Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Forgiven’ Review: When the Haves Dispose of a Have-Not

      by

      Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain play an unhappy couple who accidentally kill a stranger in Morocco en route to a desert bacchanal.“They were careless people,” the narrator in “The Great Gatsby” says of two of that novel’s wealthiest, cruelest characters; “they smashed up things and creatures.” They would probably get along with the similarly careless wretches who populate “The Forgiven,” though especially the unhappily married couple who smash into a teenager, killing him.David (an excellent Ralph Fiennes) and Jo (a decorative, badly used Jessica Chastain) are yelling — and looking — at each other while rocketing down a dark Moroccan road when they plow into the boy. For reasons that are more narratively useful than persuasive, they bring the body with them to their destination, a sprawling compound where a bacchanal is underway. There, after servants whisk away the body, David and Jo join the festivities, assuming their place among the other avatars of wealth, great privilege and bone-deep rot.As Fitzgerald observed elsewhere, the very rich are different from you and me. They are not, though, always dissimilar onscreen, and in far too many movies, they tend to fall into reliably distinct camps of gaudy buffoons, heroic saviors or unrepentant villains. “The Forgiven” is about villains. Specifically, it centers on the kind of white scoundrels who — with their empty hours and seemingly bottomless pockets, their cultivated cynicism and to-the-manner-born prejudices — stir up trouble for less-privileged souls. These monsters twirl their mustaches, seduce the naïve and rob the credulous because they can. They also do so because authors know villains provide easy entertainment, including when they’re object lessons.Certainly, in his adaptation of the Lawrence Osborne novel, the writer-director John Michael McDonagh has done his best to be diverting while he shoots fish in a barrel. His richest, most dubiously easy targets are the party’s hosts, an unctuous British libertine, Richard (Matt Smith, continuing his journey as Jeremy Irons 2.0), and his down-market American lover, Dally (Caleb Landry Jones). They’re introduced lounging in bed — the camera opens on Dally’s naked rear — as a visibly uneasy Moroccan servant enters with tea. Richard smiles at the man or maybe his discomfort. Is the servant uncomfortable with male intimacy, its unembarrassed display or merely his boss’s amused gaze?McDonagh lets the moment linger, which outwardly lets him off the hook. It doesn’t, though, not really, and he is saying something by making two gay lovers the story’s most conspicuous embodiments of neocolonialist excesses. So it goes: That night, Richard refers to the servants as boys, and Dally winds up the party (and your sensitivities) by thanking their “little Moroccan friends” who renovated the compound. The guests in tuxes and gowns laugh and swirl, eating and boozing as Moroccans hover and serve. A shrieking blonde jumps in a pool the size of a lake. Later, Jo casually drops that she and David killed a Moroccan en route to the festivities; at another point, David sneers about “pederasts” and name checks Allen Ginsberg.“The Forgiven” doesn’t get any subtler, although things improve when David agrees to drive off with the dead boy’s father, Abdellah (Ismael Kanater), and a companion, Anouar (Saïd Taghmaoui). It doesn’t make any sense given David’s prejudices and suspicions. He goes simply because the story needs him to, but it does get you away from the compound’s claustrophobia. Mostly, though, it allows you to spend time with Fiennes, whose performance — in its intricate, complex play of emotions and in the push-pull of David’s contempt for himself and for everything else — says more about this world’s nihilism than all the brittle chatter. Fiennes peels David in layers, unraveling this man until you see his hollow interior.McDonagh’s work is more nuanced and his touch lighter in the scenes with David and these other men, even as the story grows heavier and then leaden. There’s less yammering and hyperbolizing, and McDonagh makes fine contrapuntal use of the landscape’s visual drama and of the chasm separating these characters. Here, in the prickling, ominous spaces between David and Abdellah, in their glances and halting words, you see how power flows from man to man, from world to world, and how it nourishes but also engulfs.It’s then that you are reminded of the sharper work that McDonagh has done before, such as “Calvary” and “The Guard,” and how good he can be when characters talk because they have something to say.The ForgivenRated R for gun and vehicular violence. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Man From Toronto’ Review: Not So Clearly Canadian

      by

      Woody Harrelson plays a hit man and Kevin Hart the wrong man in this Netflix action comedy.There’s very little Toronto in “The Man From Toronto.” There’s the iconic CN Tower, visible only in a distant establishing shot of the twilit skyline, and a few shots of a remote hide-out somewhere on the outskirts of town, before our Canadian hit man hero (Woody Harrelson) is called away on a mission, and the action moves elsewhere — Minnesota, Puerto Rico, the suburbs of Virginia.Ironically, the movie was filmed almost entirely in Ontario, so Toronto, its capital — as well as Hamilton, Milton and Brampton — will frequently show up disguised as somewhere else. When Harrelson chases Teddy (Kevin Hart), a bumbling fitness buff embroiled in an assassination plot because of a case of mistaken identity, they’re actually cruising beneath downtown Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway — not the streets of Washington, D.C. No one in the cast even manages to pronounce “Toronto” correctly.“Geographic license is usually an alibi for laziness,” Thom Andersen once observed in his feature-length essay film “Los Angeles Plays Itself.” In “The Man From Toronto,” directed by Patrick Hughes, the vague sense of location is typical of a broader lack of effort. Although Hart, as the broadly comic version of the classic Hitchcockian Wrong Man, has a certain goofball charm, his frantic coward routine gets old quickly, with no appreciable change as the action-flick danger continues to escalate. Harrelson, on the other hand, does little with the role of the unflappable super assassin, playing put-upon straight man to Hart’s over-the-top jester without much chemistry.As the shoot-em-up carnage builds to a long one-take fight sequence in Teddy’s gym — reminiscent of the spectacular church battle in the 2014 movie “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” with less panache — the overall feeling is one of simply going through the motions. That’s a shame, eh?The Man From TorontoRated PG-13 for crude language, comic action and some graphic violence. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Accepted’ Review: Reaching for the Stars, Seeing Them Dissolve

      by

      After a scandal unravels at their private school in western Louisiana, four seniors pick up the pieces.In “Accepted” the director Dan Chen takes us inside the world of T.M. Landry, a Louisiana private school whose videos of African American students collecting Ivy League college acceptances once went viral. But nine months after the filmmakers’ first visit to the school, The New York Times published reports of physical abuse, falsified transcripts and “cultish” behavior on the part of its founders, Mike and Tracey Landry. Viewers of “Accepted” get a front-row seat to the life-altering impact of the school’s unraveling through the stories of four promising high school seniors: Adia, Alicia, Cathy and Issac.As we witness both the documentary’s subjects — and its director — navigate a shocking development in real time, a quietly probing film emerges that pierces the myth of American meritocracy.Chen makes the choice to plod along at the same measured pace throughout — even after the T.M Landry scandal comes to light — and forgo the cryptic scoring we’re used to hearing when the jig is up. Similarly, the cinematography by Chen and Daphne Qin Wu moves seamlessly between intimate hand-held shots and aerial views of western Louisiana landscapes that reflect the eventual loss of access to the Landrys and the school.In the end, it is the resilience of the film’s teenage subjects that lifts “Accepted” to new heights. As they sit for close-ups in front of a swirly blue backdrop, gone are the Georgetown and Stanford sweatshirts, and the hopes they once represented. But in their place sits a clear understanding of the misguided pressures placed upon individual minority students to succeed in a society that systemically disadvantages them and a surprisingly powerful tale about making peace with imperfection.AcceptedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Hallelujah’ Review: From Leonard Cohen to Cale to Buckley to Shrek

      by

      A new documentary tells the entwined stories of a songwriter and his best-known composition.Leonard Cohen’s final album, released in October 2016, is called “You Want It Darker.” He died on Nov. 7, the day before the U.S. presidential election, and in the years since, things have grown very dark indeed.Cohen wasn’t one to offer comfort. His gift as a songwriter and performer was rather to provide commentary and companionship amid the gloom, offering a wry, openhearted perspective on the puzzles of the human condition. “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song” is, accordingly, not a movie designed to make you feel better about anything, except perhaps Cohen himself. But this generous documentary is nonetheless likely to be a source of illumination for both die-hard and casual fans, and even to people who love Cohen’s most famous song without being aware that he wrote it.That’s “Hallelujah,” of course, which you can hear at weddings and funerals, on singing-competition reality television shows and in too many movies to count. The directors, Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, wrap a circumspect biography of the singer — loaded with archival footage and interviews with sundry friends and admirers, including a rabbi and a Canadian government official — around the story of the song.It’s quite a story. “Hallelujah” took something like seven years to finish — Cohen’s own estimates varied. Larry Sloman, a music journalist who knew Cohen well and interviewed him often, surmises that there may be as many as 180 verses, starting with the one everybody knows. By now, we’ve all heard about the secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord.But “Hallelujah” did not please the executives at Columbia Records, who refused to release “Various Positions,” an album recorded in 1983 that also included the future classic “Dance Me to the End of Love.” John Lissauer, who produced the LP and who had worked on and off with Cohen since the early ’70s, recalls the label’s decision with dismay and surprisingly good humor, given the damage done to his professional prospects. (“Various Positions” was eventually released on a small American label.)At the time, Cohen had been recording for nearly 20 years, though he was also something of a musical late bloomer. He was past 30 when he turned to songwriting, having established himself as a poet and figure on the Canadian literary scene. The filmmakers sketch his early life and career, noting his privileged upbringing in the Westmount section of Montreal, his interest in Jewish and Zen Buddhist religious teachings and his reputation as a Casanova. (His fifth studio album is called “Death of a Ladies’ Man.”)Personal matters stay mostly in the background. Suzanne Elrod, his partner in the mid-70s, is briefly mentioned — we’re reminded that she was not the inspiration for the song “Suzanne” — and their children are glimpsed but not named. Dominique Issermann, the photographer with whom Cohen lived on the Greek island of Hydra, reminisces fondly about their time together. But “Hallelujah” is interested in Cohen’s private life mainly insofar as it suggests themes for his work.These could be divided up — spiritual, sexual, existential, emotional — but he specialized in tracing the entanglement of those categories of experience. Sloman, citing an unidentified critic, says that Cohen was most interested in “holiness and horniness.”“Hallelujah” is his great anthem of religious ecstasy and sexual longing. Some versions emphasize the sacred, while others dwell on what another poet called “the expense of spirit in a waste of shame.” “All I’ve ever learned from love/Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you”: Some singers omit that line (and the one about being tied to a kitchen chair), but even when transcendence seems to prevail over cynicism, the tension between sacred desire and profane disappointment remains.The documentary’s account of the song’s fate, indebted to Alan Light’s book “The Holy or the Broken,” is a fascinating study in the mechanics and metaphysics of pop-culture memory. Bob Dylan, who admired Cohen, added “Hallelujah” to some of his set lists in the late ’80s. John Cale’s cover, recorded for a 1991 tribute album, brought the song to wider attention.“From Cale to Buckley to Shrek” is Sloman’s synopsis. Jeff Buckley’s full-throated rendition injected “Hallelujah” into the ’90s pop mainstream. “Shrek,” the DreamWorks animated blockbuster about a lovelorn green ogre, repurposed Cale’s glum version. The soundtrack album, which sold millions of copies, included another one, more in the melodramatic Buckley mode, by Rufus Wainwright. The floodgates were open.“It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth.” By the hundredth time, you might think the magic would be gone, but “Hallelujah” is one of those rare songs that survives its banalization with at least some of its sublimity intact.Cohen lived to see its triumph, and the last third of the documentary is devoted to his comeback, including generous clips from his later concerts. He is, throughout, a vivid, complicated presence — witty, melancholy, well-dressed and soft-spoken. By the end, he radiates wisdom, gratitude, and the kind of fulfillment whose elusiveness had always been his great subject.Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a SongRated PG-13: She tied you to a kitchen chair. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Sniper: The White Raven’ Review: Rage and Resilience

      by

      This slick fictional portrait of a Ukrainian sniper begins in tranquillity before thrusting us into the silent brutality of the battlefield.The polished character study “Sniper: The White Raven” tells the fictional story of a Ukrainian free spirit turned specialized soldier. Its release arrives as troubling reports on Russia’s invasion of the country break almost daily, and the movie’s themes of nationalism, rage and resilience resonate even as its glassiness holds viewers at a distance.Directed by the Ukrainian filmmaker Marian Bushan, the movie begins in 2014, as Mykola (Pavlo Aldoshyn), an amiable science teacher, leads a nonconformist existence. He and his wife (Maryna Koshkina) live in a shanty carved into a hillside, and use energy from a rudimentary windmill erected above. A primal mood steers these early scenes, and the looseness of the storytelling makes for a lovely and cogent prologue.But once Russia invades Ukraine that year and Mykola faces a cataclysmic tragedy, the film hardens and darkens. Despairing, Mykola enlists in the military, where he sheds his pacifism and volunteers to train as a marksman. After Mykola commits to the army, he hardly looks back, and we spend much of the remaining running time observing his silent focus on the battlefield.Like many other movies trailing a lone gunslinger, “Sniper: The White Raven” builds to a tense face-off, which for our hero comes to represent a small measure of justice. The story’s beginning in such a tranquil place makes its ultimate devotion to vengeance somewhat difficult to comprehend — though, one might argue, so is an imperialist war.Sniper: The White RavenRated R. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 63 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Clara Sola’ Review: Breaking Free

      by

      A 40-year-old woman, believed to be blessed with divine powers, has her sexual awakening in Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s debut feature.A sad paradox of being a woman in this world is that the more one is exalted — as a goddess, a saint, a provider — the less one is allowed to be a person, flawed and whole. Such is the predicament of the heroine of Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s debut feature, “Clara Sola.”Clara (Wendy Chinchilla Araya) is a 40-year-old woman, with a childlike, volatile nature. She lives in a verdant Costa Rican village with her mother, Fresia (Flor María Vargas Chaves), and her niece, Maria (Ana Julia Porras Espinoza). Because Clara is believed to have been blessed with healing powers by the Virgin Mary, she is trussed up and trotted out by Fresia to help visitors seeking miracles, and guarded fiercely as a model of purity. Fresia won’t let Clara get surgery for a spinal problem (“God gave her to me like this,” she declares), and she rubs Clara’s fingers in chilies to prevent her from masturbating.As the arrival of a handsome horse-wrangler sets off a slow, feral combustion in Clara, the film unfolds as a familiar drama of sexual awakening amid religious repression (with cues from “Carrie,” no less). But “Clara Sola” compels when it dwells in its central mysteries, like Clara’s special, empathic connection to nature and animals. Araya is remarkably tender as she sinks her fingers into the earth or gingerly lifts bugs off the ground, while Sophie Winqvist Loggins’s hushed, soft-focus camerawork imbues these moments with an almost spiritual grace.Is Clara neurodivergent, thus prompting her mother’s coddling, or has her deification had a stunting effect on her social capacities? Does she truly have otherworldly powers, or is she just attuned to the world differently? With its elliptical telling, “Clara Sola” leaves these questions unresolved, gently balancing between magic realism and the more tragic, sobering realities of our world.Clara SolaNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ Review: They’re Yellow but Not Mellow

      by

      This latest edition featuring the animated creatures is an origin story of sorts for their master, Gru.The cartoon characters called Minions, sufficiently popular to anchor two ostensibly discrete animated film franchises, are diminutive capsule-shaped yellow yammerers outfitted in goggles and overalls, whose bearing for the most part is simultaneously hyper and insouciant. While one of their number seems a relatively competent D.J., the remainder of this innumerable lot aren’t very adept, especially as henchminions. Kids love them. Parents, as far as one can see, tolerate them.Their latest outing, directed by Kyle Balda, Brad Abelson and Jonathan Del Val, is “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” in which the arguably epicene creatures again try to help out their master Gru — only, as the title implies, Gru here is a kid and it’s the cartoon 1970s. The movie opens with a nostalgia-inducing, feel-good Earth, Wind and Fire song, no surprise given contemporary movie convention, as the gang called the Vicious Six engages in Indiana-Jones-style high jinks for a heist of a supernatural stone. Double crosses ensue: The Vicious Six try to ax their senior member, Wild Knuckles (voiced by Alan Arkin), and little Gru auditions for the gang, then makes off with the aforementioned stone after being insulted by the baddies.The title characters have classic toon precedent — remember the maladroit elves in Tex Avery’s 1950 “The Peachy Cobbler,” or the gremlin in that Bugs Bunny cartoon? The peculiar nonchalance of the Minions is funniest when they hijack an aircraft and successfully fly it to San Francisco without having a clue as to what they’re doing.Throughout, the gang speaks speedy gibberish derived from at least six recognizable European languages — a westernized variant of Stitch-speak, maybe. Michelle Yeoh lends her voice to a character who’s both Kung Fu master and acupuncturist. And that’s all, folks — amiable and colorful as it is, the movie is also spectacularly inconsequential.Minions: The Rise of GruRated PG for action, violence and rude humor. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Beauty’ Review: Requiem for a Pop Star

      by

      The ghost of Whitney Houston haunts “Beauty,” the story of a singer, her family and best friend on the edge of fame.Befitting its title, “Beauty” opens looking lovely, even if much of what transpires in this story of a Black pop star set to ink a record deal will be ugly. Played by Gracie Marie Bradley, Beauty stands in front of a microphone in a recording studio. This close-up image will be repeated several times, challenging timeline expectations by looping what will be with what is.In this lilting, lyrical work, the director Andrew Dosunmu and the writer Lena Waithe mine, mourn and tease the Whitney Houston story. Consider “Beauty” an elegy with an edge, one that touches on faith and financials, love and condemnation.Giancarlo Esposito plays Beauty’s malefic father and Niecy Nash is her vocally exacting mother. Sharon Stone leans into her Mephistophelian role as record exec. “God was showing off a little when he created her,” she tells the TV talk show host Irv Merlin (James Urbaniak). Any doubts about the movie’s interests in religious sanctimony and patriarchal cruelties are dispelled in a scene in which dad pits Beauty’s brothers, Abel (Kyle Bary) and Cain (Micheal Ward) against each other.Like Irv’s name, other coy gestures suggest proximity to Houston’s saga while end-running biopic issues. Yet, the movie remains intriguingly withholding. Will we hear Beauty sing? Will she and her romantic friend Jasmine (Aleyse Shannon) finally “go there”? When the two dance to the Force M.D.’s slow-jam gem “Tender Love,” it’s romance not sex that gets its close-up. Instead of an evasion, this feels like respect: the filmmakers honoring but not naming what the actual star so clearly evoked here never acknowledged.BeautyRated R for language and drug use. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More