UNCUT GEMS (US - 2019) Directed by Josh & Benny Safdie. Written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh & Benny Safdie. Cast: Adam Sandler, Lakeith Stanfield, Julia Fox, Kevin Garnett, Idina Menzel, Eric Bogosian, Judd Hirsch, The Weeknd, Mike Francesa, Pom Klementieff, Paloma Elsesser, Keith William Richards, Tommy Kominik, Jonathan Aranbayev, Jacob Igielski, Noa Fisher, Wayne Diamond, Ca$h Out, Kerwin Frost, Benjy Kleiner, John Amos, Louis Anthony Arias, voices of Tilda Swinton, Natasha Lyonne. (R, 135 mins) "This is me. This is how I win." You know UNCUT GEMS is going to be an audacious piece of work when the opening scene begins in an Ethiopian mine with a zoom-in journey inside an uncut opal and eventually emerges from the rectum of the protagonist, who's in the middle of a colonoscopy. That's fast-talking, hard-hustling NYC jeweler Howard Ratner, vividly brought to life by the unlikely Adam Sandler, who was exactly who the Safdie Brothers had in mind when they started writing the script over a decade ago. The filmmaking siblings--elder Josh and younger Benny--only had the little-seen 2009 indie THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED to their credit when they first approached Sandler, but after a few more small films generally seen by no one other than critics and festival audiences, they found some significant acclaim with their 2017 cult breakout GOOD TIME, a gritty '70s-style throwback with a riveting performance by Robert Pattinson. UNCUT GEMS feels like a logical extension of GOOD TIME, like the two films could theoretically exist in the same Safdie Cinematic Universe in the parts of NYC that have remained largely unchanged over the last 30-odd years (you can see the influence of Martin Scorsese, who's also one of the producers). It was probably best that everyone involved waited to make UNCUT GEMS, so the Safdies could get some directing efforts under their belt, hone their skills, and carve their niche, and for 53-year-old Sandler (after turning the Safdies down several times before finally caving when their second choice, Jonah Hill, backed out), who's sporadically tackled dramatic work before with varying degrees of success, to be at the place he needed to be in order to dive into the role of a lifetime.
Say what you will about his dubious history of mostly terrible comedies, but Sandler is a fucking revelation here (and a shout-out to A24 for pulling their most A24 move ever by releasing this wide at Christmas). His Howard Ratner joins the shortlist of cinema's top degenerate gamblers, be they cocky, schmucky, self-destructive, or self-aggrandizing, and always thoroughly doomed, right alongside the likes of James Caan in THE GAMBLER, Harvey Keitel in BAD LIEUTENANT, Edward Norton in ROUNDERS, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in OWNING MAHOWNY. Decked out in flashy clothes, designer eyeglasses, and assorted bling, Howard owns a jewelry store in the NYC diamond district. He's doing well on the surface, but he's drowning in gambling debts all over town, and his ruthless loan shark brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian) isn't about to cut him any slack just because he's family. Howard's marriage to Arno's sister Dinah (Idina Menzel, or, if you're John Travolta, "Adele Dazeem") is falling apart, due in large part to Howard being a sugar daddy to his much-younger girlfriend and employee Julia (Julia Fox). But things are looking up, as Howard's off-the-books associate Demany (Lakeith Stanfield) has made the acquaintance of Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett (as himself). KG comes into the store to look at some watches, and Howard being Howard, can't resist showing off a rock filled with uncut opals that he had illegally shipped from Ethiopia with the intent of clearing $1 million at a prestigious auction house. In the midst of the 2012 playoffs against against the Philadelphia 76ers, KG is offended that Howard won't sell it to him, but pleads with him to let him hang on to the rock for luck during the semifinals, offering his 2008 NBA Championship ring as collateral. Owing Arno $100,000, Howard immediately pawns KG's ring for $20,000, with the intent of using it to place a bet on that night's game and using the earnings to pay off Arno and get KG's ring back with the basketball star being none the wiser.
That's only the beginning of Howard's Murphy's Law-esque miasma of misery and shit luck. It should come as no surprise that anything that could possibly go wrong will, which is what makes a great degenerate gambler movie. But Sandler and the Safdies have a genuine masterpiece on their hands with UNCUT GEMS, a kinetic, captivating, heart-pounding exercise in sustained intensity that many have accurately likened to a 135-minute anxiety attack. The rapid-fire dialogue, the perpetual propulsive throb of the Tangerine Dream-ish synth score by Daniel Lopatin (who also scored GOOD TIME under his alias Oneohtrix Point Never), the grimy old-school NYC mood and energy, and the live-wire performance of a never-better Sandler come together to fashion a film that's like nothing else you've seen in 2019. Whatever Sandler is doing--whether it's bullshitting his way out of a situation, getting into a club brawl with an up-and-coming The Weeknd (remember, this is set in 2012) when he catches Julia doing coke with him in the bathroom, trying to talk his wealthy father-in-law (Judd Hirsch) into jacking up an already large bid at the auction, freaking out when he needs the rock with the opals and both KG and Demany are ignoring his calls--you can't take your eyes off him. You cringe pondering the endless variety of new and innovative ways that Howard--a far-too-confident schmuck with big ideas and an even bigger mouth--can't stop making things exponentially worse for Howard. Shot by the veteran cinematographer Darius Khondji (SE7EN, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS) and expertly edited by Benny Safdie and co-writer Ronald Bronstein, UNCUT GEMS is a nerve-shredding descent into a hell of Howard's own making that becomes an almost communal experience with a theater audience--you're holding your breath, gasping in shock, and shaking your head in disbelief at the increasingly absurd dilemmas of the hapless Howard Ratner, so much so that the occasional bits of deliberate humor (there's a great joke involving GOOD TIMES star John Amos) serve as very brief moments of relief. Boiling with relentless tension from start to finish, you don't just watch UNCUT GEMS...you survive it. And it's the best American film of 2019.
KNIVES OUT (US - 2019) Written and directed by Rian Johnson. Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer, Margaret Langford, Jaeden Martell, Riki Lindhome, Frank Oz, Edi Patterson, K Callan, Noah Segan, M. Emmet Walsh, Marlene Forte. (PG-13, 130 mins) Pop culture artifacts have always served as accurate reflections of the era in which they were produced, and when the dust settles, the wildly and wickedly entertaining KNIVES OUT will go down as one of the most razor-sharp critiques of the Age of Trump. It may draw from the mysteries of Agatha Christie and play like an elaborate redux of CLUE, but with its cast of greedy, deplorable heirs content to live off Daddy's wealth and fame, and the daughter of an illegal immigrant who ends up the target of their white privilege wrath, KNIVES OUT isn't exactly subtle. It's ultimately a perfect metaphor for the whole idea of the 2019-2020 now of this moment, not just in the political and social divide but also the rage and the malignant narcissism that have become commonplace, and it's best thing writer/director Rian Johnson has done since his 2006 debut BRICK. That's certainly not to slight 2012's LOOPER in any way, but perhaps after dealing with everything that came with making something as huge as STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, KNIVES OUT almost seems like a back-to-basics breather of sorts, even with its labyrinthine plot, endless twists and turns, and a large cast of characters with ever-shifting alliances and an eagerness to talk shit and throw everyone else under the bus.
It's best going into this sly whodunit as cold as possible, since the surprises start fairly early never stop (NO SPOILERS). World-famous mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead by his housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) in his hidden study on the third floor of his mansion the morning after his 85th birthday party. The cause of death is assumed to be suicide as he appears to have slashed his own throat. Detective Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield) and doofus-y state trooper/Thrombey superfan Wagner (Noah Segan) are conducting a routine investigation of what looks like an open-and-shut case. But it quickly reveals almost the entire Thrombey clan to be a pit of vipers who, at best, are shamelessly salivating over their inheritance and, at worst, displaying no shortage of reasons to be glad the old man is gone. There's Thrombey's eldest child, daughter Linda Drysdale (Jamie Lee Curtis), who constantly crows about building her successful business on her own from the ground up even though everyone knows she started it with a $1 million loan from her dad; her husband Richard (Don Johnson), who had a testy private conversation with his father-in-law the afternoon of the party; Thrombey's son Walt (Michael Shannon), who manages his father's publishing house and is frustrated by his dad's refusal to allow movie and TV adaptations of his work despite being offered a ton of money by Netflix; Joni Thrombey (Toni Collette) is a new age-y Instagram influencer and the widow of Thrombey's late son, and lives a cushy, carefree life on an annual allowance from her father-in-law, who also covers the college tuition of her daughter Meg (Katherine Langford); Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans) is the son of Linda and Richard, the black sheep of the family and a lifelong problem child (as if the name "Ransom Drysdale" doesn't already render him pre-ordained to be a complete prick), who stormed out of the party after a verbal spat with his grandfather and then skips the funeral while making sure to show up for the reading of the will; and Walt's wife Donna (Riki Lindhome), and teenage son Jacob (Jaeden Martell), a Ben Shapiro-like alt-right troll who spends all of his time owning the libs on social media and calling his cousin Meg a "snowflake." Finally, there's Great Nana (K Callan), Harlan's mother ("His mother? How old is she?" Elliott asks Linda, who replies "No one knows"), who says almost nothing but sees everything.
The lone outsider is Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas, in what should be a star-making performance), Thrombey's caregiver who was hired after a recent back injury but who came to be a trusted friend and confidante to the old man. Everyone considers her "part of the family" even though they aren't entirely sure where she's from, alternately calling her Brazilian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan, or Ecuadorian because they really don't know the difference. It isn't long before Elliott is deferring the investigation to one Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a wily Southern gentleman of a private eye and a bit of a celebrity in his field (a star-struck Joni gushes "I read a tweet about a New Yorker article about you!") who's been hired by an anonymous client to get to the bottom of an alleged suicide that's starting to look more and more like foul play. Blanc presses more than the ineffective cops when he rightly suspects that old Harlan went on a scorched earth bridge-burning with some his family on the day of his birthday and more than one family member's life would be a lot easier if he was no longer around. Blanc finds an unexpected Watson to his Holmes in Marta, who he deduces is the most trustworthy ally in the house because everyone in the Thrombey family knows she has a rare condition where she vomits if she tells a lie (and yes, that's mined for laughs on numerous occasions).
Almost everyone in the ensemble gets a chance to claim the spotlight, with de Armas (who's really the star of the movie) making a charming and resourceful heroine and Craig getting to show some comedic chops in a role that falls somewhere between Hercule Poirot and Jason Sudeikis' "Maine Justice" judge on SNL (Ransom: "What is this? CSI: KFC?"). KNIVES OUT masterfully balances suspense, blistering laughs at the expense of the 1% (multiple characters refer to Jacob as "the little Nazi," and watch Johnson's Trump-supporting Richard blast immigrants while thoughtlessly handing Marta his empty plate, proof that even when she's an invited guest at Thrombey's birthday party, they still only see her as "the help") and frequently self-aware humor, as when Elliott describes the Thrombey estate as "living in a Clue board" or when he reacts to an obligatory, out-of-nowhere car chase by declaring "That was the dumbest car chase ever." Johnson errs slightly by sidelining too many of the film's more vigorous supporting actors in the second half (Curtis, in particular, is on fire here, and we're long overdue for the Don Johnsonssaince that COLD IN JULY would've started in a perfect world), but the richly-textured and intricately-constructed KNIVES OUT is an absolute blast from beginning to end, culminating in a beautifully cathartic final shot that ends it on a perfect note.
THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB (US/Germany - 2018) Directed by Fede Alvarez. Written by Jay Basu, Fede Alvarez and Steven Knight. Cast: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, Lakeith Stanfield, Sylvia Hoeks, Stephen Merchant, Vicky Krieps, Claes Bang, Cameron Britton, Synnove Macody Lund, Mikael Persbrandt, Christopher Convery, Andreja Pejic, Hendrik Heutmann, Volker Bruch. (R, 115 mins) It's been seven years since David Fincher's big-budget American version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, based on the first novel in Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy." It was generally faithful to the book, with Rooney Mara's Oscar-nominated interpretation of researcher/hacker/badass Lisbeth Salander more than holding its own against Noomi Rapace's career-making portrayal in a trilogy of Swedish adaptations. Larsson was only 50 when died of a heart attack in 2004, a year before the first of his three completed books in the series hit European bookstores en route to becoming a phenomenally popular bestseller in the US in 2008. Swedish writer David Lagercrantz was commissioned to continue the "Millennium" series, resurrecting Salander with 2015's The Girl in the Spider's Web and 2017's The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye. Opting to nix the second and third books in Larsson's trilogy and start fresh with a sequel to/reboot to the 2011 film, THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB doesn't bring back any of DRAGON TATTOO's participants other than producer credits for Fincher and Scott Rudin. Mara has been replaced by a game Claire Foy, but she's fighting a losing battle. Director/co-writer Fede Alvarez, best known for his work in the horror genre with the EVIL DEAD remake and the overrated DON'T BREATHE, completely drops the ball on re-establishing Salander as a heroic figure for the #MeToo era. The film jettisons almost everything that made her such a fascinating and iconic heroine in the past and instead drops her in the middle of what looks like a mash-up of SPECTRE, Jason Bourne, and a FAST & FURIOUS sequel. DON'T BREATHE was an excellent thriller to a very specific point where Alvarez jumped the shark: THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB's turkey baster moment comes rather early, when Salander leads some cops on a motorcycle chase and eludes them by driving off a dock and speeding across a frozen lake. It's only the first of several instances where you can hum the 007 "da-da-DA-DAAA!" cue and it wouldn't be at all out of place.
Opening with a flashback to Salander's childhood that doesn't really gel with her background in Larsson's books or in any of the movies, we're introduced to her sister Camilla, the favorite of their pedophile father (Mikael Persbrandt). Though Salander would grow up to be a righter of wrongs against women, she left her sister behind, escaping their abusive father by taking an improbably steep dive down a snowy hill off a balcony and never looking back. Cut to the present day as Salander--apparently known throughout Sweden as a hacker, vigilante, and media figure and somehow constantly out in public and living in what looks like a huge warehouse in a busy part of the city with its own closed-circuit security system and panic room--is hired for a job by Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant), who worked for the US government and designed a software program that would allow the US military to access and override the world's nuclear launch codes. Feeling he's created a monster with the serious potential for global destruction, Balder wants Salander to hack into the NSA's system in D.C. and steal it back so he can permanently delete its existence. This catches the attention of NSA analyst and former military and black-ops mercenary Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield), who immediately flies to Stockholm with the intent of retrieving the program and eliminating Salander. With Swedish intelligence head Gabriella Grane (Synnove Macody Lund) putting Balder and his genius/autistic son August (Christopher Convery) in the least safe safe house imaginable, with a wide-open window you can see in from a great distance, it's only a matter of time before their lives are in danger. Of course, the danger arrives in the form of The Spiders, a collective of Russian bad guys in the employ of--who else?--Camilla Salander (Sylvia Hoeks), who took over their father's criminal empire and wants the launch codes as a global power play and, I presume, to get her sister's attention?
Does that even sound like something Stieg Larsson would've concocted? Foy could've made this role her own but not with that material she's been given, turning Salander into a rote, generic action hero. If this is indeed the start of a new action-driven franchise, then it already looks about two films away from putting Salander in space. Lisbeth Salander is an abuse survivor, troubled loner, and genius with incredible researching and computer skills. Why is she in car chases? Why is she in intricately-staged shootouts? Why is she dodging explosions? Why is her sister an albino-looking, Blofeld-like supervillain with a ridiculous wardrobe that makes her resemble the long-lost sister of Edgar and Johnny Winter? Why is Mikael Blomkvist (played here by BORG VS. MCENROE's Sverrir Gudnason) given virtually nothing to do? And why do Salander and Blomkvist seem to be the same age now? Wasn't his being quite a bit older a key component of their complicated relationship? Speaking of nothing to do, why is Vicky Krieps, who was so good opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in PHANTOM THREAD, squandered in a superfluous supporting role as Blomkvist's editor and sometime lover Erika Berger (played by Robin Wright in the 2011 film)? Salander's shut-in hacker pal Plague also returns in the form of MINDHUNTER co-star Cameron Britton, who more or less serves as a de facto Q to Salander's 007.
Only Stanfield (GET OUT, SORRY TO BOTHER YOU) manages to stand out, mainly because most of his scenes show him intensely glowering and walking through crowded places with steely purpose, almost as if he's trying to find the nearest way out of this movie. His character's shifting alliance seems more like plot convenience, and the long sequence where Salander assists him in escaping police custody in a Stockholm airport is thoroughly absurd (how can she coordinate that many things with such perfect precision timing?). THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB is filled with preposterous contrivances, eye-rolling coincidences, and lazy storytelling, glossing over plot details in a muddled fashion and leaving a capable cast stranded. Alvarez is obviously no Fincher, but while the film looks nice and has a couple of striking shots (one standout being Salander and Blomkvist facing each other from glass elevators in adjacent buildings), everything about it is a perfunctory clock-punch that feels like a Netflix Original that was accidentally released in theaters.
DEATH NOTE (US - 2017) Directed by Adam Wingard. Written by Charles Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides and Jeremy Slater. Cast: Nat Wolff, Lakeith Stanfield, Margaret Qualley, Shea Whigham, Willem Dafoe, Paul Nakauchi, Masi Oka, Jason Liles, Jack Ettlinger, Artin John. (Unrated, 100 mins)
After nearly a decade in development and with a budget reportedly between $40 and $50 million, the American adaptation of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's legendary Japanese manga series Death Note finally arrives as a Netflix Original movie with some controversial baggage in tow, facing accusations of "whitewashing" by having the story moved to the US with American characters. There's really no controversy here--there's already been several TV and movie adaptations of the series in Japan going back a decade, and moving the story to Seattle is no different than RINGU being remade as THE RING or SEVEN SAMURAI being remade as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. If one sets aside their hand-wringing outrage and bothers watching the movie, they'll find far more legitimate reasons to dislike it. DEATH NOTE is a total misfire from director Adam Wingard, who not very long ago was a genre golden boy with YOU'RE NEXT and THE GUEST but did some damage to his growing brand with last year's heavily-hyped and ill-advised reboot BLAIR WITCH. Any hopes that BLAIR WITCH was a minor bump in the road are dashed with DEATH NOTE, where Wingard demonstrates absolutely no feeling for or connection to the material. Screenwriters Charles & Vlas Parlapanides (IMMORTALS) and Jeremy Slater (the 2015 FANTASTIC FOUR reboot and the creator of the EXORCIST TV series) make the story's transition from Japan to Seattle cumbersome and clunky, and what worked on the page and in the previous adaptations simply doesn't translate (it's also worth noting the absence of Wingard's usual writer and creative partner Simon Barrett). This gives Wingard little to work with, as he instead opts to fall back on easy solutions that makes cult movie nerds giddy, like a synth-heavy throwback score by Atticus Ross, credits in the John Carpenter font, and pointless retro fetishism with '80s songs by INXS, Berlin, Chicago, and Air Supply. These things can be fun in and of themselves in the context of a compelling film, but when they're used as desperation moves as they are here, all they do is spotlight the deficiencies, as DEATH NOTE becomes less like an American interpretation of a revered manga and more like a decade-and-a-half too late ripoff of FINAL DESTINATION and DONNIE DARKO.
Brainy high school outcast Light Turner (Nat Wolff) has a lucrative business doing math homework for all the jocks, but soon finds himself with unlimited power when a tattered old book titled "Death Note" falls out of the sky and lands at his feet. Inside are pages of complicated instructions, but essentially, all the owner of the book needs to do is visualize an individual, write down their name and a cause or circumstance of death and it will be made so. Light's been given the book by a demonic figure called Ryuk, who looks like Groot's meth-addled cousin and is voiced and motion-captured by Willem Dafoe. Light's newfound power gets him the girl, cheerleader Mia (Margaret Qualley of THE LEFTOVERS) and together, they start using the Death Note to take out bad people, from high school bullies to the mob boss who got acquitted for killing Light's mother years earlier, to terrorists and drug cartel leaders. They create the persona "Lord Kira," which attracts the attention of L (Lakeith Stanfield of GET OUT), an enigmatic agent who wears a hoodie and covers the bottom half of his face. L arrives in Seattle and quickly figures out that Light is Kira, though he gets no cooperation from Light's cop dad (Shea Whigham). Light loses control of the Death Note when people whose names he didn't write down--like FBI agents working with L--start turning up dead, prompting him to suspect Ryuk is planning to kill him before passing the book on to someone else.
DEATH NOTE is a jumbled mess. The longer it goes on, the more convoluted and less interesting it becomes, pulling arbitrary rules out of its ass when the story backs itself into a corner and needs to get to the next scene. The characters are completely unbelievable, even by fantasy genre standards, and Wingard's set-up is so rushed that the whole thing feels like a season of a TV show whittled down to 100 minutes. Light's initial reaction to the book's abilities is understandable dismay, but he accepts it pretty quickly, and Mia's blase response to his demonstration that he can kill people generates a look that shrugs "#whatever." No one seems to be on the same page with how to play this, and Wolff, while significantly less punchable here than he was in ASHBY, is still so devoid of charisma and screen presence that you'll long for the relative magnetism of someone like Dane DeHaan. Stanfield's performance as L has enough eccentricity that he at least gets your attention when he's onscreen, and he, along with Dafoe's taunting tone and inimitable cackle bringing Ryuk to life are the only positives about DEATH NOTE, and that's not nearly enough to salvage this from total oblivion.
WAR MACHINE (US - 2017) Written and directed by David Michod. Cast: Brad Pitt, Ben Kingsley, Tilda Swinton, Topher Grace, Anthony Michael Hall, John Magaro, Scoot McNairy, Will Poulter, Alan Ruck, Lakeith Stanfield, Meg Tilly, Emory Cohen, RJ Cyler, Anthony Hayes, Josh Stewart, Pico Alexander, Daniel Betts, Griffin Dunne, Aymen Hamdouchi, Nicholas Jones, Hopper Penn, Sian Thomas, Georgina Rylance. (Unrated, 122 mins)
Built around the most cartoonish and self-indulgent performance of Brad Pitt's career, the muddled WAR MACHINE, the most high-profile Netflix Original film yet, is another in a long line of absurdist political satires that try to poke fun at government and military institutions and end up coming off as irritatingly smug and self-satisfied. With rare exceptions like Stanley Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) and Barry Levinson's WAG THE DOG (1997)--films that found the right tone, stuck with it, and didn't get sidetracked by ham-fisted messaging--this subgenre is filled with the misbegotten likes of WRONG IS RIGHT (1982), WAR, INC (2008), and THE INTERVIEW (2014) to name a few, though in all fairness, WRONG IS RIGHT might actually be worth another look as some of its ludicrous plot has become reality much like entertainment-driven TV news has in the decades since NETWORK (1976). "Inspired" by the book The Operators, Michael Hastings' expansion of his 2010 Rolling Stone article "The Runaway General," WAR MACHINE stars Pitt as four-star Army Gen. Glen McMahon, a fictional stand-in for Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was appointed head of Coalition Forces in Afghanistan in 2009. McMahon doesn't feel the war is being won because "it's not being led," and despite orders from President Obama, along with reminders from the US ambassador to Afghanistan (Alan Ruck), and advisers who never actually served, McMahon ignores the plan to "assess" the situation and Obama's wish to wrap it up and "bring it on home," and instead plans to ask for 40,000 more troops and take control of Helmand Province and Qandahar, two areas that the coalition has already written off. McMahon's chief duty is counter-insurgency or, as narrator Sean Cullen (Scoot McNairy), a fictionalized Hastings, puts it, "Try to convince the country you've invaded that you're actually here to help."
McMahon is accompanied by his close-knit team of generals and soldiers who all come across as fawning sycophants to this military legend--nicknamed "The Glenimal"--none more disturbingly devoted than anger management case Gen. Greg Pulver (Anthony Michael Hall), a character based on future disgraced Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn/Pulver is portrayed here as a raging asshole with a dedication to McMahon that borders on a stalking man-crush. There's also de facto PR guys Staggart (John Magaro) and Little (Topher Grace, cast radically against type as "Topher Grace"), but all of them take a backseat to Pitt's scenery chewing. Pitt's McMahon is so far removed from the real McChrystal that changing his name was a no-brainer: he barks and grunts like the actor's Aldo Raine in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, gesticulates with his right hand balled up in a claw, walks around in a bow-legged strut, makes pained faces, and generally acts and moves like a combination of Popeye and Sterling Hayden's Gen. Jack D. Ripper from DR. STRANGELOVE if Ripper just had a stroke. It's an overly broad performance more fitting for an SNL guest-hosting gig, and it might've worked if writer/director David Michod could've settled on a tone.
The satirical elements work best in the early-going, with McMahon introduced taking a shit before chest-out strutting through the airport to the tune of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's "Confused," or McMahon meeting Afghan president Hamid Karzai (Ben Kingsley) and giving him a moment to finish praying until it's revealed that the president is not kneeling toward Mecca, but actually trying to set up his new Blu-ray player (Karzai is later seen sick in bed laughing hysterically at DUMB AND DUMBER). McMahon also gets off a few good zingers like walking into a command center and scoffing at what's on TV, saying "Let's lose the Fox News...we don't need a bunch of angry perverts yelling at us all day." But it doesn't take long for Michod to lose focus, as the satire is largely abandoned in favor of making a serious look at McMahon's ambitions blowing up in his face. His wife (Meg Tilly) spends their 30th anniversary lamenting that, by her calculations, they've spent an average of 30 days a year together for the previous eight years, and Cullen tags along on a trip to Europe to visit other coalition government officials, during which time McMahon and everyone else have a few too many drinks at a Paris bar and start openly trash-talking President Obama and VP Joe Biden (Hillary Clinton is also a character, played by Sian Thomas, though she's largely left alone and depicted as an image-conscious company woman). The resulting article ended McChrystal's military career, but even as the same fate befalls McMahon, the biggest question you might have is why is the story being told this way? As things get more serious and events start becoming less absurd and more centered on actual incidents, Pitt's mannered, over-the-top performance starts to resemble talk-show Robin Williams, a sure sign that Michod, the Australian auteur behind 2010's ANIMAL KINGDOM and 2014's underrated THE ROVER, simply deferred to the wishes of producer Brad Pitt regarding how star Brad Pitt should treat the material. Considering his degree of fame and tabloid notoriety, Pitt is an actor who relishes offbeat and decidedly non-mainstream projects (THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, KILLING THEM SOFTLY, THE COUNSELOR, BY THE SEA). In the end, WAR MACHINE is less a cutting, cynical, satirical look at the military and war and more a Brad Pitt vanity project where the actor is clearly off on his own in some other movie instead of the one his director and co-stars are working on.
GET OUT (US - 2017) Written and directed by Jordan Peele. Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lil Rel Howery, Richard Herd, Erika Alexander, Trey Burvant. (R, 104 mins) GET OUT is getting the best reviews of any 2017 release thus far, and when a genre film shows any degree of insight and razor-sharp social commentary, it's easy to overrate it. But GET OUT is one of the best and smartest fright flicks to come along in a while--caustic, uncomfortable, and refusing to pull punches, but remembering to be entertaining and witty at the same time. It deftly balances the majority of its time being genuinely unnerving but also with more than its share of funny moments, some engineered to make you laugh out loud and others designed to make you uneasy. The directing debut of KEY AND PEELE's Jordan Peele, who also scripted, GET OUT stars Daniel Kaluuya (SICARIO and the "Fifteen Million Merits" episode of BLACK MIRROR) as Chris Washington, a 26-year-old photographer who's about to go away for the weekend to meet the parents of Rose Armitage (GIRLS' Allison Willliams), his girlfriend of four months. He's a bit nervous--he's black, she's white, and she hasn't told them--but she assures him that they won't have a problem with him. The ride there includes a collision with a deer and an unpleasant run-in with a local cop (Chris is quick to comply, realizing it doesn't take much for a situation to escalate from zero to Trayvon Martin), but once at the estate of the wealthy Armitages, things are pleasant if awkward. Rose's mom Missy (Catherine Keener) is a psychiatrist who wants to hypnotize Chris to help him quit smoking, and her neurologist dad Dean (Bradley Whitford) means well but tries too hard to ingratiate himself, with everything from repeatedly calling Chris "My man," to numerous mentions that he "would've voted for Obama a third time," and asking how long Chris and Rose's "thaaang" has been going on.
Chris has a strange dinner conversation with Rose's brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) where Jeremy tells him he has the physique to be a monster MMA fighter. He's also taken aback by the presence of two oddly-behaving black employees--groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel)--who aren't very good at conversation and have dead, vacant stares in their eyes. Dean says he hired them to help out when his parents were ailing and after they died, he didn't have the heart to let them go ("I know how it looks," Dean says). The Armitages hold a party for all of their wealthy and almost across-the-board elderly friends, all of whom try too hard to appeal to Chris, whether it's feeling his biceps, mentioning how much they like Tiger Woods, or making winking assumptions about how well-endowed he must be. Chris seems to be used to well-intentioned whites trying too hard but something isn't sitting well with him. He believes Missy hypnotized him without his knowledge and he recognizes Logan (Lakeith Stanfield), the young black companion of a 30-years-older white woman, as Andre, an old acquaintance of a friend of a friend who went missing six months ago. Chris takes a pic of him to send to his dog-sitting buddy Rod (a scene-stealing Lil Rel Howell) but he forgets to turn off the flash and it causes a brief seizure where Logan, who dresses like an old man and has no idea how to fist-bump, snaps out of his stupor and seems to briefly take on another personality until he's attended to by Missy. Rod theorizes that "rich white people are brainwashing brothers into becoming sex slaves," and while Chris laughs it off, his paranoia grows more intense by the minute and he can't ignore his gut feeling that something is very wrong here.
Of course, something is wrong but GET OUT doesn't quite go in the direction the trailers and your initial assumptions might indicate. It invokes a few classics from the 1970s, from THE WICKER MAN to MESSIAH OF EVIL and one in particular that's too much of a spoiler to mention. Despite its modern themes, it actually feels like a 1970s movie in both its working in of social issues and the emphasis on building suspense instead of focusing on gore and cheap jump scares (though a couple of jump scares here work quite well). In the end, GET OUT ends up being more about class division than racial injustice, a scathing rebuke not just of white privilege but also the entitlement of the wealthy for whom money--and people--are no object. No one is immune from criticism--even Chris is shown time and again to be a pushover and someone who doesn't want to rock the boat. Peele's script piles on the unease and the dread until it's almost suffocating, broken up by Rod's comic relief that's actually a welcome breather from the choking tension (Rod's Jeffrey Dahmer rant is one for the ages). Performances are pitch perfect across the board, whether it's Whitford's vaguely passive-aggressive glad-handing as Dean or Gabriel's often heartbreaking turn as Georgina, whose constant smile always seems a little too forced, masking a sadness that isn't lost on Chris. Alternately frightening, funny, and thought-provoking, with the kind of crowd-pleasing finale that horror movies used to know how to deliver, GET OUT isn't a quite an instant classic, but it's one of the stronger genre offerings of late, and one that establishes Peele, already a respected comedian and satirist, as a serious filmmaker to watch.
