'Weapons' fires one weird shot

 

   Part fairy tale, part horror movie, part social satire, and part expression of unbridled lunacy, Weapons stands as a weird hybrid that stakes out its own eerie turf.

   Writer/director Zach Cregger (Barbarians) begins as if he's making a hard-boiled, socially observant thriller revolving around the unexplained disappearance of 17 kids from the same third-grade class in a small Pennsylvania town. 

   The kids were pupils in the class of Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), a teacher with an alcohol problem in her past. At a town meeting, one of the fathers (Josh Brolin's Archer Graff) accuses Gandy of complicity in what appears to be a bizarre crime. The parents are livid.

   We already know that at 2:17 a.m. on a Wednesday, the now-vanished kids ran out of  their homes, their arms spread out like wings of airplanes. Their flight was captured on home security cameras, fleeing youngsters who may have fallen under a malevolent spell.

   Rather than following a linear path, Cregger focuses on six characters caught up in the mysterious drama. He begins with Garner's Justine and follows with the stories of five additional characters, each elaborating different aspects of the story.

   But this isn't Rashomon, a Kurosawa classic about contrasting, often opposing renderings of the same story. Instead, Weapons reveals the emerging fury of the town's residents: a uniformed cop (Alden Ehrenreich), the school's principal (Benedict Wong), a drug-addled young man (Austin Abrams), and the only student in Justine's class who didn't vanish (Cary Christopher's Alex).

   Abrams, by the way, dishes out a classic helping of dopey, stoned behavior. I never expected to find that kind of character amusing again. I was wrong.

   The movie's six tales build toward a Grand Guignol of a finale, which Cregger presents with the same controlled precision that marks the rest of the movie.

  Horror fans needn't worry. Cregger includes enough gore to satisfy bloodthirsty horror appetites, but many of the scenes, particularly in the movie's second half, bristle with macabre humor, much of it attributable to Alex's visiting Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan as a strange woman whose presence is alternately funny and horrifying). 

   Not everything about Weapons makes sense, and a couple of jump scares seemed too cliched for a movie that's more original than most. But why complain? Weapons provides the kind of viewing experience that may  leave some saying, "Wow, that was one crazy movie," and mean it as a compliment.

All's not fair in love and at the office

 Create a toxic workplace in which competitive juices aggressively flow. Add a romance between two employees who are vying for advancement and you've got the makings of a crisp movie. 

  If you didn't already think office romances were a bad idea, director Chloe Domont's Fair Play should seal the deal.

  Domont deals with an office relationship in which the male partner (Alden Ehrenreich) can't conceal his simmering resentment about a promotion awarded to his fiancee (Phoebe Dynevor), a financial whiz-kid who works at the same hedge fund. 

  By the end of the movie, Domont, who also wrote the screenplay,  can be accused of going over-the-top, but she deserves credit for not holding back. When she fires, she wants the bullet to hit.

  Defying a company policy forbidding inter-office romance, Dynevor's Emily and Ehrenreich's Luke live together with plans to marry. To avoid discovery, they arrive at the office separately and never act like anything but colleagues.

    At first, Luke insists he's proud of the advancement Emily has earned. He assures her that he fully supports her, a claim to which you may find yourself thinking, "Yeah, right." 

     The matter is further complicated because Luke, a financial analyst, will be working for Emily. She's now his fiancee and his boss, not the best arrangement for a satisfying happily-ever-after.

     Domont often treats sex between Luke and Emily as an act of aggression, perhaps because these two lovers can't hide their competitive egos under the covers. 

     In moves that may remind you of Neil LaBute's 1997 In the Company of Men, Domont shows that the atmosphere at Crest Capital reeks of faux bonhomie and real brutality. The boss (Eddie Marsan) makes no attempt to hide his fangs.  A low-key Marsan leaves no doubt that the firm's chief can go for the jugular. He's like a coiled snake.

     It would be difficult for a director to make this kind of movie without examining the heavy masculine vibe generated in the office. To show she's up to it, Emily joins her male colleagues at a bar where they watch pole dancers. She tries to prove that she can be as hard a drinker as her male companions.

     Initially, Emily tries to help Luke be promoted, presumably so that the two can be on equal footing again. When her attempts fail, Luke inadvisedly takes matters into his own hands. He embarrasses himself with a career-wrecking speech he makes to Marsan's character.

      We know that when things sour between Emily and Luke -- each well-played by Dynevor and Ehrenreich -- the resultant breakup won't be pretty. It's also not entirely believable, but Domont isn't playing around. Fair Play keeps us involved, even during the times when we wonder whether Domont might be pushing things too far.

     

This ‘Bear' didn't gnaw on my funny bone

   Braving snow and extreme cold, I went to a preview screening of Cocaine Bear. I didn’t expect a must-see movie but I was curious to learn what filmmakers might do with a story based on an oddball report from the 1980s.

   In 1985, a drug smuggler leaped from a plane after dumping much of the cocaine he was transporting. The poor man's parachute didn’t open, the smuggler died, and the cocaine landed in a Georgia forest. A bear ingested some of the cocaine. Eventually, it was found dead, too.

   I had never head the story before reading about the movie inspired by this long-ago incident but two things immediately struck me. Both the 1980s and cocaine jokes are culturally passé, a dated backdrop for a contemporary story.

    The movie’s trailer seemed to suggest that the filmmakers were trying for a blend of horror and comedy, mixing jump scares, gory gags, and goofy characters, nothing to be taken seriously. 

   That’s pretty much what the filmmakers achieve in a strained attempt to make something out of the movie’s weird hook.

   Director Elizabeth Banks concentrates the story in Georgia's Chattahochee-Oconee  National Forest where a variety of folks embark on different searches -- all while trying to avoid turning into bear food.

   -- A mom (Keri Russell) searches for her teenage daughter (Brooklynn Prince) and her daughter’s pal (Christian Convery). 

    -- A detective (Isiah Whitlock Jr.)  tries to track down drug smugglers. 

    -- And some lame drug dealers (Alden Ehrenreich and O'Shea Jackson Jr.) seek to recover the product they hoped to sell. 

   -- In his final screen appearance, Ray Liotta plays the father of one of the drug dealers, a two-bit drug lord with little regard for human or animal life.

   -- Margo Martindale shows up as a horny park ranger. 

   I'm omitting some of the cast but it hardly matters because many of the movie’s humans wind up in pieces anyway. A severed leg here. A head there. Entrails streaming from torsos. You get the idea.

   Of course, a CGI bear terrorizes everyone with its claws, jaws, bear slobber, and insatiable appetite for increasing quantities of cocaine.  

   Banks can’t get much beyond the novel allure of the movie’s title, and Cocaine Bear, at least for me, didn't whip up enough scares or laughs to satisfy any initial curiosity.

   

   

'Solo' proves Han can fly alone

Old-school names and fresh faces combine in the latest Star Wars movie.

Director Ron Howard took over Solo: A Star Wars Story after the film already was five months into a production that, at the time, was being directed by Chris Lord and Phil Miller. Working from a script by the father/son team of Lawrence Kasdan and Jonathan Kasdan, Howard has given the resultant movie a bit of old pro feel -- albeit with a lot of fresh young faces.

Solo tired me out with a lengthy action sequence about three-quarters of the way through, but overall the origins story of Han Solo proves an entertaining enough addition to the Star Wars galaxy to drown out quibbles.

As the movie’s title promises, Solo tells the story of Han Solo and answers questions that, frankly, I’ve never spent a minute thinking about: How did Han get his name? When did he team up with Chewbacca? Was Han always a roguish, wisecracking space jockey?

The movie begins with Han (Alden Ehrenreich) scuffling to flee a harsh life on the oppressively trashy Planet Corellia, which he tries to escape with girlfriend Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke). Han makes it out. Qi'ra doesn’t.

Ford was 34 when the first Star Wars movie was released. Ehrenreich is 28. He seems to have mastered some of Ford’s attitude, occasionally revealing trace elements of Ford’s jaundiced ways in an expression or a look, but it's best to accept Ehrenreich as Solo and let go of comparisons.

The same goes for Donald Glover who plays Lando Calrissian. Solo and Lando meet at a card game that Howard handles crisply and with winking humor.

Although I tried not to nitpick my way through Solo, I will say that I had more trouble imagining that Glover, entertaining in his own right, grew into a character who looks like Billy Dee Williams, the original Lando.

All of this seems part of the now familiar Hollywood dictum that well-enough never should be left alone. And at some point, you have to wonder whether criticizing certain kinds of movies makes about as much sense as complaining about the local Walmart for not carrying Gucci or Versace.

I don’t mean to suggest that there’s no skill or quality in franchise filmmaking and it certainly doesn’t occur at bargain prices, but one presumes that the real reason that Solo exists is because, as the subtitle suggests, it’s part of the Star Wars brand.

And as you might speculate after perusing Ben Fritz’s new book, The Big Picture: The Fight for Hollywood’s Future, Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams are expendable. Han and Lando, not so much.

But I digress.

Howard tries and often maintains the cliff-hanger spirit that Lucas tried to infuse into all the Star Wars movies, and he includes an exciting sequence atop a speeding train that amps up the tension and action.

The train sequence takes place after Solo joins a band of thieves led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and the no-nonsense woman Beckett apparently loves (Thandie Newton).

Paul Bettany provides one of the movie’s best characters. Bettany plays Dreyden Vos, a cruel crime lord who presides over a nightclub. Thanks to unseen plot developments, Vos turns Qi'ra into a kind of personal consort.

Creatures abound with Phoebe Waller-Bridge doing a nice job voicing a droid that results in one of the movie's emotional high points. I also liked Rio Durant, a four-armed pilot who flies with Beckett, but don't take that as a suggestion that I'd like to see a movie based on Rio's backstory.

Of course, rebellion and the evil Empire create thematic winds -- maybe breezes in this case -- that blow through the movie as reminders of the large stakes that animate the main-event Star Wars movies.

Every now and again, the classic Star Wars musical theme turns up, a reminder that we're still in the teeming Star Wars universe. I wouldn’t have objected to hearing more of that theme, but Howard seems intent on striking a balance so that the movie is recognizably Star Wars while standing on its own. For the most part, he succeeds.

Warren Beatty's look at Hollywood

Beatty's performance as Howard Hughes proves engagingly nutty.

Friday morning's Hollywood Reporter offered the paper's box-office predictions for the Thanksgiving weekend. Not surprisingly, Moana, the animated feature from Disney, was leading a small pack of new releases. The Hollywood Reporter headline went on to note that Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply had bombed. Rules, the Reporter said, might earn $2 million from 2,382 runs for five days, that after grossing what the paper called a "scant" $285,000 on Thursday.

I don't particularly care about box-office receipts nor do I equate such numbers with artistic success, but the headline left me feeling a little sad because it felt like an era might have ended.

Beatty, who's now 79, always will be associated some very good and even great movies: Bonnie and Clyde (1967), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Shampoo (1975), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Reds (1981) and Bugsy (1991). He directed two of those movies, Reds and Heaven Can Wait.

Beatty, who made his big-screen debut in 1961's Splendor in the Grass, hasn't been involved in a ton of movies, but he nonetheless epitomizes a certain kind of stardom, some of it having to do with his reputation as one of Hollywood's most prolific lovers. That was then. Beatty has been married to actress Annette Bening for 24 years. They have four children.

Scheduling conflicts forced me to miss screenings of Rules Don't Apply, which Beatty directed. The screenplay is credited to Beatty and writer Bo Goldman, whose work includes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Melvin and Howard (1980), Shoot the Moon (1982), and Scent of a Woman (1992).

I finally caught up with the movie, although some of my anticipation had been dampened by the generally unenthusiastic reviews that greeted the movie last Wednesday.

I don't know if Beatty has given us a glimpse of the real Howard Hughes, but he certainly has assembled a strangely engaging performance as a reclusive egotist and world-class eccentric.

Beatty also can be very funny as a tycoon who hems and haws as his mind leaps from one task to another. As he anticipates his next move, Hughes seems to give the present moment only half of his attention.

Is Hughes crazy or canny? Some of the movie involves Hughes's struggle to retain ownership of TWA airlines and to protect himself from charges that he'd lost his mind.

Hughes's indifference to others comes across in almost benign fashion: He can seem so entirely oblivious to the effect he's having on others; his cruelty can seem almost inadvertent.

But the movie isn't only about Howard Hughes. It also focuses on an aspiring starlet (Lily Collins) who arrives in Hollywood with her religious mother (Annette Bening). Collins's Marla Mabrey has been summoned by Hughes for a screen test. A devout Baptist, Marla's golly-gee world view couldn't be further from Hughes's. Hughes's chauffeur (Alden Ehrenreich) becomes Marla's guide through a Hollywood wonderland -- although she seems determined enough not need anyone's help.

Matthew Broderick portrays Hughes's main attendant, a loyal fellow who works to fulfill Hughes's wishes -- which can shift within a matter of seconds. Banana nut ice cream, bought in great quantities, becomes an obsession -- until suddenly it's not.

Ehrenreich's Frank sticks with Hughes, partly because he's hoping Hughes will back him in a real estate venture and partly because he falls for Marla. Hughes forbids his employees from having relationships with his aspiring starlets.

Of course, the rules don't apply to Hughes: He takes advantage of innocent young Marla, although without much by way of malice and foresight. And of course, the he turns his employees into toadies whom he routinely humiliates.

The movie includes a variety of small performances from such notables as Alec Baldwin, Candice Bergen, Martin Sheen and Ed Harris, but none of them really matter.

So what to conclude about Rules Don't Apply? Well, I'd see it for Beatty's performance, which might qualify as one of the great screen curiosities, revealing while simultaneously being shrouded in shadows of secrecy.

I certainly understand why many have called Rules Don't Apply a flop, but if you want to see what Beatty has done with Hughes's story, you may not care. Fair to say that Rules Don't Apply is not of this moment, but it may not be of any other moment, either.

At its best, the movie has a nutty, absurdist quality that suggests that the only mistake greater than participating in business and entertainment -- or the business of entertainment -- would be to take much about it at face value.

The Coens take on '50s Hollywood

Great cast, but Hail, Caesar! is enjoyable only in bits and pieces. Fortunately, some of those bits are inspired.

Despite the exclamation point in its title, the new Coen brothers film, Hail, Caesar!, isn't the sharpest or most emphatic of their many amazing efforts. A collection of sketches that both satirize and celebrate Hollywood of the 1950s, Hail, Caesar! lands the Coens in what for them is strange terrain: They've come up with a middle-ground addition to their idiosyncratic oeuvre with -- and this deserves underlining -- touches of entertaining brilliance.

There's a whisper of a story here: Fictional Capitol Studios finds itself in the midst of a major production. The movie is called Hail, Caesar!, and it carries the same heavily freighted subtitle as Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ. The plot, which offers echoes of The Robe focuses on a hardened Roman officer who eventually sees the light, rapturously submitting to a new faith when he encounters Christ on the cross.

Capitol's mega-buck epic stars Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), a slightly dissolute movie star who is also slightly dim.

During the filming of a scene, Whitlock is drugged and spirited away by extras who demand a $100,000 ransom. As it turns out, they are rebels with a cause, leftist screenwriters enamored of the Soviet Union who meet regularly to be lectured by Professor Marcuse (John Bluthal), an unveiled reference to Herbert Marcuse, a hero of the New Left during the 1960s.

It falls to Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), the studio's tough but perpetually burdened mogul, to return Whitlock to the set so that his mega-production can wrap. Eddie's part businessman and part fixer, a guy who's accustomed to covering the tracks of the studio's frequently wayward stars.

Eddie Mannix is modeled on a real-life MGM studio fixer of the same name. Here, Mannix is treated as decent but beleaguered man who's trying to keep the studio from running aground -- not an easy task when its stars have a penchant for landing themselves in embarrassing positions.

As Eddie puts out one Hollywood fire after another, he also entertains an offer from Lockheed, which wants to give him a high paying job that would allow for a more regular and presumably respectable life.

Now, very little about the plot matters. What makes the movie palatable are several winningly ludicrous snippets from Capitol's movies. Think of them as footnotes that are more interesting than the main body of the work.

One of the best involves a bone-headed decision to turn the studio's acrobatic cowboy star into a romantic lead, jamming him into comedy in which characters dress to the nines and speak in the kind of faux British -- or British-ish -- accents that were popular in some movies during the '30s and '40s.

Director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is stuck with this egregious piece of miscasting. The scene in which Laurentz tries to prepare cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) for sophisticated patter might be enough to justify the price of admission.

The same goes for brief appearances by Tilda Swinton, who plays two roles -- gossip pedaling, twin columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker. Listen to the way Swinton says Eddie's name, giving it a twist that evokes the pleasures of a whole era of studio filmmaking.

And if you don't smile during a production number featuring Channing Tatum as a tap-dancing sailor who, along with his shipmates, contemplates life at sea without "dames," you're in an even worse mood than I usually find myself in.

And then there's a broadly comic bit involving Frances McDormand as C.C. Calhoun, a chain-smoking film editor.

For me, those were highpoint to be savored, along with numerous small touches.

Alas (to be as stilted as some of the dialogue in Capitol Studio's productions), not all of the sketches work so well. Though beautifully produced, an Esther Williams' style swimming number featuring Scarlett Johannson might have been included just to show that the Coens could do it.

Johansson plays DeeAnna Moran, a pregnant movie star who forces the studio to find ways to cover the fact that she's not married. Her story eventually leads to Jonah Hill, whose role amounts to little more than a forgettable cameo. Hill plays Joseph Silverman, a man who specializes in "personhood," a joke that's not really worth the trouble of explaining.

In A Serious Man, the Coens took on religion; their attempts to do the same here aren't nearly as rich. The movie opens with Mannix in a confessional booth where he establishes himself as a serious Catholic who's addicted to confession. Mannix feels guilty because he lies to his wife about having quit smoking, but his real guilt comes from working so hard to support a morally dubious and often lunatic enterprise.

Stretches of Hail, Caesar! proves only mildly amusing and some of the humor built around the Hail, Caesar epic struck me as more obvious than we expect from the Coens who've taken swipes at Hollywood before, notably in the feverishly brilliant Barton Fink.

Hail Caesar! may not rank at the top of Coen's impressive list, but it should do nothing to sour anyone on their work. My advice: Treat the movie as a smorgasbord. Pick what you like; forget the rest.

This teen romance goes South

Beautiful Creatures comes on like a Twilight wannabe, but turns into lushly photographed drivel.

A small-town southern boy, he yearns to experience the world beyond the stultifying, church-dominated confines of Gatlin, South Carolina. New in town, she's more worldly than any of her high school peers. Oh, and by the way, she has supernatural powers that, at age 15, have yet to be harnessed.

Despite their differences, these two -- Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes by name -- are kindred spirits. We know this because they both read books that the have been banned from the town's library. He's into Kurt Vonnegut. She carries a Charles Bukowski paperback with her, a signifier that underlines her status as an outsider with a capital "O."

Together, Ethan and Lena try for epic romance in Beautiful Creatures, an apparent Twilight wannabe that asks the now-familiar but still preposterous question: Can humans and fantasy beings find true and maybe even lasting love?

In this case, the fantasy beings aren't vampires; they're witches who prefer to be called "casters," as in spell casters. Ethan (Alden Ehrenreich) and Lena (Alice Englert) try to make a go of it, he with his curiosity, sensitivity and aw-shucks grin and she with a protective layer of teen superiority.

Ethan is easy-going. Lena, on the other hand, is not one with whom one wishes to trifle. When she's angry, she's liable to furrow her brow and create a psychic vibe that shatters every window in her high school classroom.

Lena's mysterious uncle, Macon Ravenswood (Jeremy Irons), has brought his niece to Gatlin to protect her from a family curse dating back to a Civil War battle.

For Lena, the stakes couldn't be higher. When she turns 16, she stands a chance of being claimed by the dark forces that claimed her mother Serafine (Emma Thompson) and her flirtatious cousin (Emma Rossum).
Yes, you read right. This lush bit of young adult blather features appearances by Irons and Thompson, both of whom sport southern accents. Irons brings out his inner aristocrat; Thompson seems to be enjoying herself as an arch and malicious "caster" who's able to inhabit the bodies of otherwise upstanding folks. Rossum, too, seems to have found a way to remain lively amid the story's Southern Gothic moodiness.

If the presence of Irons and Thompson weren't cause enough for concern about possible cinematic decline, the movie also makes room for the gifted Viola Davis, who plays Amma, the town librarian, a woman who has been looking after Ethan and his reclusive father since the boy's mother died.

To make matters worse, writer/director Richard LaGravenese (evidently intent on trying to provide a new big-screen fix for withdrawing Twilight addicts) seems to take his adaptation of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's young-adult novel seriously. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot follows suit with lots of lush imagery -- at least when the movie's functioning in its idea of the real world. The special effects associated with the world of casters prove considerably less captivating.

But back to our young lovers. Ehrenreich lays on as much charm as he can muster; Englert (the daughter of Australian filmmaker Jane Campion) sometimes seems to be channeling whatever sullenness Winona Ryder left behind when she exited her teen years, but softens enough to keep her character from curdling.

Ehrenreich and Englert do not make for the most memorable big-screen couple. Whether you consider it a low bar or not, they're no Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, the last actors to try to find happiness as characters from different dimensions.

I suppose there are some pleasures here, though for me they were mostly inadvertent. Macon Ravenswood lives in a vine-covered derelict cliche of a mansion that's modern and spare on the inside. At one point, Davis' Amma brings food to the gravesite her late Uncle Abner and asks for guidance. LaGravenese even manages to work a Civil War re-enactment into the movie's inflated finale. All of this might have been more fun had LaGravenese spiked the entire concoction with more daffy spin.

I don't know if young adults will turn out for Beautiful Creatures. If they do, perhaps more of these books will find their way to the screen. As for me, I was happy as barbecue sauce on a well-cooked rib to say goodbye to Gatlin, where it seemed as if I had spent far too much time and found far too little reward.