Tag Archives: Antonio Banderas

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Hookers and Blow

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Paddington in Peru

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

So what has Paddington bear been up to in the eight years since the classic Paddington 2?

Well, he’s got a new director (Dougal Wilson in his feature debut), a new Mrs. Brown (Emily Mortimer steps in for Sally Hawkins), and a brand new British passport (with an unusual photo)! And that legal ID comes in mighty handy when Paddington (perfectly voiced again by Ben Whishaw) gets a mysterious letter from Peru.

Aunt Lucy is missing!

So what’s there to do except pack up the Browns, Paddington, and Paddington’s brand new deluxe umbrella and head out to solve the mystery. After meeting with the Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman, always a plus) and collecting clues at the Home for Retired Bears, the gang hires dashing Captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas) and his daughter Gina (Carla Tous) to take them up river and straight into a jungle adventure.

Because while Paddington and family may be searching for Aunt Lucy, certain other parties are searching for El Dorado, the mythical lost city of gold!

The bar set by Paddington 2, an honest to God masterpiece, is very high. Dougal and team had their work cut out for them, and the Browns’ Peru visit is never quite as intricate, clever or transcendent as the last installment. But Colman’s comedic genius, lushly crafted scenery, meticulous CGI, and the cast and filmmakers’ commitment to the earnest charm characteristic of the franchise guarantee a delightful cinematic experience for every member of the family.

Dougal keeps the pace and perils lively, while the new screenwriting team (Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont) delivers sweet family fun that weaves in some warm furry feelies before the credits roll and a surprise guest appears.

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Good Girl

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Babygirl

by Hope Madden

It seems impossible not to compare writer/director Halina Reijn’s Babygirl with Steven Shainberg’s 2002 indie treasure Secretary (based on Mary Gaitskill’s brilliant short story). Reijn’s tale is almost a perfect inversion.

Secretary saw a relative newcomer (Maggie Gyllenhaal) deliver a revelatory turn as an absolute nobody actively seeking domination, finding it in a chilly CEO (James Spader), and slowly, wickedly, hilariously discovering ways to take control of the situation so she could pressure him to control her.

Fast forward more than two decades and Babygirl completely reframes the same tale of one woman who really wants somebody else to be in charge for a change.

Nicole Kidman—a veteran whose craft is beyond reproach—plays Romy, a tech company’s CEO. Romy has a perfect life that includes a saucy relationship with her hot husband (Antonio Banderas), little notes left in the lunches she packs her two kids each morning, and an incredibly successful company.

And all seems almost well until an absolute nobody—an intern (Harris Dickinson)—senses something in Romy and acts on it. Soon this woman who is in control of everything she surveys risks all for a little humiliation and discipline.

Though Reijn’s film benefits from sly humor, it’s far from the dark comedy of Secretary. Babygirl hones closer to thriller, building tension, keeping the pace charged, and breathlessly suggesting our protagonist’s ruin behind every unlocked door.

Kidman is characteristically amazing. She is a risk taker as an actor, and what she does with this character is fascinating. The outer shell is different, person to person, interaction to interaction, but the humanity lurking beneath is never far from the surface.

Her chemistry with Dickinson is electric but not exactly sexual. Babygirl complicates gender politics and sexuality and shame, specifically as each is loosely defined across generations. It’s an observant script and a film a bit less interested in titillation than in human drama.

Reijn’s entire ensemble is unafraid to be unlikeable, which is necessary when ambition, jealousy, insecurity, sex and shame commingle. This is a tight script, perhaps too tidy and structurally familiar because its most satisfying moments are its messiest. But it is a fascinating and fresh look at something we’ve been conditioned to turn away from.

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A Sloppy Mess

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The Clean Up Crew

by Hope Madden

Jon Keeyes has made a lot of movies, none of them very good. Generally, his films star two actors you’ve heard of and wish were in better films. Sometimes, only one of those two have talent.

The Clean Up Crew stars a couple of Keeyes veterans—the always fun Antonio Banderas (who was in Cult Killer from the same director earlier this year) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who seemed to have talent at one time and also starred in Keeyes’s 2021 effort The Survivalist.

Plus, we get a bonus actor who should be getting better roles, Oscar winner Melissa Leo. Leo and Meyers play one half of a crime scene clean-up crew, alongside drug addled PTSD sufferer Chuck (Swen Temmel), and Meagan (Ekaterina Baker), who’s hoping a sudden windfall will mean that she and Alex (Meyers) can get married.

That windfall is the briefcase full of cash that was left behind at the crime scene they’ve been hired to clean up. It belongs to crime lord Gabriel (Banderas), and he wants it back.

The script by Keeyes’s longtime collaborator Matthew Rogers delivers a solid enough premise and bursts of humor, but nothing holds together. The Clean Up Crew feels like several different movies nonsensically stapled together.

The nonexistent rapport among the characters goes a long way to emphasize the disjointed narrative. At no point do you believe any one of these humans has feelings for any of the others, certainly not that one would risk life and limb for another. It’s not that they don’t seem to like each other as much as they don’t seem to know each other well enough to not hello at Kroger’s.

Meyers may as well be in an entirely different film. Banderas—who likely filmed his scenes over a weekend in a single location far from everyone else—basically is in a different film. His is more fun because, to his credit, the actor seems to be doing what he can to enjoy himself.

Leo struggles mightily with her curious Irish brogue, and no one scene predicts the next in any logical way. Keeyes can’t decide whether or not to treat the violence as comedy, but it certainly appears from nowhere and builds to a showdown no one really wants that delivers no type of narrative satisfaction.

The Clean Up Crew is a comedy that’s not funny, a thriller with no thrills, and a flat action flick sutured together into a dizzyingly incoherent paycheck for a few actors who deserve better, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

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Sexy Boots

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Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

by Hope Madden

Live like there’s no tomorrow. For some, that idea may be freeing. Not for Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas).

Down to the last of his nine lives thanks to his devil-may-care, adventuring lifestyle, the legendary tabby knows fear for the first time. Indeed, it seems to him that death itself stalks his every move.

But just as he’s resigned himself to the life of a housecat, he learns of a wishing star and decides that this one wish is his key to becoming his fearless, legendary self again. Too bad his ex, Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), is also after it. So is narcissistic psychopath and piemaker Jack Horner (John Mulaney), as well as Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the three bears (Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone and Samson Kayo).

That’s a killer cast right there. That’s five Academy Award nominations and one Oscar. Sure, most of that is Colman, but still, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is loaded with talent.

That’s no real surprise from the Shrek franchise or the gang at Dreamworks. What is a surprise is the material these pros have to tear into. Directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado capitalize on the talent with a heartfelt, surprisingly mature script from Tommy Swerdlow, Tom Wheeler and Paul Fisher as well as animation that looks better than anything the studio’s put out to date.

Banderas has a blast, as he has since his first appearance as the booted feline in 2004. Not every actor is cut out for voice work, but Banderas excels.

Pugh’s scrappy Goldilocks is a stitch, as is Winstone’s Papa Bear. Colman characteristically delivers a performance that’s equal parts tender, hilarious and heartbreaking. And with just her voice!

The entire cast, including Harvey Guillén as the most resilient chihuahua ever animated, populates this imaginary world with decidedly memorable characters – characters with dimension, 2D be damned.

Puss’s existential crisis drives this imaginative, often hilarious adventure, but it does more than that. It anchors all the derring-do with earnest emotion and recognizable struggle. The film never feels as if it’s winking at its adult audience while dishing out frivolity to youngsters. Instead, somehow the filmmakers bridge that, engaging all ages with an emotionally complex but digestible tale, gorgeously rendered, beautifully acted and shockingly fun.

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They Don’t Like Me, They Really Don’t Like Me

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Official Competition

by George Wolf

Who’s more full of it: The cinema snob who dismisses whatever’s popular, or the escapist fan wary of any whiff of highbrow? Awards shows, or those who protest them too much? Film festival agenda twisters, or film festival attention whores?

Official Competition is here to nominate them all. Co-directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat (both also co-write with Andrés Duprat) come armed with plenty of knives, and their mischievous and wonderfully witty satire has them out for pretty much everyone involved in movie making.

When an 80 year-old millionaire (José Luis Gómez) decides his legacy should involve producing the film version of a Nobel prize-winning novel, critic’s darling Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz) gets the call to direct. But Lola insists on adapting “La Rivalidad” with a unique vision, one that starts with casting polar opposites in the lead roles.

Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas) is the worldwide box office star, while Iván Torres (Oscar Martinez) is the legendary thespian. They will play warring brothers, while their own philosophical clashes grow more volatile – and more dryly hilarious – by the day.

And don’t bother looking to Lola for cool-headed problem-solving. She’d rather provoke the tension with a variety of creative exercises – such as wrapping her two stars in restraints and threatening to destroy their most prized awards right in front of their panic-stricken faces.

Subtle it ain’t, but funny it is.

And even when a joke or two lingers a beat past its expiration, this sublime trio of actors makes nearly every frenzied interaction a joy to behold.

Is Lola a motivational genius or a complete fraud? Does Félix have the chops to go toe-to-toe with the prestigious Iván? And does Iván secretly admire Félix’s success? Cruz, Banderas and Martinez are clearly having as much fun acting it out as we are trying to sort it out.

And like much of the best satire, Official Competition is talking about one thing, but saying something else. Its barbs aimed at the movie business may be silly, acerbic and insightful, but none can hide the respect this film has for the entirely mad nature of the creative process.

Call it a love letter, with a completely entertaining ‘smidge of hate.

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Green Screen, New Deal

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Uncharted

by George Wolf

Just like most – if not all – video game adaptations, Uncharted suffers from being driven more by cheat codes than character. And then later when some people you don’t really care about take time for flippant quips while free-falling over the Banda Sea, the stakes are never going to feel consequential.

But if you set all that aside and give in to the brazen ridiculousness of the latest Indiana Jones knockoff, there’s some fun to be discovered.

Tom Holland steps into the adventurin’ boots of Nathan Drake, a wannabe explorer who’s tending bar in New York when he’s recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) for a big score.

Sure, Nathan knows all about the legend of the “biggest treasure never found.” Somewhere there’s about $5 billion in gold that was stashed away eons ago by Magellan himself, and you know what that means!

It means they’re gonna be short one barkeep come Happy Hour, because Nate’s going globetrotting.

Of course, Nate and Sully aren’t the only ones calling for this booty, and in no time they’re battling a familiar mercenary known as Braddock (Tati Gabrielle), the mysterious Chloe (Sophia Ali), and various goons sent by the villainous Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas).

Holland proves adept at parkour and trading mildly amusing barbs with Wahlberg, leaving director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) to keep his foot on the gas and let the green screen whizzes go to Funkytown.

Not all of that greenery carries ready-for-prime-time polish, but the film’s second half makes sure there’s so much of it in your face you’ll hardly have time to notice.

And if you’re game to keep the brain unplugged, stay put during the credits to notice some extra derring-do that maps out directions for the next Uncharted course.

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For A Good Time Call

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The Hitman’s Wife Bodyguard

by George Wolf

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is not a great movie – heck it’s barely a good movie – but it is a fun movie. And that last part means the film does have pretty great timing.

Because with so many of us returning to movie theaters for the first time in a long time, what is the majority looking for?

A good time. And this film does deliver it, even if it is just one Fat Bastard away from parody.

In case you’ve forgotten, this is a sequel to 2017’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard, and returning writer Tom O’Connor gets us up to speed via Michael Bryce’s (Ryan Reynolds) final therapy session with a doctor who can’t wait to be rid of him.

Bryce has lost his AAA bodyguard license, which is going to make it difficult to win the Bodyguard of the Year award he dreams of. Bryce has also sworn off guns, which becomes a problem once the bullets start flying and director Patrick Hughes (also back from part one) rolls out more direct head shots than a zombie apocalypse.

Bryce doesn’t let the lack of licensing stop him from guarding Sonia Kincaid (Salma Hayek), a spitfire who has no problem shooting first – from the hip or from the lip. Plus, she happens to be married to Bryce’s old nemesis Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson). So while Bryce and Darius are bickering about old grudges, Sonia and Darius argue about starting a family (don’t bother thinking about their ages – just go with it).

The dangerous games come from an evil tycoon (Antonio Banderas on a steady diet of scenery) who’s fighting back against E.U. sanctions on Greece, and from a frustrated federal agent (Frank Grillo) who decides his best bet is to work with bad guys in hopes of catching worse guys.

Hughes proves adept at quick-paced action and satisfying set pieces full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but excess. There’s plenty of globe-trotting to beautiful locales, lo-cut costume changes for Hayek and enough all around ridiculousness to make you wonder when Reynolds and Jackson are going to switch faces.

But the starring trio seems to be enjoying it enough to be in perfect sync – with each other and the level of material they’ve been handed. All three may be on auto-pilot, but their banter is an expletive-laden, rapid fire hoot that’s consistently mischievous and sometimes downright hilarious.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard isn’t high art, but it isn’t trying to be. In the words of Bret Michaels and Sam Jackson: it ain’t nothin’ but a good time, motherf^*%$#.

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Dolittle Jones

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Dolittle

by George Wolf

Man, when I was a kid I wanted a Pushmi-Pullyu so bad.

I would try to get all the way through “If I Could Talk to the Animals” without messing up a lyric, and imagine how fun it would be to get one of those mythical Pushmis delivered in a crate, just like Rex Harrison in 1967’s original Dr. Dolittle.

Over thirty years later, Eddie Murphy ditched the tunes for a more straightforward comedic approach in two franchise updates, and now Robert Downey, Jr. steps in to move the doctor a little closer to Indiana.

Jones, that is.

But’s it’s Indy by way of Victorian-era Britain, as Young Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado) calls on the famous animal-taking doctor with a dispatch from Buckingham Palace and an urgent plea to help the deathly ill Queen Victoria herself (Jessie Buckley).

As suspicions arise about Royal Dr. Mudfly (Michael Sheen) and the true nature of the Queen’s ills, Dolittle and friends (some human, most not) set sail on a grand adventure to acquire the cure from King Rassouli (Antonio Banderas), who just happens to be the father of Dolittle’s dear departed Lily (Kasia Smutniak).

Plus, there’s a big dragon.

Director/co-writer Stephen Gaghan (Syriana) re-sets the backstory with an animated fairy tale, then ups the ante on action while letting Downey, Jr. and a menagerie of star voices try to squeeze out all the fun they can.

From Emma Thompson to John Cena, Octavia Spencer to Rami Malek, Tom Holland, Ralph Fiennes and Kumail Nanjiani to Selena Gomez and more, the CGI zoo juggles personalities, while Downey curiously chooses a whispered, husky delivery that sometimes makes his Do a little hard to understand.

But, of course, he still manages to craft an engaging character, even centering the Dr. with a grief just authentic enough for adults without bringing down the childlike wonder.

This is a Dr. Dolittle set on family adventure mode, with plenty of talking animal fun for the little ones and a few clever winks and nudges for the parents. But as the start of a possible franchise, it’s more of a handshake than a high-five. It may not leave you with belly laughs or tunes stuck in your head, but it’s eager to please manner doesn’t hurt a bit.

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Dig Deeper

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The 33

by Hope Madden

Few true events lend themselves more perfectly to film than the 2010 Chilean mine collapse. There is more drama, peril, resilience, and joy in the facts of this incident than anything that could believably be created in a piece of fiction.

Director Patricia Riggen tackles the story of the miners trapped about half a mile below ground. With food enough for three days, all 33 men survived an impossible 69 days. The story that mesmerized the world is not just of the unbelievable perseverance of the miners themselves, but also of the tenacity of an international team of engineers who worked against both overwhelming odds and an urgent timeclock to save them.

There is no end to the cinematic possibilities available in this deeply moving, thrilling story, which is why it’s so unfortunate that Riggen layers on so much artificial melodrama.

Antonio Banderas and Lou Diamond Phillips anchor a cast saddled with one-dimensional characters, each allowed a particular flaw to overcome or an inspiring trait to benefit the group. Riggen undermines the miners’ struggles by inexplicably skirting a claustrophobic feel, allowing no one the chance to truly panic or lose hope without Saint Mario (Banderas as inspirational leader Mario Sepulveda) swooping in with a word of wisdom to put everyone back on the right track.

Events above ground are treated with even less integrity, as engineers undergo lengthy, obvious epiphanies, and families offer little more than tearfully unwavering support. Riggen’s script, adapted by a team of writers from Hector Tobar’s book “Deep Down Dark,” leeches the human drama and complexity from all the events surrounding the collapse, replacing it with by-the-numbers disaster flick clichés and easy answers.

Most of the actors struggle with accents (I’m looking at you, Gabriel Byrne), and the back and forth use of Spanish and English only further exacerbates the film’s lack of authenticity.

And yet, when that first miner is lifted from his would-be tomb, it is impossible not to be moved. Because this really happened. Thirty three humans spent more than two months 2300 feet below ground, all the while understanding that their chance for survival was infinitesimal. Their ordeal is incomprehensible, and the fight against hopelessness and financial complacency to free them is genuinely inspiring.

The miners received no compensation from the company that stranded them, and this is the best Hollywood can do?

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