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Blinder Side

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Same Kind of Different as Me

by George Wolf

It’s been over a year since the trailer for Same Kind of Different as Me arrived, and was promptly met with the widespread mockery it deserved.

Planned release dates came and went. Was it retooling, or rethinking? Maybe they weren’t really going to put out a film with so much apparent racial condescension and white guilt?

They were, they are, they did.

It’s based on the best selling memoir – steady yourself if you haven’t heard this title – Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together.

Subtle.

Ron and Debbie Hall (Greg Kinnear and Renee Zellweger) were rich white Texans in an unhappy marriage. They met homeless man Denver Moore (Djimon Hounsou) and struck up a friendship which led to millions of dollars raised for the needy.

It’s a nice story. Helping thy neighbor is a lovely message. Why does it have to be delivered this way?

Denver seems like an interesting character, and he’s listed as a co-author on the book. Did anyone think to tell the story from his point of view?

No, we must get more precious white saviors, and celebrate them for taking a black friend to their white country club while they wash their hands of violent racism with empty voiceovers (of course there are voiceovers!) such as “there are things I just don’t understand.”

Bless your heart.

Not one thing in director/co-writer Michael Carney’s feature debut feels authentic. Even smaller details, like Debbie sleeping in full makeup or a young, poverty-stricken Denver sporting gleaming straight teeth, feed the notion that this is all just a self-congratulatory show.

Well, congratulations, this might even be worse than The Blind Slide.

 

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The Fire Inside

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Only the Brave

by George Wolf

As wildfires continue to devastate areas of California, it seems incredibly timely for the debut of a populist firefighter tribute full of bombast and manipulation.

Thankfully, Only the Brave is not that movie.

Director Joseph Kosinski seems well aware of overwrought pitfalls so easily indulged, taking care to deepen our connection to major players as events build to a terrifying, true-life conclusion.

Based on the GQ article “No Exit,” co-writers Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer deftly adapt the story of Arizona’s Granite Mountain Hotshots, the first group of municipal firefighters to achieve elite “Hotshot” status.

Josh Brolin stars as supervisor Eric Marsh, a firefighting vet trying to ready his seasoned pros and new recruits for both the upcoming season and the essential state evaluations. Rookie Brendan McDonough (Miles Teller) is the team’s biggest question mark, a recovering drug addict and new father who’s determined to turn his life around.

While filmmaker Peter Berg has perfected a successful formula of quick character intros, then frenetic action for his “unsung hero” films (Deepwater Horizon, Patriots Day), Kosinski (Oblivion) is committed to a separate but equally effective path.

There are cliches here, such as a frequent “lost cause” metaphor and the obligatory stoic women standing by their men, but Kosinki and his writers are able to keep them in the background through an emphasis on intimate storytelling. We see the fires battled in often spectacular fashion, but we also come to feel the toll the job takes on family life. We learn firefighting tactics along with the newbies, and as Brendan fights to prove his worth to the mother of his child (Natalie Hall), Teller finds a nicely subtle groove to get us on Brendan’s side as well.

Even better are Brolin’s scenes with Jennifer Connelly as Marsh’s wife Amanda. Through these two skilled actors and some pointed dialogue, a couple’s fight to hold on to each other feels authentic, and the film finds an emotional core that will pay later dividends.

Often powerfully gripping and thrilling to watch, Only the Brave is a fitting salute to real people that deserve one.

 

 

 

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Stranger in Town

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The Foreigner

by George Wolf

Martial arts legend Jackie Chan jumps back into the action genre feet first with The Foreigner, a film with more depth than you might expect.

Chan plays Quan, a restaurant owner in London who loses his daughter when a rogue faction of the IRA bombs a bank. Quan believes Irish Defense Minister Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan), who rose to power after a violent IRA past, knows the identity of the bombers. After his polite requests for information are rebuffed, Quan resurrects his own bloody roots to get those names by force and have his revenge.

Director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) knows you’re ready for the latest take on Taken, but mixes some satisfying fight choreography with long stretches of political intrigue that might disappoint those looking for nothing but bad guy beatdowns. There’s nothing overly original here, but Chan provides just enough layers to be mysteriously sympathetic, Brosnan brings the seasoned gravitas, and The Foreigner keeps its head above some gaps in logic to remain interesting.

 

 

 

 

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Super More Than Friends

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Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

by George Wolf

My my, turns out Wonder Woman’s lasso was designed for a little bit more than just truth-telling.

Writer/director Angela Robinson’s Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is the fascinating story of the birth of an iconic superhero, told with enough earnest emotion and sly subversion to craft a captivating, entertaining history lesson with a naughty side.

Anchored in 1945, when Wonder Woman creator William Marston (Luke Evans) is defending his comic against charges of indecency, the film flashes back often to the 1920s, as Marston and his wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) were psychologists at Radcliffe college. After taking on a young teaching assistant (Bella Heathcote), the three develop a relationship that launches both scandal and inspiration.

A mix of Saving Mr. Banks and A Dangerous Method, PMATWW boasts excellent performances and a refreshing, if a bit idealized worldview.

Call it Super More Than Friends.

 

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Strangers on a Plane

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The Mountain Between Us

by George Wolf

The Mountain Between Us is the type of film that wants to reach us by watching two wary characters slowly reach each other. Through talented actors, it wants to speak softly but cut deep.

Well, it nails the talented actors part.

Kate Winslet is Alex, who’s getting married tomorrow in Denver. Idris Elba is Ben, a neurosurgeon who’s also headed to Denver to perform delicate surgery on a ten-year-old. Problem is, they’re both in Idaho and all the flights are canceled due to weather.

They team up to charter a private plane from Walter (Beau Bridges), a local pilot with a lovable pooch, but when he suffers a stroke not long after takeoff, two strangers and a dog are left alone in the snow-covered mountains.

Screenwriters J. Miles Goodloe and Chris Weitz adapt Charles Martin’s novel with enough contrivance and melodrama to render Goodloe’s credit on a Nicholas Sparks film (The Best of Me) anything but surprising.

Director Hany Abu- Assad (Omar) serves up some majestic scenery and a nifty crash sequence, but settles for Sparks meets Castaway. Somehow, Winslet and Elba get us invested throughout the convenient, telegraphed plot turns. It is their seasoned talent and effortless likeability that ultimately saves the film from becoming a complete eye-rolling travesty.

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Separation Anxiety

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Super Dark Times

by Hope Madden

Super Dark Times opens ominously enough: a broken schoolroom window, a trail of blood running through empty classrooms and into a cafeteria. Though the outcome is not what you may expect, it sets an eerie stage for the 90s-set coming of age thriller.

Zach (Owen Campbell) and Josh (Charlie Tahan) are best friends, not yet driving, not yet dating, not yet determined if they are permanently dorks or just “awkward stage” dorks. They both like Allison (Elizabeth Cappuccino), both tolerate Daryl (Max Talisman).

Thanks in large part to a weirdly believable cast, writing that dances past clichés and confident direction, Super Dark Times creates the kind of charming but clumsy authenticity rarely seen in a coming-of-age indie.

Eighties high school flicks, mainly of the John Hughes variety, focused on right- versus wrong-side-of-the-tracks, popularity and the pressures parents can put on us. That is to say, they focused in most ways on the same worries that had plagued adolescent-focused films since the Fifties.

Contemporary films dealing with high schoolers require the ubiquitous presence of social media. But there is a particular darkness that entered the global consciousness about adolescents in the 90s, and Super Dark Times tries to tap that, using it to color the tone of its nostalgia and cusp-of-adulthood energy.

Kevin Phillips, making his feature debut, leans on his experience as a cinematographer to ensure the film looks as appealing and authentically nostalgic-90s-coming-of-age as possible. Writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski are unafraid to drop contextual clues without burdening characters with too much backstory, just to go on to upend expectations now and again to keep you on your toes.

Super Dark Times develops a thriller atmosphere fueled by the paranoid, confused logic of an adolescent. It’s all a fascinating and realistic journey—until it isn’t.

At a certain point in Super Dark Times, the film settles. It becomes something it didn’t have to become—like the teen who’s cool to hang onto that Subway job when he really needs to ditch town and make something of himself.

It’s an enormous credit to Philips and his young cast that this unnecessary cop-out doesn’t ruin the film. Together they have drawn so much investment in these characters and their futures that you can’t help but stay tuned and attentive.

But they could have done more.

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Anyone For Tennis?

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Battle of the Sexes

by George Wolf

A fight for equality playing out inside sports arenas. Sound familiar? Battle of the Sexes isn’t just an effortlessly engaging piece of entertainment, it’s a compelling reminder that the sporting world has long been intertwined with the social and political movements of the day.

In 1973, Billie Jean King was 29 years old and the leading name in women’s tennis. Bobby Riggs was a 55 year-old former champion who missed the spotlight. As the “women’s lib” movement grew, they met for three sets of tennis that was watched by ninety million people.

Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine, Ruby Sparks) choose wisely in running the soul of the film through King. Bolstered by Emma Stone’s gracefully layered performance, the film’s emotional connection comes from King’s dueling inner conflicts: the responsibility of carrying the women’s game forward and her growing attraction to the tour hairdresser (an excellent Andrea Riseborough).

A taut script from the Oscar-winning Simon Beaufoy finds marks that often speak directly to today’s “stick to sports” crowd. In one particularly biting scene, a defiant King argues for equal prize money on the women’s circuit, telling the condescending director of the tour (Bill Pullman) that he’s a constant gentleman “until we want a bit of what you’ve got.”

As he was in the actual ’73 event, Riggs is the film’s camera-loving ringmaster, a born huckster who tells a recovery group they don’t need to stop gambling – they just need to get better at it. Steve Carell nails the role, and not just because he has the look and the attitude. In the quieter moments away from the cheering crowds, Carell gives us a faded star in search of purpose, finding the authenticity that Riggs leaned on to remain endearing.

The period details are just right and, thanks to some nifty work by two athletic body doubles, so is the tennis. Faulting only with some fleeting moments of flippancy, Battle of the Sexes wins by serving up both a crowd-pleasing spectacle and the human drama than ultimately made it so much more.

 

 

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A Serious Man

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Menashe

by George Wolf

Done well, universal themes can resonate from even the most intimate of characterizations.

Menashe is the most intimate of characterizations, and it is done well.

Menashe (Menashe Lustig is an exceptional debut) is a struggling single father within a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn. Since the death of his wife nearly a year ago, Menashe has been resisting all matchmaking efforts, even though that means his “broken home” is not fit for his teenaged son.

According to church teachings, broken homes equal broken societies, and the boy will continue living with his uncle’s family until Menashe agrees to take a new wife.

Director/co-writer Joshua Z Weinstein, a veteran of documentary shorts making his narrative feature debut, immerses Menashe in a measured authenticity that never ventures very far from a documentary feel. Though Weinstein doesn’t speak Yiddish, his film speaks it almost entirely, drawing us deeply into a strict society through a lens that is highly detailed but never judgmental.

What sits at the core of Menashe is a conflict that transcends denominations. With uncompromising intimacy, Weinstein tenderly probes faith, family, and the sacrifices necessary to hold on to what’s most important to you.

 

 

 

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Meet Me at the Crossroads

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Two Trains Runnin’

by George Wolf

Why would two different sets of white college boys head into the deep South in the summer of 1964 and go searching for long lost bluesmen?

“We were either brave, stupid, or uninformed.”

Two Trains Runnin’, director Samuel D. Pollard’s engrossing documentary on the convergence of separate journeys, shows them to be all three.

In June of ’64, the boys were privileged enough to be unaware of the Mississippi Summer Project, which aimed to bring voter registration to as many African-American Mississippians as possible. Like historical embodiments of Steve Buscemi’s music nerd in Ghost World, they were all obsessed with Delta blues, and most specifically, with two legends of the genre who had all but disappeared.

A group from California set out in search of Skip James (though no known photographs of James even existed), while “three Jews in a VW Bug with New York plates” went south to follow clues that might lead them to Eddie “Son” House (someone maybe saw him leave a theater). Maps are laid out like dueling ascents on Everest, and Pollard utilizes first-person interviews, stylized graphics, animated re-creations and, of course, stirring blues music to unite the paths of the “two trains” headed to Mississippi.

The boys were drawn to these performers through powerful expressions of both the “source and cure” of a torment light years away from their postwar suburbia. Outside the comforts of home, they found the raging racial torment of beatings, bombings, and murder, with a view that they themselves were just more outsiders coming to “give the vote to the blacks.” It is on this point that Pollard makes his subtle pivot, and the film strengthens the current of shared humanity running through it.

Featuring graceful narration from Common and contemporary Delta blues performances by Valerie June, Gary Clark, Jr., Lucinda Williams and others, Pollard has crafted a rousing bookend to Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman’s 2009 documentary Soundtrack for a Revolution. The music is the message and the message is the music, and Two Trains Runnin’ becomes both a sober reminder that the fight continues, and an uplifting ode to fight on.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

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

 

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Innocence Lost

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Crown Heights

by George Wolf

An innocent man is convicted of murder and sent to prison. For decades, his appeals are ignored while family members refuse to give up hope. Tragically, Crown Heights tells a story we have seen before, and while the film’s commitment is never lacking, a true depth of feeling is never quite realized.

Writer/director Matt Ruskin adapts the true story of Colin Warner, who spent twenty years in a maximum security prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The victim of mistaken identity, a backlog of cases, overzealous prosecutors and the systemic inequality of criminal justice, Warner became little more than a voiceless statistic, where “no matter what I say, nobody gonna listen.”

Ruskin is able to convey the enormity of all that is stacked against Warner, aided greatly by two stellar performances. As Warner, Lakeith Stanfield (Straight Outta Compton, Get Out) uncovers the desperate confusion of innocence, while Nnamdi Asomugha (also one of the film’s producers) is the picture of quiet strength as the friend who sees Warner’s plight as universal and refuses to give up on him.

Warner’s story is another tragic example of a nearly unthinkable wrong, and Crown Heights does plenty right with it. But too often, the film misses the chance to make any intimate details resonate or to cut its own path, settling instead for a well-assembled summary of gut-wrenching events.