Bob's Cinema Diary: Oct. 7: 'Plan A' and 'The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry’

Plan A

The Nakam was a clandestine group of Jewish Holocaust survivors who wanted to make Germans pay for what they’d done to European Jewry. The group planned to poison the water supply of post-war Nuremberg, considering it an act of justifiable revenge. Not all Jews agreed. The Haganah, a Zionist military organization that also operated in post-war Germany, worried that a Nakam success would turn the world against any attempt to establish a Jewish state. August Diehl anchors the story as Max, a survivor who lost his wife and child during the Holocaust. Will  Max choose revenge or a more enduring response; i.e., a victory for the fledgling state of Israel? That’s the moral territory that directors Dorn and Yoav Paz stake out. The setup couldn't be more interesting. The movie that follows? Not so much. Michael Aloni plays a Haganah operative who asks Max to infiltrate the Nakam ranks so that the poisoning plot can be disrupted. Sylvia Hoeks portrays Anna, a woman who works with the Nakam and faces her own moral crisis. In sum: intriguing subject but the movie isn't nearly as compelling as the questions it raises, perhaps because it fails to bring the drama to an exciting and suspenseful conclusion. Plan A begins by asking us what what we'd do in similar circumstances but doesn't do enough to involve us in the struggle the characters face as they move toward moments of grave consequence.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry 

Gently manipulative, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry combines sadness and sentiment in ways that make the movie feel formatted and formulaic. A.J. Fikry (Kunai Nayyar) runs a book store on an island off the Massachusetts coast. Mired in grief for his late wife, A.J. tries to drown his feelings with drink. Things begin to change when a publisher’s rep (Lucy Hale) tries to interest Fikry in her line. She's particularly enthusiastic about a book in which an old man acknowledges grief and loss. The heart of the movie involves an infant who's left in A.J.'s store. A.J. adopts the infant. The grim clouds hanging over A.J.'s life begin to lift, even though a rare copy of Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane has been stolen from his apartment. It was supposed to pay for A.J.’s retirement. The story covers A.J.'s life as his young charge grows into her teenage years. A.J. also begins a relationship with Hale's Amelia. Christina Hendricks portrays A.J.'s sister-in-law and David Arquette plays the good-hearted local sheriff. Sprinkled with literary references, the movie eventually tells us how an infant landed in A.J.'s life. But sentiment overcomes sense the longer director Hans Canosa's movie goes on. Based on a popular novel by Gabrielle Zevin, the movie eventually dissolves into a soon-forgotten sigh. 

 

New 'Scream,' same as the old 'Scream'

Wes Craven revisits the Scream franchise, but gives us little to shout about.

Scream 4 offers little that we haven't seen before as it jauntily follows in the self-conscious, bloody footprints of its three predecessors.

Directed by horror maven Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson -- the duo that has overseen all the Scream movies -- this fourth edition builds toward a variety of moments that have been engineered to create whoops and hollers in any crowd that's already primed to have a good time and doesn't care if that good time is not entirely distinguishable from the experiences it associates with the previous films.

Scream 4 loads the screen with characters as it mingles appearances by original cast members (Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette) with new arrivals (Rory Culkin. Emma Roberts and Hayden Panettiere).

This edition finds Sidney returning to Woodsboro to hype Out of the Darkness, a book she's written about how she survived her horrific experiences.

Ghostface, the series' resident killer, also returns, evidently inspired by Sidney's reappearance. Ghostface, of course, slaughters many teens, high-school students being the most expendable ingredient in most horror movies.

As fans of the series know, Ghostface is a phone freak; this being 2011, he uses lots of cell phone minutes. He always tries to call his victims before he strikes, speaking in a gravely menacing voice supplied by Roger Jackson, an actor whose name I mention as a courtesy to those who plan on entering trivia contests over the weekend.

Roberts plays Sidney's cousin, the teen-ager around whom the other kids gather for self-referential dialog, as well as for the typical events that pass for plot in horror movies that do little more than alternate jokes and stabbings.

The finale will score in some quarters, but by then I was pretty sick of the whole thing. Even with a little updating, Scream 4 feels old hat, a helping of horror that too often left me bored and bummed.

And when the script tries to get meaningful – serving up blather about the emptiness of fame and celebrity – my eyes rolled. Even in a small, ironically intended doses, social significance is the last thing I want from a Scream movie.