Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Premieres at Cannes

      by

      After paying tribute to an emotional Harrison Ford, the festival unspooled the newest sequel to decidedly mixed results. On Thursday, Harrison Ford stood before a rapturous crowd at the Cannes Film Festival and reminded us that Tom Cruise isn’t the last movie star.Ford, here with the latest “Indiana Jones” sequel, didn’t arrive at his premiere with a retinue of fighter jets, as Cruise did last year for “Top Gun: Maverick.” Instead Ford, now 80, gave the festival and the volubly appreciative audience exactly what it wanted and needed: glamour, yes, but also soul, emotion, that familiar crinkly smile and a lot of great history.That history was on display in a snappy, coherently edited homage that got the evening started. The salute took off with a clip from Agnès Varda’s “The World of Jacques Demy” (1995), itself a feature-length tribute to her husband that’s a reminder of Ford’s French connections. In the late 1960s, Demy had wanted to cast the then-unknown Ford in “Model Shop” but couldn’t convince the studio to hire him. Demy settled for another actor, but he and Varda remained friends with Ford. It’s a blast when the actor, looking at the camera, says with a smile, “I’m told that the studio said to forget me, that I had no future in this business.”After racing through other career touchstones like “Blade Runner” and “Star Wars,” the homage culminated with a title card that proclaimed Ford “one of the greatest stars in the history of cinema.” It’s no wonder that when Ford took to the stage of the Lumière theater, which with some 2,000 seats is imposingly large, he looked so visibly moved. By his side was the festival’s director, Thierry Frémaux, who, speaking in English, gushed about Ford as giddily as a kid who’s still high after seeing Indy onscreen for the first time. Rather anticlimactically, Frémaux also presented Ford an honorary Palme d’Or.“I’m very touched, I’m very moved by this,” Ford said. “They say that when you’re about to die, you see your life flash before your eyes. And I just saw my life flash before my eyes — a great part of my life, but not all of my life. My life has been enabled by my lovely wife,” he continued, looking out into the audience at Calista Flockhart. He then told the attendees that he loved them — people shouted, “We love you!” in return — and after a few more sweetly gruff words, Ford reminded the room that “I have a movie you ought to see.”That movie, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” — oops, I mean “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” — was, alas, a disappointment and not just because a funny, misty-eyed and charming Harrison Ford proclaiming his love in the flesh to fans is a tough act to follow. One problem is that the movie itself plays like a greatest-hits reel. It’s stuffed with Nazis, chase sequences, explosions, crashes and what seems like almost every adventure-film cliché that the series has deployed and recycled since it began, though unlike the Cannes reel, there’s nothing snappy about this 154-minute slog.It’s too bad. Ford certainly deserves better, and the director James Mangold can do better. (He shares script credit with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp.) Mangold has toggled between Hollywood and indiewood throughout his career, with credits that include “Cop Land,” an indie crime drama with Sylvester Stallone, and “Logan,” one of the finest Marvel-superhero movies. “Logan” was especially striking simply because Mangold managed to put his own stamp on material that all too often is so deliberately generic and industrial that the results could have come off an assembly line.“The Dial of Destiny” — the title alone didn’t bode well — isn’t terrible. It’s at once overstuffed and anemic, both too much and not nearly enough. It’s also wildly unmodulated for roughly the first half. It opens in 1944 Europe with Indy being manhandled by Nazis amid a lot of choreographed chaos, his head covered in a cloth bag. When the bag comes off, it reveals a distractingly digitally de-aged Ford, looking kind-of-but-not-really like he looked in the first couple of films. A lot happens and happens again, mostly character introductions, explanations and stuff whirring rapidly.The movie improves in the second half, slowing and quieting down enough for the actors to do more than run, grimace and shout. By then, the casting of Fleabag, a.k.a. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as Indy’s latest partner-in-adventure makes sense, whether she’s quipping or flexing her action-chick muscles. She’s fun to watch, as are Mads Mikkelsen, Toby Jones and Antonio Banderas, who exit and enter with winks and sneers. Of course the real attraction here is Ford, who holds your attention when the movie doesn’t and whose every wisecrack, flirty gaze and slow burn make it clear that he didn’t have to be de-aged because — as everyone in that vibrating room at Cannes knew — he’s immortal. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Museum of the Revolution’ Review: Sheltering in an Abandoned Utopia

      by

      This quiet documentary observes three unhoused women from different generations who live among the remains of an unfinished museum in Belgrade.Srdan Keca’s quiet observational documentary “Museum of the Revolution” is set in the purlieus of a onetime utopian building project: a monument to Yugoslavia that was meant to serve as a socialist gathering space. The structure was abandoned in the late 1970s, and today its unfinished basement level has become the dwelling place for a small community of unhoused people.The film opens with archival footage of a midcentury construction site, but soon pivots to showcase a series of haunting images of the museum as it currently stands: dark, dank and littered with debris. Successive scenes focus on three inhabitants of the space: an older woman named Mara, a boisterous child named Milica and Milica’s weary mother, Vera, who earns money scrubbing the windshields of cars stopped at motorway red lights.A lot of the film unfolds without speaking. Minutes pass as Mara and Milica amuse themselves together or enjoy time alone. The dialogue we receive offers snippets of the women’s life stories: we learn that Mara is estranged from her daughter, that Vera’s husband is incarcerated and that child welfare services tried to take custody of Milica at least once before.Keca often captures the women during spells of waiting, and builds a mood of transience by depicting them across seasons, spaces and hours of the day. This is an engrossing documentary, and one that raises questions about the ethics of intervening (or not) in the lives of people struggling to get by. That these queries hover unresolved may leave viewers uneasy, but it also positions us alongside the subjects, waiting for a solution that’s yet to arrive.Museum of the RevolutionNot rated. In Serbo-Croatian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Taking’ Review: This Land Is Not Your Land

      by

      Monument Valley embodies the Old West. But the fantasies presented in Westerns obscure its darker history and the lives of the Navajo people who inhabit it.Whether it’s John Wayne films or Chevrolet ads, Monument Valley has been immortalized in the American imagination as a symbol of this nation’s vast potential. “The Taking,” a new documentary directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, examines the site’s complicated position as a representation of the Old West despite being located on Navajo land.In the film, images and clips of movies, TV shows and advertising campaigns that have traditionally featured Monument Valley are accompanied by voice-overs that explain how white cowboys have been viewed as heroes and Native Americans as aggressors, obscuring a history of genocide and oppression.The film argues that perhaps no one has been more central to this effort than the director John Ford, who used the region as the backdrop for his western movies, with the dramatic landscape evoking and perpetuating ideals of freedom and liberation central to his stories of rugged cowboys and villainous “Indians.”Obscured in this myth making is the reality of the Navajo people, many of whom still live in the region without running water or access to stable incomes. “The Taking” is successful in demonstrating the way in which Monument Valley has become a canvas onto which the public can superimpose their own ideas and myths. But had it included more current images of the region and the realities of the Navajo people, it may have been more effective in replacing these myths, going beyond film analysis to altering imagination.The TakingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 16 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Stay Awake’ Review: Becoming Their Mother’s Caretakers

      by

      This story of a small-town family impacted by addiction succeeds in humanizing its characters but falters when it tries to include a coming-of-age tale.Jamie Sisley’s narrative feature directorial debut, “Stay Awake,” is not a novel story for those with a family member or loved one struggling with addiction. A small-town drama, the film stars Wyatt Oleff and Fin Argus as two teenage brothers, Ethan and Derek, who are forced to become caregivers for their mother, Michelle (Chrissy Metz), after she becomes dependent on prescription painkillers. It’s an all-too-familiar scenario across the United States, and the highs, lows and disappointments that Michelle and her sons face throughout her rocky treatment are both incredibly human and unfortunately predictable.“Stay Awake” does its best to center both its addiction story and Ethan and Derek’s own separate coming-of-age arcs, all without demonizing any of its characters.It’s an admirable goal that sometimes comes off as clunky and meandering, such as when Ethan awkwardly breaks up with his girlfriend by revealing he plans to go to a different college. The ensuing drama doesn’t quite match up to the life-or-death stakes present elsewhere in the film, or even to other situations Ethan faces, like having a secret crush on a male classmate. Despite such shortcomings, Oleff, Argus and Metz succeed in depicting both the frustrations and the compassion associated with caring for relatives who continuously harm themselves.Stay AwakeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Butterfly Vision’ Review: A Ukrainian Soldier’s Lonely Struggle

      by

      A traumatized woman returns home from eastern Ukraine after being held captive by Russian separatists.In the relentlessly bleak military drama “Butterfly Vision,” Lilia (Rita Burkovska) is a Ukrainian drone pilot struggling to readjust to life on the home front after enduring months in captivity at the hands of Russian separatists in the Donbas region.The story begins as Lilia makes the trek home, where she tends to an array of keloid scars and a flood of disturbing memories. She receives limited support from her anguished mother (Myroslava Vytrykhovska-Makar) and even less from her husband, Tokha (Lyubomyr Valivots), an extremist militia member who seems capable of accessing only two frames of mind: seething rancor or violent rage.This series of upsetting events grows even more dire, though, after we learn that Lilia was raped while captive and has become pregnant as a result.From the outset, the director, Maksym Nakonechnyi, establishes a cinematic language that incorporates footage from various sources: livestream feeds, aerial drone video, broadcast news B-roll. Perhaps the film’s most audacious choice is to use the texture of these formats — their lags, distortion and pixelation — when conveying Lilia’s daily torrent of post-traumatic stress. The effect is jarring, and feels less like a window into her experience than a brash camera trick.But “Butterfly Vision” distinguishes itself in its setting. The film was made before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and its story captures an early wartime phase when attitudes toward the conflict were divided. In one scene, Lilia boards a bus and claims exemption from the fare because of her status as a veteran. Vexed and disapproving, the driver and passengers raise a ruckus until she disembarks. The film might aim to deliver an aesthetic and emotional jolt, but it is the mundane, interpersonal moments that linger.Butterfly VisionNot rated. In Ukrainian, English and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Watch on Mubi. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Night of the 12th’ Review: When a Case Doesn’t Close

      by

      This refreshingly grounded French crime procedural portrays what happens when a brutal murder case eludes the diligent efforts of a by-the-book investigator.Police procedurals don’t usually start by saying that the crime at hand will not be solved. But Dominik Moll’s “The Night of the 12th” does just that, and then watches a French investigator labor away at a murder case before reluctantly abandoning it. This is a refreshingly grounded, deceptively plain picture of crime-fighting as a grind of false leads, workplace fatigue and no closure.Walking home late from a party, Clara, a joyful teenager (Lula Cotton Frapier), is doused in fuel by a hooded stranger and set on fire. Yohan (Bastien Bouillon), an extremely square new leader of a judicial police unit, questions a series of sketchy and dismissive guys that Clara may have been involved with, turning up no definitive answers. Clara’s friend offers one answer that neatly sums up the misogyny of being subject to such random brutality: it was because she was a girl.Likely suspects emerge, then fall away; phone call audio is analyzed, to no avail. After a few years, a judge takes interest in the cold case, funding new surveillance. But even though the inexpressive Yohan does seem like one of the good guys, he’s going in circles, and can’t even help his burned-out partner, Marceau (Bouli Lanners).Despite all the best intentions, “cracking a case” just doesn’t happen sometimes, and the movie (based on a nonfiction book by Pauline Guéna) matter-of-factly avoids the magical thinking we’ve absorbed from decades of macho crime-fighting yarns. Instead, it’s a matter of coping with long-term, slow-motion frustrations and failure — something sadly closer to a lot of common experience than save-the-day heroism.The Night of the 12thNot rated. In French with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘White Building’ Review: Coming of Age in Cambodia

      by

      Kavich Neang’s lush feature tells a largely autobiographical tale of growing up in a building whose often painful history is a microcosm of his country’s.The title of Kavich Neang’s richly observed feature, “White Building,” is, first of all, an exaggeration: The dilapidated apartment bloc it describes is so chipped and black with soot that it’s barely white; indeed, it is so falling apart that it’s barely a building.But for Samnang (Piseth Chhun), the young protagonist of this sensitive and largely autobiographical coming-of-age portrayal, it is home, as the real-life White Building it is based on was for Neang.Located in central Phnom Penh, the building is an apt symbol of the often excruciating changes Cambodia has endured over the last 60 years. It was built in the 1960s to house civil servants, then emptied during the Khmer Rouge’s forced relocations of the 1970s. In the ’80s, it became home to working class people like Samnang’s diabetic father (Sithan Hout), who, like Neang’s, is a sculptor. Now its inhabitants are being pushed to take a lousy deal so it can be demolished for new development, in a city they can no longer afford.Unlike his parents, Samnang has no memories of the Khmer Rouge. He and his friends grew up with cellphones and hip-hop, and they dream of becoming a famous dance troupe. They want what other boys of their generation want: girlfriends, Nikes, a chance to prove themselves.Neang excels at that Tarkovskian trick of rendering the small details of decay — a cracked tile, a leaking ceiling — with such lived-in precision that they feel somehow specific and surreal at once; like the title, images strain their own semantic boundaries. The film’s loose plotting and secondary character development can leave a few too many hanging threads, but its sense of place is so palpable you can almost smell the smoky city markets, the sweat, the hormones.White BuildingNot rated. In Khmer, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Come Out Fighting’ Review: The Battle of the Budget

      by

      A veteran cast attempts to fend off a deluge of clichés in this cheap-looking, pleasingly scrappy war film.The microbudget war movie “Come Out Fighting” is so conspicuously cheap-looking that it could be initially mistaken for one of the direct-to-video mockbusters made by the somewhat infamous indie studio The Asylum — those thrifty, semi-plagiaristic exploitation flicks like “Ardennes Fury” or “Operation Dunkirk,” which have little to recommend them besides their zany, so-bad-it’s-almost-good zeal. But while it has a blatant shoestring sheen, “Come Out Fighting” isn’t arch or irony-laden; in fact, the tone is quite serious, albeit also seriously clichéd. Between the dogfights, ambushes, minefield maneuvers and flamethrower attacks — all of them realized with cut-rate visual effects — the film is contemplative and somber, pensively reflecting on such steadfast wartime themes as determination, valor and courage among men. Perhaps needless to say, the movie features no women.It features no surprises, either, telling a familiar story about a squad of stouthearted soldiers in World War II endeavoring to rescue their commanding officer after he is trapped behind enemy lines. The writer-director Steven Luke, who has several of these low-budget war movies under his belt now, leans hard on the conventions of the genre, and borrows heavily from “Saving Private Ryan.” His writing is thin and tends regularly toward platitudes, with characters spouting wisdom like “the cards have to fall where they fall.”Both Luke and his cast — especially Hiram A. Murray as the indomitable Lt. Hayes and Dolph Lundgren as the experienced and kindly Major Anderson — seem gamely committed to the material, managing at times to muster a genuine sense of gravity. This impression of effort on the part of all involved makes “Come Out Fighting” strangely likable even when it’s bad. And it is often bad.Come Out FightingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters and available on demand. More