Swerve: predictable action and one scary dude

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Jason Clarke in SWERVE
Jason Clarke in SWERVE

In the Australian thriller Swerve, a Good Samaritan drifter gets caught up in a deadly entanglement involving a briefcase full of drug money, some very dangerous guys and a sexy woman of uncertain loyalty.  The movie gets its title from some key moments when vehicles swerve and move the plot along.  There’s a lot of convincing action (there not even any dialogue for the first seven minutes and two fatalities), but writer-director Craig Lahiff is a better director than a writer. If you’ve seen a femme fatale and some action thrillers, nothing in the plot will surprise you. Unfortunately, the wife with wandering thighs is played by Emma Booth, who is unable to elevate the Bad Girl to Kathleen Turner/Lana Turner territory.

The best thing about Swerve is that hulking Jason Clarke (Animal Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty, Lawless) is really good at playing menace and indestructibility, and here he adds a mad glint in his eyes. Plus there some pleasingly absurd touches with marching bands randomly wandering into otherwise tense scenes. Bottom line: Swerve is one hour forty minutes of unsurprising and predictable action peppered with one fun performance.

Swerve is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another gripping episode from the popular and acclaimed young adult fiction trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Just like The Hunger Games, it’s a well-paced, well-acted and intelligent sci-fi adventure fable. And it’s yet another showcase role for Jennifer Lawrence.

To review, the story is set in the future, where several generations after a rebellion, an authoritarian government plucks teenagers from the formerly rebellious provinces to fight to the death in a forest. It’s all broadcast on reality TV for the entertainment of the masses. Children killing children – it doesn’t get much harsher than that.

This time, the malevolent tyrant picks his gladiators from the winners (i.e., survivors) of the past Games. Because they have survived by killing off the other children, they could constitute their own PTSD support group; they range from emotionally fragile to raging bonkers. This adds a particularly flavorful set of roles, acted especially deliciously by Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Plummer and Jena Malone.

The main purpose of a second act is to tee up the third, and Catching Fire is very successful, with the help of a new character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (who, sadly, will not complete the sequels). Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer) does a fine job directing his first Hunger Games movie – and he’s set to direct the final chapter in the trilogy (which will actually be two movies – The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and – Part 2).

[Gary Ross, the director of the original The Hunger Games, is in pre-production on two new Jennifer Lawrence movies – Burial Rites from the Hannah Kent novel and Steinbeck’s East of Eden (where Lawrence’s role is the one played by Julie Harris in the 1955 Elia Kazan/James Dean version).]

But, at the end of the day, it’s all about Jennifer Lawrence, who must carry the movie as she plays the determined and resourceful Appalachian heroine. She’s an amazing screen presence, capable of believably portraying both panic attacks and action hero sequences. She’s worth the price of admission all by herself.

The source material may be aimed at tweens, but I haven’t met an adult yet who hasn’t enjoyed and been impressed with The Hunger Games or The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. HG: Catching Fire is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

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Actually, there’s no MUST SEE in theaters right now, but here are three pretty good movies, plus a recent hit and an overlooked classic.

Jake Gyllenhaal is brilliant in two roles in the psychological thriller Enemy.  Like all Wes Anderson movies, The Grand Budapest Hotel is wry and imaginative, but not one of his most engaging.  Just out today, Dom Hemingway is a fun and profane romp.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the gloriously entertaining American Hustle.  Amid an all-star cast, I think that Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence and Louis C.K. steal the show. American Hustle is now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Reportedly, James Garner and Julie Andrews have each tagged the biting anti-war satire  The Americanization of Emily as their favorite movie, and Turner Classic Movies will be playing it on April 6.

Finally, baseball season has begun, so it’s time to check out this wonderfully mad movie list: Bob Calhoun’s Zombies in the Outfield and Cats in the Owners’ Box: The Top Ten Odd and Overlooked Baseball Movies for RogerEbert.com.

Dom Hemingway: full throttle into a brick wall

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dom hemingway
The title character in Dom Hemingway is always in a determined hurry, one of those guys whose brow is always 12 inches in front of his feet.  He is played by Jude Law as a force of nature who takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.  Dom Hemingway is a none-too-smart professional safe-cracker who has taken the rap for his partners and is just getting out after twelve years in the slammer. He’s been fantasizing about what he wants to do when he gets out, and he intends to do it all in as compressed a time period as possible. Unfortunately, as he tells a small boy, “Dom is English for unlucky sonofabitch”.  His headlong onslaught into misadventure is ribald, profane and pretty funny.

This movie is not a masterpiece.  Think of Dom Hemingway as The Wolf of Wall Street Lite.  Still, Jude Law is very watchable and very funny, as is Richard E. Grant as his almost-as-unlucky and almost-as-dim buddy.  Director Richard Shepard made a much better movie in 2005, The Matador with Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear.  Still, Dom Hemingway works as a pedal-to-the-metal romp.

I saw Dom Hemingway three weeks ago at Cinequest 2014.

The Grand Budapest Hotel: wry and imaginative

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fiennes
Like all of writer-director Wes Anderson’s films, The Grand Budapest Hotel is wry and imaginative, but it’s not one of his near-masterpieces (Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom). Ray Fiennes plays one of Anderson’s unique creations, the imperious and shady concierge of an Eastern European hotel between the world wars. His sidekick is the rookie lobby boy (Tony Revolori). Together, they navigate a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride involving the concierge’s additional vocations of gigolo and lovable scoundrel.

The cast is superb and absurdly deep.  I counted THIRTEEN Academy Award nominees (mostly for acting, but Jeff Goldblum won an Oscar for a Live Short and Bob Balaban was one of the producers for Best Picture nominee Gosford Park).  It’s overkill, because fine actors like Edward Norton, Tom Wilkinson, Lea Seydoux and Larry Pine don’t really have much to do.  F. Murray Abraham, as the lobby boy turned old man, does stand out.

And that points out the weak spot in The Grand Budapest Hotel.  I kept saying to myself things like, “Look at the makeup on Tilda Swinton”,  “Is that Jeff Goldblum behind that beard?” and “Awwright! Bill Murray!”.  That tells me that I wasn’t fully engaged in the story.  Some critics have pointed out the historical sweep from the post-imperial 1930s through the crucible of WWII to the boring industrial totalitarianism of the 1950s.  For me, that’s still not enough to make a great movie.  But The Grand Budapest Hotel is fun to watch, and that’s not bad.

DVD/Stream of the Week: American Hustle

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american hustleWhy is American Hustle so gloriously entertaining? It’s certainly successful as a con man movie, as a 70s period piece and as a fast-paced (sometimes almost screwball) comedy. But I think the key is that writer-director David O. Russell develops such compelling characters – lots of them – and they’re so endearingly wacky, we just need to see what happens next. That’s the recipe he used in last year’s triumph Silver Linings Playbook (and in his under-appreciated 1996 Flirting with Disaster).

American Hustle opens with the wonderfully sly disclaimer “Some of this actually happened”, and then we see Christian Bale assembling the worst comb-over in cinematic history – and we’re hooked. The story follows the arc of the real-life Abscam scandal with the FBI forcing con artists to sting elected officials in an outlandish bribery-by-phony-sheik scheme. Bale plays an unattractive yet magnetic con man. Amy Adams is his tough and sexy partner. Bradley Cooper is their hyper-ambitious FBI handler.

As we would expect, Bale, Adams and Cooper are all fun to watch with this material. But Russell ‘s cast is very deep – the secondary and tertiary characters are just as fun. Jennifer Lawrence is a force of nature as Bale’s estranged wife, who takes passive aggressiveness to an entirely unforeseen level. Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) almost steals the picture as an extremely sympathetic and good-hearted local pol who doesn’t see what’s coming. And Louis C.K. is hilarious as Cooper’s put-upon boss; as he did so successfully in Blue Jasmine, C.K. plays the character completely straight and lets the material generate the laughs; many comedians make the mistake of trying to act funny in movie comedies, but C.K. has a real gift for the lethal dead pan.

American Hustle plants us firmly in the late 1970s with an especially evocative score and very fun costumes and hair. Besides Bale’s comb-over, we enjoy the tightly permed curls of Adams and Cooper, along with Lawrence’s Jersey updo. And Adams and Lawrence sport an unceasing series of dresses with severely plunging necklines.

Funny and gripping at the same time, with scads of movie stars at their very best, American Hustle is a surefire good time at the movies.   American Hustle is now available on DVD frpm Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Enemy: Gyllenhaal plus Gyllenhaal equals…

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enemy
In the psychological thriller Enemy, a guy finds out that he has an exact physical double – down to their voices and the scars on their bellies. He can’t resist looking up and meeting his twin, which unleashes some unanticipated consequences.

One guy is a tweedy college professor, kind and introspective. His doppelganger is an actor who doesn’t filter his own venal self-interest. Essentially, the difference between these two  is that one guy has a conscience and the other guy doesn’t.  They are both played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

The physical similarities even confound their partners (Sarah Gadon and Melanie Laurent).   Gadon’s performance is especially compelling in a scene when she first meets an amiable guy who doesn’t know her, but physically seems to be her husband.  Yeesh.

The key to Enemy’s surpassing the gimmick of double casting is that Gyllenhaal’s performance is so brilliant.  The difference between the two characters is so subtle.
You always know which guy you’re watching, but, other than wardrobe, it’s often hard to figure out how we can tell – it’s just in Gyllenhaal’s carriage, the occasional gesture and the hint of rapaciousness in the one character’s eyes.

Enemy is not completely literal and realistic.  Be prepared for some large and startling creatures that you will not expect.

Director Denis Villenueve knows how to deliver suspense and thrills, as he did in my top movie of 2011, Incendies, and in last year’s underrated thriller Prisoners, (also with Gyllenhaal).  Enemy isn’t as good as those films, but it’s an entertaining and mildly thought-provoking thriller.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Outrage Beyond

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Takeshi Kitano dares a Yakuza to shoot him in OUTRAGE BEYOND

Takeshi Kitano returns to star in the Japanese gangster movie Outrage Beyond. It’s a sequel to writer-director Kitano’s 2011 Outrage, of which I wrote:

If you’re looking for a hardass gangster movie with deliciously bad people doing acts of extreme violence upon each other, Outrage is the film for you. But what makes Outrage stand out is the pace and stylishness of all the nastiness, as if Quentin Tarantino had made Goodfellas (only without all the extra dialogue about foot rubs and the Royale with cheese)…Kitano, much like Charles Bronson, has the worn and rough face of a man who has seen too much disappointment and brutality.

Outrage was more of a tragic noir, because you know that most of the characters probably won’t survive – and they know it, too. There is less foreboding in Outrage Beyond, which is just glorious exploitation – gangster mayhem splattering the streets. Because this is a Yakuza film, Kitano delivers the minimum one full body tattoo and one severed finger. But he also makes ingeniously lethal use of a pitching machine in a batting cage, and “Let’s play baseball” is the cruelest line in the film.

I saw Outrage Beyond at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and XBOX Video.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Blue is the Warmest Color

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Adèle Exarchopoulos in BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR

The French drama Blue is the Warmest Color explores first love, capturing the arc of a young woman’s first serious romance with remarkable authenticity and a stunning performance by 19-year-old actress Adèle Exarchopoulos. Exarchopoulos plays a 17-year-old (also named Adèle) who falls in love with an out lesbian five or six years her senior. The film traces the course of their relationship over the next several years as the couple are challenged by jealousies and their different temperaments and class backgrounds, and as Adèle matures.

The acting is excellent, including Léa Seydoux (Farewell My Queen, Midnight in Paris) as the lover. But Adèle Exarchopoulos is a revelation. She is perfect as a teen typically full of curiosity and devoid of confidence, outwardly raunchy but profoundly innocent. And she has an extraordinary gift to seem utterly alone in a crowd. After watching Exarchopoulos, I felt as I did after seeing Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone – I can’t wait to see this emerging major talent again.

This is the first film I’ve seen by Tunisian-born French director Abdelatif Kechiche, who has twice before won the Cesar (the French Oscar). In Blue Is the Warmest Color, Kechiche uses the closeup more than any recent director that I can recall, and he is fortunate to have Exarchopoulos, who can pull it off. It’s an excellent reason to see Blue Is the Warmest Color on the big screen.

Blue Is the Warmest Color is three-hours long, which is an indulgent length, but not too long. I am usually impatient with movies over two hours and quick to find them overlong. But Blue Is the Warmest Color kept my interest and engagement for its duration, and I really couldn’t recommend many cuts.

There is a LOT of explicit simulated sex in this movie. The main characters’ first love scene must sample the entire lesbian Kama Sutra. That scene, reputed by some to last nineteen or twenty minutes, didn’t seem that nearly long. The film proudly earns its NC-17 rating by depicting the (apparently very satisfying) sexual aspect of a romance.

But, in the end, it’s all about Adèle’s romance and Exarchopoulos’ performance. Blue Is the Warmest Color won the top prize at Cannes, and is my pick as 2013’s best film.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Sundance Now and XBOX Video.

An alternative movie fest for St. Paddy’s Day

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James Nesbitt in BLOODY SUNDAY

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Now, tonight you CAN go out and drink green beer with all the amateur drinkers. Nothing wrong with that, if that’s your thing.

OR you could settle in for some top shelf cinema set in recent Irish history – The Troubles of Northern Ireland. For eight fine films about The Troubles, see my Best Films About the Troubles (Northern Ireland).