THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME (US - 2020) Directed by Antonio Campos. Written by Antonio Campos and Paulo Campos. Cast: Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgard, Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett, Harry Melling, Eliza Scanlen, Douglas Hodge, Kristin Griffith, Pokey LaFarge, David Atkinson, Michael Banks Repeta, Gregory Kelly, David Maldonado, Michael Harding, Lucy Faust, Abby Glover, Zack Shires, Ivan Hoey Jr, Drew Starkey. (R, 138 mins) Based on a 2011 novel by Donald Ray Pollock, whose bleak rural noirs set in the colorfully-named southern Ohio town of Knockemstiff have often been termed "hillbilly gothic" by literary critics, THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME presents a relentlessly grim, fatalistic tableau that, despite the change in medium, unfolds with the precision and patience of a riveting page-turner. There's enough going on here that director/co-writer Antonio Campos (2016's criminally underseen CHRISTINE, a haunting biopic of Florida news reporter Christine Chubbuck, who infamously committed suicide on live TV in 1974) could've easily turned it into a Netflix miniseries instead of a Netflix original film, but it manages to cover everything it needs to in its never-dull 138 minutes. THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME jumps around for much of its first half, going back and forth from 1945 to 1957 to 1965 in a way that can be initially disorienting but eventually works everything out as the various characters, their connections, and their situations are put into play. The main character--troubled loner Arvin Russell (Tom Holland)--doesn't even take center stage until 45 minutes in, and to get a grasp on who he is, we must first learn about his father Willard (Bill Skarsgard), a quietly shell-shocked WWII vet who fought in the South Pacific, haunted by the mercy-killing of an American soldier he found crucified, barely alive, and being slowly devoured by flies. Discharged and en route to his home in the podunk West Virginia town of Coal Creek, the shy Willard stops at a diner in Knockemstiff and is immediately smitten with kind-hearted waitress Charlotte (Haley Bennett). They eventually marry and live in a house on a hill above Knockemstiff, and she soon gives birth to Arvin.
Willard remains troubled by his wartime experiences, and despite his devoutly Christian ways, he teaches nine-year-old Arvin (Michael Banks Repeta) that if anyone starts something with you, be sure to finish it, which he demonstrates by nearly beating two local yokels to death after they make derogatory comments about Charlotte. Rapidly going off the deep end, Willard builds a large cross on the back of his property, where he takes Arvin on nightly trips of emphatic prayer, which increase in frequency and intensity when Charlotte is diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Arvin will eventually be sent to Coal Creek to live with his grandmother Emma (Kristin Griffith) and his uncle Earskill (David Atkinson), who have adopted an orphaned baby named Lenora. Cut to 1965 as Vietnam is beginning dominate the news, with Arvin (Holland takes over the role at this point) and now-teenage Lenora (LITTLE WOMEN's Eliza Scanlan) sharing a close sibling bond that's tested with the arrival of new preacher Preston Teagardin (a reptilian Robert Pattinson), who opens his first Sunday service by passive-aggressively insulting the fried chicken livers prepared by an embarrassed Emma for a potluck dinner, the only meat she could afford at the butcher shop. Other characters drift in and out of the narrative, including Carl (Jason Clarke) and Sandy Henderson (Riley Keough), husband-and-wife serial killers who pick up male hitchhikers (calling them "models") and stage sexually explicit photos before Carl kills them; corrupt sheriff Lee Bodecker (Sebastian Stan); Lenora's birth parents, insane fire-and-brimstone religious fanatic Roy Laferty (Harry Melling) and his demure, wallflower wife Helen (Mia Wasikowska); and Knockemstiff pimp and white trash crime lord Tater Brown (Douglas Hodge), who's got Bodecker's nuts in a vice.
At some point early in the third act, you'll see where the story is taking Arvin, who takes his father's lessons to heart in the way he's hellbent on finishing shit that other people start. Not only does Campos do a masterful job of vividly capturing the atmosphere of rural southern Ohio from the '40s to the '60s, but THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME also shows characters in a perpetual cycle of hopelessness, almost imprisoned by fate. Repeated cycles of violence and tragedy are handed down like family curses, and a propensity for always making the worst decisions seems like a genetic pre-disposition for everyone. Campos has created what plays a lot like a Derek Cianfrance downer that's particularly reminiscent in tone and structure to 2013's THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, especially with a lead character switch and a main star's unexpected exit around the 45-minute mark.
Skarsgard's taciturn, tightly-wound performance echoes the kind of peculiar eccentricity of the Michael Shannon of a decade ago, while Holland keeps Arvin's rage at a constant low boil, never exploding but always letting you see it growing in his eyes. Some of the ensemble--Bennett and Wasikowska, for example--aren't onscreen long enough to make a big impression, but whoever cast the unique-looking Melling and Scanlen as father-and-daughter is a genius. The biggest impression left by the supporting cast comes from Pattinson, who continues to establish himself as one of the most versatile and chameleon-like actors around with his loathsome, manipulative preacher, seducing a teenage parishioner and smugly trying to skate out of an unintended consequence with "How can you be pregnant when all we did was spend time with the Lord?" THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME is certain to provoke divisive reactions and one can argue that it has a couple more subplots than it really needs, but the degree of detail and characterization are testaments to Campos' dedication to the world-building essential to Pollock's writing, and it gets an added bit of authenticity from having the author narrate as well.
From the folks at Quiver Distribution, the company that gave us THE FANATIC, comes the pre-fab cult heist flick MONEY PLANE, which would've been much more entertaining as a viral fake trailer instead of the actual terrible movie it's selling. Feeling drawn-out even at a mere 82 minutes, MONEY PLANE manages to corral the kind of slumming cast that Uwe Boll would put together if he was still in the game. But the guilty party here is director/co-writer Andrew Lawrence, the least-known of the Lawrence brothers, though he does provide Joey and Matthew with supporting roles. MONEY PLANE seemingly wants to be the SNAKES ON A PLANE of heist movies by letting you know that it's on the joke, but it fumbles so badly that it has a character exclaim "Whoa!" and it's not the one played by Joey Lawrence. After a botched attempt to steal a $40 million painting from an art museum only to find that it's already gone when they get there, man-bunned professional thief Jack Reese (Adam Copeland, aka WWE's "Edge") and his crew realize they've been set up. The mastermind? Self-aggrandizing crime lord Darius Emmanuel Grouch III, aka "The Rumble" (Kelsey Grammer), a cigar-sucking, art collecting asshole who bought a huge debt belonging to recovering gambling addict Reese and now expects him to work it off (cue The Rumble growling "I own you"). The job? Reese and his crew--Isabella (Katrina Norman), Trey (Patrick Lamont Jr), and Iggy (Andrew Lawrence)--are going to steal $1 billion in cryptocurrency and $40 million cash from the "Money Plane," an illegal "casino in the sky" that caters to rich criminals and is untouchable since it only flies in international airspace. The stakes? If Reese doesn't play ball, The Rumble will have his wife (Denise Richards) and daughter (Emma Gordon) killed.
Anything goes on the Money Plane (The Rumble: "You can even bet on a man fuckin' an alligator!"), and the clientele includes the world's highest-paid assassins and international weapons dealers, so Reese fits right in going incognito as a notorious human trafficker. But he manages to break away and commandeer the cockpit (he's also an experienced pilot) as Isabella and Trey are left to hack the database while Iggy does tech support on the ground. Overseen by the coldly lethal Concierge (Joey Lawrence), things start off easy on the Money Plane with Texas Hold 'Em but soon graduate to the kinds of games more akin to HOSTEL, like bets being placed a man vs. a cobra, or how long some poor guy can stay alive in a piranha tank (you can imagine how those turn out), and Trey is forced to go against J.R. Crockett (Matthew Lawrence), the Money Plane's "undefeated Russian Roulette champ" (wouldn't his being "undefeated" already be understood?). Copeland, who looks like he's in a perpetual state of shock, is a dull hero who spends most of the film confined to the pilot's seat. Thomas Jane shows up for a day's work as Harry, Reese's pipe-smoking Air Force buddy who gets a bunch of exposition that never ends up coming into play ("Remind me again why you made me your daughter's godfather!"), and there's no way Richards was on the set for more than an afternoon. But it's a scenery-chewing Grammer that's the main selling point here, dropping bon mots like "How about I just blow your brains out and I'll create my own damn Pollock?" and barking "Bring me my money!" every time he appears. Like Samuel L. Jackson bellowing "I have had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane!," watching a shouty Frasier Crane drop F-bombs and take out his own henchmen in a fit of rage is the stuff of a great YouTube clip, but if you drink every time he says "money plane," you'll be passed out before you even get the chance to see him hoist an assault rifle and declare "It's Rumble time!" He quite obviously knows this is dog shit and is just amusing himself, but it also seems like he and Jane (working that prop pipe like John Cusack with a vape pen) are the only ones in on the joke. (Unrated, 82 mins)
WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS (Italy - 2020)
At the age of 80, Nobel Prize-winning South African novelist and essayist J.M. Coetzee tries his hand at screenwriting with WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS, based on his 1980 novel. The book--also turned into an opera in 2005 by Philip Glass--was conceived as a period apartheid allegory, set in a non-specified military outpost manned by officers of "The Empire," forever on guard for an attack by desert nomads--derisively termed "barbarians"--that never comes. Coetzee cited Dino Buzzati's 1940 novel The Tartar Steppe as a major influence, itself made into the 1976 film THE DESERT OF THE TARTARS by Italian director Valerio Zurlini. If you've seen the Zurlini film, the idea of the perpetual wait for a threat that looks increasingly existential and absurd with each passing year will certainly be familiar. And where Coetzee repurposed the idea for apartheid with his novel, he does so once again for the film with allusions to more present-day political concerns. Directed by Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra (his 2015 film EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT was a Best Foreign Film Oscar-nominee), WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS opens at a small town-turned-Empire outpost run by an unnamed magistrate (Mark Rylance), who's been left in charge for years and has found it's become a comfortably cushy assignment. The nomads roaming far out in the desert keep to themselves and the few that do make it near the walled-off outpost and attempt petty theft are generally given a night in jail and sent back on their way with no harm. The magistrate has developed a peaceful rapport with the locals and everybody gets along fine until the sadistic Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp) arrives for an "inspection," which involves "enhanced interrogation" of an uncle and nephew accused of trying to steal some sheep, resulting in the uncle being killed and the nephew nearly beaten to death. Deciding he still hasn't quite made his point, Joll commandeers a small group of officers and forces the nephew to guide them back to their camp, where Joll instigates an attack that results in more brutality and death.
One of the survivors (Gaya Bayarsaikhan) is brought back, bloodied and blinded by a heated fork that Joll repeatedly prodded near her eyes until she lost most of her sight. When Joll leaves the outpost, the magistrate is left to clean up the mess, nursing the girl back to health and returning her to her people. It's an arduous journey and when he arrives back at the outpost, Joll has returned, and with him is psychotic protege Officer Mandel (Robert Pattinson), both waiting to charge him with treason and abandoning his duties. The magistrate is thrown in jail with the other "barbarians" they've rounded up as they prepare for an attack from the nomads that wouldn't have happened had Joll not gleefully goaded them into it. WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS plays the heavy hand at times--you almost expect a CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST moment where Rylance's dour magistrate will observe "I wonder who the real barbarians are"--and for the most part, it moves at the pace of Merchant-Ivory. But it's a slow-burner that's beautifully shot by the great and ageless Chris Menges (who won Oscars for his work on THE KILLING FIELDS and THE MISSION) and has a trio of excellent performances by Rylance, Pattinson, and especially Depp in his best work in quite a while. It's also among his least-mannered characterizations, a welcome surprise considering his wardrobe and quirky sunglasses make him look like he took a wrong turn on his way to a steampunk convention.
Coetzee takes some liberties with his own work, drastically toning down the magistrate's rather healthy sexual appetite on the page and making him generally chaste for the screen, though it's implied that he's a regular with an area prostitute (Isabella Nefar) and he spends enough time tending to and washing the blinded woman's bloodied, battered feet that this may end up at the top of Quentin Tarantino's Best of 2020 list. The Italian-made WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2019, but US distributor Samuel Goldwyn Films sat on it for a nearly a year--no doubt due in part to the pandemic, but possibly because of Depp's very public personal dramas. But then in June 2020, multiple women accused Guerra of sexual harassment and rape in incidents dating back to 2013. Given the potential for negative publicity and toxic blowback, it's little wonder that WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS is being given an ignominious DTV burial after nearly a year in limbo, but it's a quaint throwback to the kind of old-school desert epics they used to make, and worth a look for patient fans of the three stars. (Unrated, 114 mins)
THE KING (US/Australia/UK - 2019) Directed by David Michod. Written by David Michod and Joel Edgerton. Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Robert Pattinson, Sean Harris, Tom Glynn-Carney, Lily-Rose Depp, Thomasin McKenzie, Andrew Havill, Dean-Charles Chapman, Steven Elder, Edward Ashley, Stephen Fewell, Tara Fitzgerald, Tom Fisher, Ivan Kaye, Thibault de Montalembert, Philip Rosch, Lucas Hansen, Harry Trevaldwyn. (R, 140 mins) A revisionist, GAME OF THRONES-inspired take on three plays in Shakespeare's 15th century-set Henriad (Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II, and Henry V), THE KING eschews the Bard's prose in favor of straightforward dialogue scripted by director David Michod (ANIMAL KINGDOM, THE ROVER), and co-star Joel Edgerton. Edgerton takes the role of Falstaff, and the character as presented here is notably different from past HENRY V incarnations in the 1944 Laurence Oliver and 1989 Kenneth Branagh films, and particularly the gold standard that is Orson Welles in his own 1966 masterpiece CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, which made Falstaff the central character. In Shakespeare, Falstaff, the bad influence, rough-around-the-edges guardian-turned-best friend of King Henry IV's wayward son Prince Hal, is rejected and left heartbroken by his beloved young charge upon his ascension to the throne. In the Michod/Edgerton take, Falstaff is left adrift on his own until his services are needed by the newly-crowned King Henry V (CALL ME BY YOUR NAME's Timothee Chalamet), who neither forgot nor abandoned his friend but essentially has too much going on to immediately touch base with him.
Prior to becoming king, Prince Hal enjoyed his hedonistic, hard-partying lifestyle with Falstaff and their miscreant friends. Hal is only summoned to the palace to be informed by his gravely ill father Henry IV (Ben Mendelsohn) that he's being passed over upon his death in favor of his younger brother Thomas (Dean-Charles Chapman), described by the king as "weak but eager." As Thomas prepares to head into battle against the forces of rebellious Hotspur (Tom Glynn-Carney), he's joined by a reluctant Hal, who ends up the hero of the day after killing Hotspur in a duel when the latter refuses to acknowledge the second-born son. Enraged that Hal got all the attention, Thomas moves forward to another battle and is killed, forcing Hal to inherit a throne he never wanted when his father dies soon after. Now crowned Henry V, the former Prince Hal vows to be a different king, initially insisting on withdrawing from all of his father's petty conflicts, despite the constant push for battle by some of his close advisers, including a relentlessly warmongering Archbishop of Canterbury (Andrew Havill). All the while, the young king is given guidance by his father's right hand, William Gascoigne (Sean Harris), and finds himself in an escalated conflict with France after King Charles VI's loathsome son The Dauphin (a scene-stealing Robert Pattinson) sends him an emasculating gift of a lone ball in honor of his coronation. Soon, an assassin is sent to off Henry V in collaboration with two traitors from his inner circle, prompting him to have them beheaded, followed soon after by inviting his oldest and most trusted friend Falstaff into the fray as they prepare to face King Charles' Dauphin-led army at the Battle of Agincourt.
The cutthroat royal machinations are pretty familiar as far as these things go, and it's really a long buildup to Michod staging an epic, bloody, mud-soaked Battle of Agincourt in the third act. The friendship between Falstaff and Hal isn't explored to quite the depth that it was by Welles and his co-star Keith Baxter in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, and nothing here has the emotional gut-punch of the Welles film because the devastating rejection of Falstaff--when Baxter's Hal cruelly turns his back on him when he happily arrives for the coronation--never happens here. Co-produced by Brad Pitt, THE KING is well-made, well-acted, and looks great, but it doesn't really justify its existence beyond being a two-plus hour diversion that's sufficiently engrossing while you're watching it, but doesn't really stick with you when it's over. That is, unless you count Pattinson's insane performance as The Dauphin, where he manages to channel Klaus Kinski in AGUIRRE, Mickey Rourke in BARFLY, and Gary Oldman in THE PROFESSIONAL, then wraps it all in a French accent straight out of Pepe Le Pew. Portraying The Dauphin like some kind of flamboyant, medieval Batman villain, Pattinson doesn't show up until 75 minutes in, but after one condescending dressing-down of Henry V, you'll wish Michod would immediately get busy giving him his own Dauphin spinoff movie.
THE LIGHTHOUSE (US/Brazil - 2019) Directed by Robert Eggers. Written by Robert Eggers and Max Eggers. Cast: Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson, Valeriia Karaman. (R, 109 mins) "How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks? Two days? Help me to recollect." 2016's THE WITCH heralded a unique new voice in writer/director Robert Eggers, who fashioned his feature debut as a deeply unsettling 17th-century-set slow-burner involving witchcraft, religious hysteria, and one extremely sinister goat. Eggers could've gone in any number of directions in the horror genre, but like his contemporary Ari Aster (HEREDITARY, MIDSOMMAR), he gets even weirder with his long-awaited follow-up THE LIGHTHOUSE, which is bizarre and defiantly non-commercial even by the standards of distributor A24. Sharing writing credit with his brother Max, Eggers' tale of isolation and madness on a distant island off the coast of New England in the late 19th century utilizes the journals of Herman Melville and assorted lighthouse keepers and crusty old sea salts (much like THE WITCH's dialogue was taken in part from documents from the era that it depicts), and showcases a staggeringly realistic depiction of the time and place in all its unforgiving brutality. This is the kind of film where you can feel the dampness and smell the mud, piss, and shit. Eggers veers as far away from commercial expectation as possible, shooting in black-and-white and in the archaic aspect ratio of 1.19:1, which hasn't been regularly deployed since the Weimar-era heyday of German Expressionism, Fritz Lang, and Dr. Mabuse. The tight framing only adds to the sense of isolation and claustophobia in what's essentially a two-character piece where both protagonists' grip on reality and sanity grows more tenuous and frayed by the day.
Wet-behind-the-ears wickie Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) arrives for a four-week stay maintaining a lighthouse and the surrounding island with aging, crotchety Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe). Wake is already there waiting for him, and wastes no time reminding Winslow--condescendingly calling him "lad"--who's in charge and that it's Winslow who will be doing the exhausting grunt work. The perpetually flatulent old coot also expressly forbids Winslow from going to the top of the lighthouse, where the younger man often spots a naked Wake in a trance-like state in the middle of the night, hypnotically drawn to something the blinding glow emanating from the lantern through the Fresnel lens. Winslow also finds a carved figurine of a mermaid stuffed inside in his mattress that he's soon using for his frequent masturbation excursions in the boathouse. He also sneaks into the lighthouse one night and hears Wake in the throes of sexual ecstasy but only catches a quick glimpse of writhing tentacles. He has visions of a mermaid (Valeriia Karaman), and develops a hostile relationship with a pugnacious, one-eyed seagull--this film's Black Phillip--that hangs around the lighthouse and seems to have no patience for anyone's bullshit. Wake warns Winslow to leave the gull alone, and that harming one is bad luck in their line of work, and all the while, tensions mount between the two men, with Winslow growing more concerned with the fact that his predecessor in the job died under mysterious circumstances (Wake says he simply went insane and died), and Wake wanting to more about his enigmatic subordinate's shady past.
There's a definite Lovecraftian element to THE LIGHTHOUSE, but it's less concerned with overt horror and more with a slowly simmering depiction of absolute psychological implosion (and, as a bonus, leaving no bodily function undepicted). It takes some time to figure out who's the crazy one, but things take a turn when one commits an act they were expressly warned not to do. But is he crazy? Or is the other manipulating him and driving him insane? Teetotaler Winslow eventually caves to Wake's peer pressure to drink, further toying with their grip on reality to the point where the alcohol runs out and they start guzzling their kerosene supply. There's much dark humor in the way Wake and Winslow, two guys who don't really like each other but are forced to work together (again, that 1.19:1 aspect ratio really sells the notion of being trapped with nowhere to go), eventually start to resemble an old, bickering married couple (watch how hurt Wake is when he realizes Winslow hates his cooking). That includes some subtly-conveyed, alcohol-fueled, and loneliness-induced loosening of inhibitions (Eggers joked in an interview that the lighthouse is indeed a giant phallic symbol) that have enough implications to almost turn the film into something that can be best described as "Bela Tarr's BROKEBACK LIGHTHOUSE."
It's really hard to divulge any more plot details without going into spoiler territory, and frankly, a film like THE LIGHTHOUSE doesn't make a synopsis very easy anyway, at least without one sounding like they also belong stranded in the same location with Wake and Winslow. But it's quite an experience, filled with startling, symbolic imagery, an insidiously effective use of sound (that foghorn will haunt you for days), production design of almost Kubrickian detail, and breathtaking cinematography by Jarin Blaschke. And while Eggers deserves the accolades for his uncompromising commitment to this mad vision, it's the work of Dafoe and Pattinson that really sells it. The former is a national treasure who's only getting better with age, and Thomas Wake might go down as the ultimate Willem Dafoe performance. Coming off like Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview as Captain Ahab (drink whenever he bellows "Hark!" and "Ye"), a madman-bearded Dafoe disappears into his character, sinking his teeth into Wake's verbose and wonderfully quotable monologues (which really should be released in book form) as if they're a melt-in-your-mouth steak perfectly seasoned and cooked medium rare, and doing so as crazily wide-eyed as possible for long takes without blinking. Likewise, Pattinson continues his streak of fearless and challenging career choices (between this, THE ROVER, GOOD TIME, and HIGH LIFE, he's fast becoming the de facto patron saint of the A24 mainstream audience alienator) that may be coming to a temporary halt now that he's the new Batman. But he's a real deal who's more than sufficiently shaken his TWILIGHT image and anyone who doesn't see that simply hasn't been paying attention. Long story short, if you went into THE WITCH and left feeling let down that it wasn't a generically gore-soaked, jump-scare horror movie, then THE LIGHTHOUSE will probably just actively piss you off. It's hard telling where Eggers will go from here (may I suggest an expressionist silent film with a crazy-eyed and super-toothy Dafoe going full Emil Jannings?), but THE WITCH and THE LIGHTHOUSE have firmly established him as one of today's most gifted filmmakers.
HIGH LIFE, the latest film from French auteur Claire Denis (CHOCOLAT, TROUBLE EVERY DAY) is an arthouse/sci-fi journey to the end of the universe and the kind of mainstream audience-alienating pisser-offer that's become synonymous with distributor A24. But even they knew to keep this one at a limited level, topping out at 146 screens at its widest release. Not unlike SUNSHINE or INTERSTELLAR if directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, HIGH LIFE is certainly like nothing else you'll see in 2019, and it even switches between aspect ratios (1.66:1 most of the time, but also 1.33:1 and 1.85:1) for maximum cineaste cred. Denis doesn't make it easy: the pace is extremely slow, and it takes time to find your bearings, with the opening of the film actually being the middle of the story, with non-linear editing and cutaways to various points past and future eventually filling in the blanks like an early Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu film with a touch of the significant passage of time of Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. The opening act is focused on Monte (Robert Pattinson), the lone remaining original member of the mission, and his infant daughter Willow, as something catastrophic has happened and Monte releases the bodies of several dead crew members into the forever nothingness of space. Denis cuts back and forth, revealing that a crew of death row convicts--among them Monte, Tcherny (Andre Benjamin), Boyse (Mia Goth), pilot Nansen (Agata Buzek), and Mink (Claire Tran)--who were assembled and given a chance to "serve science" on a journey to a black hole at the end of the universe in the hopes of harnessing a new energy source. It seems like a fool's mission, as one Earth-bound scientist (Victor Banerjee) even states that they won't even reach their destination in the lifetimes of those back home. But problems arise: captain Chandra (Lars Eidinger) suffers a stroke as a result of radiation poisoning and is put out of his misery by Dibs (Juliette Binoche), a deranged scientist who takes command of the mission and is obsessed with performing reproductive experiments and harvesting healthy fetuses, and isn't above sedating and raping a male subject to get the semen sample she needs.
In addition to the copious amounts of cum on display, nearly every bodily fluid and discharge puts in an appearance, including blood, piss, snot, breast milk, and menstrual blood. That's not to mention "The Fuck Box," a recreational masturbation chamber where the crew goes to let off some steam (and for Dibs to collect more specimens; seriously, there so much onscreen jizz in this that it probably qualifies for its own SAG card). Perhaps the most frequent Fuck Box flyer is Dibs herself, who rigs a contraption that gyrates in a mechanical bull-like motion as she rides a large silver dildo emerging from the center of it. Binoche leaves little to the imagination with her fearless performance here, and it's surprising that this managed to avoid an NC-17. HIGH LIFE isn't all about shock value, and the striking imagery of bodies floating in space, the sounds, and the overwhelming claustrophobia really stay with you even if the story proves frustratingly impenetrable at times. It feels like a more pervy Panos Cosmatos space movie at times, and another offbeat project for Pattinson, who also sings the closing credits song. Obviously, HIGH LIFE isn't for everybody (it would've been great to see this in a packed theater and count the walkouts), but it's a bold, original film that's an instant cult item and will no doubt take several viewings to unpack everything that's going on. (R, 113 mins)
THE PROFESSOR (US - 2019)
With his financial issues and the back-and-forth allegations and protracted legal battles with ex-wife Amber Heard, it's hard to tell from day to day whether Johnny Depp has been officially cancelled, but Lionsgate seemed to err on the side of caution by dumping THE PROFESSOR on VOD nearly two years after it was shot. Blatantly transparent Oscar bait for Depp, the film casts him as Prof. Richard Brown, a tenured Lit lecturer at an upscale university who's just been given a stage four lung cancer diagnosis. Facing the option of having maybe a year with treatment and six months without, he opts to live his remaining months to the fullest. Encouraged by his wife Veronica's (Rosemarie DeWitt) extramarital affair with asshole university president Henry (Ron Livingston), Richard goes all in--drinking in class, asking students for weed, raw-dogging a waitress in the men's room of a campus bar, and even accepting an offer of a blowjob from an admiring male student (Devon Terrell). He only confides his terminal illness to his colleague and best friend Peter (Danny Huston), and is unable to break the news to either Veronica or their teenage daughter Olivia (Odessa Young). THE PROFESSOR was shot under the title RICHARD SAYS GOODBYE, which may give it some connection to writer/director Wayne Roberts' debut KATIE SAYS GOODBYE, which played the festival circuit in 2016 but wasn't commercially released until it went straight to VOD in June 2019, a month after THE PROFESSOR. It's always amusing watching characters give zero fucks with nothing to lose, but too much of THE PROFESSOR plays like a disease-of-the-week take on AMERICAN BEAUTY, whether it's Olivia forced to listen to the passively aggressive combative dinnertime conversation between Richard and Veronica, or Richard threatening to blackmail Henry if he doesn't grant him permission to take a sabbatical. Livingston is saddled with a completely unbelievable character, never more so than when he sees Richard smoking a joint while lecturing his class outdoors, and harumphs "Is...is that a marijuana cigarette?!" like he just wandered in from REEFER MADNESS. Depp has some good moments, but the drama becomes more forced and implausible as it goes on. It's nice to see perennial sneering prick Huston in a rare sympathetic role, and Zoey Deutch is charming as one of Richard's students, but THE PROFESSOR just feels too rote and too familiar and a couple of decades too late to be borrowing so much of AMERICAN BEAUTY. (R, 92 mins)
GOOD TIME (US/Luxembourg - 2017) Directed by Josh and Benny Safdie. Written by Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein. Cast: Robert Pattinson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Benny Safdie, Barkhad Abdi, Buddy Duress, Taliah Webster, Peter Verby, Necro, Rose Gregorio, Gladys Mathon, Saida Mansoor, Eric Paykert, Robert Clohessy, George Lee Miles. (R, 101 mins) In the tradition of SPRING BREAKERS, THE ROVER, THE WITCH, IT COMES AT NIGHT, and A GHOST STORY, GOOD TIME is another love-it-or-hate-it A24 pickup that gets great reviews from critics but a toxic reception in wide release and almost immediately becomes a revered cult movie. A Palme d'Or contender at Cannes and the most high-profile film to date from sibling indie auteurs Josh and Benny Safdie, who earned significant acclaim for their 2014 heroin addiction drama HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT (Josh, the elder of the pair, got some indie buzz for his 2008 solo effort THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED), GOOD TIME is like nothing else you've seen in multiplexes this year. It's brash, ballsy, and out of its own time, and with its grainy look and a supporting cast of mostly amateur actors from Queens and Flushing, it resembles a 2017 interpretation of one of those really gritty NYC films of Abel Ferrara or Paul Morrissey, while owing a debt to the "No Wave" movement of no-budget DIY movies in the early 1980s that helped establish underground filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, Eric Mitchell, Beth B, Susan Seidelman, Slava Tsukerman, and Amos Poe. The garish Argento colorgasms in Sean Price Williams' cinematography and propulsive, non-stop Tangerine Dream-ish score by Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin) give it an enervating, exhilarating aura that's hypnotic and surreal, like a nightmare from which its hapless shit show of a "hero," Constantine "Connie" Nikas can't wake. As played by Robert Pattinson, whose post-TWILIGHT career choices are proof positive that he's a serious actor who's made more money than he'll ever need and is drawn to challenging projects with very little mainstream appeal, Connie is a petty criminal and a total loser who doesn't realize he's a loser. He's got big ideas and seems to pull them off but they always lead to bigger problems and end up sucking more unfortunate bystanders into his toxic orbit. Nobody has a good time in GOOD TIME, which is one of these familiar "survive the night" scenarios, but pulled off with such imaginative panache that it ends up being one of the most stylish fusions of sight and sound this side of BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW.
After crashing a therapy session for his mentally-challenged, deaf younger brother Nick (co-director Benny Safdie), Connie talks his brother into accompanying him on a Flushing bank robbery that almost works. They wear very lifelike masks that don't attract attention from the other customers and the teller follows directions and doesn't hit the panic button. Of course it's too good to be true, since the dye packs explode in their getaway car. While fleeing the cops, Connie gets away but Nick is apprehended and taken to Rikers. Connie takes the stained money to a bail bondsman, who says he still needs another $10,000 to get Nick out. The rest of the film chronicles Connie's attempts to bail Nick out, running into one problem after another, starting with his older sometime-girlfriend Corey (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a hot mess in her 40s who seems to have stopped maturing at 17 and is so stupidly infatuated with Connie that she lets him badger her ("What the fuck's the problem? It's like a loan...you'll get it right back!") into unsuccessfully trying to use her mom's credit card for Nick's bail. That doesn't work, and Connie then finds out that Nick can't be bailed out anyway since he's been involved in a fight in jail and has been taken to a hospital in the city, prompting one of the least-plausible escape sequences you'll ever see, and eventually leading to the introduction of three other key characters: just-paroled Queens pusher Ray (Buddy Duress, star of HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT), 16-year-old delinquent Crystal (newcomer Taliah Webster), and security guard Dash (CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Oscar-nominee Barkhad Abdi), who runs afoul of Connie and Ray when they try to recover a drug stash at a dilapidated amusement park.
GOOD TIME always keeps you on edge, with the constant use of close-ups with handheld cameras, and the grainy, 16mm-looking imagery giving it a genuinely frazzled, scuzzy vibe. An absolutely magnetic, frenetic Pattinson has never been better, seemingly going full Method by the end, where it looks like he's been awake for a week even though the film takes place over a 24-hour period (there's a couple of time flubs that undermine the flow of the story, like one character mentioning it's "almost 9:00 pm," then a bit later, someone else saying it's 7:30 pm). GOOD TIME basks in the seedy underbelly of dangerous areas of working class Queens that you really don't see much of in movies anymore, giving it a distinctly 1970s mood but coming off like Nicolas Winding Refn, Gaspar Noe, and Larry Clark teaming up to make a Michael Mann movie. The Safdies take advantage of actual locations--some shots seem to have been captured on the fly, guerrilla-style--in places that don't appear to have changed much over the last few decades. It's only fitting that this film comes off like a welcome relic from another era, a late-summer shot of adrenaline that unfortunately will be loathed by the few mainstream moviegoers who don't ignore it in the first place. It's a powerfully off-kilter moviegoing experience where nothing plays out as you expect, from the opening credits taking place over 20 minutes into the movie to the way Ray ends up entering the story and briefly hijacking it (Duress gets a long speech and flashback sequence out of nowhere that's the most inspired non-sequitur aside for a character since Victor's trip through Europe in Roger Avary's THE RULES OF ATTRACTION). There isn't much here on a narrative or subtextual level--there's probably some parallels to be drawn from Connie, Nick, and Crystal all having absentee parents and being raised by their grandmothers--and it comes up a bit short on that front, but as a character study in lowlifes and for its colorful visuals and shot compositions and aural razzle-dazzle (goddamn, that score is incredible), GOOD TIME is a gem that sticks with you and is one of the audacious films of the summer.
THE LOST CITY OF Z (US/UK - 2017) Written and directed by James Gray. Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen, Franco Nero, Ian McDiarmid, Edward Ashley, Clive Francis, Pedro Coello, Matthew Sunderland, Johann Myers, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Murray Melvin. (PG-13, 141 mins) Though he's been at it for nearly 25 years to significant critical acclaim, James Gray is a filmmaker perpetually in search of his big break. The first half of his career was plagued by long stretches of inactivity--his 1994 debut LITTLE ODESSA was followed by Harvey Weinstein shelving THE YARDS for two years before relegating it to a limited release in 2000 and several years passed before he returned with WE OWN THE NIGHT in 2007--while the second half was stalled by Joaquin Phoenix's Andy Kaufman-esque faux-meltdown while hitting the talk shows to plug 2009's TWO LOVERS, and 2014's THE IMMIGRANT was all but personally sabotaged by Harvey Weinstein, who acquired the kind of movie that cleans up during awards season and buried it in a blatant display of score-settling after clashing with Gray on THE YARDS. Gray could be forgiven if he was starting to feel that the entire movie industry was conspiring against him, but he's built a passionate cult of admirers among cineastes with his consistently excellent work over the years. Arguably the best American filmmaker working today that nobody knows about, Gray is an artist who was simply born too late. Influenced by the icons of past generations, from Sidney Lumet to Francis Ford Coppola to Martin Scorsese, Gray would've flourished in the 1970s. His early, gritty films have the distinctly vivid NYC feel that Lumet mastered, and THE IMMIGRANT--Gray's best film thus far--recalled the early 20th century immigrant experience in NYC as effectively as the young Vito Corleone scenes in THE GODFATHER PART II or the whole of Joan Micklin Silver's HESTER STREET.
Coming just three years after THE IMMIGRANT, Gray's latest film is the most radical departure of his career thus far, an adaptation of David Grann's 2009 non-fiction chronicle of British Army Lt. Percy Fawcett's obsession with finding a mythical ancient city deep in Amazonia, eventually disappearing with his son sometime in 1925, never to be seen again. As the film opens in 1905, Fawcett (played here by SONS OF ANARCHY's Charlie Hunnam, in a role originally intended for executive producer Brad Pitt), is a career military man and exemplary officer and marksman who's nonetheless consistently passed over for promotions and commendations as a result of his being the son of a drunken disgrace ("He's been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors," one high-ranking general from the "jolly good, old chap!" school harumphs to another). Fawcett doesn't rock the boat, going wherever he's ordered even if it means being away from his wife Nina (Sienna Miller) and their young son Jack. He's given an unusual opportunity by the Royal Geographical Society to put his cartography skills to use by journeying into Amazonia to map out a border between Bolivia and Brazil, who are ready to declare war over the region's rich rubber plantations. Assembling a small expedition that includes appointed aide-de-camp Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson) and fellow officer and friend Arthur Manley (Edward Ashley), Fawcett also traces the source of the Rio Verde river and is hailed a hero when he arrives back in England. But while in the harsh region, Fawcett found traces of the existence of an ancient culture, an indigenous people who left evidence of art, craftsmanship, and language centuries earlier. The Society and its stodgy old-timers are expectedly incredulous, refusing to believe that "savages" are capable of sophisticated, intelligent thought and reason. Fawcett organizes another journey into the region, this time accompanied by James Murray (Angus Macfadyen, BRAVEHEART's Robert the Bruce and CRADLE WILL ROCK's Orson Welles in his best role in years), a veteran Arctic explorer who was second-in-command on the Shackleton expedition. The aging and out-of-shape Murray proves to be dead weight in the heat of the rain forest, growing ill and being sent off on his own with a native guide only to later accuse Fawcett of abandoning and leaving him to die. WWI beckons and Fawcett's explorations are put on hold until years later, when he and his now grown eldest son Jack (Tom Holland, soon to be seen as Peter Parker in the upcoming SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING) set off to find Fawcett's Moby Dick--The Lost City of Z (pronounced "zed")--to prove his theories of the existence of the ancient, yet advanced culture.
Even more ambitious than THE IMMIGRANT, THE LOST CITY OF Z finds Gray embracing the '70s auteur spirit, shooting on 35mm film (again working with IMMIGRANT cinematographer Darius Khondji) and actually taking Hunnam, Pattinson, and the other actors deep into remote regions of Colombia to shoot among the hazardous elements. Likewise, the bulk of the scenes at home in England are shot in actual locations (the scene where Fawcett's ship docks back home is a CGI effect that sticks out like a sore thumb). As a producer, Pitt seems to be someone who, when the opportunity presents itself, gets behind filmmakers drawn the kind of classical '70s aesthetic to which Gray subscribes, as seen in his work with Andrew Dominik (THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD and KILLING THEM SOFTLY) and even Angelina Jolie's turgid but very '70s Antonioni-lite BY THE SEA. The use of film and actual places makes you smell the jungle and feel the sweltering humidity, and it gives THE LOST CITY OF Z a sense of texture and the feeling of an adventure saga of old, something David Lean might've made made with Peter O'Toole in the 1960s or Werner Herzog with Klaus Kinski in the 1970s. It's hard not to be reminded of the Herzog/Kinski masterpieces AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and FITZCARRALDO throughout THE LOST CITY OF Z, especially early on when, deep in the heart of the Bolivian jungle, they stumble on an opera house right in the middle of a rubber plantation owned by Baron de Gondoriz (Franco Nero), an actual historical figure whose depiction here is an obvious shout-out to Kinski's Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald in FITZCARRALDO. Comparisons to AGUIRRE come later as Fawcett descends into a certain level of madness, though subtly played, as he and Jack face certain death and he tries to calm his son with a wide-eyed declaration of "Whatever happens...it is our destiny!" But ultimately, the film THE LOST CITY OF Z most resembles is Bob Rafelson's acclaimed and unjustly forgotten 1990 exploration saga MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON--a throwback epic even way back then--which examined the rivalry between Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke's attempts--together and separate--to find the source of the Nile.
THE LOST CITY OF Z works best when it's on the river or in the jungle. It's when Fawcett is back home with his family that things get a little shaky. Gray doesn't do the best job managing the passage of time. It's never quite clear, at least as it's presented here, how he's "been gone for years" when every time he returns home, Nina has an infant child. In actuality, Fawcett mapped the Bolivia/Brazil border and discovered the source of the Rio Verde on two different expeditions. Here, it's presented as happening on the same one. While there were expeditions that lasted a few years, he had to return home to England more than is presented here or else the existence of the two kids can't be explained. At one point, it's flat-out mentioned "You've been gone for years," while Nina is holding what looks like a six-month-old baby. Whether we're supposed to make the leap that yes, he's coming home a lot and leaving again, isn't handled in the smoothest fashion. Hunnam turns in a powerful performance, though it's Pattinson who impresses in the quieter sidekick role. Pattinson never seemed at ease with the blockbuster attention that the TWILIGHT movies gave him, as one can see in his career choices since, which have seen him tackling two ambitious if unsuccessful projects with David Cronenberg (COSMOPOLIS, MAPS TO THE STARS) and David Michod's underrated Australian dystopian revenge drama THE ROVER. By the success of TWILIGHT, you'd think Pattinson would be locked in as the star, but he takes the supporting character and really creates something with it, and the bond that develops between Fawcett and Costin feels richer and more developed than anything involving Fawcett and his wife and kids, and the fact that we don't know a whole lot about Jack makes the father-son bonding and the final act seem rushed, which ultimately compromises the impact of the closing scenes. Still, despite the hiccups, this is majestic, passionate moviemaking that you really don't see anymore (is it a sad state of affairs when you see an establishing shot of the jungle and feel a sense of relief that you aren't hearing CCR's "Run Through the Jungle" as accompaniment?), and we could always use films like THE LOST CITY OF Z that offer a tangible, organic "reality" that you just don't get with today's overabundance of CGI and greenscreen bullshit. I don't know about you, but I'm willing to go a little easy on some screenplay flaws for some believable scenes of actors in actual risky situations in actual unpleasant conditions.
MAPS TO THE STARS (Canada/Germany - 2014; US release 2015) Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Bruce Wagner. Cast: Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, Sarah Gadon, Evan Bird, Carrie Fisher, Kiara Glasco, Dawn Greenhalgh, Jonathan Watton, Niamh Wilson, Jennifer Gibson, Justin Kelly, Jayne Heitmeyer, Joe Pingue. (R, 112 mins) As we've observed with the ongoing tragedy of Dario Argento, seeing a great and influential filmmaker skidding in his elder statesman years is never a pleasant sight, and David Cronenberg's MAPS TO THE STARS is, if nothing else, a slight step up from 2012's career-worst COSMOPOLIS. Other than one character having some significant body scarring that recalls his CRASH (1997), there's very little to here to suggest that the 71-year-old Cronenberg really has his heart in this one. It's written by Bruce Wagner, best known for the 1993 Oliver Stone-produced ABC miniseries WILD PALMS, but also a novelist (his so-called "cell phone trilogy" of I'm Losing You, I'll Let You Go and Still Holding), whose chief focus has always been the skewering of cliched L.A. and Hollywood types. Wagner also wrote Paul Bartel's 1989 satire SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS and in many ways, MAPS TO THE STARS plays like a grim spinoff of that film, one that was lambasted when it was released and only remembered today by the cult of Bartel (DEATH RACE 2000, EATING RAOUL) and the most devoted Jacqueline Bisset stalkers. MAPS TO THE STARS is yet another tiresome entry in the "Hollywood taking misanthropic shots at itself" subgenre, one that's brilliant when it's done right (SUNSET BOULEVARD, S.O.B., THE PLAYER, TROPIC THUNDER) and insufferable when it's not (almost everything else). Cronenberg has been trying to get MAPS TO THE STARS made for the last decade, and Wagner's script dates back further than that (in fact, when the project stalled three years ago and Cronenberg moved forward with COSMOPOLIS, Wagner turned his script into the 2012 novel Dead Stars), only with some added mentioning of Twitter and the name-dropping of some current stars to spruce it up. Considering how long MAPS TO THE STARS was gestating in development hell, it's alarming how utterly disconnected from it Cronenberg seems. It's not a David Cronenberg film--it's a Bruce Wagner script that Cronenberg happens to be directing. Unlike guys like Billy Wilder, Blake Edwards, and Robert Altman, the Canadian Cronenberg's never been a Hollywood insider (indeed, MAPS is his first film to features scenes shot in the US), so MAPS' potshots at industry types seem especially cheap and hollow. And by this point, Wagner's scripts are all the same, stuffed with loathsome, decadent L.A. asswipes drowning in ennui and self-absorption who do shitty things and screw over anyone to get ahead. Wagner's covered these subjects ad nauseum in past screenplays and novels and at 60 years old, he's starting to sound less like a guy with keenly satirical insights into the Hollywood machine and more like a bitter curmudgeon who's having a hissy fit because he never quite made it to the A-list.
MAPS TO THE STARS is one of those "everyone is connected" ensemble pieces: washed-up, pill-popping actress Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore) desperately wants a part in a remake of an old movie that starred her late mother Clarice Taggart (Sarah Gadon), who died in a fire 30 years ago and frequently appears in ghost form to taunt Havana about, among other things, the state of her career, the smell of her vagina ("That hole smells worse than I do!"), and their incestuous past as mother-daughter lovers; Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird), a teenage movie star who combines the worst parts of Justin Bieber and Joffrey Baratheon, is just out of rehab and shooting the next entry in his BAD BABYSITTER franchise; his enabling mother Christina (Olivia Williams), and his father Stafford (John Cusack), a famous New Age TV therapist who counts Havana as a patient and is prone to declarations during massage sessions that go something like "I'm going to press on a personal history point--memories are stored in the thighs"; Agatha Weiss (Mia Wasikowska), an odd, burn-scarred young woman who arrives from Florida boasting of a Twitter friendship with Carrie Fisher (as herself), who gets her a job as Havana's personal assistant, or "chore whore"; and Jerome Fontana (Robert Pattinson), a limo driver and would-be screenwriter who occasionally turns up as part of Agatha's character arc until the film forgets about him once more.
Wagner's script is so sloppily-constructed that things that should be big reveals and surprises land with a complete thud. Is it supposed to be a surprise that Agatha is Benjie's older sister and the disowned daughter of the Weisses? Because by mentioning her last name as soon as we see her, we've put that together. Wagner tries to demonstrate some complexity in the various parallels that manifest between characters involving ghosts, fire, and incest, with a particularly creepy focus on the latter, and he only succeeds in repetitious overkill, especially if you're one of the four people who can recall that ghosts reminding characters of their past misdeeds was also a major part of SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS. Elsewhere, Cronenberg props things up with the unfortunate crutch of shock value in ways that do nothing to further the story, whether it's bodily discharges with Agatha leaving a menstrual blood stain on Havana's $12K couch or a constipated Havana struggling to defecate and only loudly passing gas. Yes, David Cronenberg has been reduced to fart jokes and drags Moore down with him.
The best thing that can be said about MAPS TO THE STARS is that the actors commit. Moore overdoes it, but the character requires such, and one of the few satirical bits that actually has some scathing bite to it is when she loses the role in the movie to younger rival Azita (Jayne Heitmeyer), known for "letting producers put their dick in her ass and take a piss," only to win it back when Azita's six-year-old son Micah drowns in a swimming pool, prompting her to have a breakdown and drop out of the film. The role then goes to Havana, who reacts by joyously dancing through the house and outside by the pool, shouting Micah's name and singing "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye." Moore won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her scenery-chewing work and prior to her eventual Oscar win for STILL ALICE, was generating some Academy buzz for MAPS until its US release got pushed to 2015 (it was out in Europe last summer), preceded by one of the most blatantly misleading trailers in quite some time, edited in a way to make it look like Wasikowska is the psycho in a SINGLE WHITE FEMALE-type thriller. Bird does a solid job at playing a spoiled and thoroughly despicable turd, and even Cusack, taking a break from his new career in D-grade action movies, has some good moments, though he's first seen vaping--apparently his go-to prop as DRIVE HARD and RECLAIM introduced him the exact same way. Some good performances aside (though Pattinson is wasted in a rather nothing role), MAPS TO THE STARS is all bark and no bite, filled with tired depictions of debauchery, transgression, and generally bad behavior, plus an act of self-immolation that features the worst CGI fire I've ever seen. Cronenberg needn't prove anything to anyone at this point, but he's still smarter than a de facto follow-up to a forgotten 25-year-old movie that almost nobody liked. One leaves MAPS TO THE STARS wishing its poster art's tag line "Eventually stars burn out" didn't seem so oddly prophetic for its director. And as far as Wagner is concerned, his only significant contribution to cinema remains sharing a story credit with Wes Craven on 1987's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS.
THE ROVER (Australia/US - 2014) Written and directed by David Michod. Cast: Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy, David Field, Tawanda Manyimo, Gillian Jones, Susan Prior, Anthony Hayes, Gerald Coulthard, Nash Edgerton, Jan Palo. (R, 103 mins) "You should never stop thinking about a life you've taken. That's the price you pay for taking it."
The Outback has been the setting of countless Australian films, and in the best of them, regardless of the genre, the vast, desolate region practically functions as a character. It gets one of its most unsettlingly sinister incarnations in THE ROVER, the latest film from ANIMAL KINGDOM director David Michod. Set "ten years after the collapse," THE ROVER opens with a stunning 15-minute sequence with the grizzled Eric (Guy Pearce) sitting alone in his car outside a shitty shack of a bar. He goes in for a drink as a pickup truck filled with three quarreling fugitives--Henry (Scoot McNairy), Archie (David Field), and Caleb (Tawanda Manyimo) flips over, careening past the bar and coming to an upright stop on the side of the road. Eric realizes too late that they're ditching the truck and taking his car. Glaring down the road, Eric decides to get in their truck and gets it unstuck by what seems like sheer will and determination, and takes off after them. After some high-speed road games, both cars come to a stop. Words are exchanged. Eric: "I want my car back." Archie: "I can see that." Eric: "Give me my car back." Henry: "That's not gonna happen." Even with guns pointed at him, Eric fearlessly charges at the men and gets knocked out for his trouble. He comes to and the men and his car are gone. He eventually crosses paths with Rey (Robert Pattinson), a slow-witted young man who happens to be Henry's younger brother. Shot in the stomach and assumed dead, Rey was left behind during whatever job his cohorts were pulling off. Eric, who proves time and again that he'll stop at nothing to get his car, takes Rey prisoner and orders him to take him to where his brother and the others are hiding out.
Part vigilante revenge saga, road movie, Ozploitation throwback, and dystopian nightmare punctuated by sudden bursts of shocking violence, THE ROVER has some surface similarities with John Hillcoat's THE PROPOSITION (2006), the great blood-splattered Outback western that also starred Pearce, but somehow, exists in a world that's even more bleak and nihilistic. Anyone can be killed at any moment in THE ROVER, and at any moment, the sins of your past can come back to haunt you. In his quest for revenge against the men who stole his car, Eric, the ostensible "hero," manages to leave a trail of bodies behind and brings death and tragedy to several people pulled into his destructive orbit. Michod asks a lot for the audience to get behind someone who's as much of an anti-hero as Eric, but as more layers of the character are revealed, there's glimpses of the man that may still lurk, however faintly, deep down. At its core, THE ROVER is a film about relationships, particularly the shaky bond that forms between and Eric and Rey. When Rey grows angry upon the realization that he's been left to die by his brother, it's debatable whether he comes to that conclusion on his own or if he's been manipulated into it by the misanthropic Eric, who's quite the killjoy with lines like "Who cares if he's your brother? Just because you both came out of the same woman's hole?" These are two men who, by different circumstances, are alone and find some tenuous common ground in a dangerous world where a wrong look gets you killed, seemingly kindly grandmothers offer young boys for sex, and the scenic route through the Outback offers the tourist-friendly sight of roadside crucifixions.
Pearce has rarely been better than he is here. With his constant snarl and his slumped right shoulder, he looks and moves like a wounded animal, and though Pattinson is sometimes a little too mannered, he generally handles his role well. I didn't care for David Cronenberg's COSMOPOLIS, but Pattinson, who reunited with Cronenberg for the upcoming MAPS TO THE STARS, continues to prove himself a sharper actor than you'd think as he seems to be taking on the most non-commercial projects he can to establish his post-TWILIGHT cred. To say much more would spoil the plot turns that THE ROVER takes, but it does offer a study in duality, not just with its two main characters, but also when the title and even the caption "ten years after the collapse" ultimately take on more than one meaning. Michod, cinematographer Natasha Breier, and the chillingly minimalist score by Antony Partos work together to create an atmosphere of suffocating hopelessness. You can smell the sweat and the despair. Real flies constantly swarm around the actors' faces. The stench of death and decay are everywhere under the perpetually baking sun. In many ways, THE ROVER is an Outback-set Sam Peckinpah homage, not in a way that Eric and Rey are men out of their own time with nothing left to do but go out with their guns blazing (as with THE WILD BUNCH), but in the quiet ways of loyalty and family and when someone's word meant something. It's not a crowd-pleasing summer movie for everyone, and you'll find the ultimate reveal either profoundly moving or dismiss it as completely hokey (one guy, a few rows back: "Are you kidding me?"). Eric is a total bastard and he's fully aware of it, but in a world where laws and a basic moral code have disintegrated and are never coming back, a man will do what he has to do to hold on to the slightest shred of humanity and dignity left in him. A love letter of understanding to the bitter misanthrope in all of us, THE ROVER is one of 2014's best films.
Postmodernist literary icon Don DeLillo has always seemed like one of those authors whose novels are simply unfilmable, and David Cronenberg proves both that theory and that every great director has to have a worst film with the ill-advised and badly-executed COSMOPOLIS, based on DeLillo's 2003 novel. Cronenberg hasn't shied away from difficult-to-film literary works before, and he succeeded with 1991's NAKED LUNCH, based on the William S. Burroughs novel. The filmmaker is long past the point of needing to prove anything to anyone, but COSMOPOLIS just doesn't work. In an admirable attempt to stretch, TWILIGHT's Robert Pattinson stars as 28-year-old Wall Street billionaire Eric Packer, whose fortune is about to be decimated by fluctuations in the Chinese yuan. Packer decides that today is the day he wants to travel across Manhattan to get a haircut, despite the protests of his security chief (Kevin Durand) that traffic is being tied up by a Presidential visit, anti-capitalist riots, and a funeral procession for a dead rap star, plus he's getting warnings from "The Complex" that there's been a "credible threat" issued against Packer. Undeterred, Packer orders his security team to take him for a haircut in his ludicrously high-tech stretch limo, where most of the film takes place. Over the course of the day-long ride, Packer picks up various advisors (Samantha Morton, Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire) for business meetings and philosophical discussions in the limo, hooks up with his art dealer (Juliette Binoche), picks up a doctor (Bob Bainborough) for his daily EKG and rectal exam, gets out of the limo for a quickie with one of his security detail (Patricia McKenzie), and to have lunch with his wife of less than a month (Sarah Gadon) who complains that she "smells sex" on him. Meanwhile, Occupy-type protestors vandalize the limo and one (Mathieu Amalric) throws a pie in Packer's face before he gets half of a haircut (from veteran Canadian character actor George Touliatos!) and comes face to face with the disgruntled ex-employee (Paul Giamatti) who has vowed to kill him.
Cronenberg updates DeLillo's novel to a certain extent (in the book, Packer was part of the dot com bubble), by tying in the Occupy Wall Street movement and utilizing the yuan as opposed to the Japanese yen. I get what Cronenberg was going after here, with Pattinson's intentionally blank-slate performance illustrating Packer's fundamental disconnect from reality, from emotions, from the 99%, etc. and in dark-humored bits where he's listening to his chief of theory Morton's financial analytical babbling while not even noticing that the limo is being violently attacked by rioters. But it's so ponderous, so tedious, and so heavy-handed that Cronenberg just never gets this off the ground. And dialogue like "The glow of cybercapital is so radiant and seductive," "Money has lost its narrative quality, the way painting did once upon a time," and "My prostate is asymmetrical," works a lot better on the page than on the screen being spoken by actors playing characters. Even the final-act appearance of Giamatti, cast radically against type as "Paul Giamatti," fails to generate any signs of life in this shockingly DOA misfire from Cronenberg. If you're looking for a reason why there haven't been any other features made of DeLillo's novels, look no further than COSMOPOLIS. Even with Pattinson's involvement, this still only played on 65 screens at its widest US release, grossing around $750,000. As bad as this Arthouse Hell is, it would've been undeniably entertaining to watch it in a crowded theater filled with members of Team Edward and seeing how quickly it took for an angry mob of texting Twi-hards to like, totally complain to the manager because they like, paid to get in here and this is so not cool because they're like, talking, and he's got that old doctor dude's finger up his ass, and it's like, eeew!(R, 109 mins)
RED HOOK SUMMER (US - 2012)
Other than documentaries like WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE (2006) and director-for-hire gigs like 25TH HOUR (2002) and INSIDE MAN (2006), Spike Lee has lost a bit of his magic when it comes to smaller, personal indie films. 2004's SHE HATE ME didn't seem to be liked by anyone and got Lee the worst reviews of his career. His latest, the low-budget, self-financed RED HOOK SUMMER, exhibits all the self-indulgent qualities that Lee keeps in check when he's working for a major studio. The newest chapter in Lee's "Brooklyn Chronicles" series (which includes such films as 1989's DO THE RIGHT THING, 1994's CROOKLYN, and 1998's HE GOT GAME), RED HOOK SUMMER (which Lee scripted with MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA writer James McBride), has 13-year-old Flik (Jules Brown) being shipped off from a cushy Atlanta suburb to the Red Hook projects in Brooklyn to spend the summer with his fiery preacher grandfather Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters). Flik isn't enthused about being there, especially when the Bishop makes it clear that he's using this time together to turn Flik to Jesus. The fish-out-of-water teen also befriends the outgoing Chazz (Toni Lysaith) and has a run-in with gang member and aspiring rapper Box (Nate Parker). Lee frequenly meanders and lets scenes drag on much longer than necessary, with a lot of screen time devoted to the drunken ramblings of Deacon Zee (Thomas Jefferson Byrd), who's never short on opinions about Wall Street and the bailout. And when he isn't doing things like switching film stock for no reason other than because he can, Lee even finds time for a couple of awkward walk-ons as an aged, paunchy, gray-bearded Mookie, his character from DO THE RIGHT THING, and yes, he's still delivering pizzas for Sal's. Really, Spike? Come on.
The best thing about RED HOOK SUMMER is a powerhouse performance from Peters, best known for his work on the HBO series THE WIRE and TREME. There's a third act plot development that essentially forces Lee to turn the whole film over to Peters, and it's here that it finally finds some dramatic momentum, even if it creates a massive logic lapse as to why Flik's mom would send him to Red Hook. Too much time is spent with Flik and Chazz, and I know they're new to this and it's the first movie for each of them and it's kind of a dick move to take cheap shots at young, inexperienced performers and I'm sure they're nice kids, but Brown and Lysaith are absolutely terrible actors. I really don't think Lee could've done a worse job casting these two pivotal roles. Peters tries to carry young Brown along, but there's only so much he can do. If you're a fan of Peters' television work, then RED HOOK SUMMER is worth seeing for him. He's great but he's not enough to keep this from being one of Lee's least-interesting films, though it does have Peters' WIRE co-star Isiah Whitlock, Jr. stopping by long enough to drop a "Sheeeeeeeeeit!" (and he's credited as Isiah "Sheeeeeeet" Whitlock, Jr!). Otherwise, it's a sluggishly-paced horse pill that actually seems to last an entire summer. (R, 121 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
(US - 2012)
Equal parts Terrence Malick and Maurice Sendak, the critically-adored BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD stars a cast of non-professional actors led by six-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis, who rises above the film's more frustrating elements to deliver a truly remarkable performance. As terrific as she is, the film as a whole failed to connect, regardless of how well-intentioned it is. Hushpuppy (Wallis) lives with her father Wink (Dwight Henry, also excellent) in an impoverished, fictional area off the coast of Louisiana known as "The Bathtub" (inspired by the disappearing Isle de Jean Charles). The Bathtub is on the wrong side of the levee, and as Hushpuppy's teacher Miss Bathsheba (Gina Montana) tells her, the ice caps are melting and The Bathtub will eventually cease to exist due to rising waters. Hushpuppy has visions of rampaging aurachs frozen for centuries, now freed by the melted ice caps, in addition to having imaginary conversations with her absent mother and trying to care for the loving, but unstable and frequently abusive Wink after a Katrina-like storm destroys The Bathtub. The residents of The Bathtub are the kinds of close-knit, insulated, and isolated types that have always been left behind by society. Most are illiterate and live in uninhabitable shacks (Hushpuppy has her own home, an elevated trailer near her dad's rundown shack; and their boat is the detached bed of a pickup truck). Director/co-writer Benh Zeitlin is to be commended for getting such a natural, unaffected performance out of a six-year-old novice (she's particularly devastating near the end, and it's Oscar-caliber work), but the film otherwise comes off like an NPR wet dream. (PG-13, 93 mins)
