A film so quiet and low-key that it could almost qualify as ASMR, FIRST COW is the latest from minimalist auteur Kelly Reichardt, best known for character pieces like 2006's OLD JOY and 2008's WENDY AND LUCY, as well as 2011's MEEK'S CUTOFF, a covered-wagon western so authentic that one scene focused on Michelle Williams as she spends several minutes painstakingly reloading a frontier-era rifle in real time. FIRST COW is a slow-burner even by Reichardt standards, and with a lot of scenes taking place in near-total darkness, it's the first of her movies that I've found to be a patience-tester in spots. Pacing and natural lighting hiccups aside, FIRST COW is still a good film, adapted from The Half-Life, a 2005 novel by frequent Reichardt collaborator Jon Raymond, and though they whittle the story down significantly, it still feels a bit stretched at just over two hours. A present-day prologue shows a woman (Alia Shawkat) walking her dog in the woods, where it sniffs out a partially exposed skull. The woman digs around the area and soon uncovers two human skeletons lying side by side. The setting immediately shifts to 1820 in the Oregon territory, where kind-hearted Maryland native "Cookie" Figowitz (John Magaro) is traveling with a group of surly fur trappers. He's responsible for collecting their vittles but earns their scorn and derision when the barren areas only yield scattered mushrooms and berries, along with a squirrel that got away. At a camp site, Cookie finds Chinese immigrant King-Lu (Orion Lee) hiding outside his tent in the middle of the night, fleeing a group of ruthless Russian trappers, one of whom he's accused of killing. Cookie feeds and shelters King-Lu, who takes off undetected at sunrise. After splitting from the trappers, Cookie heads to a remote trading post where he runs into King-Lu. A friendship is formed as they head nowhere in particular, though Cookie has a pipe dream of opening a hotel or a bakery in San Francisco. He talks of buttermilk biscuits, and after setting up camp, they spot a lone cow on property of a nearby estate. She's the only cow in the surrounding settlement, having lost her mate and calf in the journey overseas with British aristocrat Chief Factor (Toby Jones), who more or less runs the area by virtue of being the richest guy around.
With some egging on by King-Lu, Cookie sneaks onto Factor's property and milks the cow to create buttermilk for biscuits and scones, which become huge hits at the trading post. Even Factor is impressed ("I taste London in this cake! It's astonishing!" he exclaims), hiring Cookie to prepare some pastry for an upcoming gathering. The friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is mirrored by the bond formed between Cookie and the cow--named Evie--which is almost exposed when Factor shows her off to his guests and she affectionately nuzzles Cookie, knowing him from his covert nightly milkings. FIRST COW eventually becomes as much of a pursuit thriller as Reichardt allows once Factor discovers what's been going on and vows to kill Cookie and King-Lu, but her primary concern is the mood and the atmosphere in the film's intricately-crafted rustic production design. The pace is leisurely and the tone meditative, though there are some attempts at humor (asked about their special ingredients, King-Lu declares "Ancient Chinese secret!"), and the scenes between Cookie and Evie reveal a sensitive, respectful soul probably not cut out to be in such a dangerous environment (he even expresses sympathy to her over "the loss of your husband and your calf"). Magaro and Lee are a likable team, even if the material requires them to deliver largely internalized performances, and the supporting cast has some always-reliable character actor ringers like Jones, Ewen Bremner, Gary Farmer, and the late Rene Auberjonois in one of his last roles as a grubby old prospector (he died in December 2019). FIRST COW got some positive buzz and critical acclaim on last year's festival circuit, but like everything else from spring 2020, it was halted by the pandemic, opening in March in limited release a week before theaters began shutting down, with A24 eventually relaunching it on VOD in late July. (PG-13, 122 mins)
RETALIATION aka ROMANS (India/UAE/UK - 2017; US release 2020)
Hiding behind what appears at first glance to be a generic revenge thriller for Orlando Bloom is actually a grim and heavy day-ruiner of a British kitchen sink throwback that deals quite frankly with the PSTD effects of childhood sexual abuse. Shot in late 2015 and released everywhere else in the world as ROMANS in 2017 and into 2018, the newly-rechristened RETALIATION managed to fill a VOD void for Lionsgate and Saban Films when they needed pandemic product, likely the only reason this finally saw a US release after so long on the shelf. It's a hard sell even under ideal circumstances, but their decision to make it look like any random Redbox action movie is really doing it a disservice. It's a bit heavy-handed and lays the Biblical metaphors on a little thick at times, but Bloom is a revelation here in a harrowing performance as Malcolm, or "Malky" to his friends. Malky works on a demolition crew currently tearing down a dilapidated London church in his neighborhood--the very church he attended as young boy. Malky served two years in prison on an assault charge some years back, and considering that he's pushing 40, is referred to by everyone by his childhood nickname, and lives with his aging mum (Anne Reid of THE MOTHER) who can barely hide her disappointment in him, there are numerous indicators that his maturation has been stunted to some degree. But he holds down a job and has a casual relationship with Emma (Janet Montgomery), who works at the pub where he hangs out with his buddies after work, though he's prone to raging outbursts and shuts down whenever Emma talks about getting serious.
Malky goes off the deep end when he spots an elderly, white-haired man (James Sallie) at the pub. He instantly recognizes him as the priest who raped him when he was 12 and left the parish shortly after. As the memories come flooding back, Malky can no longer keep his issues bottled up inside. He pushes Emma away and we see his buried shame manifested in self-harming episodes, whether he stabs his hand repeatedly with scissors or violently sodomizes himself with a police truncheon in front of a full-length mirror ("I try to dig him out of me...I rape myself until I bleed," he later confesses). An expansion of ROMANS 12:20, a 2008 short film written by abuse survivor and counselor Geoff Thompson, directed by the Shammasian Brothers (Ludwig and Paul), and starring Craig Conway (DOOMSDAY) as Malky, RETALIATION is bleak and uncompromising. It takes some unexpected turns that are best left for the viewer to discover, and fans of Bloom will certainly want to give it a look, with the caveat that it's extremely downbeat and unpleasant. The only real downside is that the Shammasians and Thompson didn't need to be so on-the-nose with the symbolism, especially with the crew that employs Malky having a specialty in demolishing churches. We get it! And I really can't stress it enough--RETALIATION is not the movie the Blu-ray artwork is selling. (R, 96 mins)
THE BIG UGLY (US - 2020)
Several smaller distributors usually relegated to VOD managed to carve a niche for themselves during the initial months of the pandemic. In particular, IFC Films and Vertical Entertainment took advantage of the scarcity of product and got exposure for some unlikely titles at drive-ins and at the scattered handful of theaters that remained open over the spring and summer of 2020. One such title was Vertical's THE BIG UGLY, which opened on 68 screens in late July to become the #2 movie in the country, eventually staying in the top ten through August, which is not something one can normally say about a new film starring Vinnie Jones. The former footballer-turned-LOCK STOCK-era Guy Ritchie bloke and subsequent DTV fixture is in vintage "fookin' 'ell, mate!" mode as Neelyn, the top enforcer for London-based crime boss Harris (Malcolm McDowell). With their girlfriends in tow--Neelyn is in a committed relationship with Fiona (Lenora Crichlow), while Harris is a sugar daddy to paid escort Jackie (Elyse Levesque)--they land in the heart of Appalachia, where Harris has a large stake in the operation of West Virginia oil man Preston (Ron Perlman). Everything goes smoothly until Preston's Joffrey-esque asshole son Junior (Brandon Sklenar) hooks up with Jackie behind a bar and then tries to pick up Fiona after Neelyn goes back to the hotel to sleep it off following a brawl at the local shitkicker bar, appropriately called 86 ("Only you could get 86'd from a bar called the 86!" admonishes an outraged Harris). Neelyn wakes up in the morning and Fiona is nowhere to be found. Refusing to go back to London with Harris, he instead starts asking questions around town, finds Fiona's body floating in a lake, and confronts a smirking Junior, who has a large scratch across his forehead. Tempers flare, punches are thrown, and Neelyn ends up in jail, where Preston's loyal fixer Milt (Bruce McGill) more or less concedes that Junior is a worthless piece of shit, but he'll still be forced to intervene on his behalf if Neelyn tries to go after him. Any guesses what Neelyn decides to do anyway?
Co-produced by Jones, McDowell, and Perlman, and written and directed by Scott Wiper (who directed Jones in 2007's Stone Cold Steve Austin actioner THE CONDEMNED), THE BIG UGLY is the kind of uncomplicated B-movie that would've been banished to VOD and Redbox were we not in These Uncertain Times™. It's surprisingly engaging, considering Jones hasn't exactly been associated with high-quality titles of late. And while it's a tad overlong and it doesn't make much sense why Harris and Neelyn would've brought their girlfriends along for an overnight trip to rural West Virginia when they were heading back to London in the morning anyway, THE BIG UGLY generally works if you don't think too much about it. Much of that is due to Jones' gritty performance (imagine an older, grizzled Jason Statham) and Perlman's character having some unpredictable quirks, like ripping some local dipshits over their Confederate flag and tossing it in the trash, and adamantly refusing to engage in fracking (it isn't every day you get a liberal oil baron who's concerned about the environment). Sklenar (MIDWAY) is utterly loathsome as the thoroughly repugnant Junior, the kind of sniveling brat who thinks his dad's money is a pass to do whatever he wants, and who's such an irredeemable prick that his inevitable comeuppance is the kind of applause-worthy crowd-pleaser of a moment that we've missed in these months without going to theaters. Some minor nit-picks and contrivances aside, THE BIG UGLY is certainly above-average for this sort of thing, and as far as incongruous montage-into-closing credit needle-drops go, Exile's "Kiss You All Over" is as good a classic rock earworm as any. The film is dedicated to Jones' late wife Tanya, who died of cancer in 2019. (R, 106 mins)
It's a ballsy move for any film, regardless of the genre, to call itself NIGHT MOVES after Arthur Penn's 1975 masterpiece that makes a perfect Gene Hackman double bill of existential cynicism with the previous year's THE CONVERSATION. This NIGHT MOVES has no relation to the Hackman film but stands on its own as a taut, methodical nail-biter that builds very slowly until you realize just how tightly director/co-writer Kelly Reichardt has you wound. Reichardt is one of the true originals in American cinema in recent years, her minimalist ideals creating memorable works like OLD JOY (2006), the heartbreaking WENDY AND LUCY (2008), and the revisionist western MEEK'S CUTOFF (2011), the kind of covered-wagon period piece where the filmmaker actually takes several minutes of screen time for the heroine to go through every tedious step of loading a frontier-era shotgun. Reichardt and regular co-writer Jon Raymond are known for their obfuscating, open-ended conclusions and deliberate pacing, and the first hour of NIGHT MOVES is slow enough that it makes MEEK'S CUTOFF look like STAGECOACH. But it's all by design, and Reichardt masterfully cranks up the tension in the second half as NIGHT MOVES becomes--at least by her standards--a fairly straightforward thriller that leads to a typically discussion-worthy final shot.
The film deals with three environmental activists--Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), Dena (Dakota Fanning), and Harlan (Peter Sarsgaard)--and their step-by-step plan in plotting to blow up a hydroelectric dam in Oregon with a speedboat packed with ammonium sulfate fertilizer. Reichardt's offbeat rhythms are such that she wrings stomach-knotting suspense from the most mundane situations, especially prolonged silences that grow agonizing. It's impossible not to feel cringing discomfort as the three activists stare in silence at a chatty hiker (Lew Temple) struggling to make small talk in a remote forest picnic area, or Dena's attempt to buy a large order of the explosive fertilizer from a by-the-book manager (James Le Gros) of a gardening supply warehouse. They eventually pull off the act of eco-terrorism, and of course, there's some blowback in the form of an unexpected after-the-fact complication, the resulting paranoia among the trio, and the question of whether their actions will make the slightest difference at all, all of which tie in beautifully to the powerful closing shot. Anchored by an intense, riveting performance by Eisenberg, who's really on an indie roll between this and THE DOUBLE, NIGHT MOVES is the kind of slow-burner that often tries your patience but really sneaks up on you and stays with you after it's over. Co-produced by Todd Haynes and Larry Fessenden, whose suggestion of a post-dam-explosion Wendigo encounter was presumably vetoed by Reichardt. (R, 112 mins)
WHITEWASH (Canada - 2014)
I'm a sucker for any thriller set in the middle of a cold, snowy nowhere, and for a while, the Quebecois WHITEWASH gets by just on atmosphere and an interesting performance by Thomas Haden Church. Church only got a brief career boost from his SIDEWAYS Oscar nomination a decade ago, leading to his playing Sandman in 2007's SPIDER-MAN 3, one of those mega-blockbusters that nobody really liked, but he's since settled into character roles in generally smaller films like this one. WHITEWASH provides the kind of showy leading role that any jobbing character actor likes, but it's one of those films where the more it reveals, the less you'll care. Jumping between present and past, WHITEWASH opens during a snowstorm in a small town in rural Quebec as snowplow driver Bruce Landry (Church) runs down a man walking in the middle of the road. The man is Paul Blackburn (Marc Labreche), and Bruce promptly dumps the body in the woods and recklessly drives the plow through the forest until he gets caught in a snowdrift. We see a bottle of liquor rolling around the floor of the plow and the natural assumption is that Bruce is drinking on the job. Periodic cutaways to the recent past provide--very slowly--the pieces of the puzzle as Bruce struggles to survive in the frozen wilderness.
Director/co-writer Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais seems to be going for a "survivalist thriller if made by Atom Egoyan" vibe, but the more it goes on, the more thoroughly illogical it becomes. It seems Bruce happened upon stranger Paul in the middle of a suicide attempt, talked him out of it and let him crash on his couch, with Paul quickly becoming a mooching houseguest who wouldn't leave. Throughout Bruce's time in the woods, he keeps heading into town to forage for gas and food, at one point being confronted by a homeowner after the guy's daughter catches Bruce stealing supplies from their shed. He also visits a diner and a gas station and sees his and Paul's photos in the newspaper, with the cops looking for both missing men. It's here where I question how much Hoss-Desmarais knows about rural, small-town life. In the cuts to the past, we learn Bruce lost his wife to cancer and once drunkenly crashed his plow into a restaurant. He regularly hangs out at the townie bar and at the local mini-mart, making small talk with the bored clerk. This town is clearly not very big and Bruce doesn't travel very far to dump the body before getting stranded in the woods. During his trips away from the plow, he runs into numerous people who recognize him from the paper and TV news reports. But wouldn't they recognize him as the area snowplow guy who lost his wife to cancer and drunkenly drove his plow into a local restaurant? Wouldn't most of them actually know him as "Bruce"? But the longer WHITEWASH goes on, the less interested Hoss-Desmarais is in a straightforward drama, with Bruce's guilt-riddled anxiety prompting him to return to the stuck plow and make it a new home, a sort-of purgatory of his own construction. Church does a good job in what was clearly a physically demanding role, and the snow-blanketed outskirts of Quebec makes a very effective location, but both Church and the region deserve a better story in which to be showcased. (Unrated, 91 mins, also available on Netflix Instant) THE LOVE PUNCH (US/UK/France - 2014)
Writer/director Joel Hopkins' critically-acclaimed LAST CHANCE HARVEY was a sincere and thoughtful romantic comedy with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson that flopped in theaters but has since found a following with older audiences on video and cable. Hopkins is back with THE LOVE PUNCH, a dismal FUN WITH DICK AND JANE by way of THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL that, time and again, goes for the cheapest and easiest laughs. You can practically hear him exclaiming "It's funny because they're old!" as if his protagonists were pushing 90 rather than 60. Thompson stars again, this time with Pierce Brosnan as a divorced couple who continue to ignore that small spark that still exists between them. With their grown children off at school, Kate (Thompson) is an empty-nester who teaches at a university and lives alone with her cat, while Richard (Brosnan) has just sold his company and is about to retire with his much-younger girlfriend, who promptly dumps him for a man her own age. Richard is shocked to learn that unscrupulous hedge-fund manager Vincent Kruger (Laurent Lafitte) bought his company just to drain its assets, leaving Richard, his employees, their pensions, his and Kate's savings, and the kids' college funds completely wiped out. With the help of their son Matt (Jack Wilkinson)--a convenient computer hacker because old people and computers--they get some background info on the mysterious Kruger, who just purchased a $10 million diamond known as "The Eye of the Rainbow" for his trophy bride-to-be Manon (Louise Bourgoin). Kate and Richard, with the help of their married best friends Jerry (Timothy Spall) and Penelope (Celia Imrie), hatch a plan to crash the Paris wedding by disguising themselves as crass Texas oil billionaires and swiping the Eye of the Rainbow during the reception.
Brosnan and Thompson are so effortlessly charismatic that Hopkins' inability to provide them with worthwhile material is an absolute travesty. Everything in THE LOVE PUNCH (what does that title even mean?) is played so broadly and over-the-top that it's hard to believe Hopkins is the same guy who made the comparatively sensitive and heartfelt LAST CHANCE HARVEY. THE LOVE PUNCH is constantly going for the laziest joke, from Brosnan's Texas oil man disguise looking like Burt Reynolds circa SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and Thompson sporting a garish Dolly Parton wig and an overdone Southern twang, to several RESERVOIR DOGS-inspired, sunglasses-sporting slo-mo struts set to old rock tunes, with a hotel lobby walk to The Clash's version of "I Fought the Law" interrupted by a record needle-scratch and Penelope announcing "I need a pee!" because old people and bladders. A badly-shot and terribly-edited car chase begins with Kate grabbing a cd and throwing it in the player--it's Free's "All Right Now," to which she and Richard sing along and Richard pumps his fist in mid-chase because old people rocking out during a car chase apparently equals comedy gold to Hopkins. Thompson is also reduced to getting hit in the face with a volleyball and being thrown off a jet-ski while trying to hang with younger women, and Brosnan has to endure numerous desperate 007 references. Brosnan's THE NOVEMBER MAN is currently in theaters and it shows him, a decade removed from 007, remaining a credible action star at 61, and Thompson is still a vital and engaging screen presence--why are they going along with this nonsensical charade of a story that practically has them ready for adult diapers and dinner at 4:00 pm? It would be one thing if Hopkins was treating his characters with dignity instead of making their age a consistently failed source of thudding jokes, but neither of the stars look or act as "old" as the script seems to think they are. I guess the best thing you can say about THE LOVE PUNCH is that Hopkins somehow finds it within himself to spare Thompson and Brosnan the humiliation of a set-up where one is forced to announce that they've fallen and they can't get up. Hopkins occasionally attempts some choreographed Blake Edwards-type set pieces, but he's clearly not Blake Edwards, and Blake Edwards on his worst day was better than this. A laughless embarrassment for its appealing and overqualified stars, THE LOVE PUNCH grossed a paltry $266,000 in its US release courtesy of something called Ketchup Entertainment, who got it out on just 120 screens. It was 120 too many. (PG-13, 94 mins)
