Movie Nation

Sam Mendes’ “1917” is a gripping and quite entertaining Tommy’s-eye-view of The Great War” as seen from the trenches of France.

Mendes (“Jarhead,” “Skyfall”) didn’t get his tribute to the men and their sacrifice in World War I out in time to coincide with commemorations for the end of that conflict. But he’s cooked up an immersive, heroic tale that humanizes a conflict canonized for its faceless slaughter and waste, a “Lost Generation” grimly depleted on the Fields of Flanders.

The story could not be simpler — two British soldiers (nicknamed “Tommies”) are sent across nine miles of No Man’s Land and enemy occupied territory to halt an attack that will only get their fellow soldiers slaughtered. The attack’s at dawn tomorrow, so you’d better get cracking, lads (George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman).

Lance Corporal Black (Chapman, of “Game of Thrones”) is determined to save the “Second Devons” (Devonshire Regiment), at least partly because his own brother is a lieutenant serving with them. The general (Colin Firth) picked him for this mission because he’s good with maps, and he’ll be extra motivated.

Lance Corporal Schofield (MacKay, of “Pride” and “Captain Fantastic”) was just unlucky enough to be Blake’s chum, the one he picked to accompany him. Schofield didn’t survive the bloody horrors of The Somme to get killed on some suicidal sprint to hand deliver a note. Medals, ribbons and “a mention in the dispatches” are no enticement to him.

But radios were not yet in common use on the field, and “Gerry’s cut our telephone lines,” so there’s nothing for it.

Thus begins a grim odyssey through the World War I experience — the green flowering of spring unfolding under the rotting corpses of men, horses and dogs beset by the flies of April. Mud and snipers, a wrecked tank, miles upon miles of barbed wire, ruined towns, the fascinating over-engineering of German trenches (abandoned in “a planned withdrawal”), booby-traps, dogfighting biplanes rat-a-tatting above — Blake and Schofield are solitary souls on a quest in the middle of the maelstrom of war.

The camera clings to these two as they stumble and grope, under overcast skies or in the dark of dugouts and tunnels, through the quiet hell of a battlefield half-abandoned but sure to be full of sound and fury again, any minute now. Mendes uses “the long take,” a nearly seamless series of scenes unfolding in (for the most part) real time to build suspense and empathy for our two over-matched heroes.

Because this script is hellbent on throwing every peril The Great War was infamous for at them over the course of two hours.

Mendes and his “Penny Dreadful” co-writer hurl the duo into corpse-covered shell-craters and spooky tunnels. Death comes from afar — artillery and snipers — and very close. Rifles and bayonets and bare hands are what it takes to stay alive. Death comes from above — airplanes — and below (a raging river).

Of course there’s a mademoiselle in distress (Claire Duburcq) to be stumbled over, amid the cream of British character actors who play sergeants and commissioned officers (Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Mays, Adrian Scarborough, Mark Strong) who pass by.

Of course the foreshadowing is obvious, but not heavy-handed.

It’s meant to be immersive, a “Dunkirk” of the first World War. And if it isn’t on a par with that modern classic, you can blame the slack pacing, the heaping helpings of melodrama in the tale Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns cooked up. All these obstacles to overcome, and yet so many longueurs — pauses while the soldiers on this desperate, dangerous time-sensitive mission stop to shake their heads at the waste or consider the Last Milk Cow on the Western Front. Our heroes listen to a soldier singing “When I Cross Over Jordan” and take time to recite a poem — Edward Lear’s “The Jumbles” (“In a Sieve they went to sea; In spite of all their friends could say…”).

“1917” loses its urgency just enough to make you notice and wonder “What are these two doing? Get BACK to the MISSION!”

Mendes gets the blasted landscape of No Man’s Land, the trenches, the kit each soldier carries with him right. The rapidly shifting shadows created by a descending flare make for a striking scene.

But he fritters away some of the tension and the drive of the narrative when he loses the crouching/ducking fear and paranoia that had to become instinct if you were to have any hope of surviving the war.

The “long take” has long been enshrined as a sort of cinematic rite of passage, something filmmakers indulge in mainly, one suspects, to impress the faithful — hardcore film buffs.

Orson Welles had a hand in elevating these long unedited shots that rely on camera blocking, staging, pre-planning and actors who can remember a lot of choreography to go with their lines. “Touch of Evil” opens with the most famous “long take” in cinema history.

Properly applied, long stretches without a perspective-changing interruption (edit) can build tension, when you’re not distracted and impressed by how many characters and how much ground Robert Altman’s opening to “The Player” has squeezed in. We are conditioned to cuts, and the mind misses them when they’re not there. Suspense builds as we expect something momentous coming at the end of the build-up a long take entails.

Hitchcock took this to its logical extreme with “Rope,” a 1948 thriller whose stagebound origins allowed him to “indulge” in making a film of ten long takes — with only the limitations of a reel of celluloid loaded into the camera determining how many edits the picture would have.

But Hitchcock admitted that “Rope” was just “a stunt.” Editing is the essence of cinema, “the lynchpin of worthwhile filmmaking,” as Sir Alfred put it. Cuts quicken the pace and raise the heart-rate, refocus our attention, zooming in, heightening suspense and connecting us with the characters with emotional close-ups.

You want to see a movie with “no cuts” and nothing but long takes? Hunt down “Russian Ark.” Yes, like “Rope,” that was a stunt. Like “Rope,” it’s “cool” but dull.

So no, the long takes don’t transform “1917” into the cinema event of 2019.

It’s still entertaining, a polished period piece and solid combat film, even if its story leans entirely too heavily on the hoary conventions of the Victorian/Edwardian melodramas that every Briton fighting in it would have recognized, way back then.

MPAA Rating: Rated R for violence, some disturbing images, and language

Cast: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Daniel Mays, Mark Strong, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch

Credits: Directed by Sam Mendes, script by Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns. A Universal/Dreamworks release.

Running time: 1:59

Fans of the Brit car series “Top Gear” can tell you when that show hit its stride, and list a string of memorable moments from it that generally correspond with that.

The show took off when the erudite and whimsical polymath James May became the third wheel, joining Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond.

And while their bits involving vintage cars and their shortcomings in “challenges” could be a delight, “Top Gear” only hit top gear when they put these three on the road where there were no roads — epic, breakdown and accident filled misadventures across Africa, Asia, Australia, the Arctic and the Americas.

When Clarkson was fired — more for lying about an international incident he ginned up in Argentina than for reasons given by the CYA BBC — and the other two joined him in taking Amazon’s blank check, the trips were what their titled sequel, “The Grand Tour,” promised.

The show they delivered wasn’t that, not nearly to the extent many of us wold have wanted. Car reviews, gag “tests” and fast laps? Meh. A live audience in a traveling tent? Whatever.

Give us three aging Anglo Saxons coping with the wilds of the world in various vehicles of unreliable vintage, always British and often failing in their special xenophobic ways.

So now they have finally figured that out, before the cast is too old to risk malaria, mauling and other maladies as three flummoxed funnymen abroad.

Here’s an interview with former “Top Gear” producer Andy Wilman that acknowledges that.

https://deadline.com/2019/12/the-grand-tour-showrunner-andy-wilman-interview-1202794405/

A Marvel movie for sisters everywhere.

A bit Russian for my taste, but then again, I’m not Tucker Carlson. Summer release.

The sprints, hurtling through the crowded streets of Mexico City, are a matter of life and death.

Sirens wailing, lights flashing, a paramedic bellowing over the megaphone, “Taxi, move MOVE” or “You idiot on the bicycle! GET ON THE SIDEWALK!”

And that’s just the race to get to the accident scene. In Mexico City, there are virtually no “government” ambulances. And the few private ones compete in mad dashes to get to the accident, fight or shooting first. If they don’t, nobody gets paid — not the crew, the cops who might have tipped them about the need for their services, and who expect a bribe even if they didn’t.

The patients? Often they fight over paying up.

“Midnight Family” is a harrowing and cautionary inside look at the Wild West of Mexico City emergency services. “The private sector” has taken so much of “public” care that it’s every beat-up old ambulance for itself, with pricey private hospitals paying kickbacks for deliveries and dirty cops hassling drivers over their licenses, their professionalism and their slowness over paying them bribes to let them do what they came to do.

Director Luke Lorentzen (“New York Cuts”) puts us in the front seat of the Med Care van staffed by the men of the Ochoa family, freelance entrepreneurs trying to feed and care for a big family from inside an ambulance. Their story has thrills and compassion, hard luck and grief.

And in them, any North American can see a cautionary tale of what happens to a health care system left up to its libertarian, market-driven devices. People are suffering and dying as money-grubbing corruption slows down the most basic of services — saving those hurt, in bleeding and in pain.

Fernando seems to be the patriarch, and he and (I take it) his brother Manuel are the ones who comfort the teen girl whose boyfriend just broke her nose, who pat and plead with a baby, whose glue-sniffing dad has accidentally injured, to resume breathing.

Juan is the mouthy 17 year-old go-getter. He likes to drive, uses his down time to breathlessly recite his evening’s exploits to his older girlfriend. He chews on Fernando to “take this seriously,” whenever they’re asked for their “papers” by a cop.

“This ambulance FEEDS us,” he pleads (in Spanish, with English subtitles).

Rolypoly Josúe can’t be more than 12. He rattles around the back as the ambulance recklessly races down the street, locking this bit of gear down, for he too has a role here. He’s not just onboard to complain about food and the money it’s going to cost for his next meal.

Lorentzen sees elements of the fictional features “Nightcrawler” and the Nic Cage ambulance driver tragi-comedy “Bringing Out the Dead” here, and plays them up. Ambulance drivers compete like gladiators running the chariot race in “Ben-Hur.” Losing can be life threatening. But they compare notes while sitting around on centrally located street corners, waiting for that next call. Which cops are the biggest pain, what was their toughest ride this week?

Accident scenes are chaotic. The cops aren’t there to direct traffic. They’re “investigating” and doing paperwork and hassling ambulance crews, chiding them for not having the right “plate,” the required gear or what have you.

“Midnight Family” lets us be touched by Fernando’s compassion, his inability to strong-arm victims and family members who (off camera, but overheard) haggle over the fees of paramedics who just tended to their loved-one and raced them to the hospital, often of their choice.

But the whole “system” is just appalling, a bare bones service struggling to meet the demand of a largely-uninsured populace and a medical establishment which isn’t just two-tiered, it’s sliding-scale budgeted. “Government hospital,” where you’re lucky if they can squeeze you in, deluxe “private hospital” where you expect the best care, and other private hospitals which sit somewhere in the middle, unless they’re too far away to do anybody any good.

No, you do NOT want to have an accident or need of emergency services in Mexico City. What’s even scarier is how the worst parts of that experience could take over anywhere that tax-supported services are slashed in a “You’re on your on, pal” race to the bottom.

MPA Rating: unrated, limited graphic injury footage

Cast: Juan Ochoa, Fernando Ochoa, Manuel Ochoa and Josúe Ochoa.

Credits: Directed, shot, written and edited by Luke Lorentzen. A 1091 Media release.

Running time: 1:20

Looking at the slate of films stretching out to the end of the year, this may be the last one I am dying to see.

Interested in “Bombshell,” intrigued by what Clint will do with “Richard Jewell,” indifferent to “Cats” and pretty much everything else.

But a “Great War” drama that isn’t about a “War Horse?” I’m there.  “1917” opens Christmas Day. 

“Anya” begins with a love story, and we don’t believe it for a second.

Its moments of whimsy have a forced, static quality, and never feel anything but scripted, contrived and stiff.

But taken as science fiction, which is what this is, “Anya” is a provocative tale of human genetics, cultural isolation and ethnic necessity grafted onto an unlikely coupling and what that couple wants out of this relationship.

Libby (Ali Ahn of “The Landline” and TV’s “Billions”) has dragged Marco (Gil Perez-Abraham) to the ramshackle boat a former beau (Motell Gyn Foster) lives on. She and Marco have married, and want to have children.

But something isn’t working, and Marco’s answer about the cause isn’t likely to pass muster with evolutionary geneticist Seymour (Foster).

“He’s cursed,” Libby declares. Marco was warned that “anyone who left the community could never have kids.”

“The community?” That would be a corner of the South Bronx called “Little Narwhal.” Marco’s “people” speak something like Spanish, and are from an island in the Caribbean given the unlikely appelation, “Narwhal Island.”

Narwhals, for those not familiar with the way the London knife attacker was subdued, are tusked whales who live in the Arctic. Not the Caribbean.

Seymour is intrigued enough to have Libby fill him in on her unlikely courtship, marriage and attempts at procreating with Marco. Emails prompt flashbacks.

She is older and more “experienced,” something she figured out when she (a reporter) met him. Marco was wearing exotic garb which, apparently, he’d sewn himself. He is gorgeous, so we get the sexual attraction.

But they met the day he was kicked out of his community. He has no experience of New York outside his tiny corner of it, no profession.

“How old are you?” she wants to know. “The right age” is his only answer.

Even given Libby’s intense desire to have a child, this isn’t much to build a relationship on, real or fictional.

Flashbacks skip through the tentative (and wholly illogical) courtship, and Libby’s organized, calendar-tracking attempts at procreation. Early misscarriages abound.

That’s where Seymour comes in. He takes a swab from Marco and Libby’s mouthes, and analyzes the DNA these show them. An expert on Neanderthal DNA turns out to be the perfect one to confront what he finds. Marco’s people are a whole new subset of humanity, one unable to procreate with cute Korean-American reporters.

The most interesting potential element of co-writers/directors Carylanna Taylor and Jacob Akira Okada’s film is its depiction of a tiny subculture, tucked away in plain sight in a New York neighborhood. They gather at a hidden (not really open to the public) bookstore, sing and dance in their native tongue, and shun anyone who leaves their “family.”

There’s a hint of Orthodox Judaism to this sectarian world of what one can only describe as “ethnic purity,” where genetics limit the dating pool so severely that arranged marriages are the rule and group intimidation of those who try to “leave” is the norm.

Foster’s Seymour is the focus of the film as we visit him in his lab, where he discusses the ethics of this research with colleagues and assistants. But for a guy so obsessed with discovering and “publishing,” he can’t seem to even locate this “unicorn” island where these people came from. Isn’t there a geographer on the faculty?

It’s a sci-fi “fairytale,” a I guess. And as such, it’s sorely lacking.

That points to “Anya’s” overarching shortcoming. You can have an interesting milieu and subject, but the lack of evidence of a “love story” driving the narrative leaves it kind of heartless. Libby’s “ticking biological clock” is never addressed as a motive. We simply see a pregnancy magazine. And brooding Marco is pretty to look at, and temperamental.

But what could they possibly TALK about? I mean, meeting somebody in New York is supposedly nigh on impossible, but seriously. The blasé dialogue is a reflection of that.

And lacking the charm or warmth the story should hang on in order to work, we’re just left with a quirky scientist and the unhappy mismatched folks who want to bring a child into the world because…they just want to, OK?

It’s interesting, all right. That’s just not enough.

MPA Rating: unrated, sexual situations

Cast: Ali Ahn, Gil Perez-Abraham, Motell Gyn Foster

Credits: Written and directed by Jacob Akira Okada, Carylanna Taylor. A First Encounter release.

Running time: 1:20

Imagine a low-budget movie whose characters take “The Matrix” a little too seriously. They think we’re all living in “The Matrix,” a vast computer program that has just enough glitches in it to give us clues about what’s going on.

Our memories tell us that the comic Sinbad played a genie in a movie called “Shazaam,” we were sure that Nelson Mandela died in a South African prison in the ’80s, “Jif” peanut butter used to have a different name.

And who the heck changed the “Looney Toons” series of cartoons to “Looney Tunes?”

Imagine a REALITY where Internet conspiracy buffs see all this as “proof” that it isn’t our memories that are tricking us, it’s the Master Programmer, or whoever.

Concede this point to the makers of “The Mandela Effect.” They’ve hit on a fascinating hook. Their trip down the rabbit hole isn’t as compelling or suspenseful as one might hope, but for subject matter, they’ve picked a doozy.

“Mandela Effect” is about a couple (Charlie Hofheimer, Aleksa Palladino) grieving for their lost daughter. Claire is struggling to get back to a routine. But Brendan? He’s talking to their preacher (Tim Ransom), asking the big question.

“If there is a God, why’d he take Sam (Madeleine McGraw)?”

When Brendan and Claire have conflicting memories of where a photograph of the entire family was taken, he takes his search for existential reality to that font of all that’s wise, good and factually-vetted for our protection — the Internet.

Before you know it, he’s wondering who the hell stole Curious George’s tail, what happened to the monocle on “The Monopoly Man” and just who or what is causing this mass mis-remembering that he sees people on the WWweb sharing.

Co-writers David Guy Levy and Steffen Schlachtenhaufen weave voices and clips of people of science like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Abhishek Kothari debating reality, string theory and the like, and “Mandela Effect” guru Fiona Broome speculating on what might be going on. It’s very “JFK,” and almost convincing in positing that this is something serious people talk about, even if the most serious are only doing it as a thought experiment.

Once you grab onto the date of the Cern Supercollider going online and an infamous George W. Bush faux pas about Nelson Mandela being dead, you’re “into the multiverse,” without scores of (blurry) Spider-Men to guide you through it.

Look at all the links I’ve posted in this review. This is fascinating speculative science, even if it is science fiction.

The movie can’t quite wrestle the pathos it needs out of this search for a reality where their daughter DIDN’T die. Palladino (“Halt and Catch Fire,” “Boardwalk Empire”) is better at giving the couple’s loss the emotions it warrants. Hofheimer’s Brendan, like the viewer, is hunting for “alternate facts” to explain the “unreal” nature of the death of their daughter, too wrapped up in coding and research to let go.

I needed a little more paranoid prophet out of the scientist (Clarke Peters) Brendan consults. A bit more heat to the debates with the brother-in-law (Robin Lord Taylor) was in order, too.

The effects, because you know there are going to be effects simulating the breakdown of the “simulation,” are first rate — “Matrix” and “Tron” touches.

But the best one can say about “The Mandela Effect” is that it’s a fascinating, if heartless, failure, skimming the surface of the conspiracy, not doing justice to the tragedy even if it ensures that we never, ever watch “Looney Toons (Tunes)” the same way again.

MPA Rating: unrated, fisticuffs, sexual situations

Cast: Charlie Hofheimer Aleksa Palladino, Robin Lord Taylor and Clarke Peters

Credits: Directed by David Guy Levy, script by David Guy Levy, Steffen Schlachtenhaufen. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time 1:20

Variety has the news that a 1969 Harlem music festival, contemporaneous to Woodstock, will be the subject of this compilation doc and history lesson.

Fresh live footage of Nina Simone and Sly and the Family Stone? I’m down.

https://t.co/XZxuROwRIc https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1201516548692873216?s=20

It’s not the overall all time Thanksgiving weekend record, which came from the tens of millions tallied by last year’s offerings.

But “Frozen 2” iced the single film holiday weekend record, with “Knives Out” pulling in a not-too-shabby $42 million over the five day “weekend.”

“Queen & Slim” took in $15, “Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” just under that, “Ford v Ferrari” just over $19.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/frozen-2-box-office-scores-124m-holiday-record-knives-hits-42m-1258559

Rhetorical question, of course.