Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Grist for the Emotional Mill

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Submission

by Cat McAlpine

Submission opens with the sardonic narration of an exhausted novelist/professor. His internal monologue sounds a lot like the opening to a novel but his book, we discover, isn’t being written. Ted Swenson (Stanley Tucci) is uncomfortable, unhappy, and uninspired. Then, in waltzes the first conscious student he’s had in years, Angela Argo (an incredible Addison Timlin).

Writer/director Richard Levine adapts Francie Prose’s 2000 novel Blue Angel (based on Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 film The Blue Angel, which is in turn based on Heinrich Mann’s 1905 novel Professor Unrat). Clearly, the story is not a new one. Fortunately, while the plot feels overwhelmingly predictable, the building tension is immense, largely pulled taught by the strong turns of Tucci and Timlin.

The performances, across the board, carry the film. Kyra Sedgewick is so natural on screen it’s breathtaking. She is also the only likable character, as Ted’s content and then suffering wife. Colby Minifie is delightfully nasty in her short scene as the Swensons’ daughter.

Levine does the good work of leaving breadcrumbs without pointing to them with a neon arrow. It’s hard to trust your audience (mother! being a timely example) but like a good novel, this film works because of its layers. And also because Stanley Tucci can do anything.

Surely a teacher/student affair between two narcissistic artists can’t end well, but I’ll leave the how and why to your viewing.

Honestly, I wanted a little more from Submission. I wanted to know more about the tragic death of Swenson’s father. I wanted to know why Swenson’s daughter hated him. I was desperate to know which of Angela’s somber backstories were real and which were contrived. I wanted more cause to care about the destruction of a man’s family. And shockingly, I wanted more voiceovers ripped from the pages of the resulting novels.

But I guess I’ll just have to read the book.

Submission’s inevitable resolution suggests that no matter the terrible things we do, we’re all just potential fodder for America’s next great novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL1ftT3ANYM

New In Theaters

Fresh Perspective

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Mohawk

by Hope Madden

How many Westerns are told from the perspective of the American Indian?

None, basically. When First Nation filmmakers (Chris Eyre, Sydney Freeland, Neil Diamond, Sterlin Harjo, Adam Garnet Jones, among others) create, they seem to ignore the genre that has, for most of Hollywood’s history, defined them in popular culture.

Jim Jarmusch’s brilliant Dead Man comes closest, as Gary Farmer’s character Nobody informs William Blake’s (Johnny Depp) journey. Though Farmer’s not the lead, it is his character’s perspective of the West that guides the film.

For co-writer/director Ted Geoghegan (We Are Still Here), that’s not enough. His sophomore effort Mohawk spins a far more typically Western story: battle lines drawn between Mohawks and new Americans, each trying to secure a piece of American soil.

But Geoghegan changes things up in important ways, and the result is a dramatic departure from traditional fare.

Oak (Kaniehtiio Horn) hopes to convince her mother that the dwindling Mohawk nation needs to side with the English in the War of 1812. If Wentahawi (Sheri Foster) can’t be convinced, Oak and her lovers, Mohawk Calvin Two Rivers (Justin Rain) and Englishman Joshua Pinsmail (Eamon Farren), will find her uncle and cousins at the mission and convince them.

What follows is an often brutal, certainly mournful look at a chapter in our national history no American should be proud of.

Essentially, as a small batch of white soldiers follows the trio through the woods, it is simply by altering the point of view—not by making any individual faultless or wise beyond measure—that Geoghegan shakes up the genre.

Horn’s Oak stands in stark contrast against garden variety Western heroes by virtue of her sex and her race, though Mohawk does not go to great lengths to make a “woman-centric” effort. Oak is simply another warrior, another survivor, a participant who happens to be our guide through this slaughter. This change of perspective is very simple and utterly revolutionary.

The sexuality of the three on the run from the military is another surprisingly subtle and quietly effective change.

Performances are solid—Horn and Ezra Buzzington as military leader Hezekiah Holt are particularly strong.

Geoghegan’s story (co-written with novelist Grady Hendrix) is as sadistic and brutal as we’ve come to expect from a Western—certainly from the burgeoning Western/horror mash-up. But if the plot chooses not to break new ground, the film still manages to offer a much-needed sting of rebellion.

 

 

New In Theaters, Slider

Sexy Collusion

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Red Sparrow

by Hope Madden

Jennifer Lawrence could use a hit.

Though few could throw shade at the film star’s talent—one Oscar and two nominations in a three year span!—she’s made a series of critical and commercial missteps. The slide began with David O. Russell’s weak biopic Joy, then wallowed in all that can be wrong with a superhero movie in X-Men: Apocalypse before hurtling through space with the underwhelming Passengers, and ending with the flaming disaster (though bold and compelling) mother!

Can her sexy espionage thriller Red Sparrow turn that luck around? Doesn’t seem likely, does it? I mean, come on—you’ve seen the trailer.

And yet, surprisingly enough, the film has some style, some queasying violence and unrepentant perversions, and Jennifer Lawrence. It could be worse.

Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova, a Bolshoi ballerina (yeah, right) who breaks the wrong leg, is related to the wrong uncle (the always welcome Matthias Schoenaerts), makes the wrong compromise and winds up in a nasty state.

Writer Justin Haythe, working from Jason Matthews’s novel, has never written a film worth seeing. This is no masterpiece, but it is the kind of material director Francis Lawrence (no relation) manages well.

The helmsman of the last three Hunger Games films knows how to take what amounts to dreary, ugly, mean tales of human bondage and slick them up with a plucky female lead, good costuming, a talented supporting cast and smooth camera movement.

The ugly, demeaning sexuality, though, that’s mostly just Red Sparrow.

Lawrence’s steely, emotionless mask of an expression suits this performance even more perfectly than it did her Hunger Games franchise, but the lacking chemistry between the star and her co-stars keeps the film from ever reaching the sexy thrills it hopes to achieve.

Joel Edgerton, playing the good-hearted American, can’t generate any believable connection with Lawrence’s Russian sparrow, and the crissing and crossing of teams and tales and sides and stories feel forever superficial and convenient.

It might at least be a fun time waster if Charlize Theron hadn’t done that better with last year’s Atomic Blonde.

So, no, this won’t be the film to point Jen’s career back toward true north. But she does have another X-Men coming up. That’s sure to be a winner, right?

New In Theaters

You Have the Right to Remain Dead

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Death Wish

by George Wolf

Many things about this Death Wish reboot make you wonder why, in the wake of current events, the film’s release might not have been postponed a bit. Waiting wouldn’t have made it a better film, just a little less tone deaf.

But hell, director Eli Roth doesn’t have time for any of that sensitive crap. He’s coming in guns hot, seemingly confident he’s crafting a self-awareness that must be invisible to the rest of us.

Bruce Willis is mostly effective, and sometimes disinterested, as the new Paul Kersey, and this time Kersey is a surgeon. He’s spurred to vigilante action after a home invasion leaves his daughter (Camila Morrone) in a coma and his wife (Elisabeth Shue) in the grave, and his violent alter ego quickly gains fame on social media as “the Grim Reaper.”

Kersey’s success at keeping his identity hidden is one of the many eye-rolling conveniences in Joe Carnahan’s script, all minor nuisances next to how far Roth and Carnahan end up from where they thought they were going.

While Brian Garfield’s original novel probed the futility of vigilante justice, Charles Bronson’s string of Death Wish films moved the Kersey character from anti-hero to overtired cliche.

Roth seems to think he’s revamped the franchise as some sort of satire, but he’s wildly off the mark. That would require smart humor and strategic nuance, and Roth (Hostel, The Green Inferno) just doesn’t work in shades of gray.

The humor, thanks to a couple of corny detectives (Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise), is straight outta sitcoms. Nuance? Meet bombast.

Kersey saves lives by day and takes them at night! Do you get the contrast? Do you, really? Here’s a split screen montage to help you understand.

As Kersey points out that the problem is cops who just aren’t violent enough, Roth intersperses arguments from talk radio hosts in a feeble attempt to counter the film’s overriding message. It’s just literal lip service.

The finale, a “good guy with a gun’s” wildest fantasy, cements the film’s worldview. And even if you’re fine with that, you can find it in plenty of other films with better execution.

Pun intended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_I4zqC7GN8

 

 

New In Theaters

Not So Happy New Year

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Midnighters

by George Wolf

It’s December 31st and the party is on, but Lindsey and Jeff leave early. Their marriage has been a bit strained lately, and it only gets worse on the drive home, when Jeff strikes a pedestrian in the middle of an old country road.

They try to call 911 but get no service, and when the accident turns fatal, worries about their blood alcohol level lead the couple to take the body home and sober up before making their next move.

Somebody wake up Dick Clark, because this New Year’s is going to get rockin’.

Why did the dead man have Jeff (Dylan McTee) and Lindsey’s (Alex Essoe) address in his wallet? Has Lindsey’s sister Hannah (Perla Haney-Jardine, B.B. from Kill Bill, Vol. 2!) gotten them mixed up in some trouble? And what’s with that bag full of money and the weirdly polite detective (Ward Horton)?

“Bag full of money” is a pretty good clue things are about to get complicated, and indeed they do in the debut feature from director Julius Ramsay (The Walking Dead) and his brother Alston (a former speechwriter penning his first screenplay). Though the Ramsays show plenty of promise, the talent is raw and unpolished, and too often indicative of inexperience.

Most every element here, from shot selection to pacing to performance, is by-the-numbers proficient, never allowing the film to become a truly memorable sum of parts. You’ll find substance with little style, twists that seldom surprise, and at least one nasty bit of revenge violence.

Drawing heavily from a neo-noir party planner, Midnighters is a capably entertaining diversion, not quite a can’t-miss event.

 

 

New In Theaters, Slider

The Fault in Our Selves

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Annihilation

by George Wolf

Alex Garland’s work as both a writer (28 Days Later…, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go) and a writer/director (Ex Machina) has shown a visionary talent for molding the other-worldly and the familiar. Annihilation unveils Garland at his most existential, becoming an utterly absorbing sci-fi thriller where each answer begs more questions.

A strange force of nature dubbed “The Shimmer” has enveloped the land near a remote lighthouse, and is spreading. Years of expeditions inside it have yielded only missing persons – including Kane (Oscar Issac). When Kane suddenly returns home and almost immediately falls prey to a life-threatening illness, his wife Lena (Natalie Portman, perfectly nailing a desperate curiosity) is detained for questioning by the military.

Lena, a biology professor with years of Army training, volunteers to join the new, all-female exhibition into “Area X,” hoping to find any shred of information that could save her husband’s life.

Adapting the first novel in Jeff VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach Trilogy,” Garland has found a perfect scratch for his psychological itch.

Garland builds the film in wonderful symmetry with the hybrid life forms influenced by The Shimmer. Taking root as a strange mystery, it offers satisfying surprises amid an ambitious narrative flow full of intermittent tension, scares, and blood – and a constant sense of wonder.

Just his second feature as a director, Annihilation proves Ex Machina was no fluke. Garland is pondering similar themes—creation, self-destruction, extinction—on an even deeper level, streamlining the source material into an Earthbound cousin to 2001.

Utilizing wonderfully strategic splashes of color, and a shifting timeline that drops purposeful breadcrumbs, Garland gives us a mystifying new world from the comforts of our own. Annihilation is the work of a top-tier genre filmmaker, and a challenging journey offering many rewards for those with no appetite for spoon feedings.

New In Theaters

Give the Devil His Due

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November

by Christie Robb

Imagine a world in which Bergman’s Seventh Seal made it with Burton’s Edward Scissorhands and you kinda get a sense of Rainer Sarnet’s November.

Based on the Estonian novel Rehepapp by Andrus Kivirähk, the movie is set in a sort of fairy-tale-ish undefined time period. Estonian peasants scrape out a substance-level existence while German aristocracy exploits their labor and flaunts an unattainably extravagant lifestyle before them.

Not surprising, then, that some of them strike a deal with the devil.

You see, the peasants can manufacture a kratt to do manual labor for them and steal treasure. A kratt is a creature made out of bones, sticks, and bits of rusty household implements, brought to life by giving drops of blood to the devil. (And in this movie, kratts talk and are charmingly bananas and look an awful lot like they were designed by Vincent Price’s character in Edward Scissorhands.)

At the center of the film lies the unrequited love of two peasants. Liina (Rea Lest) is hopelessly in love with Hans (Jörgen Liik). Hans has the hots for the daughter of the local German baron. Lina and Hans each try to capture the attention of their beloved while communing with ghosts, employing the services of kratts and witches, managing lycanthropy, evading the plague, circumventing arranged marriages, and avoiding starvation during the impending long winter.

The movie is a mismatch of comedy, romance, fantasy, political theory, and philosophy all shot in exquisite black and white. Somehow it comes together, like the kratts, in a way that seems fresh, bizarre, and interesting.

 

 

New In Theaters

Clowns Against Humanity

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Game Night

by Hope Madden

Nobody does dry, self-deprecating humor as well as Jason Bateman. He’s such a natural as the put-upon husband/brother at the center of the Game Night tension, he becomes the action/comedy’s effortless center of gravity.

And the way this story orbits, circles back, veers around and comes back again, gravity is important.

Bateman plays Max who, with his wife Annie (Rachel McAdams), hosts a weekly game night at his house. But Max’s super cool brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) wants to host this week, and Max’s creepy neighbor Gary (Jesse Plemons, creepy perfection) wants to come. Well, things are spinning out of control, aren’t they?

A tight script by Mark Perez gives a game cast (see what I did there?) plenty of opportunity to riff on each other and nerd up the place. The chemistry onscreen, particularly between couples—each of which is given the chance to create believable unions—elevates the hijinks.

McAdams steals scenes with comic charm, reminding us again of her spot-on timing and ability to generate plausible relationship backstory with anybody. Meanwhile, funny bits from Sharon Horgan and Lamorne Morris, in particular, keep the larger Game Night ensemble from letting the storyline lag.

The easy humor spilling from this cast pulls the film away from absurd comedy and turns it into something more comfortable. Because, even though there may or may not (or may?) have been a kidnapping and they may or may not (or may?) be making things worse, they have actually trained for this moment for years.

Because what is it that will help these couples live through the bizarre and twisted mess their game night has become?

Teamwork.

Directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Vacation) keep the action low key. This allows the entire effort to indulge in the “so this is happening right now, then? Ok, let’s deal with that” kind of humor that is so characteristically Bateman. The comedy is upbeat and fun (though sometimes surprisingly violent) and true to the characters and their relationships.

It’s consistently fun and ultimately forgettable. Like a game night.

New In Theaters

Grief in Three Acts

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In the Fade

by George Wolf

Director Fatih Akin returns to an overtly political palette with In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts), and leans on a powerhouse lead performance from Diane Kruger to keep the film above standard thriller fare.

Kruger, starring in the first German language film of her career, is Katja, a German woman whose Turkish husband, Nuri, (Numan Acar) has rehabilitated himself after a stint in prison for dealing drugs.

On the way to meet a friend one morning, Katja visits Nuri’s office to drop off their young son, and never sees them alive again. They are the only casualties in what appears to be a targeted homemade bombing, and Katja’s recollections of a random woman she saw outside Nuri’s office become key in the trial of a neo-Nazi couple accused of the murders.

After his coming-of-age tale Goodbye Berlin two years ago, Akin is back on the socially conscious ground where he seems most comfortable. Most of In the Fade is anchored in a somber look at the toll of xenophobic hate, where human souls can come to be viewed as “no longer people.”

As a grieving mother looking for justice, Kruger delivers a masterful turn, making the weight of emotional turmoil feel achingly real. Katja struggles to exist in the haze of her heartbreak, juggling grief, bickering family members and a growing need for revenge. Kruger draws us in immediately, so much so that we feel the release when her quiet resolve finally erupts in emotional outburst.

The film’s third act, “The Sea,” has trouble delivering on the promise of all that Akin has cultivated in the first two (“The Family” and “Justice”). Events begin to follow a more conventional path, and though the outcome is striking, anyone familiar with Hollywood thrillers may find the narrative choices curious.

Worth seeing? Absolutely, and Kruger’s performance will likely linger even when the film’s voice does not.

 

New In Theaters

Soccer Buddies

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Early Man

by Hope Madden

There is something adorably British about Nick Parks’s latest plasticine adventure, Early Man.

No I am not being condescending. It’s animated. It’s supposed to be adorable.

This Aardman export—the Brit animation studio responsible for the Wallace & Gromit classics, among others—pits dunder-headed but lovable cave dwellers against greedy Bronze Age Euro-trash as it spoofs sports flicks.

We open at the dawn of time, when dinosaurs and cave men and giant, toothy mallards roamed the earth outside Manchester, England. Around lunchtime.

It’s silly. And sweet. And basically a 90-minute mash note to Manchester United.

When those posh bullies from the Bronze Age (led by Tom Hiddleston’s Lord Nooth) push Dug (Eddie Redmayne) and his nincompoopy cavemen friends out of their fertile valley, Dug devises a challenge to regain his beloved home.

Like all great sports films, Early Man pushes the underdog narrative to epitomize more than simple foot-to-ball competition. Plus, you really do want these earnest faces, overbites and all, to learn to believe in themselves.

And why can’t a pig play soccer?

Dug’s quick trip into town square offers opportunities for the Aardman Easter eggs—be sure to scan the vendor booths for hilarious names. With voice talent to spare (Timothy Spall and Rob Brydon are among those with smaller roles), you’re assured the intentionally silly jokes are delivered expertly.

The problem is that Early Man would have made for a really hilarious short.

The story doesn’t benefit from a 90-minute stretch. The setting—mainly an imposing landscape littered with enormous rib bones—doesn’t offer enough opportunity for visual distraction and the characters are not memorable enough to keep your attention for the full run time.

Expect much of the familiar: googly eyes, enormous teeth, simple characters and kind-hearted laughter. CGI mixes with the stop-action to rob the film of some character, but Early Man has charm to spare.