The Weekend Warrior June 16, 2023
BROOKLYN 45, TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL, THE FLASH, ELEMENTAL, THE BLACKENING, ASTEROID CITY, EXTRACTION 2
So we’re back after another week off, but I’m still at the point where if I can’t write a column in less than two hours, then it’s just too much spent on a column where I’m not making any money, so that’s what we have… but there’s a lot to cover…
This week has been particularly busy with the Tribeca Film Festival in full effect, both in New York theaters and on the digital platform. Before I get to some of the movies I’ve seen there, I want to rectify something that I wasn’t able to get to last week (cause there was no column) and that is to review Ted Geoghegan’s BROOKLYN 45, which is now playing on streamer Shudder. I had a chance to see it with an audience a few weeks ago, and I should preface this semi-review by saying that Ted has been a long-time friend, so there’s a good chance I could be biased, but it could be equally awkward if I just didn’t like the movie. But I did, quite a bit, and I hope that people will give it a look, even though it could be argued (despite streaming on Shudder) how much of a horror movie it is vs. being a historical drama.
As the title might suggest, the movie takes place in Brooklyn in 1945 as WWII has come to an end, and it involves the reunion of a number of friends who had various roles in ending the war, including Anne Ramsay’s Marla, who was an interrogator. The group has mainly gathered to support their friend Clive (Larry Fessenden) whose wife has died recently and insists they hold a séance (the first part of the film’s horror elements), but it leads to some dramatic moments like the group learning that he has kidnapped a German woman (Kristina Klebe) claiming her to be a Nazi. A good chunk of the movie involves these six actors in a room trying to decide what to do with her, and to some, that does veer away from any horror elements they might be expecting from Geoghegan’s earlier movie We Are Still Here.
Because I consider Ted a friend, you might assume that I’m just gonna like his movie, but if anyone knows how much tougher I am on my friends’ creative endeavors, it would be Ted. Thankfully, he has knocked one out of the park with this script, which literally could be something he could have staged as a play if not for the supernatural elements that require more special effects. Fans of We Are Still Here should still be able to recognize that aspect of Geoghegan’s work but what impressed me more than anything is the cast he put together and the performances he got out of them. Fessenden and Ezra Buzzington are actors he’s worked within the past, but the performances he gets out of them just blew me away, as well as the performance by Jeremy Holm, whose work I wasn’t as familiar with.
There are some great character moments throughout but it’s really how the group decide what to do with the potential Nazi in their midst that gives Brooklyn 45 far more depth than I was expecting, even having heard the story about how the filmmaker was inspired by his father, who fought in the Air Force. I’m also glad I got to see the movie with a real audience, because there are some definite surprises that will play better seeing it with others, but it’s also great that this is available to fully explore further on Shudder, too. Setting aside any potential bias, I think it’s Ted’s best film to date and very different from his previous two films.
Rating: 8/10
Let’s get to some Tribeca-related stuff before I get to this week’s theatrical releases, shall we? I could go on a long history lesson of how I’ve covered Tribeca for 20 years and have had some difficulty in certain years finding movies that I liked. The exception to that statement are the documentaries, because I feel like the docs programmed at Tribeca tend to be some of the best docs of the year almost every year, and that’s certainly the case this year as well.
First of all, Julie Cohen’s doc Every Body, which will be released by Focus Features on June 30, is another fantastic film from the co-director of RBG and Julia, which focuses on intersex people and the battles they’ve faced against the government and against the medical field. I will be the first to admit that I did not really know or understand the term “intersex” or even the fact that that’s the “I” in LGBTQIA+, so I went into the movie assuming thinking it was more about non-binary people, which would be an interesting topic in itself. No, “intersex” people are those born with contradictory gender aspects so for instance, one of the subjects, Alicia Weigel, was born with XY chromosomes (traditionally male) and testes instead of a uterus. (For many decades, intersex people were labelled as “hermaphrodites” which isn’t quite what’s really happening.) The other two subjects, River Gallo and Sean Saifa Wall, had a similar dichotomy as kids that led to intrusive surgical procedures that made their gender identities more difficult to come to terms with as they became adults. All three of them have become activists for intersex rights, and Ms. Cohen finds a way to tell their stories with parallels to others who have had even more traumatic stories with the ways they were treated by doctors before laws were made to protect those born intersex.
The doc, Stan Lee, which will hit Disney+ this Friday, is also a great doc from David Gelb, the filmmaker behind Jiro Dreams of Sushi and other cooking-related shows and films. As the title would suggest, this is all about the mastermind behind Marvel Comics and its many beloved characters that have become even more popular with the advent of Marvel Studios. This will actually debut on Disney+ on Friday so I hope fans of the comics/movies will give it a look to learn more about Lee and his early collaborations with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to create so many popular superheroes.
I also enjoyed Sav Rogers’ Chasing Chasing Amy, which you can presume is about Kevin Smith’s 1997 comedy starring Ben Affleck and Joey Lawrence Adams, but it’s a much more personal film about Rogers’ relationship with his girlfriend and coming out at trans (to Smith, no less), so he has quite a unique perspective on Chasing Amy, as have many LGBTQ+ individuals over the years. This is a case where I think Tribeca proves that it finds quite unique docs to run that might not have the studio backing of some of the movies above.
One new addition to this year’s Tribeca is the “Escape from Tribeca” section, which was mostly focused on genre films, and it was my first opportunity to see Michel Hazanavicius’ Final Cut, a French-language remake of the Japanese horror-comedy classic, One Cut of the Dead, starring Romain Duris and Bérénice Bejo from Hazanavicious’ Oscar Best Picture-winning The Artist. As one might expect, this is a very different movie from that one, but it does run parallel to the French filmmaker’s constant foray into parody and spoof. Those who love One Cut might wonder whether it needed to be remade in French, but Final Cut is almost more of a sequel since the original Japanese movies and what happened there are referenced, and this one is being made in French for that audience. If you haven’t seen One Cut, I won’t spoil, but it essentially is about a zombie movie being made that ends up encountering zombies… kind of. Fans of the original movie should be thrilled to see Yoshiko Takehara returning as producer Madame Matsuda with a much bigger role this time.
Another great doc that was part of “Escape from Tribeca” was David Gregory’s Enter the Clones of Bruce, the Bruce being the great martial arts star Bruce Lee, who died suddenly and tragically in 1973, leading to a slew of imitators and imitations trying to capture his glory and the demand for more Bruce Lee movies. The filmmakers managed to get access to everyone from Bruce Li to Bruce Le to Dragon Lee and many of those involved with making those movies both on the distribution and filmmaking side of things. I’m a pretty big martial arts fan though not necessarily Bruce Lee, maybe because I wasn’t aware of all the copycats out there, but Enter the Clones of Bruce does a fine job culling down all the would-bes and wannabes into a fairly entertaining doc.
Tribeca isn’t all about docs and genre films though, and I want to draw attention to four narrative films I thought were particularly good. First of all, there’s Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr’s Cinnamon, a Tarantino-influenced crime-drama involving a young couple Jodi and Eddie, played by Hailey Kilgore and David Iacono, who decide to rob the gas station where she works in order to get money to move to California for her recording career. As might be expected, things quickly go south and they run afoul of a number of unscrupulous individuals, including the great Pam Grier as Mama, and her immediate family, including Jeremie Harris as a particularly tough individual. The movie also stars Damon Wayans as Jodi’s boss, who has his own plans. Many filmmakers have tried to do Tarantino, leading to many very bad movies over the years, but Cinnamon is quite a fantastic take on what Tarantino does best in terms of dialogue and characters, making me think that Montgomery is a filmmaker we’ll be seeing a lot more of.
Another solid drama was Bill Oliver’s Our Son about a married couple, played by Luke Evans and Billy Porter, who decide to get a divorce, leaving them having to fight over who gets custody of their young son. It’s hard to avoid comparisons to Kramer vs. Kramer, since this is very much a similar idea of two parents, two men who used to love each other, having to do what’s best for their son, and this is fairly typical of the dark and gloomy nature of some of Tribeca’s offerings this year. Evans and Porter are so good in this, both in their scenes together and when they’re negotiating the difficult nature of divorce proceedings and a custody battle.
I learned that Christian Petzold’s drama Afire was playing at Tribeca in a rather roundabout way, but as a fan of some of his earlier films (particularly Phoenix) I knew I’d have to see this one. It stars Thomas Schubert as Leon and Langton Uibel as his friend Felix, who are taking vacation at a remote seaside cabin where they encounter Nadja, played by Paula Beer (from Petzold’s earlier films Undine and Transit), who Leon falls for, but he also has to work on his book, which just gets more complicated as Felix falls for a local lifeguard (Enno Trebs). What made this movie particularly timely was that it involves a number of forest fires approaching where they’re staying, and I watched this literally the day after New York City was struck by smoky haze from the forest fires in Canada. I t’s definitely a slow build movie that takes some time to really get going, and like other Tribeca films, it’s rather dour but also deals with relationships in an interesting way.This will be released by Sideshow/Janus on July 14, showing that there is plenty that premiered at Tribeca that will hit theaters soon enough.
Tribeca has premiered many directorial debuts by actors, and that’s the case with Michael Shannon’s Eric Larue, an adaptation of Brett Neveu’s stageplay, with the wonderful Judy Greer playing Janice, the mother of a high schooler who shot and killed some of his classmates and how she navigates her small church community with her husband (played by Alexander Skarsgård) after the tragedy. Sure, the movie is a bit of a downer, and it’s going to be compared incessantly to Fran Kranz’s Mass from a few years back due to the subject matter, but it’s a different film, partially since it isn’t just four actors in a room, but deals with more complex emotions. I was fairly impressed with Shannon’s directorial debut, and I had a chance to interview him for Above the Line, so you can read more about the movie here.
(I also saw Randall Park’s Shortcomings, which I reviewed out of Sundance, and will be released by Sony Classics in early August.)
I’ve already reviewed THE FLASH (Warner Bros.), which you can read here, so not much more to say there, and we can focus on some of the other releases.
ELEMENTAL (Disney-Pixar)
Peter Sohn, who directed The Good Dinosaur, returns with an even more high-concept Pixar animated family film, this one set in a place called Element City where there are people made of fire, water, earth and … um… foliage, but it mainly focuses on a family in Fire City, including Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis), who wants to take over her father’s business, which runs afoul of a building inspector named Wade (Mamoudou Athie), who also happens to be water (the element her father despises). One thing leads to another and next thing you know, they’re in love… FIRE and WATER!!!
Bearing in mind that this is about as high concept as you can get, even for Pixar, it takes a little time before you can dig through all the awful puns to get to anything resembling a story. There are a lot of ideas presented in trying to create Element City, which is essentially Zootopia but with elements instead of animals. Ember isn’t a particularly new or original character, essentially a young woman trying to live up to her immigrant father’s expectations only to get sidetracked by meeting Wade, who as a water element… cries a lot. Yeah, that’s the recurring joke surrounding the character, which is funny at times but gets to be a bit much.
The first half hour of the movie is so frenetic with so many ideas and puns thrown at the viewer that it’s hard to really get into any of it, but when it focuses on the meet-cute aspect of the romance between Ember and Wade, that’s where Elemental excels. It may be because there really hasn’t been a Pixar romance movie that I can remember other than possibly subplots in Toy Story and such.
The animation also takes some getting used to because it tries to blend a number of different styles ala last year’s The Bad Guys and some things are impressive while other visuals just don’t connect. Ultimately, the visual look of the film comes together as the story begins to gel.
Although Elemental may not be top-line Pixar in the vein of Ratatouille, Up or others, it’s a perfectly enjoyable romp that excels when it focuses more on the love story than all the many other ideas being presented.
Rating: 7.5/10
THE BLACKENING (Liongate)
I’m still a little embarrassed that I walked out of this at TIFF last September, but it was my fourth movie of the day, I was pretty tired, and I just wasn’t having it at that particular moment. Fortunately, I made the effort to go back and see it a second time, and I liked it much more. Essentially, this is a horror-comedy directed by Tim Story (Ride Along, Barbershop) involving a group of school friends who reunite at a remote cabin for the Juneteenth weekend where they discover a game called “The Blackening” that forces them to decide which of them is the “blackest.” They have a set amount of time to make this decision before they’re killed.
I’m not sure why I found the cast of characters so annoying the first time I watched this (again, I blame how tired I tend to be during film festivals), but the main cast, which includes original writer Dewayne Perkins, as well as Sinqua Walls, Grace Byers, Antoinette Robertson, X Mayo, and a very funny Jermaine Fowler, who plays the nerdy Clifton, who feels very out of place, amongst his much cooler friends.
Although horror fans might be disappointed by how little actual scares and kills and gore there is in the movie – it’s really more of a comedy – there’s still enough to keep things entertaining, especially if you, too, wondered why it is always the black characters who die first… so what happens when everyone is black?
This is a solid comedy that I imagine will play well with a loud crowd (similar to Extraction 2 below), and I also had a chance to talk to the ever-charming Tim Story, an interview you can read over on Above the Line.
Rating: 6.5/10
Here are my predictions for this weekend’sTop 10, and I will admit to having been more bullish on The Flash and having lowered my prediction below $100 million despite other things that point to it doing better.
1. The Flash (Warner Bros.) - $96.3 million N/A
2. Elemental (Disney-Pixar) - $42.5 million N/A
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony) - $28.3 million -49%
4. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Paramount) - $25.5 million -57%
5. The Little Mermaid (Disney) - $12 million -48%
6. The Blackening (Lionsgate) - $9.6 million N/A
7. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (Marvel/Disney) - $4 million -45%
8. The Boogeyman (20th Century) - $3.2 million -55%
9. Fast X (Universal) - $2.5 million -53%
10. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Universal) - $1.3 million -42%
ASTEROID CITY (Focus Features)
Opening in six theaters in New York and L.A. is the latest from Wes Anderson, which maybe not surprisingly (if you’re familiar with my previous reviews), I just wasn’t really a fan of, even if it’s kind of his version of Jordan Peele’s Nope. Like Anderson’s other movies, this has an enormous ensemble cast, including a number of familiar faces from his previous movies, most notably Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Tony Revolori, and more.
The movie is set up as a play by the moderator, played by Bryan Cranston, as we’re introduced to Asteroid City, a relatively contained town in the desert where there are a number of government labs, but it’s also the locale for the annual Junior Stargazer convention where a half dozen brilliant young scientists are competing for prizes. Among them are Woodrow Steenbeck (Jake Ryan from Moonrise Kingdom) and Grace Edwards’ Dinah, whose parents (Schwartzman and Scarlett Johansson) have a bit of a tryst, and then an alien lands and all focus turns to that.
I had problems with Anderson’s last movie, The French Dispatch, because it was kind of a mess with its anthology format, and Asteroid City is a mess in a different way because there are just so many characters, very few that really contribute to the overall story, which is fairly minimal despite the slew of characters. (I mean, I love Hong Chau, but I could not even remotely remember who she played but that’s because there is so much going on with characters coming in and out, plus the whole pretense of this being a play.)
The real star of the movie is Adam Stockhausen’s production design (I’ll have an interview over at Below the Line soon) in creating the town of Asteroid City in such a specific and detailed way that makes you realize how much he contributes to Anderson’s frequently-hailed vision. There’s also a trio of girls, Woodrow’s sisters, who are constantly stealing scenes from anyone else around them, including no less than Tom Hanks, but once again, Jeffrey Wright is one of the standouts as another returning castmate from The French Dispatch (where he also stole the movie).
Asteroid City has a few funny ideas and moments, but otherwise, it’s another dud where Anderson throws everything but the kitchen sink at the viewer with no apologies that few viewers would have much interest in many of those ideas.
Rating: 5.5/10
EXTRACTION 2 (Netflix)
I’m not sure if I ever got around to watching all of Sam Hargrave’s original Extraction, starring Chris Hemsworth as extractor Tyler Rake, but I know I didn’t get to see it in a theater with an audience, as I did with its sequel, which is just vastly superior in my honest opinion. Spoiler: Tyler Rake actually survived dying at the end of the first movie, and he’s busy recuperating when he’s called back to save his wife’s sister and her family from a jail in Georgia where they’ve been imprisoned.
Although the general premise is a simple one, Hargrave gets to do more with the premise that was originally introduced in Ande Parks’ graphic novel “Cuidad,” but I especially liked the other members of Tyler’s team, Golshifteh Farahani’s Nik and her brother Yaz, played by Adam Bessa, who bring so much to the action.
The movie is also able to veer away from the usual cookie cutter villains, because there’s a familial connection between the family Tyler is hired to save and their captors, which gives the story much more depth than these movies might normally have.
More than anything, the movie is about the amazing action setpieces that Hargrave (a stunt man and second unit director) delivers with more than a few scenes that will have your mouth dropped wide, and that’s even keeping in mind that John Wick: Chapter 4 came out earlier this year.
Although mileage may vary, I’m glad to see Hemsworth in another solid action franchise not necessarily playing Thor, and I’m totally on board of seeing more of Tyler Rake, and hopefully, if Netflix and Hargrave make a third movie, they’ll make more of a play to give it a theatrical release than Extraction 2 received. This is the kind of movie that’s great to see in a theater with a rapt and reacting audience.
Rating: 7/10
(Note: Extraction 2 will hit Netflix on Friday, and yeah, I’m a little bitter about that with so many worthwhile movies to see in theaters right now.)
Above and beyond the Metrograph’s normal repertory programming, it’s also debuting a new 4k restoration of Lars von Trier’s The Idiots this weekend, which will be streaming on Mubi sometime soon but this continues their attempt to show these restorations theatrically in advance.
I’m also looking forward to seeing Chow Yun-Fat in Wong Jing’s God of Gamblers (1989) which is being shown as part of “Late Night: Wanna Bet?,” which is also screening PT Anderson’s first film, Hard Eight (1996) this weekend, as well as the James Caan movie, The Gambler (1974).
Another Asian series taking place this weekend is “Cantopop Icons,” which includes Comrades: A Love Story (which regularly screens at the Metrograph), martial arts classic The Heroic Trio (1993) and its weak-sauce sequel Heroic Trio 2: Executioners.
As part of Metrograph’s Father’s Day programming, it’s showing Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums from 2001, which is one of the filmmaker’s movies I still like. Metrograph is also showing Tim Burton’s Big Fish (2003) as part of the Father’s Day programming.
(Sorry, that’s all the repertory stuff I had time to write about, and Metrograph will always get precedence due to its proximity as my neighborhood movie theater.)
Other movies I wasn’t able to get to this weekend:
MAGGIE MOORE(S) (Screen Media)
NOBODY’S HERO (Strand Releasing)
Next week, Jennifer Lawrence stars in the rauchy R-rated comedy, No Hard Feelings, and a couple other movies (Past Lives, Asteroid City) expand nationwide. Since I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to see the former and already have reviewed the latter two, no promises of there being a column.