Movie Nation

There’s not a lot of novelty to the “angry kid masters battle rap” formula. But give the rappers British street accents, dropping consonants like they drop rhymes, and you’ve got something worth hearing out.

Even if, you know, you have to play it with the subtitles on.

“VS.” follows Adam, a tantrum-tosser who is the terror of Southend’s foster parenting system.

Adam (Connor Swindells of “The Vanishing”) doesn’t have anger management problems. He has rage-control issues.

We don’t need his social worker (Nicholas Pinnock) telling him “You’re not a kid anymore.” It’s obvious. Growing up without parents has left him broken, scarred for life.

A last-chance placement with Fiona, played by veteran British Earth Mother character actress Ruth Sheen seems to be postponing the inevitable.

Then he meets the testy cashier at the arcade. Makayla (Fola Evans-Akingbola) isn’t buying what White Boy’s selling.

“Baby-sittin’ you stoners itn’t paht of the JOB description, izzit?”

But that’s catnip to a lad like him. He talks her into taking on a task — securing him some weed — and she talks him into showing up for the flash mob rap battles she co-hosts. “Project Battle” is all the viral rage...on Southend, at least.

The social worker’s edict, “No more fighting,” has an implicit “Use your WORDS” to it. Without even planning it, Adam lets Makayla talk him into a new outlet.

“Metaphors, punch-lines, multi-syllabic rhymes, young kids expressing themselves without the use of violence?” It’s all good, she insists.

And when he’s drawn in, she takes it on herself to teach him the art form.

Director Ed Lilly and co-writer Daniel Hayes then have Makayla do something no rap battle feature film has done, and I can’t recall a documentary on the subject covering the ground either. We see her teach Adam the basics — “content and delivery” — the importance of aggression, enduring someone “getting up in your face. Can you keep your composure?”

This is no academic breakdown of styles, tropes and crutches of the genre, it’s a “How do you get up there and try this without getting ‘Slaughtered’ (the King of local rappers)?” primer.

The tentative, miss and hit nature of Adam’s learning curve is cute, as they stop to consult a dictionary, tap out ideas and full couplets on his phone, “livin’ large, spittin’ bars.”

And even though he’s rougher than 120 grit sandpaper when he takes his first shot — forgetting his rhymes, stumbling and hesitating —  he finds his groove, as is the way of such movies.

It’s a little tiresome, the way these pictures emphasize sportsmanship, supporting one another “like a proper family,” Contestants of Color always propping up the white boy just starting out in “their” art form, getting good, getting confident — “E’s awright, innit?” “Awright awright, Cassius. I get it!”

But there’s a rawness to this world, and the rapping always crosses into the personal, as “Adversary” (Adam’s MC name) catches it for being “an Emo kid who got changed into Posh Spice.”

When they reach for “Mum jokes,” though, it’s on. Adam’s Mum gave him up and he’s lived his life on edge about that.

The most tense and touching moment in “VS.” is Adam showing up, unknown and unannounced, getting a buzzcut from a hairdresser (Emily Taaffe) who doesn’t realize she’s his birth mother, but he does.

The formula may be worn from a dozen or more Hollywood pictures covering the same ground. But the novelty of the setting and the working class characters and accents — “D’y-knowhutImean?” — are fresh.

And the charismatic young leads — Swindells, Evans-Akingbola, Jovian Wade and as the bullying kingpin Slaughter, Shotty Horroh — give “VS.” enough of a lift to make it worth your while.

MPAA Rating: TV-18, violence, sex, profanity aplenty

Cast:nFola Evans-Akingbola, Connor Swindells, Joivan Wade

Credits: Directed by Ed Lilly, script by Daniel Hayes and Ed Lilly.  A BBC Films/Altitude release.

Running time: 1:39

The first cool image of “Cold Blood” comes after “the girl” has had her snowmobile accident, after she’s crawled, battered and bleeding-out, towards a remote cabin.

Feet come up to her, and from her point of view, looking up from her belly, she sees the man those feet belong to. He is Jean Reno, the hawk-featured French action star of “La Femme Nikita,” “Leon: The Professional” and “Ronin.”

And he’s not looking down at her, tending to her injuries, whispering words of help and hope. He’s turning, looking into the distance, offering her and us first one profile and then the other. He’s wondering if somebody dropped her here, if she’s the bait for yet another trap.

The stubble may be white, the piercing eyes have hollowed out over the decades. But the black stocking cap is still there, and the intense focus. He may call his character “Henry,” and be smarter, or at least deeper than the hitman/savant, the “cleaner” of Luc Besson’s “La Femme Nikita” and “The Professional.” But he’s still the last guy you want to run into in a steam room at your “club.”

That’s what sets events in motion in this convoluted thriller from first-time writer/director Frédéric Petitjean — a murder in the steam.

“Cold Blood” is a Franco-Ukrainian production, which explains the snowy wilderness, the struggling bit players and extras trying to manage something like a New York or Spokane accent.

There are traces of such popular thrillers as “Hanna” and “The American,” though both of those manage more suspense, more harrowing action and make more sense.

The “girl” is Melody (Sarah Lind of “The Exorcism of Molly Hartley” and TV’s “True Justice”), and when she awakens she has a few questions to answer — or dodge — starting with the obvious.

Him: “Why are you here?”

Her: “I’m sorry. I’ll leave as soon as I can.”

He gets testy, asking why he shouldn’t just toss her in the frozen lake so that “they can fish you out with the salmon, when the snow melts.”

He doesn’t want her there, and she seems to know why.

Meanwhile, an obsessive cop (British actor Joe Anderson) who recently transferred from New York is badgering his partner (François Guétary) about that New York steam room hit, months ago. The murdered man was rich and buried in Washington State. These cops watched the ceremony.

“According to the manual, the killer should be watching the victim’s funeral.

“‘According to the manual‘…You’ve been watching too much Netflix.”

Indeed.

We’re slipped a few clues as to what twists are coming, and led astray when one of those doesn’t pan out.

Mainly, “Cold Blood” is all about two things, Reno’s menacing screen presence, and locations.

All it takes to fake America in the movies is shipping in a Mustang, a Dodge and a Harley, and beating the bushes to find English speakers to play waitresses, fellow cops and “locals.”

Reno has, over the decades, positioned himself as the French Samuel L. Jackson, Liam Neeson or mid-career Clint Eastwood — badass, hard, not as verbose or profane as Jackson, violent without bothering to make many threats (unlike Neeson).

His character here is saddled with that saddest of “hit man movie” cliches, quoting “The Art of War,” by Sun Tzu, to Melody. That’s been old hat in B-movies since the Golden Age of Wesley Snipes.

Reno  gives us the odd hint that wherever his career has gone in recent years, he’s still above this, still able to give a line the proper Gallic flair. Don’t tell Henry that “There’s nothing here.” He takes it personally.

“Waaall, eef nothing means no cars, no noise, no Starbucks, nothing USEless…”

Which explains why I’m still a big fan of the actor, not much of a fan of “Cold Blood.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Jean Reno, Sarah Lind, Joe Anderson, Ihor Ciszkewycz and Samantha Bond

Credits: Written and directed by Frédéric Petitjean.  A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:31

Interesting. “Free” is always better than paid subscriptions, but some streamers are looking for a ot business models for delivering video content.
From The LA Times
The online video giant is pivoting away from the subscription streaming marketplace.
https://t.co/vtic4c9VEh https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1144985138079698945?s=17

The continued demand for “Toy Story 4” seems strong enough, until you compare it to other “Toy Story” movies and Pixar releases in general. A $120 million opening that was well below projections is followed by a $53-57 million second weekend, a 53-58% drop from a series where 40% week to week slide is the norm.

“Annabelle Comes Home” opened to a big Wed. audience and will have a $16-17 million weekend, right in the nose with projections, to follow up that. It could manage $30 million over 5 days, but $28 million seems to be the ceiling.

“Yesterday” is managing a $14 million weekend, with good exit tracking per Deadline.com. Ot could be a counter programming hit as the summer progresses. “Aladdin” continues to pile up the cash, “Child’s Play” does not.

https://deadline.com/2019/06/toy-story-4-yesterday-annabelle-comes-home-weekend-box-office-1202639398/

Thrillers are a genre best served in the fall.

A very British mystery thriller, with a cast experienced enough to know how to do it properly.

Ian McKellen’s “Gods and Monsters” and “Mr. Holmes” director Bill Condon was behind the camera for “The Good Liar,” about the con artist who makes an attractive widow — Oscar winner Helen Mirren — his next pigeon.

Nov. 15, we find out who’ll do what to whom.

“Riverdale” star Camila Mendes shares the screen with Adriana Barraza, a screen veteran best known north of the border for her role in Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell.”

“Coyote Lake” hits theaters Aug. 2.

We’re dropped into a fouler-than-foul-mouthed shouting match in the parking lot at school, teenage girls unloading a Marine platoon’s worth of threats and profanity at each other.

That leads to a shocking brawl, followed by a celebratory light-up and inhale in a friend’s new pickup.

Yeah, these two girls are not to be trifled with. Scary “Firecrackers,” the both of them. And damn, they’re CANADIAN!

Jasmin Mozaffari’s debut feature is a bracing blast of teen feminine rage, two friends too tight to be mere “friends” in full revolt against the sexism, classism and dead-end futures facing them in the small Canadian town where they’re growing up.

Lou (Michaela Kurimsky) is the raging redhead, seething through life towards a graduation she’s set to skip so that they can “go far away and never have to see any of these f—–g people ever again!”

Chantal (Karena Evans), her striking bi-racial best friend, is just as furious to flee, although she’s a tad less violent than Lou.

It’s not just high school and the drudgery of cleaning disgusting motel rooms part-time that they’re escaping. It’s the piggish boys, the limited, mistake-prone parents who didn’t get away and thus are Exhibit A as to why the girls should.

And those are the people whose interference threatens to derail their plans, their connection and their friendship.

Writer-director Mozaffari serves up a world of dysfunction and challenges facing the two, mainly Lou, whose temper makes the “fiery redhead” cliche come to life.

She has a tweenage brother (Callum Thompson) who borrows her clothes and her makeup. Single mom (Tamara LeClair) can feed and house them in the hovel they live in, but a child experimenting with his sexuality is more than she can take. She’s taken up with and taken in an ex-junkie (David Kingston) years and years her junior, but that doesn’t mean she’ll stop impotently attempting to discipline Lou.

“‘D’you get in a fight again? D’you pass any of your classes?”

Chantal has had enough of fending off the clueless questions from her yokel classmates — “‘How’d you get your hair like that? Is that NATURAL? I’m whiiiite!'” And she’s just ditched her brutish boyfriend (Dylan Mask) — she thinks — so that she and Lou can take off for New York.

The story may be overly familiar, but the language is slangy and crude, the sex is teen-impulsive and primitive, and the confrontations — on a littered beach, in that school parking lot, in a pool hall — are alarming.

“Firecrackers” is a simple tale told with a raw ferocity and fuse-burning-down dread for the explosions to come.

And in Kurimsky, a production designer and sometime actress, and Evans (of TV’s “Mary Kills People”), Mozaffari has stars who lay it all out there, daring us to root for their sometimes repellent characters, two bad girls reminding us of every bad choice we ever made and making us fear for the ones they do.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, sex, cigarettes, profanity

Cast: Michaela Kurimsky, Karena Evans, Gabe Meacher, Callum Thompson and Scott Cleland

Credits: Written and directed by Jasmin Mozaffari. A Good Deed release.

Running time: 1:33

Three buddies sit by a campfire, swapping riffs on Genesis — the band, not the book in the Bible — Joe Namath vs. Joe Montana and donut “hole” vs. donut “whole.”

The next morning, none of those debates are resolved. And when they get back to the car owned by the ex-con in their ranks, they find a body in the trunk.

That’s the promising set-up to “Silent Panic,” an occasionally solid if lukewarm and  uninvolving and logic-strained thriller from writer-director Kyle Schadt.

What will they do if one guy says they CANNOT go to the cops? How would ordinary Joes dispose of a corpse? What or who will trip them up?

Schadt brews up some tension among the three (Sean Nateghi, Joseph Martinez, Jay Habre) and contrives some inventive “This could be their undoing” blunders, miscommunications and coincidences.

But ignoring the fact that these three would have no clue about quarterbacks who retired before they were born, naming the ex-con “Eagle” (Nateghi) only seems like a good idea on paper.

Having his pals, or his wife (Constance Brenneman, the stand-out in this cast) start every sentence with, “But Eagle” or “Hey Eagle” or “Wait a minute, Eagle” sets the listener’s teeth on edge.

“Eagle, who ARE you right now? You’re acting like a SISSY. Man UP!” loses its sting.

Bobby (Martinez) is divorced, a single-dad and unemployed. And as the three agree (Eagle bullies them) to NOT call the police, is left with rising paranoia that pushes him into a craving for the drugs he’s supposedly quit, traumatizing his little boy as he does.

The maddening and not quite funny scene with his former drug dealer, the aged hippy Frank (Jeff Dowd of “Desperately Seeking Susan”) is a stand-out moment in the movie, and Bobby’s coked-out motorcycle ride is the most technically deft scene.

Dom (Habre) is the journalist of the trio, our narrator dating the “Sharon Tate gorgeous” coed, Sharon (Juliet Frew). That might be the most unfortunate line in the picture, certainly the most unfortunate comparison.

Schadt has the makings of a close-to-the-vest thriller like “The Loft,” but “Silent Panic” might have been more at home taking a “Weekend at Bernie’s” dark farce direction.

There’s a body of a young woman. They keep trying to dispose of it, get the car “stolen,” etc. Outside forces conspire to bring it back. Again and again.

Make the corpse male and go for laughs? Could have worked.

As it is, Schadt and cast slow-walk this thriller towards a finish line that seems to be moving further away the slower the movie gets. Any heat generated by the promising set-up dissipates long before they cross it.

MPAA Rating: unrated, a corpse, drug abuse

Cast: Sean Nateghi, Constance Brenneman, Joseph Martinez, Juliet Frew, Jay Habre

Credits: Written and directed by Kyle Schadt. A Viral Man release.

Running time: 1:35

A tougher trio? “Run” by Elizabeth Banks as “Bosley?”

Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska are the “Angels.”

With Patrick Stewart and Djimon Housou.

November.

He’s got nine women hitting him with #MeToo allegations, including one who accused him of drugging and raping her.

But it’s his record at the box office that is ending Luc Besson’s reign as the King of Euro Action Cinema.

“Valerian” and “Anna” may break his Eurocorp film distribution company, and his own rep may mean that even though Woody Allen and Polanski still find financiers and distributors, Monsieur Luc may be done.