed. Not many officers or “experts,” just sailors, Marines, pilots and aircrew who lived through it, some breaking into tears at the memories being revived, others lamenting the divided state they lived to see their country turn into.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic combat footage

Cast: Ivan Hammond, Joseph Wing, Charles Schlag, George Boutwell, George Vouros, Delbert Treichler, Abner Aust Jr., William Braddock Jr., Richard Spooner, Ittsei Nakagawa and many others.

Credits: Directed by Erik Nelson. An Abramorama release.

Running time: 1:44

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/chadwick-boseman-petition-statue-south-carolina-1234754977/

If you ever wonder if documentary filmmakers get attached to the people they make their films about, people who are often struggling to get by, the answer is yes. Sometimes they try to help. It’s called compassion.

From Indiewire

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/08/honeyland-team-buys-home-for-documentary-subject-1234583594/