Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Brian and Charles’ Review: I, Robot Wearing a Cardigan

      by

      The comic performer David Earl plays a lonely inventor who builds a robot friend in this bionic buddy comedy.For over a decade, the British comedian David Earl has been playing the character Brian Gittins, a shaggy, unfiltered eccentric whose prickly point of view inspires pity and unease. The pseudo-documentary “Brian and Charles,” an unevenly sentimental heart-tugger directed by Jim Archer, finds Brian in a corner of rural Wales feeling depressed and solitary despite the implied presence of documentarians, whom he addresses directly while facing the camera. There’s no evident reason for the mockumentary element, although it gives Earl a chance to mug for the lens.To fix his low and lonely state, Brian builds a robot. Let Silicon Valley chase a sleek future of frictionless rectangles and orbs: Brian’s creation, Charles, is a towering, homemade shambles with gray hair and a doddering shuffle that gives the impression of a retired sheepherder. Chris Hayward, who wrote the movie with Earl, plays the bot and radiates marvelous vocal and physical energy from inside a costume that appears to be constructed from a cardboard box covered in a cardigan, with a mannequin head on a pole poking out of the top. He tests the audience’s ability to become invested in an unapologetically ridiculous concoction — and he succeeds better than the human caricatures who make up the rest of the ensemble, from a stock brute (Jamie Michie) to a potential love interest (Louise Brealey) who is stuck smiling patiently as the robot teaches Brian social skills.As Brian and Charles acclimate to each other, the story appears to be about Brian the crank realizing that he is the cause of his own isolation. (Charles helps in one scene by blurting, “You are boring!”) Too soon, however, this intriguing psychological study turns into a programmatic geeks-vs-bullies story that relies on pushing the easiest emotional buttons.Brian and CharlesRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Cocoon’ Review: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

      by

      Sunshine, ice pops and rainbow flags mark a summer of transformation for a teenager in Berlin in the coming-of-age drama, “Cocoon.”There are butterfly species that have evolved to be invisible to predators until their wings open, and suddenly their backs have the appearance of watchful eyes peering out from the wilderness. Nora (Lena Urzendowsky), the teenage protagonist of the German bildungsroman “Cocoon” is interested in butterflies, even keeping caterpillars in her bedroom. Like them, everything about Nora, except her watchful eyes, seems to blend into the background. Like them, she’s looking for a reason to transform.When the film begins, it’s summertime in Berlin and Nora is 14 years old, a quiet girl, less brash than her blonde and boy-crazy older sister, Jules (Anna Lena Klenke). Nora still has the choppy bangs of a middle school student, and she’s too naïve to know how to use tampons. that the heart flutters her sister experiences around handsome boys, Nora instead feels for girls. Nora falls into a flirtation with an older classmate, Romy (Jella Haase), a tomboy who skinny dips with the class heartthrobs and doesn’t lose her cool over it. As attraction blooms into a tentative romance, Nora grows a little more confident, and her sense of self becomes a little more defined.The writer and director Leonie Krippendorff favors warmth for Nora’s coming-of-age story. Even when Nora encounters things she doesn’t like — boys with their loud rap music, girls with stick-straight hair who slur cold words after sniffing lines in the bathroom — the cinematography lingers on golden light and soft skin. The softness lacks detail, the butterfly metaphors lack originality, but the movie is pleasant, a balmy introduction to adult feelings of desire and belonging.CocoonNot rated. In German, with subtitles. On virtual cinemas and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Father of the Bride’ Review: A Remake With a Cuban Twist

      by

      A Cuban American family walks down the aisle, treading carefully along the line separating tradition and tomorrow.The protagonist of “Father of the Bride” would probably bristle to hear this new romantic comedy referred to as a “Latinx” remake of the classic, which was last revived in 1991, with Steve Martin in the role. This time a Cuban American family is at the center of the story and Billy Herrera (Andy Garcia) is the father who must confront his daughter’s coming wedding.Herrera, as he often likes to remind his children, emigrated from Cuba with little more than a few cents in his pocket and managed to build a thriving architectural firm. He has expectations for his children and their futures. When his daughter and golden child Sofia (Adria Arjona), announces she is marrying Adan (Diego Boneta), a Mexican man who does not fit the macho image Billy has always imagined, he must contend with the ways in which Sofia’s vision for her life differs from his own.The film, directed by Gaz Alazraki and written by Matt Lopez, delivers on authenticity — using actors who speak Spanish fluently and working in cultural nuances rather than relying on the broad stroke representation of Latinos we have come to expect from Hollywood. Gloria Estefan plays Billy’s wife, Ingrid, who is fed up with his rigid ways; Isabela Merced is Sofia’s sister Cora, a free-spirited fashion designer; and the comedian Chloe Fineman plays the wacky wedding planner. Most of the film’s humor comes from her hamhanded attempts at adapting to the culture and language of the Herreras.But there is little other comic relief to leaven the exploration of generational rifts between immigrants and their children, which are fueled in part by machismo and elitism. Diversity, also, is an issue, with an all-white Latino cast,” except for a brief appearance by the reggaeton star Ozuna. Still, “Father of the Bride” shows the sort of rich cultural representation that can happen when people from the cultures being represented are enlisted to tell their own stories.Father of the BrideRated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More

    • 75 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Bitterbrush’ Review: Alone on the Range

      by

      Though this quiet documentary about two young range riders recalls a western or two, it presents a modern-day portrait of hard work and friendship.Through countless tales of frontier justice and stoic machismo, the western genre has been an American mythos machine. In “Bitterbrush,” Emelie Mahdavian’s becalmed documentary, the grand vistas and cattle roundups inevitably recall a western or two (at least to this city slicker). But in following two young women employed as range riders in Idaho, the film presents its own modern-day picture of hard work and camaraderie.Hollyn and Colie are essentially freelancers under contract to look after cattle on the open range. They’re usually the only two humans visible for miles, and their West isn’t a metaphor: It’s a workplace with open skies and rolling hills, and a cabin to bunk down in. Logistics is most of the job — how to get hundreds of cows (and the herd dogs that accompany them) from here to there, what tactics to use for “starting” a colt (training for the saddle).Each task takes as long as it takes, and is carried out with easy banter (Hollyn’s sense of humor is pleasantly goofy) and mutual care. Challenges are taken in stride without much fuss (nor much fuss about not making a fuss). One of the most emotional moments occurs at the campfire when Colie recalls the hands of her deceased mother — an achingly beautiful scene that almost takes the film by surprise (and has echoes in the close-ups on both women’s hands as they wrangle wire, a scene or two later).Scored with Bach, the film nearly resists drama. Hollyn and Colie’s experiences impress not as a spectacle but as a memory of a few seasons, with a wistful touch, before each moved on to her next station in life.BitterbrushNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Jerry & Marge Go Large’ Review: You Don’t Know Jackpot

      by

      Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening play an aging couple who cash in on a lottery loophole in this flavorless comedy.The mild Midwestern couple anchoring “Jerry & Marge Go Large” are hearty, spry and scarcely beyond their fifties. But you wouldn’t know that from their dialogue, which seems intent on establishing Jerry (Bryan Cranston) and Marge (Annette Bening) as geriatrics; “too old,” “golden years” and “missed my chance” are a few of the key terms encircling them.This framing of the protagonists is essential to “Jerry & Marge”; the dopey comedy uses the sheer implausibility of its scenario as a selling point. Elderly simpletons pulling off a cash gambit? Don’t be silly! Audiences may roll their eyes, but the director, David Frankel, plays up the hook: One more slow-mo shot of dad sneakers or mom jeans and certain sequences could double as ads for Walmart clothing.Loosely based on a true news item, the story begins with the recently retired Jerry discovering a flaw in the arithmetic behind a lottery game. Capitalizing on the loophole, he starts to win big, and even ropes in fellow townspeople as shareholders. The neighbors pool their profits, hoping to reinstall a local jazz fest, until a group of Harvard students inexplicably emerges as avaricious adversaries.In tone and semiotics, “Jerry & Marge” evokes conventional sitcoms. A schematic score accentuates moments of humor or sentiment, and each realization, narrative turn or lesson learned is repeated aloud in concrete terms. While the movie sustains levity, its lack of subtlety — and a lack of stakes, save for sweepstakes — make for an altogether bland bonanza.Jerry & Marge Go LargeRated PG-13 for windfalls and pratfalls. 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Mad God’ Review: Highway to Hell

      by

      In this mostly animated experiment, the filmmaker Phil Tippett leads us through a stop-motion inferno of despair and devastation.Strange and squelchy and all kinds of sick, “Mad God” comes at you with nauseating energy, its flood of dystopian images both playful and repulsive. Merging live action, stunning stop-motion animation and endearingly awkward puppetry, this bleak experiment from the visual-effects titan Phil Tippett is best viewed on a very large screen and after a very small meal.There’s no real narrative or dialogue. Instead, an overwhelming sense of hopelessness accompanies a gas-masked figure as he’s lowered into a crime-ridden, post-apocalyptic hellscape. His mission is unclear as he follows a toxic yellow river, dodging misshapen monsters and other gurgling horrors. (These are often distressingly visceral, like the array of seated giants, their liquefied feces flooding the mouths of creatures lying beneath them.) Gloopy surgical procedures, performed in derelict rooms by white-coated figures — echoes of “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990) — linger on evisceration and extraction. One of the things extracted might be described as a baby.Though sprinkled with reminders of Lynch and Cronenberg and others, Tippett’s defiantly adult vision has a freakish originality and a sorrowing tone that’s oddly touching. Humanlike figures are squashed, tortured and consumed by roaming brutes; piteous squawks and rattles pepper a soundtrack soothed by Dan Wool’s moving musical score. Alongside, Chris Morley’s gorgeously tactile cinematography adds texture and depth to Tippett’s nightmarish vision.Conceived decades ago and resurrected in part as a training ground for a generation of special-effects artists weaned solely on computers, “Mad God” is a vivid and valuable showcase for disappearing skills. In the press notes, Tippett admits his film “kind of defies description.” I tried my best.Mad GodNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘A Man of Integrity’ Review: Fighting Dirty

      by

      Mohammad Rasoulof’s scathing drama about corruption in Iran is striking in its blunt rage, if somewhat exasperating in its monotony.The films of Mohammad Rasoulof often tell stories of ordinary Iranians cornered within a censorious government. It’s a theme with personal import for Rasoulof, who, since 2010, has faced several arrests and bans for his cinematic critiques of the Iranian state.Where the 2021 film “There Is No Evil” portrayed the moral absurdities of capital punishment, “A Man of Integrity” takes a broader view, examining how corruption has permeated everyday Iranian life. Here, Rasoulof delivers his diagnosis with a bluntness that is striking in its rage, if somewhat exasperating in its monotony.Reza (Reza Akhlaghirad), a goldfish farmer with a rebellious streak, lives in the countryside in North Iran. His isolated rural lifestyle is a deliberate choice: an attempt to evade an orthodox yet opportunistic social system, where, as one character puts it, you either become the oppressor or the oppressed.But a shady new corporation, referred to mysteriously as “The Company,” has upset the local bucolic balance. Its operators have their eyes on Reza’s land, and they resort to extortionary tricks — including poisoning his goldfish — to get him to give it up. As Reza and his wife, Hadis (a superb Soudabeh Beizaee), try various personal, legal and not-so-legal means of recourse, they encounter a Kafkaesque labyrinth of dead ends, greasy palms and sinister violence.Employing minimal background music and a bleak, blue-gray color palette, Rasoulof evokes a sense of nihilism that is as suffocating as it is affecting. Every narrative twist — including some rather contrived mafia-thriller turns — hammers home the same point: that it’s hard to be a good man in a bad system. Given the system Rasoulof works within (and against), however, it’s a message well worth repeating.A Man of IntegrityRated PG-13 for scenes of drug use, violence and general existential bleakness. In Farsi, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Emma Thompson and the Challenge of Baring All Onscreen at 63

      by

      It’s the shock of white hair you notice first on Emma Thompson, a hue far more chic than anything your average 63-year-old would dare choose but one that doesn’t ignore her age either. It’s accompanied by that big, wide smile and that knowing look, suggesting both a wry wit and a willingness to banter.And yet, Thompson begins our video call by MacGyvering her computer monitor with a piece of paper and some tape so she can’t see herself. “The one thing I can’t bear about Zoom is having to look at my face,” she said. “I’m just going to cover myself up.”We are here across two computer screens to discuss what is arguably her most revealing role yet. In the new movie “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” directed by Sophie Hyde, Thompson is emotionally wrought and physically naked, and not in a lowlight, sexy kind of way.Thompson plays Nancy, a recently widowed, former religious schoolteacher who has never had an orgasm. At once a devoted wife and a dutiful mother harboring volumes of regret for the life she didn’t live and the dull, needy children she raised, Nancy hires a sex worker — a much younger man played by relative newcomer Daryl McCormack (“Peaky Blinders”) — to bring her the pleasure she’s long craved. The audience gets to follow along as this very relatable woman — she could have been your teacher, your mother, you — who in Thompson’s words “has crossed every boundary she’s ever recognized in her life,” grapples with this monumental act of rebellion.“Yes, she’s made the most extraordinary decision to do something very unusual, brave and revolutionary,” Thompson said from her office in North London. “Then she makes at least two or three decisions not to do it. But she’s lucky because she has chosen someone who happens to be rather wise and instinctive, with an unusual level of insight into the human condition, and he understands her, what she’s going through, and is able gently to suggest that there might be a reason behind this.”Daryl McCormack and Thompson in “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” which the screenwriter Katy Brand wrote with the actress in mind.Searchlight PicturesThompson met the challenge with what she calls “a healthy terror.” She knew this character at a cellular level — same age, same background, same drive to do the right thing. “Just a little sliver of paper and chance separates me from her,” she quipped.Yet the role required her to reveal an emotional and physical level of vulnerability she wasn’t accustomed to. (To ready themselves for this intimate, sex-positive two-hander that primarily takes place in a hotel room, Thompson, McCormack and Hyde have said they spent one of their rehearsal days working in the nude.) Despite a four-decade career that has been lauded for both its quality and its irreverence and has earned her two Academy Awards, one for acting (“Howards End”) and one for writing (“Sense and Sensibility”), Thompson has appeared naked on camera only once: in the 1990 comedy “The Tall Guy,” opposite Jeff Goldblum.She said she wasn’t thin enough to command those types of skin-baring roles, and though for a while she tried conquering the dieting industrial complex, starving herself like all the other young women clamoring for parts on the big screen, soon enough she realized it was “absurd.”“It’s not fair to say, ‘No, I’m just this shape naturally.’ It’s dishonest and it makes other women feel like [expletive],” she said. “So if you want the world to change, and you want the iconography of the female body to change, then you better be part of the change. You better be different.”For “Leo Grande,” the choice to disrobe was hers, and though she made it with trepidation, Thompson said she believes “the film would not be the same without it.” Still, the moment she had to stand stark naked in front of a mirror with a serene, accepting look on her face, as the scene called for, was the most difficult thing she’s ever done.“To be truly honest, I will never ever be happy with my body. It will never happen,” she said. “I was brainwashed too early on. I cannot undo those neural pathways.”She can, however, talk about sex. Both the absurdities of it and the intricacies of female pleasure. “I can’t just have an orgasm. I need time. I need affection. You can’t just rush to the clitoris and flap at it and hope for the best. That’s not going to work, guys. They think if I touch this little button, she’s going to go off like a Catherine wheel, and it will be marvelous.”Several women have written screenplays for Thompson. That’s because “she always somehow feels like she’s on your side,” Brand said.Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesThere is a moment in the movie when Nancy and Leo start dancing in the hotel room to “Always Alright” by Alabama Shakes. The two are meeting for a second time — an encounter that comes with a checklist of sexual acts Nancy is determined to plow through (pun intended). The dance is supposed to relieve all her type-A, organized-teacher stress that’s threatening to derail the session. Leo has his arms around her neck, and he’s swaying with his eyes closed when a look crosses Nancy’s face, one of gratitude and wistfulness coupled with a dash of concern.To the screenwriter, Katy Brand, who acted opposite Thompson in the second “Nanny McPhee” movie and who imagined Thompson as Nancy while writing the first draft, that look is the point of the whole movie.“It’s just everything,” Brand said. “She feels her lost youth and the sort of organic, natural sexual development she might have had, if she hadn’t met her husband. There is a tingling sense, too, not only of what might have been but what could be from now on.”Brand is not the first young woman to pen a script specifically for Thompson. Mindy Kaling did it for her on “Late Night,” attesting that she had loved Thompson since she was 11. The writer Jemima Khan told Thompson that she had always wanted the actress to be her mother, so she wrote her a role in the upcoming film “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”“I think the thing that Emma gives everybody and what she does in person to people, and also via the screen, is that she always somehow feels like she’s on your side,” Brand said. “And I think people really respond to that. She will meet you at a very human level.”The producer Lindsay Doran has known Thompson for decades. Doran hired her to write “Sense and Sensibility” after watching her short-lived BBC television show “Thompson” that she wrote and starred in. The two collaborated on the “Nanny McPhee” movies, and are working on the musical version, with Thompson handling the book and co-writing the songs with Gary Clark (“Sing Street”).Thompson in “Nanny McPhee Returns.” She’s at work on a musical version of the franchise.Liam Daniel/Universal PicturesTo the producer, the film is the encapsulation of a writer really understanding her actress.“It felt to me like Katy knew the instrument, and she knew what the instrument was capable of within a few seconds,” Doran said. “It isn’t just, over here I’m going to be dramatic. And over here, I’m going to be funny, and over here I’m going to be emotional. It can all go over her face so quickly, and you can literally say there’s this feeling, there’s this emotion.”Reviewing “Leo Grande,” for The New York Times, Lisa Kennedy called Thompson “terrifically agile with the script’s zingers and revelations,” while Harper’s Bazaar said Thompson was “an ageless treasure urgently overdue for her next Oscar nomination.”The obvious trajectory for a film like this should be an awards circuit jaunt that would probably result in Thompson nabbing her fifth Oscar nomination. But the film, set to debut on Hulu on Friday, will not have a theatrical release in the United States.Thompson doesn’t mind. “​​It is a small film with no guns in it, so I don’t know how many people in America would actually want to come see it,” she said with a wink.That may be true. But more consequently, because of a rule change by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that reverts to prepandemic requirement of a seven-day theatrical release, “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” is not eligible for Oscar consideration, a reality that the director Sophie Hyde is not pleased with.“It’s really disappointing,” Hyde said. “I understand the desire to sort of protect cinema, but I also think the world has changed so much. Last year, a streaming film won best picture.” She argued that her film and others on streaming services aren’t made for TV. They are cinematic, she said, adding, “That’s what the academy should be protecting, not what screen it’s on.”Thompson, for one, seems rather sanguine about the whole matter. “I think that, given the fact that you might have a slightly more puritanical undercurrent to life where you are, that it might be easier for people to share something as intimate as this at home and then be able to turn it off and make themselves a nice cup of really bad tea,” said Thompson, laughing. “None of you Americans can make good tea.” More