THE WEEKEND WARRIOR Reviews and Repertory Round-Up for 12/13/24
September 5, Nickel Boys, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, The Last Showgirl
As I probably mentioned in the Early Edition, I wasn’t able to get to the single press screening of Sony’s Kraven the Hunter due to a pre-existing conflict, so I’ll be seeing that on Thursday afternoon and hopefully will have a review or two by the weekend either here and/or on Cinema Daily US. As it is, I may have overestimated that movie and New Line’s ability to get people into theaters since the latest tracking has both movies significantly lower than what I thought were already low-ball predictions.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM (New Line/Warner Bros. Animation)
I thought I’d at least be able to review this other wide release opening this weekend, and I had every intention to do so, since I genuinely love Tolkien’s books, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, and I even like a good portion of his The Hobbit prequels. Seeing his name on this animated film directed by Japanese filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama gave me hope that this would be an animated film of the quality of the Anime coming out of Japan. Nope, that wasn’t the case, as this prequel follows Hèra (voiced by Gaia Wise) as she gets caught up in a war began by her former childhood friend Wulf (Luca Pasqualino) as revenge for the death of his father at the hands of Hèra’s father (voiced by Brian Cox). The only other voice of note from the Jackson movies is that of Miranda Otto, voicing her character Eowyn, but 200 years earlier from when we met her.
I’m not actually going to review this movie, because frankly, I gave up on this one because I found it to be almost unwatchable. The animation looked worse than some of the lower budget television animation we’ve seen over the years, and nothing about the story pulled me in, because the writing and voice performances were just so awful. The movie also has the problems of many prequels – mind you, I haven’t watched very much of the Prime Video series – in that you really have to be interested in the history of a world, which only includes hints of the characters you love, in this case from Tolkien’s books and the Jackson movie. What I watched was so bad, I was stunned that Jackson would even associate his name with it, although he really is just an “executive producer,” although his movies’ Oscar-winning co-screenwriter Philippa Boyens is the film’s actual producer.
So yeah, I’m not sure what anyone was thinking with this one and why this film was allowed to be released with such a poor quality of animation and writing, but it’s really going to hurt the movie that already looked like it wasn’t going to do particularly well this weekend.
So let’s move onto some better movies, including what is this week’s “Chosen One” (although there are two particularly good movies this week)...
SEPTEMBER 5 (Paramount)
Opening in limited release this weekend and going wide on January 17 is this political thriller (of sorts) that’s actually the second movie this year that covers a live television event from the ‘70s, this one showing the events of September 5, 1972, when the ABC Sports team had to pivot when terrorists attacked the Olympic athletes’ village in Munich in the midst of the Summer Olympics, holding Israeli athletes hostage. It just made more sense for them to continue the coverage, even though they were mostly working outside their comfort zone.
Directed by Swiss filmmaker Tim Fehlbam, this was one of the nice surprises of the fall movie season. It’s a far smaller movie than something like Wicked and Gladiator II, but it’s a terrific ensemble drama that shows with brilliant authenticity how live news coverage was done back when that aspect of television was still very much in its infancy. John Magaro from last year’s Past Lives, Peter Sarsgaard, Ben Chaplin are three of the key ABC Sports players covering the Olympics when terrorists descend on Olympic village, while German actor Leonie Benesch (The Teacher’s Lounge) plays translator Marianne Gebhardt, who was beneficial in helping the news team figure out what was going on from German police broadcasts and such.
If you’ve seen Steven Spielberg’s Munich then you may already know something about the terrorist activities that had millions around the world locked to their television screens. September 5 is very specifically told from the viewpoint of the ABC journalists who were covering the story, and that’s really what makes it quite unique.
Magaro plays Geoffrey Mason, a fledgling TV director who was given more power than ever before, no one aware of what was to come, while Ben Chaplin plays his immediate supervisor Marvin Bader, and Peter Sarsgaard plays Roone Arledge, the president of ABC Sports, who is considered an absolute broadcasting legend. Arledge makes the tough decision to cover the events with the sports team, as well as giving Mason the room to make tough and important decisions. The many discussions about how to handle the situation is masterfully edited together with actual archive footage of sportscasters Jim McKay and Peter Jennings, blended so well that you’re never sure what is from the time and what has been recreated.
There are technical aspects to the film that might throw a few people off, but it also gives you an insight into how the news was created on the fly at a time when there were no computers, celphones, etc. Everyone on the team are using walkie-talkies for communication, and when a few of them go to the airport to report on the scene, they have to find a payphone and call back to the control room. The political implications of the terrorists going after the Israeli team on German soil just 25 years after the Holocaust that drove many Jews to form Israel in the first place is not lost on anyone, including Marianne, the one key German role.
September 5 is just an astounding piece of work, written and performed impeccably to create an ensemble drama that hits you with its gut punch of an ending even if you generally know the story and where it’s going. Kudos to Fehlbaum and his cast, particularly Magaro, for telling this story in such a compelling way that really leaves you thinking about what’s going on in the world today and how it’s being covered by the news.
Rating: 8.5/10
You can watch my interview with Fehlbaum and producer John Palmer over on Cinema Daily US, and I’ll have interviews with Chaplin and Benesch sometime closer to the film’s wide release in January.
NICKEL BOYS (Amazon MGM)
Opening in New York this Friday and in L.A. on December 20 is this new film from director and cinematographer RaMell Ross, who received an Oscar nomination for his cinema verité doc, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, five years ago. Nickel Boys is a narrative drama based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from Colson Whitehead, which follows the friendship between two young African-American men in a tough Southern reform school during the ‘60s where racism, harassment and outright torture (and the potential of being murdered) makes life tough for both of them.
Even though this is a narrative film, Ross uses a lot of the same cinema verité tricks he did in his acclaimed doc, making this a lot more experimental than typical period dramas. I first saw this around the time of the New York Film Festival, since it was the Opening Night Film, and honestly, I really didn’t get it, nor was I sure if I even liked it much, even though I did write about it briefly. When the movie won a number of Gotham Awards and received other critical nods in the past couple weeks, I felt like I should watch it again to see what I might have missed. So I watched it again, and on my second viewing, I realized that I really did not like the movie at all, because it just had so many problems as a film, everything from the weak writing and acting and the way Ross tells the story in such a non-linear narrative way.
We meet one of the two protagonists, Elwood Curtis, as a promising youth in the South being sent to a university due to his intelligence. On hitching a ride with another black man, they’re stopped by the police, who claims the car is stolen, and Elwood is indicted as an accomplice and sent to the Nickel Academy reform school in rural Florida. Once at Nickel, Elwood, played by Ethan Herisee, meets and befriends Brandon Wilson’s Turner and the two of them help each other deal with all the horrible things happening at Nickel.
The fact that I was able to figure out even that much of the plot is pretty amazing, considering the amount of jumping around in time and all the odd nonsensical images and relatively pointless archival footage inserted into the story. Like what’s the deal with the alligator that keeps appearing? A lot has been said about the first-person viewpoint for a lot of the movie that jumps between the two characters offering the same scene from each of their points of view, but that also didn’t do much for me. The fact is that I didn’t think either actor was particularly good, and even a ringer like Anjanue Ellis-Taylor, who plays Elwood’s grandmother Hattie, just doesn’t offer enough in her few scenes to really make me
There’s no way around the fact that this movie is “racism porn” at its worst. It’s not telling a story that needs to be told, regardless of whether Whitehead’s award-winning novel was based on historic fact, so who is this supposed to be for? Is it being made to educate white people about this very specific experience about being black? Are black people supposed to enjoy watching this experience in comparison to their own?
In many ways, it reminds me of the problems I had with Barry Jenkins’ similarly overpraised Moonlight – and I tried to rewatch that one, too! – as well as last year’s American Fiction (also released by MGM, but at least that one actually paid at the Oscars), and it’s not even remotely as strong as Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection, a movie that closed the New York Film Festival two years ago. On top of that, there was a much better documentary called Sugarcane about such abuse of indigenous kids at a Canadian Catholic school that is far more powerful and moving in relaying similar ideas.
Basically, Ross’ predilection for documentary and especially towards cinema verité, ends up being Nickel Boys’ undoing, since it comes across like a lot of experimental noodling with very little concrete storytelling to keep the viewer invested. I honestly have no idea what other critics are seeing in this movie, but even worse, I have no idea who might have any interest in seeing this if it hadn’t already been overpraised by critics.
Rating: 5.5/10
THE LAST SHOWGIRL (Roadside Attractions)
This new film from Gia Coppola (Palo Alto) – who is indeed Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter– is only receiving a one-week L.A. release at AMC Century City this weekend, before being released wide on January 10. It stars Pamela Anderson as Shelly, the long-time main dancing girl at a popular Las Vegas show that’s going to be closing, putting her and her colleagues (played by Brenda Song and Billie Lourd) in a desperate search for a new job. Dave Bautista plays Eddie, the guy who runs the show in a very rare dramatic role, while Jamie Lee Curtis follows up her Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All At Once, giving a terrific performance as Shelly’s friend, and even older showgirl who is now working as a cocktail waitress at a casino, who totally feels for the frustrations of Shelly trying to figure out what to do with her life after the close of the show where she’s been performing for decades. Kiernan Skipka from Longlegs and the recent Red One also plays Shelly’s daughter, who wants nothing more to do with her mother, who wants nothing more than to reconnect with her daughter.
I thought this film was fantastic, particularly the performances by Anderson, Curtis, and Bautista, but I probably will write my actual review closer to its national release in January, since who knows how many people will be able to watch this at its single L.A. theater this weekend.
CARRY-ON (Netflix)
I wasn’t able to find the time to watch this new action-thriller from Jaume Collet-Sera, starring Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, and Danielle Deadwyler, but it will be on Netflix across the globe this Friday. The plot (“borrowed” from IMDB) is “A mysterious traveler blackmails a young TSA agent into letting a dangerous package slip through security and onto a Christmas Day flight.” Definitely sounds like something I might enjoy watching, though I’d have preferred to see it in a theater.
THEATER OF THOUGHT (Argot Pictures)
Werner Herzog returns behind the camera for his latest documentary, which will play at the Film Forum beginning on Friday. The crazy thing is that I may have already seen this movie, possibly at DOC-NYC or some other festival, and I don’t remember enjoying it, since it was very sciency (if is the movie I’m thinking of.) Anyway, the IMDB tagline is: “Herzog casts his gaze on the human brain, looking for clues as to why a piece of tissue can produce deep thoughts and feelings, while also considering the philosophical, ethical and social implications.” It definitely sounds like something I would be interested in watching, since I’m infinitely interested in the capacities of the
DIRTY ANGELS (Lionsgate)
Hitting digital and On Demand as well as being available in select theaters is this new movie directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) and reuniting him with that movie’s star Eva Green as Jake, an American soldier who joins an all-women commando unit that includes Maria Bakalova, Ruby Rose, and Jojo T. Gibbs to gain the trust of terrorists. I assume they aren’t dirty as in they never take baths or showers.
ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME (Altered Innocence)
Opening at the Quad Cinema on Friday is Kaveh Daneshmand’s French film starring Sophie Colon as Delphine, who learns that her husband might be having an affair with one of their adopted children. I would not expect Woody Allen to be in attendance.
FILTHY ANIMALS (Freestyle Digital Media)
James T. Marsh makes his feature directorial debut with this Christmas Eve thriller about drug enthusiast Lars (Austan Wheeler) and bodybuilder Freddy (Ryan Patrick Brown), fresh out of rehab, as two misfits who hunt down child sexual predators. We should introduce them to the husband from the previous movie.
SCRAP
Hitting VOD this Friday is this film written and directed and starring Vivian Kerr as Beth, who has just been laid off from her job in L.A. but tries to maintain the illusion of normality while trying to hide her homelessness from her estranged older brother Ben (played by Anthony Rapp), while also providing for her daughter Birdy. Ben is also dealing with trying to have a baby with his wife Stacy (Lana Parrila) through IVF, Stacy being a successful lawyer trying to figure out if she even wants to be a mother. Haven’t had a chance to watch this yet, but it sounds and looks interesting.
Other movies out this week include…
IT’S NOT ME (Sideshow/Janus Films)
UTOPIA (Republic Pictures)
THE MAN IN THE WHITE VAN (Relativity)
BABYMETAL LEGEND - 43 THE MOVIE (Trafalgar Releasing)
REPERTORY
We’re going to change things up a bit this week…
Running this weekend in conjunction with Netflix’s continuing support of Jacques Audiard’s acclaimed award-winning musical crime-drama Emilia Pérez, is “The Cinematic Fever Dreams of Jacques Audiard,” a fairly comprehensive retrospective of the work of one of my favorite French filmmakers (okay, maybe tied with Olivier Assayas). Besides more recent work like The Sisters Brothers, his English language Western, and the Cannes-wining Dheepan, there will be 35mm prints of A Prophet (which I believe also won some awards at Cannes), and earlier films like my favorites The Beat My Heart Skipped and Read My Lips. They’re also showing Rust and Bone, which oddly did NOT get Marion Cotillard and Oscar nomination, but there’s a lot of great stuff in the series which runes from Friday through Tuesday the 17th.
On Sunday, you can watch Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort as part of the “Skipped a Beat” musical series, also tied in with Emilia Pérez, and on Wednesday night, they’re showing John Cameron MItchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
The big new series at Film Forum is “Brando 100,” celebrating the centennial of the beloved and often controversial Oscar-winning star of The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris, both of which are included in the series that will run from this Friday through December 26. Some of this weekend’s offerings are Julius Caesar, The Men, and A Streetcar Named Desire, as well as classics like On the Waterfront and The Wild One. I’m realizing that I haven’t seen many of these, so we’ll see if I can get to some of these.
Sunday’s “Film Forum Jr.” is the late great Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie, starring the late, great Christopher Reeve, who you can also learn more about in the doc Super/Man: The Story of Christopher Reeve, which is streaming on Max. Monday’s Clara Bow offering is Kid Boots from 1926 with live piano accompaniment.
Although Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg will end on Thursday, apparently it’s coming back for a limited run on December 20.
Beginning this week and running through January 5 is “Marcello and Chiara
Mastroianni, A Family Affair” with Chiara Mastroianni being on hand on Friday night to introduce her new film Marcello Mio, directed by Christophe Honoré, which is being released on almost exactly the 100th birthday of her father. It only screens that once because otherwise, it’s a retrospective of her father’s films from the ‘50s and ‘60s, including Fellini’s 1963 film, 8 ½, on Sunday, as well as more recent films starring his daughter.
The “Robert Siodmark: Dark Visionary” series begins on Wednesday and runs through December 19 with a wide selection of black-and-white films from the ‘30s and ‘40s from the German film-noir director, who fled his country with the rise of the Nazi regime to work in France and Hollywood. I don’t know enough of his films to recommend any, so this is very much a discovery series.
Donna Reed’s daughter Mary Owens will on hand to introduce screenings of It’s a Wonderful Life – an IFC Center holiday tradition! – but she’ll also do an extended intro for a single screening of 1953’s From Here to Eternity on Sunday night. Midnight (or close to midnight) screenings on Friday and Saturday night include Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Jack Hill’s Spider Baby from 1967, and the 2008 anthology Tokyo! Featuring segments from Michel Gondry, Bong Joon-Ho, and Leos Carax.
The “Time Capsule 1974” program continues with screenings of the original Black Christmas screening on Friday, Saturday, and Monday through Wednesday, mostly in Lower Manhattan with Friday and Saturday mostly being sold out. The Great Gatsby starring Robert Redford, screens on Saturday and Tuesday also in Lower Manhattan, and one of my all-time favorite sports comedies, Burt Reynolds’ in The Longest Yard, screens on Saturday and Wednesday, also in Lower Manhattan.
Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers screens on Friday in 35mm, while Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise’s Minority Report screens in 35mm on Saturday and Sunday. Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979) screens on Monday night.
Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise (1989) screens on Thursday night as part of “Robert Frank Centennial: Influences” with actress Sara Drier in person, and then screens again on Monday. Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer’s 1988 film Candy Mountain screens on Friday night, and other movies being screened include David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and John Cassavetes’ Shadows, and more. Check the schedule at the link above for timings.
The film classic, The Thin Man – one of my late father’s favorite movies – screens twice on Monday night, while the holiday classic, Love Actually (2003), screens on Wednesday.
NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK & WILLIAMSBURG
The “Remembering Robin Williams” series continues with screenings of Joe Johnston’s Jumanji (1995) on Saturday and Sunday afternoon in Prospect Park and over at Williamsburg, you can catch the equally classic Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). Williamsburg is also showing Mark Romanek’s rare thriller One Hour Photo (2002) in 35mm with Williams in a villainous role on Monday night.
Oh, and guess what? Richard Curtis’ Love Actually is also playing at the Nitehawk in Prospect Park on Wednesday night, so you have two boroughs to choose from if you want to watch it,.
Unfortunately, the Thursday night screening of the 1980 Flash Gordon in 35mm at Williamsburg is already sold out.
OMG! On Friday, Long Island’s premier arthouse is showing my all-time #1 favorite movie of all time, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, and then on Saturday, it’s screening 1984’s Night of the Comet with star Catherine Mary Stewart in person. On Sunday, you can bring the kids to see Will Ferrell in 2003’s Elf, Monday’s “Film Noir Classic” is Marilyn Monroe in Niagra (1954), and then on Tuesday, they’ll also be showing From Here to Eternity, presumably not the same print showing at the Film Forum as part of “Brando 100.”
Screening twice on Friday in the “See It Big” series is Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation of Little Women, and then on Saturday, you can watch Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Muir (1971).
No, I’m not bitter that Metrograph launched a new magazine this week, and they didn’t invite Member #5 (me) to the launch party, despite all of my coverage for my local arthouse over the years. Nope, I just thought it would be nice to show them what it would look like if I didn’t put them first in my repertory round-up, as I have done almost every week since the place opened in 2016. You lessen me? I lessen you.
I have no idea who Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew are – I bet they were invited to that Metrograph magazine launch party! – but they’ve programmed a few movies, including Antonio Campos’ 2008 Afterschool, starring a very young Ezra Miller, Jeremy Allen White, Emory Cohen, and Michael Stuhlbarg. (Campos will be on-hand for a QnA with Durand and Chew after the movie on Saturday night.) They’re also screening Celine Sciamma’s 2007 film Water Lilies.
I’m looking forward to seeing Lars von Trier’s Dogville (2003), starring Nicole Kidman, as part of “The World is a Stage,” as I haven’t seen it in quite some time, and it was one of the early movies I reviewed when I worked at ComingSoon.net.
“Nicolas Uncaged” continues this weekend with Michael Sarnoski’s Pig (2021) screening on Sunday, as well as screenings of Neil Labute’s 2006 The Wicker Man remake, which is pretty crazy!
On Saturday, “Do It Again” will screen Ozu’s I Was Born, But… from 1932, while
“Absconded Art” screens Jill Magid’s 2018 film The Proposal, not to be confused with the 2009 Ryan Reynolds-Sandra Bullock rom-com The Proposal.
That’s it for this week, but next week, we have a face-off for the ages, possibly one even bigger than “Barbenheimer” and the recent “Glicked,” as Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 takes on Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King. (I still have to watch Jon Favreau’s remake of The Lion King!)