'The Next Chapter': a page not to turn

 

Surely, someone could find something better to do with Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton, and Jane Fonda than plop them into Book Club: The Next Chapter, a hokey sequel in which members of a Los Angeles book club swap books for travel to Italy. A post-Covid comedy, the story centers on a bachelorette trip the four friends make preceding the wedding of Fonda's Vivian, a woman who has resisted marriage but finally has agreed to settle down with her fiancé, Don Johnson's Arthur, a character from the first installment. Bergen's Sharon, a retired judge hands out snark -- or at least this movie's  version of it. Keaton's Diane has a relationship with Andy Garcia's Mitchell, another leftover from the first installment. To travel, Steenburgen's Carol must leave her husband Bruce (Craig T. Nelson) at home; he's on the upswing after a recent heart attack but she's worried about him. Once in Italy -- notably Rome, Venice and Tuscany -- the women meet various men, including one of Carol's old flames, a chef played by Vincent Riotta. Giancarlo Giannini shows up as a good-hearted cop. Life for the women isn't always easy what with stolen luggage, a night in the slammer, and suggestive jokes that can seem more adolescent than mature. The result: a featherweight comedy with a picture postcard soul. What else to say? Only that filmmakers either can't find or are ignoring better material for gifted actresses who have been on the planet for 70 years or more.

Two teen movies: Coming of age again

A sometimes powerful 'Words on Bathroom Walls'

     If you’ve ever participated in or listened to conversations about movies, you’ve probably never heard anyone say, “Gee, I wish there more coming-of-age movies about teenagers.”
    Such movies haven't exactly been in short supply.
    Words on Bathroom Walls fits the standard profile but with a major exception. It’s about a teenager who suffers from schizophrenia. That means that Adam (Charlie Plummer), the movie’s main character, hallucinates, erupts in violent outbursts, and lives in a world in which he’s constantly accompanied by three imaginary companions.
     Director Thor Freudenthal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) does a good job depicting the fragmented world in which Adam spends his time. He shows us what's going on in Adam's mind, trying to make it as real for us as it is for him.
     Adam's trio of hallucinatory companions includes sweet young Rebecca (Anna Sophia Robb). A bro-type (Devon Bostick) represents Adam's party side. Adam's bat-wielding buddy (Lobo Sebastian) plays the role of enforcer.
      Freudenthal doesn't flinch from the issues that torment a young person whose dreams may be thwarted by mental illness. Adam aspires to be a chef.
    Tossed from a high school after a violent incident, Adam finds himself in a last-chance situation at a Catholic school where he meets a priest (Andy Garcia) who's religious but tolerant of Adam's lack of belief.
     Adam’s mom (Molly Parker) is hopeful but she's dealing with other major stresses. Adam deeply distrusts his divorced mom’s live-in lover (Walton Goggins ).
     The movie concentrates on the burgeoning relationship between Adam and a whip-smart student (Taylor Russell) who supplements her income by writing school essays for other students.
     Adam keeps his troubles secret as he vacillates between taking his meds (which have a debilitating side effect) and proceeding without chemical intervention.
     Plummer handles all of this without depriving the audience of the sympathy and engagement it needs to stick with Adam.
    The finale involving a prom and a graduation ceremony strains credibility and the screenplay, adapted by  Nick Neveda from a YA novel by Julia Walton,  isn’t difficult to outguess.
    At its best, though, Words on Bathroom Walls contains moments that are sensitively realized and deserves credit for refusing to suggest that every problem disappears at high school graduation.

Chemical Hearts, a tame teen offering
    

Chemical Hearts, another teen movie, will be available for streaming on Amazon.
     Directed by Richard Tanne, Chemical Hearts focuses on Henry (Austin Abrams), a teenager who edits his high school newspaper and who fancies himself a writer.  A young woman (Lili Reinhart)  reluctantly functions as an assistant editor on the paper. 
    Entirely normal and decent, Henry struggles to break the walls of silence and reserve that surround Reinhart's Grace,  a teen who mangled her knee in an auto accident in which her football star boyfriend was killed.
    Guilt-ridden and wary, Grace gradually allows Henry to become part of her life.
    The title connotes the movie’s principal notion. Romantic love is a chemical reaction, Henry's older sister tells him. At its height, it feels great but when it's taken away from us, we're miserable.
    Tanne creates a high-school environment that allows for a bit of diversity and also includes some of the touchstones of teen life: a Halloween party, for example.
    The movie deserves credit for taking the hurts of adolescence super-seriously but,  at the same time, can seem too eager to turn adolescent angst into something more profound than it really is.
     Whatever the case, Chemical Hearts never breaks the medium-grade ranks of its well-populated genre.

'Book Club' reads like a sitcom

A terrific cast can do little to save a lightweight comedy about mature women who, thanks to a shared book club reading of Fifty Shades of Gray, decide that they must fight against the dying light of their aging libidos. Those who know that Book Club stars Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen and Jane Fonda will have their expectations raised -- only to be crushed by an insipid premise and shallow execution by director Bill Holderman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Erin Simms. Keaton plays the recently widowed Diane, a woman who's being pestered by her daughters (Alicia Silverstone and Katie Aselton) to leave California and move in with one of them in Arizona. Fonda plays Vivian, owner of a major hotel who claims to have cherished her life of sex without emotional attachment. Bergen portrays Sharon, a respected judge whose husband (Ed Begley Jr.) left her for a younger woman. Steenburgen's Carol is married to the recently retired Bruce (Craig T. Nelson), a man who has lost all interest in sex. Crippled by a fear of flying (in planes and in her social life), Keaton's Diane meets a handsome older man (Andy Garcia) on a flight to Arizona. Fonda's Vivian finds herself being pursued by an old flame (Don Johnson), a guy whose proposal she declined many years ago. Adding to the overall mediocrity are Richard Dreyfuss (as one of Sharon's first online dating partners) and Wallace Shawn (another of Sharon's suitors). Nothing of note happens in this predictable outing, but it is marked by a certain sadness, the sadness of watching gifted actresses play desperate women in the service of a movie that has nothing in mind that doesn't spring either from cliche or from the dictates of the kind of screenwriting that makes it seem as if these characters have lived most of their lives in sitcoms.

When a hero becomes the goat

A terrific Jeremy Renner plays a reporter who fights to get the story and then battles with the journalistic establishment in Kill the Messenger.

Though not entirely satisfying, Kill the Messenger has enough energy and intrigue to earn its place on a list of movie's that rightly give us pause.

In yet another electric performance, a terrific Jeremy Renner plays a newspaper reporter who rose and, then, fell with his story.

Renner's portrayal of mayor Carmine Polito in American Hustle was a small classic, and he's done fine, even scary, work in such tough-minded movies as The Town (2010) and The Hurt Locker (2008).

An actor of exceptional edge, Renner creates the impression that his characters could tilt in a hundred different directions. We're never entirely sure which way they'll jump.

In Kill the Messenger, Renner plays Gary Webb, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury who, in the 1990s, wrote a highly controversial story about Nicaraguan rebels who were smuggling drugs into the U.S. while the CIA apparently looked the other way.

Webb's story started strong and then got blurry: Major journalistic institutions -- notably The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times -- tried to poke holes in Webb's reporting. Even his own paper eventually said Webb had over-reached.

As shown in the movie, Webb persisted in his quest because he understood that the story, which tracked events that unfolded during the 1980s, had had devastating, on-the-ground impact: Drugs were being funneled into South Central Los Angeles, where a crack epidemic was ruining lives.

Director Michael Cuesta (L.I.E.) doesn't canonize Webb, who we learn had a devastating incident in his past, a tragic episode that caused him to leave the Cleveland Plain Dealer and head for California.

When Webb's story -- entitled Dark Alliance -- broke on the Internet, it pointed to a tarnished part of the recent American past and, subsequently, raised interesting questions about whether some in the journalistic establishment were being motivated by timidity and envy.

Although the movie encourages us to side with Webb, it doesn't entirely settle the issue of whether he dotted every "i'' and crossed all his "ts."

If it's a bit indecisive, pacing and intrigue keep the story humming, as does a large and powerful supporting cast.

A seductive Paz Vega plays Coral, a woman who pulls Webb into the story. Tim Blake Nelson portrays an attorney for a crack dealer (Michael Kenneth Williams) who knows the real story of how cocaine is reaching the ghetto, and Barry Pepper appears as a prosector who doesn't seem devoted to finding the truth.

We're also introduced to Webb's editors. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Webb's immediate supervisor, and Oliver Platt portrays the paper's editor. Andy Garcia has a nice, small turn as an imprisoned drug lord who becomes one of Webb's sources.

The movie supplements its main story by showing the toll Webb's work took on his family, notably on his wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) and the older of his two sons (Lucas Hedges).

Unfortunately for Cuesta, this may be a case where the arc of the drama, derived from real events, diminishes its power: Triumph precedes a downward spiral. Webb's story trades victory for defeat, and winds up knocking the air out of itself.

Still, I wouldn't dismiss Kill the Messenger. We may not always be able to find our moorings in this complicated tale, but two things seem clear: Major institutions -- the government and the press -- can be tainted by self-interest. And no matter where you look, heroes probably will be in short supply.

'Rob the Mob,' an entertaining heist

The story of two robbers who can't read the danger signs.

Rob the Mob may not be a classic, but it's made enjoyable by a bizarre, reality-based story that focuses on two characters too dopey to understand that they've put themselves in danger; i.e., they think robbing Mafia hangouts will be a breeze.

Why worry? Can Mafia guys call the cops?

Director Raymond De Felitta had a minor hit with City Island. Less of a crowd pleaser (but more entertaining for my money), Rob the Mob offers a comic immersion in the small-change world of Queens, N.Y., during the 1990s.

When I first saw American Hustle, I didn't think I'd ever see a performance with as much New York bravado as Jennifer Lawrence's. I was wrong.

Nina Arianda's performance as Rosie Uva is almost as funny and so full of sass, it's irresistible.

Known mostly for stage work, Arianda plays a woman who works for a debt collection agency and who joins with her ex-con boyfriend Tommy (an equally good Michael Pitt) in conducting a series of ill-advised robberies of the social clubs at which mobsters spend their idle hours.

Rosie drives the getaway car, and Tommy barges into clubs wielding an Uzi he barely knows how to use.

All of this takes place against the backdrop of the trial in which mob boss John Gotti is about to be convicted of murder, and in which New York gangsters are taking a major hit from law enforcement.

Pitt and Arianda receive able support from Andy Garcia (as a mob boss), Ray Romano (as a New York newspaper columnist), as well as from Burt Young, Frank Whaley, Cathy Moriarty, Michael Rispoli and Griffin Dunne.

You won't find a bad performance in the lot: Rob the Mob is one of those movies that feels as if everyone embraced the project with enthusiasm and love.

Working from a script by Jonathan Fernandez, De Felitta gives his movie a beating tabloid heart. We're won over by the genial stupidity (and innocence) of some of the characters, by the true love between Rosie and Tommy and by unexpected sentiment, some of it stemming from Garcia's Big Al, a mob boss who once made his living cooking rice balls (actually, risotto). In a tender scene, Big Al encourages his grandson to avoid the pain of gangster life.

Rob the Mob -- a story of doomed lovers -- may have difficulty finding a niche when pitted against some A-line competition, but this small gem of a movie about feckless denizens of a small-time world shouldn't be missed -- either now or when it finds its way to DVD.

Catholic warriors on the march

If a superior historical movie is defined by its ability to infuse a subject with thought-provoking urgency, For Greater Glory mostly misses the mark.

Despite a ton of battle footage and an underdog story that pits a rebel army against a superior Mexican federal force, director Dean Wright's wannabe epic has the washed out blandness of a work that's ultimately limited both by a diffuse script and by its faith-based commitments.

Overly long at two hours and 20 minutes, For Greater Glory revolves around an obscure chapter in Mexican history, the bloody Cristero War that took place between 1926 and 1929 and which saw a group of Catholics take arms to preserve their right to practice their religion.

Mexican president Flutarco Calles, an excellent Ruben Blades, becomes the primary oppressor. The screenplay depicts Calles as a cruel and zealous upholder of the Mexican constitution of 1917 which contained a variety of anti-clerical strictures designed to limit the power of the Catholic Church. In practice, foreign priests were deported, some priests were murdered and churches were desecrated.

A scattered story tries to find focus in the person of General Gorostieta Velarde (Andy Garcia), a retired military officer who's asked to lead the rebel forces. Though skeptical about Catholic dogma, Velarde believes in religious freedom. He ultimately takes the job.

A bland Garcia doesn't do enough with the doubt that must have wracked a man such as Velarde, who -- according to the movie -- eventually was moved to reaffirm his Catholicism by a 12-year-old boy's Christ-like sacrifice.

Several familiar faces crop up in supporting roles. Looking as if he might at any moment be blown away by a stiff wind, a frail Peter O'Toole appears as a priest who's executed by the Federales. And Bruce Greenwood shows up as the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, a diplomat trying to broker a peace that serves U.S. interests.

The For Greater Glory trailer makes a big deal out of the fact that Eva Longoria appears in the movie. Longoria sheds the desperate housewife trappings of her TV fame to become the devout wife of General Velarde: Because Velarde spends most of the movie away from his family, Longoria doesn't get all that much screen time.

Earnest to a fault, For Greater Glory doesn't look hard enough at the contradiction within the rebel forces; i.e., fighting and killing to practice a religion built around the teachings of Christ. A warrior priest played by Santiago Cabrera might well have received more attention, perhaps at the expense of yet another battle.

Now, as for the movie's religio-political agenda: A Washington Post article published on May 24 reported that "For Catholics enraged by the Obama administration’s proposed contraception mandate, the film about the Mexican church’s fight in (the) 1920s is a heartening and timely cinematic boost in the American church’s battle to preserve 'religious freedom' in 2012."

I wouldn't classify For Greater Glory as entirely propagandistic nor do I think that the film will ignite Passion of the Christ levels of controversy, but, as the Post article suggests, even with an "R" rating, For Greater Glory dovetails with the objectives of some Catholic organizations. The Knights of Columbus, for example, devotes an on-line page to resources for promoting the movie.

Some will see all of this as an enhancement, but even those in total synch with the movie's values may find themselves growing antsy during its long march to glory.