21 BRIDGES (US/China - 2019) Directed by Brian Kirk. Written by Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan. Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Sienna Miller, J.K. Simmons, Taylor Kitsch, Stephan James, Keith David, Alexander Siddig, Louis Cancelmi, Morocco Omari, Chris Ghaffari, Victoria Cartagena, Gary Carr, Dale Pavinski, Jamie Neumann, Jennifer Onvie, Adriane Lenox. (R, 99 mins) Sometimes you just need a good old fashioned, big-city cop thriller and to that end, 21 BRIDGES gets the job done, even if it seems more like a January or an April release than something coming out just before Thanksgiving and the holiday season. Chadwick Boseman made his name on biopics (as Jackie Robinson in 42, James Brown in GET ON UP, and Thurgood Marshall in MARSHALL) before blowing up in Marvel's phenomenally successful BLACK PANTHER and two subsequent AVENGERS movies (in addition to his T'Challa earlier appearing in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR). With 21 BRIDGES, Boseman gets to display some stoical, next-gen Denzel Washington gravitas as NYPD homicide detective Andre Davis, a by-the-book cop who's nonetheless painted as a trigger-happy loose cannon by Internal Affairs pencil-pushers since he's known as "the cop who kills cop-killers." All the instances were deemed justified, but Davis has a constant spotlight on him because of his family history: he was 13 when his dad, a beloved and highly decorated officer, was killed in the line of duty, and his superiors think he uses that traumatic event to appoint himself judge, jury, and executioner. But it's Davis who gets called in as the lead investigator after a midnight shootout in Brooklyn leaves eight cops dead following the heist of a massive uncut cocaine stash in the basement of a posh winery. The two perps are a pair of Afghanistan war vets, both lifelong troublemakers with mile-long rap sheets: short-fused maniac Ray Jackson (Taylor Kitsch) and his reluctant accomplice Michael Trujillo (Stephan James). It's Jackson who blew all the cops away while Michael unsuccessfully tried to contain the situation, and now it's 1:00 am and they're forced to unload all the coke they could grab (they were told 30 kilos and they found 300), launder the money, and get out of town.
That becomes impossible after Davis has all 21 bridges leading into and out of Manhattan--along with all the subways going to the other boroughs--closed and the whole island put on lockdown, against the wishes of the FBI, who are giving him until 5:30 am to find the killers before it's his ass and they take over the case. On the orders of Brooklyn's 85th Precinct Capt. McKenna (J.K. Simmons), Davis is paired with narcotics detective Frankie Burns (Sienna Miller, really chewing on that Noo Yawk accent), and they remain consistently one step behind Jackson and Trujillo. But the more Davis digs into the details, the more something seems off. Why did the cops show up at the winery without being called? And how did the cops know that Jackson and Trujillo were at the home of money launderer Adi the Cleaner (Alexander Siddig)? Is it possible that Jackson and Trujillo got themselves involved in a situation that went way beyond a simple coke deal and were being set up by their shady contact (Louis Cancelmi)? Could it be that Davis was called into this case specifically because of his reputation for blowing away cop killers? Are these two particular cop killers being set up to take the fall as part of a conspiracy that may involve those sworn to uphold the law and will do whatever it takes to protect the shield? Have you ever seen a dirty cop movie before?
Yes, 21 BRIDGES is extremely formulaic and there's little suspense insofar as who the corrupt cops are, but more about how long it will be before Davis figures it out (boy, that one prominent character sure does linger in the background taking a few too many personal calls, huh?). It's the kind of movie where someone gives someone else a flash drive with damning information and that person takes one cursory glance at some random numbers and dollar amounts and instantly concludes "These are badge numbers!" It's the kind of movie where someone mentions the perps' car was spotted in Chinatown and there's an immediate cut to a rundown neighborhood with nothing but neon Chinese-lettered signs, yet the filmmakers still feel the need to include the caption "Chinatown." The script by Adam Mervis (whose original treatment was titled 17 BRIDGES until someone realized there were 21) and Matthew Michael Carnahan (WORLD WAR Z, DEEPWATER HORIZON) won't win any points for innovation, and Philadelphia isn't always convincing in its portrayal of Manhattan, but 21 BRIDGES has a solid lead in Boseman, and veteran TV director Brian Kirk (THE TUDORS, LUTHER, BOARDWALK EMPIRE, GAME OF THRONES) does a good job with keeping up the pace and suspense in the race-against-the-clock, survive-the-night scenario. It also has some well-done action and chase scenes courtesy of second-unit director and revered stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos, who's been busy working on various mega-budget FAST & FURIOUS and Marvel movies (likely where he crossed paths with Boseman), but here makes a return--at least in spirit--to the B-movie wheelhouse of his early days on William Lustig and Larry Cohen joints like the MANIAC COP franchise and THE AMBULANCE (a young Razatos also did that insane stunt facing off against an overturning car in 1987's SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2). 21 BRIDGES isn't destined for anything other than constant rotation on cable until the end of time, and it doesn't have an original thought in its head, but it's the kind of diverting enough entertainment that sufficiently scratches that itch when you want some empty calorie cop movie junk food.
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.
LIVE BY NIGHT (US - 2016) Written and directed by Ben Affleck. Cast: Ben Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Brendan Gleeson, Elle Fanning, Remo Girone, Robert Glenister, Miguel J. Pimentel, Matthew Maher, Anthony Michael Hall, Clark Gregg, Max Casella, J.D. Evermore, Christian Clemenson, Benjamin Ciaramello, Derek Mears. (R, 130 mins) Ben Affleck made his directing debut with 2007's excellent Dennis Lehane adaptation GONE BABY GONE, and after establishing himself as a solid filmmaker with 2010's THE TOWN and 2012's Best Picture Oscar-winner ARGO, he returns with LIVE BY NIGHT, based on another Lehane novel. Where GONE BABY GONE and THE TOWN (based on a Chuck Hogan novel) were set in contemporary Boston, LIVE BY NIGHT looks at the city in a Prohibition-era setting. While Affleck the director captures the look of late 1920s Boston, his script is all over the place and he's completely miscast in the lead role. Affleck isn't an actor who thrives in period pieces and the film would've been better served had he stayed behind the camera as he did with GONE BABY GONE and cast someone else (co-producer Leonardo DiCaprio, perhaps?). With his Panama hat and oversized suit, he never looks comfortable in the role of Joe Coughlin, a WWI vet and Boston stick-up man-turned-Tampa rum runner. There's simply too much story for a feature film, and here is yet another example of an overstuffed film that would've been better served as a cable miniseries where characters could be fleshed out and events wouldn't be so glossed over. The pacing is choppy and there's reams of sleepy,, mumbly Affleck narration to cover exposition and whole sections of plot that are missing, not to mention Scott Eastwood and Titus Welliver having their entire roles cut out (Welliver is still in the credits, but if he's there, I didn't see him). Robert Richardson's cinematography and Jess Gonchor's production design are top-notch and every now and again, there's a striking image (like a car engulfed in flames sticking out of a shallow lake) or a memorable line of dialogue (the "So what am I talkin' to you for?" bit is great), but the cluttered and muddled LIVE BY NIGHT is otherwise is just too familiar to make its own mark in the gangster genre, borrowing too many ideas from too many movies that came before it to tell a story we've seen countless times before.
Affleck's Coughlin is a small-time Boston hood who happens to be the son of a high-ranking police superintendent (Brendan Gleeson). He's also in love with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), the moll of powerful Irish mob kingpin Albert White (Robert Glenister). Their plan to run away together is thwarted when she's intimidated into ratting him out to White, who beats him senseless and leaves him in a coma. After he wakes and serves a stint in prison, he's paroled only to find his father has died and Emma was killed by White. Hell-bent on revenge, Coughlin forms an unholy alliance with Italian crime boss Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone) to take over the booze operation in the Tampa enclave of Ybor City and cut White out of the picture. Heading to Tampa with his buddy Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina), Coughlin teams with Cuban gangster Esteban Suarez (singer Miguel, under his full name Miguel J. Pimentel) and falls for his sister and partner Graciella (Zoe Saldana). Coughlin has to deal with all sorts of pressure, from stern police chief Figgis (Chris Cooper) cordially warning him to stay in his territory and they won't have any trouble, to the local chapter of the KKK, led by Figgis' idiot brother-in-law R.D. Pruitt (Matthew Maher), who wants a 60% cut of the business since Joe's club caters to Cubans and blacks and because he's hooked up with Graciella. LIVE BY NIGHT also finds time for a subplot about Figgis' wholesome daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning) heading off to Hollywood to be a movie star but instead falling into drugs and prostitution. She then returns to Ybor City to become a fire-and-brimstone preacher warning the townsfolk about the dangers of gambling and "the demon rum," which stonewalls Pescatore's plans for Coughlin to build a casino.
There's also double-crosses against Coughlin by the increasingly greedy Pescatore, who wants his moron son Digger (Max Casella) to take over the Ybor City operation, a sudden reappearance by a character presumed dead for no discernible reason, and about four endings before the credits finally roll. People are introduced and things happen so quickly and at times randomly that it's sometimes difficult to process who's who and how they figure into the story. LIVE BY NIGHT is always nice to look at and Affleck has an undeniable flair with set pieces (including an intense early card game stick-up that he does in a single take), but it's lacking everywhere else. He tries to cover it up with all the narration, but the seams don't take long to show. Affleck's performance is curiously bland throughout, never seeming like a 1920s gangster but always like a modern actor playing gangster dress-up (and for a smart guy, Coughlin is pretty brazenly stupid about being seen in public with Emma). Graciella's character arc makes no sense, bemoaning her husband's (yeah, she and Coughlin get married offscreen and then it's casually mentioned several scenes later) dangerous career, seemingly forgetting that they met because she's a partner in a major Cuban crime organization. Gleeson and Miller have nothing to do, and Cooper's character never makes consistent sense from scene to scene. Veteran Italian character actor Girone (in his first American film in a career going back to 1974) and an outstanding Fanning fare best, even if her Loretta ends up being another underdeveloped plot tangent that briefly turns the film into an Eli Sunday sermon from THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Affleck tries to go for a MILLER'S CROSSING feel, but ends up with a rushed, lesser BOARDWALK EMPIRE, and his own lackluster performance never inspires you to care much about Coughlin. By the third or fourth ending, the relaxed pace starts to lend a second-tier Clint Eastwood feeling to the proceedings, further demonstrating the uneven tone of the entire project. LIVE BY NIGHT might've had potential, and perhaps a longer director's cut would help, but in the end, it's a formulaic, cliche-laden misfire from Affleck.
HIGH-RISE (UK/Ireland/Belgium - 2016) Directed by Ben Wheatley. Written by Amy Jump. Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, Bill Paterson, Peter Ferdinando, Sienna Guillory, Reece Shearsmith, Stacy Martin, Augustus Prew, Tony Way, Enzo Cilenti, Dan Skinner, Louis Suc, Neil Maskell. (R, 119 mins) Producer Jeremy Thomas has tried to put together an adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel High-Rise since it was first published in 1975. Though regarded as unfilmable, it nearly came to be in the late '70s with director Nicolas Roeg and screenwriter Paul Mayersberg intending it to be their next film after 1976's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. That never happened, nor did any other attempt, and the closest anyone got prior to now was when CUBE director Vincenzo Natali nearly got the greenlight in the early 2000s. It took 40 years, but Thomas finally got HIGH-RISE made, with acclaimed British cult filmmaker Ben Wheatley at the helm, working from a script by his wife and writing partner Amy Jump. Wheatley has acquired a cult following with the overrated WICKER MAN knockoff KILL LIST, the dark comedy SIGHTSEERS, and the unnerving A FIELD IN ENGLAND, but HIGH-RISE is his most ambitious project yet, working with his biggest budget and largest, most prestigious ensemble cast yet.
Combining the coldness of David Cronenberg (whose controversial 1996 film CRASH was based on the Ballard novel of the same name) with the absurdist black comedy of Terry Gilliam, HIGH-RISE is ultimately done in by a too-lengthy delay between the publication of its source novel and its eventual big-screen adaptation. Had Roeg and Mayersberg made this in 1977, it likely would've been prophetically visionary and as highly regarded as THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH But now, in 2016, it's exhaustingly heavy-handed, hammering its points over the audience's head again and again, and even ending with a Margaret Thatcher soundbite just in case the themes of class struggle and the haves ruling the have-nots wasn't quite hammered home for the preceding two hours trip into the hellhole of dystopia and capitalism run amok. Med school instructor Robert Laine (Tom Hiddleston, in a role that would've been perfect for David Bowie had Roeg had his shot at this way back when) moves into the 25th floor of a Jenga-esque 40-story high-rise tower block. The swingin' 70s are here in all their glory, as Laine quickly hops into bed with sexually liberated single mom Charlotte (Sienna Miller), and the residents of the high-rise form a very insulated community with every convenience--a gym, pool, 15th floor grocery store--readily available. The not-very-subtly-named Royal (Jeremy Irons), the building's architect, lives in the top floor penthouse, and when problems start arising--priorities for supply deliveries going to the wealthy one-percenters on the top floors and the lower class near the bottom being plagued by frequent power outages--he dismisses it as "teething" and "the building settling in." Disgruntled, philandering TV documentarian Wilder (Luke Evans) lives on one of the lower floors with his very pregnant wife Helen (Elisabeth Moss) and several kids, and eventually leads a revolt against the rich and powerful in the high-rise. Soon, all sense of order disintegrates as the high-rise becomes both the entire world of its occupants and a microcosm (SYMBOLISM!) of societal inequality and injustice: garbage piles up, food molds, and it's kill or be killed as life metamorphoses into a visceral orgy of rage, violence, hate-fucking, and all manner of degradation, debauchery, and destruction.
This feels a lot like SNOWPIERCER in a skyscraper, from the class struggle motif to Wilder's making his way to the top of the building, all the way to one character admonishing Laine to "know your place." Sure, in retrospect, it looks like SNOWPIERCER--and other movies--co-opted a lot of Ballard's ideas, and that's not the fault of the filmmakers here, but it doesn't do this belated adaptation any favors. It's also reminiscent of a somewhat less abrasive BLINDNESS, though Wheatley and Jump do keep the unpleasantness to a minimum, mostly implying it except for a few examples of shock value shots and dialogue (Royal to Laine, during a game of squash: "By the way, I hear you're fucking 374...she has a tight cunt as I recall"). Laine is the relative "everyman" audience surrogate, a successful career man who lives in the middle of the building and is comfortable screwing third-floor Charlotte and hobnobbing with penthouse Royal and other near-the-top residents, like sneering, asshole gynecologist Pangbourne (James Purefoy). Royal, the Trump of the high-rise if you want a present-day analogy, speaks of the building as both a living, breathing entity and as a symbol of society. It's all rather facile and obvious, though again, it could've been the angry FIGHT CLUB of its day had it been made 40 years ago. Whatever ham-fisted conclusions there are to draw from the events in HIGH-RISE have already been made decades ago. Wheatley scores some points for the film's retro-future look that ties in perfectly with Laine's observation that it "looks like a future that had already happened," and trippy, early '70s prog tunes by Amon Duul and Can, and a Portishead cover of ABBA's "S.O.S." provide a lot of atmosphere, but HIGH-RISE is repetitive, dated, and eventually oppressive. The filmmakers swing for the fences and get a few hits, but it goes on forever and you'll be ready for it to end long before it finally does.
This wildly-acclaimed Austrian import ("The rebirth of Austrian horror," one blog emphatically declared ) was hailed as a new genre classic by the horror scenester echo chamber when it opened in limited release and on VOD in September of this year. Sure, there's an occasional BABADOOK or IT FOLLOWS where the hype is justified, but accolades of this sort might carry more weight if those same scenesters didn't say that about every new indie horror movie that comes out (remember every Ti West movie? Or when everyone said STARRY EYES was the next classic? Remember how everyone was pumped about THE GALLOWS and then it was actually released?). GOODNIGHT MOMMY gets an extra love tap with the kid gloves since it's a subtitled foreign film, as if that lends it a classy sheen to help deflect the rote predictability of the entire endeavor. There's some baiting-and-switching and a big twist of a reveal at the end, but anyone not declared legally brain-dead will be able to call it by the ten-minute mark, so all that's left to do is sit and wait. Then the twist comes--and it plays out just as you predicted--and the movie's over. Giving off the stench of bargain-basement Michael Haneke, GOODNIGHT MOMMY has an interesting and disturbing set-up, but the writing/directing team of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala switch gears almost immediately, turning the film into another tired "evil children" piece that just spins its wheels and turns into a stultifyingly tedious waste of time. When their mother (Susanne Wuest) returns home from having some kind of vague cosmetic surgery, nine-year-old twin brothers Elias and Lukas (Elias and Lukas Schwarz) are alarmed by her increasingly erratic behavior--she's prone to mood swings, demands total silence, and won't even acknowledge Lukas--and come to believe the woman whose face is covered in gauze and bandages (an admittedly unsettling image) isn't their mother. So far, so good, but then the sinister element of "Who is this woman?" is up-ended as the bandages come off and the boys go to extreme measures to get this person who looks exactly like their mother to confess her true identity, morphing into a rote "creepy kids" movie, even if it's the sensitive Elias acting under the direction of the persuasive and domineering Lukas. The twist is so embarrassingly easy to see that you figure there has to be something more, but there isn't. That is, unless you count the boys super-glueing their mother's mouth and eyes shut and blood gushing all over the place when they try to cut her lips open. A film that almost sets a land-speed record for going from intriguing to actively pissing me off, GOODNIGHT MOMMY can't even get much out of its ominous, middle-of-nowhere setting in a huge house straight out of a classic giallo. Come on, bloggers and horror fanboys. Your hype and fawning praise are meaningless if you don't start being a little more discerning and a little less concerned with keeping the free shit coming. (R, 100 mins)
MISSISSIPPI GRIND
(US - 2015)
For a while, the gambling drama MISSISSIPPI GRIND, the latest from the writing/directing team of Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (HALF NELSON), seems like a shaggy dog road movie that doesn't appear to be ambling to anywhere in particular. But it carries itself like a '70s character study along the lines of its two primary 1974 influences: you could argue that it's a loose remake of Robert Altman's CALIFORNIA SPLIT, but it also owes a lot to Karel Reisz's THE GAMBLER, right down to the brief presence of veteran filmmaker and GAMBLER screenwriter James Toback in a rare acting role. With his slumped shoulders and dark cloud perpetually hovering over his head, Ben Mendelsohn straddles the line between good-natured but unlucky sad sack and sketchy, self-serving shitbag as Gerry, a down-on-his-luck real estate agent who owes money all over Dubuque. With his soft-spoken but serious loan shark (Alfre Woodard in some unexpected casting) tells him the clock's ticking, Gerry hits the road with new acquaintance Curtis (Ryan Reynolds), a confident and gregariously likable guy he recently met at a seedy dive of a casino, the kind of effortlessly smooth talker who loves to tell stories and has everybody at the poker table laughing. Once he meets Curtis, Gerry coincidentally starts winning and is convinced Curtis is his good-luck charm ("You're my leprechaun!"). Gerry splits town, helping himself to $200 in his employer's petty cash fund, dragging the goes-where-life-takes-him Curtis (Curtis to Gerry: "What? You have a job?") on a road trip to Memphis and through Little Rock to New Orleans, by which time Gerry presumes to have earned enough money to invite himself to a secret poker game with a $25K buy-in hosted by Tony Roundtree (Toback), a big-time gambler he only knows of through Curtis' second-hand stories.
Things obviously don't pan out, as Gerry is a character played by Ben Mendelsohn, who's sort-of cornering the market on dodgy, untrustworthy skeezes and small-time scam artists (ANIMAL KINGDOM, KILLING THEM SOFTLY, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, LOST RIVER, and the Netflix series BLOODLINE). Like the Altman film it models itself on, MISSISSIPPI GRIND is about the interaction between the two main characters and how their bond brings out the best and worst in one another. Gerry is a hopeless, reckless gambler who loves the thrill of the bet but is terrible at it. So is Curtis, but his confidence carries him and compared to Gerry, he knows when to walk away. Curtis, whose financial solvency is never really explored, mainly just likes talking to people and finds poker tables are the best place to people-watch. He goes along with Gerry initially because he's got nothing else going on but eventually because he just likes him, and if Gerry believes Curtis is the source of his luck, then so be it. It's hard to get a read on Curtis, and that's by design. Reynolds again proves himself to be a much better actor than his detractors would ever be willing to admit (he was a last-minute replacement for Jake Gyllenhaal, who was delayed on another project), and he's a good match with Mendelsohn, who gets to show different shades of his character as the film progresses. He's funny and likable one moment, desperate and pathetic the next--nowhere is this more apparent than in a very uncomfortable reunion with his embittered ex-wife (Robin Weigert). Sienna Miller and Analeigh Tipton are saddled with underwritten and rather superfluous supporting roles as hookers-with-hearts-of-gold who capture the attention of Curtis and Gerry respectively, but other than that and an ending that's sufficient but does wrap things up a little too neat and tidy, MISSISSIPPI GRIND is an engaging, slow-burner throwback character piece that would've been right at home if it had opened 40 years ago instead of today, on just 46 screens for a total gross of $130,000. (R, 109 mins)
MOMENTUM
(US/South Africa/Spain - 2015)
The kind of movie where an establishing aerial shot features the Capitol Building in the foreground and the Washington Monument in the background and still feels the need to include the caption "Washington, D.C.," MOMENTUM is cliched almost to the point of parody. It has a hissing, snarky villain who, just before he's about to off the hero, opts to give an endless, condescending speech instead. You'd be correct in assuming a bad guy like that is also prone to hackneyed chess analogies that come back to bite him in the ass, as he of course gets the upper hand on the hero and sneers "Check!" which is pretty much an open invitation to that hero to declare "Checkmate!" just before killing him. And that's exactly how it plays out. Nevertheless, once it gets settled in after a clunky and confusing opening, MOMENTUM is stupid but reasonably entertaining action movie junk food. It's complete garbage, but it's energetic and has a pair of fun performances at its core, plus one seriously slumming surprise guest star who's not featured in the trailer, the poster art, or in any of the promotional material, and who couldn't possibly have been on the set for more than half a day, literally phoning in his performance from behind a desk.
After a botched Cape Town bank robbery where one of the criminals, Alexis (QUANTUM OF SOLACE's Olga Kurylenko) loses her mask in front of a lobby full of witnesses, a cleanup crew of hired killers led by the gleefully snide and sardonic Mr. Washington (James Purefoy) is dispatched to eliminate the entire team. Alexis had plans to disappear after this One Last Job, but now she's fighting for her life with Washington and his goons in hot pursuit. The killers are in the employ of a corrupt US senator (Morgan Freeman...yes, that Morgan Freeman), who's secretly planning a terrorist attack in Chicago in order to start a new war and secure a huge defense contract, with his entire nefarious plan laid out on a flash drive that Alexis acquired in the bank job (why a US senator would save that on a flash drive and then go through the trouble of storing it in a safety deposit box in South Africa remains a mystery). Co-written by Adam Marcus (JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY, TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D) and directed by a debuting Stephen Campanelli, a veteran camera operator who's been part of Clint Eastwood's crew since 1995's THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (MILLION DOLLAR BABY and INVICTUS star and nice guy Freeman obviously doing a solid for Campanelli, who likely wasn't going to risk getting booted off the Malpaso payroll by asking Clint to play the senator), MOMENTUM knows exactly what kind of movie it is, and it's almost nonstop action after the clumsy first act. Kurylenko displays steely gravitas as a kickass heroine who walks away from CGI explosions like a pro (team her up with Milla Jovovich!), and a constantly smirking Purefoy is having a blast as Mr. Washington ("Oh, you magnificent bitch!" he yells at Alexis when she outsmarts him yet again), There's some brutal action sequences, some winking Eastwood homages (cue the "Do you feel lucky?" speech) and self-referential auto-critiques ("I've seen this in too many movies," Washington glowers as Alexis is doing exactly what he thinks she's doing) and an inspired bit where one bad guy's head is smashed apart with a kid's Tonka Truck. A late-breaking plot development involving Alexis' background as a rogue CIA superagent recruited from the Mossad would appear to set up a BOURNE-like franchise that likely isn't happening, considering the $20 million film went straight to VOD in the US and is currently making headlines for grossing the equivalent of $69 during its ten-screen theatrical release in the UK. It's enjoyable for what it is--wait for it to turn up on Netflix Instant and queue it up on a slow night expecting nothing and you'll be entertained. (Unrated, 96 mins)
It couldn't have been that difficult to put together a riveting true crime drama about the events leading up to the 1996 murder of Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz at the hand of billionaire philanthropist John du Pont. Du Pont, played here by a prosthetic nose attached to Steve Carell, was the heir to the Du Pont chemical company fortune who dabbled in all sorts of professions--he was best-known as a respected ornithologist who published several books on birds--but had a passion for wrestling. In 1986, Du Pont contacts Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), the younger brother of Dave (Mark Ruffalo), both of whom won gold medals in wrestling at the 1984 Olympics, about running a training facility for potential Olympic wrestlers at du Pont's Foxcatcher Farms compound in Wilmington, DE. Mark, depicted as a bit of a dumb lug, has grown tired of living in Dave's shadow, and since Dave is contractually tied down to his college coaching gig, Mark sees this as his chance to establish a legacy of his own, even though, as he constantly has to remind everyone, "I won a gold medal, too." A father-son bond forms between du Pont and Mark, though their relationship gets rocky, especially once Dave eventually joins the Foxcatcher team at du Pont's insistence, though it's not helped by du Pont's increasingly erratic behavior, including firing a gun in the gym and goading the impressionable, eager-to-please Mark into recreational cocaine use.
Director Bennett Miller (CAPOTE, MONEYBALL) and screenwriters E. Max Frye (SOMETHING WILD) and Dan Futterman (CAPOTE) play entirely too fast and loose with the facts of the case, so much so that it's hard to say which is the most egregious offense. It could be that the film seems to portray the events as taking place from 1986 to just after the Seoul qualifying tryouts in 1988, when in fact, the time period was 1986 to 1996. It could be the depiction of Mark leaving Foxcatcher after du Pont and Dave become chummy and Mark falls out of du Pont's good graces, when in fact, there was no sibling rivalry in regard to du Pont because the Schultz brothers didn't live or coach together at Foxcatcher--Dave moved his family to Foxcatcher a year after Mark quit following his last falling out with du Pont. It could be du Pont's mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and her disapproval of his wrestling fixation and the creation of Foxcatcher Farms, but in fact, she died before du Pont even created Foxcatcher Farms. Dramatic license is to be expected, but it's very vague exactly what the filmmakers are trying to show here. Essentially, it's about a rich, manipulative, socially inept weirdo whose mother had to buy friends for him when he was a child, and his codependent relationship with a none-too-bright wrestler who was tired of getting the leftover table scraps of his more popular brother. It's about a guy who develops an obsession with coaching wrestling so he can both please his disapproving mom and finally get a chance to be one of the guys, even if he has to drive a wedge between two loving brothers to achieve it. Except that du Pont didn't drive the brothers apart. FOXCATCHER is smoke-and-mirrors Oscar-baiting at its most cynical, starting with the stunt casting of Carell. Sure, it's a dramatic departure for a guy generally known for comedy, but since everything about FOXCATCHER is empty and meaningless, there's nothing there beyond the distracting fake nose. It's mind-boggling that this received five Oscar nominations, including acting nods for Carell and Ruffalo, who's good because he's Mark Ruffalo and he's always good, but this is hardly a standout performance in his career. Miller's direction and Frye & Futterman's script were also nominated, while the one legitimately great thing about FOXCATCHER--the revelatory work of Tatum--went ignored. In a textbook example of an internalized powderkeg of a performance, Tatum almost single-handedly makes the inexplicably feted FOXCATCHER worth enduring for 134 excruciating minutes. It's these kinds of performances that go unnoticed by awards outfits because they're too subtle and low-key, not like Carell acting all creepy with a ridiculous phony schnoz. FOXCATCHER is proof positive that Tatum can act, but otherwise, it's one of the worst awards-season prestige films in years. (R, 134 mins)
THE CAPTIVE (Canada - 2014)
Coming quickly on the heels of his utterly superfluous West Memphis Three chronicle DEVIL'S KNOT, the once-great Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan continues his decade-long slide into irrelevance with the maddeningly uneven THE CAPTIVE. With only 2008's ADORATION showing signs of the Egoyan of old, the filmmaker has spent most of his time over the last ten or so years making documentaries and short films as passion projects while keeping food on the table by directing commercial thrillers like WHERE THE TRUTH LIES (2005) and CHLOE (2009), an erotic thriller that felt 15 years old the day it was released. Egoyan tries to have the best of both worlds with THE CAPTIVE and while the film has its moments, it just doesn't work as a whole. Most of THE CAPTIVE is made up of the same kind of fractured, non-linear narrative that old-school Egoyan fans will recognize from his 1990s masterpieces EXOTICA and THE SWEET HEREAFTER. In the outskirts of Niagara Falls, ON, 21-year-old Cass (Alexia Fast) was abducted eight years earlier by Mika (Kevin Durand) and kept in a locked basement room. Mika allows her webcam access to function as a "gateway," luring other young girls into a vaguely-defined underage kidnapping ring. Cass' separated parents, Matthew (Ryan Reynolds) and Tina (Mireille Enos) are shells of what they once were, and Tina blames Matthew for Cass' disappearance (he stopped at a bakery to get a pie for dessert that night as 13-year-old Cass was taken while lying down in the backseat of his truck). The cops, led by crusading Dunlop (Rosario Dawson) and hot-headed Cornwall (Scott Speedman), seem pretty set on the idea that financially-strapped Matthew is behind Cass' disappearance, at least until Dunlop herself goes missing after a benefit dinner for a charity organization that helps victims of child sex trafficking.
All of this plot is parsed out in bits and pieces as Egoyan jumps around the eight-year timeline. It gradually comes together like it does in his best work, and in that best work, attentive viewers begin piecing the puzzle and marveling at Egoyan's expert story construction and devastating emotional impact. THE CAPTIVE has the puzzle part down, but not so much the expert story construction and the devastating emotional impact. Once the pieces are in place, Egoyan doles out one ludicrous and often laughable contrivance after another. Mika is one of these limitlessly wealthy psychos who has the time and the technological wherewithal to plant cameras in the rooms of an entire floor of the hotel where Tina works, for the sole purpose of leaving Cass' childhood trinkets and mementos--a hairbrush, an ice-skating trophy, baby teeth--in plain sight for her to see, taunting her from afar as he watches her on a row of monitors on a control panel at his mansion. It doesn't help that, as in DEVIL'S KNOT, Egoyan has directed Durand to go hammy, playing Mika broadly and completely unbelievably. Like Sharlto Copley in Spike Lee's remake of OLDBOY, Durand doesn't even seem to be in the same movie as the other actors, looking like an anachronistic, erudite David Niven/Errol Flynn-type and behaving like a cartoon character, but somehow never drawing attention to himself and never becoming a suspect, even though he visits one other busted member of a pedophile ring in jail. Also, when Dunlop is roofied and taken from the gala benefit, she's at the same table as Mika and a strange woman (Christine Horne) in an obvious wig, and nobody seems to notice that the guest speaker is stumbling and bumbling and needs to be helped out of the building and into a waiting limo by this mystery woman. Is there an entire secret society of child abductors in this town? And are they less interested in pedophilia and more focused on using high-tech surveillance to spy on their parents and the cops? How in the hell does Mika have remote access to turn on the webcam on Cornwall's laptop so he can spy on Cornwall and Dunlop discussing their investigation? If Egoyan were ever to direct an episode of LAW & ORDER: SVU, it would probably look a lot like THE CAPTIVE, right down to the detectives standing around the office and chiming in with bits of exposition as the camera moves around them. The only thing missing is Dunlop calling in Richard Belzer's retired John Munch to consult on the case. Witness this stunning exercise in textbook Dick Wolfery:
Detective 1: "Maybe there was a watcher." Detective 2: "Or watchers." Detective 3: "A whole new class of freaks."
More than a little reminiscent of Denis Villeneuve's PRISONERS, THE CAPTIVE could've worked one of two ways: as a total throwback, give-the-arthouse-nerds-what-they-want Atom Egoyan film (fixtures like Bruce Greenwood and Egoyan's wife Arsinee Khanjian have minor supporting roles!) or as a ludicrous-but-just-roll-with-it multiplex thriller, where the contrivances and the silliness could've been easier to overlook, and a moment like Cornwall, one of the most unjustifiably cocky cops you'll ever see (he's always wrong!), finally getting clocked by an enraged Matthew would've served as a real crowd-pleaser. But Egoyan is just lost. He comes up short at both ends of the spectrum and seems to have no idea what he's doing or who his films are even for anymore. Egoyan is too smart to let the rampant stupidity of THE CAPTIVE's second half even happen, especially after making such a concerted effort to present the first half as quintessential Egoyan. I'm a sucker for depictions of cold, snowy, desolate Canada and the film does succeed on that front, and Egoyan does get two strong performances from Reynolds and Enos, both of whom seem to dominate the "smart" portions of the movie, but THE CAPTIVE is yet another sign that a slumping Egoyan desperately needs to locate his apparently abducted mojo. (R, 112 mins)
AMERICAN SNIPER (US - 2014) Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Jason Hart. Cast: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Luke Grimes, Sammy Sheik, Cory Hardrict, Sam Jaeger, Kyle Gallner, Keir O'Donnell, Jake McDorman, Mido Hamada, Reynaldo Gallegos, Kevin Lacz, Ayman Samman, Ben Reed, Marnette Patterson. (R, 132 mins)
Clint Eastwood stops just short of crafting AMERICAN SNIPER as a hagiography of Iraq War hero Chris Kyle, whose 160 confirmed kills have him credited as the most lethal sniper in US military history. Kyle was killed at the age of 38 at a shooting range in 2013 by a fellow vet suffering from PTSD, but since the publication of his memoir in 2012 up to the release of the film, questions have lingered. Questions that Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall (PARANOIA) sidestep completely: Kyle's penchant for boasting and braggadocio (he claims to have killed 255 in Iraq instead of 160); his alleged throwdown with someone he calls "Scruff-Face," claiming they were insulting Navy SEALs--Kyle later revealed this person to be Jesse Ventura, who eventually sued Kyle's estate and won, resulting in that chapter being removed from subsequent printings of the book; his claim that he and a buddy drove to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and killed 30 looters; or that he killed two men who were trying to steal his truck. There's no evidence to support these claims, and may just be shit-talk by a war-shattered man who, regardless of how tall his tales may have been, served his country and died trying to help a brother whose pain he knew all too well.
In tap-dancing around Kyle's life and avoiding the risk of offending his family in any way (Kyle's father claims to have looked Eastwood in the eye and told him he'd "unleash hell" on him if the movie disrespected his son), Eastwood and Hall simply present him as a humble, quietly mumbling, aw-shucks cowboy type, very well-played by a monstrously bulked-up Bradley Cooper. Cooper delivers a largely internalized performance, often looking like he'd rather crawl into a shell and doing his best to bury the horrors of war and the things he's seen and done--his first kill is a small child about to hurl a grenade at approaching Marines. Through four tours over a decade, he follows the standard character arc of a career soldier who's more at home in war than in the quiet and tranquil homefront. While the combat sequences have a raw, visceral intensity--particularly one scene involving an al-Zarqawi subordinate known as The Butcher (Mido Hamada), and his power-drill torture of a young boy that Eastwood and his usual editor Joel Cox handle with nail-biting, precise immediacy--the film too rigidly follows a template. It's great to see Eastwood, a notoriously fast director whose films have gotten downright sloppy in recent years, dig in and really make these sequences work. But what's here really isn't all that different from THE HURT LOCKER, swapping out an EOD bomb-disposal sergeant for a SEAL sniper, and other than a climactic firefight in a sandstorm, Eastwood often boils the Iraq War down to a cat-and-mouse game between Kyle, nicknamed "Legend" and with a $180,000 bounty on his head by terrorist insurgents, and feared al-Qaeda sniper Mustafa (Sammy Sheik), a character and subplot invented for the film.
Dramatic license is a given, and like the discrepancies between the real Captain Phillips and his portrayal in CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, it's possible to simply accept the film on its own terms. But while AMERICAN SNIPER works best in battle, its weakest sections are when Kyle is back home between tours. Sienna Miller is saddled with a stock "military wife" role as Taya Kyle, given little to do other than cry, whether she's calling Chris and listening in horror when he drops the phone in the middle of a firefight, or whether he's at home staring into space and she exclaims--wait for it--"Even when you're here...you're not here!" Miller does what she can with an underwritten role, and she's terrific in their early scenes prior to their marriage when she's feisty and independent. But once she becomes Mrs. Kyle, Taya is just worried, pregnant, or worried and pregnant. Taya Kyle is obviously a strong and intelligent woman, but AMERICAN SNIPER keeps her superficial and uncomplicated. There's a complex film to be made about the many sides of Chris Kyle and there are inconsistencies that need to be addressed, but nobody seemed up to it, almost as if even the appearance of criticizing or questioning him in any way would've diminished his accomplishments and his legacy.
Chris Kyle (1974-2013)
Eastwood once made challenging films weren't afraid to show that there were two sides to every man, whether it's the devoted father and good cop who spends his off-hours indulging in kinky, S&M sex with prostitutes the sleaziest areas of New Orleans in TIGHTROPE, or the bloodthirsty killer-turned-family man forced to once again unleash that inner beast in UNFORGIVEN. He's even explored this idea in a combat setting with LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, which managed to effectively show the human, sympathetic side of Japanese soldiers in WWII. Historically, he's confronted serious moral issues in ways that are anything but black or white (think of the quandary presented to his fatherly trainer character in MILLION DOLLAR BABY or the choice made by his embittered retiree in GRAN TORINO), but with this and 2014's earlier JERSEY BOYS, he's made two consecutive biopics that seem too safe, too corner-cutting, and too eager to treat their subjects with kid gloves. At least AMERICAN SNIPER can get by on its combat intensity and a strong performance by Cooper--whereas JERSEY BOYS was indicative of Eastwood at his least-engaged--but the transparency of its Oscar-baiting couldn't be any more obvious if Harvey Weinstein was producing it. Eastwood didn't become the legend he is by being conventional, mainstream, and abiding by the rules, and regardless of how well-made it is on a technical level, AMERICAN SNIPER is something that requires a more substantive approach than its maker is interested in taking at this point in his career.
