Movie Nation

The closing credits of the death row drama “Trial by Fire” show then-Texas Governor Rick Perry defending his state’s enthusiastic application of the death penalty during a presidential debate, to the loud applause of the G.O.P. audience for that forum.

The presumption that “the state,” hated in conservative circles for generations, is somehow infallible in the most serious and terminal application of its power, in defiance of logic and what we know about human fallibility, corruption and general mean-spiritedness, is probably lost on those doing the clapping. “Cognitive dissonance” is but speaking in tongues in many corners of America.

From what we’ve picked up about Rick Perry, he couldn’t even spell it.

And no movie is going to suddenly awaken us to the knowledge that all these people, spending years in prison or even executed, convicted of crimes that later science or evidence proves was false, has put blood on all our hands.

But like the heroine of “Trial by Fire,” a Houston French teacher and playwright played by Laura Dern, it’s comforting to see somebody try.

Elizabeth Gilbert exchanged letters with Cameron Todd Willingham, which led her to pursue experts and witnesses who made his case unravel, basically disproving his conviction with journalists all but indicting the prosecutor, arson investigators and Rick Perry who railroaded a very unpleasant “town punk” onto death row.

The case became an Innocence Project showpiece and was the subject of a documentary a few years back, “Incendiary: The Willingham Case.”

Edward Zwick’s feature film (he did “Glory”) is something of a mixed bag, a long-winded sermon that wastes too much time on preliminaries in the interest of being thorough, when its drama, pathos and rage are all packed into the third act.

The British actor Jack O’Connell (“Unbroken,””71,” “Tulip Fever”) is made over into a seething, short-tempered redneck capable of mercurial mood swings and real violence. Todd Willingham was a wife-beating drunk with a thing for Satanic posters and widely regarded as bad news in Corsicana, Texas.

When his house burned up with his three small children inside it, it wasn’t a huge leap to assume this creep was responsible. As it turned out, the whole town, including law enforcement, never looked at the fire any other way — arson. His trial was for murder, and when he got “the ultimate penalty” that prosecutor John H. Jackson (Jason Douglas) demanded, capital punishment, the view of one and all was “He deserves it.”

But even the most casual viewer of legal eagle TV series will have a laugh or two at the “evidence,” the conclusions leapt to by good ol’boy fire investigators who drawl “ire talks to you. It does not lie,” and the court approved “Dr. Death” psychotherapist.

Naturally, arson investigators saw Satanic pentangles in the fire pattern. Of course the shrink declared the guy was a psychopath, not based on ever meeting him, but on the posters he had on the wall of that house.

And no tearful defense by his wife (Emily Meade of “Money Monster” and TV’s “The Deuce”) or outbursts in court by the defendant could convince anybody otherwise. The defense attorney didn’t even try.

Zwick’s film takes a long interlude to get from the fire and trial to the interest of the one woman who thought he had a case and wasn’t going to let any sloppy public defender (Darren Pettie) scare her off.

“Where’d you get your law degree, missy?”

Imagine calling Laura Dern “missy.” Only in Texas.

Zwick and the screenplay spend more time than they should showing Willingham’s heinous prison experience, brutal fights and vicious beatings by the guards, the cruelest of whom (Chris Coy, compelling in giving this guy human dimensions) nicknames him “Baby Killer,” when the entire prison population adopts.

We see the stormy relationship between Todd and Stacy, given a hint of Hollywood “trailer trash heat” here, overdone in the extreme.

This middle acts interlude also allows too much time for sermonizing, which “Trial By Fire” gets down to. McKinley Belcher III is a riveting presence as the jailhouse lawyer/philosopher in the next cell, with “Ain’t no JUSTICE in the SYSTEM” and in Texas, “You ain’t got no CAPITAL, you get PUNISHED,” and don’t expect any mercy or legal exactitude from the Supreme Court.

“If it leans any more to the right, it’ll fall over…They got you in here, they got you GOOD.”

The film throws flashbacks with contradictory accounts of the fire (witnesses, experts, Willingham’s own) at us, and O’Connell nicely suggests mystery in the man himself. Did he do it? Is his guilt related to something less criminal? Is he just playing the playwright lady who is pretty much his only visitor?

Dern brings another version of steel (spined) magnolia empathy to Gilbert, charming when she needs to be, brittle when she forgets herself, not so tough she can’t be threatened by people who know there were Texas shortcuts taken in this case that would burn it to the ground.

I kept thinking of the contortions of Italian justice in the various screen investigations of the Amanda Knox case, where as with Willingham, how the defendant reacted to a death seemed to be all the proof the prosecutors needed. There’s a little Italian ineptitude and outright flim-flammery in an awful lot of American courtrooms, cases like this one remind us.

But that’s what happens when a movie dawdles along the way “Trial by Fire” does. Your mind wanders, fills in the dead spots where “filler” is what we’re seeing on the screen. A vigorous re-edit would have spared us that.

As it is, “Trial by Fire” finds its “Dead Man Walking” heart only after Dern shows up, and only hits its tension-building sweet spot as the “ticking clock” of impending execution winds down. It’s a sermon with too much preamble and a big finish, with some rough-edged nap time tucked in between.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, some violence, disturbing images, sexual material and brief nudity

Cast: Jack O’Connell, Laura Dern, Emily Meade, Jeff Perry, Chris Coy and Jade Pettyjohn

Credits: Directed by Edward Zwick, script by Geoffrey Fletcher. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 2:07

Here we go, QT exiting directing with a bang?

I cannot tell what this is going to be like from the trailers. It could go either way.

Could be “Dumbo,” could be “Beauty and the Beast” in the real of love action Disney remakes. Or “Jungle Book,” which was more down the middle.

The set up is as old as Hemingway’s “To Have and Have.”

A tropical island fisherman, down on his luck, turns to a more desperate use for his boat.

“Cargo” is a human trafficking melodrama set in the Bahamas, with Haitian refugees taking on the title role.

Writer-director Kareem J. Mortimer gives us a taste of island flavor, a dose of the racism/classism that kicks into high gear whenever a lot of immigrants shows up.

But it’s a slow moving thriller, spiraling into a grimness that allows for no heroics, no nobility, just the desperate struggling with the more desperate in situations that turn from bleak to dire, all of it scored with dialogue that hits “hackneyed” far too often for its own good.

Kevin (British actor Warren Brown, best known for co-starring in “Luther”) is the fisherman, unable to pay his mate (Omar J. Dorsey), ineptly filleting under-sized snapper after the latest failed trip.

He’s in the hole, with a nice house where his beautiful but sullen wife (Persia White) hides out, basically in shame, refusing to care for his demented mother. And the biggest expense is his tweenage son’s private school tuition. Because Kevin went to a private school and figures he owes the boy “at least as much a chance” as he had.

His chance, we’re teased, was probably in the past. He got them all stateside, and screwed up royally once there.

“Am I the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

“Yes. The worst…I married ‘less.'”

She has a grievance, a BIG one.

Now, he’s gambling away his little ready cash in a desperate attempt to get even.

Celianne (Gessica Geneus) has a boy of her own, a Haitian single-mom longing to save up enough to get them to Miami, where her mother has relocated. Waitressing is the only gig she can land, and she takes abuse from the Native Bahamian who owns the joint just to keep that job.

Kevin’s offered the chance to do a little work for “The Major” (Craig Pinder, sporting the most authentic accent in the movie). Human trafficking?

“Dat sounds sinister…I’m not in the slave trade. I provide a service. I prefer to call it ‘de transpor-TATION business.'”

All Kevin has to do is take small boatloads of Haitians from Nassau to “The Berrys” (small, less developed Bahamian islands) where faster boats will shuttle them to Florida.

Easy money, right? Sure.

Mortimer, who specializes in tales with this setting (2010’s “Children of God”) gives us just enough of that local color to give “Cargo” a sense of place.

But he’s basically telling the wrong end of the story, the least interesting and most cliched “white gambler in trouble and cheating on his wife” tale. And he takes forever to get down to it.

The English dialogue (the film is in English and Creole) practically groans with cliches – “Maybe I’ll get lucky.” “I’ve always been there for you, right? As long as your daddy has breath in him, I’ll work it out…I’ll protect you.”

This extends to Kevin’s dealings with the waitress whose life he takes an interest in and his extremely patriarchal treatment of her.

We see far too little of Celianne’s story, figure out only bits and pieces of her life and cannot fathom why she’d tumble for the handsome white fisherman with no apparent means of improving her and her little boy’s lots.

A Jamaican maid (Sky Nicole Grey, good) comes in further complicating matters, joining Kevin’s mother and other “passengers” — not necessarily satisfied with his or the screenplay’s service.

All the while, our “hero” is scrambling to pay the damned private school tuition so that his bi-racial kid can enjoy the white privilege he himself, “a white man in this country,” has had and squandered.

The Major has almost all of the best lines, and they feel improvised — as if the actor was helping out a writer-director who’s only seen movies and listened to the dialogue in them (a common problem with greener filmmakers).

“So, now you is the Jesus Christ of human smugglers! If you play with puppy, he lick you mouth!”

We’re treated to a few lovely shots beneath the gin-clear waters of the Bahamas and a LOT of scenes of Kevin haggling with his bank, with the private school’s bursar, ambling around in his late model Mercedes station wagon, “helping” this or that Bahamian or Haitian, just shocked when his “help” isn’t appreciated, or competent.

“You can tell someone is sincere by the look in their eye!”

Maybe you can. And you can tell a tin-eared screenwriter by her or his leaning on such lines to make his rambling, disjointed and too-often dull melodrama make sense.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, nudity

Cast: Warren Brown, Gessica Geneus, Omar J. Dorsey, Persia White, Jamie Donnelly, Sky Nicole Grey, Jimmy Jean Louis

Credits: Written and directed by Kareem J. Mortimer. An Uncork’d Release

Running time: 1:52

Yup, a near $60 million opening for the third film in the franchise, not the best movie of the three, and the green light is lit. The brand is the thing, and Keanu and John Wick are a bramd growing in value.

Here’s Variety on the announcement that confirms Keanu’s threat to keep making these as long as people keep buying tickets.

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/john-wick-4-summer-2021-lionsgate-1203221620/

Focus Features has this on deck for fall, Sept. 20 to be exact.

Everybody who is anybody in the series (pretty much) is here.

Will “Downton Abbey” get the PBS “Masterpiece” set out of the house and into theaters?

Hometown boy makes music and makes good.

http://www.justjared.com/2019/05/20/bradley-cooper-carey-mulligan-will-perform-with-philadelphia-orchestra/

Hoo hah

Robert De Niro calls for impeachment and imprisonment for Trump, says maybe Al Pacino should lead instead https://t.co/XCBNstgNLI https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1130609038238965760?s=17

Suppose the country decided that instead of banning, taxing and forcing ruinous insurance premiums on gun nuts, they simply tracked “Loners” among us, made them wear tracking headbands with a giant “L” on them, able to tase-shock “dangerous” behavior that might lead to mass shootings?

Hey, anything to avoid doing the obvious, right?

“Loners” is a groaning, labored and low-budget comic satire about just such a future, where such a program, enthusiastically endorsed by a persecuting, scapegoating, tweeting buffoon of a president.

There are ideas here, just not laughs, or in any event, not many.

Actor turned writer Neal McGowan envisions an America where Homeland Security is waging a ” “war on loneliness,” where action recovery teams might show up at any moment where a “headbander” is choosing to avoid the company of the rest of the human race.

“Society-loving Americans” have to be protected from “people hating freaks,” y’see.

There are “mandatory guidelines” which the headbanded must follow, all to avoid those neighbors standing in front of a camera described the latest mass murderer as “a quiet man who kept to himself.”

The “Loners” we meet hit most of the demographic warning signs — white, male, cut off from others. Let’s regulate that away, a draconian series of edicts and guidelines. that can lead to frantic phone calls.

“The government needs…me to have 100 friends” by the end of the day, Lincoln (Brian Letscher of “Scandal”) pleads into his phone. Success! He’s signed up another. “Thanks, Mom!”

They’re jeered by teen punks.

“How many loners does it take to screw in a lightbulb? ONE. Because, you know, no choice.”

They can’t work alone, a required “work buddy” must be issued. “A registered loner” has to check in with new neighbors.

“I just prefer to spend my time alone, is all.

Sure, mass shootings are up. But hey, we’re TRYING.

“Loners” is built around a marathon meeting of Lone ANON, a therapy ground led by the ditsy Mike (Keith Stevenson), where Lincoln, an ex-jock Sports Authority sales associate, standoffish yard service guy Tanner (Tyson Turrou ), librarian Franny (Brenda Davidson), sneaky-loner businessman Ed (David Christian Welborn), IT nerd Dabney (Neil McGowan), sociopathic conspiracy buff Jeremy (Khary Payton) and  defiantly solitary Clara (Denise Dowse) meet and try not to interact.

It doesn’t matter that holding hands or other bodily contact will cut the mandatory meeting time in half. They’re sure as hell not doing that.

But something is up, something has their group red flagged and under surveillance. Clara is busted, the meetings take on an “underground” tone. And puzzled loner Senise (Melinda Paladino) takes Clara’s place.

Their meetings are being watched and discussed high up in the paranoid corridors of power. And a mysterious Mr. Tessman (famed character actor Stephen Tobolowsky) is monitoring their meeting, too, scheming to undo it all, it appears.

A priest drops (Tucker Smallwood) drops in for a few words of encouragement.

“Introvert, a word that’s not that dissimilar from ‘pervert.’…”Make a friend, or BURN in HELL!'”

And the group slowly, reluctantly “bonds.” Sort of.

“You work in a library? I didn’t know they still had those!”

“Did you ever?”

The situation has more promise than the script keeps, as even Tobolowsky is lost in a land of no laughs.

The group therapy is nonsensical, which is fine, but not cutting edge funny or silly funny to go along with that, which isn’t.

First-time feature director Eryn Tramonn can’t find laughs in the material, which doesn’t hit its satiric points hard enough (guns, mass shootings by disaffected white males, a culture fighting every idea that could reduce this threat — regulating “loners” rather than the weapons they use) and doesn’t have enough fun with its “types.”

Davidson is the lone cast member to hint at knowing how to play up the humor, and her mere presence makes for “Loners”‘ best gag.

Librarians are a perceived threat?

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Brian Letscher, Melissa Paladino, Brenda Davidson, Tyson Turrou, David Christian Welborn and Stephen Tobolowsky

Credits: Directed by Eryc Tramonn, script by Neil McGowan. An Indie Rights release.

Running time: 1:31

Kevin Costner’s the voice of the dog, Enzo.

Amanda Seyfried is among the stars in this odd odd odd duck of a racing movie, with Milo Ventimiglia as the racing driver that dog hooks up with.

Kathy Baker, Gary Cole…damn this looks weird.

“In racing, your car goes where your eyes go.”

This Fox release opens Aug. 9, and it’ll either be a sleeper, or an object lesson from Disney that screams “See? THIS is why we canned half of Fox when we bought them out.”

(My review of “Art of Racing” is at this link.)