New Releases for the Week of September 17, 2021

CRY MACHO

(Warner Brothers) Clint Eastwood, Dwight Yoakam, Eduardo Minett, Fernanda Urrejola, Natalia Traven, Horacio Garcia Rojas. Directed by Clint Eastwood

An ex-rodeo star and former horse breeder gets a job from a former boss to bring his son hoe from Mexico. The journey is unexpectedly challenging as they take the back roads of Texas in 1979. Could this be Eastwood’s last hurrah? Maybe.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Wide (also on HBO Max)
Rating: PG-13 (for language and thematic elements)

The Alpinist

(Roadside Attractions) Marc-André Leclerc, Brette Harrington, Alex Honnold, Reinhold Messner. A 33-year-old Canadian who makes some of the boldest free ascents in mountaineering history, shuns the limelight. When a documentary crew approaches him to tell his story, a tug-of-war ensues between the needs of the filmmakers and his desire to capture the purest essence of the sport.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13 (for some strong language and brief drug content)

Blue Bayou

(Focus) Justin Chon, Alicia Vikander, Mark O’Brien, Linh Dan Pham. A Korean adoptee who grew up in the South, is happily married and stepdad to an adored daughter, but he could lose everything as he finds out that me may end up being deported from the only country he has ever known.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for language throughout and some violence)

Copshop

(Open Road) Gerard Butler, Frank Grillo, Toby Huss, Ryan O’Nan. A wily con-artist on the run from a lethal assassin decides to hide out in the office of a small-town police department, where an unsuspecting rookie cop will be caught up in the crossfire.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Wide
Rating: R (for strong/bloody violence, and pervasive language)

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

(Searchlight) Jessica Chastain, Andrew Garfield, Cherry Jones, Fredric Lehne. The rise, fall and ultimate redemption of Tammy Faye Bakker who went from the wife of a disgraced televangelist (and national joke) to advocate for AIDS patients and LGBTQ Christians in general. Chastain is getting early Oscar buzz for her performance here.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, Enzian
Rating: PG-13 (for sexual content and drug abuse)

Lady of the Manor

(Lionsgate) Melanie Lynskey, Judy Greer, Justin Long, Ryan Philippe. A stoner-slacker working as a costumed tour guide in a historic mansion – portraying the former lady of the house – is surprised when the ghost of the REAL Lady Wadsworth shows up and warns her to mend her ways.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Supernatural Comedy
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grille Sunset Walk
Rating: R (for language throughout, sexual material and drug use)

My Name is Pauli Murray

(Amazon) Pauli Murray, Patricia Bell-Scott, Dolores Chandler, Brittney Cooper. Before Rosa Parks, before Gloria Steinem there was Pauli Murray, a black gender-fluid attorney raised in the segregated South who was a pioneering activist who helped shape some of the most important social issues of his day, and whose work continues to resonate now.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: CMX Plaza Café Orlando
Rating: PG-13 (for disturbing/violent images and thematic elements)

COMING TO VIRTUAL CINEMA/VOD:

Best Sellers
Black Power
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
Hudson (Tuesday)
The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain
Last Night in Rozzie
Little Vampire (Tuesday)
The Mad Women’s Ball
Night of the Animated Dead (Tuesday)
The Nowhere Inn
Prisoners of the Ghostland
Savior for Sale: Da Vinci’s Lost Masterpiece? (Tuesday)
The Subnormal: A British Scandal
Uprising
The Wonderful: Stories from the Space Station

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Best Sellers
Copshop
Cry Macho
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain
Last Night in Rozzie
The Nowhere Inn
Prisoners of the Ghostland

The Iceman

Michael Shannon has a unique way of firing his agents.

(2012) True Crime Drama (Millennium) Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, Chris Evans, Ray Liotta, David Schwimmer, Robert Davi James Franco, Stephen Dorff, Danny Abeckaser, John Ventimiglia, Ryan O’Nan, McKaley Miller, Megan Sherrill, Hector Hank, Zoran Radanovich, Shira Vilensky, Kelly Lind, Erin Cumings, Ashlynn Ross, Weronika Rosati, Christa Campbell. Directed by Ariel Vromen

It’s always the quiet ones, the ones who lose it and go on a killing spree. Contract killers are another case altogether. These are men with ice in their veins, able to kill without remorse or emotion. It’s a job for them, no less upsetting than someone who sells cars for a living.

Richie Kuklinski (Shannon) is a family man, married to the beautiful but volatile Deborah (Ryder). He works dubbing films – cartoons he tells his wife but porn films in reality. The mobster who runs the porn operation Richie is working for – Roy DeMeo (Liotta) – is impressed by Richie’s coolness under fire, so he decides to take Richie on as a contract killer. Roy and his buddy Josh Rosenthal (Schwimmer) take Richie out and order him to kill some random homeless guy which he does.

This is the start for a whole new career for Richie as he ices guys on Roy’s say-so. When a coke deal is botched by Josh who kills the dealers involved, Roy is forced to lay low for awhile, leaving Richie unemployed. As money gets tighter and Richie’s temper gets more volatile, Richie hooks up with Mr. Freezy (Evans), a freelance contract killer who works out of an ice cream truck. He teaches Richie the proper use of cyanide and the trick of freezing bodies and then thawing them before dumping them, throwing police off on the correct time of death. It is for the latter practice that Richie is given the nickname “The Iceman.”

When DeMeo finds out about Richie’s new freelancing scheme, he goes ballistic which doesn’t bode well for Richie’s future state of health. When Roy brings in Leonard Marks (Davi) from one of the big crime families in New York, it looks like Richie’s days are numbered but Roy and Marks have forgotten one prime directive – never ever piss off a contract killer.

This is pretty standard stuff for the true mob killer movie. Yes, Richie Kuklinski was a real person who claims to have killed between 100-250 people during his heyday from 1948 to 1986. He was also a family man who’s arrest stunned his neighborhood.

While the story remains pretty typical, the acting here is superb. Shannon, an Oscar nominee, shows that there are many more of those on the way (and likely a statuette somewhere down the line) with a powerful performance here which is doubly commendable because he doesn’t have a lot to work with. The real Richie was by all accounts a strong, silent type who wasn’t much of a communicator. He was more or less a psychopath who was paid for crimes he probably would have committed eventually in any case. Shannon gives Richie at least some personality, with cold eyes that erupt into volcanic fury when pushed. It’s a marvelous juxtaposition that gives the character depth that the real Richie probably didn’t have.

Ryder, who has been an infrequent screen presence of late, is absolutely amazing as the willfully oblivious Deborah. She knows that her husband is hiding something horrible, but chooses to ignore it. There’s nothing wrong if she doesn’t know there’s anything wrong, so she chooses to ignore it until it’s right in her face.

Schwimmer is the anti-Ross here, stocky with a hippie ponytail, a 70s porn star moustache and a mean streak, although there is a bit of Ross-like nebbishness as he begins to realize he is in far over his head. Liotta gets a standard Ray Liotta crime figure and does with it what he usually does, which also adds to the overall quality of the picture.

In fact the performances are what makes the movie. This is strongly acted throughout, from the barely-recognizable Evans to Franco in a brief cameo. It’s Shannon however who carries the movie and he does so with ease. He may well be this generation’s De Niro – not a traditional leading man sort but who elevates every movie he’s in. While Vromen is no Scorsese and this no Goodfellas it nonetheless doesn’t disgrace the genre created by that film. In fact, it’s a solid follower in it’s footsteps.

REASONS TO GO: A strong performance by Michael Shannon.

REASONS TO STAY: Doesn’t really add much to the true life mob movie genre.

FAMILY VALUES:  A good deal of violence and a bit of gore, lots and lots of foul language and some sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: James Franco was originally cast as Kuklinski but had to take the smaller role as Marty Freeman instead; Maggie Gyllenhaal was likewise cast as Deborah Pellicotti but had to drop out due to her pregnancy and Winona Ryder got the part.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/21/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 67% positive reviews. Metacritic: 61/100; solid good reviews here.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Kill the Irishman

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: The History of Future Folk

The Dry Land

Ryan O’Nan and America Ferrera look towards an uncertain future in the Heartland.

(2010) Drama (Freestyle) Ryan O’Nan, America Ferrera, Melissa Leo, Jason Ritter, Wilmer Valderrama, Ethan Suplee, June Diane Raphael, Diego Klattenhoff, Ana Claudia Talancon, Evan Jones, Zion Sandoval, Benito Martinez, Barry Shabaka Henley. Directed by Ryan Piers Williams

 

Some see war as a grand exercise in duty and honor, a means of achieving personal glory or perhaps advancing a cause through battle. Those of that mindset are not the ones usually on the front lines. Those warriors who actually fight, who risk life and limb are the ones who pay the price – even if they survive.

James (O’Nan) has returned home to Texas from his tour of duty a damaged soul. His body is OK, but the trauma of surviving unscathed sometimes is just as bad as the trauma of suffering grave injury. He can’t stop thinking about an ambush in which his buddy Henry (Klattenhoff) got hurt.

His wife Sarah (Ferrera) is only happy to have her man home at long last but it doesn’t take long for her to notice that he’s not the man who left for war all those months ago. He’s changed; he has become distant and brooding. She tries her hardest to break through; his best friend Michael (Ritter) tries as well but to no avail.

He takes a job in his father-in-law’s (Martinez) slaughterhouse but the scenes of death and butchery only serve to remind him of the carnage he witnessed in Afghanistan. He also begins to get suspicious of Sarah and Michael, wondering if they have a different agenda than his well-being.

James starts turning towards people who might have some frame of reference in understanding him, like his combat buddy Raymond Gonzales (Valderrama) who has returned home to a neighboring Texas town as well. Raymond is a volatile powder keg who is steadfast in his loyalty to his friends but with an unbelievably short fuse when it comes to everyone else. Together they decide on the spur of the moment to go visit Henry in the VA hospital. That meeting has unexpected consequences that lead to both James and Raymond going in unexpected directions – and Sarah may end up being caught in the crossfire.

The return of veterans home from war has been fodder for Hollywood for ages and none did it better than The Best Years of Our Lives which in essence set the template for movies like this one. In all honesty, I’m not sure what sort of experience Williams has with the military – whether he himself served or someone close to him – but he has the feel of it right.

Williams captures the camaraderie between brothers – as those who serve under fire inevitably are – with brevity and depth. There isn’t a lot of posturing here, the kind of lovefest you might find between drunks which is often how Hollywood portrays it. Instead there’s that simple, quiet knowledge that something has been shared that nobody else can understand unless they were there.

It helps that his cast does an excellent job here. There are no histrionics, no grand speechifying – just people trying to live their lives as best they can, keeping their heads down as much as possible and in general just getting on with things. It’s a quintessinally American outlook, the U.S. version of the stiff upper lip and Williams captures the attitude well.

I’ve been a big fan of Ferrera since I saw her in Real Woman Have Curves during Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper’s Floating Film Festival several years back and this might be her best performance to date. Sarah is a complicated character, a good woman who wants to be a good wife but one who has been alone for a long time and who now finds herself alone even though her husband is back home. It’s a heartbreaking performance and the emotional center of the movie.

O’Nan plays James as a cypher who keeps his emotions close to his vest. It’s not always an easy task to figure him out, but I think that it’s an honest portrayal; James should be difficult to peg. It gives the viewer a sense of what his family and friends are going through. It’s not a sympathetic performance maybe but it is a gutsy one.

Leo is one of my favorite actresses today and even though her part is small and very much in the vein of part she has been cast in seemingly every time out, she at least gives it enough subtle shading to make it unique. Ritter is showing signs of breaking out into legitimate stardom; he could be one performance away from achieving it.

The bleak and barren Texas landscapes are fine companions to the brutal images of the slaughterhouse. Some of those images might be disturbing to the sensitive; I understand the need for them though, although I might have used them a bit more sparingly. A little brutality goes a long way in a movie as understated as this one is.

Not everything works. Some of the more talky scenes seem to be at odds with the overall feel of the movie. The Dry Land is at its best when it is quiet. This isn’t a movie about bombast and noise; it is a movie about people quietly and perhaps desperately trying to cling to something while the world strips them of their dignity and even their humanity. There are some powerful messages to be had here when the movie is at its best; I would have wished for some more consistency  but there is enough worthy material to warrant keeping an eye out on Williams as  a potentially great filmmaker in the nascent stages of his career.

WHY RENT THIS: Taut performances from nearly all the cast. Some tremendous images, disturbing and otherwise.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Uneven. The reach exceeds the grasp but just by a little bit.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a good deal of bad language, some sexuality and violence as well as some disturbing situations.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: A number of the lead actors are TV sitcom veterans (Ferrera in “Ugly Betty,” Valderrama in “That ’70s Show” and Suplee in “My Name is Earl”).

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $11,777 on an unreported production budget; I’m thinking this wasn’t profitable.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Brothers

FINAL RATING: 6.5/10

NEXT: Wild Target