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    ‘Juror #2’ Review: Clint Eastwood Hands Down a Tough Verdict

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    In his latest (and perhaps last) movie as a director, Eastwood casts a skeptical eye at the criminal justice system in a mystery starring Nicholas Hoult.Clint Eastwood has been such a familiar force in American cinema for so long that it’s easy to think you’ve got him figured out. Yet here he is again, at 94, with a low-key, genuine shocker, “Juror #2,” the 42nd movie that he’s directed and a lean-to-the-bone, tough-minded ethical showdown that says something about the law, personal morality, the state of the country and, I’m guessing, how he feels about the whole shebang. He seems riled up, to judge from the anger that simmers through the movie, which centers on a struggle to find justice within — though perhaps despite — an imperfect system and in the face of towering self-interest.Justin (a very fine Nicholas Hoult) has just finished fixing up a baby nursery at home when he walks into a Savannah, Ga., courtroom to report for jury duty. He and his wife, Allison (Zoey Deutch), are expecting, and tying themselves into knots of worry because several years earlier, their last pregnancy ended tragically. For them, his civic duties couldn’t have come at a worse time. Even so, Justin shows up, eager and attentive, and before long is seated on a jury in a criminal case that takes an abrupt, unexpected turn: The defendant has been charged with murder, and Justin quickly realizes that he himself might be the real killer.Did he or didn’t he is one question, and the start of a mystery, both procedural and existential, that soon finds Justin playing at once a freaked-out juror, potential culprit and dogged detective. The defendant on trial, James (Gabriel Basso), has been accused of murdering his girlfriend, Kendell (Francesa Eastwood, the director’s daughter). They’d been drinking at a local dive when they began arguing. They went outside, where it was dark and pouring rain, and continued to fight in front of a smattering of customers who had followed them. She walked off alone, he trailed after her in his truck, and before long she was dead.It’s a deliciously twisted setup, like something out of an old film noir in which the hero becomes the main suspect and, by desperate default, also slips into the role of a detective working the case. In this movie, voir dire has scarcely ended — Eastwood, who famously likes to work fast, races through the typical preliminaries — when Justin is sweating in the jury box and listening to the prosecutor, Faith (Toni Collette), and the defense lawyer, Eric (Chris Messina), make their cases. Before long, the lawyers have made their closing arguments, and Justin is sequestered in a room with 11 people who are also on the case.Eastwood takes a bit of time to find his groove. The opener is, by turns, pokey and rushed, and you can almost feel his impatience as he lines up the story’s pieces. He doesn’t seem to have spent much time thinking about the movie’s visuals; they look fine, I wish they looked better. He seems especially uninterested in Justin’s home life, and given how dreary and claustrophobic it looks, you can hardly blame him. Once the trial begins and the lawyers start prodding and probing, Eastwood settles in nicely. Justin realizes that he was at the bar the same night as the defendant and victim, triggering a series of jagged flashbacks that, as the trial continues, grow longer, more detailed and, in time, help fill in the larger picture.Written by Jonathan A. Abrams, “Juror #2” is a whodunit in which justice turns out to be as much on trial as the defendant. Both sides seem to have a weak case. The defendant is shady, the autopsy inconclusive, the only witness questionable, and there’s an enigma among the jurors, most of whom just want to go home. And while Eric nevertheless delivers a righteously indignant defense, Faith seems overly eager to wrap things up, partly because she’s running for district attorney and already fake-smiling like a glad-handing politician. Their arguments are shrewdly handled, pared down and delivered in a dynamic volley of edits that turn their speeches into a he-said, she-said duel, with a stricken Justin caught in the middle.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      These Oscar Snubs Still Rile Up Our Readers

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      You can’t forgive the Academy for passing up “Brokeback Mountain” or omitting Amy Adams in “Arrival,” among other oversights that still sting.Some things will always stick in your craw. When I asked readers, ahead of the Academy Awards on Sunday, if they were still mad about an Oscar snub, boy, did I get an earful.Technically a snub involves a film or an artist (or a song or any other possible contender) that was overlooked altogether at the awards. But a nominee losing to an unworthy rival was also fair game, and readers took both slights to heart.I received hundreds of responses. Readers felt strongly about the lack of nominations for “Paddington 2,” Danny Elfman’s score for the 1989 “Batman,” Will Ferrell in “Elf” and Abby Ryder Fortson in “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” But these weren’t the most notable omissions and oversights. Here are the lightly edited responses:‘Saving Private Ryan’Steven Spielberg’s World War II drama lost best picture to the period romance “Shakespeare in Love” in 1999.“Saving Private Ryan” is unforgettable. The opening beach scene was jaw-dropping. “Shakespeare in Love” is entirely forgettable. Harvey Weinstein campaigned to get that Oscar. Shame on the academy. MATT DENTON, Old Bridge, N.J.Probably the best war movie of all time versus a lightweight rom-com about Shakespeare’s love life. Need I say more? SCOTT PARKIN, Reston, Va.Who has ever watched “Shakespeare in Love” more than once? BART DEWING, Mount Vernon, N.Y.Fernanda Montenegro in ‘Central Station’More “Shakespeare in Love” ire: Gwyneth Paltrow won for best actress in that film over the star of the Brazilian road trip tale.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Mafia Mamma’ Review: An Offer You Can Refuse

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      Toni Collette has no chance of saving this jumble of Mob clichés and female empowerment.Sweet Tony Soprano, “Mafia Mamma” is bad. And not just disappointingly bad, in the way of late-career James Cameron, or irritatingly puerile, like virtually anything featuring Roberto Benigni. No, “Mafia Mamma” is so wincingly awful it makes you question the professional bona fides of everyone who had a hand in greenlighting its existence.This probably sounds harsh. But, as someone who has long respected the work of the film’s director, Catherine Hardwicke — whose abilities were evident from the get-go with “Thirteen” (2003) and, five years later, the first and best entry in the “Twilight” troop — I was jarred. A clodhopping farce interrupted by seizures of cartoonish violence, Hardwicke’s latest outing posits that the best distraction from an empty nest and a cheating spouse is to dash to Italy and join the Cosa Nostra.At least, that’s what Kristin (Toni Collette), a self-effacing California housewife, does when she’s summoned to the Roman funeral of her estranged grandfather, a Mafia don, and learns that she is his designated replacement. Having recently waved her son off to college and surprised her no-count husband in flagrante, Kristin was hoping for — to paraphrase the sage advice of her best friend, played by a delightfully spicy Sophia Nomvete — an eat-pray-fornicate adventure. The first would be easy; the less said about the last, the better.Trite, charmless and entirely without grace, “Mafia Mamma” weaves a wearying string of Mob chestnuts into a shallow empowerment narrative. Initially enshrining Kristin’s doormat personality — before leaving for Italy, she prepares a selection of Tupperware meals for her faithless husband — the screenplay (by Michael J. Feldman and Debbie Jhoon) soon has her lusting after an airport pickup (Giulio Corso) and attempting coitus with the oily boss of a rival family (Eduardo Scarpetta). Surviving multiple assassination attempts apparently does wonders for the libido.Vacillating mainly between randy-tourist energy and “Eek! Blood!” reaction shots, Collette — despite a proven gift for comedy — must serve as the sole load-bearing wall in a house of cards. Mouth and eyes agape, Kristin spends much of the movie gasping variations on “Oh my god!,” whether it’s to note the untimely expiration of a prospective lover or to salute a particularly generous plate of pasta. Filmed in Italy with a mostly Italian cast (including Monica Bellucci as a slinky consiglieri), the story stumbles from one tired setup, one ludicrous shootout, one hackneyed line to another. Worse, the filmmakers see no limit to the number of times a flatlining joke can be resuscitated, with running gags on the Godfather movies and the synchronized spitting of Kristin’s cohort whenever her family’s enemies are named.Warmly photographed by Patrick Murguia, “Mafia Mamma” opens in the aftermath of a slaughter and closes in the vicinity of a courtroom scene of surpassing looniness. By that point, I was surprised only that no one had thought to slide a horse’s head between Kristin’s sheets; maybe the writers had no more oh-my-gods left to give.Mafia MammaRated R for a violation to the anus and insults to the intelligence. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Estate’ Review: No Good Will

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      Toni Collette and Anna Faris play sisters trying to weasel their way into their wealthy aunt’s will in this black comedy.In the black, downright venal comedy “The Estate,” Toni Collette and Anna Faris play sisters on the brink of financial ruin. They run a cafe together and have just heard that the bank denied their loan application when they receive what passes for good news in this mordant farce: Their rich Aunt Hilda (Kathleen Turner) is dying.Savanna (Faris) is the more unscrupulous sister, and she convinces Macey (Collette) that they should try to cozy up to their ornery aunt in the hopes of being written into her will. But when the pair arrive at Hilda’s home, they find their equally shameless cousins, Beatrice (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Richard (David Duchovny), engaged in similar plans. The family commences a race to the bottom of their dying aunt’s cold heart. But Macey and Savanna are ill-suited to beat Beatrice and Richard when it comes to bedside manners. And so they escalate their efforts at ingratiation, plotting disastrous reunions first with Hilda’s estranged sister, and then with her former flame.The movie’s director, Dean Craig, is best known for writing the comedy “Death at a Funeral.” As a filmmaker, his images are perfunctory. “The Estate” features a desaturated color palette, and the production design looks shabby, even inside Hilda’s multimillion-dollar mansion. But Craig’s writing retains enough caustic wit for his excellent cast to work with. Collette plays the straight woman to her ruthless relatives, and the contrast between her moral dismay and Faris’s mercenary willpower drives some of the film’s best laughs.This is a comedy that takes a vicious, over-the-top look at family greed, and fortunately, the cast members are game to play their characters’ attempts at flattery in the most unflattering manner possible.The EstateRated R for language, sexual references and brief nudity. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Nightmare Alley’ Review: Seeing Is Believing. (Suckers!)

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      Guillermo del Toro’s latest movie tracks the sordid adventures of a carnival grifter played by Bradley Cooper.Festooned with gargoyles, Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” gets its game on in the sleazoid world of 1930s back-road carnivals. There, amid worn tents and garishly painted signs, a psychic reads gullible minds and a contortionist twists like a soft pretzel. The whole thing seems like fertile ground for del Toro, who’s drawn to the stranger, spookier corners of the imagination. So when a carnival barker promises a crowd a good show it is easy to imagine del Toro nodding along as he murmurs, Step right this way, folks.You get why Stan (Bradley Cooper) looks all agog when he wanders in. As a filmmaker, del Toro likes to lay an overflowing table, and there’s a lot to take in at the carnival, like the pickled baby, baptized Cyclops Boy; and a poor soul called the Geek, an ostensible wild man who bites the heads off chickens. It’s icky — that’s the idea. Stan has empty pockets and a mysterious past, and while others might run screaming, he soon joins the show’s roster of creepy and putatively charming charlatans. He proves a natural hustler and, as the story evolves, his grifting grows more sophisticated, lucrative and dangerous.You might have seen Tyrone Power navigating a similarly shadowy setup in the 1947 noir of the same title, directed by Edmund Goulding. Like the earlier movie, del Toro’s is based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, a desperate, pitiless book filled with exotic slang and steeped in the soured milk of human unkindness. Written by del Toro and Kim Morgan, the new adaptation hews more faithfully to the novel, partly because it’s not constrained by Hollywood self-censorship. But fealty isn’t always a productive strategy, and while the first film greatly tempers the book’s shocks, it doesn’t sentimentalize the source material, as this one does.Shortly after Stan becomes a carny, he begins cycling through women, beginning with a clairvoyant (Toni Collette) whose broken-down husband (David Strathairn) once had a successful mentalist act. The act uses a code that allows the performers to guess, more or less accurately, the answers to audience questions. It’s a perfect fit for an opportunist, which is a role that nicely suits Cooper, an actor who can let you see his characters’ internal whirring. Stan and another love interest (Rooney Mara) leave the carnival, taking the mentalist act on the nightclub circuit. They make bank and also meet a smooth number (Cate Blanchett) who steps out of a different, less engaging movie.Cooper adds charisma and an anxious backbeat to the story, while the old-timey carnival gives the movie texture and novelty. Part of the queasy appeal of Gresham’s novel is that it vividly brings to life the kind of low-rent carnivals that once entertained audiences with so-called human oddities, people who were often just disabled or marginalized. However exploitative, these shows provided performers with wages and homes, a community like the one immortalized in Tod Browning’s scandalous 1932 film “Freaks,” a favorite of del Toro’s. The attraction to outsider realms like the one immortalized in that film runs deep for del Toro; if nothing else, movie shoots are themselves nomadic tribes of a kind.Whatever his reasons, del Toro adores his monsters, and he’s right at home in the carnival, which he dotes on lovingly. He puts his frequent collaborator Ron Perlman in strongman tights, turns up the amperage on Willem Dafoe’s cadaverous smile and gives Collette time and space to leave an impression. Collette’s scenes with Cooper send out electric sparks, generating heat that briefly takes the chill off Stan and draws you to him. Their scenes also give Cooper a chance to flesh out the character, a mystery that unravels scene by scene. You miss Colette when her character exits, which happens all too fast because Stan has other places to go and more people to cheat.As del Toro peers into the carnival’s corners, he also folds in one of the movie’s recurring motifs: eyes. “Nightmare Alley” turns on the logic of the visible: what Stan sees and doesn’t, what patrons (you included) see and don’t. In the carnival (and in movies), seeing is believing, including in illusions, yet at what cost? Early on, Stan stumbles into an attraction decorated with eyes, an echo of Salvador Dalí’s designs for the Hitchcock film “Spellbound.” Later, when Stan develops his mentalist act, he wears a blindfold decorated with a single eye, evoking the Cyclops Boy. By the time he meets a shrink, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Blanchett), it is obvious that what Stan can never really see is himself.Del Toro is a world builder, but he can have a tough time bringing his creations to life, which is the case here despite the hard work of his fine cast. The carnival is diverting, and del Toro’s fondness for its denizens helps put a human face on these putative freaks. But once he’s finished with the preliminaries, he struggles to make the many striking parts cohere into a living, breathing whole. It’s as if, after opening his cabinet of curiosities, he expected you to continue gazing appreciatively at his collection of wonders alongside him. And while it is a nice display — everything gleams, having been lovingly polished and repolished — it’s also inert, more museological than cinematic.The problem is that this display is in service to a drama that needs narrative tension and modulation to fully work. The scenes with Lilith are particularly crucial in this respect, and also where the movie’s already logy pulse slows to a crawl. It’s no surprise that Blanchett makes quite the spectacle — she doesn’t walk and sit, she slinks and drapes — yet the performance is so mannered and self-consciously indebted to noir sirens of the past that you can almost see the quote marks framing it. In theory, Lilith should be a sharp foil for Stan. But she isn’t a character, she is a cineaste’s nostalgic plaything, and like too much of this movie she is less bathed in del Toro’s love than embalmed in it.Nightmare AlleyRated R for bloody violence. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Dream Horse’ Review: A Familiar Bet

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      Toni Collette and Damian Lewis play two underdogs in Wales who invest in a race horse in this comedy-drama ripped from the headlines.In the comedy-drama “Dream Horse,” a woman who works two jobs gets an idea. Remembering her glory days of training animals — pigeons, to be exact — she is determined to buy a mare and birth a race horse. She doesn’t have the resources to do it on her own, so she turns to her sleepy community in Wales to pool their assets.This sports underdog story, which is based on true events, has several features endemic to the genre. But “Dream Horse,” an unabashed crowd-pleaser directed by Euros Lyn, earns its smiles and cheers.Toni Collette plays Jan Vokes, who works in a supermarket by day and draws pints in a pub at night. While her husband Brian (Owen Teale) is a terrible listener — the couple play a game when he’s engrossed in television, in which he “um-hmms” at any outrageous lie Jan concocts — he is invested enough in their marriage that he doesn’t blink when Jan proposes to spend a big chunk of change on a horse.Damian Lewis is Howard, a put-upon salaryman who brings his racing expertise to the pub where Jan tends bar. He and Jan decide to form a collective to back the young foal named Dream Alliance, and it’s off to the races.It’s lovely to see Collette and Lewis, who are largely known for playing intense, difficult people, bringing genuine life to likable “ordinary” characters. Director Lyn, a Welshman himself, includes credible local detail and does knockout work with the racing sequences, leading up to a finale in the rousing “Rocky II” tradition. The final credit sequence, reprising and expanding a karaoke scene from earlier on, is a kick as well, practically worth the price of admission.Dream HorseRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Stowaway’ Review: An Outer-Space Drama, Lacking Gravity

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      This Netflix film pushes a crew of space explorers to moral and physical extremes when an unexpected passenger accidentally compromises their oxygen supply.Films set in outer space are often on a quest for meaning, filling the vast unknown of the galaxy with humanity’s basest anxieties. “Stowaway,” directed by Joe Penna, pushes a crew of space explorers to moral and physical extremes when an unexpected passenger accidentally compromises their oxygen supply. Yet for all the empathy it expects of its viewers — every character cries onscreen at least once — the film is troublingly removed from human reality.That’s not to say these characters aren’t likable or well-rendered by the starry cast. Toni Collette stands out as always, playing a veteran astronaut on her last mission. Anna Kendrick does well as the beating heart of this film, a foil to the stoic Daniel Dae Kim. And Shamier Anderson holds his own as the surprise fourth crew member, though he is given far too little to work with.Despite its futuristic musings, the film’s greatest weakness is its approach to the stowaway. His presence forces the other characters to reckon with whether he should live or die, thus the film asks, “How does anybody make an impossible decision?” What the film should be asking is, “How do two white women and an Asian man decide whether a Black man should live or die?” The viewer may ask, “Why isn’t this film from the point of view of the Black man up for slaughter?”“Stowaway” may be set in the future, but surely it is not so far removed from the present that these questions should go unanswered.StowawayNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More