Movie Nation

If you’ve wondered how this feel good musical crossed that most difficult financial bridge, as I have, Billboard has the answer. https://www.billboard.com/amp/articles/columns/pop/8512779/danny-boyle-yesterday-the-beatles-interview

The warning signs were in plain sight.

Sailors were bartering to pay for necessities, including the booze for a shipmates’ wedding, because Mother Russia wasn’t meeting payroll.

Maintenance had fallen by the board, and not just on ships mothballed because they couldn’t afford to send them to sea.

Scrambling to get the Northern Fleet into a major military exercise didn’t take into account what the crews, and officers, hadn’t been drilled in — for years — to keep themselves and their vessels safe.

And then a hydrogen peroxide/kerosene-powered torpedo gets “angry,” and the rigid chain of command doesn’t respond well to emergencies.

“All in good time,” we hear one elderly admiral purr to concerned families of the submarine “Kursk.” Of course, by this time the massive submarine, pride of the Russian Navy, was sitting on the bottom of the Barents Sea, its nose blown off. Official indifference put them there, the populace’s famous Russian fatalism would play right into that. Or so officialdom (Max Von Sydow) thought.

“The Command” is a Western account of the 2000 disaster, a harrowing but routine thriller released as “Kursk” in Europe (now on DirectTV and in North American theaters June 21).

French super-producer Luc Besson ensures that the cast and effects are first rate, and Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (“The Hunt,””The Celebration”) summons up as much suspense as he can for a tragedy in which most viewers will remember how it came out.

The narrative is heavily fictionalized, with the screenwriter slapping the names of Russian skaters and dancers on some naval characters. It’s based on Robert Moore’s book on the disaster, “A Time to Die,” and follows three threads.

Matthias Schoenaerts is Mikhail, a petty officer aboard “Kursk” with an adoring son (Artemiy Spiridonov) and a loving, very pregnant wife (Léa Seydoux). Mikhail’s biggest concerns before putting to sea is gathering the booze for a shipmate/pal’s rowdy weepy Russian Orthodox wedding, which he secures from corrupt quartermasters.

Admiral Grudzinskty (Peter Simonischek) is the leader of the Northern Fleet, on the bridge of his flag ship for the first fleet exercises since the fall of the U.S.S.R. He grouses about the state of the ships, and the size of deployment, even if a subordinate boasts they are “more than enough to send a message to our enemies.

“Now all we have to do is figure out who our enemies are.” In the movies, this is what the “good Russians” say.

And Colin Firth is the British commodore in charge of monitoring this exercise from afar, via observer subs and deep sea listening devices. Commodore Russell doesn’t hear the torpedoman’s warning call to the captain, that the no-warhead “practice” torpedo they’re set to use is leaking its igniter chemical into its fuel.

“It is angry, sir.”

Russell doesn’t hear that concern brushed off, and the crew members muttering “Say your prayers” to each other, nor does he hear the “I am not a religious…” before the inevitable happens.

But Russell and his team hear the “BOOM” when the five ton “dummy” weapon blows up, the crunch when the sub plunges to the bottom and the even more massive explosion that follows minutes later.

Only men in an aft compartment survive the blast and flooding. Mikhail, Oleg (Magnus Millang) and a few others must scramble to stabilize their flooding compartment, get a pump running and tap on the hull to get the fleet’s attention.

The admiral and his men on the surface have to figure out what’s happened and process a response.

But over in Britain, Commodore Russell & Co. are way ahead of them, pretty much for the rest of the movie.

“Mother of God. They’ve lost a submarine!”

Too much of what the world knows about the disaster has been filtered through an unreliable Russian investigation and cover-up, and some dramatic license is to be expected in a movie with European stars and financing, and the need to condense the “ticking clock” race to save the men in the stern of the huge boat.

The chronology is flawed as to who knew what and when, and who offered to help first, and the film is too eager to put fake names on characters, too eager to allow that fictionalization to move to the fore.

But there is dramatic underwater free-diving repair footage as Mikhail and his men struggle to buy themselves more time. We get truthful if not precisely accurate accounts of a secretive military culture and government given to hiding everything from its people struggling to “contain” this crisis, stalling and harrumphing in bursts of Cold War paranoia.

And there is pathos, a crackling intercom conversation between the aft compartment and the nuclear reactor crew — “We can’t leave, or it’s Chernobyl!” A little boy asks his mother, “Is Dad dead?”

“The Command” plays down the whopper that the Russians insisted on repeating, time and again, that a NATO (American) submarine had collided with theirs, causing the disaster. It sanitizes or seems to absolve some of the chain of command, and utterly ignores the PR disaster that new-“president” Vladimir Putin presided over. He was on vacation for much of this.

But we do see the worried wives and children ignore their elders’ gullible counsel, “We let the Navy do its work…Their comrades will do their duty. Your duty is to wait at home.”

We see the infamous “official” reaction to a near riot that broke out with that crowd (Putin was present for this).

And in this case, that’s enough to remind us that unlike that Russian admiral, unlike the generally cowed and complaint populace, unlike the alleged “Leader of the Free World,” we remember who our enemies are — their lies, paranoia, clumsiness and venality, systemic and endemic, that have made them our ideological foes for a century.

It’s not a classic of the genre, not moving enough to truly grip the viewer and pull us to the edge of our seats. But a very good cast and a general respect for the facts makes “The Command” a worthy-enough entry, one that realizes sometimes there is no happy ending.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some intense disaster-related peril and disturbing images, and for brief strong language

Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Léa Seydoux, Peter Simonischek, Colin Firth and Max Von Sydow

Credits: Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, script by Robert Rodat based on the Robert Moore book. A Saban Films/DirectTV release.

Running time: 1:57

This one sounded fishy from the outset.

https://www.thewrap.com/geoffrey-rush-awarded-1-9-million-in-metoo-defamation-case/

“In the Aisles” is a lovely German elegy to the nobility of work and the family we create while working. It’s a quiet, insightful idyll set in the world of modern retail, seen from the ground level — literally.

Perhaps they don’t call them “groβe kiste” stores in Germany. But they’re the same “big box” warehouses that we find in much of the world — cavernous, dark, bulk-buy discount stores built for bargain hunters.

That’s where Christian, played by Franz Rogowski (“Transit,””A Hidden Life”) finds himself, a young man with a lot of tattoos and a new job — “night stocker.”

Christian is warned about wearing “long sleeves” over his tattoos, is issued his work smock and “our basic kit” like a soldier sent into battle — four pens, a box cutter, and his name tag, and taken to “the hallowed halls.”

He apprentices under the grumpy “I don’t need any help” Bruno (Peter Kurth, sort of the muse of director Thomas Stuber). They prowl the after-hours aisles, loading beer kegs and pasta, crates of liquor and the like from the top shelves onto the bottom ones, where customers can pluck them during the next day’s shopping hours.

Bruno starts Christian on the long path towards getting a forklift license and becoming really useful there. All the “newbie” has to do is “take it real slow.” That goes for almost everybody there, the pharmacy director who plays chess with Bruno on his many, long breaks, older guys not paid enough to be in a hurry, at this stage.

Then there’s “Sweet Goods Marion” (Sandra Hüller, co-star of “Toni Erdmann”). A cocky, slightly older coquette, she breaks rules, flits about on her forklift and flirts with the shy Christian every time they have to stock a shelf together, or find their coffee breaks coincide.

Is she going to affect his work ethic, make him careless? Bruno seems to think so, because she’s married and now he’s “forklifting like a madman because you’re in love.”

Christian, of course, also has a past. He has to wear long sleeves to hide it.

There’s just enough chemistry between the winsome, vulnerable Hüller and Rogowski, who has a soulful, secretive and perhaps dangerous sort of  Joaquin Phoenix presence. But that’s not really what Stuber’s (“A Heavy Heart”) movie is about, any more than it is about Christian, Bruno, Rudi or Marion’s pasts.

It begins with “The Blue Danube” at dawn, a waltz of forklifts greeting the day in this world of eternal florescent lighting. The shift manager, world-weary Rudi (Andreas Leupold) changes the store music when the last customer has exited — Barber’s mournful “Adagio for Strings.”

“Welcome to the night!” he says (in German, with English subtitles).

And as the evening winds down into early, early morning, with Bruno grumping “That’ll do, you pass” to every little thing Christian masters during his company probation, they clock-out and Rudi shakes the hand of each and every employee as they head out the door.

The department stockrooms have nicknames, “Siberia” for frozen foods, “The Ocean” for fresh seafood. And not all departments get along as well as Bruno in booze and coughing Irina in sweets. There’s all this bickering over forklifts, for starters.

“We don’t get along with ‘canned goods.’ With ‘sweets,’ we’re fine. They’re on a friendly warpath with ‘gourmet foods’ and ‘frozen goods.'”

They gossip, with everybody offering advice about “Sweet Goods Marion.” They have a Christmas cookout out back with food fetched from the “expired today” discards. And as dreary as the work is, as isolating as their hours make them, they look out for each other. Or try to.

Stuber’s understated, slow-moving drama nicely captures the world of overnight jobs, the perils of “semi-skilled” work (a forklift can kill you) and the loneliness that is both an on-the-job hazard and a German stereotype.

There’s a sad romance to the late hours, a poetry and music to the routine and nobility in taking pride — if that’s the word — in a menial, repetitive job competently done. Stuber takes the time to closely observe the choreography of this world, the shortcuts and “tricks of the trade” that the veteran employees willingly pass on. He celebrates work and “work family” and even the piquant concept of “work wife” in “In the Aisles.”

You don’t have to have done this sort of work or kept these hours to appreciate just how much this movie gets right, lives that have moved beyond “quiet desperation” or ambition, floating into a myopic netherworld of routine.

But I guarantee you’ll never stroll through Costco blithely and blindly again.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity, smoking, some nudity

Cast: Franz Rogowski, Sandra Hüller, Peter Kurth, Andreas Leupold

Credits: Directed by Thomas Stuber, script by Clemens Meyer and Thomas Stuber.  A Music Box release.

Running time: 2:05

Good to see Linda Hamilton back in this series, which I lost interest in several “Terminators” ago.

But this has the right tone, at least. Maybe.

I always give myself a High Five if I spell his name right on the first try.

Ex-ballplayer turned ex-con returns to his old stomping grounds on getting out.

Pair up the married couple, throw in Burt Young and Michael Rispoli, see what explodes.
“Bottom of the 9th” one opens July 19.

Nolan’s good luck charm Michael Caine, heard but not seen in “Dunkirk” joins John David Washington & Co. in this global espionage thriller.

Https://deadline.com/2019/05/christopher-nolan-tenet-movie-cast-release-date-1202620596/

The trailer to this Nov. 1 release will post Thursday evening at this address.

The director of “Deadpool” is behind the camera, and Linda H and ancient Ah-nuld are in front of it.

Mackenzie Davis (“The Martian”) is in it, and Gabriel Luna is a new “Terminator.”

For now, all we’ve got are some stills floating around the Internet, and this poster.

It is very late in the gender identity game to be conjuring up an ethereal fever dream of what’s going on in the head of someone “transitioning,” or thinking about it.

But the British drama “Into the Mirror” manages it with style to burn, and just a smidgen of pathos.

The hallucinogenic visuals and spacey, romantic score by Johnny Jewel of Chromatics give Lois Stevenson’s drama the feel of a long form music video as autobiography, a young man’s journey to donning a wig, lipstick, makeup and a dress.

On London’s Tube, Daniel (co-writer Jamie Bacon, of “Rocketman”) watches a young woman apply lipstick with furtive envy. She’s blonde, so perhaps she reminds him of his late mother, whom we’ve seen in old home video in the film’s opening moments.

He’s new to the city, dodging plaintive phone calls from his Dad urging them to “sort” their relationship, trying to keep colleagues at arm’s length, and haunting the city’s Lost & Found club after hours.

Blu (Beatrice May) is sweet on him. His bullying, handsy boss (John Sackville) keeps emasculating him with the odd “pretty boy” compliment, testing him, touching him and insisting that he join the others for drinks and skirt-chasing.

“You need to get laid.”

Perhaps. Perhaps not in the way Harry the Boss thinks.

As Daniel, following his curiosity and temptation, makes his way into smokey, dimly lit Lost & Found, he is challenged by the striking transvestite Jennifer (co-writer Charles Streeter). He finds himself awakening in Jennifer’s care.

“I can’t remember last night,” he rallies, with the doesn’t-know-he’s-gay defense. “I was so drunk.”

Sure.

“Into the Mirror” concerns itself with Daniel’s state of mind, ducking under in the tub, hallucinating that he’s drowning, flashing back to childhood with every unanswered message from his dad, seeing gender confusion even in the street-lights at the crosswalk he has to traverse to get to the club each evening.

Director Lois Stevenson doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, incidents of consequence or script in general to work with. So she pours her energy into Bacon’s brooding confusion as Daniel, the soft-focus dreams and the dreamscape that is the club — fog machines and piercing jabs of lurid light cutting up the crowded dance floor.

For such a short (65 minute) and narrowly focused film, the co-writers/co-stars and director wrestle with something pretty ambitious, nothing less than a psychological undressing of transvestism.

Yes, the woman playing Daniel’s adoring mother (Nicole Evans) is blonde.

Perhaps even that view is out of date (if not in Britain), seen as simplistic, and I’ve not kept up with the literature so honestly, I do not know.

But “Into the Mirror” gets as close as any movie ever has to simulating the state of mind of someone conflicted, if no longer confused about his sexuality — the feelings, paranoia, decision making and resolve that takes one from the closet to the drag club.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, profanity

Cast: Jamie Bacon, Beatrice May, Charles Streeter, John Sackville, Nicole Evans

Credits: Directed by Lois Stevenson, script by Jamie Bacon and Charles Streeter. An Ammo Content release.

Running time: 1:05

Dave Bautista’s a gonzo cop whose Lasik doesn’t impede his need to kick ass and take prisoners, but it does mean he needs to take…Uber.

Kumail Nanjiani (“The Big Sick”) is the careful, considerate not-quite-a-stereotype hapless driver summoned to help the cop do his business.

A couple of near-laughs, or at least chuckles, in this better second “international” trailer. “Stuber” opens July 12.