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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

11 May

Reboot hails Caesar

And so we enter into our next “Planet of the Apes” trilogy. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, theaters were packed for people in ape suits chasing after hunky Hollywood sorts such as Charlton Heston (the 1968 original with a script by “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling) and James Franciscus (“Beneath the Planet of the Apes”) playing men caught out of time and in the wrong place – a world ruled by talking apes where humans were largely mute also-rans. They were the kindlings of the blockbuster before there was “Jaws” (1975) or “Star Wars” (1977) Those films, all starring Roddy McDowall, were a five-pack with the actor playing the demure, science-minded chimp Cornelius in the first three and then his son, Caesar in the last two, “Conquest for the Planet of the Apes” (1972) and “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” (1973).

Skipping over Tim Burton’s 2001 stinker, the 2011-2017 trilogy (“Rise,” “Dawn,” “War for …”) wasn’t so much a reboot as a retooling that leveraged CGI and the talents of motion-capture actor extraordinaire Andy Serkis playing the series centerpiece, Caesar, who leads the apes out of human tyranny and along the path to a peaceful sovereign existence. In that series, apes achieved higher intelligence and the ability to speak because of humankind’s meddling and experimentation, while humans turned aphasic and dimwitted due to a virus that pretty much shut down the planet – this being pre-Covid, mind you. 

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is a new grab at a franchise (“From the beginning we thought about this as a trilogy,” director Wes Ball told Empire) that serves up a warm embrace of Caesar and his legacy. Since “War for the Planet of the Apes” the solidarity of ape-dom has fragmented and gone feudal. We’re a few generations out as the eagle clan of apes, a peaceful treehouse encampment-aviary, raise eagles to help them fish, scout and defend themselves. Humans are rare and believed to be near extinction. 

Our protagonist is Noa (Owen Teague), a coming-of-age chimp whose father (Neil Sandilands) is leader of the clan and harsh to his own. On an excursion to find coveted eagle eggs and rise in rank and stature, Noa and his posse see signs of a lone human in the woods and other forces moving through the valley as well. The latter turns out to be a column of soldier apes sent forth by a bonobo known as Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), who, like any good Roman leader seeking to expand the empire, does so by sacking and enslaving – which is exactly what happens to the eagle clan. In the aftermath Noa links up with Raka (a beautifully baritoned Peter Macon), a hermit orangutan well versed in the teachings of Caesar (“Ape not kill ape,” which Proximus Caesar, who trades on the name for effect and de facto authority, violates regularly) and keeper of books, which Noa has never seen. Noa’s also never seen a human, but sure enough, the waif in the woods, (Freya Allen, “The Witcher”), now trailing them for food scraps, comes out of the dark and joins them on their quest to infiltrate Proximus Caesar’s seaside fortress – an enormous, rusted-out aircraft carrier or cargo ship beached up against the rocky cliffside – and free the eagle clan survivors, Noa’s mother and a budding love interest among those imprisoned. It’s no spoiler to say that Allen’s Mae (the apes call all human women “Nova” by default) can speak, which blows even Raka’s mind.

The film’s gorgeously shot and boasts some imaginative world building, but there’s a lot going on, perhaps too much: Proximus Caesar’s larger agenda is to gain access to an old military silo for the ostensible humanmade war machine relics inside; to date, their big tactical weapon is an electric cattle prod; other than that, it’s knives, spears and fists. Several plot threads never get tied up, and Noa and Mae are thinly drawn – twice as much so if you hold them up against Serkis’ Caesar. Part of that is the uneven pacing by Ball, who cut his teeth on the “Maze Runner” series, another dystopian sci-fi concept. That said, there are some nice homages to the 1968 original, including a dark horse ambling regally down a deserted beach, those eerie scarecrow totems from the forbidden zone and the ominous trumpeting of a ram’s horn before a siege.

The film is less steeped in the metaphorical references to slavery and racism layered into the 1963 “Apes” novel by Pierre Boulle (who also wrote the novel that “The Bridge of the River Kwai” was based on) and more front and center in the earlier franchise. What we do get is some megalomaniacal clinging to power that feels Trumpian and plenty of fair digs about human hubris and the past due to repeat itself, as well as the perils of game-changing war technology falling into the wrong hands. Not much of it’s fresh, but it is dutiful and likely do well enough to ensure the next two chapters before another pause and a reboot. It’s how it goes, damn them all to hell.

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Film Clips

27 Apr

Of Beavers and Boys, reviewed: ‘Hundreds of Beavers’ and ‘Boy Kills World’

Cult camp is an odd genre bucket that collects a vast variety of films dumped there for varying reasons. Some (“El Topo,” “Barbarella” and even the recently released “Sasquatch Sunset”) end up there by design; others (“Showgirls,” “Mommy Dearest”) wind up there because they’re unintended, rubbernecking-worthy spectacles. Two films from this week’s roundup land there with mixed results: “Hundreds of Beavers,” which had a held-over-by-popular-demand extended run at the Somerville Theatre this year and is now available on streaming platforms, and “Boy Kills World,” which played as part of the Boston Underground Film Festival at The Brattle Theatre and opens at Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond on Friday. Two different films with distinctly different outcomes.

‘Hundreds of Beavers’ (2022)

“Beavers,” co-written by director Mike Cheslik and star Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, shoots for something new and markedly left of center. What the pair has concocted is slapstick, silent-era comedy mixed with loopy Looney Tunes animation and modern-day special effects. Made for a mere $150,000, the film has a premise that feels affectionately borrowed from Chaplin or Keaton: A 19th-century applejack seller named Jean Kayak (Tews), perpetually hopped up on his own hooch, gets into a skirmish with an army of beavers in the frozen wilds of the northern Midwest – think “Jeremiah Johnson” (1972) by way of “The Gold Rush” (1925). The beavers aren’t cute CGI creations, but dudes in suits with ginormous buckteeth. There’s something to do with a fur trader (Doug Mancheski) and his winsome daughter (Olivia Graves) whom Jean fancies, but it’s mostly Jean versus the bevy of beavers with cartoonish boinks and bams and some fairly taxing physical comedy performed by Tews as he hops from one log to another in a sawmill and slip-slides his way across the ice as a legion of angry beavers chases after him. No dialogue is spoken, and it’s shot in black and white. The experience (did I mention the daughter is pretty good at disemboweling beavers with a knife?) gets a bit repetitious, but Cheslik and Tews, all in on the hijinks, save some zaniness for the last go-round.

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‘Boy Kills World’ (2023)

“Boy Kills World” jumps out of the gate with promise; in the near dystopian future the aristocracy keep the masses in check with an annual lottery/purge called the “Culling.” What the film is, however, is a fairly pat, years-in-waiting revenge drama centered on a warrior known just as Boy (Bill Skarsgård, “Barbarian”) under the tutelage of a sensei (Yayan Ruhian, from the “Raid” films and “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum”) to beef up and exact revenge on Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen), the elitist who sanctioned the execution of his parents when he was an adolescent. The gimmick is that Boy can’t talk, yet the whole movie is narrated by him in voiceover. That’s done by H. Jon Benjamin (the voice of “Archer”), who makes Boy sound something like a cross between the gruff growl of Christian Bale’s caped crusader in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy with the wily witticisms of Bruce Campbell in any of the Sam Raimi “Evil Dead” flicks. That is somewhat fitting, as Raimi serves as executive producer here, and though directed by Moritz Mohr, “Boy Kills World” has plenty of Raimi influences. The plot of rebel forces fighting an aristocratic tyranny means comparisons to films such as “V for Vendetta” (2005) are sure to drop, but the lesser, forgotten 1992 Mick Jagger vehicle “Freejack” is the more apt comparison, as the fun of watching Skarsgård the avenger’s parkour-propelled takedown of legions of baddies ultimately palls. Skarsgård, almost as jacked as older bro Alexander was in “The Northman” (2022), makes for an impressive onscreen presence, as does Jessica Rothe as the skilled assassin known as June27 equipped with a neat combat helmet that’s a cerebral message board of sorts. It’s too bad the narrative arc they ride isn’t as sleek and mean

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Challengers

20 Apr

Triples tennis, lacking in rules

Luca Guadagnino knows how to stoke the erotic and push the boundaries of moral comfort (and then some) while delving into complex, fully formed souls living preternatural existences on the fringe of society. Take “I Am Love” (2009), in which Tilda Swinton played a well-to-do wife having an affair with her cook, or Timothée Chalamet as a fine young cannibal in “Bones and All” (2022) or even Guadagnino’s Oscar winner “Call Me by Your Name” (it won Best Screenplay and Chalamet and the film were nominated) that made him an international talent. They’re all rooted in viscerally deep carnal connections.

His latest, a fierce, fast passion play, hops into the ranks of pro tennis at the level just below Serena and Federer superstardom. You’re immediately wowed by bristling chemistry between its three wholesome leads, the raffish Josh O’Connor, also now on the screen in Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera,” Mike Faist, who broke through as Riff in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” (2021) and Zendaya, currently ruling the desert in “Dune: Part Two.” O’Connor and Faist play Patrick Zweig and Art Donaldson, besties since the age of 12 and more than pretty good with a racket. The flashbacks to their teenage doubles matches are showcases in cocky bravado that spill over into the after-parties that are all about netting members of the opposite sex. Now, however, the two are not so close. Art’s looking to play in the U.S. Open. He’s got a slam within his reach, but a recent slide has his confidence shaken and his game off, so his wife-coach Tashi (Zendaya) decides to have him play in a warmup tournament in nearby New Rochelle. It’s B-league, sponsored by a local tire outlet, but also draws Patrick, who lives pretty much hand to mouth sleeping in his car at tourneys. They haven’t seen each other in nearly 13 years, since Art won the hand of Tashi – who had been dating Patrick.

In rewinds (there’s a bevy of ’em, but with the help of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ electric score and some slick, attentive costuming, it’s done pretty seamlessly) we learn that Tashi – then Tashi Duncan – was the next big thing in tennis, a Naomi or Coco heading to Stanford before owning the world. A knee injury changes all that. The three initially meet at a tourney where Tashi is the big draw. At the trophy awards ceremony, both lads jockey for her favor and invite her back to their stylish hotel room for a beer. Ultimately the evening turns into a three-way makeout session, with Tashi subtly sliding out of the triple tongue tickle, which proves to be an eye-popping realization for Art and Patrick and emblematic of Tashi being perpetually one step ahead and pulling the strings.

As energetic and comely as our gamers are in the reignited love triangle, there are reasons for pause. Namely their stoic, unbridled sense of self interest and lack of emotional connection or fealty; Art and Tashi have a young daughter in a hotel room she scoots out on to have illicit meetups with Patrick. It’s like a 150 mph ace serve, awesome to behold but hollow, if that’s all the match is: Pretty but cold, not the intoxicating grit of a hard-fought Connors-McEnroe marathon hanging on every stroke, antic and bead of sweat. That happens in the on-court sequences, which are viscerally and kinetically staged, but not off-court. The fault is not on the performers so much as on the script by Justin Kuritzkes, which has zing and zip but not depth. In execution it’s not far from Zendaya’s 2021 outing “Malcolm and Marie,” in which Sam Levinson’s framing of a marriage pushed to the edge is more cool conceit than credible lived experience. How “Challengers” ends, there’s no true match point. That may sit well with those smitten by the film’s postured aesthetics, but others searching for something more reflective will likely be left at the midcourt line, tennis’ version of no man’s land.

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Short Takes: “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” and “Sasquatch Sunset”

20 Apr

‘Sasquatch Sunset’

David and Nathan Zellner churned out quirky, experimental indie works such as “Plastic Utopia” (1997) and “Goliath” (2008) and later veered into slightly more digestible alternative fare with “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” (2014), about a depressed Japanese office worker obsessed with the movie “Fargo” (1996) who searches for that film’s lost suitcase of cash. They opt for something more fantastic and scatological here as they embed us in a group of Sasquatch over the course of a calendar year. The film’s not far off from “The Dawn of Man” sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968); no human words are uttered, though there are plenty of human gestures. Amid the lush greenery of the Pacific Northwest we get to know our clan of cryptids; the brusque alpha male (co-director Nathan Zellner), the lone female (Riley Keough), the more demure junior male (Jesse Eisenberg) and an ostensibly adolescent ’squatch (Christophe Zajac-Denek). Early on we get a fairly gratuitous sex scene right out of “Clan of the Cave Bear” (1986), then there are bouts of masturbation and self-exploration of genitalia (yup, you get full-frontal bigfoot). As base as that may sound, the film unfurls more like a stock nature documentary until things move toward the comic and absurd: Employing a turtle withdrawn into its shell as something of a cellphone; or the alpha munching on what can best can be described as herbal hallucinogens and laying his desire for sex on a mountain lion, which does not go so well. It feels like “The Three Stooges” by way of Nat Geo, and near going over the top. There’s plenty of pissing and shitting too, especially when the clan discover a logging road running through their territory (it’s up to this point that it’s unclear if we’re in the Paleolithic or the present) and experience the need to mark it. As much as you could say it’s a “Beavis and Butt-Head” spin on the Pakuni from the 1970s Saturday morning TV staple “Land of the Lost,” there is vulnerability, fear, compassion, grief and a sense of community that registers onscreen. Well crafted (the costume, makeup and cinematography impress), “Sasquatch Sunset” is at turns weirdly touching and, as the title suggests, there is the heartbreak of witnessing what may be the last of a rare breed.

‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare‘

The title might tie you up with thoughts of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” and isn’t too far off – both are about teams assembled by the British government to stave off evil forces with world domination in mind, and both have links to James Bond (more on that later). Beyond that, one is based on a comic book and the other on the real-life derring-do by a ragtag team of World War II commandos trying to cripple the Nazi naval war machine as Britain remains the lone European holdout against Hitler and prays for the entry of the United States into the war. 

Based on Damien Lewis’ 2016 nonfiction book spun up from Winston Churchill’s declassified papers, the Guy Ritchie-helmed film homes in on Operation Postmaster, one of Churchill’s unauthorized and unsanctioned covert ops that proved instrumental in swaying the balance of power in the war.

The rich potpourri of strapping can-dos is led by Maj. Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill, aka Superman, rocking a killer handlebar mustache), sprung from the brig for the suicide mission. With him are explosives expert Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding, “Crazy Rich Asian”), Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), captain of the modest fishing vessel used for the operation, and gleeful Scandinavian killing machine Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), who would give Alexander Skarsgård’s berserker in “The Northman” (2022) a run for his money in bloodletting and wear a broad beaming smile while doing it. The target is a critical Nazi supply ship (of CO2 filters for U-boats) and ammo depot on the West African island of Fernando Po, then a Spanish colony. Along the way the raffish rascals sink a Nazi patrol boat, liberate tactical strategist and ladies man Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) and tangle with a British destroyer. They have operatives on the island as well with Richard Heron (Babs Olusanmokun) who, a la Rick in “Casablanca” (1942), runs a casino, and club chanteuse Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González), who’s deadly with a pistol but oft dangled as bait to ply Nazi command.

Ritchie, known for his cheeky, stylistic verve (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “The Gentlemen”), which the director set aside for his other “truly happened” effort “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” (2023), reverts pleasingly back to his roots. It’s “The Guns of Navarone”(1961) if reenvisioned through an “Inglourious Basterds” (2009) lens. The cast is all in, even if the narrative, long for its two-hour running time, ebbs when it should be cresting.

Back to that Bond thing: Under hushed asides from Churchill (played by Rory Kinnear, so electric in “Men” but no Gary Oldman here) there’s a Brigadier Gubbins code-named “M” (Cary Elwes) and his aide, a young Ian Fleming, the guy who would go on to pen the secret-agent novels–allegedly inspired by Cavill’s suave Major. The original 007, Sean Connery, played Allan Quatermain in that other “Gentlemen” movie. 

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The Beast

12 Apr

Meeting again for the first time, hopping from disaster to disaster via DNA

Bertrand Bonello’s unsettling yet alluring contemplation on fate and the future, “The Beast,” is an enigmatic weave of three periods in which two actors – Léa Seydoux (“Dune: Part Two,” “Blue is the Warmest Color”) and George MacKay (“1917”) – play roughly the same attracted-to-each-other, but unable-to-connect souls. It’s based loosely on or, I’d say, more inspired by Henry James’ 1903 short story “The Beast in the Jungle.” In the story, a fickle man of stature feels fated to suffer infamy, and as a result, lives a cautious, coddled existence trying to avoid the inevitable. The punchline is that it’s this that makes him notorious. Bonello’s reimagining is more “Cloud Atlas” (2012) by way of “Mulholland Drive” (2001) than anything truly Jamesian.

The film begins with Gabrielle (Seydoux), a pianist and French socialite, perusing an art exhibit in a Parisian gallery circa 1910. Amid the meandering cascade of transmogrified nude men captured in various torturous states, mouths agape and phalluses prominently on display, she bumps into a young British aristocrat named Louis (MacKay) who claims they have met before. Whether the claim is true or a ploy, the connection between the two feels instant and deep and immediately illicit, as Gabrielle’s husband is in the next room. The flirtation as they walk and talk in dour, somber tones isn’t sexual per se, but more soulful, as Louis vows to be Gabrielle’s savior when she, à la James’ protagonist, professes a perpetual fear she cannot fully articulate. From there we jump to 2044 Paris with Gabrielle working with an AI assistant – they have progressed to fully realistic, near-flesh incarnations and can even engage in sex – to try to find work, but can’t because she is too cluttered by emotion (that fear?) and thus less desirable (because emotions make you less effective, or so that is the premise). In both the Belle Époque and future Paris, the streets are nearly bare, as if a pandemic or apocalypse has occurred. All we ever see is Gabrielle and maybe one or two other wandering souls. The gorgeously shot, stark framing is beyond visceral, and that 1910 timeframe is intentional: The sequence takes place right after the Great Flood of Paris, when the Seine overflowed and the streets were knee deep in water, a historic occurrence that later folds into the plot with dire consequences as Lous and Gabrielle pay a visit to the doll factory owned by her husband (a stoic and purposeful Martin Scali).

The third and most jarring of threads takes place in Los Angeles 2014. Gabrielle is an aspiring actor housesitting a spartan glass manse in a upscale neighborhood while Louis, a never-been-kissed incel who vlogs his hate for women, catches sight of Gabrielle at a club and begins to stalk her. Like that Parisian flood, it’s a natural catastrophe – an earthquake – that becomes an agent of fate for the two.

Given all the time and personal hopping, Bonello’s tight narrative control is more than a neat party trick, but beyond that it’s the immersed performances by the actors that compel. Seydoux, whose Gabrielle is driven by a perennial sense of not knowing and doom, is the more rooted across the chapters, though her opening green screen scream scene and audition clips are priceless, eye-popping pullouts. MacKay is the one asked to do some broad changeups, toggling from dutiful gentleman to angry misogynist blaming the world for his failures. You know that in the filmmaking process there was time to change wardrobe and get into character, but as rendered it feels like bold turns on a dime – a wonderment, to be sure.

Pages from other films are clearly borrowed, but feel new. Gabrielle 2044 undergoing a DNA purification process to become a more employable candidate lies in a black isolation pool with a mechanical arm inserting a long needle into her ear. It’s a scene that feels pulled right from a Cronenberg body mutilation movie, which is hauntingly apt; Seydoux appeared in the auteur’s most recent endeavor, “Crimes of the Future” (2022). With the human-AI emotional connection there’s “Her” (2013), and a bit from Michael Haneke’s grim “Funny Games” (1997 and 2007), in which the rewind of video footage plays into the reshaping of the narrative.

The essence of “The Beast” is not unlike Kar-Wai Wong’s haunting elixir “2046” (2004). It’s imbued with a sense of bridled passion as the future and the past inform and influence each other. There’s dread and desire in every frame. Not all of it clicks, but overall its tonality mesmerizes, captivate and drives at you from within. 

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Civil War

12 Apr

For correspondents in a torn country with echoes of today, any side is the wrong side

Alex Garland has always been thematically clear in his films. His first two directorial efforts, “Ex Machina” (2015) and “Annihilation” (2018), plumbed creationism and doom, while “Men” (2022) donned the veneer of horror as it wrestled with toxic masculinity and misogyny. Here Garland shifts to the more immediate and less fantastical with this loose-lensed scrutiny of journalism, namely its relevance and the ethics of those plying it. Sure, the civil war of the title is happening across the United States, but it’s vague as to why; all we know is that the Western Forces – a two-star alliance with their own, more spartan rendering of the ol’ red, white and blue – consists of seceded states Texas and California, and that Florida is a wild card trying to pull the Carolinas in to some kind of something or other. It’s a MacGuffin wrapped inside an enigma for certain, but Red and Blue states aligning is a bit of a stretch. Given the premise, folks are going to want to reflect on the nastiness here and now and how we move on, but “Civil War” is not that film. It takes a while to work that out and get on the page with Garland, a more-than-capable writer (“28 Days Later,” “Never Let Me Go”) and inherently immersive filmmaker.

“Civil War” opens with journalists in New York City recording mob unrest and the efforts of a bristling police presence trying to tamp it down. Again, the who and why isn’t explained, but given the immediacy of the scene, Garland and his crew transport us beyond our want-to-knows as veteran war photographer Lee Miller (Kirstin Dunst) snaps away at the post-explosion carnage of a car bomb. Trying to tag along is Jessie (Carlee Spaeny, the apple of Elvis’ eye in “Priscilla”) a Lee Miller wannabe who shoots on old-school film and would have been digitized herself if it weren’t for Lee pushing her out of the bomb blast. Like the punchy western journos in “Welcome to Sarajevo” (1997) and “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1982), the correspondents regroup in a hotel, drink scotch, milk each other for scoops and discuss the next hot spot locale to pursue a story. Lee and her pen man Joel (Wagner Moura) want to score an interview with the power-clinging, third-term president (Nick Offerman) before D.C. is beset. Jessie weasels her way in, as does Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), an older political reporter from the Times looking to get to the front line in Charlottesville. The winding 800 miles to D.C. (can’t go down the main coastal roads) is filled with strange moments: a vintage boutique in a Southern hamlet seemingly untouched by the conflict, a gas stop where alleged looters hang from rafters awaiting “trial,” meticulous mass graves and plenty of skirmishes where not many seem to know what they are fighting for or who’s on whose side. “I’m just shooting at a guy who’s shooting at me,” one gentleman in camouflage and punk-dyed hair offers as he tries to suss out a sniper. 

At the end of the not-too-golden bricked road, Garland stages a phenomenally choreographed siege of Washington that’s as heartbreaking as it is breathtaking. Through it all he digs into the “objective indifference” of journalists – the professional tenet of getting the story and being impartial. It’s a cold and effective mirror that raises begging questions, and others more practical and immediate: If powers are to fall, will the organizations they file with still exist (the Times and Reuters) and if so, shouldn’t they become freelancers for foreign press such as the BBC or The Guardian? Then there’s the matters of personal preservation and the reasons for the civil war that are never discussed, which makes you see more notorious touch points in our recent past, namely Jan. 6 and the Proud Boys. To be clear, the Western Forces are no liberating army – or at least not one I’d want to be liberated by, as they shoot first and ask few questions. When they do ask, if your answers aren’t right, you’re dead. Twice as dead if you’re not white. 

It’s a slippery yet provocative slope. Some might call it manipulative stoking of fears without owning it, and they’d be right. The film also falters with Jessie; she’s as shallow as dew mist – an amalgam of parts with nothing human to grab on to, and Spaeny feels miscast. Thankfully that all fades in the rearview as things ramp up en route to D.C. As a visionary behind a pen or a lens, Garland has a penchant for lawless dystopia that translates well here, and frighteningly so. The war in the backyard holds our eyes and our minds even if the themes offered fail to fully crystallize in the billowing smoke of the distant hills. 

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Love Lies Bleeding

13 Mar

Noir goes to the gym, coming out taut and sweaty (with big hair)

“Love Lies Bleeding,” the delightfully audacious lesbian crime noir from Rose Glass, may not be a road movie per se, but it sure feels like one. It’s everything “Drive-Away Dolls” wanted to be and more: edgy, free of tropes and seared tight by the kind of angry authenticity that imbued “Titane” (2019), “Bound” (1994) or anything Greg Araki ever lambasted us with in the 1990s.

The setting’s a podunk New Mexico town in the mid-1980s – boxy cars, big hair and no cellphones – where Lou (Kristen Stewart) bides her time toiling at a no-frills pump-and-grunt gym, where unclogging the toilet is job No. 1. (And this loo is not like the sleek pieces of pristine public art tended to in Wim Wenders’ well received “Perfect Days.”) No, this is like a Fenway’s men’s room at its odorous worst, and the clientele are all juiced-up meatheads, though Lou feels at home among them, like one of those small fish that swims calmly among sharks and cleans their gills. It probably helps that she has a side hustle shilling steroids.

Lou lives a modest existence. Her flat is classic Allston: worn sofa, tatty rug and clothes strewn everywhere. Her life feels flat too. There is no light in it. Even her one passing love interest, Daisy, (Anna Baryshnikov, daughter of Mikhail), a vapid young woman with a beaming smile and nothing to say even though she’s always talking, feels done and over with. Clearly something has to give, and we get the first whiff of what’s going on under the covers when two FBI agents posing as old family friends come by to inquire about Lou’s father and mother. It’s here we learn Lou is somewhat estranged from her father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, rocking a Brian Eno ’70s do), who owns the gym, a gun range and most everything (and everyone) else in the town, but remains close to her sister Beth (an unrecognizable Jena Malone in a blonde bob) who has a tumultuous home life with her husband J.J. (Dave Franco), a rat-tailed scum who works at the firing range.

Tangled webs and criminal pasts get more tangled when Jackie (a super-jacked Katy O’Brien) drifts into town and Lou’s gym, but not before an encounter with J.J. Jackie’s a transient soul pumping her way across America en route to a bodybuilding contest in Las Vegas. She’s got big dreams and even bigger pecs. It’s love at first pump, or something like that. After getting cornered by two sneering lunkheads, Jackie and Lou fall into bed. Souls get bared, love springs and Jackie moves in (she had been sleeping under a bridge). For much-needed cash, she takes up a job waitressing at Lou Sr.’s shooting range, which doesn’t sit too well with Lou.

Glass, who made audiences take notice with “Saint Maude” (2019), an immersive, eerily tense ambient piece, strikes a dutiful balance between pulp punchiness and grrl power anthem with a peppering of gonzo genre-stretching flourishes. One of those goes-to-11 touches is Jackie juicing to the point of Hulk-like ’roid rages and some outré, almost Lynchian veers into alter reality. The chemistry between Lou and Jackie carries the film atop its broad, sculpted shoulders, driven by the kind of passion and injustice that made “Thelma & Louise” (1991) and “Bound” (1996) such indelible fist-in-the-air fuck-the-patriarchy staples. The cinematography by Ben Fordesman recasts the neon-basked Southwest in a gritty neo-noir light that deepens the film’s sense of time, place and genre, but the key here is Stewart, whose underreactive restraint is the film’s hook. Jackie’s the hammer. The two together are an intoxicating tandem, vulnerable yet steeled as they try to make it to tomorrow and their way out.

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Dune Part 2

2 Mar

Feudalism and colonialism vie with the giant sandworm for best space monster

After seeing the first installment of Denis Villeneuve’s reenvisioning of Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi saga, the prospect of “Dune: Part Two” left me with a modicum of dread. Why? Villeneuve (“Arrival,” “Blade Runner 2049”), who is a competent craftsman and then some, had done well with a rote, by-the-numbers introduction that, while serviceable, didn’t seem to have the gravitas – or the legs – to go above and beyond David Lynch’s much-made-of 1984 version. Plus, who was going to take on the role of the ruthless Feyd-Rautha that Sting made so memorable in the Lynch version, and would Timothée Chalamet’s taciturn and aloof Paul Atreides ever give us a reason to yield up a precious thimble of perspiration? Questions to which we now get answers.

“Part Two” is bigger, a notch better and longer too, mostly because much of the requisite backstory has been dispensed: A feudal empire occupying the desert planet of Arrakis, the only source of melange or spice, a drug that lengthens one’s life and can imbue super-prescient capabilities and space travel via hyper warp. (Call it oil or coca for cocaine and you’d have the precious resource analogy.) The displacement and oppression of the Indigenous folk of the planet – yes, Herbert bridged feudalism and colonialism, for a double fucking of people simply going about their daily lives.

There’s more action in “Part Two” – and more worms – as Chalamet’s Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), transition into the messiah realized and Reverend Mother of the Fremen, the Indigenous people, by drinking the blood of one of those giant sandworms. It’s a crazy acid trip that kills most who decide to drop out and tune in; only those destined by prophecy make it through, or something like that. Paul even gets to ride a worm (far less cheesy than Kyle MacLachlan’s sand surfing back in 1984, but somehow not quite as satisfying). And of course there’s the whole big take-back-the-planet throw-down with the Harkonnens, bad guys led by a grotesque baron (the always excellent Stellan Skarsgård, nearly unrecognizable under makeup and CGI) who violently displaced House Atreides as stewards of Arrakis in “Part One.”

The mega battles are mostly blessedly brief – clearly Villeneuve knew that throngs of shadowy figures wielding knives in a sandstorm wasn’t a sustainable spectacle. The visuals that make it onto the screen are lean, pointed and stunning, some through fine editing and special effects (including beguiling shots of moons and distant planets) as well as scrumptious cinematography by Greig Fraser (“The Mandalorian,” “Zero Dark Thirty”), not only of vast sandscapes but in the gladiatorial arena on the home planet of House Harkonnen, shot in a post-nuclear-blast ashy black-and-white. That’s where the baron’s nephew, Feyd-Rautha, slices up a few Atreides holdovers as part of his birthday celebration. (Feyd-Rautha is played by “Elvis” portrayer Austin Butler, bringing his own bite to the part and looking like one of the pasty, skin-headed war boys out of 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.”)

As far as the casting goes, Chalamet and Ferguson grow in their parts. There was something off about Chalamet in “Part One,” and that lingers some here too; the sum of the parts doesn’t quite add up. Winners are Zendaya getting more screen time as Chani, Paul’s Fremen warrior instructor and love interest; Javier Bardem’s cagey Stilgar, one of the Fremen elders who feels like he could walk into any David Lean-directed desert epic and be at home; Butler; and, in smaller parts as members of the priestess-witch sisterhood known as the Bene Gesserit – Lady Jessica belongs to it – Florence Pugh as the emperor’s daughter, coming into her powers; Charolette Rampling as the Mother Reverend, in consultation with the emperor; and Léa Seydoux, lithe and fawning as Lady Margot, who’s assigned by Rampling’s Mother to ferret out Feyd-Rautha by any charming means possible. The one negative is the casting of Christoper Walken as the emperor. Don’t get me wrong, I love Walken and nearly everything he’s done, but the soft-spoken Jersey boy heavy in outer space doesn’t quite make the warp jump.

With its coveted resource as the plot-triggering core, and a crash-and-burn extraction process, “Dune: Part Two” isn’t far off from an “Avatar” chapter. It has a different ecosystem – desert instead of jungle and water – but the same invasive avarice. It packs in a lot thematically beyond space colonialism, though. Religion comes under scrutiny: Is it a means of pacifying and controlling the masses, as Chani challenges, or can sustained faith lead believers to a better place? As prophecy meets politics, the players in Herbert’s universe reveal themselves to be playing games within games as the ones holding the strings of power vie for legacy and control.

Speaking of the future, just like with “Part One,” the next “Dune” chapter isn’t announced at the film’s conclusion. Rest assured there will be a “Part Three.”

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Drive-Away Dolls

23 Feb

Considering the fantastic cast and punchy setup, this is a bit of a toe stub for Ethan Coen in his second outing (his other being the 2022 rock-doc “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind”) since splitting in 2019 with his brother Joel from a partnership that generated some of the most revered films of the recent cinematic past – “Fargo” (1996) and “No Country for Old Men” (2007) among them. These drive-away dolls are lesbians on a road trip to hell (well, Florida) to deliver a car and visit one’s nana. The car contains wanted cargo (a MacGuffin with shades of “Repo Man” that doesn’t have the greatest of payoffs) with a bunch of shady goons in hot pursuit. The lines between the sexually liberated Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and demure bestie Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are drawn starkly in nearly every scene; along the way Jamie brings hookups back to their various motel rooms as the bookish Marian heads to the lobby to read Henry James during playtime. It’s a buddy movie with romantic possibilities – a soccer club spin-the-bottle makeout session forces the issue. Coen and his co-writer, wife Tricia Cooke, who edited projects such as “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2000) and “The Big Lebowski” (1998), borrow too much from their shared canon, namely C.J. Wilson and Joey Slotnick as idiosyncratic goons (and that is literally how the are referred to in the credits) whose opposite approaches to dealing with an escalating situation feel ripped slackly from “Fargo.” Qualley, so good in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019) and last year’s “Sanctuary,” furthers her blossoming CV with an energetic, scene-pushing presence bolstered by an affable southern twang, and Viswanathan makes for a good offset. The chemistry between the two carries the uneven mishmash as it stumbles early and struggles to regain its quirky vibe. Also in the mix, in small raucous parts, are Matt Damon as a Florida Man, Colman Domingo as the goon handler, Pedro Pascal on ice, Beanie Feldstein (“Booksmart”) as Jamie’s brash law enforcement ex and Bill Camp as the car dispatcher no one listens to. At least this not-quite-fully-baked road comedy with a prize dildo set gone missing is a fast 84 minutes. 

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The Zone of Interest

13 Jan

Tending to the flowers fertilized in the shadow of a German genocide

If you didn’t think we needed another Holocaust film, Jonathan Glazer would like you to think again. “The Zone of Interest” is Glazer’s very loose adaptation of the novel by Martin Amis, the author of “London Fields” who passed away last year before the film was shown at Cannes, and it flips the lens on one of the most heinous and barbaric undertakings committed to history. The major departure from Amis’ text is that Glazer opts to go less obliquely at the matter: Instead of using Amis’ fictionalized commandant of Auschwitz, he names names, focusing on the real-life Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), whom we grimly learn was something of a revered efficiency expert; his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller); and their five young children. Technically you could call “The Zone of Interest” a biopic, but one like you’ve never seen before.

The other big changeup is that we never step inside the walls of the death camp and, for the most, hang out with Hedwig and the children as she tends to the garden and they play in their well-manicured yard in the shadow of a high wall lined with barbed wire. Occasionally we hear a muffled scream or distant gunshot, the repugnant gravity of which is an alarming stab in the ribs. But for Frau Höss, this is the everyday, and she goes about her business without a second thought. There are times too that particles of ash fall from above, giving reason for a cough or the application of a tissue. Other than those inconveniences, life for the Höss contingent is not far off from that of the von Trapp family, sans the musical numbers and wide smiles. And that’s Glazer’s quiet driving point, that such an atrocity was born of complacency and complicity, be it by birth, assimilation, association or failure to see – willful or not – and could happen again. Did the children have choice in their station, did even mom and dad? There’s much to chew on. More diabolical scenes have Rudolf in meetings with peers and higher-ups looking to score maximum efficiency as crammed carloads of poor souls from Hungary are ushered north by train and into the jaws of Höss’ well-honed, methodical processes. Compared with “Succession,” it’s a staid, dour affair, as all are on the same page. There is no contention or hidden agendas, just quiet agreement with the cold winds of detached dehumanization whirring loudly.

To give us an abstract tear-away – a palate cleanser – Glazer every now and then drops into nocturnal scenes, shot in black-and-white thermal imaging, of a young girl wandering through a strange, foreboding landscape doing something or other with apples. It feels like a page from Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) and, likewise, is a means of dealing with trauma and the bigger conflict taking place in the outside world.

This is the first film in 10 years by Glazer, director of the edgy, sublime British gangster flick “Sexy Beast” (2000). His last was “Under the Skin,” an eerie, inventive sci-fi pontification on an alien foraging for food, with us being the food.

The “Zone” score by Mica Levi, whose dark, ethereal notes Glazer relied upon to make “Under the Skin” so transportive, amplifies the anguish in achy grinds that not only echo the pain and suffering from inside the walls, but the torment within those meting the wrongs as they struggle with the consequences of their actions. There’s one brief yet powerful scene of remorse in which one agent of repugnance doubles over and gags, ostensibly to cough up the evil entity inside that possesses him. There is no exorcism or atonement for those choosing genocide.

The central performances are essential. Not enough can be said for Hüller and her work in the past year. She was the primary reason Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” registered as so extraordinary in its otherwise ordinary scope, and is just as valuable here projecting a controlled, stoic posture bolstered by a dark sense of privileged entitlement. Friedel too is all in, but Glazer’s camera doesn’t often leave the domestic realm of the Höss house, and daddy’s a very busy man, who like any good family guy doesn’t bring his work home with him – even if it looms over his backyard with all the girth and heft of a menacing kaiju restrained by chains that are bound to break. The reckoning is there, and Glazer roots us so we can’t look away, imbedded with corroded souls swept up in a malignant campaign. 

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