Regan and Gorbachev talk nukes

 

  Put Jeff Daniels, Jared Harris, and J.K. Simmons in the same movie, and you’ve created interest - at least among those who value capable acting. In The Brink of War, Daniels plays Ronald Reagan; Harris appears as  Mikhail Gorbachev, and Simmons portrays George Shultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State. 

   In 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev met in Reykjavik for a summit meant to tackle issues of nuclear disarmament. 

   The Brink of War offers a dry, sometimes prosaic account of a meeting disrupted by Reagan's insistence on including  a human rights discussion Gorbachev had no interest in having.

    Gorbachev also objected to Reagan’s plan to build a Star Wars defense system for the US., even after  Reagan suggested that Gorbachev could use US technology to build his own missile shield.

    The summit failed, but a year later it produced the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. That means the  movie must focus less on a triumphant outcome than on the back-and-forth between the two leaders. 

     Aside from Simmons Shultz, who cautions Reagan, not to miss an unprecedented opportunity, the supporting cast doesn’t have much to do.

     Nancy Reagan (Hope Davis) remained at home, staying in phone contact with the president. Branka Katic portrays Raisa Gorbacheva. She accompanied her husband, but mostly remained on board the ship that brought Gorbachev to Iceland. Occasionally, she came ashore for photo ops.

     Rather than playing like a momentous historical moment, the film, written and directed by Michael Russell Gunn, unfolds like a determined recreation. 

     As for Daniels, make-up can’t quite turn him into a Reagan lookalike, but he masters Reagan’s delivery and offers moments of hard-headed conviction and easy wit.

    In all, the movie's style feels musty and dated, as if it has been shackled to the need for period authenticity and seriousness, which is understandable but less than exciting.

A horror movie with sex on its mind

  Remember the horror series Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma? The original starred Billy Preston, an actress who has vanished from public view. Obligatory sequels followed, establishing the Camp Miasma movies as a horror staple that wore out its welcome.

  Stop scanning your memory. There never was a Camp Miasma series, but director Jane Schoenbrun bases her movie -- Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma -- on a meta-conceit. An indie filmmaker, Hannah Einbinder's Kris wants to remake the original Camp Miasma movie, retooling it for contemporary audiences.

    To prepare, Kris travels to an abandoned camp where the movie's former star (Gillian Anderson) lives in isolation. Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow) makes movies that have garnered a following, partly because Schoenbrun's films deal with (wait, let me try to calculate the number of themes) movie madness, trans issues, pop culture, female eroticism, and campy asides, this time evidenced in the search for the perfect Jolly Rancher.

     The horror element of Schoenbrun's movie involves a character called Little Death that lives at the bottom of a lake near the abandoned camp, emerging occasionally to spear people to death or, in the case of Anderson's Billy, to deliver the world's best orgasm. 

    Little Death wears a box over his head that resembles a repurposed air vent that might have been salvaged from the bottom of the lake. His look is more last-gasp Halloween costume than one calculated for terror.

     The screenplay makes comparisons between Billy and Norma Desmond of Sunset Boulevard. Kris wants to convince Billy to appear in the remake. A studio wants a version that's more woke, less transphobic.

     Less a character than a collection of intellectualized tropes and inhibited sexuality, Kris makes an argument for the remake that sails over Billy's head. Billy understands that Kris' over-intellectualization masks the link fundamental between fear and desire that she's been avoiding.

      Transparent artifice from production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly makes it clear that Camp Miasma, which includes a segment from the original movie, needn't be taken with Kris' cinematic seriousness.

     That's not to say that Schoenbrun doesn't indulge in gushing sprays of plasma as Billy slowly coaxes Kris into accepting her libidinous desires, no matter how strange they may seem to others. 

      Mostly a two-hander, the movie includes supporting performances from Jasmin Savoy Brown as Mari, Kris's bisexual partner, and Aren Buchholz as Thor, Mari's male lover.

      Appearing as a studio exec who's baffled when Kris calls him to pitch her latest version of Camp Miasma, Dylan Baker lands the movie’s funniest scene, a send-up of the mismatch between studio preoccupations and auteur ambitions.

      Wild and amusing as all of this may sound, Camp Miasma misses an essential horror ingredient: scares. Moreover, its amusements seem aimed at an audience that, like Kris, is fluent in the language of horror. It pays to know something about split diopters and how they’re used in horror films.

      Speaking with a southern accent, Armstrong's Billy is more intent on liberating Kris's sexuality than on making another movie. Armstrong's vampy, campy performance constitutes the movie’s main attraction, enriched as it is by the humanity Armstrong conveys.

      Camp Miasma, which is less morose than I Saw the TV Glow, lives in its own world and seems aimed at those who want to be part of Schoenbrun's inside joking and gender explorations. Me? I kept waiting for the movie to break through its own self-involvement.

Hungry dinos trample the burbs

 Advanced publicity for The End of Oak Street blames a mysterious cosmic event for transporting a  typical American suburban neighborhood to a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth. 

  Anne Hathaway, who seems to be everywhere this summer, and Ewan McGregor, who lately has  been working in TV series, star as husband and wife in a high-concept job that keeps them on the run. 

  Director David Robert Mitchell can’t muster the suburban charm that Spielberg has mastered, but his movie begs for comparison with Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, which did a better job of providing a reason for why humans must struggle to keep from becoming dinosaur food, a fate not all Oak Street residents can escape.

   The movie's involuntary time travel involves a large bubble that intermittently appears and serves as a portal through time. As an explanation, it proves laughably feeble. Maybe that was the point.

    Mitchell leans heavily on two young performers — Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. They play the Platt children, who dodge dinosaurs without their parents when Convery's Brian sets out to find his beloved dog Starbuck. His sister follows, and another youngster (Jordan Alexa Davis) eventually joins them.

   The End of Oak Street seems to be turning pages in a give-em-what-they-came-for playbook, offering a series of dinosaur attacks and relying heavily on CGI to keep the film monster heavy and to ensure that these destructive behemoths prove reasonably disgusting.

   A giant snake invading a house makes for one of the best-assembled set pieces and there is (wait for it) a scene of dinosaur copulation), a stab at genre-mocking amusement in the midst of survival terror.

   Watching McGregor's character try to defend himself with a sledgehammer looks a bit silly. Hathaway wields a rifle. But the movie emphasizes flight more than fight.

    Modest attempts are made to deepen the characters. Aspiring to be more than a homemaker,  Hathaway’s Denise is writing a novel; McGregor’s Greg tipples from a hidden bottle; he has been reduced to delivering pizzas to earn extra cash. Husband and wife often argue.

   Best taken as a love letter to ‘80s cinema, End of Oak Street might have done well to lean more heavily into its goofier aspects and tried for full-out comedy. 

  As it stands, a formulaic End of Oak Street offers many views of Hathaway running, Hathaway screaming, and Hathaway expressing fear. 

  It’s not easy to spoof shlock movies without becoming one, a trap that End of Oak Street can’t entirely avoid, but credit Mitchell with moving rapidly until he reaches the film's unfortunately muddled copout of an ending.

 

Coming of age in Las Cruces

  

 It's not unusual for a family to go through a crisis. But what if every day presented a crisis of some sort? I ask the question by way of introducing Olmo, a movie about a Mexican-American family living in Las Cruces, N.M. in 1979. Aivan Uttapa plays the title character, a young man who is often called upon to care for his quadriplegic father (Gustavo Sánchez Parra). Burdened by the need to work, Mom (Andrea Suárez Paz) relies on Olmo and his sister (Rosa Armendariz) for help around the house. Olmo does help, but typical teenage impulses and needs often conflict with his familial role. Olmo focuses his hormonal attentions on Nina (Melanie Frometa), a girl who lives across the street. Director Fernando Eimbcke mostly adopts Olmo's point-of-view, developing the story around attempts by Olmo and best friend Miguel (Diego Olmeda) to attend a party Nina has told them about. They're welcome -- providing they bring a stereo. A scene in which Dad gives Olmo a lesson in stereo repair becomes a mini-study of father/son tensions. All the performances are good, and young Olmeda is perfect as a kid who supports his friend, tries to learn how to dance, and follows Olmo when he mistakes a home where a funeral is being held for the location of the party they hope to crash. Olmo has serious moments, but Eimbcke's affection for the characters is palpable, and we feel it too.

When sex happens once a year

  Boasting a blatantly contrived high-concept premise, One Night Only is better than it ought to be. At the same time, the movie — which rides on  agreeable performances from Monica Barbaro and Collum Tower — isn’t the winning charmer it might have been.

  The contrivance: One Night Only, directed by Will Gluck and written by Travis Baum, creates a world in which unmarried people are subject to an oppressive government mandate: They’re allowed to have sex on only one night a year. 

  Don't expect a hard satirical punch; the movie delivers more of a powder-puff pat. The sex mandate stems from a fascistic government that wants to promote marriage and restrain what it regards as profligacy. 

   Gluck surrounds this implausible premise with a spiffed-up version of New York City, where Tower’s Owen operates a pizza restaurant and Barbaro’s Allie sings for a living. 

    Afflicted by stage fright, Allie is relegated to recording songs for commercials, in this case for a drug that’s supposed to help with psoriasis. Is there a compelling reason that psoriasis maintains its cliched status as joke material? 

   After an initial flop of a meet-cute, Allie and Owen try to find someone with whom to have sex while the clock ticks its way towards celibacy. 

    A romantic at heart, Allie gives up on any hope of finding love after an ill-fated foray to a bar with a pal.  She heads home, but her gay roommate (Quintessa Swindell) gives her a sexy dress and pushes her out again.

    For his part, Owen is stranded by his girlfriend (Maya Hawke). Over an expensive omakase dinner, she announces that she doesn’t plan to sleep with him. She's after a new experience. 

   Allie and Owen keep encountering each other as the movie works its way through a variety of contrivances, notably a search for condoms in a market where they seem to have sold out.

   Eventually we meet Owen’s mom (Molly Ringwald). She has planned a sexual evening with her partner (LeVar Burton). Still, the movie mostly wanders through a Gen Z world, introducing a set piece involving a hip private party. Allie easily gains admission. Owen is shut out.

    At the party, Allie meets a rock star (Charlie Gillespie) who pushes her to sing in public. He charms her until their encounter goes bad with a bit that lands an unneeded sour note.

    A determined socialite (a sharp Ella Loudon) gets Owen into the club, but that relationship also goes awry in another scene that hovers on the border of tastelessness.

     Look, we know that Owen and Allie are destined to be together. Some of the dialogue is amusing, as is a precocious kid (Mateo Ray) who boldly presents himself as a possible sex partner for Allie.

     So back to the beginning. Gluck (Easy A and Anyone But You) gets good work from his cast, but can't liberate enough laughs from this gimmicky fable. 

     

       

       

'Ice Cream Man' offers gore galore

Eli Roth has directed notable horror movies, among them  Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005). He's also produced such helpings of horror as Clown (2014) and Haunt (2019). Now, Roth arrives with Ice Cream Man, a horror movie that tries to cut the heart out of idyllic, small-town life when a smiling ice cream man (Ari Millen) turns the town's kids into killers. Ice Cream Man tries to walk the line between sadistically funny and sickeningly gory. Roth knows how to do that, but once you see a sweet little girl saw off her mother's head with a hacksaw, you've pretty much got the bloody drift. I'm not going to describe all of  Roth's bloody inventions, but if Roth was looking for a satirical edge, he misses. Roth can't squeeze much thematic juice out this gory kiddie revolt against adult authority. The plot centers on Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), youngster who remains immune to the killing urge because he's lactose intolerant and didn't eat the tainted ice cream. Before the movie ends, Roth serves up a silly, tortured explanation for all the kiddie carnage. For the record, Roth plays Jared's father in a serving of horror that melts away while we await the next serving of gore, such delicacies as brains scooped from the head of a school principal. Gross? Yes. Up to the best standards of horror wit? Hardly.

The callow youth of Anthony Bourdain

  In the summer of 1975, a callow 19-year-old from New Jersey traveled to Provincetown, Mass., a certified mecca of free-style living. Tony (later to become celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain) spent the summer working in restaurants and partying. 

 At the time, Bourdain was dealing with rejection for a writing fellowship at Vassar, the college he attended. But that didn't stop him from claiming to be a writer to anyone who’d listen. 

 Bourdain assayed this early part of his life in Kitchen Confidential (2000), a bestseller that helped boost his public profile and establish his reputation as a bad boy of culinary arts. 

  In the movie, Tony, a renegade young Bourdain  (Dominic Sessa) follows a girl (Emilia Jones) he has fallen for to Provincetown. Once there, he lands a restaurant job and sleeps on a hammock on the porch of the Portuguese restaurateur (Antonio Banderas) who will become his mentor.

  So goes the movie-altered version of this fledgling period of Bourdain's life. Johnson turns Tony into a coming-of-age story in which a young man learns to accept the use of the more formal  “Anthony,” a decision that's emblematic of his emerging seriousness about food.

   The movie opens with a telling quote from Kitchen Confidential in which the mature Anthony looks back at his young self: “I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” 

    We don't spend much time wondering whether this knockabout kid will ruin his life. We know Tony's arrogance will make way for the man who became a worthy guide through the world of food — no matter how exotic the fare. Bourdain's travelogue and food expeditions also yielded one of the best-written shows on television.

     In that sense, Johnson’s movie can't help being a bit of a cheat. We know the immature jerk of Tony will mature. We also know that Tony's pretensions about being a writer eventually became real; as a writer, he matched a broad range of interests with keen powers of observation. He didn't have to pretend to be smart; he was smart.

     Filled with drinking, drugs, and carousing, Tony's youthful summer is set against the noisy mayhem of a kitchen backdrop. Tony makes novice mistakes but eventually gains some footing. He discovers that he could feel at home in a kitchen, a feeling I'd liken to what some of us felt about the newsrooms where we learned to be reporters, places where we thought we could belong.

     A small cast of kitchen characters includes Sal (Leo Woodall), a womanizing, cocaine-snorting oyster shucker and prep cook who wears his callousness with a confidence Tony can't match. 

    Johnson’s story includes an incident in which the restaurant suffers a major calamity. Other scenes depict Tony's wobbly relationship with Jones’ Nancy. She's the woman who eventually would become Bourdain's first wife. 

    Credit Banderas with a weary and wise performance as a chef who's so religious he makes Tony accompany him to church on Sunday. Banderas's character presides over a band of young rogues but he respects the disciplined ways of the kitchen. He may not be a the top of his game, but he knows where the peaks are.

    Tony stands as a decent preview of a life that was destined to become more interesting after the movie’s redemptive conclusion. The adult Bourdain was better company than his 19-year-old self -- and more interesting, as well.

     Bourdain committed suicide in June of 2018. He was 61. Johnson minimizes suggestions about the tragic end awaiting the cocky kid who Sessa brings to life. He sticks to the world Bourdain inhabited before his life began to take shape.

      Some of the dramatic license Johnson takes bothered me, but I went along for the ride. I appreciated the movie’s willingness to spice up the coming-of-age formula. I also realized that in this post-Bear era, I could still appreciate a foray into the bustling world of a professional kitchen, even in a tourist trap of a restaurant that was a long way from Brasserie Les Halles, the now gone New York eatery where Bourdain became executive chef.

     Nineteen-year-old Tony probably would have had to borrow a few bucks to purchase even a moderately priced appetizer at Brasserie Les Halles. Tony's mix of comedy and colorful incidents will do until someone makes a movie about the grown-up who fascinated us with his adventurous spirit and knowledge. That might make for a more memorable movie.

      

      

A samurai tires of the sword

  When a movie entitled The Samurai and the Prisoner arrives, it's fair to expect ample swordplay. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa defies that expectation in a big way.

 Adapting a 2021 novel by Honobu Yonezawa, Kurosawa's 16th-century period piece offers more talk than action, much of it concerning intrigue inside a castle that's about to be overrun by a powerful warlord.

  Although the movie contains one battle sequence and a couple of additional violent scenes, The Samurai and the Prisoner mostly involves conversations in which the lord of the castle questions retainers or ruminates about the coming siege. 

   Kurosawa relies heavily on these conversations to accomplish what other directors might have shown in flashbacks or as part of a flowing narrative. The approach takes a bit of adjustment, but it soon becomes clear that Kurosawa’s four-part story centers on betrayals, tests of loyalty, and the difficulties of breaking with long-established customs.

    Masahiro Motoki plays Araki Murashige, lord of Arioka Castle. Tired of fighting and wary of samurai demands for revenge, Murashige disappoints his followers by sparing the lives of those who cross him.

    A pivotal event occurred before the movie's start when Murashige broke with the invading Oda Nobunaga, a leader of acknowledged brutality. Murashige spends most of the movie trying to outsmart his opponent or trying to avoid the worst consequences of a devastating invasion.

   Masaki Suda plays Kuroda Kanbei, the prisoner of the title, a brilliant strategist who works for Nobunaga. Murashige imprisons him, even relying on the brilliant him for advice, much of it delivered in the form of cryptic riddles.

    Murashige’s wife (Yuriko Yoshitaka) may have her own agenda. Having already tasted Nobunaga's cruelty, she’s obsessed with ideas about the afterlife and allows Kurosawa to explore another theme while establishing Murashige as a skeptic about beliefs he dismisses as superstitious.

    As for Murashige, he interrogates his retainers about matters that include murder and betrayal. At times, the movie plays like a series of high-stakes mini whodunnits that include the murder of an eight-year-old captive Murashige wanted spared.

   Another episode centers on a severed head that has been taken by Murashige's forces, a battle trophy that also confirms the death of an enemy general.

   Divided into chapters marked by each of the four seasons, the story proves talky and sometimes confusing. The characters are based on real historical figures who may be well known to Japanese audiences. American audiences aren’t likely to have that advantage.

    Known mostly for horror films (Cure, Pulse, and Retribution), Kurosawa (no relation to the great Akira Kurosawa) plays this one straight, although he's not averse to adding melodramatic flourishes, particularly at the film's conclusion. 

   The Samurai and the Prisoner boasts fine performances, an unwavering commitment to dialogue, and what appears to be careful period detailing. But as the movie wore on, I wondered whether Yonezawa's book -- described as a blend of historical and detective fiction -- might have worked better on the page. 

   Kurosawa’s approach tells as much as it shows, and the result can be wearing in ways that keep the characters at a distance, turning a 147-minute movie into a succession of sometimes revealing puzzles that generate limited emotional involvement.

'Spider-Man' can still spin some fun

  As far as Spider-Man is concerned, the world has amnesia. Still heralded as a crime fighter, Spider-Man has become a loner. Even his closest friends have forgotten that he’s also Peter Parker, a nice guy from Queens. 

 To clarify: The collective loss of memory that underlies Spider-Man: Brand New Day stems from developments at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), the previous installment of the four-film series starring Tom Holland as Spider-Man.

 Directed by Dustin Daniel Cretton, this edition explores Spidey's deep loneliness, the soul-wrenching isolation that derives from being alienated from the humanizing comforts of his former life. 

   Don't fret: This alienation isn’t buried deep inside  psychological subtext: It’s right on the surface as are the usual Marvel tropes about problems that accrue to those deemed "special."

   So let’s spin ahead: Brand New Day offers well-mounted action, nicely executed vertiginous airborne set pieces, and a scene-stealing role for Jon Bernthal, who plays Frank Castle, The Punisher. As a character of ambiguous intent, Bernthal brings an amusingly credible dose of urban grit to the proceedings. 

    Mark Ruffalo also has a nice turn as Bruce Banner, the professor who becomes The Hulk. Like a child who recognizes that a tantrum has gotten out of hand, Banner agonizes over his destructive powers.

    Better yet, the movie remains grounded on Earth, one of the things that makes Spider-Man appealing. Sans his uniform, Spider-Man's body shows the bruises he receives from slamming into buildings. He also must fiddle with ways to control is arachnid genes.

    Familiarity with The Avengers and X-Men movies helps because you'll find some of the inevitable cross-pollination that has become a defining Marvel feature. Think branding within branding, which can create confusion for those who arrive unequipped with glossaries.

    The emotion in Brand New Day derives from Spider-Man's relationship with girlfriend MJ (Zendaya). Best pal Ned (Jacob Batalon) is obsessed with Spider-Man’s crime-fighting, but has no idea who the person under the mask might be. Both characters knew Spider-Man's secret identity before the onset of global amnesia.

     Holland does a fine job as a young man grappling with identity and loss, not only of his pals, but of wise  Aunt May (Marissa Tomei), whose grave he visits and who appears in a flashback.

     An early picture battle with Scorpion (Michael Mando) has some sting, but the main story revolves around a revelation (no fair saying more) fans should appreciate. 

      The story introduces a bureaucratic agency dubbed Damage Control. As Damage Control director William Metzger (Tramel Tillman) says he wants to harness the energy of a villain who knows how to leap from mind to mind and take over the bodies of … well …. anyone. 

      Depicted as waves of telepathic energy that ripple through the air, body-hopping can happen between any two beings who are no more than 33 feet apart.

     Marvel newcomer Sadie Sink, never mind how she turns up, proves a welcome addition. Watch for a cameo appearance by Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, a character with an unusual office.

     I can't say that I loved Brand New Day. Some of the storytelling feels muddled, a few talky scenes add emotion but slow the pace, and, true to Marvel's MO, Brand New Day dutifully does groundwork for possible future movies.

     Still, I enjoyed enough of Brand New Day to stay with it. Marvel's big-screen menu (sequels, prequels, and stand-alone adventures) seems as if it will run on forever, but credit Brand New Day for qualifying as a worthy special of the day.