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Nutcrackers

by Hope Madden

If you know David Gordon Green from the recent Halloween trilogy or The Exorcist: Believer, you don’t really know David Gordon Green. Who could blame you? He’s a hard guy to know.

He followed up the four magnificent character driven indies that began his career with a trio of raucous comedies before mixing TV directing with low budget dramas. Then he did a couple of high-profile Hollywood dramas before venturing into franchise horror. The guy’s tastes are less eclectic than whiplash.

Well, with Nutcrackers, he’s back in the independent realm, but his dabblings in every format, budget and genre inform the piece.

Ben Stiller plays Michael, a Chicago real estate developer in the final throes of a project he’s been working for six years. He’s called to BFE Ohio (actually, Blanchester, Ohio) to care for his four recently orphaned nephews while the social worker (Linda Cardellini, classing up the joint) looks for a foster family.

He can only stay for the weekend, though.

Sure, sure.

It’s a classic set up—ambitious city slicker loses everything and finds out who he really is in the chaos of family and smalltown life. And at Christmas, no less! Michael is also the type of character Stiller’s played many times. But Green’s approach is strictly indie—no swelling score, no spit takes, no mugging, no reaction shots.

Green also recognizes his real stars: Homer, Arlo, Atlas and Ulysses Janson. The four newcomers deliver sweetly feral performances with an authenticity you don’t find in films like these.

Leland Douglas’s script hits familiar beats that could easily have become cookie-cutter family film fare, but Green’s execution is untidy enough—snot-faced, uncombed and realistic—to breathe new life into a familiar idea.

Stiller’s delightfully understated performance cements the genuine feel of the film. He has an easy chemistry with Cardellini as well as the Janson kids, and he mines the script’s humor for something that seems like real people being funny, rather than movie comedy.

There’s a feeling of improvisation within scenes that allows Nutcrackers plenty of surprises. On the other hand, Green’s indie approach is often a mismatch with the broad comedy hijinks in the story. Certain scripted moments—those that smack of “zany comedy adventure”—are wildly out of place, and the film never fully shakes the obviousness of its premise.

Nutcrackers mainly feels like an experiment. David Gordon Green takes a familiar Christmas family film script and sees if he can make something real out of it. He doesn’t always succeed, but he does deliver a charming mixed bag of nuts.

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Capone

by Hope Madden

What a nutty idea.

You’ve seen Capone on film: films about him, films containing him, films about gangsters reminiscent of him. A lot of these movies have been great – some of them classic. But you have never seen Alphonse Capone the way writer/director Josh Trank sees him.

Wisely, Trank realized Tom Hardy would be able to translate his vision.

There are moments, especially early in the film, where Hardy and Trank seem to be conjuring Vito Corleone (Hardy has always carried the same dangerous charisma of Brando, anyway). But it doesn’t take long before the role defines itself as something we truly have not seen before.

The film focuses on the final year of the infamous mobster’s life—the adult diapers and dementia year. He’s served his prison term for tax evasion, the syphilis he contracted in his youth has taken its toll on his mind and body, and his money is quickly evaporating.

Maybe he’s hidden $10 million somewhere. Maybe he’s just nuts.

Trank’s loose narrative is less concerned with the scheming, criss-crossing and backstabbing from underlings trying to find the money than it is with Capone’s deterioration, and that’s what makes this film so gloriously odd.

There is a grotesque humor underlying many of these scenes. Trank doesn’t ask you to sympathize with this notorious villain, nor does he revel in his decrepitude. But he definitely explores it, and that’s a brave decision. Many a mobster film fanatic will be annoyed by this glimpse into the post-badass years, but defying expectations is something Capone does early and often.

If Trank doesn’t trade in sympathy, we can still expect Hardy to generate empathy. As is characteristic of every performance in his career, Tom Hardy finds the faulty humanity in this character. His depiction of Capone’s confusion is unerringly human, and in his hands Trank’s macabre humor never feels like mockery.

Linda Cardellini flexes more in the role of Capone’s wife Mae than she has in her many other turns as put-upon spouse. She’s a great sparring partner for Hardy, and their volatile but ultimately tender relationship creates a needed grounding for a film so busy with the shadowy unreality of a diseased mind.

Because of the borderline surreal nature of a film told from the point of view of a man in the throes of dementia, it’s often tough to suss out the reality of the events onscreen. This generally works, but there are certainly moments—generally those inserted to give us stepping stones of a plot–that seem stiffly ill placed.

Thankfully, Hardy’s there to command your attention. No doubt some viewers will be disappointed—those who tuned in to see Hardy play a badass at the top of his game. My guess is that the reason one of the finest actors working today was drawn to Capone was the opportunity to do something just this unexpected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnvz-P9j2qA