Movie Nation

Vivienne Westwood is a founding mother of British punk, an artist turned fashion designer who shaped, more than anybody else, the “look” of punk during the Sex Pistols’ heyday.

Her then lover and collaborator was punk impressario Malcolm McClaren, and in the new documentary “Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist,” she recalls how she and McClaren “cast” the band, and she dressed them.

Every time you see a torn t-shirt, a safety pin or swastika misused in “fashion,” thank Vivienne.

Defiantly independent, even as she hits 80, she and McClaren opened such iconic shops as Let It Rock, Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die and World’s End. She set the tone for this DIY look, and maintained it “even after they (the media) moved on to the next new thing.”

Lorna Tucker’s film captures Westwood as she finally absorbs the recognition British fashion long withheld from her and tracks her as she evolved her cluttered, DIY-looking weird-wear into runway-ready showstoppers, her brand spreading worldwide during the course of the film.

We see her hands-on piecing together of “looks” on her models, with her husband, the Austrian Andreas Kronthaler, fussing over every layer, accessory, ungainly shoe or legging.

They’re just “a drunken auntie and the gay uncle” to her “family” of designers and employees coos Andreas, who will never be butch enough for “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” But they make this work, doting over each other and the work (he was a former student and model) as her independent empire reaches the far corners of the globe.

Naomi Campbell giggles about her famous runway tumble in whatever absurdly impractical heels they whipped up, and Kate Moss jokes about their years of association.

Tucker lets Westwood (her first husband’s name) grouse about old ground she doesn’t want to cover again, about McLaren, chapters she’d just as soon forget.

She was openly mocked on British chat shows, and seeing some of what she puts out there, that’s easy to understand. And yet, she persisted.

And the filmmaker lets Westwood trumpet her environmentalism, which works itself into her “No fracking” etc. designs. Left unchallenged is fashion’s role, in the very vanguard of industries ruining the planet on so many levels that there have been documentaries about it.

Still, she chose not to open a planned shop in Beijing for all the right reasons.

“Westwood” doesn’t rank with the great and revealing fashion docs of the past decade — “The September Issue,” “Valentino: The Last Emperor,” “Iris” or “The Gospel According to Andre.” But Tucker has documented cultural proof that an artist who sticks with it long enough and takes care of herself can live long enough to see everybody else come around to her way of viewing the world of what we wear.

It’s an amusing gloss on a punk icon who never gave up the rebellion and never let go of the safety pins.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, nudity, profanity

Cast: Vivienne Westwood, Pamela Anderson, Christina Hendricks, Andre Leon Talley, Andreas Kronthaler and Kate Moss

Credits: Directed by Lorna Tucker.  A Greenwich Entertainment/Amazon release.

Running time: 1:23

Like millions of Netflixers, I was watching Robert Forster Friday night in what turns out to be his last “movie” role — as the “El Camino” vacuum cleaner salesman whose side hustle is what Jesse Pinkman is more interested in.

Forster played heavies and heroes and romantic leads, mostly on TV, until Quentin Tarantino rescued him from obscurity for “Jackie Brown.”

That’s the one I plan to re-watch today. Forster got decades or work out of that sparkling appearance, a bail bondsman who finds love in a stewardess doing bad (Pam Greer), a damned George Jones “He Stopped Loving Her Today” level performance. Pathos, understanding, humility and wit, that became his showpiece role. World weary, that was Max Cherry.

I interviewed him for his work in Mamet’s “Lakeboat,” a working class Joe playing a working class Joe — Joe Pitka, crewman on a Great Lakes freighter.

Classy guy, modest, everything you want in a movie star.

Deadpan or understated and earnest, malevolent or romantic, he made it look effortless, from “The Descendants” to the “Olympus has Fallen” franchise.

Classed up “El Camino,” and how.

“The African Queen” anyone?

Their audiences don’t necessarily overlap, but anybody seeing “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie” on Netflix after catching “Downton Abbey” on the big screen should pick up on the similarities.

They both exist as fan service, movies that give devotees what they want. “Character  moments” abound. Scenes, here and there, have a random “Well, let’s give him/her another bow” feeling. Both films lope along, stuffed with scenes that don’t do much of anything to drive the narrative forward. The lack of “urgency” — a characteristic of long-form/short-season television — weighs on them both. The story doesn’t race forward so much as drip drip drip along.

And fans will not care.

But in the case of “Breaking Bad,” the victory lap series creator and writer/director Vince Gilligan was going for seems off.

It picks up the story right after the bloody but sentimental mayhem of the “Breaking Bad” series finale, which happened six years ago. Everybody who was there, who lived through it or who returns in fresh flashbacks here, is older, heavier, plainly not the scrawny cancerous high school chemistry teacher (Bryan Cranston) or his former student Jesse is played by a 40 YEAR OLD (Aaron Paul). And Jesse Plemons, Jesse Pinkman’s captor and a somewhat simple drug mob killer, has become a star character actor and put on age and weight in the ensuing six years.

Pretending years and years haven’t passed between then and the present day is a mistake. Underlining that is the genre of story Gilligan tells. “El Camino,” named for the classic truck-bodied Chevy, is a GET AWAY tale. Jesse Pinkman survived a slaughter that is still all over the news. His parents are being interviewed on TV. There’s a manhunt on. And this languid “memory play” of a movie is about how seemingly unconcerned Jesse is about self-preservation, you know escaping.

Cops and bad guys are looking for him and this rare, collectible car he’s driving. And dude, beaten and tortured and on the lam — doesn’t get out of town as fast as his legs or El Camino can take him. Scene after scene, long flashbacks about that captivity with his murderous jailor (Plemons) simple-mindedly using him as slave labor — installing a camper cover on the El Camino, disposing of a body in Todd’s oddly retro-mod Albuquerque apartment  — poke along, with no sense of the ticking clock that should be/HAS to be running out on old Jesse, who needs to hightail it to wherever he can to “start over.”

Are we being asked to forget the 40 year old playing him? Jesse is still supposed to be young and naive enough to maybe not grasp the urgency of his situation, the time-sensitive peril he faces.

The choppy, episodic-TV vignettes-“story” never works in a feature film. But there is a “Breaking Bad” logic to the narrative. Jesse reasons he needs money to start over. He mulls over his just-past-his-teens flashback with meth-man Mike (Jonathan Banks) about what he could do, where he could go, having made bank at such a young age (cough cough).

The long flashbacks covering his captivity do more than just turn Plemons into the film’s co-star. They reveal the cash that Jesse knows is out there, and the other bad men who contributed to his captivity, although that seems alternately too humane to be as sadistic as it was.

Robert Forster was in a single episode of the TV series, but has a lovely, sharp and amusing stand-alone scene here.

And Cranston’s return as Walter White may be a selling point, but serves no purpose other than to show how different Walter and Jesse look from their “Breaking Bad” years.

None of which should chase fans away from this feature length coda. But don’t kid yourself. As a stand-alone movie, this isn’t all that.

The grace notes, final bows (Skinny Pete and Badger), classic cars that would be the easiest vehicles in New Mexico to track down — a Fiero, the El Camino, a damned AMC Matador turns up in one random scene — are embellishmets on the bigger journey, Jesse’s hardening, his final metamorphisis as a character.

The stand-offs here play as contrived.

If you missed the series, or have forgotten much of it, there’s a refresher summary that plays as prelude here.  But whatever “closure” fans want beyond that final “Baby Blue” send-off, “El Camino” still doesn’t add up to anything a non-fan should bother with.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug use, profanity

Cast: Aaron Paul, Jesse Plemons, Robert Forster, Krysten Ritter, Jonathan Banks and Bryan Cranston

Credits: Written and directed by Vince Gilligan. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:02

Swapping notes with a reviewer friend from the Midwest this week, we ticked off the credits on “Gemini Man” that should have signaled a much better movie than we saw on the screen.

Ang Lee behind the camera, Billy Ray and one of those “Game of Thrones” blokes among the credited screenwriters.

But the premise seems anchored in an earlier era, the trailer gave much of the movie away and there isn’t much of the “charming” Will Smith here, and let’s face it — him playing all hard and humorless? He can’t manage it. I dare say the fact that his “72 confirmed kills” government assassin who hugs each almost everybody wasn’t exactly the way the dude was scripted.

It cost a fortune to strip decades off his face, and the digitized version of him is less than human and obvioussly so. More convincing than you’d think, but not convincing enough. The action beats had a digitally jerky video game speed about them.

Is a $19 million opening a “bomb?” Not really. But watch that “Bad Boys” sequel trailer attached to this movie in the theaters and tell me that’s pre-sold, that it doesn’t look as mediocre as “Gemini Man” did in its trailers.

“Joker” is holding 50% of its opening weekend audience, which tells you this one is connecting with viewers, if not all critics. I expect it to find its way into the Oscar conversation, but we’ll see. $46 million.

“The Addams Family” has proven to be a kid-friendly brand through the ages, and a new animated one may be only about half as dizzy as you’d hope. But you and I are adults. The sight gags are here, and Oscar Isaac’s little vocal riff on Raoul Julia as Gomez is fun. It’s now looking at a $30 million+ opening.

I had to catch Lionsgate’s Adam Devine “in love with my cell phone” comedy “Jexi” at a suburban multiplex. There were two of us in the theater. The other guy laughed even less than I did. 

That one is now headed for a little over $3 million. Back to Netflix, Devine.

A stressful Minnesota family Thanksgiving, a harrowing drive on icy roads on the way home. Their child has a fall on a construction site next to a gas station they stop in, an anxious race to a nearby hospital.

But the worst is over, right? That’s what Joanne (Lily Rabe) and Ray (Sam Worthington) figure. Once they get past the intrusive admissions questioning, the maddening wait, “Everything’s going to be fine,” right?

Well, the ER doc on duty is played by Stephen Tobolowsky. So, maybe not.

“Fractured” is a rock solid, blood simple thriller from the director of “The Machinist.” If you haven’t seen that deeply disturbing Christian Bale tale, RENT IT.

This is about what happens when Ray lets wife and child (Lucy Capri) head “downstairs” for a CAT scan. He watches the elevator drop to “LL,” takes his seat and waits. And waits and waits and waits.

When he starts asking questions, he gets the brush off. “Shift change” and all of that.

When he remembers the shifty looks nurses, the admissions clerk and others gave him, the testing “Is this really relevant?” questions about “family history” and his first wife and his “recovering alcoholic” status, panic sets in.

When he learns that radiology and imaging is UPstairs, not in the basement, he freaks.

Where is his family? What’s going on here? What exactly is his mental state, aside from the manic man missing his wife and child that we can see?

Director Brad Anderson, working from a middling but covers-the-basics Alan B. McElroy script (he wrote a “Left Behind,” a few “Wrong Turns,” “The Perfect Guy,” etc.), concentrates on Worthington and visual and aural (muffled sound) ways to show Ray’s increasingly frayed state of mind.

The lead-up to the opening act accident is grey, chilly and fraught. We can feel something bad happening quite a bit before it actually does.

Worthington ably threads his way through Ray’s rising alarm, from “It’s been hours,” to “I signed her in myself! You threw out the SHEET?” to “You lost my FAMILY?”

The hospital responds the way “TV movie” hospitals do, nary a concern for liability when dealing with a distraught father. But when the cops arrive — in the script’s farthest reach — they treat every coherent or semi-coherent thing out of Ray’s mouth absolutely seriously. Hospital personnel are quick with the “You need to calm down,” but the cops? They ask questions.

That’s a twist — a situation where you’re suspicious and in fear of the medical profession and trust the cops to do the right thing.

Worthington’s had his share of tour de force opportunities, and this one pays off. He’s just crazy enough to plant doubt, just sane enough to make us think “He’s NOT paranoid. Are these people selling kids or harvesting organs?”

There’s little beyond the grey-and-grim production design here that one would venture so far as to call it “great.” But “Fractured” provides an interesting mystery, engrossing story and a couple of superb action beats, more than enough to make it “Netflixable.”

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Sam Worthington, Lily Rabe, Stephen Toboloswky, Adjoa Andoh and Lucy Capri

Credits: Directed by Brad Anderson, script by Alan B. McElroy. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:40

The now-traditional Thursday night “preview” — actually just the unofficial opening night for most new movies — went to “Gemini Man” last night, which edged “Addams Family” $1.6 million to $1.25.

But read a little more into those tea leaves. The big action pic, fresh competition to “Joker,” barely nudged past a kiddie film which has limited showings because good parents put their children to bed by 9 (the “Addams” audience or 10.

That suggests “Addams Family,” an MGM-UA release of a Vancouver animation house’s handiwork, will blow up, doing perhaps 50% better than DREAMWORKS’ most recent animated release. “Abominable” opened at a little over $20, “The Addams Family” cartoon could hit $30, $29 anyway.

Reviews for “Gemini” were withering. Reviews for “Addams Family” are more divided (I was on the cusp of giving it a pass, but couldn’t go there.)

“Gemini Man” should clear $20 million. If it doesn’t, the folks releasing a “Bad Boys” sequel no one but that chunky has-been Martin Lawrence wanted, may sink into utter despair. Will Smith also has an animated film coming out. Forget “Aladdin.” That was Disney brand-name entertainment, not a “Will Smith” blockbuster. Bad time to be buying into Will.

The OTHER new release is an Adam Devine cell phone virtual assistant takes over his life comedy. “Jexi” is tasteless, not at all funny, but maybe it’ll clear $3, $3.5.

“Joker” has been setting mid-week records, earning $137 million+ in its first week. Will it hit $45 million on its second weekend? Probably.

“Downton Abbey” is still selling tickets, besting “Abominable” during the week. The projection is that Dreamworks’ little China-friendly animation will earn another $6 to $7 this weekend. That may be high. “Addams” is sucking that audience away from it.

“Downton” will be at $83 by midnight Sunday, after adding another $5 million or so.

“Ad Astra” is about to leave the top ten. “Judy” is already out the door.

Back in olden times, the great Jonathan Demme could be relied on to turn out a Neil Young documentary every year or so.

The world’s most fanatical Neil Young fan is dead, so Neil is directing his own projects under a nom de plume. This one’s about recording a new Crazy Horse LP.

Oct. 22, it hits theaters north and south of the Canadian border.

Anyone looking to acquire a taste for the admittedly acquired taste that is Adam Devine might want to skip “Jexi,” a star-vehicle comedy which makes him second banana to a smartmouthed smart phone.

Rose Byrne voices the phone, a glitchy Siri/Alexis/Cortana that takes over a hapless San Francisco loser’s life. But really, almost anybody could have managed that “star” turned into “supporting player” trick.

Devine’s inexplicable march from “Modern Family” into “Jewish Jack Black, only not nearly as talented and not particularly funny” on the big screen earns another “Ok, this isn’t working out” with this R-rated, calorie and charm-free wheezer of a comedy.

“Jexi” might have been more at home on Netflix, where is where Devine’s recent work has turned up. At least there, you’re only a screen prompt away from “back to menu.” His needy screen comedies always try too hard, always hit their R rating too eagerly.

Devine plays Phil, a creator of listicles for a San Francisco web media company, Chatterbox.

Phil is part of a large team that cooks up “Ten cats that look like Ryan Gosling” “stories” that drive the site’s traffic. We barely have time to not laugh at Phil, or his colleagues (Charlyne Yi, the Miss “Nineteen Strikes and You’re Out” of comedy casting, and Ron Funches), when the life of the party bursts in to scream a few threats, snort a few insults — Phil is “Prison Lips” — and find the only live-action laughs in “Jexi.”

That would be Michael Peña, playing the boss, Kai, a bone-headed bundle of bullying insecurities. His best trick? Demanding a human beat-box chorus from his minions for his every exit.

“Play me out.”

Phil lives alone and lives through his phone, ordering food and his life through the screen he rarely takes his eyes off of. Even crashing into a cute cyclist (Alexandra Shipp of the Young “X-Men” movies) only rattles him when he loses that phone.

But its replacement — provided by the foul-mouthed phone store clerk (Wanda Sykes), who lectures him about what “little crackheads” “hipsters” like Phil are, thanks to their phones — is about to rock his world.

From the moment he powers her up, his new digital assistant is a little…off.

“Did you read the terms of service agreement?”

Who bothers with that? No.

“Idiot.”

Jexi is “here to make your life better.” And for “her,” that begins with passing judgement on Phil’s solitary, anti-social life, his foiled ambitions (a journalism degree), his limited diet and his inability to manage anything like charming or even appropriate behavior with the opposite sex.

Oh yes, the utterly charmless “meet cute” with Cate the bicycle shop cutie (Shipp) must be rectified with dating help. The “f——g moron” of a boss (Jexi’s words) must be pressed for a promotion. Jexi gives Phil no choice in these matters.

That’s the clever conceit here, that a defective cloud software assistant, with access to all your data — from work history and health records to bank accounts, social media passwords, the works — could take over and run your life “better.” And if she’s a little clingy? Well, Jexi knows how to hit where it hurts and how to get her way when cornered.

Pork for dinner, again?

“You look like you could use a salad, Phil.”

Jexi’s “fastest route to work” entails driving a Mini Cooper across four lanes of breakneck San Francisco traffic.

“Stop being a chicken, Phil. Strap on a sack, Phil.”

About one in 40 of those Jexi putdowns is funny. And after a while, even that batting average is unsustainable.

And that leaves us with a clipped, digitized until its almost unrecognizable Rose Byrne voice, a whole lot of Adam Devine and not nearly enough scenes with Michael Peña.

Who’s funny enough to earn his “Play me out” beat-boxing.

Devine? Still an acquired taste that defies acquisition.

MPAA Rating: R for strong/crude sexual content and language throughout, some drug use and graphic nudity

Cast: Adam Devine, Alexandra Shipp, Michael Peña, Wanda Sykes, Charlyne Yi, Ron Funches and the voice of Rose Byrne.

Credits: Written and directed by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore. A Lionsgate/CBS Films/eOne release.

Running time: 1:30

Nat Wolff is a young infantryman in Afghanistan who finds himself at odds with his sergeant (Alexander Skarsgård) and the rest of his platoon in “The Kill Team.”

Writer-director Dan Krauss has turned his documentary of the same title, about Army soldiers who called themselves “The Kill Team” for torturing and murdering civilians in the endless Afghan War that began after 9/11, into a feature film. Yes, it really happened, although this version is fictionalized. Names were changed, etc.

Andrew Briggman (Wolff) has enlisted and is about to deploy when we first meet him. Dad (Rob Morrow) couldn’t be more proud, and Andy grins at the smiles and thumbs-up he gets, just for passing through the airport in uniform.

Afghanistan is a real eye-opener, of course. Hot, dirty and dangerous work, house to house searches for men with the gear to build IEDs (improvised explosive devices). Andy follows the rules, tries to give orders to the civilians with respect, and finds himself humiliated by an outraged local.

Not to worry. His sergeant (Tunji Kasim) is a real “hearts and minds” guy, forcing his men to wave at children, handing out candy. It’s when that sergeant gets killed that the war takes a turn to an even darker side for Andy and his comrades.

Skarsgård is the replacement, Sgt. Deeks, a hardended veteran with three tours under his belt and a promise. “Give me your loyalty” and he will make them warriors,” men who will “be a part of history.”

Skarsgård plays this guy with his usually flinty intensity, speaking in an always menacing near-whisper, especially when the men get a taste of Deeks’ methods.

“Who’s ready to have some fun?”

Taking a prisoner, hiding him from command and torturing him, summary executions in the field, “incidents” that are explained away with lies. Deeks has his own playbook, his own idea of “fun.”

Most eagerly go along with it. As with any war, they have an abiding hatred of “the enemy.” As in every guerilla war, that enemy could be anyone. As in any war in a foreign land, racism finds easy acolytes among the combatants.

Andy finds himself apalled, thwarted or intimidated from reporting what he’s witnessed, coerced into participating. And with every minute that passes, we see the danger he feels for himself, a man at odds with armed men who know how to deal with “rats” and a Sgt. who seems to have getting away with all this worked out.

Krauss knows the territory, the standard operating procedures of men on and off duty, the jargon. He does a decent job at building suspense, and Wolff (“The Intern,” “The Fault in Our Stars”) gives a solid performance as a young man desperate to tell somebody what’s going on, and fearing for his life as he does.

But this is Skarsgård’s movie, and his whispered menace and gimlet-eyed stare informs his every scene. Deeks isn’t a caricature of evil. He has taken “duty” and “mission” into off-the-books and off-the-deep-end sadism.

He’s cunning and manipulative. Andy wants a promotion? He makes him fight a more qualified comrade (Brian Marc) for it in front of the entire platoon.

The big and small screens have been awash in military features and documentaries since 9/11, and there’s not a lot to “The Kill Team” that qualifies as new or surprising.

But a decent level of suspense and the genuine dread Skarsgård casts, like a shadow, inform it and make it stand out in a genre that may not outlive America’s endless military involvement in that corner of the world.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, violent content and drug use.

Cast: Nat Wolff, Alexander Skarsgård, Brian Marc, Adam Long, Rob Morrow

Credits: Written and directed by Dan Krauss.  An A24 release.

Running time: 1:27