The Green Knight

Are you a fan of the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table? This period piece immerses you in the fog and frightful existence of Middle Ages England. While Arthur and Guinevere are referred to in the credits simply as King and Queen, the unmistakable Round Table sets the stage for their mostly silent oversight of the damp and dark court where some of the action takes place. 

This is Camelot as you’ve never imagined it. Enter the Green Knight, a green-skinned, green-haired Groot type who rides a green horse right up to the Round Table and challenges any taker to a deadly game on Christmas Day. One caveat: any injury delivered to the Green Knight in hand-to-hand combat will be returned in kind exactly one year later. Most Knights take one step back at this point and leave it to a newbie, the king’s nephew. Without delving too far into legend, Morgana, Arthur’s half-sister is mostly off screen as some sort of evil enchantress, acting on behalf of her son as he begins his quest to become the knight, Sir Gawain.

 

The pace of the film is slow, the costuming reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but utterly lacking humor. The Chaucerian feel of the journey, or perhaps more rooted in poetry like Homer’s Odyssey, leaves you wanting to shower by the end of the film. They were very dirty times, and Director/Writer David Lowery brought them to life nicely, with ghosts, giants, thieves and witches lurking in the woods and hills along Gawain’s (Dev Patel) quest. As with other Knights, honor is tested along with valor, and the quest eventually is complete, but at what cost?

 

This is Patel’s first film since The Personal History of David Copperfield. His performance is solid, but more serious in this outing. Alicia Vikander, known for Ex Machina, is Gawain’s girlfriend and temptress, a dual role that has her playing both Essel and The Lady. Sean Harris, known for his roles as a recurring antagonist in the Mission Impossible franchise is an aging Arthur, somewhat lost in the fog, and struggling to remain larger than life. His soft-spoken honor shines through and provides a vector for the story line.

 

This movie has an art house feel, but leaves you with lingering thoughts back to the characters and the quest. It also makes you want to learn more.

 

 

The Green Night (2021) runs 2 hours, 10 minutes and is rated R.

 

Black Widow

I went into this film determined to count the number of hero falls. You know, like the one in this promo shot, where the actor lands from an impossibly long fall in a crouched position, as if absorbing the shock with one knee and one arm. This is the point at which my orthopedic surgeon would be reconstructing knees, ankles, an elbow, hips and one wrist, assuming I ever got out of traction for the multiple ruptured discs in my neck and back. But I’m no super hero. No, I’m not. 

And neither is the Black Widow. She’s just an extremely skilled assassin, Natasha Romanoff, trained in Russia and a member of the Avengers following defection. Scarlett Johansson has played the Black Widow in nine Marvel films beginning with 2010’s Iron Man 2, and is finally getting her own feature.

 

I feel this almost could have been called The Black Widow’s Little Sister. Yelena Belova plays a role almost equal to that of the title character. This was a generous decision on the part of Executive Producer Johansson. Natasha’s Mom and Dad are along for the ride too, or at least people who pretended to be Mom and Dad. 

 

It all begins in Ohio in 1995 when the sisters are six and eleven. The action starts almost immediately and pauses only occasionally throughout the film to give the audience a chance to catch their breath, and for some tender dialogue to play out on screen.

 

One of the first surprises in the movie was the screenwriter's recognition that hero falls have been over used. They are a running gag, the source of some inter-character banter in a few classic Marvel moments of humor. The sparingly used jokes always lend some fun to these very numerous movies. And the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) catalog is so extensive that some might be reluctant to dive into yet another origin story about a beloved character, but don’t hesitate.

 

The movie stands on its own and many backstory elements are explained. General Dreykov has a large mostly off-screen role in Black Widow. He is the creator of the “Red Room” where “Widows” are trained to be a human-trafficked global army of female assassins, mind-controlled from a floating fortress. His indestructible secret weapon, called Taskmaster, appears throughout the film and has a secret to reveal. It kind of feels like a James Bond plot at this point.

 

David Harbour plays Alexei, the Red Guardian, a Russian super-soldier answer to Captain America, and Rachel Weisz has a role as Melina, his wife. Florence Pugh is little sister Yelena Belova. Yelena, Milena, Belova, Romanov, the names get a bit confusing, but don’t become a distraction. 

 

Believe it or not, Don McLean’s song American Pie has a place in Black Widow. Those of us who lived through the overplaying of this song in 1971 still cringe when we hear it, but the lyrics, “That’ll be the day that I die,” factor into a key scene, so we’ll let it go.

 

Marvel fans will find much to love about this film. The action is non-stop with lots of explosions, amazing car chases, intricately choreographed fight scenes and locations including Morocco, Budapest, Rome and Georgia. The film feels much shorter than 133 minutes. Of course, stay beyond the credits.

 

 

Black Widow runs 2 hours, 13 minutes and is rated PG-13

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard

Take the leading actors from 2017’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard (Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson), add Salma Hayek, Morgan Freeman and Antonio Banderas, and what have you got? Much less than you’d hope.

Hayek and Banderas have co-stared multiple times since Desperado in 1995, including voiceovers in 2011’s Puss ‘N Boots, Once Upon a Time in Mexico in 2003 and Oscar Nominated Pain and Glory in 2019. This film was a waste of their on-screen chemistry.

 

Ryan Reynolds has secured himself a one-man genre as a one-liner spewing action star, much like his character in the Deadpool franchise. He brings much of the humor to this film. Samuel L. Jackson is his usual F-bombing self, and Salma Hayek co-stars once again with her breasts. They are literally in a supporting role, commented on, fondled and used as weapons to lure bad guys. At age fifty-five she either has great genetics or they spent a fortune in makeup and post-production making her look much younger. It seemed she was competing with Jackson for most F-words, and I’d have to call it a draw.

 

There’s a ton of gunfire, explosions, car chases and fight scenes woven around a pretty ridiculous story with several subplots that add little to the whole. The reluctant trio set out to foil an angry Greek billionaire’s plot to destroy the EU’s power grid with a giant diamond encrusted Dremel tool and a USB drive full of viral computer code. By mid-film there are so many flavors of bad guys, mostly cliches, that it’s hard to recall how they all fit into the plot. This has all been done before, only better.

 

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard runs 1 hour, 40 minutes and is rated R.

Cruella

The first thing to be aware of is that this is not a remake of any version of 101 Dalmatians. That was done in the 1996 live-action version with Glenn Close in the title role. A screenplay by John Hughes merits a second look at that incarnation of the 1961 children’s book of the same name. An attempt at a very unnecessary sequel resulted in 102 Dalmatians, also starring Close, a domestic box office money-loser and the reason there was no 103 Dalmatians. Close is behind the scenes in this latest Disney feature as an executive producer.

This is a prequel, the Cruella Deville origin story. We get to meet her as Estella, a troublesome young girl genius with very strange hair and an innate gift for design. We find out where the name of her evil alter ego originates and are introduced to several dalmatians that either have a very long lifespan or are easily replaceable. They return later in the film.

 

Two Emmas later (Stone and Thompson) we enter the world of high-fashion design dominated by The Baroness, a truly heartless character reminiscent of Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada.Once we flash forward to the adult Estella, the movie begins to feel a lot like the Prada story line, and according to my movie-watching wife Jeanne, there are tons of really cool dresses to be seen.

 

I was more focused on the “Baduns” from 1961, still named Horace and Jasper, and here reluctantly evolving from Estella’s crooked cohorts to Cruella’s henchmen. They are bumbling thieves, but far more likeable than their cartoon version. Their little dog Wink almost steals the show. He is a Chihuahua with an eye patch and a big attitude. Buddy, Estella’s dog is cute too, aging from an adorable pup to a scruffy sidekick, always in key shots paying attention to humans and scampering through crowds at parties.

Another character that caught my attention was the Panther De Ville, a classic luxury vehicle that was used as Cruella’s car in all three live action films. It is reminiscent of the Excalibur, produced in the 1970s, and it made me flinch to see it used in high-speed chases through the streets of London. I assume the resulting damage was CGI.

 

There are secrets revealed throughout the somewhat lengthy two plus hours film. The childhood segment went on a bit long, as did Estella’s transformation during the emergence of her wicked inner persona. A hint of kindness surfaces occasionally, which puts The Baroness in the true role as this movie’s ultimate villainess. Does Cruella have a heart after all? 

 

Both Stone and Thompson do a fine job. This was a fun movie, and there’s nothing to prevent taking the kiddies, though you might find yourself explaining that when good doesn’t triumph over evil, sometimes less evil triumphs over more evil. It’s a Disney movie, after all.

 

The setup for a sequel is firmly cemented during the final scene. Stay through the credits!

 

Cruella runs 2 hour, 14 minutes and is rated PG-13

 

 

A Quiet Place II

We were welcomed into the theater with promotional videos featuring Salma Hayek and John Krasinski, thanking theater goers for returning to the big screen to see their respective films. That felt both very welcoming and somewhat sad, as if we’re all castaways being slowly reintroduced to society. Adding to the out-of-a-coma feeling were trailers that advertised, “Coming in October of 2020,” or other long overdue dates. These reminders of our emergence were poignant and somehow personal. This is the second re-opening of Regal Theaters, and we can only hope that it’s for real this time.

But we are returning on Day 474, and in that respect, the one year break we endured waiting for the sequel to A Quiet Place felt oddly appropriate. We share so much with the Abbott family, having been isolated and pursued by a mostly invisible and menacing horror. Things have improved for us, but not for them, not at all. 

 

Krasinski reprises his role as Lee Abbott, but only for the duration of a flashback to “Day One.” Emily Blunt and the kids are all back, enjoying a tranquil summer afternoon when all Hell breaks loose. We get to see how the alien invasion begins, and how suddenly things turn south. Just as suddenly we join the family in their current attempt to survive, tip-toeing through fallen leaves that crunch dangerously and into the arms of “people not worth saving.” This is a modern-day War of the Worlds.

 

I’m not going to spoil anything by saying that the alien and human monsters in the film all have four limbs and a penchant for destroying human life that defies understanding. Of course, the small family does the expected worst thing possible, they split up, allowing scene-shifting directorial fun for Krasinski and his editors, and audio engineering pluses that alternate between the silence of Regan Abbott, the deaf daughter, to the super-sensitive hearing of the sound-seeking monsters. We get a good look at the monsters in this outing.

 

Each character in the film struggles with an inner psychological conflict if not an outward, physical one, the overcoming of which carries individual plot lines through the film. Sets are post-apocalyptic, the remnants of humanity reverting to barbaric genetic memory or leading tranquil lives in hippie-like communes. Somehow, the lights have remained on for over a year, despite T-Rex/Raptor/Alien creatures running amok with the strength to shred train cars and buildings.

 

I counted at least three scenes that caused me to jump in my seat. The silence contributes heavily to the setup for these Hitchcock-like moments. This is a great sequel, worth seeing, but if you haven’t seen the original, by all means get it done before seeing number two.

 

 

A Quiet Place II (2020) runs 1 hour, 37 minutes and is rated PG-13

Wrath of Man

For my first time venturing into a post-pandemic theater I chose a film that wouldn’t require my full attention. That attention was compromised by the angst of sitting with a group of unmasked strangers, in some cases one behind the other, perhaps two feet apart. This was despite Regal Theaters’ best efforts to assign seating when purchasing tickets online. People just can’t do this simplest of things, like sitting in the seat they selected. Ah, well, at least the theaters may survive. We’re all itching to do something normal like go to the movies.

If you’re a fan of Jason Statham, this will satiate your blood lust and desire for revenge porn. The photo I chose for this review is of his biggest smile during the two-hour feature produced by Guy Ritchie. More on Ritchie in my reviews of The Gentlemen and Aladdin. He has proven himself to be a successful screenwriter and producer for an untrained high school dropout. He has a penchant for violence and appears to favor tight closeups, as if considering eventual viewing on a TV screen. He has a long history with Jason Statham, having launched his acting career in his late 90s release of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

 

Statham’s version of the unstoppable, almost super-heroic action star has him sauntering through scene after scene killing bad guys with ease and precision. He is clearly unhappy, and in Wrath of Man, that’s the motivating force behind his plot for revenge. He is a virtual Houdini, a zip-tied can of whoop-ass that keeps you on the edge of your seat because you’ve already seen him take out crews of inept armored car bandits and survive multiple gunshot wounds. He seemingly dusts off bullets like dandruff.

 

The script for Wrath of Man is initially quite weak, at least in the opening sequences when Statham, nicknamed “H,” applies and tests for a job as a driver at “The Depot,” the hub where Fortico Security’s armored cars return at the end of their pickups. It looks like home base from the TV show Taxi, and is populated by fellow drivers who all behave more like they’re in a prison yard than at work. New guys get viciously razzed, but H quickly applies his unsmiling, cold steel persona and has the boys wondering if he’s a dark horse. It’s a bit suspicious that he passes his entrance evaluation with exactly the seventy per cent required. He’s that in control, holding back and saving the good stuff for his first job. And that first job instantly lofts him to hero status at work.

 

Fellow drivers are also assigned goofy nicknames. “Bullet,” “Boy Sweat” and “Hollow Bob” are examples. The dialogue is juvenile and the banter is so over the top as to be ridiculous. But it does offer a couple of opportunities for mild laughs. There should have been more of those.

 

A missed opportunity is the presence of Dana, the lone badass girl driver played by Naimh Algar. She plays a relatively inconsequential role as H’s only love interest, a one-night stand solely for the purpose of interrogating her in the middle of the night at gunpoint. The role offered the possibility of a female costar with secret skills like those of Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde. But I guess there’s no sharing the lead with Statham. But wait, who’s that handsome young bad guy, the baddest bad guy, following a convoluted layered onion of bad guys throughout the movie? Why, it’s Clint Eastwood’s son Scott, who made his screen debut in Daddy’s Flags of our Fathers in 2006. He’s not Clint, but he has a future on the big screen.

 

Wrath of Man is worth seeing if you like the Ritchie/Statham formula for violence and male dominated plots. It seemed a bit long at two hours, but that was in part due to the droning, ominous musical score that never abates and becomes sort of corny and distracting. All things considered, two better “Wraths” come to mind, like The Wrath of Khan or The Grapes of Wrath. Smile, Jason, smile. It will make you seem even more sinister. You’re fast, you’re furious. We get it.

 

 

Wrath of Man runs 1 hour, 59 minutes and is rated R.

Koko di Koko da

Warning: this movie is not for relaxed or more nightmare prone viewers. And to think we paid to see this thing.

I guess the film did its job within the horror genre. It was intriguing, but so relentlessly perverse and horrifying I worried about sleeping through the night without night terrors or bizarre dreams of my own. Ok, now I have your interest.

 

If you liked 2019’s Midsommar, you’ll love Koko di Koko da, so named because of a melodic and seemingly simple fairy tale with a haunting tune and creatures that literally haunt the two main characters in the film. Think It’s a Small World After All with attack dogs and psychopaths. After those two films I’m just thinking Sweden is kind of a weird place. Some characters in this movie are puppets, others are just deranged incarnations we initially see on a music box that plays the title song. That gift, given to a young girl on her eight birthday becomes the nexus around which the parents’ try to work through their grief and repair their marriage following an allergic seafood reaction that kills the girl and almost finishes off the mom. It’s kind of a combination of The Blair Witch Project and Groundhog Day, seasoned with Cabin in the Woods.

 

The film definitely leaves its viewers on edge, trying to figure it all out, and a bit tired from reading some rather rapid subtitles. Yeah, it’s in Swedish. Oh, and there’s a white cat.

 

The movie is directed by Johannes Nyholm and stars Leif Edlund and Yiva Galon, but who cares. We don’t know them and probably won’t see them again, though they all seem pretty busy in the Swedish film industry. 

 

If you’re still curious you can find this movie on Amazon for $4.99.

 

Koko-Di, Koko-Da (2019) runs 1 hour, 29 minutes and is unrated.

The Sound of Metal

We might not have noticed this Amazon Original without a recommendation from viewers in Germany (Dankeschön!) In fact, the opening segment might have been off-putting, a documentary-like heavy metal musical segment from a band called Blackgammon playing an earsplitting track with a screaming vocal, incendiary guitar and intense percussion. I’m not sure if their sound qualifies as “screamo,” lacking perhaps the right punk influence, but the volume is way up there, and contributes to the story line.

But hang in there. Riz Ahmed plays Ruben Stone, a drummer who’s rapidly losing his hearing. A drug addict four years clean on the power of his relationship with Lu, played by Olivia Cooke, they tour with their band in a custom RV, supporting each other with healthy smoothies, exercise, dance and affection. This is after all, a love story, despite the tattoo on Ruben’s chest that reads, “Someone Kill Me.”

 

Ahmed is a British Pakistani actor, rapper and activist you might recognize from Four Lions, Jason Bourne and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. He was listed as one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2017 on the strength of a nomination by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

 

Cooke starred in 2018’s Life Itself and TV work including Bates Motel and Vanity Fair.

 

The audio engineering in The Sound of Metal immerses you in the experience of losing your hearing. Unlike so many films that have a character repeat out loud the sign language being used, the viewer is as initially helpless as Ruben, and you feel his depression and frustration, especially as a musician. 

 

Following a recent ear infection I experienced a similar series of events shown when Ruben struggles to clear his ears and eventually sees an audiologist. But despite the time he spends benefiting from and contributing to a sequestered deaf community, the cochlear implant he chooses to fund with all of his worldly possessions is a brutal little procedure that he hopes will “fix” the problem that the deaf community doesn’t feel needs fixing. Embrace the stillness.

 

The Sound of Metal is thoughtful, well-acted and doesn’t resort to gratuitous sex, violence or cheap gimmickry. 

 

Written and directed by Darius Marder, this project may be an important addition to his small portfolio.

 

 

The Sound of Metal (2019) runs exactly 2 hours and is rated R.

 

 

Kajillionaire

Richard Jenkins is one of those familiar character actors you just can’t place. Most recently he had a lead role in The Last Shift, a mostly overlooked pandemic casualty from 2020. He has an eclectic film resume that includes The Shape of Water, Step Brothers, The Cabin in the Woods, White House Down and many others. In Kajillionaire he is Robert, father to the strangely named Old Dolio played by Evan Rachel Wood, and husband of Theresa, played by the almost unrecognizable Debra Winger. We know Wood most recently from her lead role in the series reboot of Westworld. 

 

These three are an essentially homeless family who wander through the streets of California looking for loose change, stealing mail and surviving day to day as career scammers. They rent office space attached to a business called Bubbles that oozes pink suds three times daily. They diligently scoop the foam from the adjoining wall in order to prevent damage and mold. Perhaps that value contributes to the owner’s tolerance of chronically late rent and unending promises of payment. Meanwhile, they live in superstitious fear of “the big one” and the electric power of frequent earthquakes.

 

Old Dolio has been raised more as a tool than a daughter. The family precisely splits the proceeds of scams three ways in a loveless business relationship. The parents only acknowledge 18 of their daughter’s 26 years, keeping her just short of adulthood, entirely dependent and constantly seeking emotional approval. Her husky-voiced, deadpan persona is that of a shell-shocked dumpster diver experiencing the world with a sense of forbidden wonder. Enter Miranda, an enthused random accessory encountered mid-heist on a turbulent airplane ride, and a possible casualty of her own parents’ dysfunctional relationship. Here the story takes on a new dimension as a love story that gives purpose and eventual resolution to the film.

 

This is a quirky low budget movie with an Indie feel, directed by Miranda July and with an Executive Producer credit by Brad Pitt. It showed up on a “best of 2020” list when searching for a movie to watch during our continuing theater blackout. It was $5.99 on Amazon, held our interest throughout and might gain traction once discovered.

 

 

Kajillionaire (2020) runs 1 hour 44 minutes and is rated R.

 

 

 

Infidel

If “inspired by true events” is meant to suggest that you’re about to watch a true story, then labeling a food as “light” will help you lose weight.

So, no, Infidel is not a true story. And that’s good, because if the two main characters were truly as reckless as portrayed in this film a more appropriate title would have been “Imbecile.”

Doug Rawlins, a famous evangelical Christian blogger is invited by a friend to travel to Cairo to be a guest on a popular talk show. His wife Liz who works at the State Department warns him not to make the trip, double dog dares him not to evangelize while there, and then equips him with her seemingly CIA-like skills so he can send her a secret encoded message if necessary.

Doug is played by Jim Caviezel, the tall, dark and deadly Mr Reese, from the successful television show Person of Interest. He has also had his share of religious themed roles, as the apostle Paul and as Jesus himself in Mel Gibson’s brutal 2004 telling of The Passion of the Christ. In Infidel, his appearance on the Egyptian talk show goes smoothly until he turns to the camera and states, “Jesus IS god.” Until that point the audience was happily applauding Jesus as a teacher and prophet. At this point he initiates an international incident and his own kidnapping by Hamas terrorists. Fortunately, Rawlins is able to use his magic USB drive to get a message to Liz, but first he drops the drive within sight of his captors, and then a hacker on the Internet intercepts, decodes and posts the message. Out comes the power drill and Doug agrees to anything they want.

Not to be outdone, Liz Rawlins, played by Australian Claudia Karvan, throws on her hijab and travels to the Middle East to rescue her captive husband. She is alternately helped and harassed, stumbling through a series of chance encounters, eventually gaining the attention of Israeli agents from Mossad who need her help to liberate their own captives. A hint for married couples reuniting during a raging gun battle. Don’t stop for a loving embrace while hand grenades are rolling toward your feet. And if you’re going to pick up a live grenade and throw it at the bad guy, don’t think about it for a few seconds.

Some unbelievable sequences make for decent action and suspense, assuming you can suspend your disbelief. The film examines the very real topics of kidnapping and honor killing, which is Director Cyrus Nowrasteh’s intent. His own father was detained and arrested on a trip to Iran in 2013. Plenty of coverage on the evening news has focused on tragic events like the kidnapping and death of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson. Nowrasteh’s only other directorial credit during the last ten years is for a film called The Young Messiah, about Jesus from age seven as he grew into his religious identity. The film lost over ten million dollars worldwide.

Infidel (2019) runs 1 hour, 48 minutes and is rated R.

 

 

The New Mutants

When a movie starts with the graphic flipping pages of a Marvel comic book I’ve come to assume it will be a top-notch film and an enjoyable couple of hours. So much for that theory.

This is an origin story of a handful of young “new mutants” who have been sequestered for their own protection by Doctor Cecilia Reyes, played by Alice Braga. The secret facility allows monitoring and guided development of superpower skills that put the mutants on a path to someday becoming X-men. This is obviously a world in which X-men are known and mutants are still feared and marginalized.

Problem one: they’re troubled teenagers. Problem two: the newest recruit (or prisoner) is Danielle Moonstar played by Blu Hunt. I think Blu Hunt is a better name than Danielle Moonstar but, oh well. She has the ability to materialize everyone’s worst fears. She is Native American and believes that inside every person dwells two bears, one good and one evil. The evil bear makes an appearance late in the film.

Charlie Heaton, recognizable from his work in Stranger Things, plays the Kentucky coalminer Sam Guthrie, whose powers cause a mine collapse that kills his father and leaves him with survivor’s guilt.

Anya Taylor-Joy plays Magik, an armor-plated, sword wielding bully with a bad attitude and a personal history with monstrous “Smiley Men.” Her strangely wide-set eyes feature as prominently here as in her recent portrayal of Emma in the movie of the same name.

The film spends far too much time on character development. The Mutants are discovering the limits of their powers, a convenient means of educating the audience as well. It seems we also need lots of convincing that Dr. Reyes is not a sweet, softspoken caretaker after all. Dani and her new buddy Rahne head off on a young lesbian love tangent, and the Smiley Men add a bit of Guillermo DelToro style monster horror. It should be horrifying enough that real life Marilyn Manson voices over one Smiley Man.

Eventually it is determined that Dani is too powerful to be controlled. Dr. Reyes receives some sinister instructions from an offscreen superior and the Mutants bond against a common enemy.

Originally intended to be the first part of a trilogy, multiple delays interfered with this film's promotion and release. It is now considered the thirteenth and final chapter of the X-men series even though the ending screams “sequel.”

 

The New Mutants (2020) runs 1 hour, 34 minutes and is rated PG-13.

Tenet

A palindrome is a word or phrase that reads the same backward as forward. “Tenet” is a palindrome. There are entire scenes within this movie that are palindrome-ish. The movie is utterly confusing and exhausting to decipher for the entirety of its two and a half hours. It is also brilliantly written, if complexity gets credit, and the editor(s) of this beast should win an Oscar.

I could tell you the entire plot and key scenes of this film without spoiling it. I love good time travel movies, but they are simple by comparison to this looping, parallel timeline action film in which John David Washington, known as “The Protagonist” and his strangely familiar partner Neil, played by Robert Pattinson, set out to save the world from something they don’t understand. Washington recently starred in BlacKkKlansman, which was a walk in the park compared to this very physical role as a CIA type who has been tested for inclusion in a secret organization that operates outside of time and national interests. Michael Caine makes a brief appearance as Crosby, an elite conduit to forged art and the world of uber-wealthy arms dealers.

If you’re familiar with the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during the 1940s, lead scientist Robert Oppenheimer has an analogous team leader hundreds of years in the future. That female scientist is working on a project so dangerous to the existence of everything that she hides nine components back in time and kills herself to prevent her knowledge from being known. The project is called Tenet and it has fallen into the hands of Andrei Sator, a crazed Russian oligarch suffering from a terminal illness. He plans the annihilation of the entire history of the human species rather than die and leave the world to continue in his absence. As with his estranged wife, if he can’t have her no one can.

“What’s happened has happened” is repeated frequently throughout the film. People and things are “inverted” through time turnstyles, machines that act as portals to a backward running parallel dimension. This results in fights, battles and chases being run simultaneously in positive and negative time, bullets being caught by guns and characters coming dangerously close to their alter-selves, sometimes without even being aware. The climactic James Bond-like battle scene is filmed with red and blue teams of soldiers running against ten-minute countdown and count-up clocks toward the same zero point. One’s knowledge of the other’s actions contributes to confusing reversals within the action and results in unexplainable paradoxes that defy logic and physics. Buildings are simultaneously blown up and reconstructed as timelines cross. The sometimes overly ominous musical score has snippets of backward sounds, and some dialogue is played both forward and reversed.

It’s no surprise that Christopher Nolan wrote and directed this mind bender. He is also responsible for Memento, Inception and Interstellar, all cerebral and non-linear productions, but not to this level.

I recommend being well rested before seeing this movie. It’s worth seeing, perhaps more than once if you really want to understand what’s happening. But that might require using the turnstyle to run a temporal pincer operation in order to give future information to your past self. Yeah, it’s that complicated.

Tenet (2020) runs 2 hours, 30 minutes and is rated PG-13

 

The Broken Hearts Gallery

On our latest outing to the “new normal” intensive care unit known as going to the movies in the year 2020 I wanted to see Tenet but it wasn’t my turn to choose. That’s ok, since a steady diet of Netflix eventually grows tiresome and just isn’t the cure for cabin fever or whatever we now call being trapped by an invisible enemy. We needed to get out of the house.

Something light hearted actually sounded appealing, and a Rom Com is about the lightest level movies can attain, short of Blazing Saddles or Superbad. But be clear, this is a chick flick, fulfilling all criteria of that species – catering to a youthful, female demographic on topics of love and romance. But this is not The Big Sick or When Harry Met Sally. It’s cute, but not even close.

The only familiar actor in this film is 72 year old Bernadette Peters who is not only still living but has retained that pinched, cute little face and voice that plays well in drama or comedy. She is an insanely talented singer who branched off into comic roles thanks to Mel Brooks and alongside one time partner Steve Martin. She even appeared on Carol Burnett and with The Muppets where she fit right in.

A diverse and heavily female cast of twenty-somethings over shares just within the bounds of the PG-13 rating, threatening each other with vibrators and talking obsessively about penises and vaginas. Lucy, played by an energized but frequently depressed Geraldine Viswanathan is a collector of memorabilia. She is clearly a hoarder living in an apartment-sized museum of reminders, the most recent of which is a tie from the artist she just broke up with. That tie becomes the inspiration, hung from a nail on a wall, for a gallery of memorabilia. The idea is a surprisingly huge hit among fellow New Yorkers who share a similarly unhealthy tendency to wallow in past relationship souvenirs. Nick, played by Dacre Montgomery, Lucy’s eventual love interest is rehabbing a building that becomes the Broken Hearts Gallery. He plays the part with sweet and sincere detached strength and vulnerability. You know, kind of a Rom Com Everyman. Prior to this he appeared in Stranger Things and as Jason, the red Power Ranger.

The dialogue in Broken Hearts Gallery often becomes that machine gun spray of impossibly cohesive and funny lines that perhaps only Robin Williams was actually capable of delivering. But there are quite a few laughs and if you can look past the unrealistic delivery, the lines are quite good. Director Natalie Krinsky also wrote the screenplay which may explain this stuffing of large words into small spaces.

The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020) runs 1 hour, 48 minutes and is rated PG-13.

Unhinged

In Unhinged, an almost unrecognizably overweight Russell Crowe stars as a deranged assailant in pursuit of a young mother who honks at him when he fails to proceed at a green traffic light. Granted, she lays on the horn hard three times and he sits through the entire light. Road rage ensues, but quickly becomes something far more sinister.

Consider this film a cross between Falling Down and Duel. Although not all of the action is in vehicles, much of it takes place behind the wheel. A staccato tap, tap, tap, tap musical/mechanical score during a relentless pursuit accompanies the action, similar to Duel and eventually you expect Rachel’s station wagon to start smoking and breaking down, just like Dennis Weaver’s car did on a long uphill climb.

If Crowe gained a ton of weight for this script I feel bad for him. It wasn’t worth the pain and suffering he’ll endure if he wants to trim down. He does a great job of playing a deranged killer, but the script has numerous flaws, mostly in the frightened female victim’s logic. After so many recent films in which women leverage their strength, intellect and cunning it seems this script returns us to a time in which helpless females were victimized by a big, bad man, though she does have a plan thanks to her Fortnite-playing son.

Just a few of the lessons we learn between scenes of graphic torture and highway carnage:

1.     Control your emotions in traffic,

2.     Say you’re sorry convincingly, even if you don’t feel the need,

3.     Don’t put on mascara while driving,

4.     Take your phone with you when you pay for gas,

5.     A phone without a screen lock is asking for trouble,

6.     Call the police instead of trying to outwit a lunatic,

7.     Never negotiate or follow a psychopath’s instructions.

Caren Pistorius plays Rachel, the woman who drives a red station wagon with lots of warning lights illuminated. She allows her busy life to get in the way of her busy life, oversleeping and losing her biggest client, letting her gas tank run down to empty and other avoidable actions on a day when everything has consequences. Pistorius does the best she can with a somewhat corny script, but she just can’t seem to find a breakout film. This one surely won’t be it.

Director Derrick Borte has six unremarkable films to his credit in twelve years. The opening scene in Unhinged is solely for the purpose of establishing Crowe’s unstable, violent behavior, I guess so that we understand when he next “unhinges” we’ll know what he’s capable of doing. But when Michael Douglas comes unglued in 1993’s Falling Down, you almost feel for him. That one is a much better film.

The opening scenes in Unhinged are a compilation of news stories, some of which appear to be actual footage of our stress-filled and chaotic current events. This sets up the film’s premise but then takes it to a completely insane next level, sort of like Fortnite.

The anxiety first felt when Rachel is targeted eventually fades when her actions and those of her pursuer become clearly unreasonable. Reaction to Rachel’s decision-making border on those experienced in teen slasher movies where you find yourself asking, “Why is she doing that? No, don’t go alone into the dark kitchen filled with knives.”

This pandemic-delayed film is mercifully short and has an estimated budget of $33 million with global opening weekend receipts of $23 million. They may make money on this thanks to Crowe’s power to draw crowds.

 

Unhinged (2019) runs 1 hour, 30 minutes and is rated R.

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Those who may be mistakenly drawn to this film as fans of the magician David Copperfield will be disappointed. But as a huge Charles Dickens fan, it was a must see as soon as I heard it was released. It was also our first time venturing out to a theater since about February. I’m happy to report that the experience was safe and sanitary. Being virtually the only two people in the theater helped a lot. Contactless ticketing and concessions, masks, gloves, cleaning between features and social distancing were all in play.

So, a brief note about the magician we’ve unfortunately all come to know better perhaps than this classic character from Dickens’ own favorite and most successful book. Magician David Seth Kotkin changed his name to the Charles Dickens character David Copperfield because he liked the sound of it. The book is magical, but that’s about all the two have in common.

Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire plays David alongside several other memorable cast members. Not least of these, and a real treat to see them onscreen together, are Peter Capaldi as Mr. Micawber and Hugh Laurie as Mr. Dick. Capaldi is known primarily from his television portfolio, with 46 episodes as a recent Dr. Who incarnation, and Laurie we know of course from 176 episodes of House, sans English accent, and much other television work. The two could have easily exchanged the quirky roles they played in this film. Both were a delight.

This modernized take on Dickens’ enhanced autobiography is his own coming of age story. It takes us from his birth to middle age, with memorable characters and events that became fodder for his eventual writing career. The director explored young Copperfield’s brilliant and inquisitive mind dissecting and jotting down bits of idiosyncratic comments and capturing differences in dialect among those around him. Casting of this movie is interestingly diverse. Copperfield is Indian and several traditionally white characters are Black. After a very brief bit of confusion you settle right into the acting and accept the portrayal without regard to race, which is nice.

Perfectly cast as the character Uriah Heep is Ben Whishaw who has played everything from Q in recent Bond films to Melville in The Heart of the Sea and the voice of Paddington the bear. Critics have called him one of the best actors of his generation. He is a sniveling, falsely humble and insincere antagonist to the extreme. Those who think Copperfield is a magician may think Heep is a rock band. Nope, but great choice of name.

It’s been a long time since I read David Copperfield, but this movie makes me want to read it again. There are numerous comedic threads running throughout the story that make it a fun and richly British period piece set in the mid 1800s. The opening scene has an adult Dickens reading his tale to an auditorium filled with admiring listeners. For a brief period, the public speaking engagements of Dickens and Mark Twain overlapped. Amazingly, though Twain was a great admirer of Dickens, and they were once in the same room, they never met. What a dream it would be to hear either one perform.

One other note: the actual title of the book was The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery.

 

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) runs 1 hour, 59 minutes and is rated PG. 

Swallow

If you’re looking for a short movie reminiscent of Ordinary People or Good Will Hunting, this film shares a couple of themes with those longer, better known films. In all three the main character is in therapy, has an abusive or emotionally distant parent and comes to grips with demons, thus resolving a lifetime of struggle.

Now factor in a rape and the desire to eat dangerous objects and prepare to watch Swallow. Haley Bennett wonderfully plays Hunter Conrad, a sort of Stepford Wife to Richie Conrad (Austin Stowell,) heir apparent to the family business and a perfectionist who just wants Hunter to step up her game and behave. Richie’s parents are no help, supporting and increasing the pressure on Hunter to be everything their boy deserves. “Richie likes his girls with long hair,” quips his mother, suggesting that Hunter grow out her neatly coiffed short style.

Hunter journeys from family pressure cooker to therapy, through multiple hospitalizations and eventually comes face to face with an intervention that is in reality a forced voluntary commitment. “Sign here or Richie wants a divorce,” says Dad.

You might want to look up the medical condition called “Pica” before viewing. I thought this was limited to children or pregnant women who develop a taste for dirt, but it’s so much more and is quite disturbing. Here is a brief summary of what you’ll find online: Pica is a psychological disorder characterized by the desire to eat substances such as ice, hair, paper, sharp objects, metal, stones, soil or glass. Hunter seems to crave them all and creates a little display, collecting her trophies after they pass through her digestive system. This is delicately handled.

The problem is, some don’t pass through without causing internal injuries, and the resulting E.R. visits alarm the family, rattling their cages so to speak, and being control freaks, her cage most of all.

I won’t reveal anything further about the film’s outcome. Hunter’s journey with its betrayals, confrontations and awakenings is definitely worth watching. Director Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s own grandmother suffered from compulsive hand washing in the 1950s and is incorporated into the character of Hunter along with societal expectations of a happy, expectant mother. That and his experience as a “gender fluid” man who lived as a woman named Emma Goldman for four years in his twenties led him to say, “What’s interesting is that I don’t really know what I currently am right now, especially after directing this movie. Emma is always a part of me, and I’ve thought a lot about her over the years. It’s always a continual journey.”

Awareness of this background information elevates this film from a fictional story to more of a psychological study of the human mind with its malleability, vulnerability and ability to cope. I don’t know if the previously mentioned two films can make the same claim.

Swallow can be rented on Amazon Prime, YouTube and AppleTV for $4.99.

 

Swallow (2019) runs 1 hour, 34 minutes and is rated R.

Should I see this movie? 

First Cow

This is another potential casualty, at least on the big screen, of the Covid pandemic. We had trouble finding a way to watch First Cow despite good reviews and recommendations from friends. We finally resorted to watching it on a laptop through iTunes. We do not have an Apple TV and our ancient (four year old) Smart TV was just short of smart enough to cast this movie from a phone.

Despite those limitations, this beautiful film has an art-house feel, a simple story line and quiet, engaging dialogue between its two main characters. The feel is immersive, softly focused under the smoky forest canopy with audio engineering that brings to life every twig cracking under foot, the snap of a mushroom’s stem and the sounds of quietly chewing bites of biscuits. This contributes to an anxious experience for audiences who have been conditioned to expect sudden action on the heels of silence.

John Magaro plays Cookie, an expert East Coast baker accompanying fur trappers in the Oregon Territory during the mid to late 1800s. Verbally abused by a troop of surly mountain men, he remains a loner and spends much of his time searching for food in the forest. There he discovers King-Lu (Orion Lee), crouching naked in the woods, having escaped a group of pursuing Russians for having killed one of their members in self-defense. Keep in mind that this was a period of extreme racial injustice and mistreatment of Chinese immigrants. (Read Mark Twain’s Roughing It for more.) The ensuing friendship leads to an entrepreneurial arrangement that puts both new friends at risk. The actors turn in memorable, understated performances.

Eventually we meet the “first cow” brought to the territory by a wealthy landowner, who has a nostalgic craving for fine baked goods. Cookie and his new partner attract his attention at a sort of woodsy marketplace where they sell their biscuits, a memory-invoking Eastern treat in the remote frontier. The landowner’s insecurity with military counterparts and his vengeful nature factor into the plot as we approach the film’s subdued climax.

Director Kelly Reichardt, a Florida native, prioritizes atmosphere over plot and visual effects in her film festival entries, one of which (River of Grass) was called one of the best films of 1995 by the Boston Globe and others. The Academy Awards may seem overwhelming for someone who considers herself  “a pretty boring person” but if the awards are conducted virtually next year, First Cow may be a surprisingly perfect fit. At the very least it should receive nominations for sound editing and design.

First Cow (2019) runs 2 hours, 2 minutes and is rated PG-13

Should I see this movie? 

Yellowstone (Series)

Sit back and enjoy vistas ready made for postcards, a cinematic feel that spans episodes and intriguing opening credits embedded in a steaming, sulfurous counterpoint of the old and new west. Welcome to the Yellowstone Ranch. Meet rancher/patriarch John Dutton. He is your host. Do not try to escape.

I heard a lot about this series from the Paramount Network, but it wasn’t until our local Xfinity service rolled out the Peacock channel that we had the ability to stream the first two seasons. Now that we’ve binged ourselves into a stupor, it’s time to take a look back and decide if season three is worth purchasing. 

The star of the show and one of its executive producers is the legendary Kevin Costner. He’s one of the much older Newman/Redford Hollywood genre of hunks that cause misty-eyed lasses to temporarily forget all about their feminist ideals and leave us normal guys saying, “Hey, did you hear what I just said?” But what does he have that I lack, other than, well, everything. And he’s a year younger than me to boot. When he was Dancing With Wolves I was dancing with diapers and stuck in one of the most boring jobs of my life.

But this is not a bio about Kev. For that, head to Wikipedia for an exhausting ride through a busy career, multiple marriages, vacillating political affiliations and errors in judgment that would derail most mortals. He has aged well and in Yellowstone has a gruff voice that, if not his own, is going to result in a nodule on this vocal chords.

Dutton is a sixth generation homesteader who would have us believe, “I’m not a rich man.” This, despite owning a ranch near Bozeman, Montana the size of a national park, his own helicopter, a fleet of trucks and ATVs, cattle, horses, barns, stables and a log cabin mansion to die for. I guess he’s house poor. And “to die for” is the key to this entire series. The Dutton clan is a modern day James Gang.

Dutton’s wife died while out on horseback with her children fifteen years earlier. Daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly) is blamed for the accident with her mother’s dying breath and goes on to become the meanest, sleaziest cowgirl in Montana. Her hatred for older brother Jamie (Wes Bentley) intensifies as the series progresses. Jamie is equally damaged, but was sent away early on by Dad to attend Harvard Law School because, “I need a lawyer.” As a result he returned a misfit, a slick hipster in a family full of murderous wranglers. Thus, the need for a lawyer.

The family is embroiled in local politics. Dutton is literally in bed with the Governor on the anniversary of his wife’s death because, “That’s the one day I most need to think about something else.” He is also at war with competing interests for casino and property development with Native Americans on the nearby reservation, a California developer and the Beck brothers, a sinister duo who stop at nothing to get what they want, including poisoning all of Dutton’s cattle and abducting his grandson.

There are tons of tangential plot lines, generally woven around hapless cowpokes, some of whom pledge allegiance to the Dutton brand by literally being branded by Dutton. The proper position, according to Yellowstone graphic guidelines for the stylized Yellowstone “Y” is the upper left quadrant of the chest, the fleshy part that sizzles nicely while the recipient is screaming. Given that many of the Yellowstone Ranch wranglers are recruited when released from prison, what’s a little permanent disfiguration when offered a job with a bunk and three squares as an otherwise unemployable felon?

When Beth is not goading Jamie into killing himself, or making others wish they were dead, she’s out trashing a Bozeman boutique where her Native American sister-in-law is accused of shoplifting. Racial injustice toward the occupants of the “Res” is a consistent theme throughout the show. And thankfully, they are the only people in the show who aren’t portrayed as murderous savages.

What would a modern day Western be without a compassionate killer who dresses in black and goes by the nickname “Rip” (Cole Hauser.) I’ve lost count of the individuals who are RIP-ing as a result of his trips to “the train station.” This is the local dump where anyone trying to quit their job at the ranch are unceremoniously shot in the head and pushed over a cliff. It makes you wonder about the size of the pile of bodies and duffle bags at the bottom of that ravine.

Rip is the only cowboy who is man enough to handle Beth, but she continually baits and humiliates him. He’s just born to suffer, and is the only branded “family member” who will never benefit from being treated like John Dutton’s son. Meanwhile, actual son Kayce (Luke Grimes), a self-sabotaging outlaw, psychically damaged in the war like Dad, resists being programmed and abused further but can’t seem to escape Dutton’s crushing gravitational pull. Like, who doesn’t have a fistfight with their coworkers to get the respect they deserve when they’re promoted?

Aside from the scenery and a plot that offers plenty of cliffhangers to ensure a repeat visit, there is a possible drinking game emerging thanks to a script full of paragraphs filled with Western wisdom. After a while you can predict the onset of an impossibly cogent sharing of life experience with a pause during which an actor seems to adjust their footing and brace for the delivery of a soliloquy memorized just before Director Taylor Sheridan said, “And, action.” Of course, he’s the screenwriter, so he’s actually setting up a shot framing his own words.

Categories of wisdom thus far identified are: Cowboy wisdom, Indian wisdom, John Dutton wisdom, wrangler wisdom, real-estate developer wisdom, Governor wisdom and Beth’s own particular brand of psychosexual wisdom. In fact, half of the characters are delivering wisdom while the other half are receiving it. Seems like they should eventually learn from each other and kind of even things out. But the really smart ones invariably try to escape, with one last bit of wisdom on the way to the train station.

I have friends who have lived in Bozeman for years. I’d like to hear from residents who are being portrayed as affluent snobs in a town full of baristas, boutiques and whiskey bars where you have to hope you don’t show up at exactly the wrong time. Even minding your own business can get you beaten nearly to death for wearing a nice tie. If confronted, remember to say, “Yes sir, Mr. Dutton” and offer to pay for his drink, or at least be prepared to listen to some words of wisdom. And don’t forget, nothing good happens in bars or after midnight, especially near the Yellowstone Ranch.

Should I watch this?