The iconic look of sci fi cinema was redefined in the late ’70s and early ’80s by Syd Mead, a visual stylist who cast a long shadow over the genre.
An artist and futurist who worked for Ford, his conceptual art for films gave him a dash of immortality.
“Tron,” “2010,” “Mission to Mars, “Short Circuit” even.
And then there was the Ridley Scott masterpiece conceptualized below.
Here’s a link to Variety’s obit of Mead, sometimes billed (“Star Trek: The Motion Picture”) as “Meade.”
I was one of the few critics to bother checking out Kevin Hart’s theatrical comedy concert film “Laugh at My Pain” when it opened back in 2011.
He was already a veteran bit player, comic support on TV (Judd Apatow’s “Undeclared”), and movies (“Fool’s Gold,” “40 Year Old Virgin,” “Soul Plane”), so I knew who he was — a reliable laugh in “little man” form. But this stand-up special/theatrical release was blowing up and kind of out of nowhere, so I dropped in.
He jump-started his career with that hilarious doc, and I made it a point to review all his other concert docs that followed — watching his Hollywood profile grow with feature comedies in between tours, seeing the “Yeah, I’m spending money on fire effects for a comedy concert — I’ve sold out!” arc of his fame.
He’s spread himself Steve Harvey thin in the ensuing decade — doing TV, a Sirius/XM and streaming comedy chat show with his crew, and “Ride Along” and “Think Like a Man” big screen hits, buddy comedies galore (“Get Hard,””The Wedding Ringer,””Central Intelligence”).
Then he hit his peak, and hit a brick wall at the same time. It was 2018, and here he was, a superstar about to host the Oscars, when it all came down on him — homophobic stand-up bits, homophobic tweets.The Oscar gig disappears, and that announced plan to remake the urban comedy classic “Uptown Saturday Night?” A movie he was using his clout to create? Stillborn, or in turnaround. Not happening. Yet.
His recent marquee comedies? “Night School?” Underperformed. “The Upside” buddy comedy with Brian Cranston did well. A remake of “The Great Outdoors” is in the works, but he’s more an ensemble guy, now. “Jumanji” is rebuilding his brand. And he has a LOT of TV series he’s sticking his name on.
If the “angry little man” wants to re-launch himself proper, it’s no shock that he’d take a shot at doing it via a “my side of the story” documentary series for Netflix. It’s not the sort of thing I’d burn a lot of time on, but noticing all the hits an old blog entry on him announcing “Uptown Saturday Night” as his next project, I was curious, like the people visiting that link.
What’s the status of that project? And what’s Hart doing to tidy up his image, after his very public “family man” image meltdown, his refusal to apologize about the old tweets and one-liners?
“Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up” offers no apologies, despite his publicist urging “humility,” and no real update on “Uptown.” The series catches Hart at that pre-Oscar/mid-“Irresponsible” tour peak — 2018.
We see him meet and try to talk somebody PRETTY famous into co-starring in “Uptown Saturday Night” with him.
“He’s a f—–g thespian!” Hart jokes, as he’s given the “I have to go away and think about it” brush off.
We see and hear him recording his voice track for “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” watch him multi-task to the point of distraction, maybe neglecting his family because of how driven he is to do it all, manage it all and get filthy rich while the iron is hot.
We hear him talk about his college-educated single mom, the driving inspiration in his life and career, and the fences he’s mended with his recovering-addict father. His mother died, and his dad’s behavior after that glibly made it into his stand-up. But there’s earnest emotion in his fervent desire to please the parent no longer around.
“Look at your boy! See what he did!”
We watch the wife (Eniko) Hart’s assured us is “not a homewrecker” come to tears over the “very public humiliation” of him cheating on her the way he once cheated with her while still married to his first wife. Hart spins that as best he can.
And we see the bad car wreck that he had to recover from to get the full slate of films and TV productions he has on his plate back up and in the works.
The effect of it all is a lot like his decreasingly funny stand-up films. It’s all about spin, polish and flashing wealth — the AMG Mercedes, the selfies with fans gassing up his Ferrari. He’s pushing the idea of how “hungry” he still is, but like his “version” of this and Eniko’s spotlight moments of truth, it all feels focus-grouped and safe.
He’s never been an unlikable presence, but when he justifies his manic money-making juggling as “I’m doing this for you guys,” I just don’t believe him. It’s an ego thing. It’s as sincere as everything else in “Don’t F**k This Up,” as sincere and heartfelt as his non-apology/apologiesduring the Oscars dust-up.
His publicist, Haley Hileman, was never able to get him to “take a humility pill.” His sudden fall didn’t cost him much, not like the car-wreck that he spends much of this series recovering from. But it’s still a good reason why the more we see of him, in person and out of “character,” the less likable he seems.
And the victimhood card he whipped out then, the “struggle” he plays up in all this affluence and success, isn’t a good look. It just isn’t.
Comics are stereotypically needy, damaged souls — and the big ones can be awfully prickly, so he’s not alone in this. Every entertainment journalist has “good Seinfeld” and “bad Seinfeld” interview stories.
But if he’s not doing a real “mea culpa” here, if he’s as insincere as he often comes off, then what is the point? This is six episodes of Hart insincerely trying to convince us of how sincere and humbled he is.
MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity, drug abuse discussed, profanity
Cast: Kevin Hart, Eniko Hart
Credits: A Netflix series (six episodes and counting?)
Running time: @31 minutes each.
The reason to mention the sometime actor and director of such violent, lurid and iconic indie films as “King of New York” and “Bad Lieutenant” in the headline of this review is to zero in on the most promising possibility of “The App.”
Abel Ferrara plays the American director of an Italian production of “The Life of Jesus.” The filming of that movie-within-a-movie doesn’t go well. But the mere presence of Ferrara on the set influences the neon and LED-glow look of this deathly dull “app that messes up your life” thriller.
We see a Rome and Milan of tacky/modernist hotel suites, of ancient statues freshly capped with neon halos, of LED crosses and faces lit with the soft glow, or strobing pulses, of a smart phone.
Whatever else co-writer/director Elisa Fuksas (“Nina”) is aiming for here, visually she’s paying homage to Ferrara. Hell, if she didn’t have other credits, I’d suggest her name is a Ferrara construct. Say the surname out loud to hear where I’m coming from.
“The App” is about “Italy’s most famous heir,” a rich pretty boy (Vincenzo Crea) named Niccolo whom we meet in bed in Los Angeles. He’s having post-coital pillow talk with Eva (Jessica Cressy), his grad-student girlfriend.
Niccolo hasn’t mentioned the fortune he’s an heir to. He wants to make it as an actor on his own, sort of like Kate and Rooney Mara. And he’s just scored his big break — playing Jesus for Abel Ferrara (never identified by name) back in the Old Country.
But Eva has a request. Sign up for this popular dating app “for people already in relationships, but curious” as to who else is out there. It’s for her Phd thesis, she says. He’ll be “Lorenzo,” she’ll be “Sara.” Who knows, maybe they’ll find out they’re “perfect” for each other, she coos (in Italian with English subtitles, or dubbed into English).
This is the last thing he he needs, but sure. He’s about to play Jesus, “and a lot of actors have gone a little mad” in that undertaking. His family business is about to undertake a huge merger and his “place within the company” has to be sorted (he’s estranged from his parents). Nothing like a little role-playing on a sex hook-up app, at the insistence of his girlfriend, to get in the right frame of mind.
Niccolo finds himself interrupted, and intrigued by “Us,” the app. Some video message him, teasing and tempting. Another gets her hooks in him with just her voice.
And there’s the head of housekeeping at the swanky Rome hotel where he stays. Ofelia (Greta Scarano) is a tad too attentive, too fretful and sneaky, a trifle more Catholic than seems safe — considering the role he’s about to play and the amorality she thinks he lives by.
Thanks to the film he’s making, and the app, Niccolo finds himself “tested,” in ways almost totally unlike Jesus (a serpent co-stars in one scene), lying to Eva when she comes to visit and pining for this “Maria” woman of uncertain identity who keeps setting up phantom meetings, enticing him with her sexy voice, talking him out of deleting the app.
The poor guy is sure to crack up.
As colorful and pricey as the production values look, the cast in front of those settings is never less than drab. Little bits of sexual titillation don’t alter the fact that our lead is a curly/pretty hunk…of dead weight. The supporting cast fares no better.
The plot teases promising twists that don’t quite develop. A Fellini-esque moment or two — Niccolo being tied to a cross for a green screen tests — doesn’t animate “The App” enough to warrant your time.
Still, give it up for the settings, the tackiest bedrooms this side of Vegas, or those depicted in “Uncut Gems.” Maybe Ms. Fuksas should have signed Ferrara on as a script doctor. He’s made plenty of unwatchable films, but at least he gives the viewer something awful to latch onto. Fuksas doesn’t even do that.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, self-injury, profanity
Cast: Vincenzo Crea, Jessica Cressy, Greta Scarano and Abel Ferrara
Credits: Directed by Elisa Fuksas, script by Elisa Fuksas, Lucio Pellegrini. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:19
This isn’t the Georgia of the Falcons, “Real Housewives” or Tyler Perry.
It’s the one Stalin came from.
So you can see the “Billy Elliott” challenges of a life in tights in this Feb. release.
Stephen Lang, Fred Williamson, David Patrick Kelly, William Sadler and George Wendt are among the aged vets trapped in a bar under siege in this gory, over the top action piece. “VFW,” played straight or for tongue in cheek laughs, comes out Feb. 20.
A sonata isn’t just a drab Hyundai sedan or a sleep-aid meant to treat insomnia.
It’s a work for a solo instrumentalist, typically, in classical music, composed for violin or piano, although there are flute, organ and clarinet works famous within the repertoire of those instruments as well.
The aptness of “Sonata” as a name for a sleep aid depends on your appreciation of classical music.
“The Sonata” is a stylish, Gothic and high-toned horror tale set in the world of classical music. It is remarkable for being one of the final films of “Blade Runner” icon Rutger Hauer. Not managing much that’s frightening, it’s also a tad sleep-inducing.
Hauer plays Richard Marlowe, a composer introduced in a bravura first person point-of-view opening. We see a man walking the halls of his gloomy French chateau holding a candle in front of him to light the way. He stops, fetches a gas can, walks to a terrace, douses himself and…well, there’s a candle.
Freya Tingley of TV’s “Once Upon a Time” is Rose, a temperamental young concert violinist who takes the news of her father’s death frostily. She hadn’t seen him since she was a toddler.
Her French agent, Charles (Simon Abkarian of “Rendition”), is taken aback by her “I don’t have time for this right now” response. He didn’t realize who her father was — a composer “not famous, more notorious,” and something of a recluse in his last years.
Both of them have their interest piqued when Rose inherits his home in France, and the copyrights to his music. The old man even left Rose an envelope. That’s what leads her to “The Sonata,” Marlowe’s last score.
It’s a creepy piece of music, dissonant at first, with a tricky tempo. And in it are these odd symbols, not traditional musical notation.
No matter. Charles sees dollar signs, the daughter performing and recording a celebrated composer’s last work. Rose isn’t so sure. And as Charles gains guidance from an aloof musicologist (James Faulkner) that points to the occult, Rose starts thumbing through a book collection that includes assorted works of Satanic lore (and oddly, Ambrose Bierce’s satirical “The Devil’s Dictionary,” no doubt purchased because of its catchy title).
Weird dreams reach her, old cassettes of some of the old man’s more horrific hobbies turn up. Premiering this sonata?
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Hauer has little chance to make much of an impression, mostly appearing in a vintage TV interview Marlowe gave.
“Music…it’s not entertainment. It floats around inside me…I just follow the voice I hear!”
God?
“Something like that.”
The score, by Alexis Maingaud, is horror strings on steroids and quite lovely. Director Andrew Desdmond and his production designer and cinematographer conjure up a properly spooky look and setting — overcast skies, dimly-lit chambers, a foggy forest.
But the script delivers very little punch or pace to let that creepy vibe pay off. The marvelous, chilling score might as well be a funeral dirge, as slow as this conjuring is at getting to its payoff and point.
It’s a pity Hauer couldn’t have bowed out on a high note with, say, his patrician menace in “The Sisters Brothers.” At least “The Sonata” won’t be his curtain call. He had other film performances in the can when he died in July. As uneven or unworthy as many of the movies he’s performed in have been in recent years, let’s hope at least one of them is better than this.
MPAA Rating: unrated, horror imagery, profanity
Credits Freya Tingley, Simon Abkarian, Rutger Hauer, James Faulkner
Credits: Directed by Andrew Desmond, script by Andrew Desmond, Arthur Morin. A Screen Media release.
Running time: 1:28
That’s not a terrible plummet, more a steep falloff for the “final” “Star Wars” film. It’s still trailing “Last Jedi,” at this same point in release. A big Xmas pushed it over $300 million and narrowed that gap considerably.
Any way you slice it, a $177 million opening weekend with a $72 million second weekend means a 60% drop. Films people talk up and love enough to see, en masse, more than once don’t fall that precipitously.
“Jumanji” is the real holdover star this holiday season — another $35 million. In two weeks, it will finish ahead of “Star Wars,” at least on a given weekend’s charts.
“Frozen 2” and “Little Women” piled up $16.5 each. “Little Women” is overperforming, with $29 million in North America, and decent money coming in from overseas as well.
“Spies in Disguise” underwhelmed at just over $13 for the weekend.
“Uncut Gems” did A24 and The Sand Man proud — a $9.5 million weekend, destined to set A24’s all time box office mark. And soon.
“Knives Out” did another $9+.
“Cats” gained no traction, not even clearing $5 million on its second weekend. “Bombshell” didn’t reach $5 either.
Several contenders that have been out awhile cleared $1 million, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and “Ford v. Ferrari” among them.
“1917” pulled in over $1 million in very limited release since XMas, over $500k for the weekend. “Just Mercy” managed 1/5 of that in equally limited release.
The dashing figure of singer, actor and icon Pedro Infante still looms large enough in Mexican pop culture as to inspire fresh appreciations of his talent.
Sometimes, the reference can be oblique, in animated form (“Coco”). Sometimes, it’s more direct, but not anybody’s idea of a screen biography. That’s where the musical comedy “Como Caído del Cielo” resides, a lighthearted but underwhelming fantasy built around a legend, trading on his celebrity, his talent and his reputation as a womanizer.
Yes, it was a different era. Infante died in a plane crash in 1957. And yes, he “owned” it, as the kids say today. The guy starred in a movie titled “Dice que soy Mujeriego” (“They call me a ‘Womanizer’) for heaven’s sake.
That’s almost where we meet Infanté (Omar Chaparro). He is dead, but in limbo instead of heaven, singing his ranchera ballads to “my audience,” which still exists, if only in his mind.
The decision-makers in Heaven would love to be rid of him. He was famous and his songs were romantic classics, but he himself something of a rotter. “You did too much good to rot in Hell,” the angels decide (in Spanish, with English subtitles).
The angels (Roger Montes, Itza Sodi) decide to bring him back to Earth, let him improve his “record” enough to get him into heaven. It’s a “Heaven Can Wait” remake, of sorts, with Pedro taking on the guise of another womanizing Pedro, a Pedro Infante impersonator who has been in a coma for 90 days, bankrupting the motorcycle police woman (Ana Claudia Talancón) who is his wife in the process.
The angels will supervise his tidying up of New Pedro’s life, which won’t be easy. They’ll watch over him (they’re nude, easily the funniest joke in the movie), make sure he doesn’t go and tell anyone or otherwise give away that he’s the real Pedro Infante, reincarnated.
The fish-out-of-water possibilities here are promising, the sexist old school mariachi trying to fit in without realizing what cell phones are, and that feminism has put women in uniform and changed Mexico and the world in ways that render rakes like him obsolete.
That’s not the movie José Pepe Bojórquez (“Hidden Moon”) chose to make. The culture clash/battle of the sexes/generational differences stuff is mentioned, but never ever grappled with. Somebody might note how out of date quinceanera “coming out/coming of age” parties are, but New Pedro’s niece Milagros (Elaine Haro) wants a lavish one, and that’s that. Pedro insists on taking control of Raquel’s police motorcycle, old fashioned Latin macho at its worst. She acquiesces.
Pedro, given the bare minimum of charm and charisma by Chaparro (seen in “Compadres” and as a bit player in the Eugenio Derbez comedies “How to be a Latin Lover” and “Overboard” in the U.S.), is trapped in a seriously old-fashioned and scattered comedy that makes much of Infanté’s reputation, but shows little evidence of the man who tells his guardian angels “Women are what kept me strong. They were my VITAMINS!”
His transition should be one of shocking abruptness, a “Eureka” moment when he sees the light thanks to meeting his granddaughter (Yare Santana) for the first time, a young woman (great-granddaughter age, just saying) with a seriously-jaded view of a “great” man she never met.
Instead, Chaparro plays this guy as catnip to the ladies, eager to brush them off, repent, reform and patch up New Pedro’s life. That’s going to be tough because New Pedro was cheating with the cousin (Stephanie Cayo) of wife Raquel, Raquel mortgaged their house to the hilt to pay for his medical bills and she cannot forget or forgive his faithless womanizing.
Pedro is chased by thugs in the employ of the mayor, sings in assorted Infanté impersonator competitions, on the street and in the restaurant where granddaughter Jenny works, and winds up in the ring — fighting (literally) to raise money to bail out Raquel’s mortgage woes. Restaurant kitchen pals, Pedro’s mariachi bandmates, Raquel’s family and policewoman colleagues all figure in the story.
None make much of an impression.
Unfunny asides about cell phones, automatic dishwashers and the hyper-sexualized twerk-crazed dancing on music shows on TV pop up.
Yeah, it’s all over the place. A promising, legendary subject wrecked by a cluttered script that tries many dated things, most of which don’t play as particularly amusing.
The silky, disembodied voice of Infante does the singing for Chaparro, understandable, but a little off-putting.
It’s more frustrating than funny, a movie titled “Como Caído del Cielo (As Fallen from the Clouds)” that plays as fallen but never quite getting up from that fall.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Cast: Omar Chaparro, Ana Claudia Talancón, Stephanie Cayo, Yare Santana, Elaine Haro, Roger Montes, Itza Sodi
Credits: Directed by José Pepe Bojórquez, script by Alfredo Felix-Diaz and José Pepe Bojórquez. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:52
The hair-raising moments of the creature feature “Sweetheart” come the first time our shipwrecked heroine (Kiersey Clemons) is chased and swiped-at by the clawed monster from the deep that wants to eat her.
It only comes out at night. We, and she, are only getting glimpses of this Creature from the Pacific Lagoon, Beast from 5 Fathoms.
Letting us see more would be a mistake, we think, remembering Jenn’s harrowing nights spent in a hammock she’s hung as high up the coconut palms as she can manage, or crawled into a hollow log that might resist the talons of the beast.
So naturally, that’s what co-writer/director J.D. Dillard does. His modestly gripping “Cast Away with a Creature” (Sorry, I’ll stop.) fritters away its fright and suspense as it shows us too much. It muddies its spare survivalist plot and clutters its cast with characters who might have a better bead on Jenn’s post-shipwreck sanity than she does.
If you want to know why this ostensibly taut, lean thriller didn’t get a theatrical release, even with rising star Clemons (“Hearts Beat Loud,” “Angie Tribeca”) in the lead, this is why.
Director Dillard & Co. had a promising minimalist horror pitch, but blew it in execution.
Jenn washes up on the shore of a deserted isle (in Fiji), and finds a shipmate just down the beach from her. He lives just long enough for her to shout her name into his ear, try to stop his bleeding coral reef injuring, and struggle with the Coconut Conundrum.
That temptation is the first place she goes to get him “water.” She missed the “Cast Away” narration about it being a diuretic — NOT what you need when you’re likely to die of thirst.
Jenn is a survivor. And in this script, she’s going to have help. Finding a previous shipwrecked survivor’s stash of matches, Polaroids, a water-logged diary and Coca Colas will get her started. Finding her luggage from the sailboat that sank with her, her boyfriend (Emory Cohen) and three others on board means she’ll have a change of clothes.
I love that she doesn’t talk to herself (“Cast Away” style) or to volleyball. We just observe her figuring out food, frantically working out the flare gun that doesn’t flag down a passing plane.
It’s the noises of the night that freak her out. Whatever “It” is, it devours fish — leaving half-eaten sharks on the beach. And it isn’t picky about human flesh, either — digging up the bodies that wash up on shore with Jenn.
Her shock at her predicament leaps straight into pragmatism — How do I survive it? How do I get off this island? — and assumptions. She assumes that since the damned thing only comes at night, and that means she’s safe hunting for its lair during daylight hours.
I love the set up and the setting, and Clemons makes a plucky, attractive heroine to take the ride with. But Dillard goes wrong when he washes away the monstrous mystery, and when he introduces other characters and their back-stories to the plot — late in the second act.
That makes the finale, however satisfying, inevitable in the extreme, and the terrors that set it up not the least bit terrifying.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for creature violence, some bloody images and brief strong language
Cast: Kiersey Clemons, Emory Cohen, Hanna Mangan Lawrence
Credits: Directed by J.D. Dillard, script by J.D. Dillard, Alex Hyner and Alex Theurer. A Universal/Blumhouse release, on Netflix.
Running time: 1:22
This period piece is about a feminist protest of the 1970 Miss World pageant in London.
Keira Knightley is a young mother properly outraged by this pageant and its patriarchal practices, Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a contestant. Jessie Buckley and Suki Waterhouse and Keely Hawes also star in“Misbehavior,” a March (UK) release, a real world event and protest with lots of points of view.
Rhys Ifans is the piggish organizer/promoter, Eric Morley.
Philippa Lowthorpe (“Three Girls”) directed it.
Greg Kinnear peels back the skin to show Bob Hope at his sexist, womanizing ugliest. That’s reason enough to check this British “true story” production out.
Movie Nation 