Yeah, he did the drugs, yeah he rubbed everybody he ever worked with the wrong way.
Musician, master of close vocal harmony, egomaniac, jerk, lucky by association, Hall of Famer.
If David Cosby can own up to the insufferable a-hole he’s been at times, what is Neil Young’s excuse? I mean, Jonathan Demme did half a dozen Neil docs and never got at the prick everybody says he is.
Espionage, betrayal, mistrust all around in this tale of an Israeli Mossad recruit from the director of “Bethlehem.”
She voiced the singing swimmer in the Disney animated classic “The Little Mermaid,” based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. And she’s perfectly cool with casting a young singing sensation and great beauty in the role. Halle Bailey is black? So what? Be like Jodi.
And if Rob Marshall REALLY wants to mess with expectations, he should cast a Jonas Brother as Sebastian. And keep the character’s Jamaican accent.
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It’s a big budget heist picture that Universal was going to produce, but Netflix dinged its bottom line for it.
Doesn’t seem like a natural fit for Netflix. They do well with intimate pictures, rom coms and more modest budgeted pieces. This has “Spectacle” about it. Too big?
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Labor activists and just plain working folks might look with envy overseas, to France, where work weeks are shorter and life can be better when unions battle management.
The truth, as recreated in the new film from Stéphane Brizé (“The Measure of a Man”), is grimmer and grittier, drawn-out. Where foreign news media might summarize the final score of a strike, who won and who lost, the battle itself is harrowing, fraying and exhausting.
That’s what the docudrama “En Guerre” (“At War”) captures. It’s a gripping and glum account of the ebb and flow of a strike in an era when all the power lies with management, and too much of the media sympathy lies with ownership — stockholders.
Vincent Lindon of “The Apparition” and “The Measure of a Man” stars as Laurent Amédéo, a working man and union rep fighting for his and the 1100 other jobs that will be lost when a German-owned auto-parts conglomerate closes their factory in high-unemployment Agen.
The 60ish Lindon has to get across the wearying nature of the struggle, the energy burned in combative union meetings, trying to keep the workers united, and in arduous negotiations with a company that will not be swayed from closing the factory by reason, economics, government pleading or the courts.
Le Perrin Industries is still making a profit, just not enough to prop up the big dividends that they keep handing out. Two years of labor concessions later, they’re pulling the plug.
Laurent and Mélanie Rover and their team go round and round with the plant’s manager (Jacques Borderie), trying to get them to honor their five year commitment, agreed to when concessions were given by labor.
No dice.
But Laurent has absorbed the words of the film’s opening title, (in French, with English subtitles) “Whoever fights, can lose. Whoever does not fight has already lost.”
“At War” follows this struggle for months, through losses of faith, fractures in the “united front” of workers, through scrums with riot police and factory takeovers and workers unloading on a government that always acts in the best interests of business.
Several players in the drama are not actors and use their real names, but that doesn’t lessen the impact of the crocodile tears that Borderie, actually an elected official, cries when he assures Laurent and Mélanie (actually a welder) and their team that “It’s not workers against bosses any more. We’re all in the same boat.”
Other “suits” declare, “”That grief that you feel, we managers feel it too.”
But Laurent and Melanie are testy and firm — “We kept our word,” she says. “You keep yours.”
They gave up millions in added labor and lost bonuses to allow the company to thrive, but that cash was paid out in stock dividends and management pay, or so the workers see it.
Their contract is binding only until the company decides to bail out of it, the French courts rule. And damned if the president doesn’t figure that getting involved “would be counter-productive.”
We never hear “Thoughts and prayers,” or see it in the subtitles. But you can feel it.
Brizé intercuts the bracing debates with TV report point-of-view footage of the workers marching, manning picket lines, taking over headquarters and bickering over strategy as the weeks become months and stout hearts waver.
A pulsing electronic score paces these scenes, and Brizé parks his camera halfway behind pillars or other figures, giving “At War” the feel of footage grabbed on the fly and on the sly, as this battle unfolds.
The union leaders try to correct violent extremes in each others’ behavior, but there’s desperation in every talking-over-each-other shouting match.
The factions that break out deride Laurent for “prancing on the evening news,” but when they start to cave in, he spits his own accusations and warnings back at them.
“You’ve got a shovel to dig your own grave!”
There’s energy and pace in this film, despite the fact that it’s mostly talk, conversations carried out at a shout.
Plodding along — despairing — as it does, “At War” wearies the viewer much as the activists themselves are worn down. But that’s the idea. We can talk the “Stay strong, stay together” talk all we want, but until you’ve been faced with ruin, a gutted future and a desperate present, you just won’t know.
When the inevitable eruption comes, we can only shake our heads and wonder if that kind of direct consequences for callous, mercenary corporate behavior, would have any impact in the U.S.
Maybe, “At War” dares us to consider, the “fight” is all we have left, even if the war itself is lost.
MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity
Cast: Vincent Lindon, Melanie Rover, Jacques Borderie, David Rey, Olivier Lemaire
Credits: Directed by Stéphane Brizé, script by Stéphane Brizé, Olivier Gorce.
A Cinema Libre release.
Running time: 1:54
This French drama, from the director of “The Measure of a Man,” is about a strike — the breakdown in negotiations that lead to it — opens in limited release July 19 and 26.
A movie about working people struggling in an era when all power, political and economic, is in the hands of corporations and their stockholders.
In an alternate, perhaps more just universe, the career of deadpan comic Marc Maron might have been just a tad less quixotic.
A hit sitcom (not this) or long-running chat show hosting gig, a movie here and there, a household name without having to labor through years of failures and a last-ditch podcast taped in his garage.
But that Marc Maron might never have filmed the dopey, double-down deadpan “Sword of Trust,” a no budget farce filmed in Birmingham, Alabama. He might never have swapped testy banter with Michaela Watkins and Jillian Bell, or been upstaged by the hilarious Toby Huss.
He might never have starred on THE indie comedy of the summer.
“Sword” is an oddball deep dive into a Deep South that has gotten over some things, and not gotten over too many others. It’s about legacy, family, the responsibility of true love and the bitter aftertaste “The War of Northern Aggression” has left with a few too many “Duck Dynasty” types.
The characters feel real, the situations not that-far-fetched, and the dialogue has the halting, fresh-picked life of improvisation, a tribute to the script by “mumblecore” mistress Lynn Shelton, who also directed, and Michael Patrick O’Brien of “Saturday Night Live.”
No lie, it is laugh out loud funny.
Maron plays Mel, longtime proprietor of Delta Pawn. He seems honest, which in his profession, is half the battle.
“What, you gonna try and sell this yourself? They’re used,” he tells a customer pawning some fancy boots. “You need the money.”
“You’re not screwing me?” the guy wants to know.
“Not screwing you.”
Well, maybe.
Mel’s weathered, world-weary true colors come through via later visitors to the shop. There’s Deirdre (director/co-writer Shelton), a 40ish waif and “poet” who has “AA” written all over her, and of course needs money. They have history, but that isn’t going to sway Mel.
“Swear to God, I’m good for it.”
“You’re NOT good for it.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Isn’t it?”
And then there’s Cynthia and Mary, who show up with a Civil War (“War of Northern Aggression”) sword.
It’s all Cynthia’s (Jillian Bell of “Office Christmas Party,” “The Night Before” and TV’s “Supermansion”) granddad left her. That, and a long, demented rambling letter and this odd certificate “authenticating” the sword.
It belonged to General Sherman. Or Sheridan. It was surrendered by said Union general at Chickamauga. Or Chickabogga. Something like that.
Mel’s lowball offer, “story, or no story,” won’t do, as Cynthia and Mary are sure it’s worth more, even if they’re not quite down the rabbit hole of the “true believers,” those “Invictusians” in search of the “truth” about how that war some Southerners will only call “The Late Unpleasantness” turned out.
A little Youtube searching by Mel’s otherwise-useless assistant (Jon Bass) convinces him that maybe he needs to up his offer.
“Is this ‘Antiques Road Show for Racists?'”
That leads to a very reluctant partnership. And that’s when good ol’boy Hog Jaw (Huss) shows up and drawls, cusses and struggles mightily against the redneck stereotype that he most certainly is. “Think I was born yesterday?” he says, hearing their “story,” wading through the BS as they inadvertently verify what he firmly believes is history’s attempt to “erode away the real truth” about The War.
That’s about all that’s quotable from Hog Jaw in a profanity-averse review. But suffice it to say, every F-bomb, menacing shrug and look of “You stupid Yankee” befuddlement, every smeared diphthong, or El Camino motor-revving that emanates from Hog Jaw’s ball-capped self is a hoot.
Mel’s “Let’s take these suckers for all they’ve got” strategy starts to seem more dangerous than any other transaction with bearded, belligerent rednecks he’s ever taken part in.
And the ladies? They’re a couple, and they insist on coming along to every drug-dealer styled “meet” the Invictusians and their Big Boss (Dan Bakkedahl ) ordain.
A hallmark of the “mumblecore” movement in indie cinema is the sparkling, quasi-improvised wit of the characters, mouthy “Comfy Chair” fans of “Humpday” (an earlier Shelton film) who talk and talk and talk, and amuse most every time they open their mouths.
Maron handles the style with ease, but Watkins is a damned virtuoso of bitchy banter, making us believe Mary, Cynthia’s life partner, is “not angry with you. You just sort of rub me the wrong way.”
The plot here is a means to an end, adding a layer of Southern social commentary to a comedy about a culture that’s filled with liars and frauds who prey not just on the gullible, the “willing to believe,” but on each other.
Maron, Watkins, Bell, Bakkedahl and especially Huss make everybody in this world as recognizable as that nutty neighbor or Flat Earth uncle we all know and roll our eyes at. And they let us laugh at them.
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout.
Cast: Marc Maron, Jillian Bell, Michaela Watkins, Jon Bass
Credits: Directed by Lynn Shelton, script by Lynn Shelton and Michael Patrick O’Brien. An IFC release.
Running time: 1:29
He’s often said he’d like to do eight or nine did he’s proud of, and then hang it up. We’ve been assuming hel’ll finish that promise with a “Star Trek” or some such final film that he has bandied about, publicly. Now he’s suggesting, “Maybe this is it.’ That’s how The Hollywood Reporter is taking it, anyway.
I think there are already lawyers involved in the “Star Trek’ talk, so I am calling BS on THR’s spin. What Tarantino really wants, as we saw at Cannes, is to be immunized against criticism.
Here I was, all set to hate all over “Trespassers” and leave a mess as I did.
But it delivers such a visceral, pulse-pounding and predictably far-fetched finale that my hate was gone with the wind — almost.
“Trespassers” is an attractive-young-folks trapped in a remote house thriller, menaced from without — SOMEbody wants to get in — and menaced from within.
Angela Trimbur, Zach Avery, Janel Parrish are Jonathan Howard are two young couples, the ladies “high school besties,” the guys utter strangers set to have a “Quien es mas macho?” contest.
Sarah (Trimbur) chose to not do this AirBnB weekend from Hell alone with her husband Joe (Avery). They’ve experienced a loss, and she’s summoned Estelle (Parrish of TV’s “Pretty Little Liars”) and Estelle’s boorish beau Victor (Howard) to this McMansion in the desert.
A little booze, a little coke, a little sex in the hot tub, “have fun, and forget the world exists for a bit.”
But an opening scene has teased us with the fate of the owners of the house. It wasn’t a happy fate. Sarah’s messing around in their dark room might be a clue as to why they were targeted by masked, gold-toothed, machete-and-pistol-packing Latinos. The owners were photo journalists.
The quartet in the house have just enough time to get irritated with Victor’s bullying, his racist cracks about “border hoppers” and sexist insults about strip clubs, when a stranger calls. Or knocks. As she’s played by Fairuza Balk of “The Craft” and “Valmont” and “Bad Lieutenant,” we question her motives.
“Finding truly kind people in this world is like finding a diamond in a sea of broken glass.”
Why, again, does she need to use their phone? And man, if there’s a screen-written “story” about why anybody needs to use a phone that’s more elaborate or contorted than the Corey Deshon wrote for “The Stranger” here, I’ve forgotten it. Red flags in every line.
“I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West, honey. I’m a neighbor.”
So far, so formulaic, right? But here’s where the “hate” kicks in.
Any time a thriller gets so caught up in dreaming up ways to torture women that we wonder why the torturers don’t stop torturing and, you know, go FIND the “MacGuffin,” the Hitchockian plot contrivance that drives the movie, instead of demanding that their hostages TELL them or “We’ll do this to your eye or THAT to your teeth or leave your friend’s brains spattered all over the wall,” you have to wonder.
Wonder what the director or screenwriter’s beef with women is, wonder if they have mommy/sister/girlfriend/wife issues they might want to work out with a shrink instead of subjecting viewers to their torture porn.
The complex entanglement of relationships among the two couples is of only lukewarm interest, and the drawn-out assault on McMansion in the Mohave so expected that “Trespassers” dissipates the good will and intense interest it needs for its mid-movie twists to come off.
But that finale is a real corker, excruciating in the ways director Orson Oblowitz ratchets up the tension and the expectation of intense suffering and pain. Yes, I’m saying the torture porn, and its resolution, made me squirm.
I hate the genre, can’t stand those genre tropes, and can barely forgive them even when they work.
Balk is the stand-out in a cast of supporting actors (a “Fury” credit here, a “Last Ship” regular, or a recurring “Good Place” character there) given a shot at taking on leads.
Howard has the meatiest role, and impresses as something of a brutish stereotype, and Trimbur gets across intelligence and anguish without straining.
But Corey Deshon’s script is a veritable catalogue of thriller devices, types and worn out situations. Every “cut” and “paste” shows.
And no amount of sex in the hot tub or stabbings in the eye can hide that.
MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, sex, cocaine and alcohol use
Cast:Angela Trimbur, Zach Avery, Janel Parrish, Jonathan Howard, Fairuza Balk
Credits: Directed by Orson Oblowitz, script by Corey Deshon. An IFC Midnight release.
Running time: 1:27
Movie Nation 