Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 38 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Fauna’ Review: Narcomythologies

      by

      This lean meta-drama tackles the fictions typically associated with Mexican culture with droll humor and bold conceptual play.In “Fauna,” the Mexican Canadian filmmaker Nicolás Pereda teases with and deconstructs the fictions typically associated with contemporary Mexican culture in a lean 70-minute running time that abounds in droll humor and bold conceptual play.At first, the film starts out like a deadpan indie comedy heavy on the cringe: Luisa (Luisa Pardo) and her boyfriend Paco (Francisco Barreiro) drive out to a depopulated town in the Mexican hinterlands to visit Luisa’s parents for the weekend. Once they’ve reached their destination, they encounter Luisa’s churlish brother, Gabino (Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez), unfolding a tense, awkward dynamic that only worsens when Luisa’s father and mother arrive.When Luisa’s father (José Rodríguez López) takes the two men out for a beer, Paco — who plays an actor in the Netflix series, “Narcos: Mexico” — is asked to reprise his role right then and there, pitting his nervous disbelief against dad and Gabino’s stoic entreaties. Barreiro, who in real life acted in the drug trade drama, is eventually pushed to perform a monologue drawn directly from the finale of the first season, resulting in one of the most exciting, and wonderfully mortifying bits I’ve seen in quite a while.Pereda then deftly reorients the film by bringing to life the plot of a hard-boiled novel that Gabino is midway through reading. The actors from the first half of the film are recycled in this nested narrative, playing detective story archetypes involved in narco-adjacent intrigue ripped straight from the original characters’ dreams.Brimming with postmodern flourishes, “Fauna” calls attention to the slippery nature of performance and identity, lodging a complex, yet highly engrossing critique of narco culture’s influence on Mexican storytelling — and it does so without a drop of that pesky didacticism.FaunaNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Tailgate’ Review: Retribution for Road Rage

      by

      In this Dutch thriller, a man puts his family in danger by refusing to apologize to a serial killer with a pious streak.If you’ve ever been the victim of another driver’s road rage, you might sympathize with the killer stalking “Tailgate,” a Dutch thriller from the writer-director Lodewijk Crijns. The Exterminator, played by Willem de Wolf, is a clean-cut, eerily tall man who kicks things off by murdering a cyclist. As the biker pleads for his life, sputtering apologies, the menacing figure puts an exterminator’s spray gun in the biker’s mouth and pulls the trigger, poisoning him to death.Not getting the sympathy angle yet? Enter Hans (Jeroen Spitzenberger), a loathsome man rushing his family to a weekend trip at his parents’ house. Hans snaps at his wife, gleefully teaches his daughters that women are terrible drivers and — most importantly — rides The Exterminator’s bumper for a long stretch of highway. When Hans is confronted and an apology is demanded, he becomes even ruder, despite his wife’s misgivings. In response, The Exterminator methodically works to track down and eliminate Hans.The killer is plenty horrible in his own right, but it can be difficult not to root for him. This is a predator-stalks-prey narrative, and Hans has the charisma of a cockroach. As The Exterminator’s van creeps down the road, it invokes the same tantalizing suspense as seeing a fin above the water during “Jaws.” But here, the potential victim is a total cretin, not a skinny-dipping ingénue or a fearsome fisherman. This well-choreographed hunt is chilling, sure — particularly because of de Wolf’s terrifying performance and unconventional choice of weapon — but it’s also a little bit fun.TailgateNot rated. In English and Dutch, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters and on Film Movement. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      No Lion, the Skipper Is the Real King of the Jungle Cruise

      by

      Bad jokes and puns are part of a Disneyland job that has been immortalized in a new film. Those who’ve held the role at the theme park never really leave it behind.In 1916 Brazil, Skipper Frank Wolff runs the cheapest jungle cruise on the Amazon. And undoubtedly the cheesiest, as he introduces tourists to the river’s wondrous sights with a spiel overflowing with doozies.“If you look to the left of the boat, you’ll see some very playful toucans. They’re playing their favorite game of beak-wrestling. The only drawback is, only two can play.”“The rocks you see here in the river are sandstone. But some people just take them for granite. It’s one of my boulder attractions.”And the highlight of the tour: “Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the eighth wonder of the world,” he says, building toward the climax, as his rickety steamboat passes behind a makeshift waterfall. “Wait for it … the backside of water!”Frank’s guests may groan and roll their eyes at his droll banter in Disney’s “Jungle Cruise,” starring Dwayne Johnson as the swaggering skipper and arriving July 30 on Disney+ and in theaters. But the skippers and their spiels — corny jokes and bad puns, the cringier the better — have been the real stars of the Jungle Cruise attraction since the first one opened at Disneyland in 1955. Take them away and the seven-minute fantasy boat trip along rivers in South America, Asia and Africa, inspired in part by “The African Queen,” might be just another ride down a fake waterway with fake scenery.It’s also one of the rare performing jobs at a Disney theme park where the skippers can weave their own personalities into the script — from dry and geeky to animated and flamboyant — and get guests in on the action. “It’s this alchemy that happens” that few attractions can replicate, said Alex Williams, a former skipper who now works for the Disney fan club D23.With the new movie as well as the ride’s freshly reimagined story line, the Jungle Cruise is in the spotlight now, and no one is feeling it more than the skippers themselves.“We’re all just really excited about being able to share this experience with everyone and being the inspiration for the movie,” said Flor Torres, a “lead” on the attraction.“Once a skip, always a skip.” That’s the motto of skippers who’ve held a job requiring them to maneuver a boat while performing a stand-up routine dozens of times across an eight-hour day.Puns and jokes about the “backside of water” abound on the ride at Disneyland.Don Kelsen/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images“People really take that to heart,” Torres added of the motto. “I know skippers that have worked here maybe 20, 30 years ago, and they still come by and talk to us like they were just here yesterday.”A handful have wisecracked their way to bigger stages, like Ron Ziegler, the White House press secretary for President Richard M. Nixon; the filmmaker John Lasseter; Steve Franks, a screenwriter and the creator of the TV series “Psych”; and, it’s said, the actor Kevin Costner. (Alas, stories that Robin Williams and Steve Martin honed their humor at the helm are apparently only myths.)Other former skippers have recounted their experiences on podcasts like “Tales From the Jungle Crews” and “The Backside of Water,” or provided pandemic uplift in Freddy Martin’s “World Famous Jungle Cruise” video and its sequel.And a bold few have revealed some not-Disney-approved antics in books like “Skipper Stories: True Tales From Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise,” a compilation of six decades of anecdotes from former skippers, including the author, David John Marley.To wit: The ritual of becoming a “real skipper” by peeing in the river at night. The Jungle Justice inflicted on skippers who abused their break time (they found themselves suddenly scheduled for upward of 90 minutes of nonstop cruises without water or a bathroom stop). The off-hours party where $2,000 was spent on alcohol and condoms.A good skipper is an extrovert, a nut and somewhat of a rogue. At least that’s how Bill Sullivan, who joined the Jungle Cruise in 1955, once put it. His own skipper colleagues included a man who arrived one morning with chameleons around his neck.They didn’t have much of a script in the beginning so the men wrote their own, Sullivan, who eventually became vice president of the Magic Kingdom, recalled in 2008. (Women didn’t become skippers until the mid-1990s.)Johnson with Emily Blunt in the film, which now incorporates a bit of the ride patter.DisneyThe spiel had been repeatedly fine-tuned by the time Franks landed his gig in the late 1980s. And venturing from it was ill-advised.“You would hear these stories about supervisors hiding in the jungle, listening for people going off-book, but if that was true, they would have canned me on Day 2,” he said. “I knew I wanted to make movies, and I was doing stand-up at the time. And as soon as we got around the first corner, I was working in material.”Franks stayed at Disneyland for eight and a half years, writing the script for Adam Sandler’s “Big Daddy” while monitoring the Enchanted Tiki Room.Crews may have been rowdier back in the day, but “today we’re much more conservative, a little less the Wild West,” said Kevin Lively, one of two skippers chosen to represent Disneyland at Tokyo Disney Resort’s 25th anniversary celebration in 2009. (There’s also a Jungle Cruise at Walt Disney World and Hong Kong Disneyland.)Lively now works as a Disney Imagineer, developing skipper spiels and contributing “gnu” magic to the attraction, which has replaced racist elements like spear-throwing African “headhunters” with a story about Felix Pechman XIII, “the unluckiest skipper on the dock.”And when the “Jungle Cruise” movie needed an injection of humor, Lively was on it.“I shotgun-blast puns and references and Easter eggs to them, and let them kind of just run amok,” he said. “There’s stuff in there that I think all these skippers will get, which just makes me over-the-moon happy. They really showed their love of the attraction in that film.”Skipper Frank’s ersatz Amazon tour wasn’t in the original script, said Jaume Collet-Serra, the movie’s director. But once the filmmaker had ridden the actual Jungle Cruise and witnessed reactions to that “backside of water” joke, he knew what he had to do.Treat the audience to a mini-Jungle Cruise experience.“I was like, let me give them what they want for two minutes and then I’ll give them more, but at least they’ll be happy early,” he said. “You know, ‘Here is what you came for — now let the movie begin.’” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Evening Hour’ Review: Heart of the Country

      by

      In this drama, a wholesome young man in an Appalachian town tries to do right by friends and family but gets caught up in a side hustle dealing pills.A colleague of mine once floated a memorable thought experiment: if you could visit the picturesque fictional towns portrayed in 1940s Hollywood dramas in the present day, they might be ravaged by the opioid epidemic. The idea traces a thread of continuity in American life, which I believe is partly what “The Evening Hour” is trying to do.Set in a small Appalachian town, Braden King’s luminous second feature centers on a wholesome nursing aide, Cole (Philip Ettinger), who moonlights as a drug dealer. His daily rounds of checking on seniors — including his grandmother — also entail picking up and dropping off pills. He’s a peacemaker with a casual girlfriend (Stacy Martin), a clingy old friend (Cosmo Jarvis), another pal (Michael Trotter), who’s also a client, and an absent mother (Lili Taylor), who suddenly shows up when his grandfather dies.King works to portray a tight mesh of relationships around Cole, directing Elizabeth Palmore’s valiant adaptation of the sensitively rendered Carter Sickels novel. But lacking a strong central performance from Ettinger — who gets stuck on a half-pained, half-exasperated setting — much of the movie feels like a series of comings and goings, entrances and exits. And from the moment that a ruthless dealer in town gives Cole a hard look, there’s no question where his side hustle will lead.In flashbacks, Cole longs for time spent with his grandfather and at religious gatherings. The movie opens and closes with appreciative pans of the verdant hills that suggest the heartland will live on. But what comes in the middle doesn’t quite hold together.The Evening HourNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Resort to Love’ Review: A Struggling Singer in Paradise

      by

      In this romantic comedy, a woman reeling from a failed engagement and a flailing career escapes to a glamorous island resort.“Resort to Love,” Christina Milian’s second rom-com with a punny title in two years (she starred in the 2019 “Falling Inn Love”) is as uninspired as its name.The movie, directed by Steven Tsuchida and streaming on Netflix, follows Erica Wilson (Milian), a struggling singer who takes an entertainment gig at a luxury resort in Mauritius after a career setback. When she arrives, she’s shocked to find that she has to sing at weddings, and it turns out that her ex-fiancé, Jason (Jay Pharoah), just so happens to be getting married there. Erica and Jason struggle with lingering feelings. At the same time, Erica is getting to know Caleb (Sinqua Walls), Jason’s dreamy older brother, who is a retired special forces operative.The charm of romantic comedies is, in part, their predictability, with characters working through personal hang ups and finding love by the end. The genre’s popularity points to a basic human need to be seen, and to have tenderness and vulnerability in our lives. But the success of a rom-com hinges on viewers rooting for the film’s relationships. In “Resort to Love,” the lack of discernible chemistry between the characters makes it hard to believe they belong together.Pharoah and Milian’s performances are stilted and emotionally barren. Erica and Jason were a couple for four and a half years, but it’s unclear why. There is no familiarity in their interactions, and the only thing over which the pair seem to bond is their would-be wedding song, “No One” by Alicia Keys.Walls is a bright spot in the film, and gets not nearly enough screen time. His Caleb is the perfect rom-com protagonist: beautiful, charming and grounded. But that can only nominally boost this film, in which the only surprise is that Caleb falls for Milian’s one-note Erica at all.Resort to LoveNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Lorelei’ Review: A Rural Melodrama, Lost at Sea

      by

      Pablo Schreiber and Jena Malone attempt to provide an anchor for this listless character drama.In one of the more fanciful sequences in the melodrama “Lorelei,” the film’s protagonist, Wayland (Pablo Schreiber), dreams of his lover, Dolores (Jena Malone), on the beach. She beckons like a siren, beautiful until he gets close. Then Dolores screams, becoming a monster. The image presents a ham-handed metaphor, and it’s indicative of the lack of imagination that hampers the literal-minded drama.When the movie begins, Wayland has just been released from a 15-year prison sentence. He returns home to rural Oregan, a world of dirty dive bars and motorcycle gangs. It’s also where Wayland met his first love, Dolores, who is now a single mother of three, scraping by on not enough money and not enough social support.The pair rekindle their romance, but Dolores is erratic, prone to mood swings, quick to accuse both Wayland and her kids of betrayals. Wayland is thrust into becoming the stabilizing force for an entire family, a responsibility he resents.As a first time feature filmmaker, the director Sabrina Doyle demonstrates an ability to create an environment for her rural, working class characters that feels specific and lived-in. Couches are never clear from clutter, wood-paneled homes have been stained by too many hard rains. Schreiber is hulking and tender, and Malone astutely plays her character as an overburdened adolescent, lost in the expectations of adulthood.But Doyle displays less adeptness with creating memorable images or narrative momentum. Her film plods through Wayland’s disillusionment, with conflicts that feel repetitive and dreams that are mired in self-consciousness. The film is invested in accurately depicting the details of its character’s lives, but its collection of studied impressions doesn’t coalesce into a coherent final portrait.LoreleiNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Ride the Eagle’ Review: A Nontoxic Bro Faces Midlife Lessons

      by

      A conga-playing, marijuana-smoking man approaches middle age — and romance — with help from a video from his mother.It’s doubtful that anyone who has enjoyed the work of the writer and actor Jake Johnson can name, offhand, an instance in which he has played a guy who works in an office. It’s just not a thing with his nontoxic, shaggy bro persona. In “Ride the Eagle,” which Johnson co-wrote with the director Trent O’Donnell, he plays a character compelled to contend with imminent middle age. But no worries — his journey in no way obliges him to button down or up. Just the opposite.Johnson’s Leif, a man of simple pleasures — yes, he fires up a joint pretty much as soon as he’s out of bed — lives on the property of the leader of a band for which he plays the conga drum. His mom, Honey (Susan Sarandon), who abandoned him as a child, has died. She has bequeathed to him a much snazzier cabin than his current one — but to get it, he has to run a gantlet of life lessons Honey lays out for him in a video she recorded before she died.When Leif arrives at her place, he finds a significant amount of dope in its cabinets, establishing a new bond between mother and son. The marijuana did not, strictly, belong to Honey, which sets up a plot point that draws in a menacing J.K. Simmons. Her instructions to Leif include a lot of carpe diem stuff that you yourself have likely heard a thousand times, even if you don’t have a hippie in your life. Fulfilling one task, Leif reconnects with an old love, the initially nonplused Audrey (D’Arcy Carden).“Where do these people get their money,” I wrote in my notes as Leif and his dog set out for a long drive at the film’s fade-out. Doesn’t matter. Nor do the multiple clichés. In “Ride the Eagle,” the laid-back vibe is all.Ride the EagleNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Enemies of the State’ Review: Seeking Proof Shrouded in Shadows

      by

      This documentary on the strange case of Matt DeHart weaves uncertainty into its structure.Was Matt DeHart an Air National Guard veteran who, having spent time in hacktivist circles, stumbled on information so explosive that the F.B.I. had him physically tortured during an interrogation process? (That’s what he claimed when he fled to Canada after 2013.) Or was he a fugitive from justifiable charges of producing and transporting child pornography, a case he suggested had been concocted?Journalists who have covered the DeHart saga — and the summary above is only the tip of the iceberg — have tended to note when corroboration becomes impossible. The remarkable thing about “Enemies of the State,” a documentary directed by Sonia Kennebeck and executive produced by Errol Morris, no stranger to epistemological mysteries — is that it comes close to offering decisive yes and no answers, with evidence to back them up.It becomes a documentary about re-evaluating biases, a process that may well implicate the filmmakers. As Tor Ekeland, a lawyer who represented DeHart, says in the movie, “The only way to make the facts in this case make sense is to entertain some kind of wild conspiracy theory.” Kennebeck must have recognized the danger of doing just that. Matt’s parents, Paul and Leann, featured extensively, appear to have reached a point where no amount of paranoia would be unjustified, yet they seem utterly convinced of themselves. Even the third parties interviewed — the National Post journalist Adrian Humphreys, the McGill professor Gabriella Coleman — wind up confronting blind spots.Kennebeck weaves uncertainty into the formal design, staging re-enactments mingled with original audio, for instance. The movie is a spoiler deathtrap, but the questions it raises are fascinating.Enemies of the StateNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More