Movies

THE OUTLAW KING: medieval slaughter, falling flat

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Chris Pine in THE OUTLAW KING

Chris Pine has the title role in Netflix’s The Outlaw King.  It’s the story of Robert the Bruce, who wrested control of Scotland from the English and became the Scottish king in the early 1300s. I like Chris Pine, and he makes a medieval warlord very relatable, but this movie is pretty flat. I was especially disappointed because I admired director David Mackenzie’s last movie (Hell or High Water – also with Chris Pine) so much.

I’m guessing from Mackenzie’s surname that he was drawn to Bruce as an icon of Scottish nationalism. But all these historical struggles of conquest and rebellion in the feudal era were really just tugs of war between rival warlords – the moral equivalent of the Soprano Family. To its credit, The Outlaw King (as do Shakespeare’s histories) does not overly romanticize the self-serving motivations of the nobility

The Outlaw King is kinda historically accurate – it captures the overall arc of the story, although Bruce’s archenemy, the future Edward II, was not at the battle of Loudin Hill and, hence did not engage in a mano a mano showdown with Bruce there as depicted.

On the other hand, there isn’t much in the historical record about most women in the early 1300s, particularly Bruce’s second wife, Elizabeth (Florence Pugh).  The filmmakers have constructed a pretty interesting character in Elizabeth, so that’s all to the good.

We do know that Edward II was a pretty interesting cat (not a complement), but, while The Outlaw King portrays Edward’s problems with Dad and hints at his narcissistic bravado, it misses the chance to go deeper.

There is a lot of the hacking and hewing of medieval combat a la Braveheart, in The Outlaw King, chiefly in Bruce’s pivotal victory at the battle of Loudon Hill. But the overall emptiness of the movie leaves the battle scenes, as well-crafted as they are, less thrilling than those in Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V.

The Outlaw King exists for those who need a dose of medieval slaughter and a spunky queen, but there’s not enough there for the rest of us.

THE GREAT BUSTER: A CELEBRATION: comic genius unleashed and then squandered

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Buster Keaton’s THE GENERAL in THE GREAT BUSTER: A CELEBRATION. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group.

The documentary The Great Buster: A Celebration traces the life and career of the filmmaking genius Buster Keaton.  Every chance I get, I recommend Keaton’s silent masterpieces Seven Chances and The General. But The Great Buster puts Keaton’s work in helpful context.

First, director/film historian Peter Bogdanovich introduces us to Keaton’s upbringing as the child star in his parent’s vaudeville act. This is a CRAZY story, about Keaton working one-night performances from the age of FOUR in an act where he was essentially a guided missile in a fake leprechaun beard.

Next we learn about the young adult Keaton being introduced to the movie business by San Jose’s own, Fatty Arbuckle, and then moving on to creating his own two-reelers. Then The Great Buster focuses on the ten great features on which Buster had complete creative control. And then Bogdanovich takes us through MGM’s mishandling of Keaton’s career and the resultant decline. I thought that I had a good handle on Keaton’s body of work, but The Great Buster is essential to understanding it.

The Great Buster gives us many cool tidbits from his work in TV commercials through his final happy marriage. And 100-year-old actor Norman Lloyd relates an anecdote about performing a scene in Limelight with Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

Peter Bogdanovich in THE GREAT BUSTER: A CELEBRATION. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group.

The Great Buster: A Celebration opens this weekend in the Bay Area.

Stream of the Week: I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE – schlub goes postal

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Elijah Wood and Melanie Lynskey in I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE

In the wonderfully dark comedy I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore, Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) is wallowing in a lonely, depressing, humdrum existence, when she has one of those days where everything goes wrong. When she staggers home in abject failure, she finds that her home has been burglarized. It’s the last straw, and Ruth becomes energized in an obsessive quest to track down the thieves. She picks up her geeky neighbor (Elijah Wood) an a confederate. Soon the lovable loser and her oddball sidekick follow the clues to a very dangerous gang, and they find themselves in a lethal thriller.

I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE
Melanie Lynskey and Mcon Blair in I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE

I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore is the directorial debut of actor Macon Blair, an actor who has elevated a slew of indies, especially the refreshingly original thriller Blue Ruin. Blair has a tiny but very funny role as spoiler-dropping bar patron.

Melanie Lynskey is a comic treasure, and her deadpan earnestness carries I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore. What’s so funny here is that her Ruth, a workaday schlub, only needs to become SLIGHTLY deranged before she falls into a life-and-death adventure.

After a Blink-And-You’ve-Missed-It theatrical run, I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore is available to stream on Netflix Instant.

FIRST MAN: making mankind’s greatest achievement boring

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Ryan Gosling (left) as Neil Armstrong in FIRST MAN

First Man is the astoundingly boring story of mankind’s greatest achievement – sending men to the moon and returning them safely to earth.  It’s a major whiff for Damian Chazelle, the director of indie hit Whiplash and the refreshingly original La La Land.  Chazelle also wrote Whiplash and La La Land, but not the screenplay for First Man.

Ryan Gosling is the moon-walking astronaut Neil Armstrong, and Claire Foy (The Crown) is his wife Janet.  Much of the film is consumed in the story of their marriage, damaged by the loss of a child and stressed by the danger of Neil’s missions.

With the ingenuity, courage and sacrifice that produced the moon mission, this should have been a thrilling story.  Instead, it drags morose characters through a meandering procedural.

Gosling gets to prove that he can play taciturn, which gets old fast.  Foy dances along the continuum from aggrieved to highly aggrieved.  Their talent is wasted, as is an excellent cast overall.  Ciarán Hinds and Kyle Chandler are the NASA managers, and Jason Clarke and Cory Stoll (excellent) are other astronauts.  Shea Whigham and Lukas Haas are in here somewhere.

As the end credits rolled, The Wife and I turned to each other in wonder at how unentertaining this film was.  First Man especially suffers in contrast to The Right Stuff, Apollo 13 and Hidden Figures.  Worst true-to-life NASA movie of all time?  Here’s  a contender.

MONROVIA, INDIANA: not much happens, except life itself

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MONROVIA, INDIANA

Master documentarian Frederic Wiseman peels back our prejudices and reveals the humanity and beauty – even in Fly-over America  – in Monrovia, Indiana.  His static camera and patient editing give us unadulterated doses of life in Monrovia, a 1,000-person hamlet amid the cornfields and pig farms of central Indiana.  In a 2 hour, 23 minute tour, we visit the barber shop, the high school, pig farm, the grocery store, the coffee shop, the town council, the hair salon, a livestock auction, the liquor store, the grain silo and the town’s annual festival.

Not much happens, except life.

We do see a Masonic Lodge ritual (a first for me) and the entire sermon at a funeral.

This is deeply Red State territory and a land of bad haircuts.  But people care about what they do and about each other. Wiseman introduces us to Monrovia as a reflection upon humanity and upon life itself. There has never been a more fascinating documentary about a more boring subject. Surprisingly, this is a mesmerizing film.

WHAT THEY HAD: caring for Mom and a resisting Dad

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WHAT THEY HAD
Blythe Danner and Hilary Swank star as Ruth and Bridget Keller in WHAT THEY HAD, a Bleecker Street release. Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street

In the family drama What They Had, two siblings (Hilary Swank and Michael Shannon) face their mom (Blythe Danner) sinking into Alzheimer’s, and their father (Robert Forster) refusing to take action. To heighten the pressure, the out-of-town daughter wants to give the old folks more slack than does the local son. He’s been dealing with this situation up close, and he’s fed up. The dad is used to always being in charge, and he doesn’t cope well with needing help.

Despite the subject, What They Had is not a depressing movie, mostly because of the sunniness of Danner’s character. This is a character-driven story that benefits from this stellar cast. This is the first feature for writer/director Elizabeth Chomko, and she delivers an authentic and well-crafted story.

I saw What They Had at Cinequest. Here’s a clip.

Stream of the Week: REVENGE – the web is spun

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REVENGE
Siren Jørgensen in REVENGE

In the Norwegian suspense thriller Revenge, the slightly creepy Rebekka (Siren Jørgensen) appears at a hotel on a remote fjord under the false pretense that she is a travel writer. The hotel is otherwise empty because it is off-season (think The Shining). She ingratiates herself with the hotel’s owner Morten, the most economically and socially significant person in town, and his wife (Maria Bock). It turns out that twenty years before, Morten date-raped Rebekka’s little sister, leading to her suicide. Now Rebekka wants to exact vengeance.

Revenge becomes a tick-tock suspenser as Rebekka deliberately lays her trap. We’re able to see some, but not all, of the web that she spins, which will put in jeopardy Morten’s reputation, marriage, business and his very health and survival. Can she pull it off? And how lethal will her revenge be?

It’s the first feature for Kjersti Steinsbø, who adapted the screenplay and directed. She has created a real page-turner here. In one very effective touch, it turns out that one of the characters knows FAR more than we initially suspect.

REVENGE
Anders Baasmo Christian in REVENGE

Revenge is uniformly well-acted, but Anders Baasmo Christian, as Bimbo the bartender, is exceptionally good. Just keep your focus on Bimbo. There’s more there than initially meets the eye. And Bimbo’s relationships with both Rebekka and Morten are very conflicted and complicated.

The ending is satisfying, and Morten’s ultimate fate is unexpected. Revenge was one of the world cinema high points of the 2017 Cinequest. Revenge can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE: 5 million orange-toothed critters and a Cajun octogenarian

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Thomas Gonzalez in RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE

The offbeat documentary Rodents of Unusual Size, with its bizarre subject, is charmingly addictive. That subject is the nutria, a 20- to 30-pound Argentine rodent that threatens Louisiana’s wetlands and coastline.  Yes, 30-pound swamp rats with orange teeth.

Although Rodents of Unusual Size is decidedly non-preachy, the nutria is serious business. Imported for the commercial potential of its fur by a Tabasco sauce heir, nutria escaped into the Louisiana wilds and propagated wildly. When the US fur market crashed in the 1990s, the locals stopped trapping them, and Louisiana’s nutria population exploded to 20 million.

The problem is that nutria eat the roots of the vegetation in the Louisiana wetlands, causing erosion that has converted at least 42 square miles of land into open water. Worse, those wetlands are the storm buffer for the rest of the state.

Louisiana offers hunters a $5 bounty for the tail of each dead nutria, which has reduced the nutria population to a more manageable 5 million.  We even meet a guy whose official job title is Nutria Tail Assessor.

One of the reasons I love Louisiana is that folks just don’t take themselves too seriously there. Even when they are focused on the grave environmental impacts of the nutria invasion, they still appreciate the absurdity of a 30-pound, orange-toothed swamp rat.  (And, fittingly,  Rodents of Unusual Size is narrated by Louisiana native Wendell Pierce.)

Along the way, we are also introduced to nutria fur and the fur company Righteous Fur, nutria meat, nutria sports mascots and even nutria as pets.
But most compellingly, we meet Thomas Gonzalez, an 80-year-old bayou native, nutria hunter and bon vivant. Gonzalez is a force of nature, complete with strong-willed opinions and some impressive dance moves. Gonzalez serves as the voice of Louisiana and finishes the movie with a profound perspective on the nutria.

I saw Rodents of Unusual Size at Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club with filmmaker Chris Metzler available for Q&A. Metzler and his colleagues Jeff Springer and Quinn Costello filmed Rodents of Unusual Size over four years during Louisiana’s nutria season (November to April). The affable Metzler is a font of nutria knowledge, full of tidbits like albino nutria being prized by taxidermists. Because nutria are very difficult to spot and film in the wild, the filmmakers used Nooty the stunt nutria throughout the film. Nooty joined the filmmakers in creeping along the red carpet at various film festivals and has her own Facebook page.

Thomas Gonzalez alone is worth meeting on film, and, as told by Rodents of Unusual Size, the story of the nutria is quirkily fascinating. This weekend, Rodents of Unusual Size will be opening a new run at theaters in Marin and the East Bay.

MUSEO: portrait of alienation in the form of a heist

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MUSEO

The true life Mexican heist film Museo is really a portrait of alienation – and immature alienation at that. It’s about a young middle class guy in a third world country, and he has first wold problems; his prospects are not unlimited, but he’s way better off than his less educated compatriots. So he and his weak-willed buddy pull off an audacious art theft.

Unusually, and perhaps uniquely, among heist films, hardly any time is invested in assembling the team (here it’s the guy and his buddy) or in the heist itself. The guys steal the most famous ancient Mexican artifacts from the National Museum, essentially the heart of the nation’s heritage. The theft becomes a sensation that dominates the national zeitgeist, triggers an all-out manhunt and a political scandal. How could this have happened?

Of course, there can’t possibly be any buyers for such high visibility objects (just like in this year’s other real life slacker heist film American Animals). Most of the film is figuring out what to do next – and good options are non-existent.

The protagonist is played by the fine actor Gael Garcia Bernal. Unfortunately, this character really isn’t that interesting; I think that is because his alienation is based on petulance and not on rage (see the great Jack Nicholson ragingly alienated roles of the 70s).

Museo does a good job of evoking the Mexico City and Acapulco in the mid 1980s. But without the central thrill of a heist, we are left with an unsympathetic protagonist and his predicament, and that’s really not enough for a two-hour movie. I saw Museo at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

https://vimeo.com/287000720

QUINCY: a musical giant in moments of unusual intimacy

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Quincy Jones in QUINCY

Let’s start with the subject of the biodoc Quincy, the musician, music producer and musical impresario Quincy Jones. Jones is a giant of 20th Century music, one of the most important and prolific musicians ever. This is an individual who has composed 51 screen scores and over 1000 original compositions. He was the musical partner of Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson during their most creative periods. Jones produced the best selling album of all time (Thriller) and the best selling single (We Are the World). Along the way, he picked up 79 Grammy noms and 27 Grammys, and is one of only 18 EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony).

Quincy Jones amassed that legacy though multiple decades and musical genres and broke color barriers throughout his life. That makes wonderful fodder for this biodoc, co-written and co-directed by his daughter Rashida Jones.

Besides the archival footage and talking heads, Rashida Jones is able to share Quincy Jones himself in moments of unusual intimacy, where he contemplates his relationships with his ex-wives, his kids and his vodka, not to mention his schizophrenic mother and workaholic father.

The popular actress Rashida Jones is an accomplished filmmaker. This is the fifth film she has directed, and she co-wrote the unusually intelligent romcom Celeste and Jess Forever.

Quincy can be streamed from Netflix.