A writer’s sojourn in “The Jane Austen Residency” is sweet, romantic and fun? Or will it be, as the French say, “le hot mess?”
“What are you waiting for, Mr. Darcy?”
This French flavored Laura Piani play upon “Pride and Prejudice” stars Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly and Charles Anson and comes out this spring.
Oscar winner Bong Joon Ho’s latest film is an arch sci-fi parable about the troubled world we live in.
An Earth-born colonist/laborer on the distant planet Nilfheim has been recruited by a charismatic but dimwitted poseur/ex-senator/cult-leader whose “propogate the species” enterprise features a bird mascot. Too on the nose?
The laborer was in a jam and needed to get off Earth in the worst way, and being pretty dumb himself, he didn’t read the fine print on his contract.
Mickey isn’t just to be exploited, dictated to and endangered on the four and a half year journey to Nilfheim. He’s an “expendable,” to be treated as a guinea pig, lab rat, worker drone and canary in a coal mine by his employers, who cavalierly let him die or kill him off on dangerous jobs only to 3D print/process a new version of him, a perfect copy in appearance and a wholly updated adult with all the memories, up to the week, of oafish Mickey Barnes.
Every time he’s killed on a spacewalk, purposely exposed to deadly radiation for study and slowly murdered by being forced to test the atmosphere of Nilfheim as a lab rat as Science finds a vaccine to save the other, more valuable colonists, Mickey’s “number” changes.
“Mickey 17,” who narrates his story from its narrative midpoint beginning, with flashbacks and a story that picks up and takes him to his epiphany and final fate, is the incarnation of this sad sack we become most familiar with.
Robert Pattinson, once the Timothee Chalamet of his day, plays the various Mickeys in a sort of Keanu Reeve stupor/Buster Keaton stoicism. Mickey is known to all of the other colonists, a hapless object of fun who faces just one question from these tactless cultists over and over again.
“What’s it feel like to DIE?”
Mickey found love on the long voyage out, a cop/detective/soldier “agent” named Nasha (Naomi Ackie of “Blink Twice”), who revels in experimenting with the digital Kama Sutra with pretty-but-dim Mickey.
Mickey regards Timo, the partner (Steven Yeun of “Minari” and “Nope”) who got him into that fix on Earth, and into a more terminal one in space, as his best friend. On a ship packed with the cruel and tactless, Timo is a particularly loathsome, callous creep who’s used his partner as a scapegoat and thinks no more of killing him or letting him die than he would an ant trapped in an unflushed toilet.
Their Dear Leader on this church-driven colonization is cheerleading cult leader Kenneth Marshall, an unseated senator who found a new hustle and is leading the faithful to their new homes on an ice-covered hellhole of a planet.
Mark Ruffalo makes this puffed up dunce half Trump, half Elon Musk, a “celebrity” whose cunning wife (Toni Collette) is in his ear, trying to steer him clear of this scandal or that ugly revelation about how he REALLY feels about his red baseball-capped clown car of colonists.
Another police agent (Anamaria Vartolomei) seems to have the sweets for Mickey, for reasons we can’t guess, and the only compassionate member of the careless, cretinous science team Dorothy (Patsy Ferran) also seems to care for his well-being.
Everybody else just uses and abuses this non-union loser as they see fit.
“Snowpiercer,” “The Host” and “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho summons up memories of his least likable “hit” “Okja” with this icky, overlong wallow in “life is cheap for working folks around the world” allegory.
But in adapting Edward Ashton’s 2022 sci-fi novel “Mickey 7,” he references Big Idea films from “Brazil” to Chaplin’s “Modern Times,” even as he fails to find anything funny in the repeated deaths of R. Patts in an “Edge of Tomorrow” sense, a goof on that film’s “Let’s kill off a famous actor for laughs” humor.
Pattinson and the picture turn truly interesting when Mickey survives one expected death only to find he’s been regenerated as Mickey 18, a tougher, wise-to-his-exploitation and hellbent on avenging it “version” of the usually passive dullard Mickey is. There’s to be a struggle for Mickey’s place in reality between these mismatched two.
I loved all the threads Bong Joon Ho weaves into this narrative even as I lamented all the ones he leaves hanging. The narrative takes a “Close Encounters/Starship Troopers” turn that seems shoehorned in, reaches a half decent “Pandorum” climax and promptly wanders off into a stunning dull anti-climax.
Our writer-director leans on that lazy screen adapters crutch, voice-over narration, to carry too of the novel’s account of Mickey’s dreads and dreams and jokes about his plight.
“You read through the contract?” one and all ask Mickey as he signs on for a life of endless suicide missions destined to end badly. There’s a hint of generational angst as a guy who lost a lot of loan shark’s money on a macaron delivery business.
“I don’t have any skills,” Mickey admits. Might as well join a space colonization mission he’s sure to not survive — to repeatedly not survive.
But Pattinson is a sad but silly stitch in the title role. Ruffalo and Collette dial up their villainy and Ackie sexes things up even if Yeun seems a tad lost and miscast, too subtle and straight-laced for a farce this broad.
Sure, “Mickey 17” waters down its messaging by broadening that message to Netflix mini-series extremes (a better place for this movie, I fear). But if the movies are going to talk about labor, human rights, cruel “leaders” and love in the world Gen Z is growing up in, the raw deal facing Mickeys 1-17 is a good place to do it.
Rating: R, violence, sexual content, drug abuse, profanity
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Patsy Ferran, Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Bong Joon Ho, based on a novel by Edward Ashton. A Warner Brothers release.
Running time: 2:17
Bond
A couple of top flight character actors — Irish mainstay Colm Meaney and American kvetcher Paul Reiser — pair up for an Irish comedy about family history, inheritance, grudges and cultures clashing in “The Problem with People.”
It’s got the sunny, soaked summery greens of Ireland, a friendly pub and colorful locals going for it. And you can’t make a credible comedy about Ireland without Meaney.
But the problem with “The Problem with People” is a script by people who don’t seem to “get” Ireland, who then cook up clunky reasons to pair these two “cousins” up and contrive clunkier concerns that drive them apart. Their research appears to have consisted of watching other movies about Americans in Ireland. Or um, Scotland.
There are grace notes — a lovely memory recited by the old man (Des Keogh) responsible for throwing these two distant relations together illustrated by charcoal sketched animation and black and white photos of a long ago rift in the family.
The American (Reiser) is convinced to go by his daughter, who reminds him his favorite film is “Local Hero.”
“That’s Scotland. Whole other country.”
“What’s the difference?”
But the charms of quaint Tinahely, County Wicklow wear thin and after an hour of charming or at least flirting with charming, the picture collapses into a contrived conflict that neither works logically nor plays comically.
Meaney is Ciáran, whose ancient “Da” (Keogh) uses his deathbed to demand “the last request of a dying man,” that his son track down an American relation and put an end to “the whole sorry story” of how their extended family became separated 100 or more years ago.
Ciáran neglects the Gorman family funeral home business, leaving Padraig (Patrick Martins) in charge as he plows through all the Gormans in the New York directory until he hits on the developer Da told him was profiled in a magazine article a while back.
Barry (Reiser) is taken aback by the call. No, it’s not a “scam.” No, they don’t “want” anything. OK, actually, they do. Barry’s about to close a big deal on a 57th St. redevelopment, but sure, he’ll fly off to rural Ireland to fulfill “a dyin’ man’s last wish.” His daughter’s (Jane Levy) “Local Hero” argument seals the deal.
Barry and Ciáran get along grand, and there’s just enough local color to charm him and us — two local lads who imitate American accents and Americanisms based on what they’ve heard from the movies, the attentive barmaid (Lucianne McEvoy) Barry takes a shine to.
And then the old man, who summoned up the strength for one last night down’tha pub, dies, but not until after sentimentally rewriting his will. He leaves half his property to the rich New Yorker.
It’s a silly conceit that might have worked had they played up how ridiculous and against-the-grain of such stories this rash act is. Instead, we’re with Ciáran, who’s in a fury over the way Americans grieve and the way Americans greed.
The picture has inane tit for tat escalations, a town dividing up to take sides and none of it making much screenwriterly sense as the whole enterprise goes plumb off the rails.
The moral of the story, that “it’s mighty easy to fall out, but the weight of carrying” a grudge “forward can be too great,” is trite and the forms the illogical feud takes — in the past and in the present — spoil the potential fun.
As we watch Reiser and the redheaded Levy (of “Evil Dead” “and TV’s “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist”) gnosh on Manhattan Chinese food and debate Irish motivations and a family murky past, with Reiser dipping into his “This is what I’m saying” shtick, the movie hints at something wittier that might have been.
Would it have been funnier to have the American Gormans as Jewish, via marriage, conversions and what not? THAT’s a culture clash with real friction — hopefully funny — in it.
“Mad About You” alum Reiser does New York Jewish well, Irish American distantly removed, not so much. The reasons for avoiding that subject area include steering clear of stereotypes, not that Reiser and co-writer Wally Marzano-Lesnevich do a bang up job with that, either.
More local color and more colorful locals might have helped, with a better root conflict than a blase battle over real estate and a will. Otherwise, this sweet nothing loses the “sweet” and never overcomes the “nothing.”
Rating: 16+, profanity, alcohol
Cast: Colm Meaney, Paul Reiser, Jane Levy, Des Keogh and
Lucianne McEvoy
Credits: Directed by Chris Cottam, scripted by Wally Marzano-Lesnevich and Paul Reiser. A Quiver release on Amazon Prime.
Running time:
Adrien, dashing from 1960s Rio de Janiero to Brasilia, the then new capital of Brazil, in a pink 1929 Chrysler 75 adored with green stars, pulls over at the first modernist police station he spies.
He steps out of the ragtopped jalopy in nothing but boxer shorts, and proceeds to dress and babble in French — cigarillo dangling from his lips the whole time — to the befulled Portuguese-only speaking cop.
“Sir, could you please arrest me?”
“I’m a deserter. I lost my uniform. I flew without a ticket, conned an invalid. I fought with men of all colors and nations, and I drive around in a stolen pink car with little green stars.
“I’m also guilty of public indecency. The handcuffs, please!”
Adrien, played by international film icon Jean-Paul Belmondo, leaves out stealing a French cop’s Triumph motorcycle, sprinting miles on foot to an airport in pursuit of his kidnapped girlfriend, dodging dart gun bolts and fists, and when his own fists fail, kicking any villain he figures has it coming in the crotch.
And that’s before stealing an airplane he’s not quite sure how to fly, swimming miles to an oligarch’s yacht, dodging crocodiles in the Amazon and swinging like Tarzan from jungle tree to tree to free his dizzy beloved (Françoise Dorléac) in “That Man from Rio,” one of the great comic romps of the 1960s.
Filmmakers from the then-new James Bond franchise to Steven Spielberg would borrow from this spectacular action farce, which featured a future Bond villain (Adolfo Celi), locations cribbed for decades of other films and a finale that became a version of of the opening sequence of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” over 25 years later.
“Short Round” from “Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom?” His prototype is a pint-sized Afro-Brazilian shoeshine of many talents and connections named Sir Winston (Ubiracy De Oliveira), who saves Adrien’s French fried bacon more than once in this Oscar-nominated classic.
Director and co-writer Philippe de Broca’s Franco-Italian co-production serves up “The New Brazil” of the early ’60s — striking architecture, breathtaking scenery and poverty mostly glossed-over by the fresh-scrubbed faces of the “simple happy natives.”
The color film stock gives the picture a travelogue sparkle, and the stunts — with Belmondo plainly doing his own hair-raising motorcycle chasing, building dangling, diving, tumbles and crawls through brawls — can be pre-CGI jaw-dropping.
The plot? A couple of sketchy dart-gun wielding characters in trench coats swipe a statue of supposedly little value from a French museum. Professor Catalan (Jean Servais) has just enough time to tell the cops there were three such statuettes, and that they’re “cursed” before he’s kidnapped.
Agnes (Dorléac, of “Cul de Sac” and “Billion Dollar Brain”), the carefree daughter of a dead researcher who was with Catalan when they unearthed the statues, is also nabbed.
But Agnes was kidnapped right in front of her home-on-leave soldier, Private Adrien Dufourquet. He springs into action, a man of no “particular skills,” but a headstrong, impulsive rescuer on the fly.
He has no idea who took her or where they’re taking her. But he wings it westward with her kidnappers, unable to convince the flight crew of the jetliner he conned his aboard that she’s been “taken,” and at every turn, he’s there — trying to free her, hopefully before his leave runs out the following Monday.
“The bad guys always win!” Agnes gripes, once the drugs that made her even dizzier wear off. And so it seems. But Our Man Adrien will see about that.
Cinematographer Edmond Séchan shot one of the greatest short films of all time, “The Red Balloon,” and gives us sumpuous scenery, an “Architectural Digest” visual appreciation of the New Brazil’s architecture, and the occasional stunning shot — Adrien and Sir Winston climbing a mountainside favela in silhouette at sunset to Sir Winston’s cute and cool stilt house.
The editing leans into the travelogue nature of this international production a tad more than is necessary to maintain the picture’s pace, but the movie doesn’t suffer much for it.
And Belmondo, in one of his most entertaining action roles, just hurtles across the screen — dashing and diving and pilfering and conning and driving and dodging punches and crashing through construction sites and swinging from vines and construction dolly cables and falling out of a plane.
Damn.
Most of the time, we can see that’s really him, and marvel at how perilous they made the stunts look around him. Belmondo’s charisma is well-matched to the out-of-his-element and had-about-enough Adrien, a simple and sarcastic man out of his depth long before he’s a fish out of water, or in it.
Director de Broca hit his 1960s peak with this film, and went on to make “King of Hearts” and decades of more lightly-regarded films after that.
The oft-dubbed Italian character actor Celi plays the oligarch behind this New Brazil modern architecture spending spree. He moved into the James Bond universe as Bond’s skin-diving foe Largo in “Thunderball.”
And Dorléac, one of the great screen beauties of her day, had her finest comic role in this film before her life and career were tragically cut short in a car accident that killed her before “Billion Dollar Brain” finished shooting.
Laugh out loud moments and “How’d they do that?” stunts aside, one of the great pleasures in viewing “That Man from Rio” today is to see how this film influenced the action films and action comedies that followed. By the time Roger Moore took over as James Bond, the series’ producers weren’t even hiding their debts to “Rio.”
Spielberg allegedly wrote the director to praise the film and claim he’d seen “That Man from Rio” nine times.
Whatever the influences it spread far and wide, the film today is a grand snapshot of Paris, Rio and Brasilia in the early ’60s, and a reminder that Tom Cruise wasn’t the first to figure out that doing your own stunts, when reasonable and even occasionally unreasonable, stamps an action film with bonafides that show up in the finished film, and in the actor’s confidence or even genuine skittishness while doing them.
The effort shows in ways we don’t just see on the screen. We feel it.
Rating: TV-MA, violence, mostly comical, smoking, drinking
Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Françoise Dorléac, Jean Servais, Ubiracy De Oliveira and Adolfo Celi.
Credits: Directed by Philippe de Broca, scripted by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Ariane Mnouchkine, Danie Boulanger and Philippe de Broca. A United Artists (Les Artistes Associés) release from Cohen Media Group on Tubi, other streamers
Running time: 1:54
Samara Weaving is a Madonna-esque pop superstar stalked by Ray Nicholson in his father Jack’s full “Here’s JOHNNY!” nutjob mode in “Borderline,” a violent and crazed comedy about celebrity and the delusions it feeds to those who have it and those who psychotically crave to be near it.
It’s a dark subject. Ask Taylor Swift or any performer who has to keep bodyguards on duty and lawyers on retainer for restraining orders. Obsession with pretty pop starlets can be as pathetic and comical as those Tiffany fans depicted in the documentary “I Think We’re Alone Now,” or deadly dangerous. Remember the murdered singer Christina Grimmie?
Writer-director Jimmy Warden, who wrote “Cocaine Bear,” reaches for both in a darker-than-dark comedy about a brash star, the bodyguard who tries to show compassion for how she affects one fan in particular, and that one fanatic in 50 who turns out to be dangerous.
It’s more “Cocaine Bear” gonzo than subtle. But the laughs are big and bleak and sometimes bloody as one man’s deranged obsession comes to a head when he finally thinks he’s achieving his goal.
Set in the ’90s, “Borderline” follows Bell, a bodyguard who is both intimidating and certain of his threat assessment abilities. Eric Dane (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Burlesque”) plays up the guy’s patience and compassion when he has to deal with the latest door-knock from wild-eyed Paul (Nicholson), a “problem” fan who is certain singer Sofia (Weaving) is his girlfriend.
Wearing his dad’s old suit and bringing a single rose to the door of her gated mansion (How’d he get that far?), Paul sets off a few warning bells, which Bell is sure he can unring. That gets him stabbed enough to die, but he doesn’t. And that gets Paul inside Sofia’s mansion, bubble-bathing and Tom Cruise “Risky Business” dancing until he decides to turn himself in.
It’s a good thing Sofia was on the road with her “Deranged” tour.
For some reason, she brings Bell back on the job six months later. You’d think nearly getting yourself killed and potentially exposing your client to a nut with a knife would be a firing offense. But no.
Bell clocks back in just as Sofia is finishing up her fun with her latest plaything, a star NBA point guard (Jimmy Fails) who lets her crossdress him up and take him out to her favorite clubs. But he’s just figured out that, like her passion for jigsaw puzzles, he’s useful only until she’s “figured” him out down to the last piece. He’s about to go “back in the box.”
That’s the very moment that Paul, working with a fellow mental patient (Alba Baptista) and a too-loyal lump of a friend on the outside (Patrick Cox) breaks out of the mental institution and sets in motion his murderously cunning plans to live his dream.
Weaving gives Sofia the arrogance of the rich and famous, shrugging off suggestions she’s treating this point guard as a plaything, refusing to let herself be shocked or even that afraid when intruders get into her house. Ms. “Rich is a state of mind” has the brazen bravery of someone too insolated from real world problems to believe that anything bad can happen to her.
Point guard Devonte names songs by Cyndi Lauper and Madonna as his favorites, which does more to push Sofia over the “Borderline” than any violent threat staring her in the face.
Nicholson leers and mugs and oh yeah, we see the family resemblence in Paul’s more deranged moments.
Dane plays the straight man in all this, cast to set up tough guy/hero expectations which Bell may or may not live up to.
Random bits score the biggest laughs. A cop is summoned at one point, but he (Matthew Del Bel Belluz) is so distracted and unprofessional as to make us wonder if he’s another accomplice. No, he’s just got an audition in a few hours. He runs through Fred Astaire’s “Top Hat” song and dance when he’s supposed to be watching for creeps behaving creepily.
And that petite “fellow inmate” who escapes with Paul? She’s French. And you know how they are about Celine Dion.
Like “Cocaine Bear,” “Borderline” was built with “midnight movie” appeal in mind. And even if it never quite adds up to more than that, it doesn’t disapoint.
Rating: R for graphic violence and profanity
Cast: Samara Weaving, Eric Dane, Ray Nicholson, Alba Baptista, Patrick Cox and Jimmy Fails
Credits: Scripted and directed by Jimmy Warden. A Magnet release.
Running time: 1:34
Dormer is Dr. Audrey Evans, who attacked childhood cancer in conventional and unventional ways, including pioneering opening the first Ronald McDonald’s House in 1969.
Clancy Brown’s the veteran doctor trying to rein her in, with Brandon Michael Hall and Jimmi Simpson among the supportive colleagues.
Blue Harbor is releasing this Mar. 28.
Bacon gets to play a little music, drive a ’70 Chevelle and corral or kill demons on behalf of Old Scratch.
Jolene Purdy, Damon Harriman and Beth Grant also star in this eight episode series, which may have enough ideas to fill an 85 minute B-movie.
Ultraviolent horrific fun, if this red band trailer is any indicator. This series comes to Amazon Prime April 3.
A “Downton Abbey” alumna pops up in this trailer, too. See if you spot her.
Is this a “spinoff from ‘Ray Donovan?'” Never watched that.
“MOBLAND”– Paramount/Ritchie INSIST on ALL CAPS for the title — premieres on Paramount + March 30.
One of the more disillusioning aspects of the Golden Age of Content is the way Netflix repurposes intellectual property and remakes films for different markets.
Spanish films get almost pointless Mexican or Argentine remakes, and vice versa. And it all comes home to roost when they share these Around the World with Netflix variations on the same platform — North American Netflix, for instance — at the same time.
Right now, you can choose between the new Norwegian (dubbed or subtitled) rom-com “På villspor” (“The Wrong Track”) or the original Swedish film, “Ur spår (“Off the Rails”).
Not sure why the Norwegians would remake a Swedish skiing comedy that came out just a couple of years back, but that’s Netflix for you. They’re different, with a lot of charm of the first version of this story about finding purpose via the Scandinavian version of a winter marathon — a long cross-country ski race — wrung out of the Norwegian version.
But with its rural scenery and Nordic Olympic (Lillehammer and environs) locations, “Wrong Track” can claim the edge in that regard.
The set-up — a screwup, “never finishes anything” single mom who quits jobs and bungles mothering enough that she’s about to lose custody — is coerced into taking up cross country skiing by her seemingly-has-it-all-together older brother.
As Emilie (Ada Eide) struggles with the training and the reckoning this take-stock quest of skiing The Birken imposes on her life, will she finally get purpose and maybe find love along the way? As we learn that focused, motivated, Volvo driving yuppie brother Gjermond (Trond Fausa) has his own struggles — with a marriage (Marie Blokhus plays Silje) suffering from their inability to procreate, what will this “test” teach him?
One of the cutest elements of the original film, how odd it is for a Scandivanian to not know even the basics of skiing, is missed here.
The sex and romance elements are more abrupt, perfunctory and charmless in this take. But they go for the same upbeat, heartwarming feel in the finale, which plays about the same.
I’d suggest you skip “Wrong Track” and watch the Swedish original, since you sure as shooting don’t want to sit through two and the Norwegian “Tracks” feels more clumsily manipulative.
But both flirt with that “watchable” threshold thanks to scenery, engaging actors and people who have learned to do more than just put up with having too much snow for their own good.
Rating: TV-MA, sex, nudity, public urination gags, profanity
Cast: Ada Eide, Trond Fausa, Christian Rubeck, Idun Daae Alstad, Deniz Kaya and Marie Blokhus.
Credits: Directed by Hallvar Witzø, scripted by Lars Gudmestad and Vilde Klohs, based on the script for the Swedish film, “Ur spår” by Maria Karlsson A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:34
The trailers hint that there might be laughs, that the tone of “Riff Raff” — a dark and bloody comedy about hit men, family, and how those two only exist together in the movies — could very well come off.
Jennifer Coolidge and Bill Murray rarely do us wrong. Ed Harris brings gravitas and reality to every role he plays. And Gabrielle Union is here to class up the joint.
Pete Davidson? Well, it’s a hit man comedy, so there’s a chance he’ll get popped. Remember how we all laughed and laughed when that happened in “Bodies Bodies Bodies?”
But then there’s the moment in the opening credits, when you’re walking in on a small distributor’s comedy and you see the “Directed by Dito Montiel” on the screen. And there’s nothing for it but to mutter Gordon Ramsay’s favorite expletive.
“F— me.”
Directors aren’t wholly responsible for whether a film comes off. Casting a movie well does wonders. But if a script has a scrap of promise to its premise, the director of “Man Down,” “Boulevard,” “”A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” and “The Clapper” is your best bet to turn it into a Golden Raspberry Awards contender.
“Riff Raff” lives down to its title, a trashy movie with a gilded cast — a cast a tad tarnished thanks to the addition of this to their resumes.
Actor-turned-screenwriter John Polono (“Stronger”) cooked up a story of a mobster who’s buried his past, remarried and made a better life, two mobsters hunting him down via his unfortunate son and alcoholic ex, and a trio of varying-degrees-of-“innocent” bystanders, starting with the mobster’s adopted, Dartmouth-bound teenaged son.
Murray is the old trigger man they call “Lefty,” bluff and blunt and bullying around his amoral protege, Lonnie (Davidson). Something puts Lefty and Lonnie on the trail of an old acquaintance.
That would be Vincent (Harris), doting stepdad to smarty-pants D.J. (Miles J. Harvey), worshipful husband of too-classy-for-him Sandy (Union).
The intrusion of Vincent’s son from an earlier marriage, Rocco (Lewis Pullman), Roccos’s very pregnant Italian girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini) and Vincent’s blackout drunk ex-wife (Coolidge) is Vincent’s first clue that something awful is up.
“What’d you do this time?” is how he greets his adult son. “You sure cuss a lot when Rocco’s around” is the Dartmouth-bound smart kid’s astute observation. Seeing as how his dad is compulsive model boat carver forever giving him “Don’t ever settle” lectures on a girl who just used and rejected D.J., that should be a tell for D.J. and his mom.
Ruth, the boozy, unfiltered ex who gets “horny when I’m scared,” cuts to the chase.
“You don’t know him (Vincent) at all!”
The disparate characters are destined to collide in a country house high on a woody hillside in Maine. The tale of how they all got there and what the bad blood here is about is told out of order via flashback “revelations,” rendering it a style we’d call Tarantinoesque. We’d call the callous, amoral and seriously unfunny violence Tarantinoesque, too. But why drag a good if perhaps overpraised filmmaker into this?
From the first spilling of blood, “Riff Raff” grates and goes grimly wrong. Blundering hit men use each other’s names in front of a farm produce store owner, a scene that ends with “A History of Violence” slaughter. It’s repeated later with victims we could describe as “annoying” and overly-helpful.
Neither Davidson nor Murray can make these scenes, or later jokes about “torture” and reasons for wanting to do it pay off. The violence is random, awful and way out of proportion to what sets it off.
There are interesting twists to the plot, but the finale’s a fiasco followed by the clumsiest anti-climax of the new year. And too much of what precedes it is packed with simplistic attempts to let Murray/Coolidge/Davidson and Union do what they’ve done in other movies and TV series.
Davidson’s Lonnie is “a twitchy weasel?” Hardly a stretch.
Union is very good at playing prim, proper and PO’d with just her flashing eyes and a testy line.
“Can I get a word?”
Coolidge is the only one of the lot who manages a laugh, running her “MILF” based career second act through another wringer, struggling to score a giggle here and there at how vulgar, coarse and lowdown one oversexed drunk can be.
“White Lotus” reminds us she can be better than this, as indeed most everybody else here has demonstrated via their earlier credits.
Their director? Not so much.
Rating: R, violence, sexual content, drug use, nudity, profanity
Cast: Bill Murray, Jennifer Coolidge, Gabrielle Union, Pete Davidson, Miles J. Harvey,
Lewis Pullman, Emanuela Postacchini, Michael Angelo Covino and Ed Harris.
Credits: Directed by Dito Montiel, scripted by John Polono. A Roadside Attractions release.
Running time: 1:43
Movie Nation 