rating: ***
the story: Vicious thugs end up getting their comeuppance.
review: If it weren't for the performance of Robert Taylor as the sheriff whose son-in-law goes on a revenge rampage, I wouldn't be talking about Into the Ashes. I watched the movie at all because it was another of James Badge Dale's string of minor 2019 releases, the best being Standoff at Sparrow Creek and Donnybrook, which like the latter also costars Frank Grillo. Grillo has been a fascinating career to follow recently, too, and he gives a different kind of performance, in the same basic role, than he does in Donnybrook. (A far cry from my first distinct memory of him, in Warrior, where I assumed he was a real-life MMA fighter cast to give authenticity to training sequences.)
Dale, meanwhile, has such a minor role in this one that he doesn't spend too much time creating a distinct character, which is the opposite of what he did for Donnybrook.
But as I said, I'm talking about Into the Ashes at all because of Robert Taylor. I know, who? There's an earlier Robert Taylor, but this one is the guy who starred in the latter-day western TV series Longmire. Late in the movie he settles into a low drawl that totally transforms the performance, and becomes the best reason to watch, and talk about, the movie.
Because suddenly you're watching the western Harrison Ford never quite made. Ford did make a kind of western, Cowboys & Aliens, but even as it was being billed as "Indiana Jones Meets James Bond," the movie was much more centered on Daniel Craig than Ford's grizzled rancher. The Harrison Ford being channeled in Into the Ashes actually comes circa Blade Runner 2049, one of the many times in recent years Ford has revisited an iconic role. As in Cowboys & Aliens, Ford's work in Blade Runner 2049 is a relatively minor one, all considered, but in it he seems at last totally comfortable as an older person. If he'd made a western (I suppose he still could), it would be Into the Ashes, exactly as Taylor does it.
And Taylor looks like Ford (except, maybe, the hair, but why quibble?), and I can't help but wonder if that was all completely deliberate. Before I got swept up in the idea, I even thought the filmmakers were deliberately looking for a bargain basement Ford, but Taylor is a relatively known commodity. I have no idea if he did the same sort of channeling in Longmire, never seen it and probably never will. But by the time we're following Taylor's sheriff basically more than anything else (sort of making the movie in the same spirit as No Country for Old Men or Hell or High Water, with Tommy Lee Jones and Jeff Bridges, respectively, in similar roles, but here perhaps at its best, even if the other elements aren't), it no longer really matters. Taylor is fulfilling what Ford had done, but would probably never do this way.
And maybe doesn't have to, really, now that Taylor has.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Mary Magdalene (2019)
rating: ****
the story: Mary decides to follow Jesus Christ, but finds Peter about as accepting as her brother had been.
review: With Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix leading the cast, it's safe to say Mary Magdalene isn't necessarily the kind of movie that will appeal only to Christian audiences (plenty of uninspired filmmaking does exactly that, though). Mara is the eponymous Mara, Phoenix is Jesus. The fact that it isn't entirely beholden to the religious viewer doesn't mean Mary Magdalene is akin to The Last Temptation or Jesus Christ Superstar. It's a serious approach that wishes to explain the material at face value, not wildly reinterpret it.
Mary as the central subject is a way to explore not only how the ministry of Jesus would've looked, but the world around it, and even Jesus himself. I don't think any of it radically departs from the Gospels, but there's also room for an interesting idea or two.
The most interesting one, perhaps, is exploring the character of Judas Iscariot (a brilliant Tahar Rahim), the apostle who would later betray Jesus. Here he's depicted as a true believer, but motivated, it seems, in the hope that Jesus will resurrect his dead family. Conversely, Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor in his best role since 12 Years a Slave) is presented perhaps for the first time as the grumpy figure he always was, without the focus on his ultimate redemption, just how he would've come across before it.
Mara has been a fascinating chameleon at least since her breakthrough role as Lisbeth Salander in the Hollywood version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the performance, and the movie itself, still criminally underrated). She tends to inhabit low-key individuals in trying situations, and is always compelling to watch. Her Mary has an older brother who's scandalized that their father has been indulging her, letting her remain unmarried and living at home well past the traditional norms. If there's something of the modern feminist in the conception of Mary in the film, it becomes less about that and more the liberating idea of finding freedom in budding Christianity, an idea that seems completely outrageous today.
Jesus in the movie becomes drained of energy in vast crowds, especially when dispensing miracles. I don't know if the idea is unique to this movie, but it's perhaps the most humanizing thing it does with someone who has sometimes seemed difficult to conceptualize on a human scale (although many have argued that he was just human, even those who believed in him). His disgust at the tenders of sacrificial lambs at the temple is one of the most electrifying sequences in a movie about Jesus ever filmed, finding new context in one of the familiar scenes of his life. In this version, the disgust is more about the awareness of his impending sacrifice (the whole entrance to Jerusalem is fraught with destiny) than profaning God's home with mere financial matters.
Anyway, we also get a scene or two in a synagogue, which surprisingly is something that's never really been emphasized in a story about Jesus. When you remember that Jesus was Jewish, and that he was known to preach in synagogues, it seems all the more surprising, but then so few attempts have been made to stray, in good faith, from the traditional narratives. It's actually Mary attending services, by the way.
I don't know if watching a film like this will affect someone's perspective on matters of faith, but it feels like something that has genuine insight, and on that level alone can be recommended. But it's also good filmmaking and worthwhile viewing for fans of Mara, Phoenix, and Ejiofor.
the story: Mary decides to follow Jesus Christ, but finds Peter about as accepting as her brother had been.
review: With Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix leading the cast, it's safe to say Mary Magdalene isn't necessarily the kind of movie that will appeal only to Christian audiences (plenty of uninspired filmmaking does exactly that, though). Mara is the eponymous Mara, Phoenix is Jesus. The fact that it isn't entirely beholden to the religious viewer doesn't mean Mary Magdalene is akin to The Last Temptation or Jesus Christ Superstar. It's a serious approach that wishes to explain the material at face value, not wildly reinterpret it.
Mary as the central subject is a way to explore not only how the ministry of Jesus would've looked, but the world around it, and even Jesus himself. I don't think any of it radically departs from the Gospels, but there's also room for an interesting idea or two.
The most interesting one, perhaps, is exploring the character of Judas Iscariot (a brilliant Tahar Rahim), the apostle who would later betray Jesus. Here he's depicted as a true believer, but motivated, it seems, in the hope that Jesus will resurrect his dead family. Conversely, Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor in his best role since 12 Years a Slave) is presented perhaps for the first time as the grumpy figure he always was, without the focus on his ultimate redemption, just how he would've come across before it.
Mara has been a fascinating chameleon at least since her breakthrough role as Lisbeth Salander in the Hollywood version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the performance, and the movie itself, still criminally underrated). She tends to inhabit low-key individuals in trying situations, and is always compelling to watch. Her Mary has an older brother who's scandalized that their father has been indulging her, letting her remain unmarried and living at home well past the traditional norms. If there's something of the modern feminist in the conception of Mary in the film, it becomes less about that and more the liberating idea of finding freedom in budding Christianity, an idea that seems completely outrageous today.
Jesus in the movie becomes drained of energy in vast crowds, especially when dispensing miracles. I don't know if the idea is unique to this movie, but it's perhaps the most humanizing thing it does with someone who has sometimes seemed difficult to conceptualize on a human scale (although many have argued that he was just human, even those who believed in him). His disgust at the tenders of sacrificial lambs at the temple is one of the most electrifying sequences in a movie about Jesus ever filmed, finding new context in one of the familiar scenes of his life. In this version, the disgust is more about the awareness of his impending sacrifice (the whole entrance to Jerusalem is fraught with destiny) than profaning God's home with mere financial matters.
Anyway, we also get a scene or two in a synagogue, which surprisingly is something that's never really been emphasized in a story about Jesus. When you remember that Jesus was Jewish, and that he was known to preach in synagogues, it seems all the more surprising, but then so few attempts have been made to stray, in good faith, from the traditional narratives. It's actually Mary attending services, by the way.
I don't know if watching a film like this will affect someone's perspective on matters of faith, but it feels like something that has genuine insight, and on that level alone can be recommended. But it's also good filmmaking and worthwhile viewing for fans of Mara, Phoenix, and Ejiofor.
Saturday, September 21, 2019
Men in Black: International (2019)
rating: ****
the story: A new MiB recruit quickly discovers another giant intergalactic crisis.
review: So, here's the thing: Men in Black (1997) is probably a classic on par with Ghostbusters (1984), but it's somewhat hard to view it as such because Will Smith was just getting started on a decade-long run as one of the most reliable box office attractions of that period, making it difficult to distinguish whether Men in Black was its own entity or, ultimately, just another Will Smith smash hit. Regardless of whether or not you enjoy Smith two subsequent appearances in the series, this fourth entry then becomes: Does the concept work without him?
I think it does. Then, I generally like the whole series. The storytelling has changed over time, notably the attempt to pivot almost entirely to Smith in the third one, at a time when his appeal was actually waning, and his performances were shifting away from the kind he was giving in the first one, which actually served to put more focus on the MiB universe itself, its vision of aliens run amok in all manner of guises. MiB: International, at the very least, adds to the memorable menagerie with the sidekick Pawny and the Beard Alien. The Beard Alien is just awesome.
Notably, the stars of the movie, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, are actually reprising an act from Thor: Ragnarok. Thompson is the lead character here, inhabiting the Will Smith initiate role from the first movie, which a more developed backstory and a more deliberate arc. Any concerns that the hard focus on her being a woman playing too much into current trends might be redirected to how Smith was presented, including the memorable gag of the decoy white driver. Which is to say, even that is entirely in-character for the series.
Hemsworth, meanwhile, gets to do what Smith never did, which is to make being an agent seem like a casual thing. Clearly Smith's J was always supposed to turn out to be a rogue figure, but he was mostly presented as such in relation to Tommy Lee Jones' K. I like that Hemsworth and Thompson actually reveal their real names to each other, further distinguishing the two versions of the series, where even though we learn J and K's names, those initials will always be how they're remembered. If this is the only time we experience Hemsworth and Thompson in the series (though it would be interesting to Fast & Furious the series), then at least they leave a mark.
The mole trope seems fairly obvious from the moment Liam Neeson appears. He plays his part obviously from the start, but he's here for a supporting role. Emma Thompson provides one of several pieces of linking material within the series (in hindsight it was a good thing Rip Torn was killed off last movie, since by this one he was, sadly, dead in real life). Rebecca Ferguson appears as the somewhat requisite femme fatale.
Bottom line: International proves the series isn't entirely about Will Smith. That's a good thing.
the story: A new MiB recruit quickly discovers another giant intergalactic crisis.
review: So, here's the thing: Men in Black (1997) is probably a classic on par with Ghostbusters (1984), but it's somewhat hard to view it as such because Will Smith was just getting started on a decade-long run as one of the most reliable box office attractions of that period, making it difficult to distinguish whether Men in Black was its own entity or, ultimately, just another Will Smith smash hit. Regardless of whether or not you enjoy Smith two subsequent appearances in the series, this fourth entry then becomes: Does the concept work without him?
I think it does. Then, I generally like the whole series. The storytelling has changed over time, notably the attempt to pivot almost entirely to Smith in the third one, at a time when his appeal was actually waning, and his performances were shifting away from the kind he was giving in the first one, which actually served to put more focus on the MiB universe itself, its vision of aliens run amok in all manner of guises. MiB: International, at the very least, adds to the memorable menagerie with the sidekick Pawny and the Beard Alien. The Beard Alien is just awesome.
Notably, the stars of the movie, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, are actually reprising an act from Thor: Ragnarok. Thompson is the lead character here, inhabiting the Will Smith initiate role from the first movie, which a more developed backstory and a more deliberate arc. Any concerns that the hard focus on her being a woman playing too much into current trends might be redirected to how Smith was presented, including the memorable gag of the decoy white driver. Which is to say, even that is entirely in-character for the series.
Hemsworth, meanwhile, gets to do what Smith never did, which is to make being an agent seem like a casual thing. Clearly Smith's J was always supposed to turn out to be a rogue figure, but he was mostly presented as such in relation to Tommy Lee Jones' K. I like that Hemsworth and Thompson actually reveal their real names to each other, further distinguishing the two versions of the series, where even though we learn J and K's names, those initials will always be how they're remembered. If this is the only time we experience Hemsworth and Thompson in the series (though it would be interesting to Fast & Furious the series), then at least they leave a mark.
The mole trope seems fairly obvious from the moment Liam Neeson appears. He plays his part obviously from the start, but he's here for a supporting role. Emma Thompson provides one of several pieces of linking material within the series (in hindsight it was a good thing Rip Torn was killed off last movie, since by this one he was, sadly, dead in real life). Rebecca Ferguson appears as the somewhat requisite femme fatale.
Bottom line: International proves the series isn't entirely about Will Smith. That's a good thing.
Donnybrook (2019)
rating: ****
the story: A U.S. army vet goes to extreme lengths to improve life for his family.
review: There's now a lineage of movies from the past decade that needs pointing out: Warrior (2011) to Hell or High Water (2016) to Donnybrook (2019), which will be perhaps the best and easiest way to explain what Donnybrook accomplishes.
Warrior was an MMA movie that was anything but an MMA movie. It wasn't the MMA version of the traditional Hollywood boxing drama, but rather a movie that featured mixed martial arts but wasn't about mixed martial arts. It was about the contrasting fortunes of a pair of brothers destined to collide all over again (in or out of the octagon). It was above all else great filmmaking. Hell or High Water was a latter-day western, a Great Recession story about a pair of outlaws who were also brothers. They were both concerned with matters of the modern world we often don't focus on, how easy it is to fall behind when everyone's so focused on the glories of getting ahead. But the reality is, there's a large percentage of the population that routinely struggles.
Donnybrook is a powerful, poetic experience. It maintains a razor focus on its characters. It features acts of grizzly violence. Interestingly, the only time director Tim Sutton actually shows the violence is perhaps the worst but also the most routine: when a scene of domestic violence plays out inside of a car. It's fair to say that most of this is metaphor, that unlike Warrior, which ends up spotlighting the MMA tournament it builds toward, the eponymous backwoods version of that event in Donnybrook is really only glimpsed at the very end. Where Warrior and Hell or High Water trace a sequence of events, Donnybrook follows its lead characters as they meet their various fates.
It's a movie where the villain has no redeeming qualities. This is an era that has often put villains in a sort of sympathetic spotlight, but not Donnybrook. There's never any hope of redemption for Frank Grillo, who had his breakthrough role in Warrior, which led to Captain America: Winter Soldier, where he first inhabited this kind of character. Grillo's sister is played by Margaret Qualley, who nearly stole Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from much bigger actors. Between the two performances, she has easily become a personal favorite. Grillo's counterpoint is Jamie Bell, once an adorable young actor and now turned into grizzled veteran, and perhaps this is his perfect role, the army vet with nowhere to turn but sheer desperation. James Badge Dale, who seems to have been cast out from Hollywood proper, turns in a typically compelling performance as the only cop who might've been able to intervene in these desperate lives, having firsthand experience as he does.
The whole experience is handled expertly, from how it opens to how the story circles back to that point, and the rich music score that punctuates every moment, knowing exactly when to pivot, as the story itself does. Apparently what little exposure it has had fixates on the violence, but doesn't seem to understand how little there really is, or what any of it means. A pity. But one that shouldn't end up being the final word.
the story: A U.S. army vet goes to extreme lengths to improve life for his family.
review: There's now a lineage of movies from the past decade that needs pointing out: Warrior (2011) to Hell or High Water (2016) to Donnybrook (2019), which will be perhaps the best and easiest way to explain what Donnybrook accomplishes.
Warrior was an MMA movie that was anything but an MMA movie. It wasn't the MMA version of the traditional Hollywood boxing drama, but rather a movie that featured mixed martial arts but wasn't about mixed martial arts. It was about the contrasting fortunes of a pair of brothers destined to collide all over again (in or out of the octagon). It was above all else great filmmaking. Hell or High Water was a latter-day western, a Great Recession story about a pair of outlaws who were also brothers. They were both concerned with matters of the modern world we often don't focus on, how easy it is to fall behind when everyone's so focused on the glories of getting ahead. But the reality is, there's a large percentage of the population that routinely struggles.
Donnybrook is a powerful, poetic experience. It maintains a razor focus on its characters. It features acts of grizzly violence. Interestingly, the only time director Tim Sutton actually shows the violence is perhaps the worst but also the most routine: when a scene of domestic violence plays out inside of a car. It's fair to say that most of this is metaphor, that unlike Warrior, which ends up spotlighting the MMA tournament it builds toward, the eponymous backwoods version of that event in Donnybrook is really only glimpsed at the very end. Where Warrior and Hell or High Water trace a sequence of events, Donnybrook follows its lead characters as they meet their various fates.
It's a movie where the villain has no redeeming qualities. This is an era that has often put villains in a sort of sympathetic spotlight, but not Donnybrook. There's never any hope of redemption for Frank Grillo, who had his breakthrough role in Warrior, which led to Captain America: Winter Soldier, where he first inhabited this kind of character. Grillo's sister is played by Margaret Qualley, who nearly stole Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from much bigger actors. Between the two performances, she has easily become a personal favorite. Grillo's counterpoint is Jamie Bell, once an adorable young actor and now turned into grizzled veteran, and perhaps this is his perfect role, the army vet with nowhere to turn but sheer desperation. James Badge Dale, who seems to have been cast out from Hollywood proper, turns in a typically compelling performance as the only cop who might've been able to intervene in these desperate lives, having firsthand experience as he does.
The whole experience is handled expertly, from how it opens to how the story circles back to that point, and the rich music score that punctuates every moment, knowing exactly when to pivot, as the story itself does. Apparently what little exposure it has had fixates on the violence, but doesn't seem to understand how little there really is, or what any of it means. A pity. But one that shouldn't end up being the final word.
Saturday, September 7, 2019
The Distinguished Gentleman (1992)
rating: *****
the story: A conman runs for congress (stop me if you've heard this one).
review: Wow. So until I randomly ran across a DVD of it in a library book sale, I'd never heard of The Distinguished Gentleman. Seems kind of odd. I mean, it stars Eddie Murphy, one of the best-known comedic actors of the past forty years. He'd made a considerable splash in the '80s with movies like Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, and Trading Places, and while it's true he went into a box office dry spell in the early '90s, before The Nutty Professor revived his career, I still thought I'd at least knew the stuff in-between. But apparently not. There might be a very good reason, and it has nothing at all to do with the quality of the movie itself.
The Distinguished Gentleman was released in theaters in December 1992. You may recall that the US presidential election had just been held the previous November, and that Bill Clinton won. It was a highly-publicized political season. Clinton's popularity surged in part thanks to his appearance playing a saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show, and he was later called "the first black president." Distinguished Gentleman makes no direct references to Clinton (other than borrowing part of his campaign material evoking H.W. Bush's "read my lips"), but anyone paying attention to the movie will understand how it perfectly evokes Clinton-style politics, and as such, it can be viewed as a criticism of Clinton on the very eave of his presidency.
And yet it's strangely nonpartisan. Murphy's conman spends the whole movie, in which he quickly wins congressional election based on name recognition alone (he shares a last name with the recently-deceased congressman played by James Garner) and plunges straight into Washington affairs, without once worrying whether anyone is a Democrat or Republican. The '90s were a period where the feud between the parties hotly intensified. Aside from probably Air Force One, Hollywood presidents tended to be Democrats in the Clinton years, typified by The American President (which in turn gave birth to The West Wing but perhaps most honestly, Spin City).
But anyone who began to suspect that politics had become a sort of cynical, get-rich-quick lifestyle might have found Distinguished Gentleman very familiar. It's just not how people were actually talking about it. Clinton's most direct satire, Primary Colors, began as a cynical book phenomenon but eventually became a somewhat fawning movie. But Distinguished Gentleman blows it out of the water. It's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the modern age.
Where Jimmy Stewart plays an irrepressible idealist, Murphy at first has no interest in the job itself, until he begins to see the responsibility he's accepted, and the colleagues who have completely rejected it. Lane Smith plays his mentor, and in name he evokes Nixon (Smith even played Nixon three years prior, in The Final Days, so it can hardly be considered coincidental), but the story, in an era where Watergate's legacy remains as relevant as ever, never really reflects Nixon himself. This is called biting satire.
The somewhat anonymous cast includes Chi McBride when he apparently was being billed simply as "Chi." He remains a hidden treasure wherever he pops up. The spotlight rests, then, on Murphy, who gets to pull off, instead of his familiar trick of Peter Sellers ubiquity, a number of killer accents, including an MLK impression that if he'd ever turned into a full performance might've totally transformed his career. But he never mugs for the camera. This is a fairly straight performance for Murphy, which is probably one of the reasons it's been so easy to overlook. It's obviously a comedic movie, but its famously spastic star restrains himself. It's the absurdity of the story that's the source of the humor this time.
And the sad part is that politics remains exactly like this today, making Distinguished Gentleman increasingly relevant material, created at the dawn of an era, dismissed as poorly timed, but in the end, quite timeless. And well worth rediscovering because of it.
the story: A conman runs for congress (stop me if you've heard this one).
review: Wow. So until I randomly ran across a DVD of it in a library book sale, I'd never heard of The Distinguished Gentleman. Seems kind of odd. I mean, it stars Eddie Murphy, one of the best-known comedic actors of the past forty years. He'd made a considerable splash in the '80s with movies like Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, and Trading Places, and while it's true he went into a box office dry spell in the early '90s, before The Nutty Professor revived his career, I still thought I'd at least knew the stuff in-between. But apparently not. There might be a very good reason, and it has nothing at all to do with the quality of the movie itself.
The Distinguished Gentleman was released in theaters in December 1992. You may recall that the US presidential election had just been held the previous November, and that Bill Clinton won. It was a highly-publicized political season. Clinton's popularity surged in part thanks to his appearance playing a saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show, and he was later called "the first black president." Distinguished Gentleman makes no direct references to Clinton (other than borrowing part of his campaign material evoking H.W. Bush's "read my lips"), but anyone paying attention to the movie will understand how it perfectly evokes Clinton-style politics, and as such, it can be viewed as a criticism of Clinton on the very eave of his presidency.
And yet it's strangely nonpartisan. Murphy's conman spends the whole movie, in which he quickly wins congressional election based on name recognition alone (he shares a last name with the recently-deceased congressman played by James Garner) and plunges straight into Washington affairs, without once worrying whether anyone is a Democrat or Republican. The '90s were a period where the feud between the parties hotly intensified. Aside from probably Air Force One, Hollywood presidents tended to be Democrats in the Clinton years, typified by The American President (which in turn gave birth to The West Wing but perhaps most honestly, Spin City).
But anyone who began to suspect that politics had become a sort of cynical, get-rich-quick lifestyle might have found Distinguished Gentleman very familiar. It's just not how people were actually talking about it. Clinton's most direct satire, Primary Colors, began as a cynical book phenomenon but eventually became a somewhat fawning movie. But Distinguished Gentleman blows it out of the water. It's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the modern age.
Where Jimmy Stewart plays an irrepressible idealist, Murphy at first has no interest in the job itself, until he begins to see the responsibility he's accepted, and the colleagues who have completely rejected it. Lane Smith plays his mentor, and in name he evokes Nixon (Smith even played Nixon three years prior, in The Final Days, so it can hardly be considered coincidental), but the story, in an era where Watergate's legacy remains as relevant as ever, never really reflects Nixon himself. This is called biting satire.
The somewhat anonymous cast includes Chi McBride when he apparently was being billed simply as "Chi." He remains a hidden treasure wherever he pops up. The spotlight rests, then, on Murphy, who gets to pull off, instead of his familiar trick of Peter Sellers ubiquity, a number of killer accents, including an MLK impression that if he'd ever turned into a full performance might've totally transformed his career. But he never mugs for the camera. This is a fairly straight performance for Murphy, which is probably one of the reasons it's been so easy to overlook. It's obviously a comedic movie, but its famously spastic star restrains himself. It's the absurdity of the story that's the source of the humor this time.
And the sad part is that politics remains exactly like this today, making Distinguished Gentleman increasingly relevant material, created at the dawn of an era, dismissed as poorly timed, but in the end, quite timeless. And well worth rediscovering because of it.
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