Movie Nation

We figure out “The Silent War” is  Western long before the Spanish captain has dismounted and shown off his El Tigre, a Spanish knockoff of that cowboy cannon, a Winchester (’92). It’s obvious when the hero steals the horse and the leather “duster” riding coat from the gentleman/hunter.

That captain (Aitor Luna) is relentlessly hunting, on horseback, that horse thief (Asier Etxeandia) through the remote, under-populated borderlands in the North of Spain.

It doesn’t matter that the year is 1944 and the hunted man is a die-hard Spanish Republican hoping to re-start the Spanish Civil War — this time, with the help of the Allies who are nearly done defeating Germany and Italy. The Spanish uniforms and machine guns of the irregulars returning to Spain don’t hide the fact that this is a tale of pitiless murder and revenge.

And you don’t have to show cattle for your story to be a Western.

This bloody-minded last-man-standing thriller, based on a comic book, puts the viewer through a ringer. There’s a little Spanish history, a lot of stunning scenery and lots of gruesome violence and drawn out savagery.

First-time feature director Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas shows a flare for building suspense, an unblinking eye for violence and a kind of relentlessness that wears by the film’s third act. But the man has an eye and an ear for period piece action.

The “ear” part comes from the Spanish title to “The Silent War.” “Sordo” (“Deaf,” in English) is the state Anselmo (Etxeandia, of the Oscar-nominated “Pain & Glory”) finds himself in right off.

He’s part of a group of Spanish Republican freedom fighters, returning to the country to re-start their Civil War. It’s October of 1944 and they are part of a thousand man force of infiltrators, coming in before (they’re sure) the Allies join them to “finish up” — the last fascist dictatorship in Europe.

But their “For Whom the Bell Tolls” sabotage — blowing a bridge — goes up prematurely. Their unit is all but wiped out. Vicente (Hugo Silva) is injured and captured. Anselmo is on the run, with only a little ringing to remind him of what ears used to be for.

Dogged, murderous Capitán Bosch (Luna) isn’t much on prisoners.

“The dumbest part about prisoners,” he lectures his men (in Spanish with English subtitles), “is refusing yourself the joy in killing an enemy!”

But deaf or not, Anselmo is hard to catch. Torturing Vicente in the village where he used to live isn’t helping. Perhaps his lady love (Marian Álvarez) can be persuaded to help?

And failing that, there’s always the Russian mercenary-sniper (Olimpia Melinte) who lost one eye at Stalingrad and isn’t particular about who she hurts or kills.

The mercenary’s arrival is the first sign that this WWII era thriller was born in a comic book. Spain’s Franco sent Spanish troops to fight in Russia –– against the Russians.

Everything up until then has been a collection of repurposed elements from classic Westerns. There’s a stand-off in a remote cabin, a lot of horses, a shoot-out and chase on horseback, random acts of brutality and a bit of honor among foes.

A sergeant that the insurgents capture in the opening scene is freed, and given a bullet to keep in his pocket for the next time he runs into them or people like them.

To “remember (the bullet) is in your pocket and not your head!”

The setting is striking, and the violence comes right up against the edge of “repellent.” And there’s a sense that we’re slow-walking our way towards the final showdown and whatever sadism it promises.

But Cortés-Cavanillas and his co-writer wonderfully transfer the comic’s gimmick — that Anselmo cannot hear, and thus cannot hear enemies catching up to him on horseback, cannot understand what people he’s pointing a gun at are saying and cannot logically sneak up on anybody else as he tries to survive this month-long ordeal.

It’s too grim to be for every taste. But that “deaf man hunted” hook, the novel setting and the Western archetypes parked on the edge of the 1944 Pyrenees make “The Silent War” a winner, and suggest the start to a promising feature film career.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, graphic bloody violence, sexual assault

Cast: Asier Etxeandia, Marian Álvarez, Hugo Silva, Aitor Luna, Imanol Arias and Olimpia Melinte

Credits: Directed by Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas, script by Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas, Juan Carlos Díaz Martín, based on the comic book by David Muñoz and Rayco Pulido.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:02

Tera keeps her black cap pulled down over her eyes and keeps those eyes in a permanent glower.

The hat is armor, her posture sullen, defensive. You grow up Chinese and female in South Central Los Angeles, it comes naturally.

She’s in school, studying business, when we meet her. But her side hustles tell us that she’s out of these kids’ league, a 21 year-old who’d already an MBA — matriculating bad ass.

She can tell the family business — her mom’s Chinese restaurant — is a dead end. Her broken down mother knows it, too. It takes her cousin to articulate it.

“This neighborhood don’t do anything but keep you where you’re at.”

But that one delivery to a back-room drug “lab” will change the arc of Tera’s career and her family’s fortunes.

“Take Out Girl” is a gritty, promising but somewhat flat-footed first feature from cinematographer (“Prodigy”) turned director Hisonni Johnson.

It has a feel for its setting — the cultures thrown together, inter-marrying, absorbing from each other — the street argot that hints at African American, Latino, Chinese, Korean, Filipino as a first-gen melting pot. And it has a compelling leading lady. Hedy Wong, who co-wrote the sometimes-melodramatic script, seems too streetwise, fearless and tough to be 21. This world, it is suggested, made her that way.

She can look this drug dealer, Lalo (Ski Carr, spot-on) –hulking menace and gold grill masked by a hint of Latino gentility — square in the eye and give him the business consultant’s rap about his “problem.”

“No disrespect, but your people? They’re not really functional. They noisy.” As in, they’re sloppy and unmotivated. And their scowls, stubble, tattoos and chains make them walking drug world stereotypes to the cops.

Somebody like her, “Little Asian Girl” making Chinese food deliveries? They’d never give her a second thought. What’s your name, Chinese girl?

“Call me what you call me.”

“Take Out Girl” it is.

The family’s in hock, and Tera’s school hustles aren’t fixing that. But Tera’s supposed to be “the brains” in her family, with her short-tempered brother Saren (Lorin Alond Ly) the one most likely to get mixed up dealing drugs, hanging with gangsters. Which he is.

Tera is the one who takes things to the next level.

Lynna Yee sympathetically plays their mother, crippled by back pain from a lifetime of single-mom labor in a restaurant she is afraid to close, even for a few hours, just to get a break.  Dijon Talton plays Nate, the custodian/handyman at their strip shopping center, the one sweet on Tera.

And veteran screen heavy J. Teddy Garces is Hector, aide de camp to Lalo, the one “watching” their unnamed new delivery queen because — as the cliche goes, “I don’t trust you.”

The film’s leisurely opening sets up Tera as a smart cookie, Saren as a hothead and Mom as a martyr to her kids and her business. Learning her new business is handled with some sharply cut montages, set to drug dealing hop hop.

Too little is done with Tera’s business acumen, there’s no spark to the would-be romance and too many one-on-one scenes play as static as still-lifes. Characters strike a pose, take a beat and ask for a date or make an introduction by insisting you “Check out the white shoes. White shoes!” or share some confidence.

These scenes slow down the early acts.

Odd moments of drug dealer generosity and “little Chinese girl” bravery ring false. All these violent people with guns and she never flinches? Several shifts in tone and the nature of Tera’s work seem abrupt, and the third act’s twists are pure melodrama.

But the milieu, similar to 2017’s “Gook” with far more conventional plot complications, is a winner and Wong is utterly convincing as a clever hood rat, if not quite as convincing as a coed. Suspense isn’t maintained throughout, but several scenes manage a wonderful tension.

That adds up to an indie thriller with promise, if not quite the pace and polish it needs to deliver the drama, excitement and heartbreak.

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

Cast: Hedy Wong, Ski Carr, Lynna Yee, Lorin Alond Ly, Dijon Talton

Credits: Directed by Hisonni Johnson, script by Hedy Wong and Hisonni Johnson. A The Label release.

Running time: 1:39

I liked the “Groundhog Day” Jeep commercial. And the Boston Hyundai “pahk the cah” ad. But those and this James Bond short spot were the only items from “The Big Game” that I sampled.

This adds a little to the stunt bonafides for this April’s Bond film. Nothing else.

“Disappearance at Clifton Hill” is an indie murder mystery set in one of North America’s most infamous tourist traps — Niagara Falls.

It’s got a winning cast. Tuppence Middleton of “Downton Abbey” and “The Current War” is our troubled heroine. Iconic Canadian director David Cronenberg plays a local conspiracy crank who may not be a “crank,” and who has his own podcast.

Who WOULDN’T listen to a Cronenberg (“Scanners,” “A History of Violence”) podcast on Niagara Falls conspiracies?

But the movie, taking its name from the Canadian tourist strip Clifton Hill, is a clumsily over-complicated affair with the odd moment of suspense, a lot of local color and a plot that utterly outsmarts itself by the end.

Abby was only seven years old, fishing with her family, when she saw him — “the one-eyed boy.”

He was hiding from someone. When a Chevy Impala parked just up the hill, he fled, but in vain. Two adults grabbed him, beat him and shoved him into the car.

Abby was too frightened to say anything. She finally told her sister, Laure. And Laure, just as little, never believed her.

Twenty-five years later, memories of this long-ago trauma, which may have triggered a lifetime of lies, deceits and off-the-beam behavior, comes back to Abby (Middleton) as she returns to Niagara Falls to settle her mother’s estate.

She and Laure (Hannah Gross of “Joker” and “Mindhunter”) are to sell the old Rainbow Inn, the family motel on the Canadian side of the falls. The family that controls most of the tourist trappy kitsch attractions wants the land.

“The haunted houses aren’t actually haunted,” Abby jokes to a barfly she’s flirting with. “The funhouses aren’t actually fun.”

But Abby is reluctant to close this door, puts off the entreaties of Charles “Charlie” Lake III (Eric Johnson), heir to that funhouse/wax-museum/arcade empire that wants the Rainbow. When she rummages through her late mother’s photos, she remembers why.

Who WAS that “one-eyed boy?” Her first clue that she didn’t just dream it all up is there on film.

Her sister rolls her eyes, and the new cop in town Abby picked up in that bar (Andy McQueen) is dismissive in a most-un-Canadian way. But the diver she stumbles into, down stream from the falls, takes her seriously.

Walter Bell (Cronenberg) is a longtime member of the volunteer corps that hunts for bodies after they’ve jumped or fallen over Rainbow Falls.

“Do you know what happens when a body hits the bottom of the gorge?” Cronenberg’s eyes glaze over a little as he asks the question, as if he’s about to salivate over the idea of showing what “swallowing a grenade” looks like in a movie of his own making.

Walter has theories about the long-missing kid and passes on rumors via podcast that should get him sued. Abby listens and does her own digging through photos, old promotional videos and archived newspaper stories in the library.

We can do the math. She’s unsettled, no career and in her ’30s. She doesn’t have to tell us she studied journalism in college. “Crazy” is something her sister hints at, but girlfriend knows how to hunt down facts and leap to conclusions about them.

Director and co-writer Albert Shin (the Korean drama “In Her Place” was his first feature) gives “Clifton Hill” a vivid, immersive sense of place. There’s a diner themed as a flying saucer, casinos, seedy “funhouses” so old that Robert Ripley could have visited them (“Believe it, or Not!”) and a few “off season” tourists (It hasn’t snowed — yet.).

But the story stumbles along, never quite selling the worn-out “This might be all in Abby’s head” conceit, never quite playing fair, never making enough sense to allow us to reason out a solution or accept the coda that Shin & Co. slap on it.

The effect is a muted thriller that delivers a couple of good scenes, and one electric one — a late-night diner confrontation featuring an accented local magician/lion tamer played by Marie-Josée Croze.

That adds up to a muddled mystery-thriller that’s something of a wash, one that director-turned-actor David Cronenberg all but steals. And that “Over the Falls” podcast his character hosts? I’d pay to hear that.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, adult themes and situations

Cast: Tuppence Middleton, Hannah Gross, David Cronenberg, Eric Johnson and Marie-Josée Croze.

Credits: Directed by Albert Shin, script by James Schultz, Albert Shin. An IFC Midnight release.

Running time: 1:40

The Writers Guild of America tossed another bouquet onto “Parasite” last night. It won best original motion picture in their annual awards fete.

Bong Joon Ho may be fluent in English by the time this “acceptance speech season” for him is done. The Korean director and Han Jin Won cowrote the script and share the prize.

Best adapted screenplay went to the wondrous “JoJo Rabbit,” and its director, adaptor co star Taika Waititi.

“Watchmen,” John Oliver and other HBO things dominated the TV side.

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/wga-awards-winners-2020-writers-guild-1203488902/

This coming-of-age odyssey is instigated by one of the great cringe-worthy suggestions in the history of publishing.

Yuma has cerebral palsy, is 23 and confined to a wheelchair. She is also a talented manga artist, hoping to break free of the Youtube pixie, Sayaka, who publishes her work and steals all the credit. That’s why she’s meeting with a publisher of manga porn, the kinkier side of Japanese comic books.

“Artists draw from experience,” the publisher (played by Japanese broadcaster Yuka Itaya) complains (in Japanese, with English subtitles). “But you don’t have any. The sex scenes…don’t feel authentic.”

Go out and get some experience, she says with a crass wink. Then we’ll see.

“37 Seconds” is a remarkably frank and surprisingly warm depiction of disability, care-giving and sexuality. Writer-director Hikari (Mitsuyo Miyazaki), with her debut feature film, doesn’t shy away from anything in showing 23 year-old Yuma’s quest to get “experience.” And she takes pains to not let that, with its titillating possibilities, take over this story of finding yourself, your voice and your independence when confined to a wheelchair.

Here’s what Yuma, played by first-time actress Mei Kayam, who has cerebral palsy, is up against. The genetic illness is just the beginning.

Her mother (Misuzu Kanno) is smothering, never wanting to let her do anything on her own. Yuma can take the train to work, but Mom must pick her up, insists on cooking for her and even bathes with her.

Then there’s the boss, one of those cotton-candy-wigged Japanese nymphets with the mousey voice and the popular Youtube brand, to which she’s added a popular manga. She (Minori Hagiwara) insists to interviewers, “I work alone!” But who knows how much she actually draws?

Yuma creates the manga on sketchpads and digital tablets. Yuma meets deadlines. Yuma gets zero credit and very little pay as Sayaka cannot be convinced the PR value of having a disabled artist as her “assistant” would be pay off in sales.

Yuma is shy, her voice a squeaky whisper. But by Godzilla, she’s been told to do something about her “cherry,” and that’s what she’ll do. Studying porn on the Internet might help. But the real research is in the red light district, where sex workers of every “pronoun” under the Rising Sun can be procured.

One characteristic of Yuma’s journey is the kindness she encounters in this world. Flattery from transgender performers, and even sympathy from the seemingly-all-business gigolo she hires makes up for how badly things can go wrong with your “first time.”

And then she stumbles into Mai (Makiko Watanabe), wheeling around with her “favorite client” (actor and disability activist Yoshihiko Kumashino). Yuma’s horizons grow, in an instant.

The most dramatic scenes pitch the daughter rebelling for her independence and her mother fighting back by restricting it. Kayama, a social worker in real life, holds her own with veteran actress Kanno, who makes the mother fierce, paranoid but still sympathetic.

Mom complains about “creeps” and “freaks out there” in the big bad city. But the film’s joys are in the lurid world of Kabukichō, Tokyo’s red light district.

The culture clash for North American viewers of “37 Seconds” is in the professionalism and compassion in the film’s depiction of the sex worker trade.

But Hikari’s eagerness to not let this “sex trip” take over her movie, to not make it all about “How I Got My Manga Published,” leads to some over-reaching. Yuma’s story grows more complicated, and those expanding horizons take her to Thailand.

Not for reasons you might think.

That detour never stops “37 Seconds” cold, but we never lose the sense that it is indeed a detour and probably superfluous to the plot, if not the title.

It’s still an eye-opening, heart-warming deep dive into multiple cultures — Japan, cerebral palsy, sex workers and manga.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, nudity

Cast: Mei Kayama, Misuzu Kanno, Shunsuke Daito, Makiko Watanabe, Yuka Itaya, Minori Hagiwara

Credits: Written and directed by Hikari. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:55

“Standing Up, Falling Down” is a comfort food comedy. It finds laughs in all the expected and familiar places, sentiment in a few more, and reminds us how offhandedly hilarious Billy Crystal was and remains.

There’s banter and wit and stand-up comedy and karaoke and bad choices and sage advice to this “coming home defeated” tale. And if you want to know what a comedy that really “sticks the landing” looks and plays like, here you go.

Ben Schwartz of TV’s “Parks & Recreation” stars as Scott, a Long Island comic failing in LA. He’s doing “bits,” and bombing in a tiny cafe where no one even notices him.

“Ford Fiesta — Why do they even CALL it that? I feel like it’s never really a ‘fiesta’ inside. Right? It’s just a car!”

Do they have crickets in LA?

Scott goes home to Eastern Long Island — NOT “The Hamptons” part — back to his adoring mom (Debra Monk) and dismayed and disappointed dad (Kevin Dunn).

What’s Dad got to be dismayed about? His son’s 34, with no direction and no job. And his daughter (Grace Gummer) is also still living at home — at 30.

The sibling banter is biting, and loving.

“The comedy world’s SLOWEST rising star comes back home!”

She, on the other hand, is managing a pretzel shop in the mall. And “I’m dating a COP!”

“You? I don’t believe it.”

“OK, he’s a security guard.”

Scott laments his lot to one of the few friends he still has in town, pines for the girl “I ran away from — literally,” and rolls his eyes at his mother’s many “Post Office application” hints.

And then he meets the lush. Marty (Crystal) is the resident character at the Whale’s Tail, a local bar. He loves “Jäger Bombs” (boilermakers) and karaoke. Scott and Marty collide in the toilet, where the lush notices the younger guy’s skin rash. “I know a guy…”

When Scott shows up at the dermatologist’s office, Marty — who has no real memory of meeting him — turns out to be “the guy.”

“Stress hives,” Dr. Marty diagnoses. “Or, you could be dying of 30 or 40 other diseases.”

“Are you even a real DOCTOR?”

I put a lot of stock in witty banter in a comedy, and “Standing Up, Falling Down” has plenty of that. We can credit screenwriter Peter Hoare (TV’s “Kevin Can Wait”). But you can’t help but notice there are a couple of stand-ups — one of them a living legend — at the ready as joke-doctors on the set.

The doc has a Twitter joke account — “I’m a good ‘follow.'”

He has lots of great advice — “Regret is the only thing that’s real. It’s why the good lord gave us weed and booze — numbing agents.”

And of course he has loads of issues.

The comic has this whole thing to work out with “the girl I left behind” (Eloise Mumford), and this “voice” thing that stand-ups have to find in order to be funny.

How white is he?

“Wanna hear WHITE? I once bought a Bon IVER album in a Whole Foods!”

And that’s how “Standing Up, Falling Down” plays out — jokes, sparkling bits of dialogue, a few touching third act twists and laughs in surprising places.

Gummer, Meryl Streep’s daughter, has never been funnier on screen. And David Castañeda as the “security guard” boyfriend is a hoot.

It doesn’t re-invent the “stand-up (screen) comedy,” doesn’t cover much new in the “You can’t go home again” genre. But there are laughs, grins and at least one Billy Crystal bit worthy of a spit-take.

And as I said at the outset, the last couple of couple of scenes are scripted and played so skillfully, warmly and amusingly that this one doesn’t exit quietly. It really sticks the landing.

MPAA Rating: unrated, alcohol and marijuana abuse, profanity

Cast: Ben Schwartz, Billy Crystal, Grace Gummer, Eloise Mumford and Kevin Dunn

Credits: Directed by Matt Ratner, script by Peter Hoare. A Shout! Factory release.

Running time: 1:31

Great news! The chances of screens in movie theaters being devoted to the ouevre of Adam Sandler just vanished. Well, maybe.

Netflix loves the Sandman. $240-$275 million, 4 more films is his new deal. Good value, his fanbase is the Netflix Generation. That “Murder Mystery” he did with Jen Aniston was the most watched Netflix original last year.

Win win.

No Oscar nomination. But it wasn’t really warranted. Netflix is a perfect fit.

https://t.co/nCq https://t.co/bHAgj8vJrT https://twitter.com/IndieWire/status/1223546533477539840?s=20

The free #Harriet screenings in 50 Regal sites across the country will be held Feb. 4 and Feb. 11. See what theaters they will be held at: https://t.co/RNAzE2DeVO https://twitter.com/THR/status/1223573985696407554?s=20