Wednesday, May 31, 2017

She fights for world peace

Gal Gadot and Chris Pine click in an enjoyable Wonder Woman.

It has epic scale, unforced humor, genuine star chemistry and, of course, a female main character. We're talking about Wonder Woman, an enjoyable new addition to the endless stream of comic-book movies that have seized the popular culture, holding it in a sometimes suffocating grip.

But Wonder Woman is a DC Comics movie with an important difference. Because Wonder Woman's main character can be naive about the nature of the humans she encounters, the movie freely can substitute innocence and conviction for hard-bitten cynicism.

In the hands of director Patty Jenkins (Monster), Wonder Woman introduces us to a character with roots in Greek mythology. From an island where Amazon warrior women train to the cratered battlefields of World War I, Wonder Woman makes it clear that Princess Diana, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, has but one objective: bringing peace to the world.

Early on, we learn that the Amazons have conflicting ideas about Diana's destiny. Diana's mother (Connie Nielsen) wants to protect her daughter from the violent life. Diana's aunt (Robin Wright) insists that the girl learn the arts of combat.

Scenes on the all-women island march to a mythic cadence that allows for introduction of the Amazon women's approach to life and for exploration of their relationship to the gods.

Life on the island mostly seems happy until the real world intrudes. A pilot crashes into the ocean off the island's coast. Diana, who has never seen a man before, rushes to the rescue. Pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) is being chased by Germans who know that he's a spy who has stolen vital information from the German high command.

Diana eventually leaves her island paradise with Steve: She believes it is her duty to end the slaughter of World War I, something she plans to accomplish by slaying Ares, the god of war. Diana doesn't care that her plan may seem wacky to everyone else. Diana's view: Men only make war when they fall under the evil influence of Ares, rogue son of Zeus.

We know that Diana will be up to the task because we've already seen her spin in the air in captivating slo-mo. We also know that she has powers even she doesn't fully understand.

Jenkins has lots of fun with scenes in London where our super-heroine confronts the peculiar demands of life among ordinary humans. These include suggestions that Diana wear dresses rather than her regular outfit, which boasts a Wonder Woman tiara, a cape, an armored bustier and short shorts.

Diana also carries a shield, a sword and a glowing Lasso of Truth, not exactly routine accoutrements on the streets of London, circa 1918.

Steve rounds up a colorful crew to accompany Diana to the front. Steve's cohorts include a guy who knows how to work the angles in any situation (Said Taghmaoui), a Native American scout (Eugene Brave Rock) and a sharp-shooter (Ewen Bremner) with a lilting singing voice.

We also meet a British politician who says he wants to negotiate an armistice (David Thewlis) and a secretary (Lucy Davis) who works for Steve and adds plenty of spark.

Villainy arrives courtesy of German General Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and his hideous chemist colleague (Elena Anaya), a woman whose ability to develop lethal gasses has earned her an appropriate nickname: "Doctor Poison."

Gadot claims star status, handling the title-character with charm, sincerity, finesse and a look that exudes beauty and good health. It also doesn't hurt that she and Pine seem to have figured out the intricacies that make for good comic and romantic chemistry or that, at various times, Diana offers crowd-pleasing insistence on her total independence from male authority. It's something she takes for granted.

Those who crave action will find plenty of it: from the training grounds of Diana's island home to the trenches of World War I to a finale that's loaded with the clangor of the customary effects. Wouldn't it have been amazing had Diana, who speaks dozens of languages, been allowed to resolve the movie's problems with more brain than super-power brawn?

Oh well, what can we expect from a movie in which Diana lifts a tank and tosses it as if weighed little more than a Frisbee? Wonder Woman is, after all, a comic-book movie -- and it earns a place among the best of them.

Giving life to the newly dead

As a regular reader of New York Times obituaries, I was keenly interested in director Vanessa Gould's Obit, a documentary about the journalists who write obituaries for the Times and the department in which they toil. The journalists you'll meet are smart, dedicated and thoughtful about their work. The key to the Times's approach: Obits are written for the Times only when they have news value. That could mean a subject accomplished something unusual, achieved fame, became notorious or was a person of demonstrable historical importance. Much of the commentary comes from Bruce Weber (shown above), who talks about his approach, his anxieties (fear of mistakes) and the pressures of writing on deadline. Equally important, Gould asks the Times's obit team to discuss how decisions are made about the amount of attention any noteworthy death receives. Will it appear on Page 1? Will it be referred to with a headline and capsule description on Page 1? Will it lead the obituary section or be placed in a secondary position? Interviews are enriched with clips and photos from the various lives under discussion. If you're an avid newspaper reader, you won't want to miss this informative and entertaining documentary -- and you'll come away with a good feeling for those who labor to bring eloquence and information to the passing parade of lives that helped define their times.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

This 'Pirates' tells a cluttered tale















He watches life evolve without him

Brian Cranston stars in Wakefield, the story of a father and husband who withdraws from his life.

A capsule summary of Wakefield suggests that it's mildly miraculous that the movie ever got made. Here's a movie that takes place almost entirely inside of one man's head. That man, evidently at wit's end with his repetitive suburban life, suddenly deserts his job and family.

A night spent in his garage attic after a late arrival home turns into months as Howard Wakefield observes activities in his home through a window in the room where his family has been storing its junk. Howard becomes an observer of his wife and two daughters, and his thoughts serve as a narration for a movie about a selfish character who becomes a dubious spokesman for upper-middle-class men who hate their lives.

Never mind that Howard is a successful partner in a Manhattan law firm or that his wife, Diana, is beautiful or that his twin daughters seem to be growing up without any real problems. Howard is fed up with his marriage, but -- at the same time -- lacks the guts to tell his wife that he wants out.

If anyone but Brian Cranston were playing Howard, the movie might have been unwatchable. But Cranston takes us inside Howard's mind, allowing us to see what's happening in the house through Howard's often jaundiced, sometimes sarcastic point of view. Howard tries to make us conspirators in an act of unparalleled irresponsibility.

Director Robin Swicord, who also wrote the screenplay for Wakefield, uses flashbacks at times and eventually allows Howard to leave the house. His appearance degenerates: Starting as a competent looking executive, he morphs into a bearded bum, leaving his attic perch only when he must do some scavaging. He claims to feel a new-found freedom.

Wakefield takes a big risk: We're watching Howard watch the movie of the life he abandoned as he spews a stream of dialog that sounds as if it were lifted from a novel. At times, you wonder whether we should be reading Howard's story, not watching it.

As Howard's wife, Jennifer Garner does her best to define the stages of Diana's adjustment to Howard's disappearance: Grief and panic gradually give way to acceptance.

We also learn that during his marriage, Howard was prone to express unwarranted jealousy to his wife, even when she was doing little more than being sociable at parties.

I suppose the irony of all this is that if Howard saw himself as superfluous before his vanishing act, his disappearance only serves to reinforce his conclusion.

Perhaps it's best to think of Wakefield as an experimental movie with an A-list cast. The experiment proves only partially successful, perhaps because it's difficult not to be a little too aware of the pitfalls such a solipsistic story faces and the strategies Swicord uses to overcome them.

Daring to plan for a wedding

An Israeli movie overcomes its high-concept premise.












Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Few laughs wash ashore in 'Baywatch'

Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron are lifeguards in a movie that never convinces that it has any reason to exist.

Why anyone wanted to turn a beach-boob-and-muscle TV series into a movie is beyond me. But that didn't stop director Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses and Identity Thief) from taking on the challenge of creating a big-screen version of Baywatch.

In its new version, the always buffed Dwayne Johnson teams with an equally buffed Zac Efron to create a movie that tries to parody something that already looked like parody, a lame bit of 1990s TV that developed a following among those who liked pecs, peek-a-boo bathing suits and unblemished skin.

Mixing hard bodies with a soft-headed mystery involving drugs and real estate, Baywatch is neither funny nor tense enough to drive the movie to whatever destination it may have been trying to reach.

Despite a few attempts at self-referential hipness (cameos from David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson among them), the movie's humor mostly dips as low as the bikinis the Baywatch women wear.

Johnson's Mitch runs the Baywatch lifeguard squad like a military unit; he insists that the lifeguards devote themselves to protecting a stretch of Florida beach as if it were Fort Knox.

As part of a PR ploy, Mitch is forced to hire a disgraced Olympic medalist (Efron) who begins the movie as a kind of selfish outlier but (here's a surprise) eventually accepts the group ethos.

To further fulfill the demands of contemporary comedy, the movie adds the obligatory nerdy guy to its muscular mix. Jon Bass plays Ronnie, a guy who's accepted as a lifeguard trainee because he has "heart." The movie's first big joke involves Ronnie, an erection and a beach chair with slats. It's not the last penis joke, either.

Despite his bean-bag physique, Ronnie seems to catch the eye of a bombshell, run-in-slow-mo lifeguard played by Kelly Rohrbach.

Priyanka Chopra who plays Victoria, the villain of the piece, a woman with murderous plans to acquire every bit of real estate in the bay area.

A local cop (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) wonders why a group of lifeguards are getting themselves involved in crime. You may share his consternation, but then it's probably not fair to expect a Baywatch movie to make much sense.

About three-quarters of the way through, the script finds a way to sideline Johnson and allow Efron to dominate the proceedings, a major mistake.

Forget the movie's amped-up ocean rescues: Someone was needed to rescue a screenplay that should have been beached.

If you're looking for a movie that has some laughs and effectively deals with the idiocy of bygone TV shows, try Mindhorn, a British comedy available on Netflix. It actually manages to find some laughs in telling the story of a washed-up TV hero who's asked to help solve a real-life murder

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Ridley Scott again unleashes monsters

The creator of the original Alien delivers an accomplished helping of sci-fi and horror -- but some of the thrill is gone.

Everyone who's old enough, probably remembers their first viewing of Alien , the Ridley Scott-directed movie that in 1979 landed a direct hit to the pit of the stomach. Besides being a masterclass exercise in generating tension, Alien also helped temper the optimistic buoyancy of movies such as 1977's Close Encounters of a Third Kind. Scott brought cynicism and dread to the galaxy, offering a view of space that was industrialized, gritty and full of terrifying dangers.

James Cameron's Aliens added booming urgency and scale to the groundwork Scott had done. And, of course, there were two additional movies, neither of which found quite the same purchase in the pop-cultural landscape or should we say "spacescape?"

Scott again picks up his creature cudgels with Alien: Covenant, a sequel to his 2012 Prometheus, as well as a prequel to Alien.

In Prometheus, Scott played with big ideas and made his most memorable character an android played by Michael Fassbender, who gave his synthetic creation traces of scalding wit. Unfortunately, the serious talk in Prometheus sometimes clashed with the action Scott may have felt compelled to deliver.

Set in 2104, Alien: Covenant isn't exactly free of ideas, either. They're laid out in the movie's chilly opening -- a conversation between an android (Fassbender) and his maker (Guy Pearce). The two discuss the nature of creation and the ability of a creation to surpass its creator. The android sounds an eerie note that suggests the inherent inferiority of human life. "You will die. I will not,'' says the robot.

Little in Scott's movie matches the ominous elegance of this prolog which takes place in a large white room that looks as if it might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 2001.

But ideas eventually fall prey to the expected shocks in which newly designed horrific looking creatures burst from backs or chests or latch onto the faces of their victims.

The story involves a space ship named Covenant, which is being run by an android named David. The crew has been put into deep-space sleep as the ship heads toward a distant planet with some 20,000 colonists on board. The implication: Humans must leave a fully exploited Earth.

The plan goes awry when a space storm awakens the crew, which almost immediately faces a temptation that we know will lead to trouble. A signal -- John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads -- emanates from a planet that's closer than the ship's original destination. Could years be shaved from the Covenant's planned seven-year journey by finding a closer and apparently habitable planet?

Katherine Waterston plays a crew member who loses her husband, the ship's captain, during the sudden reawakening. Another officer (Billy Crudup) assumes command of the small crew, which includes Danny McBride, Demian Bichir and Carmen Ejogo.

It gives you some idea about the effort that goes into characterization to know that McBride's character is called Tennessee. He wears a cowboy hat. Do you need (or want) to know anything more?

Nowhere near as memorable as the original Alien crew, this group of voyagers winds up buffeted by a conflict between Waterston's evidence-based character and a man more inclined to take things on faith (Crudup).

Additional conflict arises between two robots, both ably played by Fassbender: the android of the prologue -- named David -- and a later model named Walter. David proves the more mission-oriented to the two. Having absorbed what he needs from humankind, the sinister Walter sees no reason for keeping people around.

Scott spends significant amounts of time on the planet that the Covenant reaches, thus sacrificing the extreme claustrophobia that turned the first movie into a white-knuckle masterpiece.

Not surprisingly, the movie's peripherals are all expertly handled by the veteran Scott and his crew: from the look of the spacecraft to the idyllic surface of a planet where the crew encounters monsters capable of working their way into human bodies in a variety of ways.

Alien: Covenant arrives wrapped in a convincing package. For some, that will be enough, but for those who regard the original Alien as a breakthrough movie, it's difficult not to see Alien: Covenant as a slightly depleted helping of a once stunning pop-cultural landmark, something like a well-made TV series that continues to entertain even after it has lost much of its juice.

Was he a contender or a pretender?

Liev Schreiber scores a knock-out in a so-so boxing picture about Chuck Wepner, the reputed real Rocky Balboa.

If I were considering making a movie about Chuck Wepner, the obscure New Jersey boxer who rose to sudden prominence when he fought Muhammad Ali in 1975, the last person I'd think of to play Wepner would be Liev Schreiber. Wepner was a hulk of a man whose native Bayonne left him with a raspy Jersey accent. Schreiber, on the other hand, has one of the most melodic and precise voices in show business.

But something about Wepner evidently caught Schreiber's fancy because he not only stars as Wepner in the new movie Chuck but serves as one of the movie's producers.

Schreiber knew what he was doing. His portrayal of Wepner, a boxer who was treated as the Rodney Dangerfield of boxing (no respect) is spot-on. Wepner was dubbed "the Bayonne bleeder," not exactly a moniker to strike fear in the hearts of opponents.

Schreiber ably captures the struggle that marked much of Wepner's life: He wanted to be somebody important -- not just a guy many regarded as a Bayonne-based club fighter.

For Wepner, a loss to Ali became a triumph as well as the reputed inspiration for Sylvester Stallone's Rocky. Wepner made it all the way to the fight's 15th round before Ali finished him off. Most sports people thought Wepner wouldn't survive three rounds.

Wepner became a kind of fill-in fight for Ali after the champ's fabled Rumble In the Jungle with George Foreman. But Wepner, who actually had a respectable pro record, became one of the few men ever to knock Ali down, landing The Greatest on his butt in round nine.

Director Philippe Falardeau (The Good Lie and Monsieur Lazhar) sets Wepner's story against the well-defined Jersey backdrop that bred Wepner and his pal John (Jim Gaffigan). The two men drink, snort cocaine and party hard enough to ruin Wepner's marriage to his wife Phyliss (a terrific Elisabeth Moss).

Wepner later meets Linda (Naomi Watts), the woman credited with helping him straighten out his life after a stint in the slammer. Wepner was busted for cocaine possession about 10 years after his championship bout.

Additional support is provided by Ron Perlman, as Wepner's manager, and Michael Rapaport as Wepner's disapproving brother. Rapaport's John hated the way the increasingly dissolute Wepner treated his daughter. Wepner always seemed to be seeking public adulation rather than accepting the love of those closest to him.

Perhaps in an effort to distinguish his movie from Hollywood's large boxing-movie card, Falardeau puts the big fight in the middle of the movie, devoting most of the Chuck's post-fight story to Wepner's precipitous, self-induced decline.

At one point, Wepner meets Sylvester Stallone. I had trouble buying Morgan Spector as Stallone; Pooch Hall makes a more credible Ali, but these are minor distractions in a movie in which every actor works overtime trying to capture his or her inner Jersey.

None of this is to say that Chuck makes it through its 98-minute running time without being bloodied. We've seen too many movies about the way lives were ruined by drugs during the 1980s. We've also seen too many movies about the way a boxer reaches a peak and then squanders any success he might have achieved. The great distinction with Wepner is that his stature derived from a loss.

The movie also belabors Wepner's obsession with movies. His favorite: 1962's Requiem for a Heavyweight, which starred Anthony Quinn as Louis "Mountain'' Rivera, a down-and-out pug who spent his time clinging to a dream about what he could have been. When Rocky becomes a smash, Wepner totally identifies himself with the movie, so much so that he thinks he deserves congratulations when Rocky wins an Oscar for best picture.

Wepner's delusions are meant to be sad, but by now, we've seen so many boxing films that chart rises, declines and redemptions that the scenario feels played out, almost to the point where there's not enough film to support its many fine performances.

Still, Schreiber's knock-out work may be enough to carry you through the movie, and Moss, familiar from TV's Mad Men, again proves that she's one of the most capable actresses around. Her Phyliss is not a woman to be messed with.

So, a reserved endorsement for Chuck. Like its main character, the movie stumbles and lumbers, but manages to survive.

A girl in a bubble falls in love

Amandla Stenberg played Rue in The Hunger Games, an adaptation of a popular piece of YA fiction. In Everything, Everything, Stenberg returns to the YA universe, this time in a less-than-credible story about an 18-year-old who suffers from an immune deficiency so severe it has made her allergic to nearly everything. Stenberg's Maddie lives in a fairly luxurious bubble. She shares a sealed, modern home with her mother (Anika Toni Rose), a physician. When new folks move next door, young Olly (Nick Robinson)tries to break through Maddie's hermetic shields. Taken with Olly, Maddie wants out of the house in which she's spent her whole life. She's eager to pursue her first love interest. Not surprisingly Maddie's mother objects: Having already lost her husband and a son in an automobile accident, Mom can't abide losing another child. Director Stella Meghie understands how to showcase two appealing young actors, but the movie gets worse, the more you think about it. Based on a well-received novel by Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything may satisfy its teen audience, but it translates to the screen as YA fluff with major plot holes. And in this romantic fantasy, an isolated girl sports a surprisingly large and trendy wardrobe for a kid who never leaves the house.

Married, but philandering

Debra Winger and Tracy Letts are fine, but the characters in The Lovers aren't drawn with enough vigor.

Like an overdose of maple syrup, a lush musical score flows over The Lovers, a laid-back look at a marriage gone stale. Yuk.

Debra Winger and Tracy Letts play the movie's principal roles, a husband and wife whose marriage has gone well past its expiration date. Despite that, neither character seems able to shake free.

Both Winger and Letts appear game for either a comic look at withered love or a serious drama about a husband and his disillusioned wife, both of whom are involved in extramarital affairs. Director Azazel Jacobs seems to split the difference. He alternates between one affair and the other without lighting any real fire, and The Lovers feels wan.

Winger's Mary has become involved with a writer (Aidan Gillen) who wants a more serious relationship. Same goes for the dancer (Melora Walters) with whom Letts' Michael is having an affair. She, too, craves a "relationship" that involves more than sex.

To keep things running smoothly, Mary and Michael have promised their respective lovers that they will resolve issues in their marriage and move on -- just as soon as the couple's son (Tyler Ross) finishes a visit during a break from college. This visit provides the catalyst that upsets the status quo and forces the story off dead center.

Winger ably portrays an unsatisfied woman who also struggles with a conflicted conscience, and Letts does his part as a husband whose philandering seems to have a longer history than his wife's. But few scenes reach a boiling point, and Jacobs, who also wrote the screenplay, focuses his energy on two characters who aren't as interesting as the situation in which they find themselves -- and that's not all that intriguing, either.

The actors, especially Winger, keep The Lovers watchable, but ultimately can't give it memorable life.

Poetry and pain in a New England life

Cynthia Nixon joins director Terence Davies for A Quiet Passion, a movie about Emily Dickinson.
During her lifetime, only a few of Emily Dickinson's poems were published. Most of Dickinson's work received attention after her death in 1886. For most of her 55 years, Dickinson led what most would regard as an isolated life, which makes her a fine subject for director Terence Davies, a filmmaker who understands the mournful qualities of lives tormented by big questions.

The best of Davies' work (Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes) survive as personal masterpieces, cinematic constructions haunted by the sadness of once-vibrant lives lost to the obliterating mists of history. In A Quiet Passion, Davies brings a meticulous awareness to the story of a poet who spent her final years living in isolation in her native Massachusetts.

No one who's familiar with Davies' work will be surprised that there's an alarming quiet in Davies' new film, a sense of how life was lived before the intrusion of the contemporary noise which inundates and distracts us. That silence can be taken as a ferociously empty backdrop against which lives rattle on, some -- like Dickinson's -- with an acute awareness of their finite nature.

Early on, we meet Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon) as a student at Mount Holyoke College, where she's immersed in a severe religious environment that ill-suited her exploratory mind. When her father (Keith Carradine) comes to retrieve her with her brother (Duncan Duff) and sister (Jennifer Ehle), Dickinson couldn't be happier. She wryly confesses that such a severe dose of evangelism has made her ill.

Upon returning home, Dickinson asks her father if he would object if she wrote during the quiet of night. He agrees. She begins her engagement with her life's work.

Dickinson charted a deep course, indulging her preoccupation with the frailties of the body and with life's ultimate destination, the grave. "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,'' is one of the Dickinson poems you might want to read as an accompaniment to Davies' movie, which -- of course -- offers bits and pieces of other Dickinson poems.

Much of the movie involves domestic scenes in Dickinson's home: arguments with her father when she refuses to attend church, entreaties by her sister Lavinia to open her heart to living, disapproval of her brother Austin's affair, and her relationship with Austin's wife (Jodhi May). Dickinson also becomes infatuated with a married pastor (Eric Loren) whose wife (Simone Milsdochter) seems to have one quality: reproach.

Early scenes receive a comic lift from the bumptious hypocrisy of Dickinson's aunt (Annette Badland), who writes bad poetry. Dickinson's mother (Joanna Bacon) remains emotionally distant from the affairs of the household.

We also meet Emily's demonstrative friend Vryling Buffam (Catherine Bailey), a woman who has little use for the rules of society but who ultimately submits to social pressures that require her to marry.

At one point, Davies creates an interlude about the Civil War, the violent tragedy that raged during Dickinson's time. He does this by showing photos from Gettysburg and Antietam.

As much as anything, A Quiet Passion makes us feel the aching emptiness of the present, and the movie unfolds with the resonance of a deliberate footfall on a hardwood floor.

Nixon creates a Dickinson who's fiercely independent and yet enmeshed in the life of her family. Eventually, she retreats to her room and, for the most part, remains there.

I can't say that I wasn't a trifle bored at times, but Davies seeks to enlighten us about the incongruities of the period: The quest for transcendence set against the starched rigors of parlor life, for example. A Quiet Passion isn't for every taste, but like Dickinson, Davies always goes his own way, an increasingly estimable quality in today's cinema of formula and cant.

Sisterhood in an Italian asylum

She charts a rebellious course
In Like Crazy, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi plays a woman who has been committed to a mental institution, but never drops the hauteur that she brings with her. For Tedeschi's Beatrice, the institution resembles a family estate over which she (not the doctors or nurses) presides. Director Paolo Virzi also introduces us to Donatella (Micaela Ramazzotti), a new patient who initially resists Beatrice's guidance, but who eventually falls under the older woman's spell. Viewers may not be able to resist comparisons to Thelma & Louise, a better picture about two women on a journey toward independence. Like Crazy eventually provides Beatrice and Donatella with an opportunity to escape the institution; they have adventures as the screenplay hints at a dark secret that torments Donatella. The two actresses keep the movie percolating, but the delusional Beatrice becomes a handful for everyone she encounters -- and that includes an audience that may find her incessant chatter a bit much. Virzi doesn't seem to solve the movie's problem; i.e., defining a line between mad and sane behavior. Instead, he opts for a tale of sisterhood marked by intermittent charm and an always refreshing dash of Cuckoo's Nest rebellion.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Schumer and Hawn stumble in the jungle

Formula tramples fun in this early summer comedy.

It has been 15 years since Goldie Hawn appeared in a movie. Maybe she should have waited a bit longer instead of hitching her star to Snatched, a comedy that teams her with Amy Schumer. Hawn, who has made her share of successful comedies, this time appears in a formula job that elevates raunch in the service of yuks that are few and far between -- at least for me.

Widely regarded as one of the funnier comics on the planet, Schumer received lots of praise for Trainwreck, a 2015 comedy that she wrote and which Judd Apatow directed. But Schumer didn't write Snatched. That job fell to Katie Dippold, whose credits include the recent Ghostbusters movie (not good) and The Heat (better).

Here, Dippold, with a forgettable assist from director Jonathan Levine (The Night Before and Warm Bodies), provides a platform to showcase Schumer's willingness to go raunchy in ways that become a form of feminist assertion -- and, at least in the past, have hit paydirt.

Schumer plays Emily, a young woman who loses both her job and her boyfriend in the movie's opening scenes. To make matters worse, Emily is stuck with two tickets to Ecuador, a country she planned to visit with the boyfriend who decided he could do better.

Unable to persuade any friend to accompany her to Ecuador, Emily coerces her reluctant mother (Hawn) into joining her for an adventure. Emily also has a brother (Ike Barinholtz), an emotionally hampered adult who still lives with his mother and who's unable to leave the house. Why? Because he's the comedy's demonstrably (and annoyingly) neurotic character -- as opposed to Emily, a character defined by her self-absorption.

Once in Ecuador, Emily is lured into a trap that results in mother and daughter being kidnapped. During the course of their prolonged escape, Emily manages to put a spear through someone's throat for what she insists should be seen as an "accidental murder." She also must rid herself of a colossally sized tape worm that's extracted from her mouth by a couple of locals who lure the bug from her by dangling a hunk of meat in front of Emily's face, perhaps the movie's biggest laugh.

Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack appear in roles that could have added welcome strangeness had they been around more. Their rough-and-ready characters eventually try to rescue Emily and her Mom.

Fairness compels me to tell you that a preview audience reacted more favorably to the movie than I did, but for me, the movie's few random chuckles were matched by a significantly larger number of scowls as I watched two talented women sweat their way through the Amazon.

Lock, stock and a smokin' hot sword

King Arthur gets the Guy Ritchie treatment -- and suffers for it.

In King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, director Guy Ritchie goes medieval on us, and the result is bleary-eyed, loud and full of summer-movie bluster.

Ritchie, who broke onto the international film scene with his kinetic gangster epic, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and who brought us a couple of big-ticket Sherlock Holmes movies starring Robert Downey Jr., goes further back in history, but, unfortunately, brings his adrenalized sensibilities along with him.

These emerging Knights of the Round Table talk with cockney-inflected accents as Ritchie tells an origins story about how King Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) came to lead his kingdom. In this version, a young Arthur escapes slaughter by an evil king wannabe named Vortigern (Jude Law). Vortigern robs Arthur of his throne by killing the boy's father (Eric Bana), an actor who amazingly manages to look composed in the midst of all the visual chaos.

Raised in a brothel as a child of the streets, Arthur's story begins in earnest when he pulls Excalibur, his father's sword, from the rock where it has been embedded for most of the young man's life. Arthur's feat is accompanied by an oops. Once Vortigern knows where the real heir to throne is, he sees only one option: Arthur must be killed.

Meanwhile, a multi-cultural band of comrades -- notably Djimon Hounsou's Bedivere and Tom Wu's George -- goad a reluctant Arthur toward his destiny.

Ritchie heaves shards of Arthur's story at us in ways that add confusion to a narrative that seems to have been invented to support a variety of booming set pieces. In one of them, Arthur visits the Dark Lands to fight bats and rats as part of his inner journey; i.e., before he can triumph, Arthur must remember the murder of his mother and father at the hands of Law's evil Vortigern.

In many respects, Ritchie's approach to the Arthurian legend owes more to Marvel Comics than it does to English mythology. One difference: It's not Arthur who has super powers, but his sword. Arthur must learn to wield this glowing weapon throughout the course of a cluttered, 126-minute running time.

The movie's editing style seems to have been inspired by the desire to inflict a thousand cuts on any given moment. Accompanied by Daniel Pemberton's pounding score, the movie barrels its way through action sequences that produce more frenzy than coherence.

When Arthur swings his sword, the movie slows down as if it's showing us the way an athlete enters what some call "the zone." Arthur perceives everything in slow motion, vanquishing foe after foe with an ease he barely remembers when the carnage stops, and the movie renews its double-time pacing.

Arthur's attempts to impress with scale are obvious from the outset: The movie's opening -- a prolog, really -- offers displays of carnage featuring mammoth creatures that resemble the kind of elephants that might appear as floats if a Thanksgiving parade were run by Satanists.

Hunnam takes a step back after his work in The Lost of City Z, which made room for subtlety. Think Crimson Peak and Pacific Rim, in which Hunnam also appeared. But in fairness to Hunnam, a set of leather pants, a buffed torso, and a street-wise attitude do not a character make.

Looking as if he's reprising the most malicious moments of the character he played in HBO's The Young Pope, Law supplies the expected hiss/boo helping of murderous villainy.

Astrid Berges-Frisbey adds a feminine touch as The Mage, some sort of magical character who helps Arthur realize his role this teeming fantasy world.

I suppose Ritchie deserves some credit for trying not to genuflect at the feet of a well-worn legend, but he drags the story of Arthur into the dirt and never allows it to shake off the mud.

Ritchie batters an estimable story, and, I'm afraid, it winds up beating him to a pulp.

Serial killers in Australia's Perth

Director Ben Young has skills, but has he applied them to the right subject?

Generally speaking, criticism has more to do with "how" than with "what;" i.e., subject matter often proves less relevant to reviewers than the effectiveness with which that subject is handled. Sometimes, though, subject matter becomes an unavoidable part of formulating an informed opinion.

I thought about this while watching Hounds of Love, an Australian thriller in which a normal-looking couple from Perth abducts and kills young women. Set during the 1980s, the movie has been praised for director Ben Young's discretion. For the most part, Young keeps the movie's torture and violence off screen.

Fair enough, but directorial restraint doesn't mean that the crimes of fictional couple John and Evelyn White aren't felt. At several points, I found myself asking why I was watching. Was there anything to be gained from a such an uncomfortable experience, no matter how well executed by a director who's mounting his first feature?

For me, there were gains, but I'd have to classify them as secondary to my overall concern.

For example, I'd cite the performance of Emma Booth, the actress who plays Evelyn White. Booth's Evelyn wriggles under the thumb of John (Stephen Curry), her control freak of a husband. At times, she feels sympathy for the couple's victims, and for her, abduction of young women can have a double edge, particularly if John is sexually attracted to one of their victims.

The movie, also written by Young, centers on a familiar question. Can the victim, a teen-ager played by Ashleigh Cummings, create enough tension between husband and wife to survive her ordeal?

Cummings' Viki, a 17-year-old whose parents are in the midst of a divorce, defies her mother (Susie Porter) by sneaking out of the house at night to attend a party. The Whites, who are on the prowl, pass by Viki in their car and offer a ride. They seem nice enough, but it's already clear that Viki will be in for a rough ride. She'll end up drugged and bound to a bed, abused and terrorized by these two apparently friendly suburbanites.

It quickly becomes apparent that a mixture of torture and terror fuels the eroticism between Evelyn and John. They're sexually excited by their foul deeds.

Those who see the movie needn't know much more, although it should be noted that Young amps up tension without too much fuss as he allows his imagination to wander from his apparent inspiration: the real-life story of David and Catherine Birnie, a Perth couple who kidnapped and mutilated four young women during the 1980s.

Young begins by allowing his camera voyeuristically to scan the bodies of young women playing ball in a schoolyard. It's only later that we realize we're being exposed to the killers' point-of-view, but these opening images make it clear that Young aims to undermine any sense of ease viewers may feel.

By the end, Hounds of Love has taken on the trappings of a conventional thriller, but I found myself still struggling with the question that bothered me throughout. I guess I wish that Young, who clearly has skills, had tried his hand at something more thematically rewarding than a teen-ager's torment at the hands of a murderous pervert and his cowed partner.

Food and diversity in Israel













Thursday, May 4, 2017

Those guardians of the galaxy return

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 boasts both lulls and amusements, but does nothing to tarnish the franchise.

The original Guardians of the Galaxy took the market by storm in 2014, providing a refreshing antidote to the self-seriousness that infiltrates many parts of Marvel's vast comic-book repertoire. Unexpected and slightly bizarre, the movie featured Rocket Raccoon (voice by Bradley Cooper), a snarky animal who delivered the movie's best wisecracks, and a diminutive creature named Groot (voice by Vin Diesel), a mini-tree of an alien who added an element of off-kilter cuteness.

Now comes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 sporting a name that makes the movie sound as if it aspires to find a home in The Library of Congress catalog. Not Guardians 2 or even Part II, but "Volume 2."

This is not to say that the movie, written and directed by a returning James Gunn, mires itself in big themes. Gunn tries to replicate the self-aware attitude of the first installment, something along the lines of recognition that joyfully teeters on the rim of the pop-cultural toilet without falling in.

If that's too abstract for you, let me put it another way: The first movie was fun. The second movie? Sometimes it's fun.

A creative application of special effects and CGI help keep Vol. 2 from tarnishing the franchise, even as it falls prey to a typical second-helping problem, overcrowding in just about every department.

Vol. 2 plunges viewers into a self-referential universe that makes room for musical and TV nostalgia from the 1980s, one of the fascinations of a Guardian played by Chris Pratt; i.e., Quill. The movie's 1980s nostalgia trip also includes a recurring reference to David Hasselhoff of TV's Knight Rider and Baywatch fame.

I'm always amazed at the pop-cultural knowledge that aficionados bring to these movies. Without prompting, they can tell you all about Drax (Dave Bautista), the muscular man with the hearty laugh that always sounds forced to me, like he has to think about it before letting loose with a guffaw.

During this episode, Quill meets a character who claims to be his father. He's Ego, played by Kurt Russell. If you had any doubts, Ego's name serves as a clue about the character's intentions. Ego wants to enlist Quill's help in fulfilling a long-standing ambition. Trouble, of course, looms.

In what amounts to a glut of characters, Michael Rooker stands out as Yondo, the alien who raised Quill.

You'll also find a cameo appearance by Sylvester Stallone, and we meet Mantis (Pom Klementieff), a creature with an antenna that enables her to function as an empath. Mantis touches people and instantly knows what they're feeling.

Zoe Saldana returns as Gamora, who this time faces off against Nebula (Karen Gillan), a cyborg with blue skin who began her life as Gamora's sister. Hey, a little sibling rivalry never hurts.

Additional female power emanates for Ayesha, a golden-skinned character played by Elizabeth Debicki.

One of the movie's better bits involves a character named Taserface (Chris Sullivan), a brutish fellow whose descriptive but preposterous name prevents his victims from taking him seriously. If you're keeping score, Taserface belongs to a group called the Ravagers.

Gunn provides enough explosions to satisfy action-hungry audiences, and after a third-act dip, the movie picks up for an ending that tempers the obligatory mayhem with a bit of emotion that stems from the self-sacrificing act of one of the movie's characters.

You may be getting the impression that the movie virtually bursts with characters, effects, action and amusements. Some hit; some don't. But Vol. 2's mixed bag won't keep it from reaping a box-office bonanza. I can't say that Vol. 2 matches the enjoyment of the first movie, but, boy, can you see it trying.

A man who knows how to wheedle











She insisted that cities are for people

In 1961, author/activist Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a landmark book that asserted the primacy of people over buildings when it comes to the vitality of cities. The new documentary Citizen Jane: Battle for the City provides valuable insights into Jacobs' career and sets up the conflict that gives the movie its juice. Jacobs spent much of her time opposing the efforts of New York City building czar Robert Moses. Moses viewed city blight as a cancer that had to be cut from the urban body; Jacobs understood that these neighborhoods -- with their street life and self-containment -- represented enclaves of safety and community. She was appalled to see them give way to faceless apartment buildings that quickly developed into fortresses of alienation. Jacobs ultimately moved to Toronto, but late in her New York City life, she battled to save her West Village neighborhood from Moses' reach. Jacobs' activism reached its heights when she helped organize efforts to prevent Moses from building a highway across lower Manhattan; she and others believed that Moses' earlier construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway had paved the way for the deterioration of the South Bronx. They hoped to save lower Manhattan from a similar fate. Director Matt Tyrnauer buoys the story with wonderful footage of New York in the 1930s, '50s, and '60s and with interviews from authorities such as architecture critic Paul Goldberger. Citizen Jane stands as a tribute to Jacobs and an encouragement to those who believe that lively, enriching serendipity -- which may look like chaos -- never should be planned out of existence.

The story of an enigmatic chef

It seems almost quaint to remember the days before committed foodies became commonplace and chefs emerged as celebrities. Director Lydia Tenaglia's documentary Jeremiah Tower, The Last Magnificent reminds us that the current obsession with restaurants and their chefs had a beginning. Regarded by some as the first celebrity chef, Tower worked with Alice Waters at Berkeley's famed Chez Panisse. He later opened a San Francisco restaurant called Stars. Tower grew up around wealth but was mostly ignored by his patrician parents. Even as a kid, he was obsessed with food and menus. After Harvard, he applied for a job at Waters' Chez Panisse with no prior experience. At the time, Chez Panisse was a kind of hippy hang-out with great food. Did Tower -- an enigmatic but charismatic gay man -- do more to establish Chez Panisse's culinary importance than anyone else? Before his break with Waters, Towers shifted the restaurant's cuisine to locally grown ingredients and was instrumental in creating the so-called "California Cuisine" -- at least that's the impression I took from the film. After an earthquake ravaged Stars, Tower withdrew to Mexico, where he resided until he made an improbable attempt at a comeback. In 2014, he took over Tavern on the Green, a heavily trafficked New York City restaurant that couldn't accommodate Towers' idiosyncratic but entirely committed approach. I could have done without Tenaglia's attempts at recreating scenes from Tower's boyhood, but watching various big names in food -- Martha Stewart, Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain -- talk about Towers' career proves fascinating and Tower himself adds an elusive but compelling quality. The film's best achievement may be the way it reminds us that restaurants have become entertainments unto themselves; Tenaglia shows us the life -- and trendy commercial heat -- that the best of them generate. Waters, by the way, isn't among those interviewed.

At the bedside of a dying king

Director Albert Serra's new movie observes Louis XIV during his final hours.

It's difficult to explain why watching someone on their deathbed creates a certain grim fascination. Are we compelled to ask what it will be like to find ourselves in such a position -- which we someday surely will?

Perhaps, but it's nearly inconceivable to think that a director would make a one-hour and 55-minute movie about a bed-ridden man who's on the verge of expiring -- even if that man is Louis XIV, the great Sun King of France and the longest reigning monarch in the country's history. Louis died in 1715 after 72 years on his gilded throne.

Catalan director Albert Serra takes on the challenge of creating a movie about a dying man, embracing nearly every hazard such a task entails. He uses no flashbacks and does little to flesh out Louis' career. He surrounds Louis with courtiers and physicians who plead with him to eat and who execute the few orders he manages to give. Any sign of life from the dying monarch -- even nibbling a biscuit -- becomes a cause for hope and elation.

Louis is played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, whose long history in French cinema began when he played young Antoine Doinel in Francois Truffaut's landmark 1959 film, The 400 Blows.

Now, 72, Leaud takes on the appearance of a magnificent ruin as Louis lies in his bed at Versailles. Although much of his time on screen is spent in the prone position, Leaud conveys the manner of a man who has known little other than the royal life. Whether he's chatting about the looks of women in the court or descending into the abyss that awaits, Louis remains the king.

True to the movie's mood, Serra includes Louis' final request: He wanted his heart to be cut out and mummified, a command that seems to emphasize the king's assurance of his place in history.

Ultimately, Louis seems more accepting of his fate than the gaggle of advisors who surround him, characters who understand that the center of their world is on the verge of vanishing. They try to force Louis to drink, but drops of water only dribble down the great man's chin. Louis' doctors debate about whether they erred in not amputating Louis' gangrenous leg.

Serra surely will tax some viewers' patience. Slowly paced and composed of minor inflections leading up to the monarch's death, Louis XIV gives us few insights into the events of the period, which probably won't bother those who have forgotten that among Louis' signature accomplishments was revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had granted rights to France's Protestants.

Historians quibble about why Louis was called the Sun King, but everyone acknowledges that Louis ruled by what he deemed divine right, an imperative that gave him absolute authority. Serra's movie doesn't exactly keep us on the edge of our seats, but few -- if any -- filmmakers would have thought to focus on the final hours of the Sun King and the dying of what had been his magnificent light. Whatever the movie's challenges for viewers, I'm grateful that Serra made it.