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Outtakes

All Hat and No Cattle

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Gunslingers

by Hope Madden

Nic Cage makes, what, 18 movies a year? And every tenth or so is really worth watching, maybe because it’s fun, often solely because he’s a lunatic, and once in a long while you get a Pig, a Dream Scenario, a Mandy. But more often than not you get a Gunslingers.

Written and directed by Brian Skiba, the film opens with the worst AI New York skyline, circa 1904, you’ve ever seen. The scene that sets up the film amounts to a handful of quick cuts, gunshot sounds, and the worst CGI fire you’ve ever seen.

Cut to four years later and Thomas Keller (Stephen Dorff, a consistently solid actor who deserves better roles) is looking for the mythical town of Redemption, Kentucky. There he can lay down his guns and his name and take on a new, peaceful life, like every other citizen. It’s a town full of wanted men who’ve found…subtlety is not Skiba’s strong suit.

Hold your horses! That guy who was badly CGI burned? He’s on Thomas’s trail! And so is Val (Heather Graham), an “old friend” with a 4-year-old in tow. Who could be the father? What could Val want in Redemption? And how much exposition can Heather Graham be tasked with blurting out at opportune moments?

Well, old Thomas hasn’t been a citizen of Redemption long, but he’s already got friends in Redemption: town leader Jericho (Costas Mandylor); his daughter, the bartender (Scarlet Rose Stallone); his righthand law man (Tzi Ma in the worst wig you’ve ever seen onscreen); and the town religious zealot (Cage, dressed so anachronistically like a late ‘60s hippie it’s ludicrous).

Gunslingers feels like a grade school play written by a precocious 4th grader who watched a lot of Spaghetti Westerns. Skiba presents all the main beats of the genre with none of the connective tissue that gives them context or purpose. Every scene is contrivance plus shoot out plus convenient plot turn plus Val shouting exposition followed by Cage brandishing some kind of inexplicable tracheotomy sound to his vocal delivery.

It’s probably not the worst movie Cage has made, but lord, it is not good.

New In Theaters, Slider

Can You Keep a Secret?

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The Farewell

by George Wolf

Caught in a lie and feeling desperate?

There’s always the Homer Simpson defense (“It takes two to lie – one to lie and one to listen”), or even the George Costanza (“It’s not a lie if you believe it”).

But with The Farewell, writer/director Lulu Wang finds poignant truths in an elaborate lie, speaking the universal language of “family crazy” while crafting an engaging cultural prism.

Inspired by an episode of the This American Life podcast, The Farewell unfolds through the view of Billi (Awkwafina), a Chinese American who follows her parents back to China after the news of her grandmother Nai Nai’s terminal cancer diagnosis.

But Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao-priceless) is the only one who doesn’t know how sick she is, and the extended family has concocted a ruse about a grandson’s wedding to give everyone an excuse to come visit Nai Nai one last time.

Billi’s parents (Tzi Ma and Diana Lin) are worried she’ll end up giving the game away – and with good reason. Billi is not entirely on board for the “good lie,” and this conflict of conscience is the vessel Wang steers to expose important cultural differences while she’s getting solid laughs with all the family antics.

The lies -both big and small- pile up, all in service of the belief that one’s life is part of a whole, and thus it is Nai Nai’s family who must carry the emotional burden of her illness.

It is Awkwafina who carries the film. If you only know her as a comic presence (Ocean’s 8, Crazy Rich Asians), prepare to be wowed. As our window into this push and pull of tradition in the modern world, she makes Billi a nuanced, relatable soul.

While Wang’s script is sharp and insightful, her assured tone is even more beneficial. Even as the film feels effortlessly lived in, it never quite goes in directions you think it might. Wang doesn’t stoop to going maudlin among all the whiffs of death, infusing The Farewell with an endless charm that’s both revealing and familiar.

Funny, too. No lie.