THE WEEKEND WARRIOR July 26, 2024
THE FABULOUS FOUR, DÌDI, THE BEAST WITHIN, THE LAST BREATH, THE ARCTIC CONVOY, ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS
Another week, another 500 movies!!!!! No, it’s not so bad, but maybe it just seems that way, and once again I’m starting to write this way later than I should be. I usually should be writing this on the weekend before release, but I had a crossword tournament on Sunday, and a ton of interviews for Cinema Daily US (coming soon!) as well as Neil Rosen once again inviting me to be on his PBS show Talking Pictures with Neil Rosen, which is so much fun. (If you watch this episode when it airs on Aug 2, you’ll notice me laughing more than usual through most of it, ‘cause the two other critics, Roger Friedman and Bill McCuddy, were just cracking jokes constantly… I had a few jokes myself, but I’m not sure they made the cut.)
For various personal reasons, I will not be reviewing DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE (Marvel/Disney) in this week’s column or as a separate review, just because the press screening wasn’t convenient, and I decided to just see it like a normal human on Thursday afternoon, in IMAX 3D, no less. I’ve been trying my best to avoid spoilers (thanks for nothing, Roger Friedman! <G>) but I’m trying to remain excited for it without going into it with too many expectations, if you know what I mean. I’ve been kind of worried about this movie just being one in-joke after another without much of a story, but we’ll see how it goes.
On the other hand, there is another wide release this week that I did see, and that’s…
THE FABULOUS FOUR (Bleecker Street)
If you’ve been reading this column for the past few years than you already know how annoyed I’ve been getting with these so-called comedies that bring together four legendary actresses, a few of them Oscar-nominated, into a movie with the simplest and most inane of plots for the sake of laughs.
This one comes from Australian filmmaker Jocelyn Moorhouse (The Dressmaker) though she’s only directing this one. The high-concept premise involves Bette Midler’s Marilyn getting married and invited her old besties to Key West, Florida to attend, although she had a falling out with Susan Sarandon’s Lou (a doctor). Their other friends are Megan Mullaly’s singer Alice, and Sheryl Lee Ralph’s Kitty (from Abbott Elementary, another TV show I’ve been meaning to watch). As expected by anyone who has seen any of these movies (like Summer Camp just a few months back).
I’m not even sure where to begin with this one, since I’m nervous about being thought of ageist or sexist for absolutely hating this movie trend that doesn’t seem to be going away. Granted, I haven’t seen anything good from Diane Keaton for some time, but Sarandon and Midler appear in so few theatrical releases, I have to imagine their fans may be interested in this one for that fact alone.
Even so, the movie has such a lazy screenplay that it is almost the exact plot as other recent films like the Book Club sequel from last year, and in almost every case, these movies go for the lowest-hanging fruit in order to get laughs.
Sarandon is the best part of the movie, because she seems to be aware that the material is shit, so she puts her best foot forward anyway. I can’t say the same for Megan Mullaly, whose character we’re introduced to as she is having a fling with a significantly younger recording engineer, and her being a cougar chasing after younger men seems to be the only significant characteristic for her. Bruce Greenwood shows up as a potential suitor for Joe, but then there’s a twist there, as well, not one that makes that big a difference in terms of making the weak comedy any less grueling.
Oh, also there are these annoying younger people who meet Sarandon’s character on their flight to Florida, and they keep turning up for some reason, just there to root on the older woman, I guess. Probably the worst part of the movie has to be when it introduces that old nugget of having one of the friends, in this case Sarandon, take drugs and then get into situations that are meant to be funny. Wisely, Sarandon is able to play this without hamming it up in the way that Diane Keaton or Jane Fonda might.
There’s a parasailing sequence that could be an outtake from Summer Camp, but it’s made worse by three of the women deciding that’s a good time to sing a song. Just when you think this movie has run out of ideas and steam, it throws in an obligatory song and dance number in the end credits that will just piss the viewer off more about the laziness shown by the filmmakers.
The Fabulous Four is such a horrible attempt at comedy, it could be accused of elder abuse, the only thing that even remotely salvages it being Susan Sarandon, who somehow rises above the material, but not always.
Rating: 3.5/10
THE BOX OFFICE CHART
1. Deadpool and Wolverine (Marvel/Disney) - $187.6 million N/A
2. Twisters (Universal) - $34 million -58%
3. Despicable Me 4 (Universal) - $13 million -47%
4. Inside Out 2 (Disney/Pixar) - $7.7 million -40%
5. Longlegs (NEON) - $5.6 million -53%
6. A Quiet Place: Day One (Paramount) - $3.2 million -50%
7. The Fabulous Four (Bleecker Street) - $2.1 million N/A
8. Fly Me to the Moon (Sony/Apple) - $1.5 million -55%
9. Bad Boys: Ride or Die (Sony) - $1.3 million -51%
This week’s “Chosen One,” opening in New York and L.A. is…
DÌDI ( 弟弟) (Focus Features)
I saw Sean Wang’s amazing coming-of-age film (his third feature?) virtually at this year’s Sundance, and it quickly became one of my favorite things from that festival. It also won the Audience Award, so clearly, I’m not alone. It stars newcomer Izaac Wang as Chris Wang, a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy who lives with a domineering mother (Joan Chen), her own hyper-judgmental mother-in-law “Nai Nai” (Chang Li Hua), and an older sister with whom he is constantly squabbling.
Set in 2008 California, this is clearly a semi-autobiographical movie for Sean Wang, since there’s such a specificity to Chris’ journey, and yet, despite taking place 30 years after I was his age, I could totally relate to so many aspects of his life. That’s the brilliance of Wang’s film, in that he has created this story that will be so relatable to so many people even if they don’t share any of the experiences of Chris.
Of course, the most obvious comparison would have to be Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, but this is more of a movie that’s just as much about a dysfunctional family as it is about navigating through life as a teenager, and there just seems to be more depth and weight to the story Wang is telling in this one.
Izaac Wang and the other young actors are quite impressive, but the movie also gives you a reminder that Joan Chen may be one of China’s best actors and one that has yet to be nominated for an Oscar. Maybe her performance as Chris’ Mom will change that, but first, Focus has to get the Academy members out to see the movie, which is always tougher when there’s only one name star amongst the cast. (Hey, it worked for CODA and Nomadland, didn’t it?) But I also loved Chang Li Hua’s Nai Nai, who is quite a funny and lovable character in her own right.
While I’m generally a fan of good coming-of-age films, it’s been a while since I’ve seen one as brilliantly effective across the board as DÌDI, because Sean Wang clearly had a very personal story to tell, and his cast really delivers. I cannot recommend this movie enough, because it’s just an absolute joy, and I think people will love this, even if you don’t think it’s your thing.
Rating: 9/10
THE BEAST WITHIN (Well Go USA)
I do love werewolf movies, so I watched Alexander J. Farrell’s British werewolf drama with interest. Kit Harrington from Game of Thrones is the primary draw playing an abusive husband suffering from a werewolf’s curse, and the movie is about how his 10-year-old daughter Willow (Caoilinn Springall) and wife (Ashley Cummings) deal with his changes, as the young girl learns the truth about her father.
I went into this movie with quite a bit of confusion, since I wasn’t sure if this was meant to be modern-day England or a period piece or what, and I didn’t get the relationship between Willow with her parents and grandfather, an odd character played by James Cosmo, who seems to be more of an antagonist at times than Harrington’s werewolf.
Farrell isn’t bad as a director, creating a decent-looking film with Harrington’s transformations into a werewolf and some gore, and the sound design is also good, but the film takes such a slow build approach that most of it just comes across as dull and bland.
The tension in the film does build up to the third act as Willow and her mother have to hide from their out-of-control werewolf father/husband, and there are aspects of his treatment of his family that draws comparisons to domestic abuse, but that aspect felt pretty subtle to me. Much of that comes from the weak performance given by Harrington, and the other actors around him are only slightly better, but when there are so many better werewolf movies than this made over the past century, you wonder what is the point of this one?
A fairly lackluster and highly unoriginal addition to the werewolf subgenre of horror, The Beast Within has so much potential, on which it just never fully delivers.
Rating: 6/10
THE LAST BREATH (RLJEfilms)
The only thing I like better than werewolf movies is a good shark movies, but unfortunately, Joachim Hedén’s The Last Breath is not good. It begins in an interesting way during WWII where the USS Charlotte is torpedoed by a German UBoat and sunk to the bottom of the sea where the surviving crew are attacked by… You guessed it… sharks. Eight decades later, a diver named Noah (Jack Parr) is exploring the area in the British Virgin Island when he finds the wreckage of the USS Charlotte. Soon, his friends arrive, including the obnoxiously rich Brett (Alexander Arnold), Noah’s ex-girlfriend Sam (Kim Spearman), Riley (Erin Mullen), and the token stoner idiot Logan (Arlo Carter), the latter who you can probably guess will be shark chum soon enough.
The basic premise is that Levi (Julian Sands), the captain of the boat that Noah has rented to go diving, has been having financial issues, so Noah’s rich friend Brett offers to pay him thousands in order to go diving in the sunken USS Charlotte, even though Noah states that it’s very dangerous. Once the group of friends gets down there, they discover that…. SPOILER…. SHARKS!
It was so nice to see the late Julian Sands having a prominent role in this, because as some might expect, the genre legend is the best part of what’s otherwise a pretty bad movie. Things are going perfectly fine until the group gets into the water, and then we have a bunch of divers (not necessarily the actors) with what is clearly ADR voice-over as they talk to each other. Most of the actors, other than Parr and Spearman, are just so bad that even when they pop up in a breathing space so they can take off their goggles and can actually act, it isn’t that much better.
As much as I enjoy some of the gory make-up effects involved with the shark attacks, the writing is just so horribly bad that I couldn’t even just enjoy it for its schlock.
The fact is that this movie doesn’t even stand up to 47 Meters Down and its sequel, but that’s because the director of those films is just much better, and there are just so many better movies that this film is ripping off so many better movies so obviously without bringing anything new to the genre.
The Last Breath probably would have been better off with the more appropriate title of “The Last Gasp.”
Rating: 5/10
And that’s about how far I got in terms of watching stuff, although there were a few others that interested me, and I did get screeners for these, that I just didn’t have time for due to reasons mentioned above.
THE ARCTIC CONVOY (Magnet)
I didn’t get a chance to watch this historical action-drama from Norwegian filmmaker Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken, but set in 1942, it sounds like it takes place in a similar setting as the beginning of The Last Breath, essentially being about a convoy bringing military supplies to a Norwegian outpost in Murmansk, across the brutal German-infested waters to support their soldiers on the frontline. I’m hoping I’ll have a chance to watch this soon.
ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS (Kimstim)
Opening at the Metrograph on Friday with director Wei Shujun on hand for QnAs on Friday night and Saturday afternoon (when I’ll be seeing it) is this intriguing crime neonoir thriller from China that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. It stars Zhu Yilong as police investigator Ma Zhe who is exploring the discovery of a woman’s body on the banks of a river in a small southern China town. This is based on the short story “Mistakes by the River” by YuHua, and I decided that I’d rather see it on person this weekend, so no review. I’ve seen the cool trailer quite a few times, though.
RHINEGOLD (Strand Releasing)
Opening in New York at the IFC Center and in L.A. at the Laemmle is the new movie from German-Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin (In the Fade, Head-On, The Edge of Heaven), who is actually one of the international filmmakers whose work I’ve really enjoyed. This one is about a man named Giwar Hajabi (Emilio Sakraya), who came to Germany as a young boy in the mid-80s with his family, and who builds on being low on the totem pole to becoming a petty criminal and drug dealer. Owing lots of money to the cartel, Giwar plans a gold heist to pay them back. A little bummed I didn’t get to this one to review but hope to watch soon.
SWAN SONG (Greenwich Entertainment)
This verité dance documentary from Chelsea McMullen is exec. produced by Neve Campbell, who starred in Robert Altman’s The Company way back in 2003. It follows the National Ballet of Canada, as they stage a new production of “Swan Lake,” directed by Karen Kain as her final production before she retires. This also opens at the IFC Center on Friday with McMullen and Campbell doing a QnA next Tuesday night.
MOTHERS INSTINCT (NEON)
Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway star in the new psychological thriller from cinematographer Benoît Delhomme, who has worked with John Hillcoat, Julian Schnabel, Anton Corijn and many more, a remake of a 2018 French-language film that was adapted from a 2012 novel by Barbara Abel. Chastain and Hathaway play next-door neighbors in ‘60s suburbia who have boys of the same age, but the relationship between the two women hits a downturn after a number of tragic events. Oddly, NEON did not have screeners of this and didn’t screen this for critics, so I’m not quite sure how good this can be, and it definitely seems to be getting dumped… BIG TIME. I guess they all can’t be Longlegs (thank god!).
THE GOOD HALF (Utopia/Fathom Events)
This new dramedy from filmmaker (and Rooney frontman) Robert Schwrtzman actually premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, and it’s getting two Fathom Events screenings this week ahead of a limited release in August. It stars Nick Jonas as Renn Whelland, who returns to Cleveland for his mother’s funeral, forcing him to confront problems and grief from his past. Yeah, it sounds like the premise for about a hundred movies that play at Sundance and other festivals, and if I had a chance to watch it again, I may have reviewed it – plus I still have an interview with Schwartzman to run, but needed to watch the movie again before doing so. The movie also stars Brittany Snow, David Arquette, Alexandra Shipp, Matt Walsh, and Elisabeth Shue as Renn’s mom. Hopefully, I’ll have more about this soon.
I just wasn’t able to get to…
WATER BROTHER: THE SID ABRUZZI STORY (Kinnane Brothers)
NYC REPERTORY
Once again giving the lead slot to another downtown repertory arthouse that’s just killing it with its programming, this weekend kicking off a “The Complete Melville” retrospective, and Film Forum is not dicking around, so if there are any movies by Herman Melville you haven’t seen but you want to, you should definitely check out the line-up. I myself am not that big a fan even though I have so many friends who swear by him and his noir thrillers. In fact, his 1969 film, Army of Shadows, which was just released in the States for the first time in 2006 will be getting a 4k restoration for a full week starting August 2, although this series (at least for now) is only running through August 1. I haven’t seen many of these though Le Samouraï recently got a lengthy run at Film Forum, and other films like Bob Le Flambeur and Le Cercle Rouge are regular repertory fare… so they must be good?
Les Blanks’ doc Burden of Dreams will continue through August 1 and Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982) will continue with a few screenings added for the weekend. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai runs through August 1, but Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room will be coming to an end on Thursday to make room for the Melville.
Beginning this weekend is “Ties That Bind: Tales of Madness,” screening the horror classic, The Wicker Man (1973) and Lars von Trier’s tough-to-watch Antichrist from 2009.
“Long Live Scala Cinema!” continues through the weekend with more showings of A Clockwork Orange, John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which I think I’ll be seeing on Sunday.
“In Pursuit of Shadows” continues, mostly focused on the new film Only the River Flows, but you’ll still be able to see the likes of Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, and the highly recommended The Wild Goose Lake through next week.
This weekend’s “Lazy, Hazy, Swayze Days” offerings are The Outsiders and Point Break, both of which I’ve already seen at the Metrograph. (Surprised they’re not showing Ghost!)
“Under the Pavement, The Beach” will screen Jean-Luc Godard’s 1968 film, Un Film Comme Les Autres as part of its series about the 1968 uprising.
“In the Realm of Tatsuya Fuji” will continue to show In the Realm of the Senses through the weekend, as well as Nagisa Oshima’s Empire of Passion (1978).
“Summer at Sea” continues with the most overrated Italian film ever made in the history of that country, Antonio’s L’Avventura (1960), which I hated the first time I saw it and never have been able to understand why people like it. (I’ve even tried to see it again.) You can also see the original Swept Away on Thursday afternoon, and it also will be screening Rohmer’s A Tale of Summer (1996), part of the French filmmaker’s “Tales of Four Season” cause the Metrograph does love Rohmer to a disturbing level.
“Art Cinema, Olympiad and the World” also continues through the weekend; I still have nothing more to say about this series.
Opening at the IFC Center this Friday is a restoration of the Rene (Fantastic Planet) Laloux-directed 1982 animated sci-fi film, THE TIME MASTERS (Janus Films), co-written and designed by the late great Jean Giraud aka Moebius. It’s a strange film, appropriate to be a midnight movie with optional but recommended edibles. It follows a young boy named Piel, who gets stranded on the planet of Perdide, where he calls for resume by a pilot named Jaffar, who is transporting an exiled Prince and Princess from their kingdom, with the help of the old seadog Silbad. Listen, this is no Heavy Metal, but it’s fun and weird with a crazy twist few will see coming.
This weekend’s “Late Night Favorites” include the original horror classic Friday the 13th (1980), as well as repeats of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left and The Matrix. “Ralph Bakshi: Outside the Lines” will screen Fritz the Cat (1972) and do a repeat of Fire and Ice (1983), all of these screening late on Friday and Saturday nights.
Continuing through the weekend are the 40th anniversary 4k restoration of Amadeus, Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, and Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979).
NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK & WILLIAMSBURG
Playing at Prospect Park on Saturday and Sunday afternoon is the classic The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, while Monday’s “Kids vs. Evil” selection is Pet Sematary II from 1992. Tuesday’s “Ridiculous Submline” is The Manitou.
Friday and Saturday’s late night “July Giallo” at Williamsburg in the absolutely classic, Argento’s Opera. Shu Lea Cheang’s Fresh Kill (1994) will play on Saturday and Sunday afternoon as part of “Recent Restorations” while Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) will play Saturday and Sunday morning for the kiddies. 1955’s Rififi will play on Tuesday night.
Continuing the “Milestone Movies: The Anniversary Collection 1994” with screenings of Kevin Smith’s Clerks, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Speed, Ed Wood, Forrest Gump, The Mask, The Lion King, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn, and so much more.
This weekend, a series called “Verbatim” begins, focusing on “a very particular technique that filmmakers and screenwriters have adopted on rare but almost inevitably indelible occasions: drawing the dialogue or onscreen text verbatim from various written documentary materials – transcripts of interviews, cockpit voice recorders, public hearings, or (most often) trials”. This will include screenings of George C. Wolfe’s 1993 film Fires in the Mirror, Marc Levin’s Twilight: Los Angeles (2000), Alice Diop’s Saint Omer (2022), and much more.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar-winning The Favourite screens on Friday night as part of the retrospective for the Greek filmmaker. Greg Mottola’s underrated Adventureland, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, will screen on Saturday night as part of “Cult Café,” and Sunday, for the kiddies, there’s the animated Hotel Transylvania. On Wednesday, my good pal and Dario Argento biographer Maitland McDonough will be heading out to Long Island to screen Argento’s Suspiria.
Playing this weekend as part of “See It Big: 70mm” is Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967), a fun movie but not my favorite Tati. Disney’s Bambi will play as part of MoMI’s “World of Animation” series, while the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer (2008) will play on Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
“Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger” continues through July 31 with The Thief of Baghdad on Friday and Peeping Tom on Sunday, as well as many more.
Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger continues through the weekend – not repertory but kinda repertory.
On Friday, drag queen Hedda Lettus presents the classic horror film, Alligator, written by no less than John Sayles.
FilmLinc has been showing Hitchcock’s classic 1959 thriller North by Northwest in 70mm, and you can catch at least one or two more screenings on Thursday.’
BAM (BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC)
Claire Denis’ rarely-seen No Fear, No Die (1990) will be screening all weekend.
Next week, M. Night Shyamalan returns with the thriller Trap, starring Josh Hartnett, as well as Sony’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, which I’m not sure will be screened for review. I guess we’ll see.