MISS SLOANE (France/US/UK - 2016) Directed by John Madden. Written by Jonathan Perera. Cast: Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alison Pill, Michael Stuhlbarg, John Lithgow, Sam Waterston, Jake Lacy, Christine Baranski, David Wilson Barnes, Chuck Shamata, Dylan Baker, Ennis Esmer, Raoul Bhaneja, Douglas Smith, Meghann Fahy, Lucy Owen, Michael Cram, Joe Pingue. (R, 132 mins) A sort-of MICHAEL CLAYTON take on the gun control lobby, MISS SLOANE is fairly transparent end-of-the-year awards bait that works more often than it doesn't and serves as a reminder that movies for grown-ups used to not be such a rare commodity. The crammed story perhaps bites off more than it can chew yet still seems a little long running past the two-hour mark, and frequently seems like it could've been better served as an HBO or FX series. It also can't help but feel like Aaron Sorkin fan fiction, with debuting screenwriter Jonathan Perera slavishly devoted to the Sorkin style, from every line of dialogue sounding like an over-rehearsed proclamation to the presence of NEWSROOM co-stars Sam Waterston and Alison Pill to dubiously silly character names, though in fairness to Perera, neither "Rodolfo Schmidt" nor "Esme Manucharian" seem quite as improbable as Olivia Munn as THE NEWSROOM's chief financial reporter "Sloan Sabbith," though a point is made of Schmidt's middle name being "Vittorio." Though dealing with a topical subject matter, director John Madden (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL) gives MISS SLOANE a '70s aesthetic in its matter-of-fact, Alan J. Pakula-esque presentation, right down to a clandestine meeting in a dimly-lit Washington, D.C. parking garage that's straight out of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN.
Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain in icy and driven ZERO DARK THIRTY mode) is a top shark for a powerful D.C. lobbying firm run by George Dupont (Waterston). Dupont wants her to work with Bob Sandford (Chuck Shamata), a representative from an NRA-type organization looking to bring women aboard the pro-gun movement. Elizabeth derisively dismisses the idea, with everyone wrongfully assuming she lost a loved one in a mass shooting. Her rationale is simple: she has the skills and the power plays to sell anything on Capitol Hill, but pushing to make gun access easier is where she draws the line and grows a conscience. She quits Dupont's firm in protest and joins a smaller outfit owned by Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong) that's backing a mandatory background check bill that Dupont and his new top gun Pat Connors (Michael Stuhlbarg) are working to help Sandford shut down. Elizabeth pulls out every trick in the book, putting the cause before all else, including outing colleague Esme Manucharian (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) as a survivor of a high school massacre 20 years ago, something Esme has kept buried from everyone except Schmidt. As Elizabeth's former colleagues--Dupont, Connors, and Jane Molloy (Pill)--plot her downfall with a forgotten incident in her past involving paying for a congressman's overseas trip as part of a lobby for palm oil tariffs (way too much time spent on that scintillating subject), Miss Sloane sets her own plan in motion that exemplifies her core philosophy: play your trump card right after they play theirs and make sure you surprise them.
Chastain commits to the character even as Perera's script has her go through all the predictable arcs. We learn little about Miss Sloane as a person other than she's a loner who doesn't relate to people, thinks only of her work, abuses prescription pills, and frequently enlists the services of male escorts when she needs a release or to "fantasize about the life I didn't want." When her usual appointment skips town, she meets his replacement Forde (Jake Lacy), and it's all business until he starts to sense real feelings in her, and she of course shuts down and sends him away, her illusion of emotionless isolation shattered. You see moments like this coming, and others like the desk-clearing fit of rage when her back's against the wall, the opposition is beating her, and she's questioning her entire career. Told mostly in a series of flashbacks as Elizabeth is testifying before a Congressional hearing overseen by a vindictive senator (John Lithgow) and not following her attorney's (David Wilson Barnes) advice and invoking the Fifth, MISS SLOANE sometimes suffers from its characters giving speeches in lieu of having actual, real-life conversations, but it does a mostly commendable job of replicating an "issues" movie from back in the day, fused with the least grating tendencies of its obvious inspiration in Aaron Sorkin. Madden and Perera succeed in making it less about taking sides on the gun issue and more about the characters while keeping the preachy, hectoring sanctimony (like, everything that ever came out of the mouth of Jeff Daniels' Will McAvoy on THE NEWSROOM) that's often Sorkin's Achilles heel, to a minimum.
ARRIVAL (US - 2016) Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Eric Heisserer. Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, Mark O'Brien, Russell Yuen. (PG-13, 116 mins) It's easy to see the trailers and the advertising for ARRIVAL and write it off as another alien invasion sci-fi movie, but it has bigger goals in mind and is ultimately about something else entirely. Having said that, the path it takes to get to where it's going borrows from a variety of sources. You'll easily spot ideas from other movies--CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and CONTACT immediately spring to mind, and the imagery of spacecrafts hovering over cities invokes INDEPENDENCE DAY and DISTRICT 9 among others, while its somber mood and its focus on the deconstruction and composition of language and communication takes things into an alien invasion PONTYPOOL realm. Though it's all a primer for a surprise third-act revelation that packs a wallop and shows ARRIVAL's true intent, even that has distinct echoes of both a no-budget cult classic from a decade or so ago as well as a certain '90s sci-fi mindbender, albeit with less apocalyptic implications.
Twelve shell-like spacecrafts appear at various points around the world, with one of them in Montana. Linguistics professor Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is brought in by the US Army's Col. Weber (Forest Whitaker) as a consultant to attempt to establish communication with the visitors and decipher their language. Largely withdrawn from the world following her 12-year-old daughter's death from a rare form of cancer, Louise immerses herself in her work and still has military security clearance from some translation work she did for a counterterrorism operation a few years earlier. She's joined by theoritical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) as they enter a gravity-free portal at the base of the "Shell" and very slowly open a line of communication from behind a giant glass divider in the ship with a pair of large, heptapod beings that they dub "Abbott & Costello." It's a slow process--too slow for Weber and irate CIA agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), whose main goal is to ascertain the threat level and who demonstrate little patience for the curiosity of linguistics, physics, and the wonder of scientific discovery, even though Abbott & Costello have done nothing aggressive. A growing sense of paranoia and too much of an Alex Jones-type right-wing TV pundit gets the better of a few renegade soldiers who try to blow up the shell while Louise and Ian are in it, their lives spared when Abbott & Costello use their gravitational powers to force them down the portal after unsuccessfully trying to warn them about the explosive device. They clearly mean no harm, but neither Louise nor Ian can convince Weber and Halpern of that, and the global operation goes south when paranoid Chinese military leader Gen. Shang (Tzi Ma) issues an ultimatum to the Shell over China, threatening to blow it up if they don't retreat. Various countries, working together, soon go off the grid and stop sharing information with one another as talks break down, humanity grows impatient and violent, and Louise is haunted by recurring dreams and visions of her dead daughter.
Quebecois INCENDIES director Denis Villeneuve, who crossed over into the mainstream with 2013's PRISONERS and 2015's SICARIO, isn't as commercial this time out, with one shot in particular a winking nod to his bizarre 2014 Cronenbergian indie ENEMY. With its chilly, cerebral tone, ARRIVAL occasionally has a Cronenberg feel to it, or at least looks a lot like what might've happened if an in-his-prime Atom Egoyan made an alien invasion movie. It's a film that's not particularly interested in accommodating those looking for action and special effects, but it's still accessible enough for the multiplex. Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer (LIGHTS OUT), who adapted Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life," don't seem to bother pretending to camouflage ARRIVAL's obvious influences, but it finds its own voice quite unexpectedly, and what initially appear to be plot holes, contrivances, and corner-cutting actually make sense once all is revealed. Whether that makes ARRIVAL legitimately clever or very smooth at pulling off some bullshit dei ex machina may be one of the many post-viewing discussion topics. Even with its unexpected late-film developments, ARRIVAL isn't quite the instant classic that many reviewers are making it out to be, but it manages to accomplish a lot more than most genre films that opt to travel down a road paved with the ideas of so many movies that preceded it.
For years, Don Cheadle has been talking about his wish to make a film about jazz legend Miles Davis. He finally got the chance with this partially crowd-funded indie that also marks his debut as a writer and director. For something that he had bouncing around in his head all these years, MILES AHEAD is an almost total missed opportunity. Cheadle wanted to avoid the pratfalls of a standard-issue biopic, which is commendable, but he more or less just drops a character named "Miles Davis" into a rote buddy movie with occasional car chases and action sequences. Set primarily during Davis' reclusive late 1970s period of self-imposed exile in his Upper West Side NYC apartment, MILES AHEAD pairs him with a fictional Rolling Stone journalist named Dave Braden (Ewan McGregor), who's desperate to grab an exclusive with him. Davis is currently butting heads with Columbia Records execs who have been waiting several years for his latest record. Columbia A&R douchebag Harper Hamilton (a reptilian Michael Stuhlbarg) and his Davis-like, Next Big Thing signing Junior (LaKeith Lee Stanfield) steal the sole copy of Davis' latest recording, prompting the embittered, burned-out, drug-addled trumpeter and his befuddled sidekick Braden to turn NYC (actually, Cincinnati, where this was shot) upside-down in pursuit of it. All the while, Davis periodically reflects on his career triumphs (and, of course, sees himself in the young ingenue Junior) and his failed marriage to dancer Frances (Emayatzy Corinealdi), pondering Where It All Went Wrong.
The flashbacks to the 1950s to the mid 1960s seem like Cheadle giving himself some opportunity to portray Davis in a straightforward fashion rather than the showy, coke-snorting jazz version of Howard Hughes he's playing in the late 1970s sections of the film. Cheadle is a dead ringer for Davis and it's a terrific performance that's completely let down by Cheadle the filmmaker. Cheadle is a gifted actor who could've brought much substance and complexity to a serious chronicle of the ups and downs of Davis' life. Why he--and Davis' family, who gave him their blessing--opted for a completely fictional scenario is a mystery. McGregor doesn't have much to do other than to look perplexed over Davis' wildly unpredictable behavior (like firing a gun in the Columbia offices), while Corinealdi does some good work in the more serious side of the film, even though she's tasked with little other than raging at a selfish, serially philandering Davis when he repeatedly treats her like a doormat. If Davis' family was OK with showing him in a negative light in these scenes, then why not make an honest film about him instead of this dumb movie that tries to have one foot in the arthouse and the other in the multiplex? Cheadle makes a great Miles Davis...it's just lost in a mediocre misfire of his own making. (R, 101 mins)
ELVIS & NIXON (US - 2016)
Elvis Presley and President Richard Nixon had a meeting in the Oval Office on December 21, 1970, with the resulting photo of the two cited as the most requested in the National Archives. ELVIS & NIXON purports to tell "the true story" of what went down at that secret meeting. Troubled by the direction of Vietnam-era youth--their malaise, their drug use, their music--Elvis is obsessed with the idea of working undercover for the Federal Narcotics Bureau as a "Federal Agent-at-Large," and requests a meeting with Nixon to make it happen. This story was covered before in Allan Arkush's little-seen 1997 cable movie ELVIS MEETS NIXON, with Rick Peters as Elvis and Bob Gunton as Nixon, but ELVIS & NIXON, co-written by actor Cary Elwes and directed by Liza Johnson (HATESHIP LOVESHIP), has two bigger names onboard, with Michael Shannon as Elvis and Kevin Spacey as Nixon. These are brilliant actors, and while neither does an SNL caricature, Spacey does a good job of nailing Nixon's mannerisms in the face of Elvis' increasingly absurd behavior, like an impromptu karate demonstration near the end of their afternoon together. Nixon sees being an Elvis pal as a way of appealing to America's youth, and while he's initially dismissive of the idea, the meeting puts a spring in Nixon's step--watch the way he enthusiastically asks aides Egil Krogh (Colin Hanks) and Dwight Chapin (Evan Peters) "Am I Mr. Cool?"--and Spacey does a very nice job with it. Shannon is a versatile actor but he just can't pull off Elvis. It makes sense that he wants to play Elvis as a person rather than the "Elvis" of his public image, but he never comes off as anything but Michael Shannon in an Elvis costume. He meets two impersonators early on and they demonstrate more life than he does. Shannon's Elvis is among the most quiet and soft-spoken in pop culture. It would've helped a little to maybe sound or act like him--Shannon is about as plausible an Elvis as Chevy Chase was a Gerald Ford. While Spacey doesn't cartoonishly mimic Nixon, he at least conveys a Nixonian presence. Shannon seems like an Elvis impersonator who's off the clock but still hasn't changed into his own clothes. And who cares about his buddy Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer) who's preoccupied with getting back to Hollywood to propose to his girlfriend (Sky Ferreira)? The closing credits roll at 80 minutes and they still have to pad the running time with a subplot about Jerry and his girlfriend? Also featuring Johnny Knoxville for some reason, ELVIS & NIXON finds some genuine laughs in the very late-going, but for the most part, it's low-key to the point of catatonia, never recovering from a miscast Shannon's inert (though some critics really liked it) interpretation of the King. If you want an Elvis performance that's funny and heartfelt and relatively real, stick with Bruce Campbell in BUBBA HO-TEP. (R, 86 mins)
ANDRON (Italy/UK - 2016)
From the 1960s through the 1980s, it was common to find Hollywood actors who were aging or in a career slump slumming in B-grade European knockoffs of popular American movies. To that end, there's a brief sense of nostalgia to be enjoyed with ANDRON, an incoherent Italian ripoff of THE HUNGER GAMES and THE MAZE RUNNER that somehow prominently features a visibly inconvenienced Alec Baldwin as Adam, the nefarious master of--wait for it--"The Redemption Games." It's some survival game being broadcast to a post-apocalyptic, dystopian society in the year 2154, years after "The Big Catastrophe" nuked the planet, killing billions of people and leading to The Nine Corporations assuming control of the world. Ten strangers wake up to find themselves forced contestants in The Redemption Games, which is being beamed to members of an enslaved society who have placed bets where the winners earn their freedom. You expect to see Danny Glover in something like this--he plays "The Chancellor," some Nine Corporations leader--but isn't this a little beneath Alec Baldwin? Sure, hosting a rebooted MATCH GAME is probably a fun lark, but how exactly did this script get to him? Did he see an easy payday and assumed the resulting mess would never be released? ANDRON was filmed in 2014, around the same time Baldwin had a supporting role in the fifth entry in Santiago Segura's popular Spanish-made TORRENTE action/comedy franchise, TORRENTE 5: OPERACION EUROVEGAS (the first was made in 1998 and they've turned up streaming on Amazon), so he likely did the Malta-shot ANDRON on the same trip to Europe. But why? His appearances throughout are almost Bruce Willisian in their laziness and disconnect from the rest of the movie (the DVD's making-of shows a VFX shot of Baldwin's head being CGI'd onto a stand-in's body for a scene where his character appears with Glover). He probably didn't spend any more than a day or two on the set, probably coming off like a mercurial prick at least once and maybe trying to lighten the mood by entertaining the crew by dropping some GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS bon mots or the MALICE "I am God" speech. His role primarily consists of sitting at a desk, watching The Redemption Games on a hologram and occasionally engaging in some MINORITY REPORT pantomiming as he manipulates and moves things around on a holographic screen. When the first contestant is killed, a smirking Baldwin purrs "Ten little Indians standing in a line, one toddled home and then there were nine." Other observational witticisms from behind his desk include:
"Now things get interesting."
"Let's liven things up a little."
"Let's give them something else to think about."
"That's my girl."
"Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends!"
"Let's shuffle this deck."
"What the hell is that?"
"Get them back on the grid!"
"Shit!"
Written and directed by Francesco Cinquemani, ANDRON is so muddled and incomprehensible that it feels like you're watching the fourth or fifth installment in a franchise where the previous installments were never made. Opening in medias res is one thing, but not knowing who anyone is or what's going on or why we should even care makes for a frustrating experience. Never mind the atrocious CGI and greenscreen work--it seems entirely possible that Baldwin is completely unaware of this film and his appearance in it is actually a CGI hologram--the story isn't even remotely engaging and what little you can figure out is blatantly and shamelessly cribbed from THE HUNGER GAMES, THE MAZE RUNNER, and even the cult classic CUBE. The nominal lead is Leo Howard, the star of the Disney Channel's KICKIN' IT, and Skunk Anansie vocalist Skin plays a Milla Jovovich-like badass who's been implanted with someone's memories or some such nonsense. ANDRON is a complete botch that has the audacity to leave the door open for a sequel, and if Z-grade '70s hack Alfonso Brescia/"Al Bradley" was still alive and making Italian ripoffs, he probably would've made this. As it is, it's hopefully as close to an Uwe Boll joint as Baldwin will ever get. Did he owe Stephen a favor and do this movie for him? Did Mitch & Murray send him to Malta on a mission of mercy? (R, 96 mins)
Though his influence is still felt in new films like Justin Simien's DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, in recent years, Spike Lee has done his best work on low-profile documentaries and really only makes mainstream news when he's pissed-off at a geriatric white director. After his remake of OLDBOY was taken away from him and recut by producers only to end up being one of the biggest bombs of 2013, Lee wanted to make a small film with total creative control and turned to Kickstarter to crowdfund his unlikely next narrative effort: a remake of Bill Gunn's 1973 cult horror oddity GANJA & HESS. DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS follows the 1973 film very closely--so closely, in fact, that Gunn, who died in 1989, shares a screenwriting credit with Lee. Like Lee, Gunn was a maverick with experience playing the Hollywood game--he was a veteran TV actor and wrote Hal Ashby's 1970 film THE LANDLORD. GANJA & HESS was supposed to be a low-budget blaxploitation vampire film but Gunn fashioned it as a gritty and challenging art film. It also existed in a more blaxploitative cut called BLOOD COUPLE that Gunn hated, but GANJA & HESS' cult following remains strong over 40 years later, and has even aired on Turner Classic Movies. Lee obviously loves the film, since DA SWEET BLOOD is an almost scene-for-scene tribute, shot in just 16 days and doing its damnedest to emulate the look and feel of Gunn's seminal contribution to African-American cinema. Wealthy anthropologist Dr. Hess Greene (Stephen Tyrone Williams, in a role played by NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD's Duane Jones in the 1973 film) is studying the Ashanti Empire, an ancient African culture for whom the consumption of blood became an addiction. He's stabbed to death with a cursed Ashanti dagger by his suicidal research assistant Lafayette Hightower (Elvis Nolasco). Lafayette succeeds in killing himself and when Hess awakens from the dead the next morning, he not only hides the body but has an insatiable thirst for blood, first stealing packets from a blood donation center and eventually picking up a prostitute, slashing her throat, and consuming her blood (there's a brief AIDS scare for Hess in one of Lee's few attempts at updating the story). Eventually, Lafayette's British ex-wife Ganja (Zaraah Abrahams) arrives at Hess' Martha's Vineyard summer home from Amsterdam, and the two quickly begin a passionate fling as Hess initially tries to keep his need for human blood a secret known only by his devoted, Renfield-like manservant Seneschal (Rami Malek). When Hess and Ganja marry, Hess "turns" her as the couple seek out victims--who always "return" much like they did--starting with Hess' bisexual ex-girlfriend Tangier (Nate Bova).
Like Gunn, Lee uses the need for blood as a metaphor for addiction and the way it destroys the lives of the user and those close to them. But it's not enough for Lee to present vampirism (a word never used in either Gunn's or Lee's film) in a metaphorical sense--he actually has to have Hess say "This is like an addiction!" Lee does everything short of stop the film and break the fourth wall himself to say as much. Lee gets really heavy-handed when Hess reaches an existential breaking point late in the film and goes to a black church (where Thomas Jefferson Byrd and Stephen Henderson reprise their respective Bishop and Deacon roles from the endlessly self-referential Lee's 2012 film RED HOOK SUMMER), where a gospel group is singing a hymn with the not-very subtle lyrics "You've got to learn/To let it go/You've got to know/When it's all over." Lee throws in some lines that pay clumsy lip service to inner-city race and poverty issues, but they exist as ham-fisted bullet points and are quickly dropped. DA SWEET BLOOD is overlong and self-indulgent, but it offers a terrifically moody score by Bruce Hornsby (his opening credits piece is among the best things he's ever done), some impressive original songs by unsigned artists from numerous genres, and has its strong moments as Lee mixes the Brooklyn-based, indie-film aesthetic of his youth (it's hard to believe he's pushing 60) with a bizarre fusion of art film and grindhouse trash. Clearly trying to wash away the bitter aftertaste of OLDBOY, Lee made DA SWEET BLOOD for no one but himself. It's the strangest film of his career and one with absolutely zero commercial potential, but there's an overwhelming feeling of dread throughout and some legitimate poignancy amidst the arthouse posturing as Hess barrels down the road to ruin, dragging everyone along with him. For all its flaws, I still prefer DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS over RED HOOK SUMMER, Lee's last attempt at re-establishing his indie cred, a film that offered a great Clarke Peters performance but little else, starting with Lee himself as a graying, paunchy Mookie from DO THE RIGHT THING, still delivering pizzas for Sal's. (Unrated, 124 mins)
CUT BANK (US/Canada - 2015)
The Coen Bros. worship is laid on so thick with CUT BANK that it almost qualifies as fan fiction. Veteran TV director Matt Shakman makes his feature filmmaking debut here and among his many credits over the last decade or so were a few episodes from the first season of the FX series FARGO. CUT BANK features Oliver Platt from the FARGO series, plus other actors from past Coen Bros. films, like John Malkovich (BURN AFTER READING) and Michael Stuhlbarg (A SERIOUS MAN), and Billy Bob Thornton has both the FARGO series and a Coen film (THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE) to further cement the connection. CUT BANK centers on a Coen Bros. staple: the kind of stupidly pie-in-the-sky, ostensibly foolproof scheme that's half-assedly planned in maximum Jerry Lundegaard fashion and almost immediately collapses in on itself. In folksy Cut Bank, MT, former high school football star and current townie Dwayne McLaren (Liam Hemsworth) is sick of his dead-end mechanic job and just wants out. He's tired of being the caregiver to his distant and now-bedridden father, and he wants to run off to California with high-school sweetheart Cassandra (Teresa Palmer) and open a body shop. He's talked mute co-worker Match (David Burke) and disgruntled mailman Georgie Witts (Bruce Dern) into going in on a scam with him: while Dwayne is standing in a field filming Cassandra's Miss Cut Bank audition video, a disguised Match will shoot Georgie in the distant background, be captured on video by Dwayne, and the reporting of the murder of a federal employee will net them a $100,000 reward (it should tell you how doomed the plan is when Dwayne thinks $100,000 is "a lifetime sum" and none of them seem to know how to keep up the ruse of Georgie being dead). While Dwayne keeps Georgie in hiding and waits for his reward money from a postal inspector (Platt), soft-spoken Sheriff Vogel (Malkovich) investigates, and Cassandra's father/Dwayne's asshole boss Big Stan (Thornton) quickly figures out that Dwayne is up to something, local stuttering recluse and--red flag!--taxidermy enthusiast Derby Milton (an unrecognizable Stuhlbarg) eagerly awaits a priority mail package that Georgie was supposed to deliver the day of the murder. With the mail truck gone missing, Derby decides to launch his own obsessive investigation and pursuit of his parcel, and that's when the body count starts climbing.
As far as Coen Bros. ripoffs go, CUT BANK is one of the better examples, thanks largely to a great supporting cast comprised of some of the most solid pros in the business. There's quirky dialogue, shocking violence, dark comedy, and vicious twists of fate, but sometimes Shakman and screenwriter Roberto Patino (SONS OF ANARCHY) are a little shameless, not just in the plot but with some of the quirks. Any fan of the FARGO TV series will recognize Burke's Match as a slight resketching of Russell Harvard's deaf assassin Mr. Wrench. And as great as he is with his screen presence and quotable dialogue ("I just want my p-p-parcel" is this film's "Friendo"), Stuhlbarg's Derby is basically what would happen if NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN's Anton Chigurh was played by Milton from OFFICE SPACE. Make no mistake, Stuhlbarg owns CUT BANK and you almost wish he was the central character, even if Hemsworth is marginally less bland than usual. The wrap-up is a little too neat and clean, with Malkovich getting a speech somewhat similar to Tommy Lee Jones' at the end of NO COUNTRY, but as derivative as it is, it moves quickly and entertains. You're still better off watching BLOOD SIMPLE, FARGO, or NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN again, but you can do a lot worse than CUT BANK, and it's a must-see if you're a fan of Stuhlbarg. (R, 93 mins)
