Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed are improvisers recruited to infiltrate the mob, with Sean Bean, Paddy Considine and Ian McShane as cops and bad guys.
It’s a British production, with Brit director and screenwriters. The “Safety Not Guaranteed” etc. connections in the trailer aren’t “creative.”
June 12. Straight to Amazon Prime?
The last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are the setting of “The Chambermaid,” a same sex/class-crossing romance that blossoms in World War I era Prague.
This sumptuous Czech/Slovak co-production, performed in Czech, Slovakian, Hungarian and German, is “Downton Abbey” with more explicit sex, nudity and unfiltered glimpses at all the messy bodily functions servants clean up to keep the posh — Germans in this case — in the comfort to which they figure they’re entitled.
Anka (Dana Droppová) is a blonde teen in the provinces, the “bastard” child of a mother who has just remarried. Her gruff stepdad reads an ad in a paper seeking a chambermaid in the city, and next thing Anka knows, that’s her fate — a long coach ride into Prague where she’ll join the staff of the home of the German aristocrats whom she’s always to address as “Milady” (Zuzana Mauréry) and “Milord” (Karel Dobrý).
All-knowing senior housekeeper Liza (Vica Kerekes) is her guide into this world, where the male servants relish their piggish power over the women just as Milord dallies, at his convenience, with Liza.
Kristina the cook (Anna Geislerová) is from the same village as Anka, so there’s no escaping that “bastard” label here. Not that the rich family of nags and slappers that they work for care.
Oldest daughter Resi (Radka Caldová) has picked up on her parents’ cruelty Bullied herself by a mother determined to not be “stuck” with her, with Anka forced to “get the books” for Resi at dinner so that she can eat with one under each armpit to keep her elbows nobly at her side, Resi pushes around Anka because she can.
And then she rethinks her as a co-conspirator. Anka is the one she confides in about the young man (Cyril Dobrý) her parents have decided is a suitable mate. But what can she expect on her wedding night? Her mother’s explained the facts of married life under a repressive patriarchy.
“You’ll understand after your first beating.”
But “What is Gustav going to do with me?” is a question Anka can only answer cryptically. “What all men do.” Her orders are to “find out” and report back to her mistress. Anka promptly submits to an over-attentive manservant (Lukas Pelc) and relates what she’s learned.
“It’s endurable.”
Demonstrating the delicate points of love-making bonds the two girls. And no Gustav brutality or sudden war can break that.
Director and co-writer Mariana Cengel-Solcanská — she made “Scumbag” with Droppová and Pelc — keeps the focus on the two women in a romance of exacting attention to period detail. This is the world of she-who-scrubs-the -bloody-sheets and she-who-must-empty-chamber-pots-into-the-city-sewers.
Rural folkways and superstition are called on before any doctor is summoned over a pregnancy — wanted or unwanted.
Droppová manages the open-faced innocence we’re expected to buy into in Anka, a child who resolves to grow up — fast — when she falls for a young woman just as trapped as she is, only in luxury and an unpleasant if not downright abusive marriage.
The women are stoic, shrinking from conflict and all-but-resigned to their fates, and the men prone to ruling this house with varying degrees of power over them. Caldová plays the subtlest story arc even as her character is making what seems like the shortest journey. Kerekes lets us see the “dreamer” in the delusional Liza, and Geislerová is flinty and no-nonsense in the flesh as Kristina, who won’t “curse” a hated husband headed into battle but who will tell you what she won’t do, step by step.
The plot of this “true story” is as melodramatic as any “Upstairs/Downton” soap opera, with just a light sprinkling of the ethnic resentments of an ungainly, teetering, multi-cultural empire that’s backed itself into an imperialist conflagration that will shatter empires, norms, borders and class distinctions.
The love affair will be tested. The consequences of a world war will be brought home as surely as the consequences of love affairs and politics rest uneasily under this belle epoque mid-city garden home’s roof.
But it all gloriously glides by, an upended city world of dinner parties and Strauss waltzes at the piano, a too-trusting aristocrat who leaves it to servants to “burn this” or that possible “state secret,” and a way of life in the provinces barely impacted by the ever-shifting borders and the end of travel by stagecoach.
Rating: unrated, nudity, sex, some violence
Cast: Dana Droppová, Radka Caldová, Vica Kerekes, Lukas Pelc,
Zuzana Mauréry, Anna Geislerová, Cyril Dobrý and Karel Dobrý
Credits:Directed by Mariana Cengel-Solcanská, scripted by Mariana Cengel-Solcanská and Hana Lasicová . An Omnibus Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:54
Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody, Dave Franco et al welcoming Morgan Freeman, Daniel Radcliffe and Rosamund Pike for this sequel to the 2013 sleeper hit, due out in Nov.
Justice Smith is in it, if that seals the deal for you.
I know it’s an A24 release rolling out Oct. 3, on the cusp of “awards season.” But how does Emily Blunt agree to co-star — again — with Dwayne “The Human Hemorhoid” Johnson without Disney money?
An early UFC history bio pic of Mark Kerr, using the same title as a 22 year old documentary about Kerr.
A 1975 Japanese thriller titled “Bullet Train,” about a high-speed passenger train with a bomb on board, one that will explode if the train slows beyond a triggered speed, inspired the bomb-on-a-bus thriller “Speed,” its sequel and lots of imitators.
It was a the biggest Japanese disaster pic of its era, excluding movies starring a giant monster from beneath the atom-bomb-tested sea. So of course it inspired a sequel. It just took 50 years to get around to doing it.
“Bullet Train Explosion” references the original film’s “incident” as it hurls a cast of cast of dozens if not hundreds and modern CGI effects at that still-somewhat-plausible scenario- – a murderous bomber holds both the train and the entire country hostage as the sleek, streamlined locomotive and passenger cars hurtle towards their doom.
There are suspenseful stretches and vigorous “work the problem” exercises blended into ludicrous twists and the odd dash of Bugs Bunny Physics in this self-serious thriller built on classic disaster movie bones.
We meet the vast array of characters — uniformed personnel of the Hayabusa 60 that sets out from remote Aomori to Tokyo, technicians of the railroad’s control center, the suits at Tokyo HQ, and select passengers from the 300+ souls riding the rails this fateful day.
Tyuyoshi Kusanagi of “Doomsday: The Sinking of Japan” stars as white-gloved conductor Takaichi, whose attention to detail and crisp salutes aren’t sinking in fast enough with his subordinate, Fujii (Hanata Hosoda).
“This is is a serious job, you know,” he scolds in subtitled Japanese, or dubbed into English.
The train’s driver is a just-as-meticulous young woman, Mastumoto (Non) who sits in the cockpit alone, reciting her various safety and start-up protocols aloud as they set off.
A huge high school field trip, a scandalized politician (Machiko Ono), an “unemployed rich man” influencer (Jun Kaname) and a sketchy guy with a bulky bag and wearing a respiratory mask are among the paying passengers.
The train gets under way. The bomber phones HQ with threats and a demand — 100 billion yen (702 million in dollars, a figure tariff-shrinking by the hour). How serious is this bomber? A freight train is blown up with an identical bomb to get the point.
As the people in charge scramble to respond, politics interferes and the passengers are abruptly made aware of their plight. Some panic, cast blame and insult the “Sugar Mama” politoc. And one takes matters into his own hands. The ransomer wants “all of Japan” to pitch on this? Fine. Let’s set up a Go Fund Me page. All those kids on “Insta” spread the word.
Meanwhile, an audacious “rescue plan” is cooked up at HQ. How do you defuse a bomb you haven’t located on a fast moving train? What might plan B be?
One of the cute touches here is somewhat jarring if this is the way these trains, which have been around since the early ’60s, are operated. Officials communicaste with land lines with flashing red lights, a situation room features models and ancient and simple what-train-is-where display board and wind-up stopwatches are used to time speeds and operations suggest that the world’s onetime digital electronics leader is still running its rail network in an analog world.
“Tradition?” No money for upgrades? Union rules? It is to laugh. And perhaps that’s meant to be a joke, as the film itself is so old fashioned as to be creaky.
The picture’s turn towards “Give me a break” nonsense roars in with the third act. Before that, we’re treated to a few too many scenes of cool-headed professionals performing their professional duty professionally.
But the odd moving moment, acknowledgement of “duty” and comically absurd throw-down over what decision should be made and by whom enlivens the proceedings, even if it doesn’t come close to overwhelming the intentional or unintentional silliness of stiff actors playing all this so very seriously.
Rating: TV-14, violence, blood
Cast: Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Non, Machiko Ono, Daisuke Kuroda,
Jun Kaname, many others
Credits: Directed by Shinji Hiruchi, scripted by Kazuhiro Nakagawa and Norichika Ôba. A Netflix release.
Running time: 2:14
So a 50ish alcoholic manic depressive comic moves to Key West to run a comedy club.
Sounds like a movie, right? Well, it did to Joe List. And as he’s one of the hot comics of his generation, he got a film crew together and went to cruise ship era Key West for a weekend — not terribly long before Key West troubador Jimmy Buffett died — a sort of bacchanale/interview and let’s-do-some-sets-together with his career-long friend Tom Dustin.
“Tom Dustin: Portrait of a Comedian” sets up as another version of Jerry Seinfeld’s documentary “Comedian,” a depiction of the life, the ups and downs of the work, as seen via one guy who “made it” and one who never will.
Generously taken, it’s a filmed effort by List to immortalize a colleague who, as Dustin himself notes, will be “forgotten” without a Netflix, HBO or whoever stand-up special to capture his persona and his act on film. More generously, it could be that List figures his talks-about-his-issues-on-camera friend is not long for this world.
Aged, touristy and booze-and-drugs-soaked Key West was built on benders, and from the looks of things, Dustin’s been on one the whole time he’s been there.
But that’s observed rather than hammered home in a shapeless documentary that is filled with anecdotes that List wants to call “stories” as he’d originally thought to title the film “Tom Dustin: Storyteller.”
Let. Me. Guess.
With a Key West friend and fellow comic noting that “Tom has about 80 stories, and he tells them ALL every day,” and so very many of List’s stories about Tom and Tom’s stories about himself involving drunken escapades that barely merit the “escapades” label — Dustin wetting himself , etc. — and almost all of them are punctuated with or prefaced by a desperate “I FELL off my chair” or “I almost DIED laughing,” List looked at this footage in the editing process and realized it wasn’t funny.
Non-comics use “I like to have DIED” lines to insist what they observed/went-through was hilarious because they don’t have the chops to make it amusing as a bit.
Mercifully 15 minutes shorter than its festival-run length, “Portrait of a Comedian” uses clips of podcast and radio station interviews and snippets of old sets to flesh out the early years of these two Boston lads’ meeting and staying pals as one started up the ladder of success and another took on a grinding gig of appearing at all of America’s Funnybones comedy clubs, barely making ends meet and drinking up his thin profits as he did.
We hear about Tom’s childhood — son of a hustling, huxter used car salesman dad — hear of his “Open Mike Night” success and why he gave up when he bombed on his second outing, only to come back to stand-up after 9-11.
The two comics reference the documentary “When Stand Up Stood Out,” a similarly shapeless 2003 all-star film that captured Boston’s place in the stand-up explosion of a previous era. But they’d have been much better served watching “Comedian,” with its more coherent STRUCTURE, and more intimate observations of the life, the work and its pitfalls.
The grind of the hours, the drugs and impersonal one night stands, it’s all self-destructive and that’s a striking contrast to the jocularity on stage. Stand up’s long been about the damaged-and- angry-about-it struggling to get by, to “make it” and finally get rich and “happy.”
Richard Lewis wasn’t the first or the last stand up to use performance as “therapy,” and that notion has become a “Curb Your Enthusiasm/Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” cliche.
But the proliferation of streaming services just moved stand-up specials from HBO to Netflix. It didn’t really add new big payday venues. Just Comedy Central. And “pilot deals” for sitcoms — the finish line for a previous generation of comics– have all but dried up.
“Comedy Central never rang me up,” Dustin shrugs. And podcasts are for Marc Maron and the already-famous. So here Dustin is, making his mark in a town where a lot of the foot traffic gets back on a ship and leaves by dusk, before comedy clubs open.
Dustin performs laugh-out-loud funny bits, starting a “story” on stage by telling you he’s not going to cross this or that line, but admitting he’s just crossed that line so he’ll just cross several others. But the interviews, filled with tipsy, inside-joke laughter, ring comically hollow. The anecdotes and riffing between the two pals aren’t all that.
Key West and all of its denizens look day-after-a-bender old here, and Dustin notes the whole place is like “a cruise ship that ran aground.” Bingo.
But he’s making a go of Comedy Key West, emceeing and performing, “bringing my (comedian) friends down” for shows, packing the house. Dustin figures he’s found his destiny and seems happy with it. Perhaps. And perhaps constant drinking helps.
A chance ride-by — Jimmy Buffett on a bike — earns a tasteless suggestion that they “keep” that in the movie and chase Key West’s most famous popularizer down “because he won’t be around for long.” They even plug the now-deceased Buffett in the closing credits. But the idiots from BAHS-ton spell it “Buffet.”
Because that’s on brand in this half-assed, unfocused “appreciation” of a pal who probably needs to watch this sober at least once to see how “happy” he says he is and how wrung-out he looks. This isn’t an appreciation. It’s an intervention that lost its nerve.
Rating: unrated, lots of profanity, smoking and alcohol abuse
Cast: Tom Dustin, Joe List
Credits: Directed by Joe List. A Matson Films release.
Running time: 1:36
Big speeches rife with “the F-word”– “fascism” — pack the third act of “Keeper of the Flame,” a mid-WWII MGM thriller that was a tad too anti-fascist for fat cat studio chief Louis B. Mayer. Those speeches also burden a film whose third act is perfunctory and clumsy when much of what’s preceded it crackles with wit, intrigue and a civics lesson that doesn’t play like a lecture.
The second ever Tracy/Hepburn picture bombed at the box office, earned indifferent reviews and an even worse “review” from Mayer. He stormed out of the premiere.
But Oscar winner Donald Ogden Stewart (“The Philadelphia Story,” “An Affair to Remember”) considered this his best screenplay. Working from a just-published I.A.R. Wiley novel, Stewart squeezed “The Front Page” in, with “Meet John Doe” messaging and “Citizen Kane” flourishes (Welles’ masterpiece premiered one year before “Flame”).
And director George Cukor — who, like Hepburn, was cool on the project — produced a soundstage-set marvel that has aged better than anyone would have dreamed back then.
Viewed, listened to and quoted today, “Keeper of the Flame” plays like an undelivered indictment, damning and cautionary, and a movie that speaks to America’s present moment every bit as loudly as it did back in 1942-43.
It’s a tale of a heroic, charismatic and cultish public figure, a sort of Charles Lindbergh with Sergeant York’s combat credentials. Robert Forrest dies in a car crash. Spencer Tracy is the veteran correspondant who worked the Nazi Germany beat who now wants to write “The Robert Forrest Story” “so that people will still hear his voice.” Katharine Hepburn is the Great Man’s widow who isn’t so sure that’s a good thing.
Forrest was almost nominated to run for president, a man who inspired nationwide “Forward America” “Americanism” clubs, including the uniformed Robert Forrest Boys Army for America out to displace the Boy Scouts. He died driving off a bridge on his large private estate, because he moved in monied, influential circles.
All the red flags — or baseball cap — warning signs are there. All the celebrated Steve O’Malley has to do is get close enough to the widow to discover “the truth.”
“It’s a pity how easily people are fooled.”
The wisdom of cabbies, country doctors and skeptical fellow reporters is embraced and celebrated.
“Some people don’t fully appreciate the importance of newspapermen as public servants.”
Ah, but to his peers and competitors, O’Malley might not be the ink-stained savior he’s built up to be.
“Oh, he’s a journalist, not a newspaperman!”
A “Kane” styled montage covers the car wreck and press coverage of the unseen/unheard Forrest, ending with O’Malley’s arrival in the press scrum covering this famous figure’s funeral.
Audrey Christie plays an old crush, also on the story, cracking wise about all “Joshua (O’Malley) has to do is blow his horn” and the widow Forrest’s “walls of Jericho” (her silence) will come tumbling down. Stephen McNally plays an even more recognizable “type,” Freddie — the against-the-grain reporter who doesn’t “do” hero worship and is the wiser for it.
O’Malley finds a weeping child (young Dwayne Hickman, decades before “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”) who blames himself for his idol’s demise. He runs into an unpleasant, ne’er do well relative (Forrest Tucker), a worshipful hotel clerk (Donald Meek), an embittered employee (Howard Da Silva), a doubting doctor (Frank Craven) and a droll and chatty cabbie named Orion Peabody (Percy Kilbride).
“There’s always good and evil, up against each other,” Orion opines. “A man’s gotta take sides, sooner or later.”
Whatever the embarassment of riches in the supporting cast, we aren’t allowed much time away from our leads, with a reporter turned fan turned would-be suitor who wants to “protect” the widow, because he doesn’t see how she and Forrest’s fanboy private secretary (Richard Whorf) are whispering about manipulating him and burning Forrest’s papers as fast as they can round up some matches.
Tracy is the stoic he needs O’Malley to be, and Hepburn the smart cookie who skips between staying one step ahead of the snooping reporter, and one step behind him.
The plot never wholly unravels, but the logical lapses trigger abrupt turns of the third act, and invite long speeches about great wealth’s ties to fascism and conspiracies to “stir up all the little hatreds of the whole nation against each other” and the use of social/ethnic/racial division to end democracy.
Whatever the merits of the novel, Stewart’s script is topical and shockingly timeless, with lovely turns of phrase and flashes of the sort of wit that decorated the comedies and comic thrillers of the era.
“Did it hurt much?”
“Did it hurt when?”
“Did it hurt much when Hitler kicked you out of Germany?”
Christie has “the Hepburn role” of the flirty reporter who banters with Tracy’s rival writer O’Malley, although a few of the Kate/Spencer exchanges have a nice flash.
The soundstage-bound settings and effects impress in monochrome in ways that a color production would have spoiled. This feels and plays black and white, not “noir” but grimly serious and downbeat.
Even if the story had followed that first act of steady build-up to a fine, furious finale instead of the third act action feeling so shoehorned in, there’s little doubt that Mayer, later a Hollywood Blacklist backer, would have still hated it.
But watching this film over eighty years later, one does wonder if the message of “Keeper of the Flame” was taken as seriously, even back then, as it should be today.
Rating: TV-PG
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Richard Whorf, Howard Da Silva, Dwayne Hickman and Forrest Tucker.
Credits: Directed by George Cukor, scripted by Donald Ogden Stewart, based on a novel by I.A.R. Wiley. An MGM release on Tubi, other streamers.
Running time: 1:40
Big speeches rife with “the F-word”– “fascism” — pack the third act of “Keeper of the Flame,” a mid-WWII MGM thriller that was a tad too anti-fascist for fat cat studio chief Louis B. Mayer. Those speeches also burden a film whose third act is perfunctory and clumsy when much of what’s preceded it crackles with wit, intrigue and a civics lesson that doesn’t play like a lecture.
The second ever Tracy/Hepburn picture bombed at the box office, earned indifferent reviews and an even worse “review” from Mayer. He stormed out of the premiere.
But Oscar winner Donald Ogden Stewart (“The Philadelphia Story,” “An Affair to Remember”) considered this his best screenplay. Working from a just-published I.A.R. Wiley novel, Stewart squeezed “The Front Page” in, with “Meet John Doe” messaging and “Citizen Kane” flourishes (Welles’ masterpiece premiered one year before “Flame”).
And director George Cukor — who, like Hepburn, was cool on the project — produced a soundstage-set marvel that has aged better than anyone would have dreamed back then.
Viewed, listened to and quoted today, “Keeper of the Flame” plays like an undelivered indictment, damning and cautionary, and a movie that speaks to America’s present moment every bit as loudly as it did back in 1942-43.
It’s a tale of a heroic, charismatic and cultish public figure, a sort of Charles Lindbergh with Sergeant York’s combat credentials. Robert Forrest dies in a car crash. Spencer Tracy is the veteran correspondant who worked the Nazi Germany beat who now wants to write “The Robert Forrest Story” “so that people will still hear his voice.” Katharine Hepburn is the Great Man’s widow who isn’t so sure that’s a good thing.
Forrest was almost nominated to run for president, a man who inspired nationwide “Forward America” “Americanism” clubs, including the uniformed Robert Forrest Boys Army for America out to displace the Boy Scouts. He died driving off a bridge on his large private estate, because he moved in monied, influential circles.
All the red flags — or baseball cap — warning signs are there. All the celebrated Steve O’Malley has to do is get close enough to the widow to discover “the truth.”
“It’s a pity how easily people are fooled.”
The wisdom of cabbies, country doctors and skeptical fellow reporters is embraced and celebrated.
“Some people don’t fully appreciate the importance of newspapermen as public servants.”
Ah, but to his peers and competitors, O’Malley might not be the ink-stained savior he’s built up to be.
“Oh, he’s a journalist, not a newspaperman!”
A “Kane” styled montage covers the car wreck and press coverage of the unseen/unheard Forrest, ending with O’Malley’s arrival in the press scrum covering this famous figure’s funeral.
Audrey Christie plays an old crush, also on the story, cracking wise about all “Joshua (O’Malley) has to do is blow his horn” and the widow Forrest’s “walls of Jericho” (her silence) will come tumbling down. Stephen McNally plays an even more recognizable “type,” Freddie — the against-the-grain reporter who doesn’t “do” hero worship and is the wiser for it.
O’Malley finds a weeping child (young Dwayne Hickman, decades before “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”) who blames himself for his idol’s demise. He runs into an unpleasant, ne’er do well relative (Forrest Tucker), a worshipful hotel clerk (Donald Meek), an embittered employee (Howard Da Silva), a doubting doctor (Frank Craven) and a droll and chatty cabbie named Orion Peabody (Percy Kilbride).
“There’s always good and evil, up against each other,” Orion opines. “A man’s gotta take sides, sooner or later.”
Whatever the embarassment of riches in the supporting cast, we aren’t allowed much time away from our leads, with a reporter turned fan turned would-be suitor who wants to “protect” the widow, because he doesn’t see how she and Forrest’s fanboy private secretary (Richard Whorf) are whispering about manipulating him and burning Forrest’s papers as fast as they can round up some matches.
Tracy is the stoic he needs O’Malley to be, and Hepburn the smart cookie who skips between staying one step ahead of the snooping reporter, and one step behind him.
The plot never wholly unravels, but the logical lapses trigger abrupt turns of the third act, and invite long speeches about great wealth’s ties to fascism and conspiracies to “stir up all the little hatreds of the whole nation against each other” and the use of social/ethnic/racial division to end democracy.
Whatever the merits of the novel, Stewart’s script is topical and shockingly timeless, with lovely turns of phrase and flashes of the sort of wit that decorated the comedies and comic thrillers of the era.
“Did it hurt much?”
“Did it hurt when?”
“Did it hurt much when Hitler kicked you out of Germany?”
Christie has “the Hepburn role” of the flirty reporter who banters with Tracy’s rival writer O’Malley, although a few of the Kate/Spencer exchanges have a nice flash.
The soundstage-bound settings and effects impress in monochrome in ways that a color production would have spoiled. This feels and plays black and white, not “noir” but grimly serious and downbeat.
Even if the story had followed that first act of steady build-up to a fine, furious finale instead of the third act action feeling so shoehorned in, there’s little doubt that Mayer, later a Hollywood Blacklist backer, would have still hated it.
But watching this film over eighty years later, one does wonder if the message of “Keeper of the Flame” was taken as seriously, even back then, as it should be today.
Rating: TV-PG
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Richard Whorf, Howard Da Silva, Dwayne Hickman and Forrest Tucker.
Credits: Directed by George Cukor, scripted by Donald Ogden Stewart, based on a novel by I.A.R. Wiley. An MGM release on Tubi, other streamers.
Running time: 1:40
Southern fried accent in Revolutionary War Pennsylvania?
That totally tracks. Doesn’t look like much, but we’ll see, if this isn’t canceled pre release.
This August release is mainly interesting because of the way the “Maybrook Missing” children, who (in the film) dashed out of their homes and into the night at 2:17 pm, is being shallow faked into “reality.”
It’s an August 8 horror film, when late hits are rare, but this Josh Brolin/Julia Garner vehicle has buzz and is opening early enough in the month that we know they’re not dumping jt.
And “This really happened” fake hype gets fans’ attention.
Movie Nation 