Movie Nation

The works of Luis Barragán, Mexico’s most famous architect, are austere, clean, linear and angular; blank, windowless walls or towering obelisks, brightly painted with stucco textures, water and trees strategically placed within the viewer’s aspect, even when standing in a garden or courtyard, staring skyward.

His most famous works in his native land — Fuente de los Amantes, Casa Gilardi, Torres de Satélite and Faro de Comercio  — have a modernist minimalism that can easily be overlooked. Which is probably why, years after his death, those in charge of his legacy in Mexico sold his professional archives — drawings, writings, photographs, etc. — to a Swiss furniture tycoon, or more precisely, the tycoon’s Barragán-obsessed wife.

No buyer in Mexico could be found.

The writer and artist Jill Magid came to her Barragán mania more recently. But as she endeavored to intensify her study by visiting the works and the artist’s studio in Mexico, taking inspiration and using his art to inspire her own, she found herself blocked by this Swiss couple and their foundation.

“The Proposal” is the name of the art project she concocted to address this idea of “What happens to an artist’s legacy when it’s controlled by a corporation?”

Like Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock or more recently Stan Lee (still tweeting away, post mortem, as is Hitchcock), Barragán has his legacy controlled by an entity, not a family.

The Swiss couple, Vitra furniture magnate Rolf Fehlbaum and archive director Federica Zanco, have blocked any use of images of the architect’s work, stopped earlier documentaries from being made by banning the use of images of that work and even trademarked the name (“Without the accent.”) Barragan.

It’s the damnedest thing.

The story goes that Rolf proposed to Federica, who suggested that instead of a pricey ring, she’d rather have her favorite architect’s archive. For $2.5 million it was hers, to curate and dig into “as a scholar.”

Mexico’s art community was upset and has tried to gin up outrage over this affront to national pride, this cheap sell-out of their artistic patrimony. And ever since this happened in the mid-90s. every time an an artist or researcher or anybody approached the archive for access to further their research, Zanco has politely but firmly begged off — decades of letters insisting this book or that exhibition is coming up — “Unfortunately, we are struggling on closing a major project” — collating and organizing to do, etc.

“Legacy always remains an open question,” Magid notes in her narration for the film. Barragán’s is now controlled by an enthusiastic, litigious and uncooperative — my words here, not Magid’s — rich dilettante.

Magid envisions a project of her own, a years-long correspondence, travel and filming, narrating and communing with the artist’s work (she stays in his Mexico City studio for a while).

But “every time I try to find Barragán, I encounter Federica.”

Magid sees them caught in a love triangle, with the architect (who died in 1988) at its center. That leads her to “The Proposal.”

“The Proposal is an artwork and a catalyst. Its intention is to question the status of Barragan’s archive in Switzerland, and its possible return to Mexico.”

She is denied permission to film here or there, which she skirts. She sends flattering letters to “Dear Federica,” and receives polite rejections, sometimes hints of “copyright violation” and “intellectual property” litigation.

And yet, she persisted. She gets Barragán’s family involved, and the Guadalajara government. The flattering notes seem to wear Federica down, just a smidge.

Magid’s film is in keeping with the Pritzker Prize-winning architect’s ethos, quiet interludes, a little music (she gets to thumb through Barragán’s old LP collection), a film of minimalist beauty for a man who had, as his Pritzker Prize tribute noted, “accepted solitude as man’s fate.”

There are interviews with the Manhattan gallerist and the widow of Barragán’s business partner, who sold the archives, as well as members of the Mexican arts community and guardians of the buildings and “personal” archives there. We see snippets of news coverage here and there of the controversy attached to this remote, secretive “foundation” and its ownership of a vital part of Mexican artistic history.

There’s also a lot of footage of Magid — gazing, strolling, writing, showering and dressing. Hey, she put five years of work into this (God bless foundation grants). She’s going to get her closeup.

The film and the filmmaker recognize Federica for her passion for the architect, and by inference condemn her selfishness and laxity about doing something with the archives.

I was reminded of “The Fountainhead” (the artist’s rights to control their work) and “Citizen Kane,” as well as the legacy stories of Disney and others as the film’s travelogue, detective story, artistic act of persuasion, mediation and public shaming unfold.

“The Proposal” is serene, patient and sucks you into this quandary with skill. To her credit, Magid makes us care, even though we’re not sure what she’s got in mind or if she’s as persuasive as she thinks she is.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Jill Magid.

Credits: Directed by Jill Magid. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: 1:26

Cities that go too long without championships become the stuff of legend — endless punchlines to the rest of the sporting universe.

Boston, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit all endured mythic losing streaks in this sport or that one. How Detroit’s long hockey drought ended, with a quintet of the first Russian players to slip into the NHL, is the celebratory subject of “The Russian Five.”

Joshua Riehl’s film is playful and fun, with the odd somber moment, a marvelous appreciation of the brutal beauty of the game when it’s played with the grace these players brought to it in the 1990s.

It begins with the cloak and dagger machinations of people like Red Wings exec Jim Lites, flippantly recalling sneaking this and that player out of the not-yet-former U.S.S.R. in hotels, through third party countries, answering angry phone calls from the U.S. State Department afterward.

This was at the behest of general manager Jim Devellano, a folksy, Canadian-accented slow-talking hustler who started gambling on “wasting” draft choices on very young Russian stars in the hope that some of them could be lured across “The Iron Curtain.”

“How do you get a guy to defect?”

They made it up as they went along, using the Detroit Free-Press hockey writer (Keith Gave), who just happened to speak Russian, to get to players like Sergei Federov and Vladimir Konstantinov.

A doctor was bribed to ensure that a player was diagnosed with cancer that could only be treated in America. There was another time Lites set up a secret rendezvous in the Drake Hotel in Chicago, where the Soviet National Team was playing an exhibition game, bringing a contract, $10,000 in cash, brochures for the nicest riverfront apartments in Detroit, and for a new Chevy.

That’s how you sell Detroit to the Russians — the river, a Corvette and good ol’ American greenbacks.

As Devellano assembled this team in the ultimate example of “playing the long game,” the NHL was exposed to a new style of hockey — pass happy instead of the “dump and chase” with lots of body-checking that Canada had turned it into.

“When they were on the ice, they had the puck all night,” a former teammate remembers.

But as the team’s “five piece unit” was pieced together, and the glorious, high-scoring style took root, the Big Prize eluded them. And the fans and the institutions of hockey built something “like the Mountain of Everest of pressure,” Federov recalls.

Here’s a dismissal by a print columnist of the day, there’s a doubt from then-coach Scotty Bowman or Lites or Devellano as the Red Wings “which had become, overnight, the RED Wings,” failed to win Lord Stanley’s Cup.

They’d have to “toughen up, play the Canadian way,” that back-bacon blowhard Don Cherry, the TV commentator who presided over the game for decades, fumes on the air. ” “I don’t want’em here, the players don’t want’em here. What is this? ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ or ‘Hockey Night in Russia?'”

Actor and Detroit area native Jeff Daniels is here to give us perspective how where Detroit’s image, of itself and to the world, was at the time.

The cute culture-clash nature of the new teammates pops up in old home movies where the Russians celebrate Blockbuster, where they can rent “Terminator” movies, Hellman’s Mayo and Corvettes. The Americans had to develop a taste for vodka and drinking sessions built on constant toasting.

And here’s former teammate Darren McCarty calling Vyacheslav Kozlov “the most miserable” so-and-so ever to play the game, and explaining the difference between a “sucker punch” and “cold cocking” somebody.

It’s a fun movie right up to the sobering reality that even the best moments are going to have sadness injected into by the cold, cruel world.

Still, “The Russian Five” manages to give us a lesson in the players who helped the NHL evolve and softened Cold War tensions as they did. It’s good to remember they’re not all Putins over there.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Jim Devellano, Sergei Fedorov, Viacheslav Fetisov, Igor Larianov, Wayne Gretsky, Vladimir Konstantinov , Vyacheslav Kozlov, Jeff Daniels

Credits: Directed by by Joshua Riehl, script by Keith Gave, Joshua Riehl and Jason Wehling. A Lucky Hat release.

Running time 1:38

Bruce Beresford’s latest is an Aussie tale going straight to digital May 21.

“Ladies in Black” earned theatrical release down under.

It’s a three hour long movie, and after that epic opening weekend, there was really nowhere to go but down.

So as “Avengers: Endgame” races towards the $2 billion mark globally ($1.78 and counting), let’s not make too big a deal of the fact that unlike the “Star Wars” relaunch, it didn’t leave enough audience for the second weekend to break THAT record, too.

“Force” managed over $149 on its second weekend. “Endgame,” despite the folks who have enough free time to kill ANOTHER three hours and see it again, is in the process of falling off 59-60% on its second weekend, which will leave it in the $146 range.

That’s from Deadline.com, but based on the Friday estimates (from $157 OPENING Friday to $40 million May 3), “Endgame” is going to fall much further short than that. It’s now looking like a $100-120 million second weekend.

That could change with walkups Saturday and Sunday, but right now, no “new” record. It’s still making money at a furious and unprecedented clip. Disney/Marvel has no complaints.

Deadline.com is still saying the over-hyped R-rated Seth Rogen is catnip to Charlize Theron comedy “Long Shot” will edge “The Intruder.” But “Intruder” won Thursday night, and that should be enough to get it past the $10.5 million or so audiences are shelling out for “Long Shot.” Too close to call, but I’m calling it — for “Intruder.”

They’re both “fun, bad movies.” A lot of reviewers–not all of them SXSW nerds — didn’t think “Long Shot” was bad, but they’re not as tired of the slovenly troll gets the runway model/Secretary of State into bed formula as I am.

“UglyDolls” had a chance, with a Hulu Series based on a long-established doll line to boost brand identity — and Chinese production money (Alibaba, China’s answer to Amazon). But it’s dull and parents aren’t racing to take their tiny tykes (the only audience for it, really). It won’t clear $10 million unless there’s pent up Saturday demand that nobody is anticipating.

“La Llorona” is closing in on $50 million, “Captain Marvel” is over $420 and “Shazam!” will clear the $135 mark by Sunday night.

Fox’s “Breakthrough” has proven that faith-based films don’t have to be angry to hit. It’ll be over $33 million by midnight Sunday and will be in the $40s by the time the no-budget pic finishes its run.

“Dumbo” has one last weekend in the Top Ten, and with it finishing its run in the $112-118 range, probably counts as a disappointment, if not actually a Tim Burton bomb.

We’ll have to wait until Box Office Mojo weighs in later today with final Friday totals to see if “El Chicano” and its 600 screens cleared the $1.36 million it would take to edge “Dumbo” out of the top ten.

I called this the minute the lights came up on a packed Mon night preview I attended. Stupid movie, but it plays.

It did better Thursday night and better Friday than “Long Shot.” That looks like a win. Or second place to “Endgame” anyway.
#TheIntruder overtakes #LongShot and #UglyDolls at the Thursday box office https://t.co/iWXJFdeXvQ https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1124614645359099904?s=17

Not a big name in the cast, but that effect is pretty chilling.

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” grafted onto every alien bugs biting people picture. Later this summer, we should see “Assimilate.”

Travolta’s an ex-baller/private eye in this neo noir, coming to theaters and VOD May 24.

Good to see Famke Janssen and Brendan Fraser getting into films again.

The strain of achieving “twee” shows in far too many scenes and moments in the arrested development/coming of aged dramedy “Peel.” It may offer Emile Hirsch a chance to recreate his tweens even though he’s in his mid-30s. But there is little if anything of consequence that comes out of this grasping, gasping overreach for daft.

Even the big overarching theme — a broken family mended by revisiting that breaking point — is inconsequential in the extreme.

“Peel” is a kid whose childhood consisted of meekly playing along with his rough and tumble brothers, drinking Orange-zina (think “Tang”) and being doted on by his hippy mom.

Mom (Amy Brenneman) gets into rows with Dad (Victor Verhaeghe) over how she’s sheltering and home-schooling their youngest, shortest and only redheaded child. That leads Dad to take brothers Will and Sam and leave, never to make contact again.

Twenty-five years later, Mom has crawled into a bottle, with Peel (Emile Hirsch) in charge of mixing her vodka and Orange-zina cocktails. He’s eccentric, something of an artist, and utterly naive to the ways of the world outside their yard. He can’t even tell the cute Korean-American neighbor (Angelina Joo) is sweet on him.

We can. We can also tell that he’s entirely too old for her, physically if not socially.

Then Mom dies. Peel is left on his own, no visible means of support and a mortgage to pay. And so he rents out a room to the first musclehead who rolls by in a 1970s Gremlin.

Jack Kesy of “12 Strong” and TV’s “Claws” plays Roy as a sort of good ol’boy Ryan Gosling. He chain smokes, sports a crew-cut with a cute little Bieber tail and drawls, mostly about women.” ‘Ritas” he calls them — short for “senoritas.”

“I’m-o teach you every Godd—-d thing you need to know to attract the opposite sex!”

With Roy comes Chuck (Jacob Vargas), whom Roy labels a “Professor…with a “Degree from the University of Adversity.” Chuck refuses to speak English, and purrs poetic observations, opinions and insults at Peel in Spanish, which Peel doesn’t understand.

Chad (Garrett Clayton) is a third new roomie/renter, the college guy who can help populate their parties with lots of lovely ‘Ritas. Or so Roy figures.

That first party has Peel blowing up condoms because he thinks they’re balloons, with Chuck feeding drinks to “El hombre de la casa” (Peel) and Chun Ja (Joo) and her Korean cousin Jooeun (Hana Hwang) dancing to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” with Peel.

But that cannot distract the easily-distracted Peel from his need to fill the gaping hole in his life. He needs to find his brothers. And being too naive to know how to do that, he’s going to need help.

I’m scanning back over my notes for “Peel,” scraping up the not-even-a-handful of jokes and situations and marveling how anybody could get a 100 minute movie out of this.

It’s an enervated film, with Hirsch tasked with being the irony-impaired naif who just reacts and misreads every human interaction he has.

Visiting Mom’s lawyer (producer and sometime actor Ray Bouderau) produces a wry grin or two. What can Peel do with a house, a mortgage and no job or living on his own skills?

“I don’t know. I’m not a life coach, son.”

“Do you think you could help me find my brothers?” earns an elaborate dismissal, just a lawyer writing on a slip of paper, folding it up several times and turning it over to Peel.

The numbers “411” are all he wrote.

Kesy provides comic counterpoint as tactless horndog Roy, who greets Chun Ha at the door by calling back to his landlord — “Hey Peel, your math tutor’s here.”

It’s just that there’s too little for everybody to play, too much effort in emphasizing how eccentric and gifted Peel is supposed to be, with only the odd bit of evidence for either.

The characters, from the roommates to Peel’s family, all have the potential to be made interesting. Chuck, for instance, is a race handicapper and Roy an inveterate gambler. There’s an avenue ripe for comic situations. Screenwriter Troy Hall and director Rafael Monserrate do nothing with it. They’re hell bent getting us to the third act with mere hints of “twee” to sustain us until they do.

That potential is turned inconsequential at every turn.

Hirsch is a gifted comic actor and could have made a lot more out of this unworldly guy who draws and snorkels obsessively and gets his hair cut about as often as Johnny Depp.

And no, a few sweet moments in the final act don’t paper over the emptiness that precedes them. “Peel” is just as its title suggests, a movie that’s all surface peel and no substance.

MPAA Rating: R for language including sexual references, and for some drug content

Cast: Emile Hirsch, , Shiloh Fernandez, Amy Brenneman, Jack Kesy and Yaya DaCosta

Credits: Directed by Rafael Monserrate, script by Troy Hall. A Sony Pictures release.

Running time: 1:41

When we talk of “pace” in a movie review, it doesn’t just mean the speed at which the story unfolds.

It refers to energy in the performances, narrative drive, “urgency” in the way what we’re watching grabs us and pulls us with it to the bitter end.

“The Dirty Kind” is a movie with no pace, no narrative drive, sleepwalking performances and zero urgency.

That’s why if you jump to the end of the review you’ll see zero stars, a rating so rare I have to track down internet art to illustrate it whenever I have to trot it out.

This mystery-thriller has no mystery and no thrills. It’s a picture with more off-screen gossip than story. This is how bad a movie can turn out when Michael Madsen’s trumpeted as a producer and nine days is the length of the shoot, and something the filmmakers felt the need to brag about.

What, we’re supposed to evaluate this crap on the curve? This is “48 Hour Film Project” bad. How’s that?

Sniffing around the Internet, you can discover that the “story” — I hesitate to call it that — was “inspired” by the Congressman Anthony Weiner sex scandal. A senator gets his lap-dancing girlfriend pregnant and the guy he hires to “take care of it” doesn’t drive her to the clinic. He brings along a friend who kills her to get all the money promised for taking “care of it.”

But the lax, meandering movie loses track of the senator (Paul C. Kelly) and the missing woman, professional name “Natalie Cottontail” (Victoria Wallace).

The private eye may borrow the names of detective story novelists Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain for his name, Raymond Cain (Duke Williams). But he’s no tough guy, no smart guy, no guy with any sense of urgency about this missing and presumed dead daughter of the person who hired him. If you must see this, watch how he’s abused in the inevitable “asking too many questions” kidnapping and beating. Very, um, Harvey Weinstein styled punishment from the hoodlums.

While there’s some justification for taking our PI into a private, off-the-books “lap dance club” (filmed in dim, red lighting). He’s asking questions, right? But shlepping to a party for the most banal cocktail banter in screen history? You’ve got 84 minutes of movie. DO something with them.

Writer-director Vilan Trub manages one cute moment. Raymond Cain is paid in cash, which he stashes in a Trojans box in his nightstand.

Nothing else — not one performance, not one moment of action, not one bit of questioning — engages, enlightens, enrages or titillates.

Our hero doesn’t show up for 20 minutes, and we regret that the filmmakers interrupted his nap.

His best line may be in self-defense –“I am not a creep.”

His worst line is every other word out of his mouth. “I think we got off on awkward terms.”

Ever heard that sentence by a native English speaker? Anywhere?

“Awkward” is the perfect single-word description of “The Dirty Kind.” There are awkward pauses in exchanges of dialogue, as if the actors are struggling to come up with their line. Not that there’s any sign of a struggle. Every single actor seems drained of life.

The editing is awkward to the point of clumsy. And don’t get me started on the lighting.

The film’s brief 84 minutes are interminable.

It’s only May, and we may already have a candidate for Worst Picture of 2019. And keep in mind, I’ve already seen “79 Parts.”

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Duke Williams, John Mertens, Amanda Plant, Victoria Freire, Ed Glynn

Credits: Written and directed by Vilan Trub.  A Bayview release.

Running Time: 1:25

Way back in ancient times, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” set the opening weekend and second weekend box office records which generations — Ok, not generations — have held to be dear and unbreakable.

With “Avengers: Endgame” wiping out the records with a $357 million opening last weekend, might the second weekend record — $149 million for “Awakens” — also tumble?

Box Office Mojo certainly seems to think so, predicting a 57% week-to-week drop and a $154 million second weekend. Brad Brevet with Mojo notes that there’s more repeat business on this “Avengers” than there was for “Infinity War,” and bases the estimate on that.

Guessing whether everybody who has wanted to see this pretty much has, and how many of them will want to spend another three hours with this story seems more difficult to gauge (for me, anyway) than the opening weekend. And the opening weekend EVERYbody underestimated what “Endgame” would do.

So any guess between $100 million and $200 million, which is where Variety is hedging, seems reasonable. After that epic opening, and clearing $30 million a day all week, anything less than the record would be a sign that the audience has had its fill, anything under $125 million would put an exclamation point on that.

And it could easily, considering the number of screens it is on, manage $200 and break the old record by as many miles as it beat the opening weekend record.

“Long Shot,” the Charlize Theron/Seth Rogen R-rated rom(sex) com, got decent reviews (not from me, meh) and should open in the teens — $12 million says Mojo, $9-16 fudges Variety.

“UglyDolls,” based on the toy line, is from first-time animation distributor STX, which usually goes for action pics. It’s a dull affair aimed at tiny tukes, but the tunes are good and it’s on a lot of screens and fills a void in the kiddie corner, so Variety’s $12-16 projection seems, well, low. I think high teens, maybe even $20.

Mojo goes even lower on that one, thinking it’ll manage $10.

The non-supernatural thriller “The Intruder” could be in that same range, even without a marketable cast (Meagan Good, Michael Ealy, Dennis Quaid). Predictions are ranging $9-16, and I’ll opt for the higher end of that.
“El Chicano” is opening on enough screens (605) to crack the top ten, though nobody is predicting that.