Movie Nation

Italian filmmaker Beniamino Barrese confesses to having dedicated his life to “filming and photographing my mother.” He won’t use the phrase “Oedipus Complex,” that is for the viewer to infer in watching his film about Mama, Benedetta Barzini.

“The Disappearance of My Mother” captures the 1960s supermodel turned ’70s (and beyond) Marxist/feminist, a striking figure who raised children by building an afterlife of journalism, activism and education.

Barrese has always found her his most captivating subject. But with “Disappearance,” Barzini is participating in one last flurry of filming in a Garbo snit. She wants to be alone. She wants him to stop filming her, to “leave all this” imagery, get away from the world, perhaps even commit suicide.

Or at least break the weirdly-obsessive son’s camera.

In “Disappearance,” we see archival interviews and footage of young Benedetta striking poses back in her day. We hear her explaining (in Italian, with English subtitles) that modeling means trying to “look indifferent to the troubles of the world,” that with makeup, hair and false-eyelashes she was “transformed according to the desires of others,” just one of those people who “vanish inside the concept of ‘beauty.'”

She’s 76 now, vaping instead of smoking, but her self-awareness dates from her peak earning years, when the budding feminist started rejecting the whole idea of fashion and selling oneself as “beauty.”

We look at her lecturing lovely Italian coeds about this and see and hear how unconvinced they are.

We see Barrese auditioning assorted models (in English), of different ages and different looks — gorgeous to a one — to “play” his mother in recreations for the film. He has them draw on a beauty mark that looks like the big mole Benedetta often covered with makeup during her cover girl days.

It’s just that his insistent filming is driving his mother to distraction. He has let a camera come between them, and she hisses “Assasino!” and “Basta! Enough!” She calls him a “petty bourgeois” and a “pain in the ass” even as she is negotiating with him about how his film will end, with her disappearing.

She wants to catch up with her old pal ’60s and fellow model and actress Lauren Hutton, and he wants to film the whole thing. Both of them chew him out, one a tad more gently than the other.

After we’ve seen the son surreptitiously film her (Blood on the pillow?) while Benedetta is sleeping, skinny dipping (maybe) in the bay, and squatting in the woods, we start to wonder what kind of co-dependent creeper she’s raised.

Like Garbo, Benedetta wants to “close the door,” but not for the same reasons, perhaps. Garbo wanted her image to remain young, sexy, exotic and unattainable, and resisted being photographed for the last 50 years of her life. Vanity.

Benedetta Barzini, still modeling (a special appearance in a show in London’s Fashion Week), but deeply soured on a planet despoiled by fashion and the “men” (and women) who run it, just wants “out.”

Doing this film gives her control of that, she figures, a chance to stage her exit from the scene, “the only gift I can offer myself.”

She laments that with all this cell-phone narcissism and mania for photographing everything, “nothing is left to memory.” But by the end, “I hate memory” is her new mantra.

As for the film, and its testy 90 minutes of bickering over “the ending,” the only thing that could live up to that talked-to-death hype is a suicide, or something proximating that.

Barzini doesn’t want that “violence” on her memory, or in her son’s film. Thankfully.

After watching that son recreate Mom’s famous poses and cover shots with a vast array of today’s young (and unknown) models, maybe she figures she needs to stick around, on or off film. Somebody’s got to pay for the boy’s therapy.

MPAA Rating: unrated, smoking, profanity

Cast: Benedetta Barzini, Beniamino Barrese, Lauren Hutton

Credits: Written and directed by Beniamino Barres.e A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:34

Martin Scorsese has clarified his criticism of the Franchise that Ate Film in a New York Times op-ed, no less.

“Market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption”

Why yes, they are. And formulaic and forgettable. Directed by “giants” of the medium, too. Rarely.

Since speaking out, Ken Loach and Francis Ford Coppola have, when asked, added their voices to this “Marvel is killing cinema” chorus.

https://t.co/H4HxcTnoPa https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1191701950036791297?s=17

If you’ve never watched a sporting event that you weren’t sure was “fixed,” you’re probably not much of a sports fan. Things happen on the field, in the ring and on the court that go beyond head-scratching and have you shouting at the TV or booing from the stands.

Three things figure into such conclusions, heated or not. First, the game, fight, etc. is in the hands of the poorest paid people involved — referees, umpires, etc. Second, there’s big money involved thanks to the world’s weakness for gambling. Money corrupts.

And thirdly, the folks who cover sports for a living are more interested in getting a shouting spot on “Around the Horn” than on the hard work of digging deep, querying the league or sanctioning body and law enforcement, ruffling feathers and exposing what “really” went on at Super Bowl XL, for instance.

“Inside Game” is a true story about what seems, on the face of it, the easiest sport to manipulate — pro basketball. There’s a long season packed with games the general public cares little about, leaving it to the gamblers who want to bet “the spread,” the winner and their margin of victory. The players are too well-paid to be easily tempted to toy with that (you’d think). But the referees? An extra foul/free throws awarded at the end, a little look the other way here and there, a motivated “whistle,” and they’re the folks in charge.

The right off-the-books, amoral guys, with the right referee, weren’t that obvious. And if the trio who came up with their “inside dope” scheme in 2007-2007 weren’t clumsy, drug-addled or just plain idiots, they might shaken the sport, the NBA and Vegas to its core.

It’s an “inside gambling” glance at addiction, greed and ethics — essentially a gloss on an age-old story of crooked guys who fly too high and get caught. But its big reach is taking a stab at corruption, the psychology of the addictive personality. And its big stumble is in fixing blame, carelessly tossing it about as if rot like this was ever “a victimless crime.”

That’s how “Baba” Battista (“MadTV” veteran Will Sasso, who was Curly in “The Three Stooges” movie presents it. He’s one guy among his circle of childhood friends who wound up a big time sports bookie, “a mover” (placing bets for high rollers who want to hide their action) with a veritable “war room” in his house — a desk surrounded by TV screens tuned to games and computer moniters logged into global betting sites.

He’s tipped by another suburban Philly friend-since-childhood and bookie, Pete (Nick Cordero) about “line moves,” the betting line on the point spread of particular games, has been jumping around just before tip-off with a suspicious frequency.

More suspicious, it’s on games refereed by another childhood pal, Tim Donaghy (Eric Mabius of “Chicago Fire” and “Ugly Betty”).

And together with their mutual womanizing pot-dealer pal Tommy (Scott Wolf  of TV’s “Nancy Drew” and “The Nine”), Baba tricks Tim into a meeting and arm-twists him into doing whatever he’s doing for others for Baba instead.

What Tim has is access to training rooms at the arenas, the inside word on who’s hurting who’s pouting, who won’t play well with whom, the sorts of things that tip the balance in a basketball game. He’s using that to place bets against the spread, and he’s doing quite well.

With Baba in charge, big money can enter this “sure thing.” Burner phones, with Tommy acting as the paid go-between, a mobster with money called “The Chinaman” (Reggie Lee) and “They’ll never catch us. TRUST me!”

Tommy’s voice-over narration presents these guys as blood brothers for life, bonded since childhood over team-oriented basketball. They have each other’s backs, he says. Forever, he says.

So even though Tommy’s short attention span for short skirts and “action” and getting a buzz on is a warning sign, Baba and Tim have a deal.

The corrupt-to-their-core nature of these guys means Baba won’t let Pete in on this action, that Tommy’s much-younger bombshell fiancée (Lindsey Morgan) doesn’t mean he’s giving up sexual hook-ups in nightclub toilets and that Tim will go any easier on ref colleagues who talk star players into giving them signed journeys as favors. He’s the hypocrite in the crowd. 

Actor turned director Randall Batinkoff doesn’t do much to sell the suspense, the rising risks and potentially deadly consequences that could come from these guys’ mistakes, unnecessary risks and callous disregard for planning ahead or anticipating trouble.

Sasso’s Baba jumps from beer and liquor to pot, “oxy” and cocaine — burning through cash and rubbing his nose incessantly as the stakes are raised. Having him do coke in front of “The Chinamen” and his henchmen suggests how careless he is, having him sniff and rub his nose — we GET it — in every scene is remedial, acting overkill.

Wolf’s Tommy should be funnier, the dolt with the attention span of a salmon who must absorb a phone “code” he’s supposed to use when communicating with the others. Yeah, buying a new Lotus is a great way to blend in.

Mabius has the most to play, a referee who is the son of a referee (Michael O’Keefe) who thinks he can stuff his pockets without actually getting his hands dirty.

None of the performances of these unlikable characters grab you, give the viewer a sense of what’s at stake and why we should care.

There’s also something very “Entourage” about “Inside Game,” both in the “guys from the neighborhood” group dynamic and the toxic sexism that the film practically embraces.

Tim is under pressure from his spendthrift wife (Julie Claire) to put their spoiled “gifted” (yeah, right) teen daughter in Bradenton, Florida’s most expensive private school.

Baba runs hot and cold with hot-blooded, shrewish wife Debbie (Betsy Beutler), who turns a blind eye to how he keeps their brood in upper middle class luxury.

And Tommy’s using every woman in sight the way his pothead girlfriend Stephanie is obviously using him.

It’s just sordid enough to make you feel a little dirty for having watched it, even as the many explanatory scenes, showing the way “the line” can be manipulated, make you leery of ever placing another wager on sports, or even of trusting the various leagues to ensure the integrity of their contests.

There’s too much dirty money involved and too little interest from law enforcement on the sports journalism “jockocracy” to simply take their word for it.

MPAA Rating: R for language and drug use throughout, and some sexual content

Cast: Eric Mabius, Scott Wolf, Betsy Beutler, Lindsey Morgan, Reggie Lee, Michael O’Keefe and Will Sasso

Credits: Directed by Randall Batinkoff, script by Andy Callahan. An iDreamMachine release.

Running time: 1:37

Let us hope the digital tech for recreating WWII Naval/airborne combat has progressed beyond “Pearl Harbor.”

Cannot tell from the trailers, which have that “U.S.S. Indianapolis” video game graphics look. Without Nicolas Cage.

Every documentary is a gamble, a non-fiction film whose “story” is not scripted, but discovered right in front of the camera, created in real life in real time. And real life is full of surprises and disappointments, foiled plans and dashed dreams. Real life, as most of us know, rarely provides us with that “Hollywood ending” that the movies like to deliver.

The football documentary “The All-Americans,” is about “El Clasico,” the annual high school football rivalry between East L.A.’s two most promiment mostly-Latino high schools. Filmmaker Billy McMillin followed coaches, players and the families of Roosevelt High and Garfield High for nine months leading up to their seasonal grudge match.

It’s got a hyped Big Game, players figuring out their role in the drama, heroes in the making, planning for their future. Coaches extoll the “discipline,” “family,” “focus” and “commitment” that they’re teaching their kids.

And then the damned game itself is an anti-climactic bust. I dare say McMillin’s heart sank before halftime. But thank heavens that isn’t what the film is about.

McMillin’s movie is about inclusion, a tale of immigrants and sons of immigrants, girlfriends and relatives with “no papers,” kids disparaged for their race on Fox News and on local Los Angeles talk radio in thinly veiled racist code language, some of it not veiled at all.

These kids? They’re not playing “futbol,” or soccer. They’re suiting up for “futbol Americano,” working part time jobs after school, committing to each other to representing themselves, their school and their community.

They are and this place they come from, as Roosevelt High coach Alfred Robledo declares, “just as American as anywhere else in the country.” Like many a red-blooded American male, they’re all about those “Friday night lights.”

We see two different programs and two different philosophies or ways of “teaching” kids and giving them a better shot in life.

Javier Cid of Roosevelt keeps a “Training Scholar Athletes” sign on the door to his office. He takes great pride in his team’s 100% graduation rate, in the fact that a game once derided locally as “The Chili Bowl” has become a tradition and an 80-plus-years-and-running statement on Latino Americanism.

Garfield coach Lorenzo Hernandez coaches as a second job. He’s a local cop (we see him on a ride along) who talks about simpler goals, instilling the “discipline” for his kids to “not make the same mistakes I see out on the street every day.”

We meet players like Mario Ramirez, with a sparkling GPA and recruitment letters from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, living in a three bedroom house crammed with 14 people.

There’s Joseph Silva, a coiled knot of fury on the field whose father is in prison and his mother a junky on the streets, a kid who has been homeless, “living in vans,” but who finds focus as a Garfield linebacker. He works in a bakery before school. And he’s been a father since he was in the 10th grade.

Other kids are the sons of guys who played in this game, emphasizing the family and neighborhood ties that give El Clasico its larger meaning and import.

And then there’s Stevie Williams, the African American kid from South Central who takes city buses every day to go to a school where he’s the most singular of minorities, a black kid who doesn’t even speak the first language of the rest of the student body.

McMillin’s film has wonderful fly-on-the-wall moments that will give you pause, an ex-con dad bragging about the tough love he used to instill his son with competitive fire, locker room tirades (by the kids) and foul-mouthed arguments between kids and the adults in charge on the sidelines.

One minute you think, “I’d want this coach molding my boy’s attitudes and direction in life,” the next you figure maybe the cop/coach has a better handle on that.

And then you remember, “You’ve got to be a freak of nature size-wise” to played the game, and concussions and dislocations, etc., come with the sport. Maybe soccer and tennis?

Like the coaches, the viewer can embrace this or that boy’s story, but only at our own peril. Kids aren’t predictable, and they’ll let you and themselves down — on the field, and off.

But that messiness and disappointment is a part of the charm of “The All-Americans.” It’s not about the game, or even “how they played the game.” It’s how the game shapes who they are or will become, for good or ill.

And that means the “Big Game Finale” has just as much impact, meaning and resonance when it’s a blowout as when events on the field contrive to give us “the Hollywood ending.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, football violence, profanity

Cast: Mario Ramirez, Joseph Silva, Sammy Hernandez, Javier Cid, Lorenzo Hernandez, Stevie Williams and Alfred Robledo

Credits: Written and directed by Billy McMillan. An Abramorama release.

Running time:  1:38

Some of us in the reviewing trade have beaten the put-down “Lifetime Original Movie” to death. To which I shout “GUILTY!”

But it’s a hard descriptor to shake when it so vividly captures a female-centered romance or woman-under-threat melodrama, once the bread and butter of cable’s “Women’s Channel.”

Does the label work for Netflix’s “Holiday in the Wild,” which pairs up the always-winsome Kristin Davis as a divorcing veterinarian who meets a womanizing bush pilot (Rob Lowe) while on safari in Zambia?

Or is it “Sex in the Serengeti?” Take a wild guess.

“Holiday in the Wild” has a briskness I appreciated, even if that means it rather rushes us and Kate (Davis) into a divorce that upends her Manhattan penthouse marriage, if not her lifestyle. And Lowe and Davis and the African scenery and setting — a nursery for orphaned baby elephants — ensures a certain charm.

Then the whole “holiday” part of it all, complete with African versions of famous Christmas carols and the usual “stop shopping and consider what’s REALLY important” messaging kicks in and the charm is smothered under a heaping helping of treacle.

Kate barely has time to grit her teeth over becoming one of the “ladies who lunch,” and no time to even finish her pitch for a “second honeymoon” African safari when her workaholic hubby (a drab cliché, drably-played by Colin Moss) blurts out “Are you happy? I’m not in love with you any more.” And “We had a lot of good years.”

With son Luke (John Owen Lowe, son of Rob) heading to college, what will Kate do?

Why, fly off to Africa, seethe over all the “honeymoon” and couple stuff set up for their resort stay, drink to forget and endure the clumsy but chaste come-ons of the stubbly hunk in the bar, Derek (Lowe).

Imagine her surprise (hers alone) when Derek Hollister turns out to be the pilot taking her on a tour of the game preserve, home to Africa’s “Big Five — elephants, lions, rhinos, leopards and Cape buffalo.”

Hollister, “that’s with two ‘Ls,’ just in case you want to put in on a complaint form.”

When Derek puts his plane down near a baby elephant, freshly orphaned by poachers, “Holiday in the Wild” takes on its true mission. Dr. Kate is pressed into service at an elephant orphanage, where the charming Jonathan (Fezile Mpela) lays out the threat to the largest land mammal, and the hard work of saving the babies of parents who were killed for their ivory.

Whatever the script promises in “Out of Africa” (comic) romance terms, there’s not much to this Ernie Barbarash (“Cube Zero”) film.

The “meet cute” kind of works. Almost. Somewhat.

The obstacles to romance are pallid — and pale — a rich blonde (Hayley Owen) who funds the nursery. Nothing at all is done with this.

Romance is forgotten altogether as we’re treated to baby elephant care and its accompanying “Awwwwwwww,” and endless interruptions just as he or she is about to make her or his “move.”

A cute touch? A hilltop marker that denotes a “wi-fi hotspot” for communicating with the outside world.

Not cute? Lamer than lame puns. “Safari, so good!” “Thanks a latte!”

And the African choral treatments of familiar carols kind of works. But even the “holiday” in the title feels like a promise this moldy fruitcake of a comedy cannot keep.

The elephants are cute. Chemistry between the stars might have developed, at some point. But there’s just enough treacle here to drown the thing.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, poaching, alcohol, PG-tame language

Cast: Kristin David, Rob Lowe, Fezile Mpela and John Owen Lowe

Credits: Directed by Ernie Barbarash, script by Neal H. Dobrofsky, Tippi Dobrofsky. An MPCA/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:26

A period piece starring Samuel L., Nia Long and Anthony Mackie and opens Dec. 6.

Steven Amell from “Green Arrow” stars in this Dec. 13 release.

Kind of X-Men ish, no?

“Cousins” is a hamfisted and campy gay romance from Brazil, the sort of gay rom-com North American indie cinema moved on from decades ago.

The broad characters, the eye–rollingly obvious come-ons may produce a few laughs…in between the groans. And moans.

Lucas (Paulo Sousa) is a shy, orphaned lad who has been living with his devoutly religious aunt (Juliana Zancanaro), practicing his music, switching his Yamaha keyboard into organ mode to serenade her friends at the end of their weekly Bible study.

Those friends wonder about Lucas, who is handsome and talented, but seems to have no friends or prospects for friends.

Then Aunt Lourdes gives him news straight out of a gay porn comedy. There’s this handsome cousin that Lucas has never met. He’s coming to stay with them. He’s just been kicked out of his parents’ house, thanks to a short stretch in jail.

“I don’t want to know what he did,” Auntie says (in Portugeuse with English subtitles). We practice unconditional “forgiveness in this house.”

They’re a little pressed for space. Mind sharing a room with him?

Oh, and one other thing, Aunt Lourdes will be away on a Catholic retreat when “Mario” arrives.

Mario, played by writer and co-director Thiago Cazado, has a swagger and a cigarette when we meet him. He hugs a little too hard, “for all those years we have not hugged!” He’s amusingly eager to walk about with no trousers, making this a “bulging underwear comedy.”

He’s full of stories about the sorts of “games” cousins play, suggestions that “we push our beds together” because “I’m afraid of ghoosts.

Yeah it’s like that.

A little piano serenade, a little air guitar rocking out, a little alcohol and then it’s naked time, sex scenes set to insipid English language pop.

All the while, Lucas is fending off Bible study Julia (Duda Esteves), a coming-on-strong beauty who seeks piano lessons, even though her screeching shows her to be tone-deaf, and whose ditzy flirtation means every lesson end with her bouncing on the lad’s lap.

Give “Cousins” a couple of points for attempts at “cute.” That hugging line made me laugh, and the fact that even the devout in the household curse like sailors, turning to apologize to the nearest crucifix (they’re everywhere), is worth a grin.

Poor Esteves has to vamp through a character so broad you’d swear she was created in the 1940s, and performed by somebody yanked from a community theater stage in mid-mugging.

“Cousins” may be a cinematic novelty in Brazil, but aside from the nudity (more or less tastefully handled), there’s little novel or entertaining for film audiences this far north, just titillation.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, with nudity, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Thiago Cazado, Paulo Sousa, Duda Esteves, Juliana Zancanaro

Credits: Directed by Mauro Carvalho and Thiago Cazado, script by Thiago Cazado. A TLA release.

Running time: 1:22

Projected to open over $40 million, “Dark Fate” suffered a worse fate.

“Harriet” earned $12 million, “Arctic Dogs” scored $3.1.

Via Variety, which is reporting that the film could end up losing $100 million, all in.

https://variety.com/2019/film/box-office/box-office-terminator-dark-fate-opening-weekend-misfire-1203391110/