Storm Reid and Mykelti Williamson are the big names in this tale of a murdered family that will not let go of a surviving member.
It opens on the last weekend of August, a dumping ground where a promising horror title can stand out as counter programming.
Looks cute, with social commentary built in.
August 20, this festival favorite hits VOD.
You don’t even have to shoot in color. A little VR start up wants to let you see the world through someone else’s eyes. Empathy is to be the byproduct.
Zack Robidas, Kathy Searle and Nat Klaitz star in it.
The trailer that won the Super Bowl finally becomes a movie in the flesh this Thursday night.
Love the pairing of DJ and J. Stath, Idris makes a formidable villain.
I doubt of the cars upstage these lads, McLaren or no.
There’s no predicting how “Teacher” will play in the world wide cinescape. But it hit me. I found writer-director Adam Dick’s debut feature relentlessly disturbing on all sorts of levels. And no, that won’t be to every taste.
He and star David Dastmalchian –;of TV’s “MacGuyver,” “Ant Man and The Wasp,” and Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming big screen version of “Dune” — create one of the most serrated cinematic portraits of bullying, the ways it tears through a school and scars for life.
It traffics in tropes and stereotypes, ups the ante on the extremes its bullies go to and yet never seems, at any point and in any way, removed from reality.
This is our world, a daily dose of cruelty doled out by the insensate. Here’s a movie that carves “Hurt people hurt people” into the heart and rarely lets us off the hook as it does.
Dastmalchian is Mr. Lewis, teaching Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” to juniors at Prairie Trail High in suburban Chicago. He has the spectacles, the too-flat hair and the sensitivity that mark him as the quintessential nerd. Yes, the film’s prologue shows us, he was bullied as a child, even as he was dealing with a violently unhappy home life.
Bitter? His new divorce barely scratches the surface of that. Anger management issues, a drinking problem — the last thing this guy needs is to see his own haunted life relived by his less fortunate students.
Daniela (Esme Perez) is pointlessly taunted for her race and her shyness, which manifests itself in the halting way she reads from the play in class.
Preston (Matthew Garry) is the kid the jocks pick on in class, on the bus and in the cafeteria. He’s a smart student, a photographer, and that doesn’t seem to help.
Because Tim Cooper (Curtis Edward Jackson), the sociopathic high-born star pitcher of the baseball team won’t let it — or them — be.
“Teacher” sees Mr. Lewis struggle to intervene as Tim escalates their torment in a waking nightmare of beatings, social media shaming and intimidation.
Mr. Lewis is up for tenure, but still he speaks out. Not that his principal (Cedric Young) is much help. “Everything’s fine,” he says. “This isn’t Kafka.”
But later, as everything is even less fine and things seem more Kafkaesque, he pleads — “We need to hang on until summer! Please work with me!”
Because Mr. Lewis, in trying to rein in Tim’s reign of terror, runs him afoul of the brute’s rich, well-connected father. Kevin Pollack is a decent dramatic actor (“A Few Good Men”) and one of the most gifted comic impressionists of our time. But as Bernie Cooper, he is menace incarnate.
Violent? We can’t say. Threatening? Always. Pollack underplays the obvious tells that Dick slips into the script, a rich guy used to getting his way letting on that he knows all about Lewis, his situation and the screws he can turn to get lenience and special treatment for a son he probably realizes is a thug, because he was raised to be “tough” on his inferiors.
Dick, fleshing out a short film he made with this title and on this subject a couple of years back, suggests two might-be-romances. Daniela and Preston are in the foxhole together, awkwardly facing the pitiless piling-on of teenagers who are all too eager to reward the bullies for not picking on them. They will bring you to the verge of tears.
And Lewis might find a kindred spirit in fellow teacher Arabella (Helen Joo Lee), whose surface sparkle gives a hint of the brittle underneath, letting on that the reasons she might find James Lewis interesting are things she has in common with him.
Because Dastmalchian never quite lets us root for the guy. We can twitch and empathize with James, even if we don’t sympathize with him. “Bitter…sweet” his only pal on the faculty (John Hoogenakker) says of him.
His ex describes the “mood swings, violence and drinking” that made her give up on James. And Dastmalchian plays the guy as so on edge that the real shocks here aren’t his bubbling rage and narrated thoughts of acting out. It’s when he repeatedly tries to understand the perpetrators, mediate the conflicts and keep the peace that he makes your jaw drop.
A very good actor makes us see the strain all this puts on a loner whose lifelong humiliation never ended.
“They say we can never go home again,” he narrates. “In truth, we never leave.”
The cleverest thing Dick tries and almost succeeds in pulling off is teasing out the viewer’s desire for revenge, of Preston (with only a camera for a weapon) and later social media savvy James, and then upending that craving as if his movie is a “teachable moment.”
When James complains that he’s but a “bark in the dark” when he rants about the sociopathy and cruelty overwhelming a society that rejects “‘After School (Special)’ warm fuzzies,” he might be talking about “Teacher” itself.
I found it so real it leaves bruises.
MPAA Rating: unrated, violent, sexual content, alcohol abuse
Cast: David Dastmalchian, Kevin Pollack, Esme Perez
Credits: Written and directed by Adam Dick. A Cinedigm release.
Running time: 1:40
The latest Netflix wrinkle on that “Lifetime Original Movie” staple, “That’s not my baby,” is about man who makes that claim, an Argentinian artist who is on and off the wagon, and either on or off his rocker.
Yes, “The Son” is a horror film, but with subtle chills substituting for shrieks and freaks and blood. This is about the chilling realization that this foreigner you married may have swapped babies on you for purposes you cannot quite fathom, a belief no one else shares.
We find Lorenzo (Joaquín Furriel) and Sigrid (Heidi Toini) in their Buenos Aires bed, wrapping up the throes of making a baby.
He is older, a painter with passion. She is Norwegian, with a Ph.d in biology. He’s had children from a previous marriage and is laid back. She is…anal in the extreme, clinical, listing to her doctors (in Spanish, with English subtitles) the medicines she expects to be given in this “C-section happy” country. Sigrid had a miscarriage once, and she’s too smart to leave anything to chance this time.
She gives off a chill when they attend a cocktail party with Lorenzo’s old flame (Martina Gusmán) and agent (Luciano Cáceres ).
They joke, on meeting Sigrid, that the “old wolf hasn’t lost his teeth.” Lorenzo jokes back, “The wolf finally fell into the trap!” So maybe that’s the reason for Sigrid’s frosty Scandinavian standoffishness.
Renato and Juliette seem a bit taken aback by the baby plans, but still toast the Goya-obsessed Lorenzo’s big “comeback.”
Ah, but there are two threads to the story. We also follow Lorenzo, bruised and chastened, out of the jail cell that Juliette has freed him from. What put him here, who got hurt and what is this strange illness that the shrink we eventually meet calls “Capgras Syndrome?”
Something happened with the baby. Lorenzo doesn’t think it’s his. And as the EARLIER thread unfolds, with Sigrid acting more and more secretive, bringing in her old nanny (Regina Lamm) — who has the not-at-all-comforting name “Gudrun” — we start to ask questions ourselves.
Juliette may not be sold on her client’s claims — “I don’t know whether you went mental or back to drinking again!”
The judge isn’t listening to Lorenzo’s loud claims that “I’m NOT crazy!” The guy, covered in paint and a bit wild-eyed on a good day, isn’t the authority on his own sanity.
“That’s not for you to decide!”
Director Sebastian Schindel, working from Leonel D’Agostino’s script based on Guillermo Martínez’s novel, “The Protective Mother,” makes us see all this through Lorenzo’s eyes.
He spies Sigrid giving herself strange belly injections while she’s pregnant. He notes Gundun whipping up a bizarre liver smoothee, the baby’s food. He is kept from the child for most of the day. He sees mother and nanny home-treating the child’s fever when he thinks little Henrik — lost that argument, I see — needs to see a doctor.
And then there are the locked doors, the unusual new units (in his eyes) attached to the HVAC system in their timeworn Buenos Aires home.
Forget his cracks about his wife’s New Scandinavian cuisine. He smells something seriously fishy going on. A science experiment? Witchcraft? A Norwegian chapter of the “Midsomar” cult?
Schindel does a decent job of teasing out suspense, although movies like this almost always tilt one way in the “Is he mad, is everybody actually OUT to get him?” debate. Furriel sells, but doesn’t over-sell the mystery. Toini doesn’t have a subtle character to play, and thus our minds are made up for us about her.
There’s a bit of taking sides in the picture, with the production weighing things heavily for the Argentine man. “Damned icy Scandinavians and their herring” isn’t said out loud. But you can feel the culture clash subtext, and where the filmmaker’s sympathies lie.
The score is mostly strident “thriller” strings, with the police and jail scenes amusingly underscored by over-familiar (perhaps not in Argentina) “Law & Order” echoing percussion.
It all makes for a somewhat predictable thriller whose saving grace is its creepy tone, the lead performance and a tendency to go easy on the heavy-handedness.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex
Cast: Joaquín Furriel, Martina Gusman, Luciano Cáceres, Heido Toini, Regina Lamm
Credits: Directed by Sebastian Schindel, script by Leonel D’Agostino, based on a Guillermo Martínez novel. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:32
Disney, Marvel and Pixar have even to it that the House of Mouse has shattered the single year box office record for a studio. Over $7.67 billion for the year already — with over five more months of receipts to come. As Variety (@Variety) reports, “The five biggest movies of the year at the domestic box office are all from one studio: Disney.”
“Marvel,” “Avengers,” “Dumbo,” “Aladdin,” Lion King,” “Toy Story 4” –Dazzling movies which changed the medium and raised the bar on cinematic art and narrative invention. Right. Sure.
Game over. As far s 2019 goes. https://t.co/nAGx6gIZv8 https://t.co/PjSlwrelIW https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1155591290261856262?s=17
But for…how long? And more importantly…why?
Showings will be Sept. 15th at an AMC theater near you, a Fandango/AMC event.
https://t.co/Dq1NWf0t9Y https://twitter.com/EW/status/1155795764813152257?s=17
Mark Hamill shared this “Star Wars” screen test on the love-in we call his Twitter feed. It is…adorbs. See for yourself.
“My screen-test for @starwars w/ Harrison on the 1st day I ever met him. Neither 1 of us had read the script at this point, only this 1 scene. I asked George what kind of movie it was-“Let’s just do it, we’ll talk about that later” We never did talk about it later-we just did it.” https://t.co/e7cHWoLmJk https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/1155549281324953601?s=17
A tricky thing, making a colonial-era rescue mission thriller in our post-colonial age.
Do you pay heed to political correctness, or do you just let the visceral action, suspense and “us vs. them” violence work on that more primitive part of the brain?
“15 Minute War” is a tense, tight Franco-Belgian action picture that could have been made in the 1970s, and in some sense should have been. Along with split-screen montages, reggae and blues-rock on the soundtrack, military bravado and the never-dying myth of the “surgical strike,” “War” has political incorrectness is in its very DNA, along with classic action hero “types” and hostage-rescue thriller tropes.
Heavily fictionalized, but based on a true incident, director and co-writer Fred Grivois sets our scene with an opening title, days when “terrorism strikes Europe and the Middle East daily. Welcome to 1976.”
In Djibuti, the last French colony in Africa, revolutionaries are trying to force the French out. The terrorists/”freedom fighters” have the support of Somalia, the neighboring former British colony that had, since its independence, fallen under Soviet influence.
One day, four heavily-armed men storm onto a school bus and take the white children of diplomats and French Foreign Legionnaires on board, and the bus driver, hostage.
Twenty-one kids are taken, the driver is released to tell the French what has happened.
The kids speak French, the terrorists speak English –“NOBODY MOVE! No TALK!” But they make their best threats in French.
“Sit down and be quiet , otherwise (he drags his finger across his throat)!”
But their dash to the border, through beautiful rolling desert-scapes, falls just short. The kidnappers expect sanctuary in Somalia. But they and their prey sit in no man’s land, between the two country’s border guard stations.
Olga Kurylenko (“Quantum of Solace”) plays a teacher in the school who dashes to the border to “volunteer” to help. She evades the French, who have denied her request, and gets on board the bus to aid and comfort the children.
“I don’t care about the French,” American teacher Jane hisses to the head kidnapper (Kevin Layne). “I care about the children.”
“The WHITE children?”
Meanwhile, in France, Captain Andre Gerval (Alban Lenoir) gets word of the incident while visiting his little girl, with his pregnant wife, in the hospital. He assembles his team.
Lorca (David Murgia ) shows off the ring he’s gotten his girlfriend, Campére (Michaël Abiteboul) his new quick-draw “Dirty Harry” shoulder holster. They and cynical Pierre (Sébastien Lalanne) join Gerval as he threatens their way onto a Cairo-bound commercial jetliner at the airport.
Larrain (Guillaume Labbé)? He’s “the best.”
They’re snipers, a special police squad whose bluff, chain-smoking boss (Josiane Balasko) wants them to “prove what’s so ‘special’ about your ‘special unit.'”
There’s a “CIA Cowboy” or “CIA hippy” (Ben Cura) there to, um, “observe.” Some of the kids were American, and by the time they’re in-country, the American teacher is a hostage with them. So the U.S. is pressing for a solution.
The team is confronted not just with their mission, a “synchronized” five shots-at-once hit on the kidnappers from a vantage point they’ll have to crawl to reach, but with the usual “Well, if Paris grows a spine” political interference from home that such movies traffic in.
And the French Foreign Legion is there, with its macho brawlers looking down on the “gendarmes” (the team is civilian, “cops”) and cigar-chomping general (Vincent Perez) “waiting for orders” (always in French, with English subtitles).
The kidnappers are wired on khat and waiting for help from Somalia, and maybe the U.S.S.R.
The tough-guy talk is just as hard-bitten in French as it reads in the English subtitles.
“Diplomacy? Is Giscard (the French president at the time, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing) sending sweets?
The Foreign Legion general isn’t impressed.
“Do you even believe your own bull-merde?”
“L’Intervention” this was called when it opened in Europe, and it’s a film that lives on the conventions of its genre. We see tense countdowns as the snipers try to track their targets (the camera floats over targets, a bullseye in the rifle scope trying to keep the head in the shot). We hear bickering over orders. And we take the occasional trip inside the bus to see how the meek and worn children, their teacher and their tormentors, are faring.
Grivois, who directed “Tempus Fugit,” maintains a modest hold on tension. He narrows the film’s point of view so tightly that we don’t get much of a sense of the kidnappers’ motivation. This isn’t “Captain Philips” or any of the movies about Entebbe. The desperation doesn’t show, the aspirations of the revolutionaries are ignored.
Perhaps that’s understandable when you’re dealing with people willing to shoot or grenade children. But more fleshed-out villains make for better thrillers.
And actions movies’ default “The military knows best” ethos has not been treated kindly by history. They don’t. “Snipers who never miss” is another myth that dies hard in these “surgical strike” pictures.
In the real world, especially with 1970s firearms, triage and technology, “surgery” is and was damned messy.
Still, it’s entertaining to see worn Hollywood tropes trotted out and acted-out in French. And the action finale, the actual “15 Minutes of War,” atones for many of the sins this solid B-picture tallies up until then.
MPAA Rating: unrated, violence
Cast: Alban Lenoir, Olga Kurylenko, Sébastien Lalanne, David Murgia and Guillaume Labbé
Credits: Directed by Fred Grivois, script by Fred Grivois, Ileana Epsztajn and Jérémie Guez. A Blue Fox Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:38
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