8-Bit Christmas

NPH: Home for the holidays.

(2021) Holiday Comedy (HBO Max) Neil Patrick Harris, Winslow Fegley, Steve Zahn, June Diane Raphael, Bellaluna Resnick, Sophia Reid-Gantzert, Che Tafari, Santino Barnard, Max Malas, Brielle Rankins, Braelyn Rankins, Cyrus Arnold, Chandler Dean, Jacob Laval, Katia Smith, Tom Rooney, David Cross, Kathryn Greenwood, Louise Nicol, Erica Levene, David MacInnis, Monica Dottor. Directed by Michael Dowse

At this time of year, the airwaves – or to be more precise, the streaming services – are flooded with Christmas themed movies, the bulk of them rom-coms with nearly identical plots about how the magic of Christmas serves as a kind of love potion. There are so many of them this year that Cinema365 chose not to list any of them in the Coming Soon preview section. If you want to see one, you won’t have far to look and one is pretty much just like the others.

To be dead honest, making a good, original Christmas movie is truly hard. Walking the line between genuine sentiment and overwrought treacle is tricky at best, and most movies seem to fall off the line into a vat of maudlin faux emotion that leaves you feeling like you just binged on a big bag of Sugar Babies. Some movies, though, manage to avoid that fate. Is this one of them?

Jake Doyle (Harris) is a single dad taking his young daughter Lizzy (Resnick) to his childhood home for the holidays. There is some tension between the two; Lizzy wants a new cell phone for Christmas, but Jake isn’t keen on getting her one. When they get to grandmother’s house (having gone over the river and through the woods), they find nobody home. Jake finds his old Nintendo Entertainment System in his bedroom and invites Lizzy to play a few games with him. Lizzy is about as enthusiastic as you would imagine any modern kid would be to play a game system that is thirty years obsolete. Jake offers to tell her the story of how he met her mother….oh, not quite right…how he acquired his Nintendo.

Young Jake (Fegley) wants a Nintendo more than anything at Christmastime 1988. Only one kid in the neighborhood has one – spoiled rich kid Timmy Keane (Dean) who chooses ten kids from the horde gathered outside his home to come in and play…or, more to the point, watch HIM play. Jake and his friends Mikey Trotter (Tafari), twins Tammy and Teddy Hodges (the Rankins twins), uptight Evan (Barnard) and pathological liar Farmer (Malas) whom nobody really likes but who hangs around anyway, are all eager to get a Nintendo of their own and free themselves of the tyranny of Timmy. A tragic accident involving a Power Glove and the Keane family dog leads Timmy’s mom and dad to embark on a crusade to ban the gaming system, making Jake’s quest even more difficult.

\He tries to cajole his parents – John (Zahn) and Kathy (Raphael) to buy him one for Christmas but they’re not having it. Mom is extremely budget-minded, constantly looking for bargains no matter how they end up causing Jake all sorts of torture, like the girl’s boots she buys him to wear because they were on sale. Jake is also trying to avoid the school bully Josh Jagorski (Arnold) who takes particular delight in torturing Jake.

Every scheme that Jake comes up to get a Nintendo ends up in disaster and with the big day looming, Jake starts to become desperate. How far will Jake go to get his hands on a Nintendo? Will he find success or disappointment? Will his father and mother ever figure out how much this game system means to him? The answer might surprise you a bit.

Most who read the plot synopsis and have a fair amount of film knowledge might see distinct similarities in plot to the Bob Clark 1983 classic A Christmas Story, substituting only the era and the object of the main character’s desire – at least nobody is lecturing Jake that he’ll put an eye out with his Nintendo. However, his parents (particularly his dad) have their own preconceptions of the damage a Nintendo would do to their son. They were, perhaps, not far wrong.

The juvenile actors are actually okay for the most part; at least they aren’t wooden, or worse – act like they’re acting. The late 80s are captured fairly well, although there are a few details that are missing; why are no kids watching either Nickelodeon or MTV? Also the fashions and hair styles don’t scream the era. And yes, while the movie was shot in Toronto, it was supposed to be set in Chicago and to be quite honest, doesn’t have the feel of the Windy City, which is one of the things that made the films of John Hughes such a delight.

I hadn’t expected to like this much, particularly since the plot was seemingly so derivative but something very odd happened; the more I watched the movie, the more I got into it and the more I was captured by its spell. By the end of the movie, I was actually quite misty-eyed and that’s quite a feat when you consider how jaded I am about Christmas movies. This is one of the better ones to come down the pike in recent years and if you have a subscription to HBO Max and have a yen to watch a holiday film, this should be near the top of your list.

REASONS TO SEE: Harris and Zahn are welcome additions to any movie. Grows on you to the point where you might be misty-eyed by the end.
REASONS TO AVOID: A little bit been-there, done-that.
FAMILY VALUES: There is mild profanity, rude humor and some brief violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film is written by veteran writer Kevin Jakubowski, based on his own debut novel.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: HBO Max
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/20/2021: Rotten Tomatoes: 81% positive reviews; Metacritic: 66/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: A Christmas Story
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: The Mustangs: America’s Wild Horses

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BLONDE. purple

Robbery, assault and battery.

(2021) Crime Drama (1091) Julian Moore-Cook, Ellie Bindman, Adam J. Bernard, Jennifer Lee Moon, Jessica Murrain, Roger Ajogbe, Andy Chaplin, Joe Gallina, Nicholas Grey, Daniel Jordan, Jennifer Lee Moon, Emily Swain, Richard Sandling, Jess Radomska, Stella Taylor, Oliver Silver, Al Gregg, David Ngara-O’Dwyer, Ryan Molloy, Martin Smith, Thomasin Lockwood. Directed by Marcus Flemmings

When things are going well, everybody tends to be generous and kindly. It is when things are exploding in our face that our true characters tend to emerge. Nothing explodes in the face quite like a bank robbery gone sideways.

And that is exactly what’s happened to Wyatt (Moore-Cook), a man who requires an immediate infusion of cash that is talked into doing something he’s never done before – rob a bank. His more experienced partner, Nath (Bernard), has been shot and taken to the hospital. Wyatt is left with a teenage girl Maddison (Bindman) as a hostage and a hostage negotiator (Gray) who might be the least suited for the job in the history of law enforcement.

In the two hours or so of the film’s run time, we get to meet these characters and others in their orbit. We find out that other members of the crew, like the hot-tempered Ant (Sandling), dropped out of the heist before it even began. We meet femme fatale Saida (Moon). And through it all, we see how Wyatt got into a situation that is so far over his head that it might as well be Mt. Everest.

Flemmings, whose last film Six Rounds (which Bernard starred in) showed immense promise, improves on that film here. The dialogue is far better, a quantum leap in fact. There is a noir-ish quality to it that is tantalizing. His eye for casting talented unknowns continues, as Moore-Cook and Bindman both shine. Bernard, who continues to impress, is a scene-stealer in a supporting role that you won’t soon forget. He’s an actor with the presence to carry franchise-level pictures, mark my words.

The drawback here is in the pacing and the editing. The film bounces around with a cornucopia of flashbacks which from time to time interrupt the momentum the film is building. This sort of thing can be frustrating to a viewer and as a critic, I tend to advocate simple storytelling devices to young filmmakers. Too many flashbacks can spoil a film like too much salt can spoil an entrée. Also, the movie is set in America, but the cast is British and it was filmed there. While I get the sense that Flemmings was trying to make a comment on American racial relations (a prologue Montage shows incendiary moments in American racial tension, from the Civil Rights era right up through the marches of Black Lives Matter), but there are too many English accents to make the movie believable as American-set. However, there is a killer soundtrack of classic R&B and retro-soul that is absolutely perfect for the film’s atmosphere.

In general, though, this is a movie that has a good deal going for it. Flemmings’ movies tend to be intelligent and thought-provoking which is a commodity that should be encouraged in any filmmaker. The good news is that this movie isn’t a step backwards for Flemmings; he’s moving in the right direction. I wouldn’t be at all surprise if his next movie made a serious impact on the independent movie scene. No pressure, right?

REASONS TO SEE: The soundtrack is essential.
REASONS TO AVOID: The edit could have been a bit tighter (loses steam when it bounces around to various elements).
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity and some violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In addition to being a film director, the London-born Flemmings has also been a fashion photographer.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/14/2021: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Dog Day Afternoon
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: Set!

3 Day Weekend

No matter what, he’s got her back.

(2019) Suspense (Sleeper Cell) Morgan Krantz, Maya Stojan, Nathan Phillips, Scott MacDonald. Directed by Wyatt McDill

Sometimes a movie will show a tremendous amount of promise but end up sabotaging itself with the execution. 3 Day Weekend is just such a movie.

Millennial Ben Boyd (Krantz) decides that after a painful relationship break-up to go camping and get away from his heartache. Never mind that he really has no experience camping; how hard can it be to pitch a tent and set up a sleeping bag? Exactly.

However, he stumbles upon a deaf girl (Stojan) locked in the trunk of a car and intuits that a kidnapping is in progress. There is a menacing looking redneck (Phillips) with a gun involved and Ben’s attempts to rescue the damsel in distress go awry. When another redneck bearing a gun (MacDonald) shows up, things get even more lively, but Ben couldn’t possibly imagine the truth of what is happening; it certainly isn’t what it might seem to be to him at the time.

And there you have it; a simple concept, which McDill enhances by keeping dialogue to a bare minimum (there’s almost no dialogue at all in the first 30 minutes other than text messages which become important later), and to McDill’s credit he pulls it off. Also adding to the list of admirable qualities for the film is that it is told from the viewpoint of each character at various times with each character adding to the information that the audience has, changing our interpretation of events subtly until it ends up being quite a major shift. Kudos to McDill (who also wrote the script) for that.

Where the film loses its goodwill is in the camera work. McDill and cinematographer Brian Lundy rely a great deal on handheld cameras, leading to shaky cameras running through the Minnesota woods. He also utilizes some very questionable camera angles that end up annoying the viewer rather than impressing us with their skill. I’ve never been a big fan of shaky cam to begin with; it’s a much-overused camera technique. Used in moderation, it adds immediacy. Used to excess, it adds nausea.

It’s a shame because Lundy and McDill have some beautiful woods to work with, and McDill has written a very good film. However, movies are a visual medium and if that aspect of the project isn’t up to par, it really creates an unpleasant experience. The good news is that McDill shows a lot of potential here and if he just settles down a bit with the cinematography I’m positive he’s capable of delivering some really good movies.

REASONS TO SEE: Builds up the tension nicely.
REASONS TO AVOID: Some really questionable camera angle choices and way too much handheld shaky-cam.
FAMILY VALUES: This is some violence and a bit of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film made its world premiere at the 2019 Twin Cities Film Festival, near where filming took place..
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/14/20: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet, Metacritic: No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Blood and Money
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: Musical Comedy Whore

La Familia

Father and son are on the run.

(2017) Drama (Celluloid Dreams) Giovanni Garcia, Reggie Reyes, Kirvin Barrios, Indira Jimenez, Ninoska Silva, Vincente Quintero, Mariû Favaro, Dixon Dacosta, Tatiano Mabo, Alberto Gonzalez, Morris Merentes, Natacha Pérez, Luis Domingo Gonzalez, Sahara Alvarez, Jesus Rivas, Andy Duque, Miguel Angel Suárez, Franlys Diaz. Directed by Gustavo Rondón Córdova

The economic woes in Venezuela have brought that nation to the brink of collapse. What does that mean to those that live there however? For the wealthy, it’s pretty much business as usual. For the poor of Venezuela, the effects are devastating.

Pedro (Reyes) is poor. He’s a 12-year-old boy who doesn’t attend school which doesn’t seem to alarm anyone. He lives in one of the more impoverished districts in Caracas, the capital. His father Andreas (Garcia) is a day laborer, working whatever odd jobs he can find to squeak by. His mother is nowhere to be found; whether she is dead, deserted or divorced the movie never quite elaborates.

Pedro, essentially growing up without any supervision, runs around the streets with a group of kids, each trying to prove how much tougher they are than the rest. Pedro mostly pals around with Jonny, his best friend. One afternoon they are accosted by a kid with a gun who attempts to rob them of the cheap cell phone they found. Pedro, never one to take anything lying down, gets into a fight with the would-be robber. It ends badly for the young kid.

When Andreas finds out, he knows what he has to do; get the heck out of dodge. He knows that the kid that Pedro hurt has relatives who are in the gangs that run the ghetto, and they are going to make an example of both Pedro and his dad. Andreas takes a reluctant Pedro to a different part of the city and tries to earn as much money as he can so that they can get out of Caracas forever.

But that isn’t going to be easy. Pedro is headstrong and has zero respect for the work ethic of Andreas. For his part, Andreas is not above stealing some bottles of booze from the catered parties he works as a waiter at from time to time when his mostly construction work is done for the day to resell for a little extra cash but otherwise prefers to walk the straight and narrow, preferably crouched down under the radar. Pedro prefers to stand up straight and tall and take on all comers, bowing and scraping to nobody.

The two get along about as well as two brood bulls in a paddock full of cows. Pedro wants to go back to where he belongs; Andreas wants something better and knows he will never find it for himself. Something’s got to give.

This is a terrific character study in that both Andreas and Pedro are given richly developed personalities of the kind we rarely see in the movies anymore. Neither one is cliché and neither one is easily summed up. Neither Andreas nor Pedro can be put into a specific box; they are both complex and imperfect. Much of the realism of the film – which was filmed in some of the worst crime-ridden areas of Caracas – is owed to how well the two main characters are shaped.

Garcia, a celebrated stage actor in Venezuela who has done some memorable film roles as well, owns the screen. His gaze is that of a frightened lamb who knows the slaughterhouse is nearby. His eyes dart from place to place, but he seems to find peace and satisfaction in working hard. Eventually the joys of receiving a paycheck begin to affect Pedro who starts out as a tough guy but shows layers of depth as the film wears on.

.The tone here is pretty bleak, not just for Pedro and Andreas but for Venezuela as well. While Córdova isn’t pointing specific fingers here, there is no escaping that this is a parable for his country from the corruption to the crime to the hopelessness. The realism inherent in this film is sobering and smacks of truth. I can’t speak directly to the situation in Venezuela but I know poverty and how it affects of the souls of those afflicted by it and that’s where this film soars. That this is a first feature for Córdova is impressive; no doubt so long as he doesn’t get into hot water in his native land he is going to be a major talent coming out of Latin America. This movie is a triumph from beginning to end.

REASONS TO GO: The father-son dynamic is caught perfectly. The life lessons here are hard-earned – as they are in real life.
REASONS TO STAY: Some may find this film to be too bleak.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some violence and profanity as well as sexual content and adult themes.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Reyes was discovered by casting personnel for the film while playing soccer in a middle class neighborhood in Caracas.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/25/18: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Running Scared
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: Maze Runner: The Death Cure

Happy Death Day

Isn’t reliving the same day over and over and over again a scream?

(2017) Horror (Blumhouse) Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken, Laura Clifton, Jason Boyle, Rob Mello, Rachel Matthews, Ramsey Anderson, Brady Lewis, Phi Vu, Tenea Intriago, Blaine Kern III, Cariella Smith, Jimmy Gonzales, Billy Slaughter, Donna Duplantier, GiGi Erneta, Lindsey Smith, Dane Rhodes, Caleb Spillyards, Missy Yager. Directed by Christopher Landon

We all have days that we’d rather forget. Days in which things don’t go the way they’re supposed to, days in which we do things we’re not proud of, days when we’re the victims of bad circumstances. Think about how awful it would be to relive those days over and over and over again; it would be enough to drive anyone insane.

Tree Gelbman (Rothe) is having that kind of day that nobody wants to relive. The Bayview College sorority sister wakes up after a night spent partying in a dorm room – a dorm room! – apparently having spent the night with a cute but nondescript guy named Carter (Broussard) whose name she has already forgotten. She makes her way across campus to the sorority house, encountering a global warming activist, a couple soaked by a sprinkler and a fainting frat pledge. Her dad keeps calling and she keeps on ignoring the calls.

He’s calling because it’s her birthday and she’s going to have an even worse day than she’s already had. That evening, on the way to a frat party, she is ambushed by someone wearing a mask of the college’s mascot (the Bayview Babies – really?) who shoves a knife into her – several times.

But then she wakes up, much to her surprise and then she relives the same day, the same events, only to meet the same fate. No matter how she changes things up, her killer always finds her. She realizes she’s going to have to find out the identity of her killer if she’s to escape his homicidal rage and bust out of this strange and terrible time loop.

This is a movie that borrows liberally from other movies, most notably Groundhog’s Day and Scream. I don’t think a movie has to reinvent the wheel every time out but there should be at least some originality and some effort put in to developing the characters so they aren’t just two-dimensional types but that doesn’t really happen here. And that’s okay so long as the movie remains entertaining and thankfully it does.

Rothe is the centerpiece here. Tree starts out the movie self-centered and shallow in what is pretty much a sorority stereotype but as you’d guess during the course of her many relived days she begins to discover what a bitch she’s been and  begins to actually grow. By the end of the movie she’s still not entirely likable – wisely the writers don’t go a complete 180 on us – but she’s more likable. Rothe, a veteran of young adult movies and the Mary + Jane TV show on MTV, shows a great deal of presence and camera-friendliness. I hope she’ll be able to break out of these teen stereotype roles and get some meatier parts at some point soon.

I do like the meta twist at the end – that was an unexpected delight – but discovering who the killer is isn’t going to take a lot of brain power for anyone who has seen more than one or two slasher movies in their time. I would have liked to see more of the self-awareness that the writers showed at the end as it would  have made the movie a lot more fun since the slasher aspect was so rote.

The movie has done pretty well at the box office especially considering it’s bargain basement production budget and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a sequel or two on the horizon. There are some pretty fun aspects here and if your expectations aren’t too high you should get a kick out of the film, although I would tend to recommend it more for teens and young adults who haven’t seen a whole lot of slasher movies but like the ones that they’ve seen. On that basis what they see here will seem a lot more fresh and new than it does for older farts like this reviewer who has been there and seen that but was entertained nonetheless.

REASONS TO GO: Rothe has some potential as a lead actress. The Meta ending was much appreciated.
REASONS TO STAY: The film borrows too liberally from other movies. The plot twist is a little too easily figured out.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of violence and scenes of terror, some crude sexuality as well as brief partial nudity, profanity and brief drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The producers couldn’t get the rights to use the ringtone in the trailer, 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” so they were forced to use an original tune as Tree’s ringtone in the movie.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/4/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 69% positive reviews. Metacritic: 57/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Groundhog’s Day
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: The Light of the Moon

The Trip to Spain

Tilting at windmills is hard work.

(2017) Comedy (IFC) Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Marta Barrio, Claire Keelan, Justin Edwards, Rebecca Johnson, Timothy Leach, Kerry Shale, Kyle Soller, Margo Stilley. Directed by Michael Winterbottom

 

The Trip movies – first to the North of England, then to Italy – have relied on a formula in which real life actors Coogan and Brydon, bringing only slightly fictionalized versions of themselves to bear, travel for a week in a beautiful, scenic location to tour some of the best restaurants and inns locally after which one of them (Brydon in the first two, Coogan here) write an article about it.

Things have changed somewhat since the first movie. Coogan is now Oscar-nominated actor (and writer) Steve Coogan and the success has most definitely gone to his head as he slips references to Philomena into the conversation whenever humanly possible – and occasionally when it isn’t. Rob has a new child in the family and the squalling baby is enough to get him hastily out of the house and back on the road with Steve.

Other than that, it’s basically business as usual; car drives through lovely countryside, stops at lesser known points of interest (to us Americans anyway) stopping at amazing restaurants where a multi-course meal awaits The two men banter at table, breaking into dueling celebrity impressions with Winterbottom denoting the end of the conversation by breaking away to chefs hard at work in the kitchen followed by a waiter bringing out a magnificent looking gourmet dish at which point the two begin a new conversation

Hey, the formula has worked for the first two movies and I’m generally an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” kind of guy, but a little more variation might have been nice. While it’s true there is a more melancholy, autumnal air in that both men are into their 50s and have begun to suspect that their career aspirations may be passing by the reality of their accomplishments, the basic layout of the film is the same as the other two. It’s like listening to an album with exactly the same cover and layout as two other albums, only the songs are slightly sadder than the first two albums but strikingly similar in melody and lyrics.

The draw for these movies continues to be the byplay between Coogan and Brydon, much of which (I suspect) is improvised. The two snipe at each other in a passive-aggressive manner, but hurl bon mots at one another like grenades. The two have an easy, companionable camaraderie that makes it feel like you’ve dropped by to hang out with a couple of old friends, only they’re eating way better than you are. Suddenly that movie popcorn doesn’t feel quite so gourmet, even with the Parmesan-Garlic powder that has been sprinkled on it.

This is distinctly British and like the other two films is actually a condensed version of a miniseries that was broadcast on British television. Sadly, the complete versions of the shows are not yet available so far as I know in the States; I suspect there are a ton of references ignorant Americans like me will not get. Still, It’s always a good thing when you want more of something rather than less.

The movie leaves open-ended (despite one of the more surprising endings of the series) the possibility that another chapter will be headed our way. The filmmakers are certainly missing The Trip to France and The Trip to Greece, among other places although I wouldn’t mind seeing them in The Trip to America somewhere down the road. Even so these movies, one part comedy, one part travelogue and lots of parts food porn, continue to not overstay their welcome. This is the weakest of the three but it’s still strong enough to make me see where the road takes these two comics next.

REASONS TO GO: The easy camaraderie between Brydon and Coogan continues to be a highlight for the films. The Bowie and Roger Moore sequences are hysterical.
REASONS TO STAY: This is the weakest of the three so far as it feels somewhat formulaic.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity, a hint of sexuality, some adult themes and plenty of food porn.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The song “The Windmills of Your Mind” by Noel Harrison figures in the movie and is played over the end credits; a different version of the song by The King’s Singers was played at the end of the final episode of Coogan’s popular TV series I’m Alan Partridge.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/25/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 83% positive reviews. Metacritic: 66/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Paris Can Wait
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: The Only Living Boy in New York

The Tenth Man (El Rey del Once)

The King of Buenos Aires!

(2016) Drama (Kino Lorber) Alan Sabbagh, Julieta Zyllerberg, Usher Barilka (voice), Elvira Onetto, Adrian Stoppelman, Daniel Droblas, Elisa Carricajo (voice), Dan Breitman, Uriel Rubin, Dalmiro Burman. Directed by Daniel Burman

 

There are those of us who embrace our roots. Then, there are others of us who want to disconnect ourselves from our roots entirely. Much of that has to do with our childhood and how we feel about it. The traditions of our upbringing can be a prison – or set us free entirely.

Ariel (Sabbagh) is an economist currently living in New York but who grew up in El Once, the Jewish quarter of Buenos Aires. He is dating a ballerina (Carricajo) and things are getting serious between them. He is returning home to Buenos Aires to introduce his girl to his father Usher (Barilka) who runs a charitable foundation in El Once, serving the poor of that area and providing them with prescription medicine, clothes, food and even arranging for shelter.

Things start going wrong before he even leaves for the airport. His girlfriend has to stay behind because she’s wangled an audition for a major ballet company, so she will be arriving a few days late. Usher asks Ariel to find a size 46 shoe with Velcro instead of laces for a bed-ridden client of the foundation, and although Ariel searches everywhere, he can’t find shoes with Velcro in the short amount of time that he was allotted by his father, who sprung that on him just hours before he had to board his plane.

Once he gets to town, Usher is nowhere to be found although his Aunt Susy (Onetto) shepherds him inside the foundation which is surrounded by angry clients, looking to get meat for the upcoming Purim celebration; the Foundation has none due to a payment dispute between Usher and Mamuñe, a local butcher. Finally Usher calls and has Ariel deliver the shoes, then go to the apartment of a deceased client to find unused prescriptions to take back to the Foundation to redistribute. He is accompanied by Eva (Zylberberg), an attractive but mute Orthodox Jew whose hand he cannot even shake due to the proscriptions of their brand of the faith. It’s this kind of thing that drove a wedge between Ariel and Usher to begin with.

As the week progresses, things begin to fall apart for Ariel who continues to be avoided by his father and who gets roped into performing errands for the Foundation. However, Ariel begins to be inspired by Eva’s spirit and sweetness, and slowly he begins to succumb to the charm of his old neighborhood. What will this mean for the fractured relationship between father and son, and more to the point, between the son and his faith?

Burman has a history of films that deal with the Jewish faith in Latin America that explore similar subjects as he does here, although not quite in the same way. The early part of the movie is a little bit off-center, even a bit surreal as the two most important people in Ariel’s life – his father and his girlfriend – are nothing more than voices on a cellular phone and he wanders about El Once, a bit lost and befuddled. Gradually, though through the rhythms of the neighborhood and its rituals and particularly through the sweet and gentle Eva (who actually does have a voice), he finds a sense of purpose and connection and that journey is at the heart of the movie.

Sabbagh spends most of the movie on the phone, and that can be fairly boring cinematically speaking but the actor, who resembles Jason Alexander a bit to my mind, pulls it off. He plays Ariel as a fairly low-key individual; there are no histrionics, only a sense of frustration that grows as the movie begins, but the more he becomes involved in the neighborhood and with Eva, the more he changes and finds himself. It’s a stellar performance and one you may not want to miss.

I have to admit I was squirming a bit through the first half of the film but the longer it went on, the more it appealed to me. Burman clearly feels a connection with El Once (he is also a resident of the area) and just as clearly a real affection for it. The movie was filmed in the neighborhood and many of the people who live there show up as extras or in small roles.

Most of the time when we see movies about the Jewish experience, we are seeing it either in New York, Eastern Europe or Israel. Burman’s films provide us a look at what Judaism means in Latin America, a predominantly Catholic region but certainly with a fairly large Jewish population. The movie isn’t necessarily a love letter to El Once, but it certainly plays a role in the film and is a large part of why I liked it so much.

Given the charm of the neighborhood and Ariel’s evolution (or de-evolution from a certain standpoint) this is the kind of movie that generally appeals to me. It’s low-key, charming and provides a look at life somewhere that I probably will never see. Movies like this give us perspective into our own daily lives and even if you’re not Jewish, you will likely find this as heartfelt and warm as I did.

REASONS TO GO: This is the kind of movie that grows on you as it plays. Sabbagh plays it low-key and gives a tremendous performance.
REASONS TO STAY: Some might find this a bit overly out there, particularly at the beginning.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some sexual content.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The scene filmed in the Mad About Fabrics store was filmed in the actual store with the owner of the store playing himself. Usher Barilka, who runs the charitable foundation in the area that the one in the film is based on, provides his voice as Ariel’s father.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/6/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 73% positive reviews. Metacritic: 66/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Putzel
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: The Secret Life of Pets

Rebound

Gag me with a gag.

(2014) Horror (Look At Me) Ashley James, Mark Scheibmeir, Julia Beth Stern, Kevin Bulla, Wes O’Lee, Brett Johnston, Bruce Cole-Edwards, Dan Sutter, Liz Bauer, Ali Williams. Directed by Megan Freels

One of the worst things that can happen to you in a relationship is being cheated upon. The feeling of betrayal is overwhelming; it attacks your sense of self-worth and makes you question yourself – what did I do wrong? – as opposed to blaming the person who made the decision to cheat in the first place. It hurts everyone it happens to, but some people take it harder than others.

Claire (James) has felt the sting. An aspiring actress struggling to find roles in Los Angeles, she comes home one afternoon to find her boyfriend of three years (Johnston) in the throes of passion with a co-worker (Williams) who will go down in film history as having the bitchiest smile ever recorded.

Claire is quite naturally devastated. After some soul searching (and tearful showers), she decides that it is time to cut her losses and go back home to Chicago. She talks things over with her best friend Shannon (Stern) who wonders if she’s not just running away from her problems and advises her to think of it more as a vacation and less as a permanent move, but Claire is adamant. A road trip back to Chicago it is and the opportunity to take stock of her life and begin anew.

Even with the best of intentions things can go devastatingly wrong and in Claire’s case, they turn from bad to worse. An encounter with a homeless woman (Bauer) leaves Claire shaken; she also manages to lose her cell phone. And of course when she’s in the middle of nowhere later that evening, her car breaks down. A sympathetic driver (O’Lee) picks her up and takes her to the local mechanic, Eddie (Scheibmeir) who diagnoses the problem as a timing belt. The bill is more than Claire can afford, so she manages to talk the handsome but shy mechanic down to a little less by using her natural charm. The part won’t be available until the next day, so Claire will need to spend the night in the flea speck of a town.

Eddie drops her off at the local bar where she gets something to eat and drink, courtesy of a none-too-friendly bartender (Bulla) and samples the less than savory citizenry. That’s when her eyesight begins to blur and before long Claire is in a nightmarish situation that makes being cheated on look like good news.

Freels who also wrote the movie takes a very simple concept and makes it compelling. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles here – this is what is called in the industry a micro-budgeted film – and they really aren’t needed. Everything revolves around Claire’s emotional breakdown and Murphy’s Law made horror film high concept.

On the negative side, the dialogue can be a bit clunky; particularly the conversation between Claire and Shannon which at times didn’t sound like the way two people naturally talk. There is also a bit of overacting in a melodramatic sense, and the music kind of underscores it; Freels’ approach of “less is more” would have done the movie good in the music department. The good news is that the film gets a lot better once Claire hits the road which is pretty early on.

This might be classified by some as torture porn but there is kind of a film noir vibe which is unexpected and welcome. Not a noir of the Bogart kind mind you, but more of a Robert Mitchum sort. This isn’t Cape Fear but it’s a distant cousin.

And now, a few words about the film’s ending. One of my big problems with indie films in general is that often the ending is a disappointment. Not so here. The ending is strong and unexpected, but logical. It’s what makes me think that Freels has a great deal of promise as a filmmaker and writer.

This isn’t for the faint of heart and there are some fairly gruesome scenes here, but all in all this is a solid debut feature for Freels, who has been a producer of films for a few years now. Her first stint in the director’s chair is flawed as you might expect, but promising. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be checking out this movie after she makes one that hits it big.

WHY RENT THIS: Uncomfortable but delicious ending.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Melodramatic acting. Clunky dialogue.
FAMILY VALUES: Violence (some gruesome), sexuality and profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Freels is the granddaughter of the legendary writer Elmore Leonard.
NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: Not available.
SITES TO SEE: Amazon, Vimeo,  Google Play
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Hostel
FINAL RATING: 4.5/10
NEXT: Straight Outta Compton

NIghtingale (HBO)

Happy wife, happy life.

(2015) Drama (HBO) David Oyelowo, Barlow Jacobs, Heather Storm. Directed by Elliott Lester

It isn’t often that we here at Cinema365 review movies made for television, even for HBO, perhaps the most prestigious maker of television movies. While ’tis true that Nightingale got a limited and minuscule theatrical release both here and abroad, this movie, which continues to play on the cable giant and is also available on such streaming/downloading services like Amazon Prime, iTunes and Vudu, demands attention.

Peter Snowden (Oyelowo) has just done a very bad thing. He has brutally murdered his mother. She is a Bible-thumping, domineering woman who constantly treats her son, who served in the Army in the Middle East, as a child, refusing to allow him to invite an army buddy, Edward, over for dinner. That appears to be the last straw.

Except that Peter isn’t what you’d call the most reliable witness. He has anger issues, is a pathological liar and clearly delusional. He is falling apart and his matricidal actions have sent him spinning further out of control down the darkest path a man can take.

This is a one-man show, depicting Peter within the confines of his home. He records video blog segments, speaks to his sister on his cellphone and at times attempts to wheedle Edward into coming over, generally speaking to Edward’s wife Gloria who doesn’t want Peter within a hundred miles of her husband (and for good reason).

To Peter, Edward is more than a friend – “I would do anything for that man,” he declares and judging by his level of obsession towards him we can believe it. As the movie progresses we discover that Peter’s fondness for Edward may go beyond Army buddies; there is certainly some romantic and even sexual overtones that are never overtly stated, but are clearly there.

What makes this film work is Oyelowo’s brilliant performance. Snubbed by Oscar for his work in Selma which by all rights he should have gotten at least a nomination for, he has been at last embraced by Emmy for which he has justifiably received a nomination. We are put in a fairly confined space with Oyelowo and he has to hold our interest for 90 minutes essentially all by himself, and he does so superbly. There is a great deal of nuance, from the fits of rage, the moments of sadness and loneliness, and the calm near the end when events are spiraling towards their inevitable conclusion.

Of course, it’s not just a crazy war veteran talking to himself, although there are moments of that. We hear him trying to deflect concern of his sister and his mother’s friends from church who all want to know where she is; their increasing suspicions drive Peter further around the bend. Besides the phone conversations, he talks to a folding mirror in which his reflection is refracted into three separate images, an overt symbol of his splintering mind, and often he addresses his dead mother as if she is still with him. At other times he feels crushing guilt for what he has done.

This is an emotional roller coaster ride, the intensity of which might catch some by surprise and others may be too much to handle. The filmmakers pull no punches; they make no judgment on Peter (and in fact at times we feel sympathy for him) but only present his deeds and his words for review. Certainly we recoil in horror at what he does to his own mother (thankfully, all off-screen) and at his attitudes towards those who would keep him away from Edward who more and more seems to resemble some sort of life preserver to his psyche which is clearly going under.

This is very much like watching a car accident; you’re horrified but you can’t look away. If I have a quibble with the movie, it is that at times it is more acting exercise than film, but the acting is so extraordinary that you can forgive the movie its flaws.

We have reviewed documentaries that HBO has created, and this and other films have shown an increasing willingness from HBO to exhibit their films in theaters, which of course is an entirely different experience than seeing their films at home. This is a movie that works perfectly well on the home screen and in fact, that may be a better medium for a film like this. Regardless, Oyelowo’s performance is worth viewing all by itself; it is one of the finest you will see in a theater or at home this year.

REASONS TO GO: An exceptional, Emmy-nominated performance by Oyelowo. Realistic and intense.
REASONS TO STAY: More acting exercise than movie.
FAMILY VALUES: Adult themes. Some foul language.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Very loosely based on a case that occurred in Illinois.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/9/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 81% positive reviews. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: ‘night, Mother
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: Trainwreck

Taken 3

Liam Neeson manages to keep a straight face while reassuring Forest Whitaker his beard looks okay.

(2015) Action (20th Century Fox) Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace, Dougray Scott, Sam Spruell, Don Harvey, Dylan Bruno, Leland Orser, David Warshofsky, Jon Gries, Jonny Weston, Andrew Borba, Judi Beecher, Andrew Howard, Cedric Cirotteau, Catherine Dyer, Jimmy Palumbo, Nazareth Dairian, Stefanie Kleine. Directed by Olivier Megaton

Sequels essentially come in two varieties; cash grabs made to capitalize on the popularity of the original film, or story extensions which continue the story from the first. Often the second kind can be an effective money maker for the studios, while the first kind can occasionally be surprisingly resonant with audiences. Generally speaking, however, all sequels are made – without exception – because the studios or the producers believe that there is a market demand for them.

The first two Taken films were very successful. In them Bryan Mills (Neeson), a former special ops military sort, sees his daughter Kim (Grace) kidnapped in the first film by sex traffickers and goes to Paris to kill everyone who looks at him cross-eyed and rescue his daughter; the second film has the ex-wife (Janssen) kidnapped in a revenge scenario by the dad of the kidnappers in the first film which leads to much of Istanbul being depopulated.

In this one nobody gets kidnapped. Ex-wifey is murdered and Bryan framed for it. No exotic locations, no family vacations, just Bryan tearing through Los Angeles looking to find out who done it and who is going to get his ass kicked all over Southern California. With a persistent detective (Whitaker) chasing him, ex-wifey’s husband (Scott, taking over for Xander Berkeley) trying to assist him, Russian mobsters led by the sadistic Oleg Malenkov (Spruill) slithering about, his buddies Garcia (Harvey), Smith (Bruno) and Sam (Orser) lending their own particular sets of skills when needed and Kim generally getting in the way, it’s going to be a very bad day in SoCal until Bryan gets to the person responsible for all his woes.

Now, before you wonder about the size of the rating I gave this, keep in mind that you don’t go and see an action movie for deep personal insights, innovative storytelling techniques or snappy dialogue; while sometimes any or all of those occur in an action film, it’s icing on the cake when they do. Mainly what we go to see action films for is to turn off our brains, sit back with our ice cold soda and buttered popcorn and bliss out to car crashes, flying bullets and villainous asses being properly kicked. We want to cheer for the hero, boo the villain and leave the theater feeling that all is right with the world.

It’s a fairly low bar to set from a certain perspective but there is absolutely nothing wrong with forgetting your troubles for a couple of hours in the multiplex and this is the kind of tonic you’re looking for if that’s what you’re after. Neeson is the most personable action star working at the moment with perhaps the sole exception of Dwayne Johnson and he certainly gives us everything we’re looking for in an action hero in all three of the Taken movies, this one included. Bryan is kind of a sweetheart most of the time, showing up at his college-aged daughters apartment a few days before her birthday with a gigantic teddy bear in an effort to be unpredictable. His effort fails miserably but throughout the movie he seems like a genuinely affable guy you’d want to shoot pool with.

You’d also want him at your back cracking skulls with the pool cue if necessary and while Neeson is in his 60s and moves like he’s in his 60s during a foot chase early on in the movie, he gets all the other stuff dialed in perfectly. He doesn’t have the physique of an Arnold Schwarzenegger or the fighting techniques of a Jet Li or even the hangdog smartass attitude of a Bruce Willis but he sort of fits in the mold of a nice guy with skills who has been pushed where you should never push him.

The supporting cast, for the most part, is all right. Whitaker, a fine actor in his own right, is full of idiosyncrasies and tics and business that occasionally distracts from the matters at hand but he is a very smart performer who knows that he is supposed to be the Sherlock Holmes here and Whitaker would make a crackin’ Sherlock in my opinion.

What every action film has to nail are the action sequences – the car chases, the fights, the gun battles. Even if everything else doesn’t work a movie of this genre can be redeemed by its action sequences. For the most part, the sequences here are well put together, particularly the assault on the Russian mobster’s fortress-like apartment near the end of the movie. However, it also must be said that there’s nothing in the action sequences that particularly stands out.

While I admire producer/writer Luc Besson for leaving the mold of the first two movies and going in another direction, the one he took was a path too well-traveled by Hollywood. We’ve seen the hero framed for a murder he didn’t commit and then have to battle bad guys and cops alike to clear his name how many thousands of times, and frankly this doesn’t add anything to that tired old genre. However, it doesn’t disgrace itself either.

This is the weakest of the trilogy if only by a little bit but it still has enough going for it to be worth seeing if you’re into action movies and particularly the sort that Neeson tends to do. While so many of the twists here are horribly telegraphed and if you are unable to figure out who’s behind all this you really need a year or two of remedial movie watching, it still bears a bit of attention although chances are you won’t remember much of it twenty minutes after the credits start rolling.

REASONS TO GO: Nice action sequences. Neeson is a charismatic performer.
REASONS TO STAY: Very cliche story. Neeson beginning to show his age in some of the more physical aspects of the role.
FAMILY VALUES: There’s a little bit of strong language but mostly, lots of shooting, stabbing, punching, kicking and general mayhem.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Although Neeson uses a number of different firearms in the movie, he is a staunch advocate for gun control in real life.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/27/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 10% positive reviews. Metacritic: 25/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Three Days to Kill
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Oscar Gold begins!