Lemme guess…they”ll leave out the Roger Miller et al songs.
They’re calling it “Live Action.” So.”The Lion King” model it will be.
Soulless CGI animation of a minor classic in the Disney canon? Bring it on.
https://t.co/0MDpDJ4JoC https://t.co/bCXwvfq0zZ https://twitter.com/Variety_Film/status/1248717527863021569?s=20
How do you make an intentionally cringe-worthy if not remotely funny rom-com even more humorless? By doubling down on its theme, “coincidence” and fate intervening, and basically repeating the whole dull thing as “if things had turned out differently.”
Sam Claflin (“Me Before You,” “Peaky Blinders”) ) is the hapless Hugh Grant wannabe in this Endless Wedding that You Wish would add a Funeral. Jack’s a fellow who keeps getting interrupted by boorish Brits every time he’s about to have a moment with the fetching American “war reporter.”
As she’s played by the Her Hopelessly Hotness Olivia Munn, we get his frustration.
It’s the second time they meet that’s the real rub. Jack’s sister (Eleanor Tomlinson) is about to marry a handsome Italian in an Italian villa — gardens, catered, arriving in a vintage Rolls Royce, the works. But every time Jack wants to make time with Dina the Yank, dopey Sidney in the kilt (Tim Key) intrudes, over-eager actor and Maid of Honor Bryan (Joel Fry) has as crisis or his sister Hayley yanks him away.
Because Jack’s favorite cock-blocker, ex-college roomie and cokehead Marc (Jack Farthing) shows up, blitzed and hellbent on pulling “The Graduate” rescue with the unwilling bride.
Hayley’s suggestion that Jack drug Marc with her sleeping drops is just the sort of thing idiot screenwriters dream up to show how little of the actual world they understand.
Accidents, coincidences and hilarity ensues. And then, writer-director Dean Craig (see the paragraph above) does it all over AGAIN.
This is an adaptation of a French rom-com, “Plan de table,” which is no excuse.
In all fairness, the original cringe-worthy bits of “blocking” do what they’re intended to — make you cringe and snap at the screen. Provided, of course, that you’re rooting for doormat Jack to score points with inutterably gorgeous and probably more interesting Dina.
It’s the do-over, in that cloying narration’s one “coincidence” changes everything — considering various mathematical possibilities about that (switched) drugged drink — that drags the picture underwater.
The only soul swimming to the surface and surviving? That would be hilarious Irish actress Aisling Bea (TV’s “Gap Year”), who gets a chuckle every time she delivers a filthy sweet nothing in that biting brogue.
And Freida Pinto, the other “big name” in the cast, doesn’t humiliate herself as Jack’s ex, bickering all the way through the wedding and reception luncheon with her insecure “soon to be fiancé,” Chaz (Allan Mustafa).
“Love Wedding Repeat” teeters within reach of tolerable, although this cast — Claflin is NOT a funny man, no one EVER gives Munn anything funny to do — and these situations never gave the picture a chance.
It’s cringe-worthy, and then some.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, drug abuse, sexuality, a little violence, profanity
Cast: Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn, Freida Pinto,
Credits: Written and directed by Dean Craig. A Netflix original.
Running time: 1:40
Here’s a jewel, hidden in your Netflix menu and well worth digging out.
“Mine 9” is everything you want an indie thriller to be — topical, regional, well-acted and harrowing as all get out. It may be yet another “disaster down below” genre picture, but the tragic tone, the sense of place and the dirty-fingernails reality of the players puts it over.
Writer-director Eddie Mensore takes deep into West Virginia coal country, a struggling older mine where generations of a town have dug deep and “put food on the table.”
It’s what keeps the dying town open for business, what buys groceries or “liver dogs” at the only diner left. And as an establishing scene shows us, it pays for birthday presents for a little boy, even though there’s sure to be at least one bitter widow in every gathering like this.
Zeke (Terry Serpico of TV’s “Yellowstone”) leads a crew that includes his brother Kenny (Mark Ashworth) and seven others. They’re all hardened professionals that see the dangers of overwhelmed pumps, iffy wiring and a groaning mountain above them.
Shift supervisor Teresa (Erin Elizabeth Burns) has an idea of the added risks. There’s no rescue team set up at this mine. Anything goes wrong, they’re on their own, and she still expects “your whole crew” to show up.
Zeke wants to call in Mining Health and Safety, his crew votes against it. They know “shut down” will be the verdict, and then what’ll they do?
“I ain’t blowed up or drowned in 15 years!”
John (Clint James) is prone to prayer. Kenny has a hard time showing up sober. And now he’s strong-armed his son Ryan (Drew Starkey) into taking up the tradition –“almost 200 years, our family’s been underground.”
Ryan will be our surrogate, the fellow the other miners explain the ropes, gear, “escape routes” and procedures to on his first night “underground.”
Writer-director Mensore immerses his movie and us in the whirl of activities carried out by men stooped over thousands of feet below the surface. Grinding diggers kick up clouds of dust and sparks as they chew into a seam. Sump pumps are serviced, ceiling braces and joists set up and when methane gas vents from a seam, fireproof curtains are hastily hung to keep the blaze from reaching them.
The inevitable Big Accident happens. Some men are killed, some survive and the survivors allow themselves mere seconds to show how upset they are. Then they get organized and follow the plan like the professionals that they are.
Even in the cramped, dimly-lit and smokey tunnel, the performers make vivid impressions. The awful choices facing them are reflected in the face of the guilt-ridden but “follow MSHA protocols” supervisor (Burns) on the surface.
Mensore folds in keening Appalachian folk music laments into the tableaux — the songs the men and women here on local radio, the songs they sing, the lore of their profession.
Surprises may be few and far between, with every confrontation and dramatic moment preordained. But “Mine 9” delivers suspense and pathos, geology and geography, and a spot-on cast puts faces and lives behind iconic “types,” and make this one of the most Netflixable films the streaming service offers.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, alcohol abuse, profanity
Cast: Terry Serpico, Mark Ashworth, Kevin Sizemore, Clint James, Drew Starkey, Erin Elizabeth Burns
Credits: Written and directed by Eddie Mensore. An Alliance/Netflix release.
Running time: 1:23
I have to admit, when Sam Rockwell shows up in “Trolls World Tour,” trotting out his George W. Bush drawl from “Vice,” crooning through a bar or two of “I Fall to Pieces,” I spat up my sangria.
He’s a hoot, and his character’s cowboy hat-wearing country music troll provides a comic kick in the keister for this otherwise candy-colored and James Corden-ized “tour” and lampoon of music styles and preferences.
Throw in a hilarious shot at “Smooth Jazz” — “so smooth and easy and AWFUL!” — a better one at country music, embodied by a big-haired Kelly Clarkson “death ballad” — “They must not know music’s supposed to make you HAPPY!” — and there’s almost enough here for parents to sit through this auto-tuned time-killer.
Featuring a Seussian design and color palette, this sequel to the surprise hit “Trolls” brings back a couple of those pop music Smurfs-by-any-Other-Name characters, and sends them on a quest to prevent the fascist takeover of music by heavy metal — “Rock.”
Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and her adoring aide and advisor, forever in the “Friend Zone” Branch (Justin Timberlake) set out to meet, and then foil the evil plot of punk-metal Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom of “Crazy Ex Girlfriend”). She’s out to steal the other five strings from the Great Guitar of Harmony.
She’s got “Rock.” She takes the “Techno” string from the deep-sea bio-luminescent trolls without a fight (Too stoned?) and “Classical.” She wants “Pop” and “Funk” and “Country.”
Barb wants to hit that one “Power Chord” that unites the world under the tattoo and Gibson Flying V electric guitar banner of “Rock.”
And once you hear Bloom’s cover of “Crazy Train” and the amusingly enfeebled mumbling of its author, Ozzy Osborne (playing her dad), you get it. Nobody would listen to this unless it was their only choice, right? Although, truth be told, she makes “Crazy Train” almost listenable.
So we drop in on Symphonyville, Lonesome Flats, Funkytown, etc., with dips into K-Pop, Reggaeton and yodeling — as high-handed Poppy tries to head off disaster and Save the Strings without listening to a word of protest from Branch.
A tag team of screenwriters came up with this scenario, a kiddie movie that debates “What’s more important than harmony?” and accepting “differences” in music taste, “Violence never solves a problem” but “How’re we gonna HUG our way out of this?”
It’s utterly harmless, even in its subtexts — that hip hop and funk are where ALL music comes together. If the kids are going stir crazy, give it a download.
Grown-up viewers? We’re allowed to grind our teeth on the annoying omnipresence of autotune — occasionally played for a laugh, often a crutch to get our leads on the same pitch — and James Corden, who is becoming a brand name for bloke-who-shows-up-everywhere and insists on singing.
He doesn’t do for “Trolls” what he did for “Cats.” But…
MPAA Rating: PG for some mild rude humor
Cast: The voices of Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Rachel Bloom, Keenan Thompson, Kelly Clarkson, James Corden, George Clinton, Mary J. Blige, J. Balvin, Ozzy Osborne, and Sam Rockwell
Credits: Directed by Walter Dohrn and Daniel B. Smith, script by Jonathan Aibel, Maya Forbes, Glenn Berger, Elizabeth Tibbett and Wallace Wolodarsky. A Universal release.
Running time: 1:31
“Handia” or “The Giant” is a visually stunning Basque fable about sibling rivalry, show business and the curse of gigantism set in mid-19th century Spain.
It’s about two brothers from a tiny village — Altzo– sons of a tenant farmer. Martin (Martin Eleizegi) is the eldest. And while he’s close to brother Joaquin (Eneko Sagardoy), he’s understandably put-out when soldiers from the Carlist army come to conscript one son from every family for the 1838 civil war, and their father (Ramón Agirre), without a moment’s thought, serves him up as cannon fodder.
He survives the grim savagery of the conflict, losing the use of an arm. And that doesn’t salve the grudge he still carries. Three years pass before he returns home, the Carlists having lost this war of Spanish royal succession to the Isabelinos.
When he returns, the winsome Maria (Aia Kruse) is still there and still single. But brother Miguel Joaquin? He towers over the town. He’s two-and-a-half meters tall (over eight feet). And he’s still growing. The priest keeps measuring him.
Miguel Joaquin may be Daddy’s favorite, but he’s eating them out of house and home. They barely make the rent. One-armed Martin won’t make that any better.
But an “impresario” (Iñigo Aranburu, colorless in what should have been a colorful role) comes to check out the legendary giant, and makes a pitch to their father. Martin has to convince his sibling that it doesn’t matter if they laugh at Joaquin, that “people will pay to see something they’ve never seen.”
Mr. Colossus, as he’s billed, can eight eight cutlets at a time and down “20 liters of cider a day.” He has to be the tallest man in the world. Yes, he speaks Basque, but the show doesn’t have him talk — just appear from behind a shadow curtain — all eight feet of him.
They appear before the queen in Madrid, and tour Paris and even see Stonehenge, many of the great sights of Europe. But the younger brother’s resentment simmers, the older brother’s desperation to get together cash to go to America, a marriage and mishaps and quarrels complicate the relationship.
A few good scenes lift a fairly desultory story — Queen Isabella’s impertinent demand to know if he’s “completely in proportion” (the film is in Basque, Spanish, French and English) — physicians hiring the act to study him, humiliating Joaquin with their laughter and questions.
Even that scene lacks much surprise or spark, as we saw it done better in “The Elephant Man.” And while the effect of transforming an actor into a giant is convincing, there’s not enough pathos in the performance to make him sympathetic.
Martin similarly is just there, but barely present. The film finds some heart for the finale, but the period detail, stunning scenic cinematography and generic incidents aren’t enough to pull the viewer into this Basque fable.
The conclusion lacks much in the way of a fable’s moral twist, but we do feel the brothers connect there.
The sense of myth that “The Giant” should have throughout arrives, at long last. Although there are flashes of the exploitation he should be bristling at from the start, bits of well-staged action, the sense of theater of “the act” and the wonders of the time (photography was very new), the spectacle of “The Giant” doesn’t add up to much for the viewer to care about.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, sex
Cast: Joseba Usabiaga, Eneko Sagardoy, Iñigo Aranburu, Aia Kruze and Ramón Agirre
Credits: Directed by Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño, script by Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño , Jose Mari Goenaga and Andoni de Carlo. A Film Factory/Netflix release.
Running time: 1:54
There’s not a lot of audio of the New York native’s accent — unERRINGLY copied by Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove” (President Merkin Muffley sounds JUST like STANLEY) — because Kubrick didn’t like doing interviews.
Think Mike Myers doing Lorne Michaels TO A T as “Doctor Evil.” THAT close.
But here he is, on tape. With Malcolm M., Shelley Duvall et. al…
Tribeca Film Festival is premiering this documentary –– online (probably, as the festival itself has been pushed back)– in May.
“The Dalai Lama: Scientist” is a Buddhist-sanctioned and produced documentary about the leader of Tibetan Buddhism’s lifelong fascination with science, and how he’s brought scientists and Buddhist scholars together to highlight shared ways of thinking, philosophizing and looking at the world.
These “dialogues” involve leaders in everything from physics and neuroscience to quantum computation and psychology summoned to an audience with the Dalai Lama, public discussions (videotaped) going back decades.
Scientist after scientist speaks about the stereotype he (almost all are men) had in their mind about what this meeting and chat would be like — a mystical religious figure from the Far East, “transcendental…inscrutable,” a man who claims (the film leaves no room for doubt on this) to be the reincarnated Dalai Lama, chatting about atoms, The Big Bang Theory and the mind.
The credentialed experts all profess to be impressed, and if there’s one overriding positive message of “The Dalai Lama: Scientist” it’s the celebration of lifelong learning. Since childhood, the Lama says he’s been curious about the world, tinkering by taking apart his toys, challenging his tutors about cosmology and the like once he was selected to be the leader of Tibetan Buddhism. He makes observations and asks questions of the scientists of a caliber that don’t embarrass him. And he seeks common ground — places where Buddhist teachings (at least under his regime) jibe with The Scientific Method.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner muses that he might have been an electrician or some sort of engineer had fate not intervened. With that laugh and that curiosity, he’d have been a helluva talk show host.
But this Buddhist-sanctioned hagiography, using animated and news footage flashbacks, complete with history of every Chinese assault on Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s reputation, puts you on your guard early on.
As a teen, he visited a Chinese hydro project in the early 1950s. He asked questions there, he recalls.
“I think I was the only person there who fully understood how it works.”
Say what? Where’ve we heard that, on a daily basis, over the past four years?
Try to verify some of the claims made here, the Power Point connections between science’s view of how the universe began and how it works and how, “Hey, that’s what the Buddha/BUDDHISM teaches” connects to that, and every online search leads you to some officially sanctioned Buddhist website, some of the pieces written by Uma Thurman’s dad (highest ranking American Buddhist).
I kept thinking of Michael Constantine’s character in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Magically, EVERY thing in science is verifiable by Buddhist teachings.
So take a lot of what this dry, somewhat pedantic film asserts with a grain of salt. Or two. He seems like a decent man, and there’s genuine research grappling with how the mind functions under Buddhist meditation and the psychology of compassion, which has long been his Message to the World.
But “Scientist” comes off as something of an over-reach. Dawn Gifford Engle’s film never, for more than a few seconds, lets us forget how self-serving it is. Its many “See? Buddhism has the same answers, Buddhism has ALL the answers” moments feel contrived. However benign the intent — getting science added to monastery curricula, turning out Buddhist science teachers for India and Asia — there’s still self-serving lily-gilding going on here.
And while “Deep thinkers meet and discuss deep thinking” feels like a more accurate title, getting that to fit on a DVD box was always going to be a graphic design challenge.
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Cast: The Dalai Lama, David Bohm, Paul Ekman, Steven Chu, Arthur Zajonc, Francisco Varela
Credits: Directed by Dawn Gifford Engle. A Gravitas release.
Running time: 1:34
A huge chain that grew and grew and had no plan for facing the unfaceable.
Or might bankruptcy be a dodge to get out of leases, etc? As happened the LAST time North America shed thousands of theaters, back in 2000?
I would not put it past AMC.
This long shutdown — even if they’re not paying salaries — is going to cripple virtually every cinema chain. This one is particularly vulnerable.
Beanie Feldstein, Emma Thompson, Chris O’Dowd, Paddy Considine, based on Caitlan Moran’s novel of reinvention and rock/pop culture.
Bloody delightful, innit?
May 8, from IFC — of course!
We throw that phrase “Hallmark Movie” around like it’s a sweeping indictment, as if all comfort food romances and tear-jerkers were set at Christmas, or any film rated PG or PG-13 should simply be consigned to its own cable channel and forgotten.
But it’s a descriptor that needn’t carry all those connotations. Every now and then, a “Lost Husband” comes along, tells a simple story simply, with good actors and a director who know the virtues of having a light touch.
“The Lost Husband,” based on a Katherine Center novel, plays like the good pilot of a family-friendly TV series, a breakout for a couple of criminally-underused players, and rides the considerable charms of Josh Duhamel all the way to the finish line.
It’s a “fish out of water” dramedy about a widowed mom (Leslie Bibb) from Houston who takes her two kids and moves to a farm to get re-acquainted with the estranged aunt (Nora Dunn) she lost touch with long ago.
Libby’s putting on a brave front in that minivan, but the the wound is fresh, one she can help but cover in euphemisms. She “lost” her husband. A nosy and tactless feed store clerk (Herizen F. Guardiola) wants to know “where?” And of course, “How?”
“He’s just gone!”
Aunt Jean is the bluff, no-nonsense type. Never married her late “husband,” kept the farm. Libby has no money and no plan, which allows Jean to make her move.
“We don’t call’em pets. On a farm, they’re animals, and they all have a job!”
She railroads Libby into “her” plan. Her hired man “will teach you how to run the farm.”
“But it’s NEW Years’!”
“No holidays on a farm.”
Libby may be desperate, but she’s scrambling for an escape clause as she’s “not cut out for this.” And that “farm manager” is awfully quick to agree.
Here’s where “The Lost Husband” leaps from “OK, sure” to “I’m all in.” Duhamel is the very picture of gruff, dismiss-with-his-mouth-full charm as James O’Connor. We know the character’s function in all this — put the city girl down as he shows her the animals, be the manly “stick up for yourself” presence in her kid’s life, teach “skills to help’em survive the Apocalypse” and make all the other women jealous at the attention he pays Libby, at the very moment she most needs it.
If you’ve never seen him in this guise — the classic “romantic lead” in “Life as We Know It,” “Safe Haven” — bearded, gruff and cute — you’ll wonder where he’s been all these years. Hollywood doesn’t do romances or rom-coms, not much and not anymore. He’s been wasted in thrillers and garbage “Transformers” movies, when he should have been bearded and twinkling in movies and series like this.
The money moment — teaching libby how to milk the goats. She hears him singing, half-under his breath, and he flat-out tells her, “You gotta SING to’em.”
Oh no. Not happening. OK. Maybe. Eventually. When Libby finds her song and sings to the goats, picking Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” to sing to the Nubians and La Manchas (goats) may be entirely too “on-the-nose.” But it’s perfect, and almost poignant as the film comes out a week after Withers’ death.
“The Lost Husband” takes on “forgive yourself” and “talk to your dead husband” messaging, as that impertinent cashier (Guardiola) turns out to have some California (psychic mumbo jumbo) about her, and her drawling, “I do hugs” dad (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) happens to be Aunt Jean’s longterm suitor.
There’s “closure” coming from big secrets about what was “lost” and Libby’s connection with her mom (Sharon Lawrence).
But the lightly abrasive way Bibb and Duhamel connect and the hurt hanging over most everybody lift this predictable dramedy out of the goat corral, pig pen and barn and into something perfectly serviceable and sweet and a cut or three above what you find on The Hallmark Channel.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some suggestive references
Cast: Leslie Bibb, Josh Duhamel, Nora Dunn, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Herizen F. Guardiola
Credits: Written and directed by Vicky Wight, based on a novel by Katherine Center. A Blue Fox release.
Running time: 1:48
Movie Nation 