Movie Nation

Fine art and the art of stealing it are touched on in this one.

The French comedy “L’ascension (The Climb)” is so cheerful and cutesie that pounding it would be like kicking a puppy.

Everybody grins. True love is given its ultimate test. And even if one questions the “sight gag” motives of the French for putting a Senegalese -Frenchman in the Himalayas, it’s still an adorable fish-out-of-water variation. It works.

It’s a heavily fictionalized version of a real-life event. They’ve changed the name, the ethnicity of the climber, shoved in a romance and invented all the dialogue. But basically, the story of Samy Diakhaté (Ahmed Sylla),  a resident of “the estates” (projects) and a member of the unemployed working-poor of Le Courneuve — a fellow with zero climbing experience attempting to summit Mount Everest, is true. It just happened to somebody of different ethnicity and name.

We meet Samy as he loads up his backpack, catches a ride in his dad’s taxi, and sets out for Nepal.

“Try and go all the way, this time,” is his father’s (Denis Mpunga) way of saying goodbye. I mean, he loves his 26 year-old unemployed son and all. But the kid has follow-through issues.

Much of that is due to circumstances. Unemployment is a way of life where they live, especially for African emigres.

Samy’s mates give him a lift to the station and urge him to prove that “We’re not good for nothing (in French, with English subtitles).”

Samy’s journey has flashbacks folded into it that show how he took on this quest. There is this woman…

Nadia (Alice Belaïdi) likes him enough to go out with him. But “What have you done?” she wants to know. He’s got no ambition, no accomplishments and no plans. She’s very sweet when she dismisses him, but still, it’s “Get back to me when you do.”

“I’d climb Mount Everest for you!”

That’s a promise he rather perfunctorily, in this screenplay, sets out to keep. He is laughed out of banks when he tries to get loans, but a clothing manufacturer decides to sponsor him. And FM Radio Nomade kicks in the rest, provided he calls in updates.

That’s how Nadia finds out that he’s undertaken love challenge. All her friends are like “Ooo, so romantic” or “Wasn’t there an EASIER way to get rid of him?”

Nadia is…impressed.

Director and co-writer Ludovic Bernard intercuts scenes from Samy’s family, Nadia’s supermarket clerk workplace and Radio Nomade with Samy’s progress. Each stop along the way has its altitude and location listed in a graphic — “Kathmandu (Nepal), 1400 meters.”

Samy’s lied about his climbing experience and bought his gear at a local discount store (apparently). He has the flippant arrogance of youth about this quest. And what he doesn’t know could kill him, or deny him the chance to get far enough into the journey to succeed.

The grousing climb-guide Jeff (Nicolas Wanczycki) has to give all his attention to Samy, ignoring the experienced Australians, Germans, Brits and Koreans of his group. But this delightful Sherpa, whom Samy names “Johnny” (Umesh Tamang) for all the t-shirts the guy wears with the image of the “French Elvis,” Johnny Hallyday, on them does all of Samy’s heavy lifting, smiling all the way.

If Samy can stop griping — “We’re running! We’re not even taking in the views!” — and learn “one breath, one step,” and every other mountaineering thing he’s never learned, maybe Jeff and Johnny can get him to the top.

It’s a cheesy, cheerful little bauble of a movie where we get lots of second-unit footage of the mountains, but little sense that the actors are suffering from the extreme cold one endures to climb them.

Samy becomes a phenomenon via the radio station’s interviews cheerleading him on. Magazines, the national news soon follow. His romantic quest played up by one and all.

But nobody — not the radio station, not TV or print  — bothers to interview the woman who inspired this journey. Don’t they have journalism schools in France?

The obstacles are obvious and never cross the line into life-threatening. The conflict back home is contrived and Nadia’s warming to Samy in absentia feels abrupt and invented.

Probably because it was and is, because so much of this story is just “story” and didn’t actually happen. Samy meets no mean people, no villains or cheats on his way.

The Nepalese and Sherpas come off as unfailingly honest and supportive.

But Sylla is an absolutely charming lead, a fish adorably out of water. He makes Samy amusing in his naivete, earnest in his heartsickness for Natalie and laugh-out-loud funny as he grumps and stumbles and fails — and stops to feed candy to musk ox.

You can’t say there’s more to “The Climb” than there is. But what’s here is a cute time-killer. Not every movie about Everest has to end with Josh Brolin’s frozen corpse stuck on the North Face.

MPAA Rating: unrated, marijuana joke

Cast: Ahmed Sylla, Alice Belaïdi, Kévin Razy, Nicolas Wanczycki, Umesh Tamang

Credits: Directed by Ludovic Bernard, script by Ludovic Bernard and Olivier Ducray. A Mars/StudioCanal/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:43

So it was “Bad Boys for Life” winning this third weekend in January at the box office, managing a robust $34 million, per Box Office Pro.

“1917” cleared the $15.8 million mark.

“Dolittle” earned $12.5 million.

“THE GENTLEMEN” came on just over $11 ($11.03M Weekend (Est.)
2,165 Screens / $5,095 Avg.)

“THE TURNING” did over $7.3 million opening on 2571 screens, a $2839 average.

“Little Women” will clear the $100 million mark in the US and Canada by midnight next Friday.

“Parasite” is officially the biggest but boutique studio Neon has ever had. It passed “I, Tonya” and the $30 million barrier with a $2 million weekend.

The intense but clean-cut young man slows his Beetle down at an Israeli Army checkpoint on a rainy night.

He’s going to “the funeral” he says. When the soldier takes a breath to ask more questions, perhaps search the car, the driver puts him at ease.

“It’s OK, bro,” he says in Hebrew. “I’m a Jew.”

But that Jew was Yigal Amir, and that funeral was for Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli American physician, zealot and mass murderer who had shown up at the Cave of the Patriarchs, a Muslim holy place in Hebron, put in his earplugs and shot 154 Palestinian worshippers — 25 fatally.

And to Israeli Jews like Amir who showed up on that rainy February night in 1994 , he was a hero.

“Incitement” is a riveting Israeli docudrama about the chain of events that led Amir, an intense, fanatical ex-special forces soldier turned law student, to assassinate Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, a murder that directly led to decades of right wing rule in Israel, much of it by the indicted, corrupt darling of Israel’s religious right, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yehuda Nahari Halevi depicts Yigal Amir in all his many colors — intense, “focused like a laser” on the law, on “the most beautiful girl” on the campus of Bar-Ilhan University, Nava (Daniella Kertesz ) and on Rabin and the Oslo Peace Accord.

He hates the Accord, the 1993 Clinton-negotiated pact that aimed to set a path forward for ending decades of bloody conflict between Israel (Rabin signed it) and the Palestinians (represented by Yasser Arafat).

At home, Yigal and his mouthy mama (Anat Ravnitzki) echo the rhetoric on posters, graffiti and by the screaming protesters they see on TV — that Rabin is a “traitor,” a “murderer” and that Jewish Law has a response for that. The hate runs deep between mother and son. The Palestinians are “ragheads,” and any time Yigal runs into an old army buddy, the phrase “The Executioner” pops out to describe his ruthless treatment of Palestinians.

His Torah scholar father (Amitay Yaish Ben Ousilio) doesn’t join in their rants.  He and Yigal share a beautifully-written debate that has all the fury and self-righteousness of youth hurled against the wisdom of age, experience and far deeper-learning.  Dad won’t hear of “this demonic government” in his house. Mom, on the other hand, is sure her boy “will be the greatest,” whatever he decides to do with his life. Wink wink.

“Incitement” is about rhetoric, racism, courtship rituals and religion, and director and co-writer Yaron Zilberman (“A Late Quartet”) sees to it that each has its moments in the complex portrait of Israeli culture and one-man’s radicalization that he creates.

Amir’s family are Yemeni Jews, defensive — looked down on outside of their community. Yigal is “Gali” at home, but meeting Nava’s family, he gets the third degree. She seems quite tentative about this full-court press toward “engagement” that the “laser-focused” Yigal is giving her.

Yigal’s Mama expects no less. Those are “settlement” Jews, “hypocrites.” He’ll never be good enough for them, she hisses.

The word “incel” crept into my mind as I watched Yigal try to recruit a “militia” to take over defending territories that Israel was going to withdraw troops from thanks to Oslo. He arranges religious history tours that he fills with classmates — potential militiamen. But only his militant brother and a fellow interested in Yigal’s sister sign up.

These guys fume and scheme and buy guns and even procure explosives (from a soldier, no less) for a planned mosque attack, hoping to “mow down” Palestinians, “Chicago-mob style.” Would a little attention from the opposite sex divert them?

When so many eligible women from their corner of the Judaism spectrum are like Margalit Har-shefit (Sivan Mast), maybe not. She’s the daughter of a conservative rabbi, so maybe she isn’t as independent as she first comes off.

Yigal seeks affirmation from any number of rabbis, looking for clarification of Jewish Law and its tenets — “Law of the Pursuer” and “Law of the Informer.” Those are the justifications these raving rabbis are shouting in public for “revenge” or “punishment” of Rabin for pursuing this peace deal with the people who blow up buses on a regular basis. Questioned in person, most equivocate, one even admits “I was joking around.”

With posters of Rabin in Palestinian garb, or a Nazi uniform, flooding the streets, what harm could calling for his death in a sermon cause? Kidding!

Yigal’s mother Geula is here to unravel the “tribal” schisms among Israeli Jews, the “secular” vs “ultra-orthodox,” Ashkenazi/Sephardic” splits that fuel resentment and hatred for “The Other.”

Every tit-for-tat killing, bombing or incident after Goldstein’s massacre just makes their case, in the minds of the committed. The generous use of TV news coverage, interviews and speeches in the film show Rabin struggling to keep the majority of Israelis on board this “new way,” and the sinister opportunism of Netanyahu, showing up at every fresh incident, fanning the flames.

Movies about assassins (“Nine Hours to Rama,” “The Gandhi Murder”) rarely get this deeply into the life and conditions that inspire a political murder. “Incitement,” which swept last year’s Israeli Academy Awards and was Israel’s entry as “Best International Feature” for Hollywood’s Oscars, manages to be both thorough, damning and fraught throughout.

We know what’s coming. So do a LOT of people around this guy, some of whom took him seriously, one or two who figured “You’re all talk.” Zilberman makes no bones about it. “Lone gunman” isn’t an apt description here, if it ever is. Violent words can lead to violent acts.

And violent acts, even by a supposed “lone gunman,” change history — especially when there are people who openly celebrate his violence, or brazenly pretend that it never happened.

MPAA Rating: unrated, scenes of graphic violence

Cast: Yehuda Nahari Halevi, Daniella Kertesz, Amitay Yaish, Ben Ousilio, Anat Ravnitzki and Sivan Mast

Credits: Directed by Yaron Zilberman, script by Ron Leshem, Yaron Zilberman and Yair Hizmi. A Greenwich Entertainment release.

Running time: 2:02

In an interview with Variety,
Carey Mulligan suggests Oscar Voters Need to Prove They’ve Seen the Movies.

She has a point. I think most of the winners reflect a movie the Academy by and large has seen. It’s the films that should be winners or didn’t even make it to contention which suffer tje dirty secret of Tinsel Town.

These people — Carey Mulligan included — don’t watch movies.

https://t.co/4MfqzL96aP https://t.co/05AGILvxLs https://twitter.com/Variety_Film/status/1221219331377254400?s=20

In one scene in the Colombian farce “Loving is Losing (El que se Enamora Pierde)” a misbehavior-prone masseuse (Carolina Sarmiento), prone to drugging her clients so she can goof off instead of actually giving massages, is seen watching a telenovela– one of those over-the-top soap operas Latin America is famous for.

And there’s no difference between the vampy soap and the movie that inserts this moment of a character watching the vampy soap in. None.

“Loving is Losing” is what happens when you pitch your comedy at that shrieking, eye-rolling, every gesture, reaction and burst of dialogue at the level of “La Cage aux Folles” — the gayer, campier French original.

That makes for a tedious and tiresome traipse through romance — Colombian style — where the men are cheating heels and the women desperate for a man, even one nicknamed “Pollywog.”

It’s a leering, loopy bust of a comedy, barely a laugh in it. Diaper gags, sex-play jokes, a practical joker OB-GYN, with singer and soccer star cameos because, “Why not?”

It’s kind of terrible, in its own terrible way.

A not-entirely-pointless prologue shows a cruel prank that a lovelorn little boy had played on him at a kids’ birthday party decades ago. Nico became “Nico the Dog Licker” (in Spanish, with English subtitles) when the girl he adored switched places with a dog for an eyes-closed smooch.

And shutterbug Erika was there to document it and seal his fate.

Decades later, Erika (Liss Pereira) pregnant — in love with a philandering plastic surgeon. She’s still a photographer. But so is Nico (Ricardo Quevedo), and he’s a lot more successful. He had to change his name and all — because of the widespread knowledge of his nickname, but he’s still out there, dating and dumping models.

Who cares if he’s bald and a bit doughy? And if his new nickname is “pollywog?”

His manager Camilo (Iván Marín) is angling to land this Charro/Shakira–vavavoom singer Alaska (Linda Baldrich) as a client, which entails lengthy-kinky Skype auditions for her pervy Dad (Bruno Díaz).

But meeting Erika’s three-kids/just-dumped BFF Clemencia (Lorna Cepeda) changes his life.

And even though Nico wants to keep his secret from Erika  and punish her for her long-ago crimes, he’s ready to give up models to tumble for this once-cruel pregnant lady who lies to him about her fiance. “He died…facial syphilis!” And she uh, buried him in the yard!

The OB-GYN uses puppets to “fake” childbirth, the advertising exec with the crazy wandering eye (María Cecilia Botero) is a special effect (let’s hope) in her own league.

But the rest? What plays in Colombia loses too much in translation.

MPAA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Liss Pereira, Ricardo Quevedo, Lorna Cepeda, Linda Baldrich, Iván Marín, Carolina Sarmiento and Bruno Díaz

Credits: Written and directed by Fernando Ayllón.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30

Yes, THAT Jon Stewart. Rose Byrne and Steve Carell star in this May 29 political farce.

While there’s a lot to be said for “sexual heat” in a screen romance, there’s nothing all that romantic about the slam-against-the-wall, bruising hurry that too many screenwriters (male, mostly) figure is “love language” in the movies.

The ache of longing beats “biff, bam, thank-you ma’am” every time.

“Olympic Dreams” lives on loneliness and longing. It’s a loose, delightfully-improvised romance, grabbed on the fly by a minimal crew during the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

Writer-and-actress Alexi Pappas has graduated from “Tracktown” to full-fledged Olympian this time. We meet Penelope as she weeps into the phone, leaving voice-mails to her coach back home about about how well it’s gone since her arrival in the Olympic Village.

She’s lying.

Isolated, in and out of competition, she is the very picture of the Loneliness of a Long Distance Skier. Cross-country is her event.

Nick Kroll is a dentist on a “busman’s holiday.” Ezra gets a free pass into the Olympics and meets lots and lots of athletes. Because during the day, he deals with their dental issues as a “volunteer.” Kroll, an under-utilized EveryComic, turns Ezra into EveryDentist — a bit of a mope, unwillingly “on a break” from his fiancee, inclined to talk the ear off anybody in his chair.

Every conversation he has with a patient feels made up on the spot.

Ezra sits down opposite Penelope in the dining hall, interrupting her headphone-induced solitude. The banter is awkward, almost-cute and he steps off with all the grace you’d expect of Nick Kroll (“The House,” “Adult Beginners”).

“I believe in you and I’m rooting for you. Break a leg!”

We think it, he mutters it as he exits. “Idiot.” NOT the smartest thing to say to a cross country skier.

Her event opens the games, and Pappas, having made athletic films something of a specialty, beautifully acts-out the anti-climax that not winning at this sport in this event you’ve been preparing for since childhood. She is a loner who has never been more alone than this moment.

But she runs into the dentist again. He’s 37 and looks it, she’s 22 and pierced and lithe and athletic and just as awkward. He seems a little troubled by the patient/doctor line he might cross. So they hang.

The footage grabbed on the run here gives “Olympic Dreams” a real fly-on-the-wall quality that “Eddie the Eagle” lacked. They’re in the gift shop, in the game room where athletes “relax” before and after competing, wandering the venues, watching “skeleton” sledders practice, breaking down the art of “curling,” then sneaking a private slide down the ski jump.

She holds a winner’s medal, something she’ll never have — “It’s HEAVY. And beautiful. And you’re very beautiful (to the winner). I’m sure it looks beautiful on you.”

They wander the South Korean city that was home to this Olympiad and look in on an eSports (video game) cafe — a room full of computer screens and nerd-athletes mastering their games.

“This reminds me of the saddest years of my middle school,” he snarks. She’s just coming to grips with all that she never had time to do until now.

“Birthdays, prom, bar mitzvahs — I missed…everybody’s everything!”

And then they fight — over how tentative he’s lived his life, how selfishly she’s lived hers.

Pappas and Kroll master the art of blending personality with character, so much so that we recognize the actors behind the role, but forget the line between them as they offhandedly remark on this or that and almost never say anything that feels scripted.

They turn a chilly environment warm and a conventional story into something surprising, lived-in, with the glorious romantic ache that too many romantic comedies can’t be bothered with.

Cast: Alexi Pappas, Nick Kroll, Morgan Schild and Gus Kenworthy

Credits: Directed by Jeremy Teicher, script by Alexi Pappas, Nick Kroll and Jeremy Teicher. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:23

Not every Valentine’s Day release is, well, romantic. There’s room for “bromance,” and dentist-patient bonding, too. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Athlete/non-athletic guy twice her age? We’ll see.

The second weekend of a blockbuster is almost as telling as the first, in terms of its “legs” — its ability to sell tickets for a month or more.

A good “hold” — the lower the percentage of ticket sales fall-off from week one, the better. A 50% or less drop is good to great — Pixar numbers. Anything over 60% means word of mouth isn’t helping, repeat business isn’t happening.

“Bad Boys for Life” had a huge opening weekend,$62.5 million over three days,with a big Martin Luther King Day turnout the following Monday. It is on track to do $33 million on its second weekend, as of Friday night. That’s a not-good/not-disastrous 62%+ falloff.

That huge opening weekend will push it over $119 million, all-in, by Sunday.

“1917” is losing only 35% of its turnout, weekend to weekend. It’ll earn $15 million+ this weekend, and should continue to sell tickets up through the Oscars. It will clear $100 million today (Saturday) and be over $103 by midnight Sunday.

The two wide releases opening this weekend are seeing widely differing turnout.

Guy Ritchie’s return to gangstering, “The Gentlemen,” is on pace to clear $10 million, maybe a little more, by midnight Sunday. Mixed reviews for that one. Very guy-oriented, a little Sinophobic (Gangsters are racists. Go figure.), entirely too chatty, I thought. Slow. In the parlance of Ritchie-speak, “a Brexiting geezer’s movie, it is.”

The other new title, “The Turning,” shows that people who avoid Henry James novels in school aren’t going to show up for a horror movie based on one in the theaters — again. The oft-filmed “Turning of the Screw” earned poor reviews and will have tallied only $6-7 million by midnight Sunday.

“Little Women” and “Knives Out” and “Just Mercy” are still in the top ten. Imagine how well “Just Mercy” would have done had they opened it early enough to tally a few Oscar nominations.