A 1950s private eye tale was director/star Norton’s aim in adapting Jontahan Lethem’s novel.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Willem Dafoe, Alec Baldwin, Michael Kenneth Williams and Bruce and Leslie signed on.
“Gangster with Tourette’s” is quite the hook.
It has 2:24 worth of gravitas and a Nov. 1 release date.
“Low Tide” is a “Bling Ring” variation of the well-worn “friends find treasure and turn on each other” story trope, one with just enough suspense, atmosphere and local color to come off.
Writer-director Kevin McMullin, making his first feature, leans on character “types” and familiar situations entirely too much. But leads Jaeden Martell and Keean Johnson, as burgling brothers, and Shea Whigham as the local law give it just enough pop to overcome its shortcomings.
Alan (Johnson), Smitty (Daniel Zolghadri) and Red (Alex Neustaedter) are Jersey Shore teens who resent the “Bennies” who show up in their coastal town every summer season. How much? Enough to turn them into benefactors by motoring across the bay and robbing them when nobody’s home.
It’s about 1990 — Peak Bon Jovi — and they hunt for liquor, drugs and jewelry in their ransackings.
Smitty, their not-wholly-reliable “lookout,” busts his leg on one such foray. That’s when Alan decides to bring in his kid brother as a replacement.
Smitty is on the shifty and shady side. Red, the hotheaded son of a local developer, is the leader, a bully — violent. Alan and little brother Peter are just broke. Dad’s on a long haul, long-line fishing boat for the summer., Mom died years ago.
Jaeden Martell (“St. Vincent,” “Midnight Special”) plays Peter as sort of a variation of his character in “The Book of Henry.” He’s “the smart one,” into black and white horror movies and works on the docks, selling fish for the skippers there. He’s also “a Boy Scout,” literally and figuratively. He has no business getting mixed up in this.
That’s what the local cop (Whigham) says when Alan is caught on their very next outing. Red’s a sociopath in the making, Alan is at a crossroads in his “comic book…origin story.” But Peter? He’s an innocent, maybe with a future.
Nobody’s talking to the cops. Or maybe everybody is. And that last heist, which turned up some choice loot at a dead ship’s captain’s remote cabin, has everybody suspecting everybody else of betrayal.
Only Peter and Alan know the exact contents of the haul, and only Peter knows where he buried it.
Kristine Froseth plays Mary, the pretty “Benny” Alan so wants to impress that he starts flashing money around.
Mike Hodge plays the pawn broker, the one who lectures the kids on what is and isn’t “gold,” and the one who (pre-eBay) has no idea what gold Spanish Doubloons are actually worth, then or now.
It’s also eye-rolling that the “smart kid” asserts that vintage coin stashes are “always worth more together, as a collection.” Seriously, screenwriters, a little homework renders your world more real.
Would a 50ish police sergeant in 1990 use “comic book origin stories” as an analogy to an impressionable teen? Nope. Fanboy screenwriters would.
But there’s much more sharp dialogue than clunky, with the boys announcing their “code” of who they’ll rob, and who they won’t — “No locals!”
And the cop’s lecture gets good the moment he drops his whole “origin story” analogy. “Bad guys never think they’re bad. They’ve got their reasons, and they do one thing which leads to two things which leads to a million.”
“Low Tide” — on DirectTV Sept. 5, in theaters Oct 4 — is on its surest ground when it deals with the real (not melodramatic) world of its day, sons of fishermen in a “Mystic Pizza/Breaking Away” town bonding over their contempt for wealthy vacationers, making idiots of themselves over girls on the boardwalk.
“She’s a countdown girl. Looks great from far away, 10. Then as she gets closer, 9, 8, 7…”
The cast is uniformly fine, with Neustaedter (of TV’s “The Colony”) throwing an evil Heath Ledger vibe and young Zolghadri born to play a prison “snitch.”
McMullin doesn’t reinvent the wheel here, and “types” and “tropes” only take “Low Tide” so far. But this one delivers just enough suspense, menace, violence and betrayal to never leave us high and dry.
MPAA Rating: R for language, some violence and teen drug use
Cast: Jaeden Martell, Keean Johnson, Shea Whigham, Kristine Froseth, Mike Hodge, Daniel Zolghadri and Alex Neustaedter
Credits: Written and directed by Kevin McMullin. An A24/DirectTV release.
Running time: 1:26
Post 9/11, Congressional investigators uncover some of the things the Bush Administration was covering up, “Rendition” things.
Amazon has this one slated for Nov. Release.
The Hollywood Reporter says that “tens of thousands” of customers credit card info was was stolen.
MoviePass, the bust that keeps on busting.
https://t.co/vSc6qUUf9p https://twitter.com/THR/status/1164542000714133504?s=17
A24 and Direct TV have this teen burglary drama. Jaeden Martell is one of the stars, Shea Whigham plays the law.
Nobody in it wears a cape. Well, OK. Maggie Smith MIGHT show up in one.
But her superpower is sarcasm.
Yes the “Downton Abbey” fanbase is ordering their tickets and making their plans to catch the Focus Features wide screen treatment of their favorite PBS show.
It opens Sept. 20, and tickets are pre-selling like Beluga caviar, M’lords and ladies.
So sayeth The Hollywood Reporter.
“On the nose” casting can be playful, or it can be a curse — a lazy form of screen shorthand that strips the mystery away from your thriller before the opening credits are finished.
So glancing at the names listed below, the ones that flash by in the opening moments of “Angel has Fallen,” you can probably guess from Danny Huston, Tim Blake Nelson and Nick Nolte, who might be the heavies and who might play the grizzled old mountain man who figure into the plot.
But that doesn’t ruin the movie. As Hitchcock always said, “Good villains make good thrillers” and Huston’s been working that side of the street for decades, now.
It’s a visceral experience — emphasis on “viscera” — with pulse-pounding action, gasping hand-held camera chases and hellacious gunfights.
The third film in the Gerard Butler super-Secret Service Agent series is a movie of big BOOMS, ECUs (extreme close-ups) and a truckload of F-bombs. And if it takes its action beats, plot points and politics from “The Fugitive,” “Shooter,” “RED” and Q-Anon, well that’s just madness to go along with the over-the-top B-movie mayhem.
Butler’s Mike Banning bonds a bit with an old Army buddy (Huston) who now runs a mercenary operation — Salient. “Contractors” they call themselves. Old buddy Wade needs a little help landing government work, and Mike’s in line for the top job at the Secret Service.
Wade doesn’t think either of them is cut out for desk jobs, though — “We’re lions. And that ain’t never gonna change!”
Mike? He’s got a wife (Piper Perabo), a toddler at home and pills for every concussion, neck, back and muscle injury he’s taken defending America’s presidents. He may have President Trumbull’s ear, but maybe that step up is not for him.
And then the most gonzo assassination attempt in recent screen history puts Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) in a coma, Mike in the crosshairs of the investigation (Jada Pinkett Smith is the FBI agent on the case) for colluding with the Russians, and a trigger happy vice president ready to strike back at those implicated in everything from election interference to pee pee tapes, and now a hit on a sitting president.
Mike must escape custody, finger the real culprits, clear his name and save the Republic. Again.
Stunt-man turned director Ric Roman Waugh (“Snitch,” “Shot Caller”) tops the epic (and digitally-augmented) assassination attempt with a kidnapping “hit” out on Mike, and an absolutely stunning, close-up and explosively violent escape, edited into a whirling blur of bodies, blows and bullets to the head.
Waugh isn’t much on subtlety or finesse. And as I say the plot here is a pastiche of other “clear my name” thrillers. But the man knows his meat and potatoes action beats.
Mike’s getaway includes a visit to a mountain and an emotionally overwrought Vietnam vet (Nolte), and getting and getting out of there, stuff blows up.
And no, that’s not even close to the last stuff that blows up, here.
The old man blasts the younger one with an epic speech about war, and an apology — “Me disappearing was the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Freeman gets a speech or two as well.
Mainly, though, “Angel has Fallen” (Secret Service agent as “Guardian Angel”) is about the fights, chases, shootouts and explosions. And insane lapses in protocol and logic and loony coincidences.
And Waugh makes those work, finding the odd laugh (NRA loons get what’s coming to them) as he does.
Butler wears the weary man of war thing well, and his stunt crew is aces.
Just don’t take any of the rest of this seriously. The Russian stuff is straight out of Fox News/QAnon apologia. Nobody evers uses the word “traitor.”
And try to forget every supervillain, mountain man or sniveling schemer the names in those opening credits have played, if only for two hours.
MPAA Rating: R for violence and language throughout.
Cast: Gerard Butler, Piper Perabo, Morgan Freeman, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tim Blake Nelson, Danny Huston and Nick Nolte.
Credits: Directed by Ric Roman Waugh, script by Matt Cook, Robert Mark Kamen, Ric Roman Waugh. A Summit/Lionsgate release.
Running time: 2:00
Feel free to sing along.
Lionsgate has a holiday movie that features Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie
Think anybody will show up for this?
Should’ve gotten Russell Crowe to play sexual harasser news chief Roger Ailes. He’s good at it.
There are several common problems that come with the territory when a challenging film from abroad is remade and given “a Hollywood ending.”
The remake is inevitably neat and pat, some nuance is lost as the remaking filmmaker seems in a rush to a conclusion that seems forgone. And that’s not just something viewers who remember the original film experience.
I reviewed Susanne Bier’s “After the Wedding” when it came to the U.S. in 2007. All I clearly remember about it was the Danish star Mads Mikkelsen was the Indian orphanage manager shocked at who he meets at the wedding of a possible benefactor of the orphanage. The genders have been changed for the Bart Freundlich remake.
The memory of the rest of the first film is fuzzy, but watching the remake, reveling in the performances of two great actresses in all their glory, that whole “neat and pat” thing dulls some of the impact. The twists are so big and yet muted that you wonder if they ever shocked, even way back when.
Michelle Williams is Isabel, the devoted manager of an Indian orphange that is forever short of funds. She dotes on the children, one little boy in particular, as they play and learn and even partake in their own charitable work — helping feed the hungry outside their gates.
A chance for “a suitcase full of cash” puts Isabel on a plane to New York to meet with an advertising mogul, Theresa (Julianne Moore). “She is very impressive,” Isabel is warned, as she’s fetched from the four-star hotel suite where she’s been parked.
Indeed she is. Theresa is high-powered, rich, used to getting things done and having schedules bent to meet her needs.
Isabel is rushed into a meeting, and barely has time to reiterate the data on child prostitution, the hundreds of thousands of kids who are malnourished “dying of minor illnesses” when Theresa’s endless interruptions reach a crescendo.
This “very busy time” for her is consumed with the showcase wedding she’s throwing for her daughter Grace. Isabel is taking body blows due to the disconnect between acquisitive, status-grabbing affluence and someone, like her, simply trying to feed the hungry, and the patroness who summoned her for this audience is...distracted.
“My work is all consuming” is followed by a hint of judgement. Theresa has “leaned in” to get where she is — a multi-million dollar “landscape changing” media (ad sales) company, two little boys, an estate in the suburbs. And Isabel? No husband? No children of your own?
No matter. “Very very impressive, the work you’re doing.”
The woman with her hand held out has to tamp down the fury as she is all but blown off, her time discounted by the rich woman who “has it all.”
“Come to the wedding. I’ll get to know you better.”
Williams has several such scenes in “After the Wedding” — knocked back on her heels, in need, forced to swallow her bile at the rudeness, tactlessness and judgementally direct questions Theresa, her sculptor-husband (Billy Crudup) and the daughter getting married (Abby Quinn) fire her way.
The four-time Oscar nominee lets us see each fresh wound, Isabel’s deflated recovery, the tactful “I still need a check from these awful rich people” response to every blow.
Because there are surprises at that wedding — shocking ones. And Isabel, out of place at the lavish meal, the shallow guests talking “paleo” diets and “training for a tri…in Hawaii,” tone deaf and hitting on her, or catty other guests gossiping and questioning the groom’s devotion, physically shrinks before our eyes.
And it’s not just the experience of all this free-flowing cash, that “I think we could get 100 beds for what they’re paying” for her hotel suite.
Isabel knows Oscar (Crudup), the father of the bride. Or knew him in a previous chapter in her life.
Crudup and Williams have a “Who can look more shocked?” face-off, and that’s just for starters. Bring Moore into the mix, perfectly cast as a control freak used to bossing others around, getting her own way and “damn your inconvenience” as she does, and you’ve got the makings of great drama.
Or, well, melodrama. Because the further this picture plows along, the more “Isn’t that convenient,” in terms of plot twists, comes into play.
The scenario takes on complications, too many of them humiliating to poor Isabel, as one and all engage in the pop psychology that gives them their understanding of what has happened, why, and how those involved evolved after it did.
Williams makes us weather these slings and arrows with her. Moore’s ironically-named boss and “mother,” Theresa, even at her most “considerate,” is brittle and demanding and controlling, making one long for a catfight as Isabel gets her back up.
And Crudup makes us grasp the logic of Oscar’s actions, feel just a pang of empathy (he makes a good heel) for his situation.
Quinn’s performance cleverly includes hints of the personalities of every person who had anything to do with her being there, on this day, getting married.
Perhaps its not the movie that will win Williams her Oscar, and perhaps it was wisest to park this solid but flawed melodrama as summer counter-programming, sparing it competition with the true awards contenders of the fall.
It’s still worth seeing for the clinic its dazzling cast puts on, the bite they bring to their showdowns and the heartbreak Williams lets us see — judged, hurt, insulted and tested — time and again, “After the Wedding.”
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic material and some strong language.
Cast: Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore, Billy Crudup, Abby Quinn
Credits: Written and directed by Bart Freundlich, based on the Susanne Bier, Anders Thomas Jensen script for the 2006 Danish film of the same title.
A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Running time: 1:52
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