Movie Nation

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/

A ghost story, a little horror from Netflix, which hasn’t made much of mark in the genre.

“Critical Thinking” is a cluttered, cliched and ungainly story about disadvantaged kids becoming a formidable chess team under the tutelage of a teacher/coach who “won’t give up on them.”

It’s the feature directing debut of star John Leguizamo, who plays that “cool” teacher at Miami’s Jackson High, and tries with limited success to wrestle a Dito Montiel (“The Clapper”) script into a smooth flowing film. “Critical” has many characters, too many character “types,” melodrama by the bucketful and too little that breaks from the “Big Game” sports movie formula.

Punch up the class discrimination and racial inequality messaging, with the history of chess illustrative of the whitewashing of history — “How come they always paint us out?” — and you’ve got a movie with plenty of good intentions, lots of speed chess, and so many elements it can’t get out of its own way.

Thankfully, we jump right into the fray. Top dog player Sedrick (Corwin C. Tuggles) finishes off an argument with his dad (Michael Kenneth Williams) with a chess match before heading off to his favorite elective class — chess.

Mario Martinez (Leguizamo), “Mister T” to the kids, starts another semester of chess, going over the basics for “the fish” (new kids), batting down banter and personality conflicts among his stars, the four guys who comprise his team.

Sedrick is stoic and steady. Rodelay (Angel Bismark Curiel) is the cocksure braggart. Ito (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) is the hothead and bully with a drug dealing future seemingly laid out for him. But they won’t be competitive unless Sedrick can lure white boy Gil (Will Hochman) away from the video games and back to class.

To do that, Sedrick — who once took great offense at having his new sneakers stepped on — has to find Gil and apologize.

It’s mostly a man’s world, with the girls in the class taking a timid back seat as Mister T goes into “The Philidor Defense,” “The Opera Game,” the career of Jose Raul Capablanca and finer points of “The Scandinavian Defense.”

The usual obstacles are trotted out — lack of funding from the district, an understanding but hands-tied principal (Rachel Bay Jones), the threatening lure of a gang, the guy with a girlfriend, the working class dad who flips out over the money this ISN’T bringing into the house, the dead mother, the cops watching one player in particular.

“We’ll be the guys with the mirrored shades on.”

A shocking death rattles the first act, prompting the teacher to poetry. “You guys know about Pablo Neruda?”

“You mean from ‘Family Matters?'”

The boys come together as a team, getting even better when a fresh-off-the-boat Cuban prodigy (Jeffry Batista) comes on board. Road trips, fund raising activities to pay for the tourneys, contests where sportsmanship doesn’t figure into Mister T’s teaching. Bullying and trash talk are just who they are, it is implied.

I wasn’t shocked on learning, after the fact, that Montiel scripted this. The narrative is shambolic, with blasts of violence and random “feels” tossed in with the high school (pot-seasoned cookies) hijinx and long long scenes of chess being played, with precious few shots of what’s actually going on at each board.

Filmmakers fall for the temptation of pounded game clocks, glowers and flurries of speed-chess moves in an effort to animate what can be a dramatic but rarely cinematic game. Leguizamo takes that bait, too.

The performers never transcend the archetypes they’re stuck playing, and that goes for “Johnny Legs” as Mister T, as well. He’s a magnetic performer, but this guy is a photocopy in cardboard.

I like the messaging and films of this genre have their built-in “against all odds” allure. But “Critical Thinking” needed a vigorous edit before it went before the cameras, needed to figure out who we are meant to follow and identify with and probably needed some sense of remove from the “true story.” Because giving every character almost equal screen time out of obligation, when the movie’s going to be fictionalized, no matter what, makes for a maddeningly unfocused and unsatisfying movie.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, drug trade content, profanity

Cast: John Leguizamo, Corwin C. Tuggles, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Jeffry Batista, Angel Bismark Curiel, Will Hochman, Rachel Bay Jones and Michael Kenneth Williams.

Credits: Directed by John Leguizamo, script by Dito Montiel. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:57

There are worse labels a filmmaker could pursue that “That old softie.”

That’s Brett Haley’s niche. The director of “The Hero” and “Hearts Beat Loud” serves up another slice of sentiment with “All Together Now,” a high school “It’s a Wonderful Life” without the supernatural nonsense.

It’s an uneven affair that begins with a flourish, works to develop homeless street cred, wanders into the maudlin wilderness for the middle acts and rallies for a predictable, over-the-top, break-out-your-Kleenex finale.

Disney animation singer Auli’i Cravalho (“Moana,” TV’s “Rise”) is winsome Amber Appleton, a plucky teen who teaches her English as a Second Language class with song.

She also works in a donut shop, always brings donuts when she volunteers at a local nursing home, runs the annual high school charity variety show, nurtures her pun-obsessed on-the-spectrum cousin (Anthony Jacques), dreams of getting into Carnegie Mellon University’s music conservatory and takes her chihuahua, Bobby Big Boy, with her everywhere she goes.

And where she goes at night is a school bus on the Portland School District’s maintenance lot. That’s where she lives with her widowed mom (Justina Machado). Amber is bubbly, relentlessly upbeat and keeping up appearances. But she’s poor, proud and homeless.

“I’m great. Never better.”

Following her, we see the juggling that goes on. The prepping for school she manages at her aunt’s (Judy Reyes of “Scrubs”) house, the showers she cadges off the elderly grump (Carol Burnett) she cozies up to at the nursing home.

“One of these days I will make you laugh.”

“Not if I make you cry, first!”

Amber is always thinking of others, vowing to make this year’s variety show a fund-raiser to replace the school marching band’s stolen tuba.

“SOUSAPHONE.”

“All Together Now” is about when all those balls Amber juggles in the air tumble to the ground.

Mom’s an alcoholic with an abusive boyfriend. Auditioning at Carnegie Mellon (Disney or not, she seems a little thin-voiced for a conservatory) means she has to fly cross country, which costs money. Everything she owns is in her backpack. And her little dog isn’t the youngest chihuahua we’ve ever seen.

“Uneven” works for “All Together Now” because of the relentless, “How much more can she take?” parade of calamities that visit our heroine, whose poker face in a tear-jerker suggests limited range, not stiff-upper-lip stoicism. It’s not just the singing voice that comes off “thin” here.

“It’s under control!”

Fred Armisen has a role as a cool teacher of…something. He’s barely in this thing, but he’ll be in the talent show, for sure. On the drums? Not saying.

The “romance” with the rich boy Ty (Rhenzy Feliz) doesn’t spark, a promising circle of friends is cast by the wayside and for all the “reality” of homelessness, this plays like a Disney Channel gloss on the experience.

Still, Haley knows how to wring a tear or three out of a finale, and he manages that here, other shortcomings notwithstanding. You wish it was better, even as it isn’t. But at least “All Together Now” manages to make one feel, even if you feel manipulated as you do.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic content, some language and brief suggestive comments

Cast: Auli’i Cravalho, Rhenzy Feliz, Judy Reyes, Justina Machado, Fred Armisen and Carol Burnett.

Credits: Directed by Brett Haley, script by Brett Haley, Marc Basch and Matthew Quick, based on the novel “Sorta Like a Rock Star” by Matthew Quick. A Netlix release.

Running time: 1:33

The old showbiz maxim “Always leave’em begging for more” is pushed beyond its limits in “Mambo Man,” a perfectly charming and utterly predictable Cuban dramedy that is over entirely too soon.

It’s about a Cuban entrepreneur, a pig and tomato farmer and concert promoter, beloved and thriving in his corner of Eastern Cuba, but a man who is out of his depth in the dog-eat-dog New Capitalism sweeping over his island.

JC (Héctor Noas) may gripe about the weather, the government, “The Soviets,” the Chinese and “the gringo trade embargo” (in Spanish with English subtitles). But the 50ish Michael Eisner look-alike is doing OK.

He’s got a nice farm in Bayona, and a very nice house on it where he can keep his wife Rita (Yudexi De La Torre Mesa) and spoil their little girl. He teaches her about “freedom” by buying her a bird a the street market, lecturing her through her tears as he lets the bird go.

JC knows that many with any sort of ambition have already fled the island. But he hosts tourists who visit the farm, does well with his pigs and does well by the many musicians who rely on him for bookings, recording sessions and exposure. The film’s composer, co-writer/director Mo Fini is one of them, appearing as himself, declaring his loyalty.

JC built a life of friends and business relationships built on handshake deals and grew up in a Cuba where you always pick up hitch-hikers, where an engine problem in his ancient Chevy could be solved by that one mechanic in whatever village he and driver David (Alejandro Palomino) often without charge.

Then this “old friend,” Roberto (David Pérez Pérez) with this secret “deal” he wants JC in on. Damned if the hustler isn’t out beating the bushes for cash, from a bank, old friends who owe him a favor — everybody.

His wife weeps. David says “There’s something fishy about it.” And anybody who’s ever seen a movie about a hustler trying to hustle up a big score will tense up, fretting over JC’s trusting ways.

The novelty of “Mambo Man” is the vivid portrait of street life in a changing Cuba. The 50somethings like JC may all seem to know each other — the engineer of the local freight train with his knowing wave, the mechanic who can “fix anything” who eyeballs a busted irrigation pump (jerry rigged with a car motor piston) and says, “It won’t be perfect, but we can get it figured out.”

The magic of “Mambo Man,” performances in clubs and restaurants, concerts and cookouts. Real musicians from the “Buena Vista Social Club” generation sing JC’s praises from the stage.

Rum, cigars, “sugar cane water — natural Viagra” and all this food — mouth watering its way right off the screen — adds to the texture.

Noas (“Sergio & Sergei”), as JC, floats through this world, irked when he’s late but not blowing a fuse, trusting this or that employee or business associate like “my brother,” trading on his good name for the New God of Cuba — cash.

“The Bible says love of money will send us straight to Hell,” he muses. Not that he’s taking the Bible’s advice. Not in today’s Cuba. It’s just that he’s one of the last playing by the old rules.

The parable is simple to the point of simplistic, but Noas makes a most engaging tour guide on this slide down the slippery slope. And the people, places, music and food of Cuba make one long for the day when “the gringo embargo” and travel ban are gone and we can all sample its charms.

Let’s hope the gringos, and the Cubans who emulate them, don’t eat guys like JC for lunch

MPAA Rating: unrated, a little drinking, a little smoking

Cast: Héctor Noas, Yudexi De La Torre Mesa, Alejandro Palomino, David Pérez Pérez and Mo Fini

Credits: Directed by Edesio Alejandro and Mo Fini, script by Mo Fini and Paul Morris. A Corinth Films release.

Running time: 1:23

Per @ERCboxoffice) “WB’s TENET scored a massive $53M debut internationally this weekend, in 41 territories and 20,000+ screens. TOP MARKETS UK ($7.1M) FRA ($6.7M) KOR ($5.1M) GER ($4.2M) https://twitter.com/ERCboxoffice/status/1300124719178371072?s=20