Yes, we all knew director John Ford was at work, running a photographic unit on the middle of the battle.
But deadline.com reminds us it was even more harrowing than the sequences he is depicted in the movie portray.
As It Turns Out, ‘Midway’s Bravura John Ford Moment Was Understated https://t.co/YfLAbm33rB https://t.co/zYgqPPFhM9 https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1194647877059923970?s=20
What do the limp holiday romance “Last Christmas” and the potentially romantic thriller “The Good Liar” have in common?
Both films are built on revelations that aren’t the “BIG REVEALS” the filmmakers were hoping for. And both hinge on relationships that have the frosted feel of unreality to them.
At least “Liar,” based on the Nicholas Searle novel, serves up the pleasures of two of Britain’s finest co-starring and carrying a movie at the stage of their careers when supporting roles make up the bulk of their work. They give us flashes of gusto, here and there, as this Bill Condon (“Kinsey,” “Dreamgirls”) film skips towards a third act in which the whole of what came before is pretty much undone.
Ian McKellen has the title role, and the early moments — beginning under the credits — show him and Helen Mirren as two lonely, seemingly well-off seniors (OAPs, “old age pensioners” as they say in the UK) making a love connection via “Distinctive Dating,” a matchmaking website.
It’s 2009, we are told, and each click their checkboxes — “Non smoker,” “Don’t drink” — we see him taking another drag off his cigarette and her sipping a pinot grigio. Yes, we all fib on such websites.
“Brian” and “Estelle” meet for dinner, with diplomatic pleasantries (she’s knocking back a martini) and — in short order — tiny confessions. He holds honesty as of paramount import, and there’s been “a deception on my part.” His real name is Roy.
Not to worry. Dating websites invite white lies. Her real name is Betty. Can’t let that stand in the way of romance, can we?
But as we follow Roy, we see the fake name is merely the tip of the iceberg. He’s got this big business deal with “Russians seeking to join the English Investor class.” Something to do with a fast overseas real estate flip. There are backers who’ve been invited to participate. Roy and partner Vincent (Jim Carter of “Downton Abbey”) lay it all out.
We don’t have to be told this is “dodgy” to know this is dodgy. And as you look at all of those assembled for this bank transfer business, the moviegoers’ mind weighs just one question.
“Who, exactly, is the ‘mark,’ in this con?”
That, unfortunately, spills too easily over to the romantic side of the story. Roy gallops down the street, only to affect a limp when he staggers into his dinners and other meetings with Betty. He finds himself invited to stay over, regards her suburban tract house with disdain every time her back is turned, even as he, to all intents and purposes, abruptly moves in.
It’s not just her scholar grandson (Russell Tovey) who is instantly suspicious. Because for all Roy’s twinkling, there’s something about Betty’s haste in inviting him to stay, the passive nature of the character, her willingness to hear any proposal, that instantly alters the dynamic to the viewer.
You can’t help but wonder, again, “Who is the mark and who the hustler?”
The performances and the stakes involved keep us engaged as we’re shown the depths of Roy’s deception and just how ruthless he can be. McKellen has always made a great villain, and this fellow is one of his most interesting — dapper, charming, cunning and quick on his feet when “the game” is afoot.
Mirren’s role is so underwritten and underplayed early on that we can’t help but leap ahead in guessing why she’s top billed. She has her scenes and some delicious moments. Later.
Then the third act arrives, and the flashbacks — long narrated anecdotes — take over. They revisit the distant past, serve up differing versions of that past and how it relates to who and what Roy is today, and just how shocked Betty will be at the admissions.
There’s one clever bit of business in all that. But for the most part, the picture’s believability falls to pieces here. The hustles stopped being cute earlier, and the denouement pummels the picture into something grimmer.
And “The Good Liar” lapses into being “The Poor” one in a movie that’s become both more far-fetched and utterly conventional.
MPAA Rating: R for some strong violence, and for language and brief nudity
Cast: Helen Mirren, Ian McKellen, Jim Carter and Russell Tovey
Credits: Directed by Bill Condon. script by Jeffrey Hatcher, based on the Nicholas Searle novel. A Warner Brothers/New Line release.
Running time: 1:49
Every August, the world’s greatest pickers, strummers and fiddlers of “Old Time” and bluegrass music gather in Galax, Virginia, to compete, perform, jam through the night and drink corn liquor out of Mason jars.
It’s called the Old Fiddler’s Convention, and it is the Bayreuth of Bluegrass, one of the the longest running music festivals of its kind.
But for her gloriously tuneful documentary on it, filmmaker Julie Simone and Co. focused on young fiddlers, flat-pickers, mandolinists and virtuosos of the upright bass.
“Fiddlin'” is about tradition, a dying way of life, a small Southern town that’s lost the textile and furniture manufacturing the were its lifeblood for decades, but clung to its music. The film’s focus eventually settles on showing us a genre of string music that just like classical music, puts great stock in passing down its repertoire, musicianship and performance style, generation to generation, face to face.
Simone and her crew camped out at the 80th edition of the convention, back in 2015. And from the looks of the film, they began with no clear idea of who to focus on, just determined to get a lot of music on film, and musicians talking about it.
Touch on the history. Aim for inclusion, reaching out to old timers and youngsters, old men and boys, young women and girls, a lesbian flat-picker and a black ex-NFL player who has taken up the mandolin.
“Fiddlin'” gets at the difference between “old time” music, with its Scots-Irish and African roots, and the “fancy” offshoot popularized by Bill Monroe and generations that came after him — bluegrass. The schism between the two, good-natured as it is, hath not healed.
“If God had meant for people to play bluegrass,” one picker grins and growls, “he’d have put their fingernails on th’other side of their fingers!”
As with most documentaries, a story eventually makes itself clear and the movie sets to telling it in its latter acts.
Galax may have lost its industry, but the instrument makers who have long made it their base of operations have grown world famous, their guitars, violins, mandolins and banjoes coveted by everybody in Nashville, and found a global customer base, including Eric Clapton. A generation of luthiers like Wayne Henderson and Tom Barr have begun passing down what they know to their children.
Similarly, the generation of performers who learned the 200 year-old style of music from relatives and others they crossed pathso with are making it their business to ensure a new generation is there to take their place.
And the result, Simone’s team discovered, was several schoolbuses full of old time and bluegrass prodigies. Kids like Ivy Phillips and Presley Barker, Kitty Amaral and Eli Wildman have gotten hooked and taken to their instruments with the passion of fanatics. Through conventions like this one, personal encounters with legends and Youtube’s treasure trove of archived performances, the kids have mastered the music much younger than their forebears.
The performances here, gathered mostly at campsite jam sessions, under the various meet-and-pick tents all over Felts Park in Galax, or on the stages there, are just jaw dropping.
The convention lures some 1400 competitors to battle for blue ribbons in music and flat-footing, the Appalachian clogging dance style that old time music was invented to be danced to.
And some 40,000 spectators come to hear, sing, flat-foot and maybe even whip out their spoons to play along.
“Fiddlin’s” message of inclusion points mostly to the growing foothold young women have gained in this very traditional, very white and male-dominated form of music, music that reflects “the first American frontier,” where Scots-Irish farmers moved after coastal America had already been settled.
But the film also does a decent job of capturing the music’s centuries-old connection to a place, to this being the music of working class folk who have played through prosperity and hard times, clinging to a passion that they seem tickled to share with those just now plunging into it with them.
MPAA Rating: unrated
Cast: Ivy Phillips, Presley Barker, Kitty Amaral, Wayne Henderson, Jon Lohman, Samantha Amburgey, Martha Spencer, Jake Krack, Ronald L. Tuck and Eli Wildman
Credits: Directed by Julie Simone, script by Janice Hampton, Julie Simone, Vicki Vlassic. A Utopia Release.
Running time: 1:32
As weighty as a snowflake, and just as prone to turn to mush at room temperature, “Let It Snow” is a holiday comedy that sits right in Netflix’s wheelhouse.
It’s a teen-rom comedy, cast with winning smiles like Odeya Rush, Isabela Merced and Shameik Moore, who was the voice of young Spidey in “Into the Spider-Verse.”
It’s centered around a blizzard, and an off-the-hook party, which must be supplied with beer, no matter which bullies you have to steal it from.
There’s plenty of “What the kids are listening to these days” pop in the soundtrack, tunes by Black Caviar, Illuminati Hotties, a cover of The Waterboys, as well as a heaping helping of those teen titans, The Rolling Stones.
But all it does is demonstrate how much the acquisitions folks at Netflix have raised the floor in this genre. They throw that cast and those elements at the screen, screenwriters who had a hand in “Office Christmas Party,” “Pitch Perfect 3” and “Finding Dory,” and if they can’t transcend the trite and the treacly, at least they spend enough to avoid the label “unwatchable.”
I was reading a rare disappointed comment about the film on IMDb. “It’s not as good as the book,” “A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle,” she fumed.
SHE’s disappointed? What about the REST of us? I mean, this cut-and-paste job was based on a BOOK?
The screenplay the writers’ pieced together follows three main threads converging on the teen hangout in Laurel, Illinois (actually Brantford, Ontario).
There’s Julie, played by Isabel Merced, the big screen “Dora the Explorer,” off to the big city to find that one missing figurine that will make her Mom’s elf village complete. On the commuter train home, she runs into an R & B star (Moore) who dodged the tour bus after a Chicago radio appearance.
“Oh my GOD, was that STUART BALE?”
“I really don’t care.”
That’s the nub of their “meet cute,” he’s a shy, lighting charming “pretty important person” (he jokes). She is…underwhelmed.
They’ll get off together at her home town, and duck into Waffle Town, which has aptly lost the “W”” from its sign.
“Say it aloud. AWFUL Town!”
That’s where short order cook Keon, aka DJ K*Pow$ (Jacob Batalon) hopes to host a party that launches his DJing career.
Waitress Dorrie (Liv Hewson of “Santa Clarita Diet” and “Before I Fall”) is all agog — not because the singer’s shown up, but because this dance team member (Anna Akana) she TOTALLY had a fling with has shown up. For waffles.
It’s also where Jeb (Mason Gooding) is hanging out with…oh my GOD — Madison (Hallea Jones). That drives Jeb’s alleged girlfriend Addie (Rush, of “Goosebumps”) batty.
She’s desperate enough to hitch a ride with the loon in the tinfoil suit (Joan Cusack) who drives the town tow truck through the snow to get her there.
Meanwhile, Keon’s pal Tobin (Mitchell Hope) has been assigned the beer run. He’s distracted by his futile efforts to move out of “the friend zone” with Angie (Kiernan Shipka, of “Mad Men”). But she’s distracted by the tall, cute and totally “woke” JP — home on break. No, Tobin is “not at ALL jealous of the enlightened, broomball meditating college boy.”
“Let it Snow” is a picture where little bits here and there, land — gags, one-liners.
The only relationship with any snap to it is the Julie/Soul Singer Stuart one. It starts out aloof and only turns awkward when she introduces him to her mom (Andrea de Oliveira) — “You look like that singer. He smiles like he’s holding in a fart!” — and grandpa (Victor Rivers).
“I Googled you. You grab your crotch a lot!”
As a general rule, the performers are chipper, cute and bland.
The funniest moment is a multi-denominational, SUPER politically correct holiday pageant at the church, and the most cringe-worthy is an organ duet by two of the principals of The Waterboys’ “Whole of the Moon.”
A car chase on snow that kills a beloved ancient station wagon — “She died doing what she loved. Getting really bad gas mileage!” A little lecture from the tinfoil lady about being obsessed with your social media life, via cellphone.
“It’s like standing on a whale, fishing for minnows!”
Another profundity?
“Snow hides a lot. It’s like the Spanx of weather!”
None of it adds up to much, but throwing a lot of cute actors and funny lines at the wall means “Let It Snow” isn’t a complete bust.
MPAA Rating:PG-13 for crude sexual material, strong language, and teen partying
Cast: Isabela Merced, Shameik Moore, Odeya Rush, Kiernan Shipka, Liv Hewson, Jacob Batalon, Mitchell Hope and Joan Cusack.
Credits: Directed by Luke Snellin, script by Kay Cannon, Laura Solon and Victoria Strouse, based on the novel “A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle” by John Green, Lauren Myracle and Maureen Johnson. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:33
“Hate the disease, not the diseased.”
That’s a hard message to massage when you’re making a movie about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Movies about “psycho vets” oversimplify the illness and amplify its most dangerous and anti-social symptoms.
It’s hard not to hate Hank Peck in “Mickey and the Bear.” James Badge Dale plays this swaggering, hard-drinking, war-stories-to-tell bullying life of the party in Anaconda, Montana.
The cops don’t mind picking him up. He’ll tell them stories about his Marine Corps service, funny anecdotes and hairy moments from “the Second Battle of Fallujah.”
The bars still let him drink there. As much as he wants. He’s a veteran. Hell, he’s widowed, too.
No, he can’t hold a job. There seems no end to the things that trigger him. Any number of subjects are off limits — his late wife, happy family memories.
“I’m not having this conversation.”
And the person living at ground zero with this ticking time bomb is his smart, pretty and trapped caregiver, the one who picks him up after a bender, gets him dressed for bed after he’s passed out in the shower — his teenage daughter, Mickey.
How smart? Mickey’s doing well in school, considering college and holding down an after school job working with a taxidermist. Studying marine biology in San Diego is damned tempting.
How pretty? Her immature, hormonal high school beau (Ben Rosenberg) is already making plans, with that promotion at his daddy’s business letting him dream big — “a motorcycle” he can “put you and them babies on it.” He knows this is his peak moment, and he’d love her to believe it’s hers.
Camila Morrone gives a lovely, understated turn in this coming-of-age tale, a just-turned-18 daughter struggling to control her won’t-visit-his-doctor dad, to manage her impulsive doofus boyfriend who steals her daddy’s oxycontin, and embrace her own ambitions.
How pretty is Morrone? She’s Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest girlfriend-pretty. She hides that runway-ready look behind just enough bad hair and working-poor clothing choices to lose herself in this part.
Mickey is the one who cooks, cleans up and tends to her father. She’s the one who has to visit the clinic and convince the doctor (Rebecca Henderson) to renew his prescription, even if it’s against the law, even if it isn’t doing Hank any good over the long run.
“You think Hank off his oxy is a pretty sight?” the kid wants to know.
Veteran character actor Dale has played his share of soldiers, and he gives Hank’s mercurial personality the ominous menace that drives the picture. His idea of “charming” and “cute” is bullying his kid, leaning on her more than any man with any pride would chose to, teasing her when she doesn’t need it.
What’re you going to do with your life, Michaela?
“Get a bunch of tattoos,” she scowls. “Get a husband. Get fat.”
Her horizons expand ever so slightly when the “new kid” at school, Wyatt (Calvin Demba) bats his eyes at her. He’s biracial, and he milks that “I’m from the U.K.” accent for all it’s worth. She is, of course, intrigued.
The debut feature film of actress turned director Annabelle Attanasio lives on authentiticy — a real heartland story told in the heartland — but runs on forboding. Who will knock Mickey off the tightrope she’s walking on? Will it be Dad, all medicated and muscle-bound, a collection of tics, tattoos, nightmares and guns?
Will it be Aaron, pursuing sex with her like it has an expiration date?
Or will it be Wyatt?
The details here are rooted deep in Red State reality. Mickey recognizes her dad’s symptoms, even among the old men who served in earlier wars. The guys hurting are the first to blurt out “I didn’t ASK for your help.” A small town where “everybody gets cancer” has its virtues. People are inclined to look out for Hank, give him a pass on much of his misbehavior, which crosses into criminality.
But it’s a trap, and the script plays with our recognizing that to create instant empathy for Mickey’s plight.
No, it’s not surprising, although I was impressed by all the PTSD cliches Attanasio manages to avoid. We still know where it’s going once we see how it begins.
But “Mickey and the Bear” is to be relished for its performances and its gritty indie cinema sense of place. Movies like this, set in the America far beyond the over–filmed confines of Hollywood, are why I roll my eyes at every movie trade publication that laments “runaway production” — films NOT made in Tinseltown.
MPAA Rating: R for substance abuse, language throughout and some sexual material
Cast: Camilla Morrone, James Badge Dale, Calvin Demba, Ben Rosenfield, Rebecca Henderson.
Credits: Written and directed by Annabelle Attanasio. A Utopia release.
Running time: 1:28
“Those of you who like this sort of thing might find this the sort of thing they like.” Abraham Lincoln
No buzz around this one, but with Dame Helen and Sir Ian, it seems like a safe bet. “The Good Liar” opens Friday.
Michael Peña in the Ricardo Montalban role?
No more Hollywood has-beens realizing their PG TV “fantasies.”
Nubile starlets and hunks get tested and occasionally tortured in the best Blumhouse tradition.
Releasing Valentine’s Day? That’s just sick.
May of next year. Can hardly wait. Yay.
Sometimes, a performance doesn’t give the slightest hint of looking like acting.
That’s what we see when veteran character actor Wendell Pierce, of “Treme” and “Chicago P.D.” and “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” steps into the spotlight and behind the pulpit in “Burning Cane.”
He calls, “Let the church say AMEN” as if he’s been doing it all his life, as if he could do it half-drunk, or grieving and too depressed to get through the day without emptying his whisky flask two or three times.
Because that’s what Rev. Tillman must do, and under just those conditions. Not drunk in church, but a man staggered by the blows life has handed out. And yet, he’s still able to fluidly piece together an infamous Malcolm Forbes quote about “He who dies with the most toys, wins” and warnings about what Forbes found to be the truth when he “crossed over Jordan,” joining Proverbs 18:24 and a hymn into an impressive sermon for a rural Louisiana church he can see, from his vantage point, is dying.
New Orleans filmmaker Phillip Youmans’ film is a portrait of a place and a few of its people at an interdeterminate time. Suffering, and the alcohol that doesn’t really salve it, ties the stories together, as does the church.
It’s an impressionistic, incomplete and indulgent film of strong performances, Deep South soliloquies, of the folks there, captured in extreme closeups or glimpsed in shadows, coping with a world so suffocating that merely leaving them to their devices feels like a prison sentence.
“Cane country” rarely has been brought to such vivid life in a film.
“Burning Cane” begins with a five and a half minute interior monologue from Helen (Karen Kaia Livers of “Treme”), going into Bubba Gump detail of all the home remedies she’s tried to cure her beloved dog Jojo’s mange.
Helen’s son Daniel (Dominique McClellan) drowns his work/guilt over abusing his wife/you-name-it sorrows straight from the bottle, and insists that his son of about ten (Braelyn Kelly) share the bottle with him as they stagger-dance to Robert Johnson’s “Hot Tamales (They’re Red Hot).”
Youmans treats us to almost the entire song, another big chunk of screen time in a thinly-plotted tale that only has 78 minutes to play out — with credits.
Helen’s motherly advice is for everybody, starting with her son — “It’s hard to dance with the Devil on your back.” — but including the pastor, who needs to give up the wheel of his 1974 BMW if he needs to get to the Piggly Wiggly.
“You don’t think I can hold my liquor…The Good Lord is looking out for me!”
She worries over them all, frets over her dog and suggests “the Lord” might help — eventually — even as she, like the preacher and everybody else, lapses into profanity at the burdens they’re all carrying.
“Burning Cane” has great regional cinema bonafides, a bit of film festival hype and the rhythm of poetry in its images, human connections, monologues and gloom.
Which is to say as prose, it isn’t all that. Vignettes can add up to a wholly realized film, but in this case, they tell the tale but don’t quite complete the story.
Pierce and the sermon he is delivering, intercut throughout “Burning Cane,” stick with you, a performance that transcends vignettes and makes an even stronger impression than the forlorun, overcast images that prophesy doom, or at least a purgatory no one here will escape without scars.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, alcohol abuse, smoking, implied violence, profanity
Cast: Wendell Pierce Karen Kaia Livers, Dominique McClellan and Braelyn Kelly
Credits: Written and directed by Phillip Youmans. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:18
Movie Nation 