This 'Exorcist' didn't make me a believer

 

  If you've been yearning to watch a fitfully engaging attempt to reinvent a franchise, The Exorcist: Believer might be your kind of movie. 

 Director David Gordon Green, who added three latter-day installments to the Halloween franchise, stuffs his movie with elements that seem intended to update its reach but wind up diluting its power.

 And who would have thought that the word of exorcism would be possessed by the need to give the whole business an interfaith gloss? Roman Catholic priests, long established as the devil's premier big-screen opponents, almost become an afterthought in this sometimes silly battle with the devil.

  Fifty years ago, director William Friedkin made us believe that a foul force of hell could despoil the innocence of a child. An epic struggle of will and ritual played out in the bedroom of a 12-year-old girl, all of it fueled by the furor created by William Blatty's bestselling book.

  Fair to say that Green adds a mildly secular flavor to the proceedings, delivering a message about the importance of working together to combat evil. It takes a village to beat the devil, I guess.

   Green's most significant addition to the Exorcist canon involves dual possession. After a Haitian prologue in which Angela, one the demon's victims is born. Thirteen years pass and Angela (Lidya Jewett) and her friend Katherine (Olivia O'Neill) disappear in the Georgia woods. 

    A frantic search ensues. The girls eventually turn up. Of course, they've been possessed.

   The cast includes Leslie Odom Jr. as Angela's widowed dad. His wife died while giving birth in Haiti. Displaying oodles of conviction, Anne Dowd appears as a nurse with a religious background; and Ellen Burstyn shows up to link this edition to the original. Believer is being billed as a direct sequel to the 1973 movie.

    To fulfill that promise, Odom's increasingly desperate Victor visits Burstyn's Chris McNeil. He's seeking advice about how to save his daughter. Who would know better than the mom from the first movie?

   Turns out Chris hasn't seen her once-possessed daughter in years; the two became estranged after Chris published a book about her experiences. Young Regan evidently didn't want to go public.

    The second possessed girl hails from a churchgoing family, which affords Green an opportunity to show the disruption of a Sunday service. When the demon gets the best of poor Katherine, she marches down the church's center aisle growling about the body and the blood.

    The two girls benefit from make-up, faux bad teeth, snarls, and the use of a familiar devil-like voice that sounds as if its gargling bile.

    Green whips up a couple of jump scares, but what once was frightening sometimes feels like another fulfillment of genre obligations by the first of a reported trio of movies.

   Some of the preview audience with which I saw Believer laughed as the movie fired off fan-oriented references. I guess certain kinds of horror have become less a source of big-screen terror than an occasion for in-group affirmation.

     Oh well, nothing new here: If Believer succeeds, it won't be because of divine intervention: The power of box office will compel the franchise's present and future. 

    

‘Bones and All’ difficult to digest

    If you simply described the premise of Bones and All, a story about two cannibalistic teenagers trying to find their place in society, it might sound like an ordinary horror film with lots of coagulated blood and amped up tension. 

   In the hands of director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) the movie turns into something different, an indie-spirited accumulation of strange scenes that suggests deeper meanings, “suggest” being the operative word. 

   But suggesting and saying aren’t the same thing, and for most of it two-hour and 10-minute running time, I kept waiting for Bones and All to find something. I'm no sure what. Not some on-the-nose declaration of purpose but perhaps a door that swings open, inviting us to drop beneath the surface.

   Instead, Guadagnino suspends his movie in a low-rent limbo where nearly everything seems drab, unappealing and only potentially meaningful.

  Those looking for color will find it mostly in the blood that stains the faces of the movie’s young cannibals after they chow down.

   Without making too big a fuss about it, Guadagnino lets us know that the film, based on a YA novel by Camille DeAngelis,  is taking place during the ‘80s. Working phone booths. A TV repairman’s truck. (Yes, kids, people once had their TVs repaired). Music on the soundtrack. It's all from the '80s.

  In the film’s best performance, Taylor Russell portrays Maren, an 18-year-old cannibal kid who’s abandoned by her father (Andre Holland), a caring man no longer able to cope with his daughter’s proclivities. Every time she bites, they must uproot.

  Once dad is gone, Maren sets out on her own. Early in her journey, she encounters Sully, played by Mark Rylance with a vaguely southern accent, a long braid, and skin-crawling creepiness. Sully wants to teach Maren how to live as an “eater,” which is how those driven by irresistible flesh-eating urges refer to themselves. He also craves company.

  After wisely splitting from Sully, Maren meets Lee (Call Me By Your Name star, Timothee Chalamet), another “eater. 

   Unable to find niches in the “normal” world, the two travel around the country in Lee’s pick-up truck. During one encounter, they meet a couple of good-ole boys, also eaters (an unrecognizable Michael Stuhlbarg and David Gordon Green). 

  Stuhlbarg’s character explains the title. Ominously, he tells Maren and Lee that they won’t be full-fledged eaters until they consume a body “bones and all.”  

   There’s before bones & all and after, he says, signaling what I took to mean full and gleeful submission to one’s cannibal self. 

   Unlike the movie’s two main characters, these two are barbaric eaters. Or maybe they just don’t like leftovers.

  In another encounter, Maren meets her institutionalized mother (Chloe Sevigny), who presumably passed the macabre genetic heritage of “eating” to her daughter. Mom, by the way, had herself locked up so that she wouldn’t victimize anyone else. 

  The supporting cast fully embraces these whacky roles. Chalamet charts his own weird course.

  The movie attempts to redeem itself by showing that Maren and Lee don’t really want to be “eaters,” although they take different approaches to their unexplained  “affliction.” 

  Maren adopts a moral stance: She’d rather not kill. Lee says he has no choice. It’s not clear, though, whether Maren can choose to be a more acceptable kind of carnivore.

  Guadagnino doesn’t cop out on gore and those who are squeamish about such things should probably find another movie about two outsiders roaming a lonely, creepy world. 

   If you’re wondering whether Maren and Lee eat regular food, they do — at least until the need to feed on human flesh overcomes them. I guess the movie wants us to see them as a couple of kids desperately in need of connection. 

  The movie's saving grace, such as it is,  lies in Guadagnino’s understanding of the sadness of outcasts.

   And, yes, it takes talent to draw us into this bizarre world and accept (or at least adjust to) its terms, so much so that we forget to step outside and consider what we’re watching. 

   Should we do that, we might see Maren and Lee as needy kids who also happen to be killers who can’t control themselves. 

   When these kids get hungry someone dies. Just sayin’.

Learning to survive catastrophe

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Jeff Bauman, a man who lost his legs during the Boston Marathon bombing.

For most of its 116-minute running time, director David Gordon Green's Stronger stakes out a claim to importance. In telling the story of Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal), the movie becomes one of the rare entertainments that isn't about graphic displays of violence but about realistic depictions of the effects of violence on those who experience it.

For those who don't recall, Bauman was waiting at the finish line for his girlfriend (Tatiana Maslany) to complete the 2013 Boston Marathon. He lost both his legs when two bombs exploded. Bauman also was able to identify one of the bombers, having stood about a foot away from the perpetrator.

In the climate of "Boston Strong" that followed the bombings, Bauman became a hero. He was honored at a Boston Bruins hockey game and later at a Red Sox game. He was bombarded with public adulation. As a survivor of a cruel tragedy, he became a symbol of triumph over terrorist mayhem.

Green shows us what Bauman's life was like in the post-bombing days. In a wheelchair and reliant on his girlfriend and his mother (a strong Miranda Richardson), this goofy but good-hearted son of Boston faced dual problems: adjusting to a disabled life and also to the attention he never sought.

Gyllenhaal's performance anchors the movie; he mixes moments of humor with moments of self-pity. Gyllenhaal portrays a man who others see as a hero, but who would rather get drunk with pals than pat himself on the back. Who can blame him? For Bauman, using the bathroom has become a physical ordeal.

To play the role, Gyllenhaal lost weight, turning Bauman into a gaunt figure with a crooked, diffident smile. A Costco employee who worked roasting chickens before the bombing, Bauman never seemed to have any great ambitions. Had the Marathon explosion never happened, he might have been content to watch Red Sox games in bars while exchanging stinging insults with friends. He might have been a working-class Peter Pan, a young man who sees no great benefit in entering the adult world.

Bauman doesn't always appreciate the help he gets from Maslany's Erin, the girlfriend who quits her job to help him through his arduous therapy, which includes learning how to use artificial legs.

Green tries for authenticity in his depiction of working-class Bostonians, a little grittier than what we saw in Peter Berg's Patriots Day, another movie about the Boston Marathon bombings.

Bauman's family and friends are tough, profane and not altogether agreeable people who are only too happy to join him at a bar or try to capitalize (emotionally) on what they view as his ascendance. As Patty, Bauman's Mom, Richardson creates a character who's jealous of Erin's potential to replace her as the central figure in Bauman's life.

Richardson's face reflects a mixture of bitterness, fear and occasional hope; she never tries to make us like a character who has difficulty letting go of her son. Bauman lived with his mother at the time of the bombing and remained at her home afterward.

Maslany proves equally determined as Erin, a young woman who goes through hell along with Bauman and is pushed to her breaking point. Like everyone in Stronger, she's not afraid to lose her temper.

Green doesn't dwell on the explosion that took Bauman's legs, although he brings it up in quickly inserted flashbacks that, by the end, of the movie, blossom into a more vivid (and perhaps unnecessary) display of the blast that changed Bauman's life.

Scenes in which Bauman meets Carlos (Carlos Sanz), the bystander who helped him at the site of the bombing, are well played by both Sanz and Gyllenhaal. Carlos lost a son in Iraq. Evidently, many who had relatives who were killed or maimed in America's recent wars looked to Bauman's story to reassure them that life could go on.

Toward the end, Green yields to a temptation that he manages to elude for most of the movie. He allows the movie to join the inspirational chorus in which Bauman, as a person, and Bauman, as a symbol, begin to merge. These final scenes have an unavoidable taint of hagiography that mingles with a genuine thematic attempt to give Bauman moments of reconciliation that allow him once again to be comfortable in his own skin.

Obviously, there will be those who find the film's conclusion more stirring than I did, but Gyllenhaal's strong performance and equally vital contributions from a fine supporting cast keep Stronger on track, making it a powerful look at what happens when ordinary people are damaged by events over which they have no control.

I can't think of a more wrenching scene than the one in which doctors remove the bandages from Bauman's remaining legs. Not only is the removal screamingly painful, but it also serves as a stamp of finality on Bauman's condition.

Green shoots the scene creatively, showing us Bauman's tormented face and the face of his girlfriend in profile; what remains of Brad's legs appears in soft focus between them. Do we want to see? Does he?

Together, Green and Gyllenhaal have made a movie that asks us not to look away.

A worthy Nicolas Cage performance

Joe takes us into a world of southern misery.

Joe has spent time in prison, drinks way too much and earns his living working for a lumber company that poisons trees to make room for more lucrative growth.

It should come as no surprise that Joe lives in a rural southern backwater where trouble breeds like mosquitos and staying on the good side of life's ledger requires effort.

Joe is the title character of a new drama in which Nicolas Cage finally finds a character with an internal conflict big enough to fill several of the actor's recent junkyard movies, say Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Trespass or Drive Angry.

Like Cage, director David Gordon Green also appears to be reconnecting with his artistic past in this grit-laden adaptation of Father and Son, a 1991 novel by the late Larry Brown.

Green began his career with the much-admired George Washington (2000) and other smaller movies, digressed with big-ticket comedies such as Pineapple Express (2008) and The Sitter (2011) and went indie again with last year's Prince Avalance.

It's always dicey to separate a role from the movie its in, but I'd say that Cage scores higher than Green, which is another way of saying that the performance proves more memorable than a movie that can feel derivative and in which the squalid elements seem belabored.

Cage's every move embodies Joe's conflict, which goes something like this: Joe tries to be decent, but keeps tripping over himself, mostly because of an anti-authoritarian streak that seems almost inbred.

The story in Joe centers on the relationship between Cage's Joe and Gary (Tye Sheridan), a teen-ager who idolizes the older man.

Joe may be dissolute, but he prizes physical labor, and he appreciates young Gary's desire to work his way out of his miserable surroundings, to earn his redemption with sweat.

When Gary joins Joe's tree-poisoning crew, he begins looking to Joe for the kind of guidance his own dad (the late Gary Poulter) can't supply.

Poulter's Wade is irredeemable, a drunken degenerate so cruel he tries to pimp his own daughter to another of the town's mean bastards (Ronnie Gene Blevins), a character with whom Joe finds himself at constant odds.

Joe probably falls into the realm of raw-boned movies that, like their literary counterparts, might be dubbed "grit lit," say last year's Mud or 2010's Winter's Bone.

Those two movies were significantly better than Joe, but Joe can be viewed as a sign of progress for Cage, who last gave a great performance in 2009's little-seen Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.

I hope the actor, who won an Oscar for 1996's Leaving Las Vegas, plans to make room for more of these kinds of roles in the future, if only to balance his work in movies such as the National Treasure films, another of which apparently looms.

Oh well, one always hopes.

'The Sitter' is R-rated rot

If you keep up with celebrity news, you know that Jonah Hill no longer fits the roly-poly profile that his fans have come to love in movies such as Superbad and Cyrus. I've read that the newly minted Hill has lost 40 pounds.

Earlier this year, Hill hit a new and encouraging career mark in Moneyball, which probably represents the height his artistic achievement to date. In that movie, Hill played a brainy baseball analyst whose statistical approach to the game helped the general manager of the Oakland Athletics (Brad Pitt) put together a winning season.

Hill's latest - The Sitter - reportedly was filmed prior to Moneyball, but arrives in theaters in the midst of the holiday season. You may want to think of it as a blatant exercise in counter-programming, as well as a step backward for Hill.

Here's the thinking: With family-oriented fare such as Hugo, Arthur Christmas, The Muppets and the upcoming Adventures of Tintin crowding every multiplex, a raunchy comedy just might appeal to every disgruntled guy who dutifully accompanied a date to the latest Twilight movie.

And in a week of buzzless national releases, it's also possible that The Sitter will appease those who hate the idea that Hollywood -- with visions of Oscar dancing in its head -- tends to go prestigious at the end of the year.

I'm not in any of those groups, so for me, The Sitter represents a reminder of the kind of movies Hill may have to shed - along with the excess weight - if he's going to sustain a career.

Director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express and Your Highness) seems to be doing his best to obliterate memories of such early acclaimed work as George Washington and All the Real Girls. Although The Sitter boasts a couple of moments that try to make nice, it's a mostly distasteful romp through a series of implausible and profane gags, many involving kids who are too young for major exposure in this kind of comedy.

A pre-weight loss Hill plays Noah Griffith, a young lives at home with his single mother (Jessica Hecht). The plot contrives to have the reluctant Noah babysit for three difficult kids, an anxiety-ridden 13-year-old (Max Records), a precocious girl who hides behind thick layers of make-up (Landry Bender) and a sullen Latin-American adoptee (Kevin Hernandez).

The screenplay further contrives to have Hill's Noah score some cocaine for his girlfriend (Ari Graynor) -- with the kids in tow, of course. As if to declare its salacious intentions, the movie opens with Noah performing oral sex on Graynor's character, a favor that she won't reciprocate. Hey, I don't like giving away jokes in reviews, but you should know something about the movie's mindset.

Or consider that Hernandez' Rodrigo has a fondness for cherry bombs and frequent urination. I guess someone thought it would be hilarious to watch Rodrigo relieve himself on the dance floor in the middle of a girl's Bat Mitzvah.

Noah's search for cocaine (surely a worn-out substance as far as either comedy or drama is concerned) puts him in contact with Karl (Sam Rockwell), a drug dealer who displays a boundless but obviously false sense of bonhomie.

Rockwell is one of my favorite actors, and he's certainly game for a far-out role, but he's stuck in a movie that tries to temper its foulest impulses with occasional flashes of sensitivity. Case in point: The scene in which Noah informs Records' character that it's OK to be gay or another in which Noah tells off the philandering father of the three unruly charges for whom he ultimately and predictably develops some fondness.

J. B. Smoove, Method Man and other black actors can be found on the movie's fringes, but they're mostly restricted by writing that tends to be too caricatured to be funny.

Hill is likable enough to survive this kind of comedy, but little in The Sitter serves to amuse. Built around car theft, drugs, exploding toilets, profanity, and other forms of inappropriate or illegal behavior, The Sitter is one of those comedies that manages to be more unpleasant than funny.

'Your Highness' is a royal flop

This Medieval comedy is vulgar, but not funny..

Once a darling of critics, David Gordon Green (George Washington and All the Real Girls) lately has been dabbling in low-brow comedy, first in 2008's Pineapple Express and now with Your Highness. * Green manages to take two of last year's prominent Oscar names -- James Franco (nominee) and Natalie Portman (winner) on a downward spiraling ride. * Tasteless and often downright ugly, Your Highness attempts to spoof the cliches of the sword-and-sorcery genre. * Danny McBride, who along with Franco appeared in Pineapple Express, plays a prince immersed in a sibling rivalry with his older brother Fabious (Franco). The brothers embark on a quest to save Fabious' finacee (Zooey Deschanel). * Deschanel's Belladonna has fallen into the clutches of the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux). The brothers ultimately find Belladonna, but discover few laughs as the script pours on the F-word, something you can do at home without having to purchase a ticket. * Is it me or is there some kind of rule that after winning an Oscar, an actor must always appear in a bad movie? Oh well, at least Portman looks good. * The movie's comic high point involves a severed penis. Does that tell you enough? No? Well, the presence of special effects makes the movie seem as overproduced as it is witless.* By the end, I was hoping that Your Highness wouldn't raise its sword in in triumph, but would fall on it instead.