“Kindness of Strangers”is a tale of despair and lifelines, homelessness and hope, and maybe romance — in New York City, no less.
Zoe Kazan, Andrea Riseborough, Bill Nighy, Caleb Landry Jones, Jay Baruchel and Tahir Raheem star in this February release, written and directed by the filmmaker who gave us “An Education,” Lone Scherfig.
This looks lovely.
Few movies are as instantly-awful as “Expo,” a thriller your average viewer will be too discerning to not switch off mere moments past the credits.
In a world of A, B and C-thrillers, here’s a D-or-worse one — ineptly scripted, badly acted, violent and stupid in the laziest ways.
It’s the sort of picture where the hero (Derek Davenport), a car service driver being questioned about the disappearance of a teenage violinist he’s supposed to have picked up, asks to be either charged or released by the cops.
And the police detective (Michael C. Alvarez) says “You’re free to go” followed by “We’re not DONE here.” Which is it, Skippy?
A once-homeless and traumatized veteran tries to hold a job and keep his high-maintenance younger sister (Amelia Haberman) happy, which this child kidnapping for the purpose of sex-trafficking is about to interrupt. She was the reason he was late picking up the girl who was grabbed to be auctioned off on “The Dark Web” by a geezer confident enough of his anonymity that he appears on camera to advertise his wares.
There’s nothing for it but for the PTSD vet to hit the gym, collect his gear, go out there and find the missing girl and clear his name.
He’ll hit up his old Army buddies, some of whom are into drugs, pimping, etc., and find out where in suburban Phoenix this child is being held.
His girlfriend (Shepsut Wilson) gives him his bullet-proof vest, and says “Be careful.”
Writer-director Joseph Mbah appears to be ignorant of combat protocols, legal and police procedures, and that’s just the stuff on the surface. What he doesn’t know about PTSD, child trafficking and the rest suggest he is the worst possible choice to make a movie about ANY of these subjects.
The present day scenes aren’t as bad as the combat flashbacks (Shooting a wounded comrade to keep him from being captured?). But none of this is worth a damn. None of it.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence and lots of it, child sex trafficking subject matter
Cast: Derek Davenport, Amelia Haberman, Shepsut Wilson
Credits: Written and directed by Joseph Mbah. A Green Apple/Netflix release.
Running time: 1:20
A Marvel marvel starring two guys named Jared!
Oscar winner Jared Leto plays another Spider-Man foe, in the “Venom” vein.
Michael Keaton and J.K. Simmons are also in the cast of this July release.
Michael Jai White starred as Spawn, the first black comic book superhero to hit the big screen, played Mike Tyson on TV and has co-starred with Christian Bale, Steven Segal and Tyler Perry.
But it took “Black Dynamite,” a “madcap brilliant” (Entertainment Weekly) spoof of 1970s blaxploitation action films to earn him the best reviews of his career. He co-wrote the film and stars as the title character — a “righteous brother” out to fight “The Man” and clean up the ghetto. The film is showing at The Enzian this weekend and is due out on DVD Feb. 16.
We caught up with White, 42, as he finished up a commercial for Tyler Perry’s “Why Did I get Married, Too,” which he also stars in.
Question: You obviously know a little bit about blaxploitation films. Do you have favorites?
White: “The Mack” (1973) is dramatically superior to most so-called ‘blaxploitation’ films. And well, “Avenging Disco Godfather” (1979), that title says it all — that this is real seat-of-your-pants filmmaking. I love that ‘I’m-o MAKE me a film’ attitude they had. It was an incredible time. Black folks who weren’t represented positively in the media at all, making movies, playing the hero.
Q: That genre label, ‘blaxploitation,’ has lost some of its sting since the ’70s, hasn’t it?
White: I call them ‘urban action films.’ ‘Blaxploitation’ sticks in black people’s memories. Some are still sensitive to it, if they’re not just over it. And one thing about black folks, once they’re done with some trend or other, they’re DONE with it. You go to a B.B. King or Public Enemy concert, you see nothing but white people. Black folks are DONE with that stuff (blues). White people are the ones into ’70s-style blaxploitation now.
Q: You’ve got the screen presence to be a new Fred “The Hammer” Williamson or Richard Roundtree (“Shaft”). Ever feel you were born too late?
White: These people had style, charisma, they kicked [behind] and they got the women. Where’s our Jim Browns, Billy Dee Williams today? Denzel is the new Sidney Poitier. We need a new Fred Williamson. I grew up identifying with those guys. I wanted to be Charles Bronson AND Jim Brown.
Q: Who is The Man, to you?
White: That super-rich, powerful elite who are fighting what The People want. But back in the day, the screenwriters of these genre films thought of The Man as this mustache-twisting super-villain. I remember, as a child, hearing uncles and aunts, who LOVED this idea that The Man was up to this or that, keeping us down. ‘How would you know, Uncle? You drive a BUS!’
“The Hard Way” is a C-grade action pic filmed in Bucharest.
There’s lot of gunplay, a couple of decent brawls, and few pithy one-liners, trash talk mostly, from Michael Jai White (the once and always “Black Dynamite”).
“Let me hip you to a few things,” he says as John Payne, New York nightclub owner, sizing up the two menacing goombahs who’ve stormed in to demand he sell the place for a song “for sentimental reasons.”
“I’m gonna bust your jaw,” for starters. His busboy nephew may impressed at the floors Uncle John mops with these two goons. Not “ex-special ops, Afghanistan, street-fighter” John.
“Fighting is the violent exchange of physical blows,” he cracks. “Not much of a fight when you’re the only one landing all the blows!”
The nonsensical plot sends John to deliver some pain in Bucharest after the death of his undercover agent brother, Cody. He’s got to catch up with old colleagues, including the heavy (brawler/actor Randy Couture) who runs whatever US agency has spies there, his late brother’s inconspicuous partner Mason (Luke Goss) who drives a “Bullitt” Mustang (in Bucharest) to blend in, and dancers-might-be-hookers played by Madalina Anea and Andreea Diac.
It’s a bad movie that didn’t earn a real release — and since all too often — Michael Jai White’s pictures don’t get reviewed, it’s more valuable as an excuse to ponder whya funny, capable action star like Whiteisn’t a bigger deal than he is.
Quick (low) paydays like this should be beneath him. But look at his credits.Too many movies and TV guest shots, not enough star vehicles.
Michael Jai White’s better than this. He should be getting better offers, should be a household name. Hollywood let the man down.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, gunplay, profanity
Cast: Michael Jai White, Luke Goss, Randy Couture, Madalina Anea, George Remes, Andreea Diac
Credits: Directed by Keoni Waxman, script by Thomas J. Churchill, Keoni Waxman. A Hollywood Media Bridge/Netflix release.
Running time: 1:34
A big Oscar announcement day for “Joker,” “Jo Jo Rabbit,” Netflix, “1917” and “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”
Nine best picture nominees meant that at least four best pictures apparently directed themselves.
No nom for Greta Gerwig, in other words. Or James Mangold. Or Noah Baumbach.
A better day for “Joker” than for “Rocketman.” No room for Taron Egerton in that best actor field, or for Christian Bale from “Ford v. Ferrari.” Jonathan Pryce for “The Two Popes” is not out of left field, Antonio Banderas was terrific in a lesser Almodovar effort. He won’t win Best Actor, but he’s due — decades of sensual and sensational work. That growl!
Almodovar’s “Pain & Glory” is up against “Parasite,” “Corpus Christi,” “Les Miserables” and “Honeyland” in the renamed “Best International (foreign language) Feature” category. “Parasite” is easily the favorite there, as it is also nominated for Best Picture.
Two actresses earned what I call “Cotillard/La Vie en Rose” nominations — performers better than the middling movies they starred in. Renee Zellweger is quite good (somewhat less than great, I thought) in the drab “Judy,” and Cynthia Erivo dazzled, at times, in the desultory and malnourished “Harriet.” Both films earned two nominations, best actress nominations, and one other.
Zellweger might be the favorite, but this strikes me as a category where something more interesting could happen.
Awkwafina’s acting peers didn’t think she was all that in “The Farewell,” which was shut out all up and down the line. I can see it. Lightweight picture, not a “great” performance. But the optics on leaving her out aren’t great.
Leaving out Jennifer Lopez seems like a bigger deal, to me. Bates over J Lo in the best supporting actress field? Come on, now. Love KBates, but Lopez in “Hustlers” would have done wonders for ratings, for starters.
Adam Sandler’s peers weren’t as impressed with him in “Uncut Gems” as a few critics were. Perhaps the Screen Actor’s Guild’s members remember all the roles he filled with cronies-not-actors in his “comedies” during his heyday, and they harbor a grudge. Or maybe they know a dead-eyed and over-hyped performance when they see one.
I’m disappointed that Eddie Murphy’s “Dolemite is My Name” turn didn’t earn a nomination, but it’s easy to justify. Unless you consider the fact that “The Two Popes” was a lesser movie.
People griping about “Us” being shut out should have been raising hell a month ago. It hasn’t figured in the Oscar discussion all awards season.
Same with “Just Mercy” and Jamie Foxx. I’d thrown in Mark Ruffalo and “Dark Water,” too. But that’s just me.
“The Irishman” pulled in nine nominations, with is about five too many, by my count. But OK.
“Joker” also pulled in 11. But “1917” managed 10. As did “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.” As did “The Irishman.”
So who exactly is the Best Picture favorite, now?
“Jo Jo Rabbit” made quite the show of it — six nominations, including Scarlett’s supporting actress turn.
“Knives Out” got a screenplay nomination, “The Lighthouse” was recognized with a best cinematography one.
I’d say “The Lighthouse” and “Honey Boy,” “The Farewell” and maybe “Peanut Butter Falcon” look like promising Indie Spirit Award competitors. Except that not all of them are. When you put your Independent Spirit Nominationsup months before the Oscar nominations, you rule out the chance for “make good” awards, which is what they should be.
Alma Harel (“Honey Boy”) should be competing with Lulu Wang for best director. Somewhere. Harel and Lorene Scafaria (“Hustlers”) have Indie Spirit directing nominations.
The usual suspects dominate the supporting actress/ actor Oscar categories.
Front runners Laura Dern and Brad Pitt tucked in with Anthony Hopkins (“The Two Popes”) too many “Irishmen” for that picture to stand a chance (and no Matt Damon for “Ford v Ferrari”), and Kathy Bates and Florence Pugh and ScarJo and Margot Robbie are all chasing Dern.
Was Bates any better than usual in a middling movie, “Richard Jewell?” No? Why burn a nomination on a previous winner, then? Then again, Nicole Kidman (“Bombshell”) is a previous winner, as well. She’s the big name missing from consideration there, along with with Jennifer Lopez.
Netflix had a great day by parking “American Factory” among the best doc nominees The Obamas produced it, so it’s the favorite), and taking two spots in a down year in the best animated feature category “I Lost My Body” and the holiday comedy “Klaus.”
I’d give the Oscar to “I Lost My Body,” seeing as how two of the nominees are sequels. “Missing Link,” the Golden Globe winner, is in the mix. Variety is griping that “Frozen 2” was “snubbed.” No. It sucked. That’s how this is supposed to work.
Scarlett Johansson is up for actress and supporting actress, “Parasite” for best international feature and best picture. If you didn’t see “Honeyland,” the Macedonian beekeeper docu-drama, it’s up for best doc and best international feature. Track it down.
Writer-directors Gerwig and Baumbach will have to be content to compete in the screenplay categories. “Little Women” has six Oscar nominations, “Marriage Story” has six as well. Just to keep the peace in the Gerwig/Baumbach household, I wonder?
No huge surprises, all in all. “Rocketman” peaked with its Golden Globes glory, no Adam Sandler/”Uncut Gems” love outside of New York, and limiting acting and directing to just five nominees meant worthies were going to be left out.
Unless the divisive “Joker” blows up Oscar night, I don’t think we’ll see a “Green Book/Bohemian/Shape of Water/Crash” Oscars that SOME people disavow the morning after.
The motivation for “hate watching the Oscars” this year won’t be as strong.
And Spike Lee isn’t nominated this year, so there aren’t likely to be any tantrums. Even from Tarantino.
Who will be nominated, who peaked with The Golden Globes or Critics Choice Awards?
Who will be content to pull an Indie Spirit Award nomination?
And will this be the only time The Academy jams up the schedule like this in an effort to stop all the other awards shows from stealing their thunder?
Brad Pitt is charming his way toward a best supporting actor lock with his acceptance speeches. Joaquin Phoenix doing a “60 Minutes” sit-down may be how he locks up best actor.
Zellweger and Dern, nothing but front runners and foregone conclusions?
Did the Globes get it right, all up and down the line?
A totally different electorate, a much more diverse one, should say “No.”
But this shorter calendar certainly leaves the favorites anchored in place.
Oscars.org this AM and assorted other websites are the best way to avoid the “Good Morning America” teasing.
Remember the word of the day is always “snubbed” on Oscar nominations Monday.
Another top ten finish in the US puts “Little Women” at $74.5 million in North America. Tally that with $17 million+ in Britain, $15 million elsewhere and Greta Gerwig has turned Louisa May Alcott’s warhorse novel into a $107 million hit.
Big women.
If Monday AM produces any Oscar notice, this one will clear $100 million in North America.
In America and much of the Western world, film schools are an indulgence of the children of privilege. Talent from other classes occasionally makes its way in, but by large, that’s who you see there.
In South Africa, in the townships formed by the nation’s long history of Apartheid, most kids have never seen a camera, much less dreamed of telling their stories with one.
Katie Taylor, an American woman working her way up the ladder in the casting side of the movie business (rounding up supporting players, bit players and locals for films like “Babel,” discovered that on a visit there in 2008. She decided that this was a problem she could do something about, and that it almost certainly was going to be more rewarding than a lifetime looking at headshots and rounding up actors for other people’s movies.
“I figured, I could get a couple of cameras and a couple of laptops” and show the young people of Kayamandi Township that they, too, could get their stories on the screen.
“Film School Africa” is an upbeat documentary about that school, its students, the stories they tell from the tough lives they’ve lived. It’s about the methods Taylor and fellow teacher Marie Midcalf use in the classroom, and about how the students use what they’ve learned to make short dramas torn from their lives, or documentaries about the world they live in.
Gasthon Lewis talks about how “God told me to make a movie,” and bubbly Tk Shikwambana describes falling for film school after taking up the study of performing arts. Odwa Nomavuka is described as having an artist’s eye for telling stories with moving pictures.
And we sit in the classroom, watching how the democratization of cinema brought on by cheap video cameras and computer software impacts a tiny film school in a country more known for providing cut-rate, colorful locations for Hollywood studios wanting to make “Bulletproof 2” on the cheap.
Midcalf critiques work with “We need to do an exercise on why NOT to film in front of a really bright window.” Sound design is taught, just a teacher with her laptop showing kids how they can edit in layers of natural sound and effects underneath their footage.
The obstacles here are only the most obvious. The kids zero in on “mob justice” as an issue, because of the violent world where they live. A white South African kid adjusts to being “challenged” by the environment. And the teachers are celebrated for doing not just good work in their chosen field, but righteous work.
“If I’m able to enrich somebody else’s life, I feel enriched,” the white South African Midcalf says.
While there is a touch of tragedy to the story, “Film School Africa” lacks the fireworks and hyped drama of a “SEE what these kids OVERCOME” documentary. As such, it’s a trifle bland in that “Shiny Happy People” way. It’s still smart, thoughtful and hopeful, a film school start-up tale with a lot of South Africa about it.
And perhaps one day we’ll see the products of their labors the way we can see Nigerian or Kenyan films today, all over Netflix.
MPAA Rating: unrated, recreations of violence
Cast: Katie Taylor, Tk Shikwambana, Odwa Nomavuka, Gasthon Lewis, Marie Midcalf, Juan van der Walt.
Credits: Directed by Nathan Pfaff. A Global Digital release.
Running time: 1:30
Remember Paris Hilton? Because you have to in order to “get” the um, “jokes” in the “comic” spoof “Reality Queen!”
It’s about an about-to-fade reality TV star trying to recapture her status in the Age of Memes. And it’s about 80 minutes too long.
“Queen” is a junk-comedy pieced together with a couple of “names” (Denise Richards, John Witherspoon, Mike Tyson), comic and cartoon voice-actor Charles Fleischer impersonating Larry King and not one damned joke that lands.
London Logo, played by busty freak of nature Julia Faye West, is the subject of a British TV documentary in which we catch up with her life today even as we remember her sex tape (“A Night in London,” with Mike Tyson), her reality show co-starring BBFF (Rochelle (Shelli Boone) and her many, many nip-slips, crotch-shots (getting out of cars) and other boo-boos that were a consequence of her very public life.
“I’m a model, NOT a role model!”
“Nobody TOLD me PETA doesn’t like fur!”
“I’m so waaaasted.”
“Where am I? And how many new Twitter followers do I have?”
“Jesus? He’s way too serious. He needs a makeover, maybe a man-bun like the hipster DJs wear…”
And so on.
It’s a deathly unfunny comedy, and staggeringly incompetent to boot. Hunt through the credits and figure out who did the graphic mock-ups of things like “Player” magazine covers, where “Real Man (sic) Have Curves” is a headline, “embarrassing” is misspelled, etc. And never ever hire this dunce again.
Considering another gag was a “Chocolate Mousse” that didn’t go over with her “fat” fans because the packaging says “Mouse.”
“Didn’t somebody proofread it?”
London paid $50,000 for a “micro-Chihuahua.” She doesn’t know it’s a gerbil. Richard Gere offering to pet-sit wasn’t a clue.
I chuckled at the “Helen Mirren Child Trafficking Scandal” bit (just a shot of Dame Helen with a bunch of schoolkids), the “reunion” tour with her former co-star, Rochelle, involving a private jet to hit the most popular bar in Watford, North Dakota. Maybe there’s a laugh in “I tried to cook for myself once. It tasted like syphilis!”
Not that I could tell.
Cast: Julia Faye West, Kate Orsini, Denise Richards, Shelli Boone, John Witherspoon and Mike Tyson
Credits: Directed by Steven Jay Bernheim, script by Steven Jay Bernheim, Schuyler Brumley, Chris Cobb, John-Paul Panelli, Allan Murray, Gabby Gruen, Greg Lindsay, Chandler Patton A High Octane release.
Running time: 1:24
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