Cry Macho (Movie)

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    ‘Stan & Ollie,’ ‘Resurrection’ and More Streaming Gems

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    Wildly original comedy-dramas, hair-raising horror and modest examinations of male tenderness are among the highlights of this month’s off-the-grid streaming recommendations.‘Stan & Ollie’ (2018)Stream it on Max.It’s no surprise that a biopic of the classic comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy didn’t exactly set the box office on fire eight decades after their heyday; their work has been all but forgotten in this what’s-new-and-is-it-streaming era. But the director Jon S. Baird — focusing on the pair’s tour of English music halls in the twilight of their careers — presents a compelling (if somewhat fictionalized) portrait of their affection, resentments and codependence, while Steve Coogan as Laurel and John C. Reilly as Hardy engagingly recreate the comedians’ old routines and characterizations. They’re fun to watch (and to watch together), and the pathos at the picture’s end is genuine, and earned.‘Welcome to Me’ (2015)Stream it on Peacock.Kristen Wiig is at the center of this peculiar and risky character study as Alice Klieg, a perpetually luckless unemployed woman with borderline personality disorder who wins the California lottery and uses her newfound financial windfall to fund her own bizarre daytime talk show. The director Shira Piven and the screenwriter Eliot Laurence could have easily told this story as a broad comedy or a depressing chamber piece. They pull off something trickier, positioning the picture as a serious-minded but frequently uproarious tragicomedy, and it mostly works — thanks in no small part to Wiig, whose characterization is equal parts keenly observed, deeply disturbed and breezily funny.‘Cold Pursuit’ (2019)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.You might assume this is yet another of Liam Neeson’s late-career thrillers, considering it concerns an ordinary man out to avenge the death of his son. But there’s a grim joylessness to this man and his mission, and “Cold Pursuit” gradually reveals itself as a deconstruction of these movies, willing to grapple with the bleakness of death and revenge. Neeson’s snowplow driver just keeps pounding these guys for names, then moves up to the next one, methodically searching for the responsible party. It gets broader (and more obviously “Fargo”-influenced) as it goes, which is unfortunate. But the subtext is fascinating, and Neeson seems to revel in the opportunity to do some honest-to-goodness acting in one of these things.‘Cry Macho’ (2021)Stream it on Netflix.Clint Eastwood had just entered his ninth decade on earth when he directed and starred in this adaptation of N. Richard Nash’s novel, and he looks every day of it onscreen; this isn’t the robust Clint of “In the Line of Fire” or even “Million Dollar Baby,” but a fragile, aged man with a croak of a voice. Yet Eastwood the director has always known how to play up the strengths of Eastwood the actor, and the many miles of road behind him give extra gravitas to the wisdom his character, a onetime rodeo rider, imparts on the young man (Eduardo Minett) he’s been sent to Mexico to retrieve.‘Resurrection’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.Rebecca Hall crafts an astonishing portrait of a woman in the grip of unceasing trauma in this horror-tinged drama from the writer and director Andrew Semans. Hall is the very picture of fierce independence as Margaret, a driven career woman whose carefully calculated life starts careening out of her grasp when a mysterious figure from her past (a devilish Tim Roth) reappears. The genre affectations are effective — particularly the jaw-dropping finale — but the real draw here is Hall’s showcase monologue, an emotionally devastating explanation of exactly who Roth is, and what he did to her.‘Strawberry Mansion’ (2022)Stream it on Mubi.Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney wrote, directed and edited this delightfully demented comic fantasy — a true indie with a look, sound and feel quite unlike anything else on this or any other list. Audley is also the deadpan leading man, a government auditor in a not too distant future, where citizens are taxed for the extravagancies of their dreams. It’s a digital process, so he meets a considerable challenge in the form of the batty Bella (Penny Fuller), whose dreams are still analog, leaving him with thousands of videotapes to watch and log. And that’s when things start getting really weird. Audley and Birney’s wild screenplay adroitly captures the touch-and-go intricacies of dream logic, the special effects are impressively D.I.Y. and the humor is deliriously cockeyed throughout.‘Love Is Strange’ (2014)Stream it on Max.The youthful subjects and ratings-busting sexuality of the recent cause célèbre “Passages” make it feel like the work of a newbie hotshot, but its co-writer and director, Ira Sachs, has been making thoughtful, poignant indies for years. This is one of the best, the tender and sometimes tense story of Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina), who have loved each other and lived together for decades, only to find that finally making their marriage legal turns their entire lives upside down. Sachs’s portrayal of the frustrations of Manhattan real estate rings loud and true, and his entire cast is sturdy. But the real draws here are Lithgow and Molina, who invest their onscreen relationship with a lived-in authenticity.‘It’s Quieter in the Twilight’ (2023)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.NASA launched the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts in 1977, with the goal of gathering data from the orbits of the four outermost planets before continuing beyond our solar system. More than 1,000 people were involved in the project; when the director Billy Miossi shot this documentary about the mission between 2019 and 2021, that number had dwindled down to about a dozen lifers, many of them postponing retirement or declining other opportunities to instead stay with the Voyagers. Miossi’s film is modest, especially considering the grand ambitions of the mission, yet it’s a captivating portrait of these dedicated professionals, their inspiring work and the challenges of aging technology. 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      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: The Super Bowl and an Oscar Micheaux Documentary

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      The Super Bowl airs on NBC. And TCM airs a documentary about a pathbreaking filmmaker.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Feb. 7-Feb. 13. Details and times are subject to change.MondayLOVE & BASKETBALL (2000) 6 p.m. on BET. Football is front of mind this week, but Gina Prince-Bythewood’s coming-of-age classic “Love & Basketball” is timeless. Set in Los Angeles, the movie stars Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps as young people who are passionate for each other and for the game.TuesdayAMERICAN MASTERS: MARIAN ANDERSON — THE WHOLE WORLD IN HER HANDS (2022) 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The filmmaker Rita Coburn (“Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise”) looks at the barrier-breaking contralto Marian Anderson in this new documentary. Anderson is perhaps best known for her 1939 concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which became a civil rights milestone; she also broke the color barrier for soloists at the Metropolitan Opera and toured for the State Department. Anderson’s life and legacy — she died in 1993 at 96 — are discussed here by interviewees including the tenor George Shirley and the mezzo-sopranos Denyce Graves and J’nai Bridges.WednesdayA scene from “Fairview.”Comedy CentralFAIRVIEW 8:30 p.m. on Comedy Central. A small American town deals with big changes in this new, “South Park”-esque half-hour animated series, which counts Stephen Colbert among its executive producers. The stand-up comic Blair Socci voices the mayor of Fairview, where people’s jobs are being replaced by artificial intelligence; Covid is a concern; and, in at least one case, a student gives a school presentation on his father’s career running an explicit OnlyFans account. While moderating an interview panel at New York Comic Con last year, the comedy writer-performer Jen Spyra said to the “Fairview” creator R.J. Fried, “I understand that you take the comedy to some abjectly disgusting places.” Fried responded calmly and succinctly: “That’s for sure.” The voice cast also includes the comics Aparna Nancherla and Atsuko Okatsuka.ThursdayDavid Oyelowo and Storm Reid in “Don’t Let Go.”Lacey Terrell/Universal PicturesDON’T LET GO (2019) 5:20 p.m. on FXM. Grief seems to bend time in “Don’t Let Go,” a sci-fi thriller led by David Oyelowo and directed by Jacob Aaron Estes. Oyelowo plays Jack Radcliff, a Los Angeles detective whose niece (played by Storm Reid) is murdered. But soon after the killing, Radcliff receives what is apparently a phone call from his dead niece, speaking from the past — or perhaps from another dimension. He sets off to untangle the mystery. The result is “a likable, derivative genre mash-up,” Manohla Dargis said in her review for The New York Times. “You get lost in its thickets because Estes hasn’t wholly figured out how to make toying with time work,” she wrote. “But he has a fine cast and a good sense of place, including a feel for the spookiness of emptied-out spaces.”FridayEVERYTHING’S GONNA BE ALL WHITE 8 p.m. on Showtime. The producer-director Sacha Jenkins (“Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James”) is behind this new three-part docuseries, which explores race and racism in America’s past and present. It does so with the help of interviewees from an array of fields — academic, political, artistic and more — including the historian Nell Irvin Painter, the human rights activist Linda Sarsour, the comedian Amanda Seales, the artist Favianna Rodriguez, the rapper Bun B and the sexuality educator Ericka Hart.SaturdayCRY MACHO (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. Clint Eastwood plays a patinated Texas rodeo retiree tasked with transporting a boy (played by Eduardo Minett) from Mexico to the United States in this modern Western. (Or almost modern: It’s set in 1980.) Their journey is risky but roundabout, filled with 20-miles-an-hour detours that make the movie a slow burn. Its relative quiet is especially pronounced in comparison to the work that Eastwood is best known for — a trait that A.O. Scott welcomed, mostly, in his review for The Times. “This one,” Scott wrote, “is something different — a deep cut for the die-hards, a hangout movie with nothing much to prove and just enough to say.”SundayPaul Robeson in Oscar Micheaux’s “Body and Soul.” A documentary about Micheaux will air on TCM on Sunday night.Kino LorberOSCAR MICHEAUX: THE SUPERHERO OF BLACK FILMMAKING (2021) 9:30 p.m. on TCM. From 1919 to 1948, the filmmaker Oscar Micheaux made some 40 movies filled with nuanced Black characters who broke screen stereotypes and often directly addressed issues of race. This documentary from the filmmaker Francesco Zippel (“Friedkin Uncut”) looks at Micheaux’s groundbreaking work and remarkable life: Micheaux’s parentshad once been enslaved, and he turned to professional storytelling only after a stint as a homesteader in South Dakota. His first film, “The Homesteader” (1919), was based on a fictionalized memoir he wrote. Produced about a century later, this documentary features perspectives from the late contemporary filmmakers John Singleton and Melvin Van Peebles, and a handful of performers and scholars.SUPER BOWL LVI 6 p.m. on NBC. Will the Los Angeles Rams or the Cincinnati Bengals prevail? What will it be like seeing two quarterbacks who were No. 1 draft picks — Joe Burrow of the Bengals and Matthew Stafford of the Rams — face off in a championship game, an extreme Super Bowl rarity? Most important, will Matthew McConaughey grace us with another weird, surrealist commercial, as he did for Doritos last year? Find out on Sunday during this live broadcast of the 56th Super Bowl. Viewers who are in it more for the culture (and, perhaps, the guacamole) will be glad to see a stacked halftime performance lineup: Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar. More

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      ‘Cry Macho’ Review: The Good, the Bad and the Poultry

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      In his latest film, Clint Eastwood drives across Mexico with a troubled young man and a combative rooster.Mike Milo is a former rodeo rider and horse trainer — an ornery old cuss with a complicated past and a soft spot for children and animals. He’s a grouch but also a professional, with a deep knowledge of his craft and a flinty sense of honor. To put it in simpler terms, he’s played by Clint Eastwood.Eastwood also directed “Cry Macho,” in a stripped-down, laid-back style that perfectly suits Mike’s approach to life. Sometimes in Eastwood’s films — going all the way back to “Play Misty for Me” — there’s daylight separating filmmaker and star, a palpable, if often subtle difference of perspective between the laconic, narrow-eyed man onscreen and the sly, adventurous artist behind the camera. This time, maybe not so much. Which is just fine.Mike has a risky job to do but, but he approaches his duties with no particular urgency, preferring to drive slowly and take in the scenery. Eastwood, notionally committed to doing something in the angry-dad revenge-rescue genre, uses the plot (supplied by Nick Schenk and N. Richard Nash’s script, based on a novel by Nash) as an excuse for a leisurely excursion through a picturesque landscape. Mike is on a mission, yes, racing the clock and pursued by dangerous hombres on both sides of the law. But that doesn’t prevent him from rolling into a quiet Mexican hamlet and remarking to his companions: “This looks like an interesting town. Let’s check it out.”Those companions are a 13-year-old boy named Rafo (Eduardo Minett), and Rafo’s prized fighting rooster, Macho, a noble bird who gives the film its title and its theme. Rafo, abandoned by his Texan father and abused by his Mexican mother, is attached both to Macho and to an ideal of tough, strutting masculinity. One of Mike’s tasks is to offer, by precept and example, an alternative way of being a man. Nothing too soft, mind you — this is still Clint Eastwood we’re talking about — but a more patient, less furious approach to life.“This macho thing is overrated,” Mike says. “You think you have all the answers, but then you get older and realize you don’t have any. By the time you figure it out, it’s too late.” What that amounts to is a benign form of fatalism, a humility that the rest of the movie upholds. The button-pushing and liberal-baiting that flared in “The Mule” and “Richard Jewell” aren’t much in evidence here, and the canonical Eastwood persona — the avenger of innocence who dwells in legal and moral gray zones — is in a state of semiretirement. There is evil in the universe, but it might not be entirely his problem.The opening scenes suggest otherwise. Rafo’s father, Howard (Dwight Yoakam), a big shot Texas rancher and Mike’s former boss, dispatches Mike to Mexico to collect the boy. Though Mike doesn’t much like Howard, he feels a sense of obligation, since Howard helped him get back on his feet after a series of personal tragedies.Once across the Rio Grande, Mike finds Howard’s “nutcase” ex-wife in her bedroom, and their son at a cockfighting ring. It’s 1980, by the way. The existence of GPS, cellphones and heavy security on the United States-Mexican border would spoil the atmosphere. Mike, Rafo and Macho light out in a series of Detroit junkers — mostly stolen, though nobody seems to mind — pursued by mom’s nasty boyfriend and the occasional federales.Now and then, Mike calls Howard from a pay phone. The whole project turns out to be more complicated than it seemed at first. “Don’t trust anyone” is Rafo’s mantra. That may be too sweeping, but “don’t trust anyone played by Dwight Yoakam” is a pretty good rule of thumb. As the old man, the boy and the chicken make their way down the highway, you can anticipate the turns the story will take.But not quite. The twists arrive, but not with the impact you might expect. What started as a thriller takes a long detour into the pastoral, as car trouble strands our travelers in a quiet village with a sweet cantina run by a widow named Marta (Natalia Traven). She and Mike get up to some heavy “Bridges of Madison County”-style flirting, while Rafo spends time with one of her granddaughters. There are some wild horses that need breaking, and other animals to look at, and whatever else needs to be dealt with can just wait awhile.Maybe this will make you restless. Maybe you want car chases, gunfights, quotable catchphrases and somber meditations on violence, justice and the American West. If so, there is a whole Clint Eastwood filmography to peruse. This one is something different — a deep cut for the die-hards, a hangout movie with nothing much to prove and just enough to say, with a pleasing score (by Mark Mancina) and some lovely desert scenery (shot by Ben Davis). If the old man’s driving, my advice is to get in and enjoy the ride.Cry MachoRated PG-13. Rough language and behavior. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters and on HBO Max. More