Movie Nation

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.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/tarantino-suggests-once-a-time-hollywood-may-be-final-film-1222491

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

If I’m honest, and I strive for that in every review, I think I cut the last “Avengers” movie the same slack I cut the last “Pirates of the Caribbean” picture. The last “X-Men” outing? Maybe not as much.

I’m just grateful that the whole shooting match is over, and I summon up every good feeling I’ve had over the run — from the terrific early efforts, to the desultory, repetitive finales — for that one last review of farewell.

Those obsessed with these elaborately back-engineered universes get a lot more out of these filler-filled exercises in fan-service. Like Jon Favreau and Gwyneth Paltrow, I can get a little lost. Unlike them, I’m not inclined to blame myself for the convoluted chaos I’m having to sift through on the screen.

I never bought a superhero comic and despite liking that grand huxter, Stan Lee (interviewed him a few times, delightful), never bought into this Nobel-worthy BS hype attached to all he and his ilk hath wrought.

Honestly, if Joss Whedon and Joe Johnston weren’t involved, if there’s no empowerment messaging in Gal’s character, no convincing WWI recreation, no Kenneth Branagh flourishes in “Thor,” no Paul Rudd or Robert Downey Jr. ways with a witty line, no Jason Momoa self-mocking machismo, I’m fighting boredom in your typical digital barroom brawl from the DC or Marvel SuperheroWorks.

Favreau directed “Iron Man” and has acted in these films and hopes they push Robert Downy Jr. for a superhero movie Oscar nomination, this time out. I wouldn’t be shocked if he landed one.

But all I can think about, as the credits roll and we wait for that silly “Coming NEXT time” movie plug after them, is how I’d much rather see Downey, Don Cheadle, Rudd, Mary Elizabeth Olsen, ScarJo or virtually ANY of these actors in something else.

Chadwick Boseman was in a culture-shifting blockbuster. But has he ever been worse in a movie? Have you SEEN “42,” “Marshall,” “Get on Up?”

Downey tossed away a third of his acting prime on indulgences and drugs, and much of the rest wearing an Iron Man suit. Maybe that upping of his quote and polishing of his “brand” extended his career. Or maybe he’s wasted his leading man window on movies that aren’t fated to age well.

Chris Evans? He’s getting out just in time to remind us of the light comedian he has been and can be, a leading man who can handle romances, dramas, etc.

Nobody should worry about Scarlett Johansson. But she has burned through some good years doing these mindless glorified cameos. Olsen had a great career staked out in indieland. That’s probably gone forever.

Cobie Smulders hasn’t turned her “Avengers” fame into anything non-Marvel worth watching. Samuel L. Jackson has found some side benefits from wearing the eyepatch, but his career’s at that “Any work is worthwhile” stage. Patrick Stewart is likewise benefited greatly from his attachment to the genre, cementing his fanboy status, becoming a pop culture icon (like Jackson) in the bargain.

People know who Tom Holland, Danai Gurira and Zendaya are. Ryan Reynolds has become a household name. Nicholas Hoult may owe his “Tolkien” turn to X-Men, but one is hard-pressed to think of others who have really blown up thanks to their years of service in S.H.I.E.L.D. or Professor Xavier’s school or the “Justice League.”

Michael Fassbender doesn’t need Magneto to make the rent or make his big screen mark. Margo Robbie need never revisit “Suicide Squad.”

Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo and Don Cheadle are interesting cases — turning themselves into household names with these movies. But being in “The Avengers” for them all has been like being drafted was for the WWII generation of actors. Only back then a leading man could have a screen shelf life right up to his 60s. That’s not the case, now.

I follow these fine actors on Twitter, and watch them hustling up return viewers to “Endgame” so it can break the all time box office record. Well, not Cheadle. He’s one of Twitter’s great troll-killers. Follow @DonCheadle if you don’t already.

Renner’s finding good parts, and bad ones, trading on his man-of-action persona. More “Kill the Messenger” and less “Avengers/Mission: Impossible/Hansel & Gretel” would be nice. Instead, there’s a “Hawkeye” TV series. Ugh.

Ruffalo? Man, invest the money, but get back to making movies about something.

Have these guys gotten any sort of career bounce out of tiny parts in time-consuming superhero movies?

Hugh Jackman has made more out of his Wolverine turn than virtually anybody else in any of these movies. But at what cost? He can get a “Prisoners” or “The Front Runner” made, but how many of those did he pass on to grow the sideburns back?

I wonder if there’s a life lesson for actors and agents in these now-aged-out franchises, and the sorts of contracts the players submit to.

Maybe the next James McAvoy won’t agree to anything so open-ended, maybe the Halle Berry/Jennifer Lawrence and yes Ben Affleck model will prove more attractive.

Even the best superhero actors let on how bored they are with their franchises. Jackman, again, might be the exception.

Even if audiences have shown little sign of tiring of these pictures, surely actors who value variety, acclaim for their work above the adoring pre-pleased fanbase and challenges, will want to look at all these names and faces, all that money that changed hands and all those years that were the price of that cash and want something more.

The villains, from Keaton and McKellen all the way to Pfeiffer and Jim Carrey, always had the better deal. One movie, in and out, cash the check.

What could the great Jake Gyllenhaal be thinking?

The one person one can say, without reservations, has taken nothing but benefits from his superhero “Avengers” years is Mr. “Swingers,” Jon Favreau.

His directing career as Disney’s go-to Big Budget guy, his face on screen in most every Iron Man/Avengers movie, it’s been win-win-win for him.

Everybody else, though, might rightly wonder if these were years and movie-making windows well-spent. Is that Comic Con special guest until the day you die status worth it?

Coincidence? This looks…terrific. And empowered and real “year of the woman/Decade of women” sharp.

And how many yuan do you think The Mouse will haul out of China by making it and releasing it there?

A young lady who was born to be much more than “a good wife.”

Next March, we will see what we see.

The latest Tom Holland Web Slinger outing has earned $185 million since Tuesday.

Spider-Man is as bulletproof a franchise as there is. No getting around it.

The decision to open the graphic but only faintly nightmarish “Midsommar” opposite it didn’t help the heavily hyped follow-up to “Hereditary.” Probably didn’t hurt.

I wonder how audiences are taking to it. Reviews have leaned HEAVILY on statements from the director “interpreting” his intent.

Yeah. Caught Justin Chang on NPR doing that, and misstating a plot point or two.

Whenever critics do that, I cringe.

Understandable when the work we see in the screen is challenging, and maybe not remotely as blunt as the director seems to think. But using his “spin” in a review is cheating. The film, as Kubrick always said, has to speak for itself, stand on its own.

“Midsommar” doesn’t.

Note that “The Secret Life of Pets 2” has made twice as much as the very last “Men in Black” we will ever see –$140 to $71, “Aladdin” makes bank, “Avengers” inches toward that “Avatar” record and “Annabelle” is firmly established as the big horror bit of the summer; early summer, late summer and “Midsommar.”

The girl doll has cleared twice as much as Chucky, $50 to $26.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

Interesting read from The Hollywood Reporter. It used to be cable that gave the Glenn Close/Kyra Sedgwick generations fresh opportunities. Now it is streaming video that has “lifted women of over 40, 50 or 60”

https://t.co/3nWj7Kncsk https://t.co/pYh12zLUng https://twitter.com/THR/status/1147774015794274304?s=17

Let us focus, on this day of its death, on the good Movie Pass did, not on its unsustainable business model.

Theater chains came up with their own discount mass consumption of movies model.

Young people got back in the movie going habit.

So there’s that. via Variety.

“MoviePass on hold amid cash woes” https://t.co/jjoIicbyCV https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1147445082791931906?s=17

Much has changed in the decades since the French Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand first cast a satiric eye on Western Civilization, especially its North American practitioners, in chatty, thoughtful films such as “The Decline of the American Empire,” “Jesus of Montreal” and “Barbarian Invasions.”

The history we know about and are living through. And Arcand? He’s gone from chatty to long-winded in his late 70s.

“The Fall of the American Empire” has another French Canadian philosopher bemoaning how out of place thinkers are in the modern age, scoring clever points about what’s troubling about Canada and what “destroyed” — emphasis on the past tense — The United States.

It’s the value system that emphasized money over all, something of a running thread through Arcand’s work, that displaces men like deliveryman Pierre Paul (Alexandre Landry). He is, he tells his longtime banker-girlfriend (Florence Longpré), “too intelligent” for most jobs in modern life.

“It’s a handicap,” he says, dismissing whole classes of very smart people which she brings up to counter him.

Novelists?

“The great writers were dumb as mules,” he declares. Hemingway thought he could box, for starters. He rattles down a list of authors and their foibles.

And don’t get him started on politicians. Bush, Blair, Sakozy — Pierre Paul charts the decline in thinking, morality and the intelligence of public life through the lot of them.

“Trump?”

“Imbeciles worship cretins!”

Pierre Paul quotes philosophers (also flawed, he notes) by the dozen in an enervated despair. When Linda questions their relationship and says “I can’t go on,” there’s not a hint of shock, heartbreak or meanness in his curt reply.

“Then don’t.”

Writer-director Arcand will test this too-smart-for-this-world misanthrope by hurling him into the conventions of a hoary, dope-who-comes-into-money thriller.

Pierre Paul drives his express delivery truck into the middle of an armed robbery. The money is plainly dirty, which puts Pierre Paul on the horns of a dilemma as the robbers, and the folks they’re robbing, kill each other or flee, wounded.

Bags of money are dropped at his feet. And on an impulse, this moral man in an amoral world does what people always do in such tales. He grabs those bags.

In short order, Mr. “Too Intelligent” is making every idiotic blunder we’ve ever seen in a “Nobody knows I have stolen dirty money” thriller. One of them is hiring, online, the most expensive hooker in Montréal (Maripier Morin) just because she quotes Racine and Aristotle on her website, and in the assumed name she takes on — Aspasie.

Another blunder? He instantly falls for this outlaw woman who arrives at their appointments in a bodyguard (not pimp) driven Jaguar.

And thirdly, the first person he seeks advice about his newfound stash is a famous criminal (Rémy Girard of “The Barbarian Invasions,””Jesus of Montréal” and “The Decline of the American Empire”). Yeah, tell a money launderer, fresh out of prison (where he was on college-work release, studying tax evasion) your ENTIRE story, and trust him to help you hide the money.

“Too intelligent” to ever go to the movies. Apparently.

There are mobsters in search of the cash, willing to gruesomely torture the one surviving and on the lam robber (Patrick Abellard). And the cops (Louis Morissette, Maxim Roy) are onto the hapless Pierre Paul in a flash.

He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to know his rights, blow off their blunt accusations and keep them from simply barging into his apartment.

Arcand gives Pierre Paul a righteous avocation. He connects with the West’s soaring population of homeless people, volunteering in a soup kitchen, listening to the stories of the displaced workers and Inuit who live on Montréal’s streets, handing out cash when he can.

The writer-director scores points on the broken capitalist system with Pierre Paul’s mild-mannered diatribes and in college lectures, where we’re reminded that “money has its own language,” that “poor people need the money, but corporations (and the super -rich) get all the handouts”

But “The Fall of the American Empire” may be the most sloppily plotted thriller to come along in decades. Why? Because Arcand would rather score his meek satiric points than sweat the details.

It’s great seeing very good actors we recognize, in the dim recesses of memory, from his earlier films. But we can’t help but notice this one is almost half an hour longer than the others.

And hell — who watches “The Decline of the American Empire,” “The Barbarian Invasions” (a post 9-11 summation of the state of the world) or “Jesus of Montréal” any more?

It’s not so much that they aren’t “holding up,” as we say. They may be prophetic, in a lot of their discourse and debate (in French, with English subtitles). But they were achingly of their time.

Arcand wastes too much of our time with this stumbling, dry, unfunny satire of thrillers, money and how to launder it. If you thought Netflix’s “Ozark” was long…

The filmmaker literally loses himself in the arcane “Panama Papers” business of how money is shuffled around, off-shore, or swapped out among the ranks of those eager to avoid taxes and hasten the end of Western Civilization as they do.

And like many a first-time filmmaker, his veteran of a half century of film can’t figure out when to drop the mike, how to extract himself from the talky-tangle he’s chatted his characters into.

“Fall of the American Empire” isn’t an awful film, and it probably will prove as prophetic as “Decline of the American Empire.” But it never lets you forget that its filmmaker identifies too closely with his hero, that he’s “too intelligent” to make a thriller, or bother with getting one right.

And in so-doing, his blunders are just as obvious as Pierre Paul’s.

MPAA Rating: R for some strong violence, sexual content/nudity and language

Cast: Alexandre Landy, Maripier Morin, Rémy Girard , Florence Longpré, Louis Morissette, Pierre Curzi, Maxim Roy

Credits: Written and directed by Denys Arcand. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 2:07

“Spider-Man: Far From Home” did a vigorous $27 million+ on Wed., breaking the record for Marvel properties Wednesdays. Yes, that’s a record they’re keeping track of

Add that today to the stupid money the latest webslinger outing pulled in on Tuesday — $39 million — and Sony is looking at having $150 million in the box office bank by midnight Sunday.

Yes, it’s tailing off, but not before it comes out of the gate at a dead sprint. An $80 million weekend to go with the $66 million first two days and it’ll clear $150 with ease.

The grisly but not that frightening horror tale “Midsommar” had middling Tuesday night previews numbers — $1.2 million — and a decent Wed. and looks to have about $13 million in the bank by midnight Sunday. Not a dazzling take for a creepy movie that’s more about grief and haplessness in the face of cultish groupthink, it’s generating some of the more loopy, off-message reviews of the summer.

“Yesterday” is generating decent word of mouth and expects to have a strong second weekend — maybe $10 million or more.