Crime Archives - Page 4 of 35 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

SDAFF ’19: Just 6.5

November 13, 2019****/****, 2019, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Iran, San Diego Asian Film Festival, Thriller

Metri Shesh Va Nim
****/****
starring Payman Maadi, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Parinaz Izadyar, Hooman Kiaee
written and directed by Saeed Roustayi

by Walter Chaw With only ten minutes left in its running time, Saeed Roustayi’s Just 6.5 introduces a brief musical sting in a film that, up to that moment, had relied entirely on diegetic audio and long, rapid-fire monologues delivered at high volume and intensity for its soundtrack. Said cue highlights erstwhile villain Nasser Khakzad (Navid Mohammadzadeh) drawing a line in the sand in a matter concerning the dispensation of a house he’s bought for his parents. It’s the fulcrum on which the entire film rests: not whether or not the Iranian state will confiscate a home, but the level of desperation that drives the lower classes into crime–and then the addictive nature of wealth that makes it impossible to retire from crime. As Nasser confesses when asked why he didn’t quit while he was ahead, “My eyes were still hungry.” The whole film is about the question of class and the possibility of ever climbing from one to the next. Everything in Just 6.5 is a barter at the world’s late-capitalism bazaar. For instance, the crazed narco cop on Nasser’s tail, Samad (Payman Maadi of A Separation), is dangled a bribe by drug lord Nasser that would essentially vault him into a different circle. It’s a boost he needs, we gather from a few tossed-off comments about his kid and a phone call he gets at the worst time that he has to take while the whole world is crowding in around him. He doesn’t take it because of “his honour,” but he might as well have. It makes no difference.

Red Heat (1988) – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

November 6, 20191980s, 2019, 4K Ultra HD, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Hungary, Schwarzenegger, Thriller

Note: all framegrabs were sourced from the 4K UHD disc

***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Belushi, Peter Boyle, Ed O'Ross
screenplay by Harry Kleiner & Walter Hill and Troy Kennedy Martin
directed by Walter Hill

by Bryant Frazer The first, pre-credits scene of Red Heat takes place in a Russian banya, a steam bath where hulking, Vulcanian workers in grimy T-shirts labour to shovel wood and coal into massive stoves that keep the water hot and the room steamy. The camera follows a blue-eyed man as he steps into the room, assuming his POV as he surveys the tableau. A whole section of the space is dedicated to barely-clad muscled men pumping iron, and the camera lingers on them. It pans slowly across the room before finding a group of nymphs bathing au naturel, zooming in and reframing, finally deciding it's not interested in them. The blue-eyed man turns his head, catching sight of a figure across the room. It's Schwarzenegger, about one square foot of fabric shy of nudity, striding confidently past the bathing beauties before stepping up into a side chamber and disappearing again into the haze. The next shot catches Arnold in medium close-up, tilting lazily from his calves all the way up his chiselled torso, until it frames him in flattering low-angle portraiture. He is squinting, and he is scowling, and he has an Ivan Drago flat-top. This is peak Arnold. The reverse shot lands, almost hilariously, on a group of a half-dozen nude and nearly-nude bathers, all pink and vulnerable in their skin, gazing back at him, excited or terrified or maybe both. It's as if a god stands before them.

House of Games (1987) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

September 23, 20191980s, 2019, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, The Criterion Collection, Thriller

***½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, Mike Nussbaum, J.T. Walsh
screenplay by David Mamet
directed by David Mamet

by Bryant Frazer House of Games pivots on a hand of poker that spirals out of control and reveals itself as more than a mere card game. It’s a moral hazard. On one side of the table, holding three of a kind, is Mike (Joe Mantegna), a small-time hood with a big mouth who runs a card room out of the back of House of Games, a pool hall that sits upstairs from a paperback bookstore in downtown Seattle. Across from him, George (the late, great sleight-of-hand artist Ricky Jay, in his first film role), who may or may not have drawn to a trips-beating straight or a flush. Spectating from Mike’s side is Margaret (Lindsay Crouse), a psychiatrist (and best-selling author) who stumbled upon the tableau in an effort to negotiate down the debt of a troubled patient (Steve Goldstein), a gambling addict. Impressed by Margaret’s apparent fearlessness–when he makes an oblique threat to kill her, she calls him a bully–Mike enlists her help in a scheme that isn’t cheating, per se, but does rely on duplicity. Simply put, Mike contrives to leave the room for a few minutes; in his absence, Margaret watches for an indication that George is bluffing and signals Mike, quietly, to call.

TIFF 2019: Uncut Gems

September 16, 20192019, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Telluride

***/****
starring Adam Sandler, Lakeith Stanfield, Idina Menzel, Judd Hirsch
screenplay by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie
directed by Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie

by Walter Chaw Enfants terrible Josh and Bennie Safdie follow-up their kinetic crime thriller Good Time with Uncut Gems, another helping of the same packed with so much anxiety and energy that it becomes exhausting a good while before it's done with you. Opening in an Ethiopian opal mine, where a huge-karated black specimen is unearthed in secret by subsistence miners while one of their compatriots wails in agony over a nasty open fracture in his leg, Uncut Gems then cuts to diamond dealer Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) getting a colonoscopy. When not having the inside of his bowels photographed, he's ensconced in his little retail hole in New York's Diamond District, doing his best to fend off an endless wave of creditors while looking for that one big score. In a recent (i.e., February, 2019) article in INTERVIEW, Patrick McGraw memorably describes that stretch of West 47^th between 5^th and 6^th avenues as "…a composite of fake teeth, cheap cologne, aviators, dyed hair, machismo, self-loathing, and seemingly uncontrollable gesticulating"–a good description of Howard, too, as it happens, as Sandler finally finds a dramatic role the equal now of his finest hour, Punch-Drunk Love. Howard is not unlike Barry, the role he played in P.T. Anderson's film–if Barry had no success managing his sudden fits of manic rage.

TIFF 2019: Joker

September 15, 20192019, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Robert De Niro, Thriller, TIFF

**/****
starring Joaquin Phoenix, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Robert De Niro
written by Todd Phillips & Scott Silver
directed by Todd Phillips

by Bill Chambers Two moments that soar: in the one, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), having just shed the last vestments of propriety, dons the complete outfit of his alter ego Joker–the green hair, the white face, the purple suit–for the first time and does an impromptu dance to Gary Glitter’s stadium staple “Rock and Roll Part 2” on an empty stairway in Gotham City. In the other, stand-up comic Joker achieves his dream of guesting on “The Murray Franklin Show”. The former is great because the music is at once non-diegetic and clearly prodding Joker; it’s one of the few times we’re indisputably inside his head, and, naturally, he’s soundtracked his grand entrance like he’s the star pitcher coming out to wow the crowd in the sixth inning. (Phoenix is arguably the first actor since Cesar Romero to accept that Joker isn’t just a psychopath, he’s also a complete dork.) The latter distinctly reminded me of Phoenix’s standoffish appearance on Letterman while he was in the throes of shooting the mockumentary I’m Still Here, but the reason the sequence works is that it’s legitimately suspenseful watching Robert De Niro’s Murray Franklin harangue Joker on live television, stoking a burning fuse. De Niro’s presence is of course a nod to Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, in which he’s an aspiring comedian so desperate to do his act on “The Jerry Langford Show” that he stalks and eventually kidnaps the titular Jerry (Jerry Lewis). Despite that legacy casting, a particularly baleful De Niro is morbidly implausible as a talk-show host of legend, yet his proto-Morton Downey Jr. is defensible in that it looks ahead to the rise of today’s angry pundits. Unlike his ingratiating contemporaries (Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Jerry Langford)–period markers, including the cheesy glitz of “The Murray Franklin Show”‘s set design, suggest the film takes place circa 1980–Murray seems to be jonesing for conflict. Incidentally, De Niro’s head hasn’t been this square since Midnight Run.

Telluride ’19: Motherless Brooklyn

September 2, 20192019, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Telluride

*/****
starring Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Willem Dafoe
screenplay by Edward Norton, based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem
directed by Edward Norton

by Walter Chaw Edward Norton's twenty-year passion project, this adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's modern noir loses what's affecting about the source material while amplifying, well, Edward Norton. The hero, Lionel Essrog (Norton), is afflicted with OCD and Tourette's. In the book, this means that as his interior monologue is crisp and empathetic, his exterior is kissing people and screaming out anagrams and clever atrocities. In the movie, this means Norton is angling hard for awards recognition playing Rain Man as a gumshoe. I don't mean to be unkind, merely to describe a selfish performance that does very much to attract attention to itself and very little to support a cast that frankly needn't have bothered. It's the worst first date ever–the one where the guy really wants to tell you about himself. Norton's Lionel twitches, grimaces, screams out jibes that are sometimes a little too literary and on-the-mark. He draws attention and that's half the point of it: to create a sensitive, intelligent character appalled by his inability to control his "broken" brain. Yet in an ensemble movie with a Byzantine plot, all it does is suck the air out of the room. There's a shortlist of "unfilmable" novels for any number of reasons (and a few of those, like Under the Skin, were adapted beautifully), but the reasons to leave Motherless Brooklyn free from this sort of literal go are legion.

Detour (1945) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

June 24, 2019****/****, 1940s, 2019, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Road Movie, The Criterion Collection

****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald
screenplay by Martin Goldsmith, based on his novel
directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

by Bryant Frazer Among legitimate Hollywood classics, Detour is about as threadbare as they come: a small film, shot on a shoestring over a handful of days (between six and 14, depending on whose accounting you believe) at a Poverty Row film studio. And yet, the finished product is uniquely compelling. As a crime thriller, it’s notable for the absence of gunfights, chase scenes, double-crosses, and back-stabbings. What it’s lacking in film noir‘s usual narrative detail or expressionistic flourishes is compensated for by its overarching preoccupation with determinism and a healthy contempt for fate. Amplifying and accompanying the slow-building sense of despair and helplessness is an internal-monologue-in-voiceover that’s unrelentingly dreary and self-pitying, even for noir. Detour isn’t remotely sexy or exciting, though it is amply dour and uncomfortably personal–disturbing, even, in its spare vision.

Domino (2019)

June 1, 20192019, Authors: Alice Stoehr, Belgium, Crime, Denmark, Directors: Brian De Palma, Espionage, France, Italy, Netherlands, Thriller

***/****
starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Carice Van Houten, Eriq Ebouaney, Guy Pearce
written by Petter Skavlan
directed by Brian De Palma

by Alice Stoehr When Brian De Palma was 17, relates Julie Salamon in her book The Devil’s Candy, he tried to prove his father was having an affair. “All summer long he recorded his father’s telephone calls,” she writes. “On more than one occasion he climbed up a tree outside his father’s office and snapped pictures of him and his nurse.” Though perhaps too pat as an origin story, this experience–oft-repeated by biographers, as well as the director himself–haunts his filmography. From Dressed to Kill to Blow Out to Snake Eyes, his characters and camera fixate on audiovisual evidence. They foreground how film itself can act as documentation, to either reveal or distort the truth. These same preoccupations shape Domino, his thirtieth feature and the first he’s directed since 2012’s Passion. The espionage thriller, penned by Norwegian screenwriter Petter Skavlan, intertwines three sets of characters as they bound across Western Europe. Christian (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is a Copenhagen cop who sees his partner’s throat slit in a set-piece modelled after the opening of Vertigo. He seeks vengeance against the assailant, Ezra (Eriq Ebouaney), who’s blackmailed by a handler at the CIA (Guy Pearce) into tracking down the same ISIS cell that beheaded his father. It’s tawdry material, nesting two revenge narratives and plenty of terrorist intrigue inside a film that’s under 90 minutes long.

Crank (2006) – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

May 22, 20192000s, 2019, 4K Ultra HD, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Esoterica

Note: all framegrabs were sourced from the 4K UHD disc

**½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Dwight Yoakam
written and directed by Neveldine/Taylor

by Bryant Frazer A mere 13 years have passed since Crank tumbled roughly onto multiplex screens, but the film has not aged particularly well. In 2006, its down-and-dirty action aesthetic seemed almost futuristic, thanks to filmmakers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor and their embrace of portable HiDef cameras, death-defying handheld camerawork, and aggressive, boundary-pushing visual style. But cinematic techniques have moved on, with ever-more-agile digital cameras making it easier than ever for action mavens to get tack-sharp images from impossible angles. Crank's stuntwork, much of it performed by the stars themselves, remains impressive, but it's pretty small beer compared to the latest instalments in state-of-the-art action franchises like Mission: Impossible and John Wick, which share Crank's daredevil aesthetic but eschew its rude, HDCAM-level physicality in favour of spectacular digital cinematography fit for enormous IMAX screens.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)

May 16, 20192019, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane
screenplay by Derek Kolstad and Shay Hatten and Chris Collins & Marc Abrams
directed by Chad Stahelski

by Walter Chaw As the novelty wanes and the universe expands, the John Wick franchise becomes less fleet, though its pleasures, when they arrive, have lost little of their joy. I think of these films, three of them now, as describing the arc of the great Hollywood Musical actors, the Fred Astaires and Gene Kellys, the Liza Minellis and Ginger Rogers and Judy Garlands, who would enliven whatever inanimate book in which they were mired with their irrepressible stagecraft and charisma whenever the spotlight caught them. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (hereafter John Wick 3), in other words, is a slog of mythology linking galvanizing action sequences that are meticulously choreographed, unapologetically brutal, and graceful in every way the picture's story and dialogue are not. They're so good, really, that it hardly matters what the movie's about–so good that it's fair to wonder why they're working so hard at trying to pull coherence out of this premise instead of just offering vague excuses to arm the graceful, lanky, morose hero and drop him in the middle of bad situations. I mean, do they know it's not necessary? Is the world-building mumbo-jumbo a meta-joke on a media landscape now dominated by three or four dynastic storylines?

Ocean’s 8 (2018) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital

March 11, 20192018, 2019, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Thriller

Ocean’s Eight
*/**** Image A Sound B Extras D
starring Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter
screenplay by Gary Ross & Olivia Milch
directed by Gary Ross

by Walter Chaw Gary Ross’s Ocean’s Eight is the perfect nightmare: something you’re rooting for sociologically that’s artistically bad. It’s a film with an all-female cast that tries very hard to be racially diverse as well–unlike Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters, for example, which declines to show any Chinese people in its New York City, even though it’s set largely above a Chinese restaurant. Similarly, the kindest thing that could be said about Ocean’s Eight is that it’s strangely listless, aggressively mediocre, doggedly unmemorable, while the most accurate thing that could be said about it is that it could have benefited from people of colour in some kind of meaningful role behind the camera. The time is coming, hopefully soon, where movies that just take intellectual properties and recast them with women will also be written and directed by women–who, you know, probably have something to say about women. Although Olivia Milch, hyphenate behind the decent Dude (and probably the only reason Awkwafina got a shot at Ocean’s Eight, pre-Crazy Rich Asians), co-wrote this one with Ross, Ocean’s Eight has “glad-handing equivocation” written all over it. I don’t want to say it’s terrible, but…but, I really don’t. Best to say that Ocean’s Eight won’t ruin any careers because the women are already established stars and Gary Ross, as a white guy in the business, is essentially bulletproof and fire retardant, too. True equality, after all, is when women are allowed to make movies this awful and, like their male counterparts, don’t spend any time in movie jail for the offense, either.

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

December 19, 2018****/****, 2018, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

****/****
starring KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Colman Domingo, Regina King
screenplay by Barry Jenkins, based on the book by James Baldwin
directed by Barry Jenkins

by Walter Chaw Barry Jenkins's If Beale Street Could Talk evokes Wallace Stevens's "The Snowman" and its idea of nothing beholding the nothing that is there and the nothing that isn't. It is all of the delirious, sublime rapture of falling in love; and it is all of the terrible fear of losing love to a capricious world that's rooting against you and rooting hard. The lips that would kiss are the same that form prayers to broken stones. If Beale Street Could Talk is about race and it's about sex–gender, somewhat, but more about how sex is politicized, used as a verb and an adjective, and there in the touch a sculptor gives his creation or lips give a cigarette. It's in the words that lovers old and new use together and it's in the sultry twilight where you can see the shape of your possible futures outlined as shadows against the exhaustion of another day. Baldwin's literature is seduction. His characters urge one another to listen and to use care when speaking. Words have meaning in Baldwin's world because in their interaction between the speaker and the listener, that's sex, too. He offers that there's harmony, even beauty, in the world, then shows the world in its bitterness and ugliness and challenges you to see it for yourself. I usually can't. Barry Jenkins, judging by the evidence of his films, can. It makes this adaptation by Jenkins of Baldwin's novel of the same name something a little like magic–you know, a little like sex.

BlacKkKlansman (2018) – Blu-ray + Digital

November 13, 2018****/****, 2018, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, FFC Must-Own

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C-
starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace
written by Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee, based on the book by Ron Stallworth
directed by Spike Lee

by Walter Chaw Colorado Springs is a big, modern, beautiful city. It's home to natural wonders like the Tolkien-sounding Garden of the Gods and the Cave of the Winds. Its zoo, perched on the slopes of Cheyenne Mountain, is world class. Spencer Penrose built a shrine to his friend Will Rogers on that same mountain when Rogers died in a plane crash. Cheyenne Mountain is also where NORAD is housed, and Colorado Springs is also host to the United States Air Force Academy and, once upon a time, Focus on the Family. It's an ultra-conservative city just south of blue Denver, which is itself south of the trust-fund hippie commune of Boulder. And for a few years starting around 1925, there was no greater stronghold for the Klan in the United States than in Denver. In 1978, Ron Stallworth became the first African-American police officer hired by the Colorado Springs Police Department, and then the first detective when he went undercover to infiltrate a Kwame Ture speech at a black nightclub. In 1979, he answered an ad hoping to establish a chapter of the KKK in the Springs, posing over the telephone as a man who hated every non-white race, but especially "those blacks." A white counterpart attended meetings while Stallworth eventually gained the trust of then-Grand Wizard David Duke. Duke reached out to Stallworth recently because he was concerned he was going to be portrayed as a buffoon in Spike Lee's adaptation of Stallworth's memoir, BlacKkKlansman. I mean, if the hood fits… If there is one indicator of involvement with cults like this, it's deep-seated insecurity. It bears mentioning that Denver's old airport, Stapleton International Airport, is the namesake of five-time Denver Mayor Ben Stapleton, who was a high-ranking member and, until the end of his reign, vocal supporter of the Klan. The airport is gone, but the neighbourhood that replaced it still carries his name.

TIFF ’18: Widows

September 14, 20182018, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Thriller, TIFF, UK

***½/****
screenplay by Gillian Flynn & Steve McQueen, based on the novel by Lynda LaPlante
directed by Steve McQueen

by Bill Chambers Sorry, Psycho. Killing off one movie star halfway through isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Killing off three movie stars in the first five minutes. Widows casts Liam Neeson, Jon Bernthal, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as the husbands, and while the title would seem to give away that they aren’t long for this film’s world, watching established leading men bite it so soon still creates an undeniable moment of cognitive dissonance. It’s thrilling to see co-writer/director Steve McQueen use his cachet to these subversive ends, not to mention apply his formal sophistication to the crime movie. Which isn’t to say he elevates it (we’re talking about a genre that counts Anthony Mann and Jean-Pierre Melville among its pioneers)–more that Widows offers respite from a glut of John Wick wannabes and Neeson’s own assembly-line thrillers. So, Widows. Viola Davis plays the rich one, Veronica. She lives in a swank condo overlooking Chicago that seems to have taken on the icy gleam of the bachelor pad from McQueen’s Shame in the absence of Neeson’s Harry, an idealized vision of whom haunts Veronica’s imagination. (These scenes play like the distaff version of Neeson’s The Grey.) Harry’s partners were not as well off, and their wives, Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), need money desperately enough that Alice’s own mother (Jacki Weaver, perhaps inevitably) tells her to become a paid escort. Harry, it turns out, owed money to a crime lord, Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), who’s now running for city council against golden child Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell). Manning wants Veronica to pay up, so she commits to robbing Mulligan and thus finishing what Harry started, enlisting Linda and Alice as her partners. None of them are career criminals, yet Veronica figures that if she can tailor the heist to their individual strengths, they just might pull it off.

TIFF ’18: Dogman

September 12, 2018****/****, 2018, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Italy, Thriller, TIFF

****/****
starring Marcello Fonte, Edoardo Pesce, Nunzia Schiano, Adamo Dionisi
screenplay by Ugo Chiti, Massimo Gaudioso, Matteo Garrone
directed by Matteo Garrone

by Walter Chaw About four scenes into Matteo Garrone's Dogman, I wondered if he was going to be able to keep it up: the invention, the escalating tension, the breathless feat of being something entirely novel. I've never seen anything like Dogman. It's a crime film, a tender picture about a father and his daughter, a look at poverty, a look at addiction and maybe mental illness, a critique of masculinity at its terminal extremities, and a withering conversation about what friendship can look like between two men. It's a film that feels like a fable sometimes; like neorealism at others. It's shockingly violent and then surpassingly tender. There's a monster in Dogman, too, and while it's easy to hate and fear him, there are moments where I felt myself hoping that someone could reach him. I could even feel myself wanting his approval. The picture is unusually smart about the human condition, even though its intelligence appears to be alien in nature. It's impossible to know from one minute to the next what's going to happen in Dogman, which isn't to say it makes no sense but rather that it makes perfect sense, once it happens. It's brilliant.

Telluride ’18: White Boy Rick + Shoplifters

September 4, 2018****/****, 2018, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Japan, Palme d'Or Winner, Telluride

WHITE BOY RICK
***/****
starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jonathan Majors, Richie Merritt
written by Andy Weiss and Logan & Noah Miller
directed by Yann Demange

Manbiki kazoku
****/****
starring Lily Franky, Ando Sakura, Matsuoka Mayu, Kiki Kilin
written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

by Walter Chaw Yann Demange's follow-up to his bruising, brilliant '71 is this ersatz Donnie Brasco true-crime epic. White Boy Rick details the rise and fall of underage drug kingpin/FBI informant Richard Wershe, Jr. (Richie Merritt–excellent), dubbed "white boy" by the black Detroit gang into which he inculcates himself as first a sort of mascot, then trusted lieutenant, then deep-cover betrayer, then ultimate usurper. White Boy Rick establishes Demange firmly as a formidable technical director. A scene set in a roller disco circa 1984 is as beautiful, lyrical, and effortless an evocation (and affectionate amplification) of time and space as the Cornelius Bros and Sister Rose dance sequence from BlacKkKlansman. A sudden spinout on an icy road later on carries with it the harsh kinetic immediacy and strong knowledge of space of Demange's '71. The film looks right and feels right. There's a scene at a drive-in where Rick takes a date to watch Footloose: a film that couldn't possibly be more alien to Rick's reality. Crucially, White Boy Rick behaves in the right way, too, demonstrating restraint when appropriate, naturalism where appropriate, and expressionism, especially in a sequence where Rick's junkie sister Dawn (Bel Powley, also excellent) is taken from a crackhouse against her will down a red-lit corridor strobed with shadows.

Telluride ’18: Destroyer

September 3, 20182018, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Telluride, Thriller

**/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Tatiana Maslany, Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell
written by Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi
directed by Karyn Kusama

by Walter Chaw A laconic noir that promises for a while to be fierce before settling into being familiar, Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer drips with style and atmosphere even if its destined-to-be-lauded central performance by Nicole Kidman lacks the same mystique. She plays LA Detective Erin Bell, a woman beset by demons of alcohol and regret that have left her looking cadaverous: rotted gums and hollow eyes. Most of the performance is fright make-up, the rest Kidman speaking breathily, heavily, and maybe overdoing the drunk swaying and slurring a tad. Erin’s daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn) hates her, of course, and has taken to hanging out with much-older street tough Jay (Beau Knapp), probably just to piss her off. Erin’s estranged husband Ethan (Scoot McNairy) seems nice, though, if scarred by her ferocious temper and penchant for vomiting and passing out, usually in that order. Kidman has been extraordinary in small, personal films like this. Her work in Birth is generational; Dogville, too. But Destroyer is too programmatic to make much of an impact. This kind of image-slumming is too familiar by now, and there’s not one moment where it’s not Nicole Kidman doing a performance up there. Pity.

Telluride ’18: The Old Man & the Gun

September 1, 20182018, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Film Festivals, Telluride

½*/****
starring Robert Redford, Casey Affleck, Danny Glover, Sissy Spacek
written and directed by David Lowery

by Walter Chaw David Lowery follows up his enigmatic A Ghost Story with this slobbery, open-mouthed kiss to Robert Redford, in his alleged swan song to screen acting. Redford plays real-life bank robber Forrest Tucker, who, in a blue suit and stupid hat, resumes his long career of traumatizing tellers and imparting folksy aphorisms after escaping from San Quentin. Seeing this life as his calling, Tucker was oft-described as seeming "happy," and so that's the tactic Lowery and Redford take towards this material, presenting everything as this bucolic Americana bullshit of the variety the elderly and the elderly-at-heart, especially, get off on and which Redford has made his stock-in-trade in his dotage. The only thing missing is an early-bird buffet as patrons enter the theatre. Tom Waits and Danny Glover play Tucker's sometime-partners in crime and poor Sissy Spacek is enlisted as his gal Jewel ("Well, y'sure look it!") to deliver "good-natured" to the assembled. Yes, Redford, one of the most exceptional and brilliant actors in film history, is now delivering the patented Robert Duvall elderly performance: repeating phrases, smiling in a non-specific way, and patting people's hands as they talk, complete with a wired hearing aid dangling from his ear.

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

August 8, 2018****/****, 2018, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, Theatrical

****/****
starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace
written by Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee, based on the book by Ron Stallworth
directed by Spike Lee

The Equalizer 2; The First Purge; Superfly (2018)

July 26, 20182018, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Horror, Revenge, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

THE EQUALIZER 2
**½/****
starring Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Ashton Sanders, Melissa Leo
written by Richard Wenk
directed by Antoine Fuqua

THE FIRST PURGE
**/****
starring Y’lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade, Marisa Tomei
screenplay by James DeMonaco
directed by Gerard McMurray

SuperFly
**½/****
starring Trevor Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Michael Kenneth Williams, Lex Scott Davis
written by Alex Tse, based on the screenplay by Phillip Fenty
directed by Director X

by Walter Chaw McCall (Denzel Washington) is Batman. He has a tragic past and a tortured rationale, a sense of morality in a fallen world that aligns him with the hardboiled detectives proliferating American popular culture in the immediate aftermath of WWII. He was Dirty Harry Callahan or Paul Kersey in the late-’70s-into-’80s. No coincidence Death Wish has already gotten its own remake. No coincidence, either, a series interested in a theoretical near-future in which a day of mayhem is sanctioned by the government in order to facilitate a “purging” of intra-cultural aggression has received four instalments and an upcoming television series. The latest, The First Purge, serves as a “prequel” to the events of the first film. It’s also, full confession, the first of these movies that I’ve seen. I thought the premise was interesting, don’t get me wrong, I just didn’t really have the stomach for it. I feel the same way about that new Mr. Rogers documentary, or The Cove. The world is awful. I get it. There’s a limit to how often I want to be reminded of what we’ve lost. What’s curious about The First Purge (and the Superfly reboot) is not that all its heroes (save one) are Black and all its villains are white, but rather that its relationship to something like The Equalizer 2 mimics the relationship between “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World”. One provides a kind of cross-cultural reassurance that minorities are interested in the restoration of the ruling culture; the other understands the ruling culture was never threatened in the first place. Sure, subcultures evolve in the shadow of the social order, but the social order itself remains implacable and immutable.