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The Substance

21 Sep

Demi Moore’s cure for aging goes beyond spine tingling into spine-rending

As far as gonzo art-house horror goes, “The Substance,” certain to make a stir as it drops into theaters this week, is an ineffable, WTF spectacle that’ll cement Coralie Fargeat as one of the rising new wave of auteurs of the outré. Her ghoulish company includes the likes of Julia Ducournau (“Titaine”), Ari Aster (“Midsommer”) and Brandon Cronenberg (“Infinity Pool”) among others – a youth movement taking the reins from Brandon’s dear dad David (“Rabid,” “Crimes of the Future”) and the other David of nightmarish bad trips, David Lynch.

The inspired casting of Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley as the same ego/persona is nothing short of a lightning strike. Moore plays aging fitness queen Elisabeth Sparkle, who at one point was an Oscar darling (Jane Fonda, anyone?). When we meet Elisabeth taping a segment of her TV show “Sparkle Your Life with Elisabeth,” we learn she’s 50ish, though looks 15 years younger; the real shocker is that Moore in real life is 10 years older than Ms. Sparkle. The producer of the show, a snaky ball of smarmy insincerity with the moniker of just Harvey (played with infectious hambone glee by Dennis Quaid, who can now let go of his recent “Reagan” biopic flop) wants a younger, more nubile centerpiece that will light up the stage, appeal to the younger generation and titillate the studio’s white-haired board.

Given all that (the name, the old-boy network), the #MeToo allusions are hard to ignore, but “The Substance” is a lot closer to “All About Eve” (1950) by way of the “Elephant Man” (1980) and “Carrie” (1976) than the criminal fall of the swaggering dick who built Miramax. Elisabeth, distraught at the realization her days are numbered, gets into a violent car accident that lands her in the hospital. The attending assistant, a taut-faced young man with piercing eyes, does a gentle, yet firm probing of the spine and mutteringly remarks that  Elizabeth would make a “good candidate.” Though he retracts the statement and sends Elisabeth on her way, Elisabeth later finds in her coat pocket a drive with the label “The Substance” printed on it in big bold letters. What’s on the drive isn’t too far off from Cronenberg’s “Videodrome” (1983) – both films about the evils of big media and the prospect of rebirth (the “new flesh”) that come with consequence. The long and short is that Elisabeth can attain “a newer, better” her by taking a series of injections. The catch is that you have to reverse the process every seven days. Without exception. Or else.

The trashy alleyway locker where Elisabeth gets her renewal kit feel weirdly familiar; wafts of the dumpster scene in Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” (2001) drift subtly through your mind, and the strange process of getting into the brain of John Malkovich in “Being John Malkovich” (1999). Fargeat holds the fringe masters in high regard and layers in clear references to De Palma (the aforementioned “Carrie”) and Kubrick, whose “The Shining” (1980) gets multiple references. To a lesser degree but perhaps with greater stylistic impact, “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) does as well. Some references go over the top and feel forced, but some are apt and effective homages. For cinephiles the film is a gleeful Easter egg hunt.

Much of the transformation process takes place in a cavernous white-tiled bathroom of Elisabeth’s upscale high-rise (akin to the serene purgatory in which Dave winds up at the end of “2001”) – and always in the buff.  The first injection triggers an immediate seizure that leaves Elisabeth on the ground writhing and convulsing. Just like a scene out of an “Alien” flick, her spine splits open and a slimy, porcelain other slithers out. That other, simply known as Sue (Qualley), following the renewal kit instructions, stitches up Elisabeth’s back and heads down to the studio to audition to be Elisabeth’s replacement, leaving the comatose husk on the bathroom floor hooked up to an IV or the like for sustenance.

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Short Takes: “See No Evil,” “Slingshot” and more

15 Sep

‘His Three Daughters’ (2023)

In the latest from Azazel Jacobs (“French Exit”) grief and sisterly differences are wrestled with as familial tensions crest, crash, subside and flow. We open in a small, spare Brooklyn apartment (black pleather couches, an Ikea-esque dining set and no carpeting) as estranged sisters Katie (Carrie Coon), Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) try to work out the logistics of their terminally ill father’s final hospice cycle. Katie, the oldest, is a bit of a control freak, as evidenced by her telephone disagreements with her husband and teenage daughter back home in California. Christina’s the idealistic free spirit trying to hold the situation together while figuring out the next chapter in her life, and Rachel is the one who’s been living with dad and taking care of him while slacking around the apartment and smoking weed. In short, three very different personalities that, given the heightened emotional state, clash more than not. The three leads deliver genuine, deeply felt performances that ripple with rage, regret and vulnerability. In scope and tenor, “His Three Daughters” is not far off from Florian Zeller’s quietly compelling “The Father” (2020), including a shift in reality that brings home the palpable final punch. The are times the film – which one could imagine as an intimate, in-the-round stage play – gets a bit too cyclical, but usually the dutiful hospice worker named Angel (Rudy Galvan) steps in to update the trio on the changing reality. He’s regarded as both valued family ally and annoying interloper. You never really see or hear the father other than as the sound of a respirator and beeps from a heart monitor reverberating from the back room while the three women in the tiny living room try to make sense of their past, present and future as a family.

‘Merchant Ivory’ (2024)

Stephen Soucy’s hagiography of the legendary filmmaking tandem that produced such critically acclaimed period dramas as “Howard’s End” (1985), “A Room with a View” (1992) and “Remains of the Day” (1993) puts their output into historical and cultural context and pulls back the veil on the challenges the two faced as a gay couple during less accepting times. Their films were the backbone of art house cinema in the ’80s and ’90s and beyond, until producer Ismail Merchant’s untimely death in 2005. Director James Ivory is still with us and spry in his mid-90s as he offers candid insight into production challenges and his dynamic with Merchant, the high-energy producer always looking to cut costs (you’d be shocked at how little some of these classics were made for) and shill projects to potential investors versus Ivory’s more somber, quiet approach. Soucy gives you the full rewind from Ivory being an adoptee (Ivory notes that the Paul Newman post-Depression, Great War film “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge” felt reflective of his childhood) to Merchant’s upbringing as a Muslim in Northern India, as well as a look into the rest of a production company “family” that included screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a German-born Jew reared in England (due to a guy named Hitler), and composer Richard Robbins, educated at the New England Conservatory. It was Jhabvala’s prize-winning book “Heat and Dust” that drew interest from Merchant and Ivory; when they chose to adapt, they educed a career shift for Jhabvala, collaborating on 16 films and winning Oscars for “Howard’s End” and “A Room with a View.” Troupe regulars Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave and Helena Bonham Carter are on hand to chime in, as are Hugh Grant, James Wilby and Rupert Graves, who starred together in “Maurice” (1987), a film Soucy and Ivory home in on specifically – not only because of its examination of a closeted gay couple during a time when being gay was a crime in Britain, but because of its powerful context at the time of its release when the AIDs crisis and Act Up were beginning to boil over. The access Soucy earns and Ivory’s frankness create an intimate portrait, including the willingness to concede that some of the team’s later films (“Jefferson in Paris” and “A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries” among them), while well funded, never registered the kind of critical success as the earlier films. Ivory’s only Oscar came as a writer in 2018 on “Call Me By Your Name.” Breathing in Soucy’s intoxicating love letter, you wish you could go back in time and be part of the Merchant-Ivory “family.” You will also want to go back and rewatch their classics, and perhaps even revisit some of those so-called miscues.

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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

8 Sep

Burton’s classic comedy and cast deserved new life, and here are the Deetz

It’s been more than 35 years since we heard Harry Belafonte belting out the “Banana Boat” song (day-o!) as Winona Ryder’s dour teen danced on air in the original “Beetlejuice.” The 1988 film, now followed by “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” cemented Tim Burton as a quirky voice to be reckoned with. Sure, he made “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” three years earlier, but “Beetlejuice” was the game changer that would give Burton the keys to the castle to make future passion projects “Edward Scissorhands” (1990) and “Ed Wood” (1994) and of course, the crown jewel, the original big-screen “Batman” (1989), bursting box-office records and making Burton look like a man who could do no cinematic wrong. (The Ill-conceived “Planet of the Apes” reboot would drop inertly nearly a decade later, and there was “Mars Attacks!”). 

Plus there was Michael Keaton, a guy who started out as a minor cast member on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” dropped into comedy series such as the envelope-pushing “Maude” and even had a short-lived slapstick endeavor called “Working Stiffs” opposite John Belushi in 1979. He bit into the gonzo, undead title role with such effusive vim and vigor that the performance and the film became instant classics, more than just a little left of center. I don’t think we realized it then, but we were getting a glimmer of one of the most under-the-radar talented actors of our time. The gear shift from comedic to stoic (“Beetlejuice” to “Batman”) showed a range that would morph and reform seamlessly over the years, be it the crime classics “Jackie Brown” (1997) and “Out of Sight” (1998), in which Keaton played the same Elmore Lenard-penned FBI agent for auteurs Tarantino and Soderbergh, or his Academy Award-nominated turn in “Birdman” (2014) for director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who won Best Director for his work with Keaton. In short, Keaton’s a director’s go-to third-down-back, a thespian safety valve who rarely errs. He’s done Bostonian as Globe editor Robby Robinson in “Spotlight” (2015), the Oscar winner about unearthing one of the city’s dark chapters. He’s even taken a few turns as a filmmaker, most recently the crime thriller “Knox Goes Away.” Did I mention his body of work isn’t well enough appreciated?

But enough with the accolades (all due and deserved) and history. Is “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” any good? It’s packed with nostalgia and some smart script rewirings. Ryder’s goth girl who could (and still can) see the dead, Lydia Deetz, is now a grown-up single mom who rakes in the big bucks with a paranormal TV show called “Ghost House.” Her daughter Astrid (Jenny Ortega, who rocks Burton’s Netflix Addams Family spinoff series, “Wednesday”) is off at a New England prep school and think mom’s a hoax. Catherine O’Hara’s back as Lydia’s stepmom, Delia, and still parading around with a vibrant shock of red hair. But her garish art has become a thing – a big thing, bringing in Banksy and Picasso dinero. 

Though life is relatively good for the Deetz women financially, Astrid’s father perished in a boating mishap while on a climate justice mission in Brazil and Lydia’s father, Charles, is also gone. Understandable: Actor Jeffrey Jones was convicted in 2003 for soliciting a minor to pose for lewd photos and is a registered sex offender. The film sidesteps the matter with a neat animation sequence and a shark.

His death is the reason for all to return to Winter River, Connecticut (shot in East Corinth, Vermont), where his funeral is to be held at his beloved country estate. In tow is Lydia’s TV producer and nasally love interest (Justin Theroux, replete with a cheesy short ponytail) hoping for the opportunity to spin the sojourn into a matrimony prospect as well. But it’s Astrid who sparks romantic tinder first, as she agrees to a Halloween-night date with a reclusive local boy (Arthur Conti of “House of the Dragon”). Without giving away too much, the date turns into the reason Beetlejuice is invoked and even mortals end up in the neon-green lit, checker-tiled, Dr. Caligari underworld – or its limbo waiting room, anyhow. 

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The Migrant Problem in MA and Those Taking Action to Help

30 Aug

ArCS connects asylum seekers with local hosts, helping ease an immigrant and homeless crisis

Somaya Ahmady was helped by the nonprofit ArCS Cluster in achieving her dream going to college in the United States. (Photo: Somaya Ahmady via LinkedIn)

State orders forcing migrant families to leave temporary overflow shelters – including one at the Registry of Deeds Building in East Cambridge – creates dire straits for people who fled hostile and dangerous environments in other countries, many of whom do not speak English well or at all.

As the administration of Gov. Maura Healey scrambles to manage the surge, individuals and volunteer organizations have stepped in help.

One such organization is the ArCS Cluster, which seeks to help Massachusetts meet its obligations as a “right to shelter” state. Founded eight years ago in response to the Syrian civil war by Eric Segal, a retired software professional in Arlington, the organization focuses on pairing asylum seekers with hosts in Arlington, Cambridge and Somerville.

The prospect of hosting a family that likely does not include English speakers and has a multitude of needs might seem overwhelming, especially given the confines of city spaces, but ArCS hosts say they are glad to participate.

Meredith Jones, of Somerville’s Magoun Square, a social worker at an area high school and mother of 5-year-old twins, described the process of helping a young woman escaping domestic violence in a South American country as “an extreme privilege.” The anticipation when picking up her guest from the airport was exciting, she said, “almost like having my twins.”

Shana Berger, a single mother who teaches English at Bunker Hill Community College and lives in Union Square, is hosting a Haitian family. She was paired with her family through the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network and Brazilian Workers’ Center. “We have the space, and it’s the right thing to do to help those who have nowhere else to go and those who have been failed by the system,” Berger said.

State of the shelters

Our state was the first – and is still the only – with a “right to shelter law” (New York City has a similar law, but not the state). The law, enacted in 1983, applies to pregnant women and families with children. It makes Massachusetts an appealing destination for those seeking asylum, and a prime political target; the rise in migrants entering Massachusetts is due to unrest in South American and Caribbean countries and the war in Ukraine, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, as well as a political tactics by mostly politically conservative Southern and Southwestern red states to offload their own asylum seekers.

By October nearly 7,000 families were in emergency shelter, costing the state almost $45 million a month, according to the Boston University School of Law’s Juliana Hubbard.

The formal state emergency assistance system has some 7,500 families, of which 3,700 entered as migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. The four overflow shelter sites in Cambridge, Norfolk, Lexington and Chelsea – a $125 million expense over the more than $1 billion the state spends in a fiscal year to shelter people – have been filled with families waiting to get into that shelter system, which Healy recently capped at its current number, City Manager Yi-An Huang told Cambridge’s City Council on Aug. 5. Cambridge’s registry building had around 80 families, and all are expected to be removed from the shelter by the end of the month as policies toughen.

Now called temporary respite centers, the shelters will house families and offer case management for only five to 30 days – and accepting that shelter means being barred for six months from entering a pool for longer-term help and access to up to $30,000 in aid, said Phoebe West, of Cambridge’s Office of the Housing Liaison. (The other option is “reticketing,” which will help get homeless families somewhere else that they believe they will have housing.)

“The challenge is, then, where are families going to go?” Huang said. “We’ll end up with families and children on the streets, and that is something that I know that the administration is really seeking to avoid.”

“If there are people in our community who want to help,” Huang said, they need information on “what they may be able to do.”

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Reviewed: ‘Strange Darling’ and ‘Jackpot!’ in theaters and streaming

24 Aug

‘Strange Darling’ (2023)

Where “MaXXXine” and “Longlegs” stoked serial-killer fandom, looking to reinvent the genre but falling short, TJ Mollner’s “Strange Darling” gets the job done. Set in the Pacific Northwest, with a neat, retro ’70s vibe (though the action happens in the now) we’re told in the preamble that a killer’s been working the area. Just how many have fallen victim isn’t offered, just that the killer’s been at it for a while. Cut to a bloodied young woman in red scrubs running in slo-mo, fear in her eyes, mouth agape – a shot that would make Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven proud. This perpetual-panic chiller (with a script also by Mollner) is told in six nonlinear chapters. We begin with “Chapter 3” in which the young blonde in the scrubs (Willa Fitzgerald, “The Fall of the House of Usher”), tagged in the credits as The Lady, zips down a road in a vintage 1978 red Pinto hatchback chased by a determined ruffian in a pickup (Kyle Gallner), who’s listed as The Demon. Given the labels and the setup, you think you know what’s going on, but Mollner is brilliant at obfuscating and sliding puzzle pieces in and out, altering our sense of reality as we move back and forth in time without any sense of being untethered. “Chapter 1,” essential to be sure, is the least fulfilling and the one that goes on too long when it could have been tightened into a bloody fist like the rest. The deep performances by Gallner and Fitzgerald go far to sell Mollner’s prism-shifting narrative; if not for them this might have gone over the bait-and-switch edge. Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey check in with fantastic turns as eccentric doomsday hippies living off the grid. As for carnage, blood flows regularly and freely, and in creative new ways, with some “Saw”-like scenarios and risqué sex games tossed in for good measure. The real mind blow, and main reason for the film’s success, are the gorgeous blue-and-red filtrations laid down on celluloid by first-time feature film cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi – yup, that actor guy (he’s made Beck videos in the past and has a small part in the film too); the opening credits tell us emphatically that the film is shot on 35 mm. Every frame in every scene is lit meticulously and feels noodled over arduously in staging and composition. Somewhere in L.A., one can imagine old-school cinematography aficionado Quinten Tarantino pumping his fist in the air. If horror was a poker game, Mollner just laid down down a full house. Ti West, what’s your call?

‘Jackpot!’ (2024)

Perhaps the most repetitive and boo-rific tedium of this sad summer fare so far. I’ve been leveling low on many as of late – “The Instigators” and “Borderlands” to name two – but this one takes the mealy sawdust cake. Directed by Paul Feig, who showed his mastery of macabre comedy with “A Simple Favor” (2018), the action drops us into L.A. circa 2030 where, due to an economic downturn, there’s a 24-hour period in which the winner of the statewide lottery can be hunted after they’re announced, with the killer getting the winnings. You can’t use a gun or explosive devices, but knives, axes, sledgehammers and whatnot are acceptable and encouraged. It’s “The Purge” (2013) gone Daffy Duck on helium. Given the casting of Awkwafina and local buff body John Cena as Katie Kim, a failed actress who accidentally wins the lottery and Noel, a security expert who jumps into the fray to save Katie, it’s a wasteful misfire. Sure, novel for a second, but imagine being forced to rinse your mouth with Listerine for two hours, you’d be numb and angry – and perhaps more so here because Awkwafina (“Crazy Rich Asians”) and Cena (“Peacemaker”) have shown such ripe comedic skills in the past and are rendered relatively inert here. The “cheeky” outtakes at the end are a buzzing bowl full of unfunny scat humor that reeks. There’s nothing in this film that punches any ticket – not even a scratcher – and everybody loses.

Reviewed: ‘Alien: Romulus’ and ‘Borderlands’ in theaters

17 Aug

‘Alien: Romulus’ (2024)

If you can’t get Ripley, go for Rain, or so that’s how this “interquel” between “Alien”  (1979) and “Aliens” (1986) rolls. In theory, Ripley is in a cryogenic sleep in a space pod elsewhere as this bombastic stand-alone episode unfolds on a grungy remote mining planet where Rain (Cailee Spaeny, “Priscilla,” “Civil War”) is indentured to labor 12,000 hours before she and her brother Andy (David Jonsson) can leave. Most who stay die from lung cancer – you’d think they’d have masks and clean-air breathing apparatuses circa 2130, but no, it’s like West Virginia 1956, canary in a cage and all. Andy is Black (Rain is white) and a synthetic (or droid) like Ash and Bishop in the ’79 and ’86 films respectively. This is no spoiler, as he oozes white goo after being harassed and beaten by a mob of ruffians early on because of his mild, quirky demeanor and penchant to spout corny dad jokes (“What did the claustrophobic astronaut want? More space”). Andy served as family companion to Rain as she grew up and her parents died from the ills of the planet, thus that “brother” tag. We catch up with Rain just after she has notched her hour quota, but when she goes to pick up her off-world pass, she’s informed that the corporation running the show (Weyland, so prevalent in “Prometheus” and perhaps an intergalactic rival to Atlas in “Borderlands”) has doubled the ante; she’s got another five years to go. Syncing up with her posse of hipster hackers (an uber generic lot who, like Rain, rage against the machine) they discover a dormant space station is drifting by the plant and hatch the idea to take a mining shuttle up to the structure, fire it up, slip into cryogenic pods and jet off to somewhere with clean air and fresh water. What begins as a pipe dream quickly becomes a nightmare when the adrift Romulus turns out to be a hive of the jaws-within-jaws xenomorphs that so voraciously ate their fill of other all-too curious humans in other “Alien” deep-space chillers. “Alien” director Ridley Scott must have green-lit the full-on cut-and-paste pastiche on display here, as he serves as a producer on the film directed by Fede Alvarez (“The Girl in the Spider’s Web”). There are whole scenes and lines from the films it spans incorporated to stoke franchise fans’ glee in knowing “in space, no can hear you scream,” but the execution’s shoddy, not the least bit nuanced (or nostalgic), and mostly falls flat. The nifty special FX and the Imax-Dolby surround sound (which is how I saw it, and suggest as the way to go, if you go) elevates the grinding bang of cargo ships belly-to-belly to a near Disney-ride experience. That said, much of the action is muddled and, as far as character development goes, Rain’s synth sibling probably has the deepest backstory of all … and it’s on a programmed chip that can be slipped in and out of a slot behind his ear. Speaking of synths, AI is used to bring back the likeness of Ash – or an android like Ash. The actor Ian Holm died in 2020, so the result is creepy but cool if ultimately just another reheated “Alien” ort. Of future events, one can only imagine the additional rage Ripley spouts when she awakes in another 30 years (“What, you made a Ripley movie without me? Get my agent on the line!”). Then again, one could see Ripley and Rain teaming up and going all “Thelma & Louise” (1991, another Scott film) on the Weyland Corp. honchos and studio execs, let along the duplicitous droids and skittering xenomorphs in their way.

‘Borderlands’ (2023)

This lackluster sci-fi adventure based on the hit video game gets an extra half-star just for its fine cinematic framing of Cate Blanchett’s alluring cheekbones. You could see “Borderlands” as a project with possibility, helmed by Eli Roth as a maestro of mostly lo-fi shock fare (“Cabin Fever,” “Hostel” and “The Green Inferno”) and featuring poker-hot thespians Blanchett (“Blue Jasmine,” “Tár”) and Jamie Lee Curtis (“True Lies,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once”) with Kevin Hart as the X-factor. Unfortunately, it never clicks, and the troubled production was allegedly taken away from Roth and reshot by “Deadpool” (2016) director Tim Miller too late for a script that’s a pileup of tired lines such as “I’m too old for this shit.” Blanchett is Lilith, an intergalactic bounty hunter impossible to miss with her cool, punky pink shock of hair and tasked with reluctantly retrieving the wayward daughter (Ariana Greenblatt) of universe-spanning Atlas Corp.’s swaggering CEO (Edgar Ramírez, putting some buzz in his Jeff Bezos bit) from a rust-bucket planet named Pandora. As the storyline has it, the youth is a divine being and third key to opening something known as “the Vault” on the far-flung planet where Lilith was born. “The Fifth Element” (1997) this is not, and loose (and lame) pokes at “Star Wars” are seated here and there (Hart’s soldier in a Vader-esque mask jokes that it’s hard to breathe in) with Lilith as a Han Solo stand-in. The concept of “the Vault” as an endgame likely makes more sense in online play; here, it’s a dull, uninspired MacGuffin. Giving chase to Lilith and her posse, soon including the sassy adolescent Greenblatt tossing exploding teddy bears at friends and foes with snarky glee, are Hart’s buttoned-up soldier and Curtis’ archaeologist, Atlas security forces riding hoverboards and a blood-lusting tribe of the wasteland so originally branded as “the psychopaths” who clearly have taken their hockey mask and half-naked fashion cues from Lord Humongous and Jason Voorhees. Hart, who has motormouth comedic skills to rival Chris Tucker in “The Fifth Element,” is uncharacteristically mute here; it’s Jack Black voicing beat-up ’bot Claptrap that notches the film’s few genuine laughs. To give you an example of just how little faith the studio had in releasing the film, it was already shot and sitting in the studio vault before Blanchett delivered her knockout performance in “Tár” in 2022. Its resurrection and theatrical run, adding to this summer’s dismal screening season, is further evidence of the downstream ills of the writers’ strike.

The Instigators

10 Aug

A Boston movie misdemeanor, speeding onto streaming despite Damon, Affleck

To be clear, “The Instigators” is a bona fide Boston crime movie (are there other kinds of Boston movies?). That doesn’t mean it’s in the conversation with “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” (1973), the best Boston movie ever, “Mystic River” (2003) or even “The Departed” (2006), but it does have more local accent and identifiable scenery than either of those latter two. Then again, so did the 2020 flops “Ava” and “Spenser Confidential” – the only reason to see those was to drink in their fond framing of our fair city; any other postal code and you’d be certain to spin the dial. Both came out during the Covid lockdown, when theaters were closed and films were going direct to streaming, but given the quality (despite A-lister casts with the likes of Jessica Chastain, Mark Wahlberg, John Malkovich and Colin Farrell) they’d be heading to streaming today too. “The Instigators” is partially in their company, as it got just a limited theatrical release last week (at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Boston’s Seaport) and drops on Apple TV+ Friday. It’s a much better film than “Spenser Confidential” or “Ava,” and does a decent job of leveraging Boston culchah and history rather than just using the city (and its filmmaking tax breaks) as a backdrop. But overall “The Instigators” is a missed opportunity considering its incredible cast, headlined by homeboys Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, who return home regularly to make Boston movies since their first pairing, “Good Will Hunting” (1997), which notched both actors’ big breakout.

The story, written by Affleck and Quincy-born scribe Chuck MacLean, the guy behind the Boston-set Kevin Bacon crime series “City on a Hill,” revolves around Damon’s Rory, an ex-Marine depressed over the $32,480 in child support he needs to come up with to see his kid again. To deal with his downcast condition he sees a therapist (Hong Chau, who paired with Damon in Alexander Payne’s 2017 Lilliputian satire, “Downsizing”) and teams up with Affleck’s boozy Cobby, fresh out of the slammer, to do a job for small-time mobster Mr. Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his partner, Richie Dechico (Alfred Molina), who operate out of a North End pastry shop. The gig is to raid the election headquarters of incumbent Mayor Mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman), who is expected to win reelection in a landslide. The thought is that the cash vault at the victory fete will be brimming and all the celebratory attendees pickled. Walk in, walk out, simple, but the reality is not so.

First, Cobby and Rory get teamed up with a bungling petty hood named Scalvo (rapper Jack Harlow, who starred in the bland “White Men Can’t Jump” remake), who for some reason is given point; then, when in, there’s no cash in the vault because it got so full that there were earlier armored car pickups. Add to that the materializing realization that the election is no landslide, but a runoff dogfight in which upstart progressive Mark Choi (Ronnie Cho) may have done just enough last-second politicking to trigger a regime change. No matter who takes the reins, city hall has never seen a mayor like either of these two, and the lovely brutalist facade down in Government Center that we all have come to love and hate gets plenty of screen time as the meandering plot turns it into a “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969) shootout scene late in the game. 

For those who wax romantically about our town’s old-school legacy, there’s plenty of dive bar love and Bahston Easter eggs. “Badass” Quincy (who knew?) gets a gritty new recasting. It’s a cheeky and warmly nostalgic cinematic sojourn for us locals; it’s hard to see how that works for anyone not in the know.

The film’s helmed by Doug Liman, who made made a name for himself early with the indelible “Swingers” (1996) and “Go” (1999) before teaming with Damon in 2002 for the “The Bourne Identity.” His efforts alongside Tom Cruise for the sci-fi thriller “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014) and underappreciated “American Made” (2017) were equally as solid, but then there was the flat-footed “Jumper” (2008) and this year’s unnecessary “Road House” remake with Jake Gyllenhaal. With a middling title, “Instigators” feels like a concept in search of a story.

Besides “Good Will Hunting,” Damon and Affleck (brother Ben serves as a produsah) have emitted cinematic synergy in the Steven Soderbergh “Ocean’s” flicks as well as reteaming with “Good Will” director Gus van Sant in 2002’s “Gerry,” a dark existential tale based on a real-life Boston Globe intern lost in the New Mexico desert (part of Van Sant’s provocative realism films that include “To Die For,” “Paranoid Park” and “Elephant” – all great). Unfortunately, here they bounce off each other more than they play off each other. That said, the car chase scenes are top dollar – or at least the one in which Cobby and Rory take Chau’s psychiatrist hostage (she jumps in the car willing). The route takes them to some unlikely side venues, including the public alleyway parallel to Newbury Street and the Esplanade and tops the chase sequence in brother Ben’s “The Town” (2010).

Sadly, that’s as good as the film gets; the more it spins and recycles, the more it loses its mojo – and us. Toby Jones, Ving Rhames and Paul Walter Hauser (“Richard Jewell”) round out the veteran ensemble and the use of Petula Clark’s “Downtown” and Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air” help, but … 

For the record, as far as Boston locale authenticity and verisimilitude go, the original “Thomas Crown Affair” (1968) with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway still soars above the rest.

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Trap

10 Aug

Hard to enjoy this concert when the FBI is closing in

The latest from M. Night Shyamalan, whose plot twist sleight-of-hand shenanigans captivated audiences early (“The Sixth Sense” and “The Village”) but faltered over the years (“The Happening” and “Lady in the Water”), is in line with his more recent fare “Old” (2021) and “Knock at the Cabin” (2023) – serviceable suspense despite ridiculous carrying-ons. The set-up’s fairly simple: A serial killer by the name of The Butcher, whose kill spree is at an even dozen, is purportedly at a pop diva’s concert, which the FBI and local police have targeted as the venue to apprehend Philadelphia’s most wanted. The task isn’t a simple grab-and-nab, as the authorities don’t know what The Butcher looks like, just that he has a tattoo of a bunny on his wrist and likely drives a dark-colored sedan. The latter is a deduction made by the veteran profiler on the case, Josephine Grant, played by ’60s icon Hayley Mills in a cheeky bit of casting – as she starred in “The Parent Trap” (1961). Grant believes the OCD nature of the crime scenes suggests The Butcher wouldn’t drive an ostentatious vehicle of light color, because dust and dirt would show too much. Given his moniker, though, it’s hard to imagine such exact order at the killing sites.

Attending the concert is Philly firefighter Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett) and his teen daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue), a ravenous fan of Lady Raven (played by Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka) who’s of the same pop queen royalty as Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. Dad’s not too hip and has to get explanations of the happening lingo of the moment – “crispy” and “jelly,” to name two – which wasn’t too far off from me getting a recent lecture on “rizz” from my teenage daughter, whom I similarly took to a Katy Perry show. It’s not too far into the show when dad, sussing out all the extra security precautions, starts to get antsy, and it’s not because he’s the only dorky dude towering above a sea of shrieking teens, but the killer himself. Early on, in one trip to the restroom, Cooper pulls up video footage of a panicked young man imprisoned in a basement. The film could have easily been titled “Serial Dad.”

The cat-and-mouse ferreting works pretty well for a while, and the concert orchestration is pretty dope. Saleka, who’s had small parts in her dad’s films before, wrote and performs all the songs with convincingly Swiftian appeal and nearly steals the film. Hartnett’s fine as the dad-joke pop with a sinister side, and hauntingly reminiscent of Robert Urich playing a firefighter in the film “Turk 182” (1985); Donoghue’s career, as evidenced here, should continue to rise. That said, there’s a dramatic shift in the film and locale about two-thirds in where the wheels of plausibility start to come off the bus. That’s frustrating, because until then “Trap” manages to hold your attention while you grit your teeth. Like the recently released “The Instigators,” the film could have used a better title and a less ludicrous wrap-up, though the last sequence almost does enough to redeem.

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Short Takes:  ‘Queendom’ and ‘Knox Goes Away’ 

2 Aug

‘Queendom’ (2023)

“And yet, she persisted” would also have made an apt title for Agniia Galdanova’s gripping and pointedly political documentary about 21-year-old Russian drag performance artist Gena Marvin (birth named Gennadiy Chebotarev), who, alienated, ostracized and worse, never surrenders their identity, and in the process, takes on the draconian social politics of the Putin regime as well as the war in Ukraine. Gena, a striking, lithe figure evocative of Tilda Swinton in “Orlando” (1992) or Bowie as Ziggy or in “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976) mode, was born in the far eastern town of Magadan, a place that in lens feels like it would make a good hellish gulag of a work camp in a different movie. For the most, Gena and their art are not well received in the remote town, and when taking to the streets they are often harassed and even assailed. In one scene when strolling a supermarket aisle, pasty white, bald and towering over other shoppers in a fur coat and a loose-fitting bustier (just coming from a shoot to get some essentials), they are asked by security to leave the store and not return. Raised by their grandparents, Gena is often at odds with them – the identity thing, but also money. There’s genuine care and affection in the homestead, but the grandfather, trying hard, is unable to accept his grandchild’s feminine persona and wants to know how they can subsist  on TikTok likes (I did too, something that “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” another recent portrait of Russian artists, never fully plumbed). Identifying as nonbinary and still figuring it out, Gena heads to Moscow for college, where they don’t quite fit in. Meanwhile, during protests against the war and demanding freedom for Putin opponent Alexei Navalny, they take to the street, gliding through the unrest in stark, alluring costumes; like when Bowie made his way to the stage, everything seems to stop and focus on them – the stark difference being the pervasive air of hostility versus Bowie’s adoring sea of fans. While Gena doesn’t launch into particularly political diatribes onscreen, their art is inherently so, especially in light of Putin’s increasing crackdown on trans-queer culture. The access that Galdanova and camera operator Ruslan Fedotov have is immersive, intimate and in the moment. The scenes of performance art executed on the shore of a raging sea or in a muddy quarry pit are breathtaking in composition and framing, and made all the more alluring by Gena’s keen sense of presentation and otherworldly personas.

‘Knox Goes Away’ (2023)

John Knox (Michael Keaton) has a lot on his mind, or so he tries to keep it that way despite recent tests that indicate the onset of dementia. Not a good thing for a contract killer, but Knox is not your ordinary hand of riddance, no, he’s got two doctorates and is super methodical and thorough in his work. He’s never been nabbed; he did do a stint in the slammer, but that was more the way they got Al Capone, a subplot that folds back into the final reckoning. For Knox, waning cognition turns out to be a liability when on a job. He loses track of where he is and who he’s there to shoot. At the core is a botched hit, an ongoing investigation (Suzy Nakamura, scene-grabbing as the lead investigator) and things get get amped up when Knox’s estranged son Miles (James Marsden) shows up one night seeking professional help. To say more about the pieces and how they click and don’t click together would do a disservice to this thinking-person’s thriller helmed by Keaton (his second feature) doing double duty. As the addled, once razor-sharp lead, the versatile Keaton – who’s been Batman; Birdman (in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2014 Best Picture winner); Elmore Leonard-written detective Ray Nicolette in films by Quentin Tarantino and Steve Soderbergh; and Beetlejuice (a sequel on the way this year) – does a fantastic job of conveying a failing mind, the cold facade of a calculated killer and the jittery bridge in between. The robust cast includes Marcia Gay Harden as Knox’s ex, Al Pacino as his criminal handler, Ray McKinnon of “Deadwood” as Knox’s sometime partner and Joanna Kulig, so amazing in 2018’s “Cold War” as Knox’s Thursday afternoon lover. The Miles subplot is a little overbaked, as is Marsden’s performance, but overall Keaton and his immersion into a character in transition drive the film confidently.

Deadpool & Wolverine

27 Jul

Mouth meets multiverse in a super sequel, this time inducing some yawns

Bigger isn’t always better. The initial “Deadpool” (2016) entry was crass, curt and ingeniously fresh in its fourth-wall-breaking delivery and dark humor. Ryan Reynolds was a revelation as the potty-mouthed superhero who can’t die, and the plucky gut punch sparked a possible resurrection of an increasingly dull and dying genre. “Deadpool 2” (2018) came out with the same kick and verve, but the trick was starting to thin as the plots thickened – and now, with “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the “more” is too much when the charms of yesteryear (nearly 10 years ago) largely float around like the remains of a bad, high-fiber meal left unflushed.

How did we get here? Let’s keep in mind that “Deadpool” was a Marvel outlier owned by 20th Century Fox while Disney held most of the rest of the Marvel Universe in its IP vault. Now that Disney has gobbled up Fox, it’s an all-for-one cross-breeding box office grab. Match ’em up, shift ’em around and listen to that cash register go ka-ching.  This is not the first time Deadpool and Wolverine have crossed cinematic paths: Deadpool made an appearance in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (2009), back before the mega merge. Now coveted eggs nestled under the same corporate structure, they team up – kinda – though oddly there’s no “Hey, remember back when” immortal bro moment.

What we get is Deadpool’s unmasked, badly disfigured street person, Wade Wilson, stashing away his cool red costume and ninja swords for a stapled-on toupee and a job as a car seller. He’s just been rejected by the Avengers as a team member and his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) has moved on too.  The removal of the mask mutes the rapid, rapier wit that usually spew from Deadpool’s mouth – that is, until he’s abducted through a time portal by an agency know as the Time Variance Authority, run by a smug, Trumpian suit named Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen of “Succession,” having hammy good fun with the part). The long and short is that the universe Wade is from is due to die unless an “anchor being” – an entity critical to a universe’s existence, in this case, the Wolverine – is restored. As you recall, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine took an honorable exit in “Logan” (2017), but since this is another multiverse of nonsense, anything is possible, including the impossible. “Fox killed him. Disney brought him back. They’ll make him do this until he’s 90,” Deadpool says in one of his many studio-merger-skewering lines, though few, if any, are really funny. There’s even a joke about how the multiverse had been overdone and overused, and yet the story chooses to chew the fat it just urinated on.

When the two immortals first re-meet, it’s as adversaries. They fight, arms are broken, torsos are skewered and blood spurts – it’s Bugs Bunny violence gone guts-and-gore graphic. It’s fun to watch for a second, but to what point? The pair wind up in a wasteland called “The Void” in which they encounter Charles Xavier’s evil twin sister, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin, the young Di in “The Crown”) a supreme being who lords over the dregs of superheroes from long-past Marvel franchises you forgot about and a few you never heard of. To give away further details would ruin the fun of the cameos that are one of the few bright spots of the movie, but I can say that Patrick Stewart does not come walking through the door, or even a time portal. 

As plotless as the film is – its’s a series of not-so-meta inside jokes that occasionally land – I have to give it to Disney for taking off the family-values harness.  “I’m going to show you something huge,” someone tells Deadpool, who retorts: “That’s what scoutmaster Kevin used to say.” At the beginning showdown with a legion of TVA henchmen, he says in an aside to the audience, “Get out your special sock.” There’s definitely some short, sharp jabs of dark, sophomoric wit that hit. Part of that’s credited to the return of writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, but their usual tightness gets sapped by including that everything-bagel multiverse and a host of others jumping into the scripting mix, including Reynolds and director Shawn Levy, who seems to be Reynolds go-to guy after pairing on “The Adam Project” (2022) and the Boston-set comedy “Free Guy” (2021).

Other wins are Rob Delaney, as Wade’s best friend and fellow car seller who has certain pull in other universes, and the series’ brilliant casting of Leslie Uggams as Wade’s cocaine-craving roommate, Blind Al. The two rob the few scenes they are in. As the titled leads, Reynolds and Jackman (and he is super jacked) give you what you’d expect: snarky sass, gruff growls and macho-manly bonding just in time to save the world. But all the reality- and alternate-reality rejiggering takes away from anything anyone can bite into, because the reality presented in frame can be rewritten ad infinitum without consequence. The dead and destroyed can come back just as easily as Deadpool and birthday candles. Where’s the emotional stock in that? In genre alone, we’re already dealing with a level of removed disbelief; now we just toss a handful of disparate this-and-that into a blender and take whatever the purée, chop or mince cycle gives us? To infinity and blah!

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