#if you don’t see a movie opening weekend you’re basically guaranteed to have it spoiled

[yelena-bellova]

I made it exactly six days without getting a Dune 2 spoiler 🙃

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior September 25, 2020 – New York Film Festival, THE WAY I SEE IT, KAJILLIONAIRE, STUNTWOMEN, MISBEHAVIOUR and Lots More!

A mite bit late this week, but it’s another busy week of movies though considerably less than usual in terms of ones I have any interest in watching. Oh, wait, did I say that out loud? Yup, we’re getting to that point after six months, even though I did go out to Jersey City to see The New Mutants on Saturday. It was fine. I didn’t hate it. Josh Boone didn’t rape my childhood.

Before we get to the new releases, we’ll start with the New York Film Festival (NYFF), since that just kicked off on Thursday night with Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock, which is one of five relatively shorter movies he’s made as part of his “Small Axe” anthology that will eventually air on Amazon Prime. Maybe they’ll get some kind of theatrical release then but who knows? I’ve always kind of been up and down on McQueen’s work, loving his early movie Hunger, but then being mixed on his next few films (including the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave) but then loving Widows from a couple years back. There is no question that McQueen is a true auteur in terms of filmmaking, although sometimes he loses track of the storytelling in order to get artsy, and that’s the case with Lovers Rock. It essentially takes place in and around a “Blues Night,” basically a rowdy house party fully of music and dancing and singing, but as much about the meeting of Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn’s Martha and Micheal (Blue Story) Ward’s Franklyn at this party. It’s a fairly short “film” of just over an hour that beautifully captures the music and dance of the time, although it also gets a little too “arty” as tends to be McQueen’s wont. I don’t want to spoil too much about what happens, but I think mileage will vary on this one.

There are two more chapters to be shown at NYFF, spaced out by a week each-- Mangrove and Red, White and Blue – and I’m interested enough in what McQueen has to say about this West Indies heritage and some of the stories he’s telling within the series.

Other movies that have screened for critics already including Sam Pollard’s doc MLK/FBI, which as one can probably can figure out is about the FBI’s attempt to discredit King and take him down as leader of the protesting that led to the eventual passing of the Civil Rights Act. I feel like I knew a lot of what was in this movie from other films, and I didn’t really find that this added much towards my appreciation of King than what already existed. Honestly, I liked Pollard’s other film, Mr. Soul!, which he co-directed with that subject’s daughter.There just feels to be something more personal there compared to the rather clinical MLK/FBI.

At least that has a much stronger narrative than Song Fang’s The Calming, starring Xi Qi, which is the type of movie I almost definitely would have walked out of a press screening annoyed that I was dragged up to Lincoln Center, because it’s very much like some of Hong Sang-Soo’s worst work or some of the work of Zhangke Jia, both who regularly play the New York Film Festival. Sure enough, Zhangke produced this film, so that explains that.

I decided not to even bother with Cristi Puiu’s three-plus hour period piece Malmkrog. I was a fan of his earlier films The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Aurora, but there just isn’t enough time in the day to see if this one goes anywhere. It’s the kind of thing that I could oddly justify sit in a movie theater and watch, but sitting at my laptop? No, thank you.

I also ended up watching Pedro Almodovar’s English language debut, the short film The Human Voice, starring Tilda Swinton as a woman who buys an axe at a hardware store and walks around a colorful and elaborate set with a dog, and then she gets into a long dramatic conversation (mostly yelling) over the phone with her lover or ex-lover. So yeah, basically a great showcase for Swinton, who we already know as a fabulous actor, and for the movie’s production design and cinematography. I guess I’m a little mixed on this. At least it’s only 30 minutes long?

There are a number of other festivals going on, including IFP Week in New York, which used to be one of my go-tos in terms of screening more obscure stuff between TIFF and NYFF – it’s where I saw Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy one year and a few other cool movies since. But over the past few years, it seems to have less and less of interest, and I’ve barely paid attention to what’s in the cards with its shift to virtual. Either way, it’s going on now and through Friday.

Texas has two film festivals starting up this week, the more prominent one probably being Celebration of Fantastic Fest, which as can be expected is a virtual version of the annual Fantastic Fest, which I’ve heard is one of the best genre festivals in the country, showing some of the best of previous fests’ midnight tracks as well as many premieres.  It will kick off on Thursday with Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, which Neon will release a week from Friday, and then there’s a combination of new and vintage genre and horror films. You can see the full schedule here, as it runs for one full week and then through October 8, closing with Jim Cummings’ The Wolf of Snow Hollow. The opening and closing night films are at the Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane, but all the other movies being offered free to anyone in the country, and then there are a few events like the annual Fantastic Feud, which is available to watch worldwide. Some of the film’s to try to catch include Chad Faust’s Girl, starring Bella Thorne; French filmmakers Ludovic Boukherma & Zoran Boukherma’s Teddy, and Amelia Moses’ Bloodthirsty.

Not too far away in Waco, Texas, the Deep in the Heart Film Festival runs for the next couple weekends. Nothing really jumped out from this year’s line-up, but only because I haven’t seen any of the movies being streamed. What’s great about regional film festivals like this one is that they’re “discovery fests” where you can go and watch a lot of smaller indies by filmmakers who you may not hear about since they don’t have “ins” at the big festivals where they’re guaranteed placement.

Before we get to this week’s new movies, I wanted to draw special attention to a movie from last week, I didn’t get a chance to watch before posting the column, and that’s Dawn Porter’s THE WAY I SEE IT (Focus Features), an amazing doc about former White House chief photographer Pete Souza, whose amazing career working in the White House under Presidents Reagan and Obama led him to becoming a conscionable objector to the current Trump regime by using social media to throw shade. In fact, Souza’s most recent photo book is called Shade, and it collects his social media posts and tweets of some of his amazing photos of Obama during his 8 years in the White House. This is just an amazing film from the director of John Lewis: Good Trouble, which came out earlier this year, and this one does just as much to show Obama’s humanity (and actually, the fact that Reagan had a lighter side we rarely saw in public) but also to contrast those two Presidents with the monster we have in the White House now. I immediately bought Souza’s book after seeing it, and I’m hoping more people will learn about him through this film. This might already be gone from its limited theatrical release by the time you read it, but it will air on MSNBC on October 9 at 10PM.

Because I like to start or continue with the good, I will follow up one great doc with another one, and that’s April Wright’s STUNTWOMEN: THE UNTOLD HOLLYWOOD STORY (Shout Studios), which is fairly self-explanatory. It builds on the ideas in Mollie Gregory’s 2015 book and has interviews and anecdotes from some of the youngest and newest in the stunt field to some of the legends, like Jeannie Epper from the Wonder Woman and Bionic Woman TV shows, and Donna Keegan, who has been almost all of the coolest ‘80s and ‘90s action movies including Robocop, True Lies and others. Narrated by Michelle Rodriguez, the movie mixes the actual stuntwomen like Amy Johnston, Jennifer Caputo, Debbie and Donna Evans and Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez with a few directors like Paul Feig and Anne Fletcher. (Before you ask, Zoe Bell is mentioned but doesn’t actually talk about herself or her career on camera.) I just really enjoyed hearing these stories and learning more about a profession I really don’t know much about.  I definitely recommend this doc to anyone who wants to know more about film history and the behind-the-scenes stuff. (I also wrote a feature on this movie with interviews with three of the stuntwomen from the movie over on Below the Line.)

Focus Features is also releasing Miranda July’s new movie KAJILLIONAIRE, presumably at one point on PVOD but now theatrically as well after picking it up at Sundance where there were rave reviews for it. It stars Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger (yes, that one) and Evan Rachel Wood as a family of thieves who are always planning their next grift to get the $1,500 for their overdue rent. It’s then that they meet Gina Rodriguez’s Melanie, and bring her into their plans, much to the chagrin of Wood’s “Old Dolio,” (Yes, that’s the name of her character – don’t ask!), who already has issues with her parents not showing her the love a child usually expects.  

You know, I absolutely loved July’s earlier Sundance film You and Me and Everybody We Know, so hearing that she was making a heist movie and one with such an interesting cast definitely made me curious about Kajillionaire, which got absolute raves out of this year’s Sundance. It just sounded like it could be very cool, and I genuinely have been a fan of both Evans and Jenkins for a long time. I wasn’t nearly as familiar with Rodriguez’s work on Jane the Virgin, but I definitely became a bigger fan of her after this movie.

If you’re familiar with July’s other work, you know that she’s first and foremost an artist and maybe can be considered a bit of a performance artist with film being just one of her mediums. Being familiar with some of her past work might prepare you for how strange Kajillionaire is, especially in the set-up when we meet the Dyne family – Robert, Theresa and “Old Dolio” (ugh) – and we learn about their suitably quirky lifestyle of trying to con people out of money in order to pay their aggravated landlord Stovik (Mark Ivanir).  When we meet them, they’re three months past due, and Stovik has had enough, so they have to come up with a quick scheme. “Old Dolio” has an idea to scam an airline, and during this plan, they meet Rodriguez’s bubbly Melanie, who is keen on joining this strange family, for one reason. Robert seems more interested in Melanie for sexual reasons.

Going into Kajillionaire realizing how strange July tends to go with her material – whether it’s the Dyne’s living space or their general behavior – I still had trouble getting past not only the name of Evans’ character but her entire dour, emotionless and ultimately monotone performance. (Imagine Evans auditioning for the role of Bill or Ted in a female remake, and that’s her character.)  Evans is such a vibrant performer and maybe she wanted to play down her looks that are played up on HBO’s Westworld, but this character goes so far into the world of July’s headspace that I’m not sure who could possibly relate to her. As with much of July’s work, there are elements that people can relate to, possibly the way Evans’ character doesn’t feel the love from her parents that they immediately give to Melanie, as well as the sapphic bond that develops between the two younger women, but it’s all wrapped up in the most cockamamie attempt at a weird remake of The Grifters possible. Except that the Dynes are really bad scam artists, and the movie as a whole never really goes anywhere.

On the other hand, Rodriguez is almost the polar opposite of Evans, being vibrant and with a big personality and so many more layers, and she almost saves the movie at times. Otherwise, I had high hopes for Kajillionaire and was extremely disappointed, because July has yet to deliver on that earlier film I loved so much, and this is no different.

Honestly, I have no idea why Brad Pitt’s Plan B, let alone Focus Features, shelled out money for this movie thinking it might make them money, as there’s just nothing sellable about it… not the cast, not the premise and certainly not the overall tone. I guess this will be one I will never figure out. (Even so, if you like Jenkins, at least there’s another movie with him out this week, but that one isn’t much better unfortunately.)

On the other hand, one of the nice surprises of the week was Philippa Lowthorpe’s MISBEHAVIOUR (Shout! Factory), starring Keira Knightley as Sally Alexander, a young woman going to university who falls in with the Women’s Liberation Movement of London and their plots to disrupt the 1970 Miss World competition due to the way it depicts women. The movie also stars Jessie Buckley as one of the pluckier young women trying to take down the “patriarchy,” Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Miss Grenada, Rhys Ifans as Eric Morley, who runs Miss World with his wife Julia (Keeley Hawes) and… here’s where it gets weird… Greg Kinnear as Bob Hope.

As far as the latter goes, the movie opens with Kinnear’s Hope performing for the troops in Vietnam for the USO, and I honestly had no idea it was Kinnear, nor did I realize it until about Hope’s third appearance and I finally looked it up and realized it w as him.

But Hope is a very small part of the movie that focuses on three specific women, all real people, as played by Knightley, Buckley and Mbatha-Raw.  Alexander is a divorced young woman with a daughter who is trying to get through life with some help from her disapproving mother, but she’s also adamant about being able to break through the glass wall and meeting Buckley’s Jo Robinson and her group of rebellious young women gives Alexander the motivation to do something.

On the one hand, Misbehaviour is a quaint British period piece, much like a lot of Knightley’s previous films, but it’s also another important story from the struggle of women to get equal rights that seems appropriately-timed to current times. It’s as pretty amazing story what the Womens Lib movement got up to in terms of trying to hijack the Miss World competition – watch the videos, this really did happen, though slightly modified – where young women were literally treated like eye candy or meat. What I particularly enjoyed was that the movie didn’t just focus on Alexander or Robinson, but actually oscillated from the various characters in the story as they would come together on the fateful night.

I was already a fan of the three female leads, so seeing them in a movie together was quite grand, and while Kinnear may have been oddly-cast as Hope, the movie isn’t really about him. I actually liked seeing Ifans playing a very different character, more boisterous and with a different accent, as he adds to what ended up being a fairly entertaining movie that deals with a lot of different things, including the controversy over having a white and black contestant from South Africa decades before Apartheid was abolished.

Philippa Lowthorpe, best known for The Other Boleyn Girl, does an amazing job pulling all of these pictures together but never losing sight of the real women who are being portrayed and the amazing story they had to tell. Misbehaviour is a great example of how a message movie can be done in a thoroughly entertaining way without putting off potential male viewers.

On Wednesday, Netflix begins streaming ENOLA HOLMES, an adaptation of Nancy Springer’s Y.A. book series about Sherlock Holmes’ sister, played by Millie Bobby Brown from Stranger Things. Her brothers Sherlock and Mycroft are played by Henry Cavill and Sam Claflin, their mother is played by Helena Bonham Carter, and it’s directed by Harry Bradbeer, director of Fleabag and other British series. Methinks that Netflix is hoping this will be another franchise for the streaming giant. The film takes place in 1884 England with Enola waking on the morning of her 16th birthday to find her mother having vanished. Her brothers choose to send Enola to a finishing school but instead, she goes looking for her mother in London and falls in with a young runaway named Lord Tewksbury (Louis Partridge) to unravel a great conspiracy.

I never really became a fan of Stranger Things – more due to the lack of time than interest – so I haven’t really been generate much of an opinion for Millie Bobby Brown except for her role in Godzilla: King of Monsters. That said, I DO have an opinion on Sherlock Holmes, as I’m a huge fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, and that’s partially what drove my interest in this adaptation of Nancy Springer’s Y.A. twist.

Enola Holmes begins with a rather strange whimsical tone, as Enola constantly breaks the fourth wall and talks to the viewer, but it eventually falls into a steadier rhythm that’s much more palatable. If you’re into the mystery aspects of the Holmes lore, you may be a little disappointed by some of the simple word games concocted for this Holmes’ investigation, but it more than makes up for it with some fun fight and action sequences that made me think this would have been great as a theatrical release. (Just by being on Netflix, I’m sure it won’t have a problem finding an audience.)

All in all, I generally liked Brown in this role; she reminds me a little bit of a young Saoirse Ronan, so she clearly has a lot of potential. I wasn’t as crazy about some of the other casting, including Cavill as Enola’s older brother, nor the cutesy romance stuff with Partridge, but I know I’m also not the primary target audience for the film either. Still, coming so soon after Armando Ianucci’s David Copperfield adaptation, this generally pales in comparison. Probably the biggest bummer is that Helena Bonham Carter barely appears in the movie at all, which seems like such a waste of talent, although her scenes with Brown are some of the best in the movie.

Enola Holmes will find its fanbase for sure, and while it might not be the best or strongest iteration of Holmes, as much as a fun girl-friendlier spin on it, there’s no doubt that it’s perpetually entertaining.

Lena Olin and Bruce Dern star in Tom Dolby’s THE ARTIST’S WIFE (Strand Releasing) in which Dern plays crotchety artist Richard Smythson, whose poor beleaguered wife Claire (Olin) is now living in the shadow of her celebrated artist husband, giving up her own art career, but now having to deal with his memory losses and deteriorating behavior.

Claire (Lena Olin) lives a quiet domestic life in the Hamptons as the wife of celebrated artist Richard Smythson (Bruce Dern). Once a promising painter herself, Claire now lives in the shadow of her husband’s illustrious career. While preparing work for his final show, Richard’s moods become increasingly erratic, and he is diagnosed with dementia. As his memory and behavior deteriorate, she shields his condition from the art community while trying to reconnect him with his estranged daughter and grandson from a previous marriage. Challenged by the loss of her world as she knew it, Claire must now decide whether to stand with Richard on the sidelines or step into the spotlight herself.

Watching this, it’s almost impossible to not be reminded of the excellent The Wife, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, but this is a different film from The Wife despite having similar themes of a woman who has allowed her own life and career to come second to that of her husband.

This is first and foremost a showcase for Olin, who at 65 years old, still looks amazing but also gives a fantastic performance, one unlike any we’ve seen from her in quite some time. A lot of the film deals with her character reuniting with her husband’s estranged lesbian daughter (her stepdaughter) Angela (Juliet Rylance) and her son Diego, who is being taken care of by a hunky manny named Danny (Avan Jogia). They all get together for Christmas, and Richard’s behavior just gets worse and worse as Claire vacillates between worrying about him and being infuriated by him.

Sure, it’s a little predicable at times but still a decent little film from Dolby that includes a number of incredibly touching and even some weepy moments. I ended up liking this film way more than I thought I would from the premise and my own preconceived notions of what this movie would be.

The Artist’s Wife is a really nice movie – and honestly, another one I’m shocked isn’t being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics! It’s far better than The Leisure Seekers, for instance, not only in dealing with early-stage dementia but also in the way women often have to put aside their own aspirations to help their elderly spouses through it.

Richard Jenkins also stars in Andrew Cohn’s THE LAST SHIFT (Stage 6 Films) playing Stanley, who has worked at the fast food restaurant Oscar’s Chicken and Fish in Albion, Michigan for over 35 years, but he’s planning to leave to go take care of his mother in Florida. Hired to replace him is a younger lad named Jevon (Shane Paul McGhie), who has just been let out of jail and needs the job to fulfill his probation.

I’m not really sure who this movie is intended since Jenkins plays such a sad sack slacker that I’m not quite sure who might be drawn to his character, and other than his relationship with Jevon, which definitely falls into the Finding Forrester school of movie cliches, I’m not sure that the film offers much else. Ed O’Neill does appear in the film as Stanley’s best friend, but he seemed to be playing down his role as to not steal any of Jenkins’ spotlight.

Much of the movie deals with the odd characters and situations Stanley and Juvan experience on the job, but it feels like such a hodge-podge of ideas thrown together without a suitable and conclusive arc for either character. Also, Stan is kind of a jerk, and there were only so many jokes about his mother’s bad memory – probably due to dementia -- I was willing to put up with. It’s just hard to fathom what Jenkins saw in this role or movie other than to allow the lesser-known McGhie shine a bit.

The Last Shift is a movie that tries to be a comedy without ever being particularly funny, and it just comes across like a flat and rather mundane attempt that never really goes anywhere. (Note: Days after this review was posted, I was informed that the screener link I watched did not have the final music cues and mix that the filmmaker intended. With that in mind, I will make an effort to rewatch the film when I have the film’s final version.)

A few docs of interest this week (other than the ones mentioned above) include Laura Gabbert’s doc OTTOLENGHI AND THE CAKES OF VERSAILLES (IFC Films), which follows Yoam Ottolenghi as he puts together a huge gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the opening of an exhibit about Versailles. Ottolenghi decides to bring together a number of pastry chefs from all over the world, including Dominique Ansel (inventor of the Cronut), Dinara Kasko and more to recreate the look and feel of Versailles through a series of pastries and desserts. Honestly, I really don’t have that much to say about the movie, which is only about an hour 15 minutes and still feels long. It basically just documents the preparation for the event and the event itself, and the whole thing just seems rather pretentious and high-falutin’, and more like the movie that might play at Lincoln Center than anywhere else. It will be playing in theaters (but probably not Lincoln Center) as well as on digital and cable VOD. (I told you I didn’t have much to say about it.)

Premiering on HBO (and presumably HBO Max) on Wednesday (today!) is the first part of Alex Gibney’s AGENTS OF CHAOS, a two-part documentary by the Oscar-winning documentarian about the Russian interference in the 2016 election. Another example of a movie that just wasn’t something I cared to watch right at this minute, despite being a big fan of Gibney’s excellent investigational skills in terms of getting to the bottom of a subject. The first part airs tonight (9/23) and the second part airs tomorrow night (9/24).

There’s also Ric Burns’ doc OLIVER SACKS: HIS OWN LIFE (Zeitgeist Films), which will premiere exclusively as part of Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema on Wednesday (today!). I really tried to get to this, but there’s only so much time in the day especially with NYFF, and everything else going on in my life right now. I do hope to get to it, and maybe it will be like The Way I See It or Mr. Soul! and I can talk more about it in a future column.  Burns’ doc essentially covers the work of a neurologist and storyteller called “the poet laurate of medicine,” who talks about his struggles with drug addiction, homophobia and a medical establishment that only began to appreciate him decades after some of his work. Sacks is also known for writing the book on which the Robin Williams movie Awakenings is based, but otherwise, I never had really heard of him before or any of the people interviewed. Again, I’ll try to get to this soon, because he sounds like an interesting man for sure.

If the title of Mike Gunther’s ROGUE WARFARE: DEATH OF A NATION (Saban Films) makes it sound like it would be as a video game, then you probably aren’t aware that this is actually an action trilogy with Stephen Lang playing “The President,” who I guess is the villain of the piece. Will Yun Lee plays one of a team of elite soldiers who must put a stop to detonate a deadly bomb in 36 hours. No review screeners for this one, which will be in theaters, on demand and digital this Friday.

Oddly, advance screeners were also not available for Tate Taylor’s action-thriller AVA (Vertical Entertainment), starring Jessica Chastain, which is a movie I was curious about since I’ve generally liked most of Taylor’s previous films – The Help and Get On Up more than Ma or The Girl on the Train. This is the spy thriller he’d been talking about making for a while, and it costars John Malkovich, Common, Geena Davis, and Colin Farrell. What it doesn’t have is screeners for review. It must be fantastic!

Again, lots of movies this week, but I just don’t have the time or mind to spend nearly as much time watching some of them before writing this. There’s many more docs, including Jay Sebring…Cutting to the Truth (Shout! Studios), the Netflix doc Kiss the Ground, yet another doc called Red, White and Wasted (Dark Sky Films), We Are Many (Area 23 Films), Myth of a Colorblind France (First Run Features) and Public Trust (Patagonia Films). There’s also even more non-docs in I’ll Be Around (Indie Rights), LX2048, Foster Boy and Shortcut (both also from Gravitas Ventures), The Swerve and Dead (1091). See what I mean? A ridiculous amount of movies this week and even more next week. Who can possibly watch, let alone review them all?

If there’s one thing I truly miss in this pandemic is being able to go over to my local movie theater, the Metrograph to catch whatever they’re showing, but they’ve still been killing it with their Live Screenings digital series. Tonight, the Metrograph is screening Shona Lynch’s debut political doc, Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed, which follows Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy rep Shirley Chisholm, who became the first person of color and first woman to seek a major American’s political party’s nomination for President, as she fought ridicule and racism. On Monday, Metrograph will present “Matador Records - Revisionist History,” which is a celebration of the artist on the indie label that kicked off in 1989 and released records by the likes of Liz Phair, Yo La Tengo, Pavement and Sonic Youth. Monday’s premiere will include introductions by Matador’s Gerard Cosloy and Chris Lombardi and Yo La Tengo and will be made up of a series of short films and videos. Friday, the Metrograph starts a Robert Kramer retrospective with his 1969 film Ice, and honestly, I don’t really know much about Kramer so not sure what else to say.

Next week has so many frickin’ movies that if I start watching them all without sleeping for the next week, I probably won’t get to all of them. Either way, there’s no Wonder Woman 1984, so you can blame Governor Cuomo and the assholes railing against movie theaters reopening for that one.

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!