Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      El Paso Walmart Killings Examined in '915: Hunting Hispanics' doc.

      by

      Charlie Minn’s tactical breakdown zeros in on a mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart that killed 23 people.On the morning of Aug. 3, 2019, a man armed with an automatic rifle entered a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, shooting 46 people in the span of six minutes. Twenty-three people died as a result of their injuries. Many victims of the El Paso shooting identified as Latino, and in a manifesto, the shooter, Patrick Crusius, had explicitly stated his animus against people of Mexican origin. In the documentary “915: Hunting Hispanics” (the number is the El Paso area code), survivors share their memories of that catastrophic morning.The interviews contained in this film are not glossy. Subjects aren’t always wearing makeup, they ramble, they weep. The camera occasionally seems out of focus and the editing cuts from angle to angle with little sense of internal rhythm. At the beginning of the film, this unvarnished approach is disorienting. But the longer the director Charlie Minn pursues his lines of questioning, the more his film coheres as a military history of a domestic terrorist attack.Minn retraces the path of the shooter and the response of those left in his wake as if charting moves on a battlefield. Maps show the path of the attack and the order of the victims. Interviews with survivors add on-the-ground detail to the brutal events, and cellphone footage shows the desperate escape attempts, grievous injuries and efforts to preserve or revive life among the fallen. The events of mass shootings are often presented as devastating clashes of old-fashioned good and evil — complete with heroic martyrs and devilish madmen. The value of this demystifying film is its tactical breakdown of a form of violence that has become increasingly common in the United States. Here, both prevention and survival are a result of communal strategy.915: Hunting HispanicsNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Cousins’ Review: The Ties That Bind

      by

      This sprawling drama breathes cinematic life into the 1992 novel by Patricia Grace about the diverging paths of three Maori cousins in New Zealand.The Maori family at the heart of “Cousins” greet each other by pressing their foreheads and noses together. The camera does the same: It peers deep into the characters’ faces, as if imprinting them onto its lens.The first face we encounter is Mata’s (Tanea Heke) as she walks dazedly through an unnamed city; the noises and textures around her blur together. With that same sensory dislocation, the film takes us back to her childhood, when she was separated from her family by her white father and placed in an orphanage.This tragedy begets several more in the sprawling “Cousins.” Directors Ainsley Gardiner and Briar Grace-Smith breathe gorgeous cinematic life into the 1992 novel by Patricia Grace (Grace-Smith’s mother) about the diverging paths of three Maori cousins in 1940s and ’50s New Zealand. A few years after Mata disappears, Makareta (Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne) flees home to escape an arranged marriage. Missy (Hariata Moriarty), realizing that the wedding is their family’s desperate attempt to consolidate and retain their ancestral lands, takes her cousin’s place.Widespread racism, discriminatory laws and the Maori people’s centuries-long struggle for autonomy bracket the characters’ lives in “Cousins.” The film trembles with sound, color and feeling, deriving much of its power from an excellent ensemble cast (particularly Te Raukura Gray and Ana Scotney as the child and adult Mata). Not only do the actors who play different versions of each character bear striking resemblances to one another, but an ache — for their whānau (extended family), for their home and heritage — carries through their performances. They powerfully embody the Maori belief that genealogical ties can never be severed.CousinsNot rated. In English and Maori, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘No Sudden Move’ Review: Don’t Forget the Motor City

      by

      Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro star in Steven Soderbergh’s new film, a Detroit-set period thriller with a lot on its mind.On an ordinary Monday morning in Detroit, three masked man show up at a handsome brick house on a tree-lined street. Once inside, two of them hold a mother and her children at gunpoint while their colleague accompanies the man of the house, a midlevel accountant at General Motors, on an urgent errand. It’s the mid-1950s, which means the cars are big and curvy, the men mostly wear hats and neckties, and the women are mostly wives, secretaries or mistresses.Nobody involved — not the intruders or their victims — knows entirely what’s going on. The viewer of “No Sudden Move,” whose comparatively pleasant task is to connect a whole lot of intricately arranged dots, is in good company. The guys who stay behind in the house, Curt (Don Cheadle) and Ronald (Benicio Del Toro), have been hired by an impatient fellow named Mr. Jones (Brendan Fraser) for the supposedly simple job of armed babysitting. Before the morning is over, they learn that other, more elaborate agendas are involved: the petty grudges of organized crime bosses; the voracious ambitions of the automobile industry; the imperatives of American postwar power and prosperity.And also, hovering over all of it, the preoccupations of the director, Steven Soderbergh. In the current phase of his dizzyingly protean career, Soderbergh is both an intrepid genre filmmaker and an impassioned practitioner of the cinema of ideas. “No Sudden Move,” from a script by Ed Solomon (who wrote all three “Bill & Ted” movies), is for the most part a tight and twisty against-the-clock crime caper with an obvious debt to Elmore Leonard (and a family resemblance to Soderbergh’s great Detroit-set thriller “Out of Sight”). It also has things to say — at times a little too speechily — about race, real estate, capitalism and power.Those things are interesting, but maybe not as interesting as the people who say them. The story is about the sometimes lethal pursuit of cash and information, but the film’s single greatest asset is its cast. Curt and Ronald, small-timers who are skilled and smart but also out of their depth, are the focus of the action, which means that you spend a lot of time with Cheadle and Del Toro as they act out a high-stress — and yet low-key — buddy comedy.Ronald, a bit of a drinker and a bit of a racist, moves through the world as if dancing to a sad melody that only he can here. Curt, just out of prison with sorrows of his own, has the quick wit and jumpy intensity of a survivor. Each has fallen afoul of a local crime boss, which is bad for them but lucky for us, since the big shots are played by Ray Liotta and Bill Duke.There’s more, notably David Harbour as the pathetic G.M. accountant and Amy Seimetz as his seething wife. An entire melodrama of marital malaise and sexual secrecy is folded into their scenes, even as “No Sudden Move” suggests a Coen brothers movie with a sincere social conscience in place of the ambient cynicism. Most of the characters are semi-competent players in a game that is rigged against them, and you hope that at least some of them will play their bad hands well enough to break even.The movie itself is nearly flawless in its professionalism, which is both a virtue and a limitation. The costumes (by Marci Rodgers) and production design (by Hannah Beachler) create a museum-quality panorama of the Motor City in its glory years, even as the script points out some of the cracks in the burnished surfaces. The precision and grace of the actors I’ve already named extend all the way through the ensemble — through Jon Hamm (as a skeptical lawman), Frankie Shaw (as a G.M. secretary with skin in the game), Julia Fox (as Ronald’s paramour) — to at least one potential surprise I don’t need to spoil.In keeping with the automotive themes, everything runs like a well-oiled machine, which is also to say that a crucial, hard-to-define element — of soul, of spontaneity, of messiness or inspiration — is missing. The object that sets the plot in motion is a set of highly coveted blueprints, which at one point needs to be torn in half. The schematic for “No Sudden Move” remains perfectly intact, and the thing itself works pretty much according to the specifications. A consumer-rating agency would give it high marks for safety and efficiency, but it never leaves the showroom.No Sudden MoveRated R. Bloodshed and salty talk. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Being a Human Person’ Review: Watching a Surrealist

      by

      This documentary on the Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson takes an unexpected turn.The Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson began his feature career in the early 1970s with distinctive but conventionally linear narratives. Interview clips from his early fame, included in “Being a Human Person,” a new documentary directed by Fred Scott, show a fresh-faced, sometimes glib fellow seemingly poised for industry success.In the early ’80s, though, Andersson reconfigured his working method. He bought a townhouse in Stockholm and made it into a studio and a home. In this space he concocted anecdotal, surreal cinematic reflections on not just human absurdity but human suffering, rendering them in single-shot tableaus. This movie tracks the making of what he announced as his last feature, “About Endlessness,” in 2018.The revelation of Andersson’s method, his painstaking use of trompe l’oeil both painterly and cinematic, is fascinating enough. But the chronicle takes an unexpected turn.Working from home has its advantages, but also affords near-instant access to a wine bar next door, where Andersson, now in his late 70s, starts spending what his colleagues consider a concerning amount of time. These artisans of Northern Europe are polite and kind; as much as Andersson’s behavior disturbs them, the film never shows anyone raising their voice. An audio recording of a phone call Andersson makes after walking out of a rehab and having difficulty finding a taxi is intense, and a little scary.“He’s not really a family person,” his own daughter observes. A producer notes, resigned, “He has no intention of stopping drinking.” A trip to Spain for a festival both strokes Andersson’s ego and recharges his batteries — he’s shown looking at the works of one of his heroes, Goya, at the Prado. By the movie’s end, he hasn’t so much pulled himself together as soldiered on — and changed his mind about closing his beloved home studio.Being a Human PersonNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Some of Our Stallions’ Review: At Least They Don’t Shoot Horses

      by

      The film that poses the cause-and-effect question about toxic masculinity and unhinged behavior.No equine beasts adorn this queasy comedy. Too bad. The title “Some of Our Stallions,” parodies, one presumes, the self-aggrandizing language certain American males apply to themselves. The would-be “stallions” here are a couple of misfits. Carson Mell, a burly, bearded guy who insists on being addressed as “Beautiful Bill,” wrote and directed the movie as well as taking a starring role alongside Al Di, also a producer, who plays the fast-talking Andy. In the opening scene, Bill, in a fast-food restaurant meltdown, dunks his hands into the hot oil of a deep fryer.Soon after this, Bill decides what the two really need are girlfriends. After starting the quest at a mall and predictably striking out, Bill terrorizes a delivery guy, steals his car, and drives himself and Andy to a mental hospital — a place they are both familiar with — and lies to a discharged patient, telling her they’re with the government and providing rides. That woman, Bonnie (Olivia Taylor Dudley) actually takes a shine to Andy and eventually becomes pregnant by him.The movie’s occasional references to “Taxi Driver” suggest that Mell wants to make a statement about loneliness, or something. But the movie also indulges in a glut of stereotypes about mental illness that Mell enacts with an unseemly enthusiasm — like he’s executing an antisocial wish-fulfillment exercise. The sight of Mell running around outside in pajama bottoms brandishing a toy ray gun is neither as funny nor as illuminating as Mell seems to think it is. And the 180-degree move the filmmaker pulls at the denouement isn’t so much a sellout as an opportunistic surrender to hipster sentimentality.Some of Our StallionsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Scenes from an Empty Church’ Review: Cloistered Filmmaking

      by

      This film, proudly shot and set during the pandemic, stars Kevin Corrigan and Thomas Jay Ryan as priests with different perspectives.“Scenes From an Empty Church” stars three actors — Kevin Corrigan, Thomas Jay Ryan and Max Casella — who emerged as scene-stealers in the 1990s. But watching this proudly pandemic-shot and -set feature from Onur Tukel is like being returned to the locked-down days of 2020. In a decade, the film will serve as a time capsule. But right now, it feels redundant: a dramatization of arguments (about masks, the pandemic’s effects on New York and the value of applauding first-responders at 7 p.m.) that have circulated for too long.Most of the movie is indeed set at a church — it was shot at the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel on West 34th Street — that has two priests: Father Andrew (Corrigan) and Father James (Ryan). An unseen third has died of Covid-19. The action kicks off when Father Andrew meets up with a friend, Paul (Casella), who insists not only on entering the closed church, but also on going maskless, which upsets Father James.Father James agrees to let parishioners visit one at a time under strict rules (“if they have a cough, send them off”). And as they arrive, the movie increasingly resembles a feature made solely to prove that limitations were no obstacle. The stopgaps are simply part of the drama. Paul Reiser, as Father Andrew’s dad, appears only in video-chat.“Scenes” has its moments, as any film that sits Ryan and Corrigan opposite each other in a confessional would. But even special effects near the end play more like the response to a challenge than a spark of inspiration.Scenes from an Empty ChurchNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Stand-Ups Get Experimental in Five Adventurous New Specials

      by

      For these sets, Chris Gethard, Rory Scovel, Carmen Christopher, Josh Johnson and Jessica Watkins borrow from improv, documentary and more.“You gotta get a gimmick if you wanna get applause.”When Stephen Sondheim placed this timeless showbiz advice in the classic musical “Gypsy,” he was referring to stripping. If dancing seductively while taking your clothes off is not enough to win over an audience, imagine the challenge of telling jokes in a crowded stand-up scene. In her debut, “Specialish,” Jessica Watkins puts it this way: “You need more than comedy. You need a shtick.”For Watkins, this meant pushing a cart across America on highways and through woods, sleeping in a tent and filming this lonely trek while doing sets in small spaces from New York to California. An odd mix of stand-up special and “Nomadland,” her effort is both exceptional and characteristic of the try-anything moment in comedy, one in which many performers are fusing forms, mixing onstage with off, merry with melancholy, written jokes with music, improv or other elements.Bo Burnham’s buzzy “Inside” (Netflix) packaged a solo show inside a musical. Next month, Tig Notaro releases a fully animated stand-up special. But the fastest growing comedy hybrid is the stand-up documentary. Shots of the comic backstage once bookended the jokes, but now scenes of the life of the comic regularly introduce, respond to and buttress the performance. It’s no surprise that the winners of the 2020 Oscar for best documentary feature made Dave Chappelle’s next movie, “This Time This Place,” a chronicle of, among other things, performing in his hometown Yellow Springs, Ohio, during the pandemic.“Specialish” (available on major digital platforms) is an example of the strengths and pitfalls of this high-concept approach: While it added scenic drama and beauty to her strenuous journey, it eventually overwhelmed the comedy. In explaining why she’s pushing a cart on her trip, she quips, “I wanted to look more homeless.” Such punch lines hit less hard than interludes in her life. The stand-up often seems incidental if not out of place, even a distraction from the main event.Carmen Christopher, left, and Chris Gethard in “Half My Life.”Comedy DynamicsIn recent months, Rory Scovel, Chris Gethard and Carmen Christopher put out more modestly focused specials that mix stand-up with behind-the-scenes footage. Each is experimental in different ways. In “Live Without Fear” (available on YouTube), Scovel, a dynamic and inventive performer who has delivered some of the funniest sets I have ever seen, set himself the task of making up six shows completely on the spot: stand-up merged with improv. His goal was to capture the spontaneity of creation while weaving in post-show commentary on what went wrong.Shot by Scott Moran with sensitivity to the rhythm of jokes, Scovel’s performances are riveting high-wire acts, not as refined as a normal set but displaying the drunken thrill of a party conversation starting to take off. Scovel brings titanic aggression leavened by patience, toying with words, searching for the funny parts, filibustering a premise and biding his time, waiting for inspiration to strike. Many of his best improvisations begin with simple observational premises — the weirdness of the phrase “getting on your high horse” — then move into puns (“pot-smoking horses”) followed by absurdity (“That’s where the show ‘Mr. Ed’ comes from”) and a coda with bizarre rage (“Tell me I’m wrong!”).If Scovel courts failure, Christopher hugs it tightly in “Street Special,” a deadpan, self-consciously awkward special, one of the first produced on Peacock. Carrying his own microphone, Christopher set up shop on New York street corners during the pandemic, surprising nervous pedestrians with jokes. At the start, he interrupts outdoor diners at the East Village spot Veselka by announcing that he just got engaged. After some lonely applause, annoyed glances and some quintessential New York indifference, he said he was kidding, that he has been single for seven years and that he just wanted to see what it felt like to have people excited for him.This cringe comedy will divide viewers. He satirizes certain kinds of hack comedy but finds an oddball spirit all its own. Christopher doesn’t just capture the anxious atmosphere of pandemic-era city life. He exploits it to jack up the tension in a joke.He also shows up as the opening act in Chris Gethard’s special “Half My Life” (on major digital platforms), a chronicle of a road trip alongside a portrait of a comic in a midlife crisis. Gethard is a New York comedy institution whose many projects include the popular podcast “Beautiful/Anonymous,” which features conversations with a stranger. But now, with a newborn at home, he sounds surprisingly ambivalent about his two-decade career, calling himself the king of the “near sellout” and wondering aloud about his passion for performing. “I think I still love comedy, but my back hurts and I’m tired,” he says.In his work, Gethard is known for wandering down dark avenues, but “Half My Life” actually evolves into a lightly fun special. He’s smart enough to drill down on his best bit — a series of jokes about Gatorland, an amusement park in Orlando that competes with Disney World — and concludes by becoming what is surely the first stand-up to perform for an audience exclusively of alligators.Josh Johnson follows jokes with R&B songs on his new album.Mindy TuckerIf there’s a fusion of forms that approaches the popularity of the documentary-stand-up mix, it’s that of the marriage between comedy and music. While many comics use music in their jokes, the new album by Josh Johnson (on Apple Music) is the first I have heard that puts stand-up bits side by side with earnestly produced songs. Johnson is a rising star, a “Daily Show” writer who emerged from the pandemic with this album, as well as a sharply observed special on Comedy Central that is a better showcase for his joke writing. The album, billed as “part millennial escapism, part Negro spiritual,” is a mixed bag that follows a joke about how love should be regulated (“There’s nothing someone hasn’t done for crack that they haven’t done for love”) with an R&B song.Sometimes, the connections between the comedy and the music are hard to detect. It’s right there in its title — “Elusive.”The great thing about standup is that it’s a bare-bones art. Anyone with a voice can do it. And traditionalists have a point when they roll their eyes, insisting that comics should just get to the jokes. These specials have more unnecessary or unfinished elements than the best comedy. (Scovel’s “Live Without Fear” includes a side plot about the history of the theater he performs in that doesn’t quite come together.)But it’s a mistake to be too cynical about efforts to push the form or to borrow from new sources, because that’s what will keep comedy growing. Even if the new adventurousness in specials is rooted in gimmickry, I still welcome it. The stand-up special is too young an art to become set in its ways. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Legend of the Underground’ Review: Gay Activism in Nigeria

      by

      In this stylish documentary, young men discuss their country’s laws criminalizing gay sex.The documentary “The Legend of the Underground” captures queer Nigerian activists as they discuss their country’s laws criminalizing gay sex. Together, they lament unjust arrests and police brutality. But they are not aiming for either martyrdom or altruism — instead, their goal is to improve the circumstances of their own lives.This film is stylish, like a well-curated advertisement. These men are beautiful, youthful, dressed in mesh and silks. But the movie’s almost shallow appeal to aesthetics is not disconnected from the political agenda of gay Nigerians. For these men, desirability serves multiple purposes. It may entice potential partners, but also advertisers, the global entertainment industry and the hostile Nigerian public.The movie shows the tug of war between profit and public service by contrasting the civic-minded approach of Michael, an organizer who splits time between Lagos and New York for his safety, with the actions of the prominent Nigerian activist James Brown. James wants to grow his follower count to publicize the queer cause, but he also has ambitions to become a global influencer.The filmmakers Giselle Bailey and Nneka Onuorah capture arguments as other activists wrestle with the contradictions of James’s motivations. But crucially, they don’t shy away from James. Instead, the film leaves the tension unresolved, suggesting that James’s mix of political protest and personal ambition may be new tactics from a new generation. In the Nigerian queer scene, there are no sinners and no saints. In the end, Michael dons a sweater for a night out at the club. The shirt’s glitter typeface shows a single word: Buysexual.Legend of the UndergroundNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More