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.

An explosive 'House of Dynamite'

 

    Terse and chilling, director Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite tackles a situation most of us would prefer not to contemplate: a nuclear attack on a major American city.

    Working from a screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, Bigelow divides her movie into three sections, each offering a different vantage point on the same brief time during which a missile hurtles toward the US.

    Few in the movie’s large ensemble of military and civilian characters are psychologically prepared for an event that probably will kill 10 million people in the initial blast. Scores of additional deaths from fallout are sure to follow. The missile's origins are unknown, but it's headed for Chicago.

     Those familiar with previous Bigelow hits such as Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Hurt Locker (2008) know she’s skilled at sustaining tension, and A House of Dynamite  stands as confirmation of her ability to rivet attention. In keeping with an intensely concentrated approach, Bigelow shorthands character development, opting instead to put her characters to the test.

    How quickly can they accept that they’re not dealing with a routine exercise? How good are they at handling  fear? Can they react reasonably under intense pressure?

     A strong and well-selected cast includes Rebecca Ferguson as a White House Situation Room official, Gabriel Basso as a Deputy National Security Advisor, Jared Harris as the Secretary of Defense, and Idris Elba as the President of the United States. Tracy Letts portrays a folksy general who commands personnel who scan banks of monitors. A FEMA official (Moses Ingram) tries to prepare an evacuation response.

     House of Dynamite employs too many actors to name them all. Many roles are relegated more to function than revelation. Still, Ferguson, Harris, and Elba convey the emotions accompanying concern for those outside the security perimeter, seen in glimpses that remind us that most people are unaware of a pending Armageddon.

      Snippets of story detonate along the way. A Major General at a remote outpost (Anthony Ramos) falls into despair when his crew fails to intercept the missile. The Secretary of Defense grapples with the fact that his daughter lives in Chicago, the targeted city. An expert on North Korea (Greta Lee) watches a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg with her son when she's called for advice.  

       This contrast between two kinds of horrible warfare may be a bit on the nose for a movie that avoids extraneous observation, but A House of Dynamite mostly meets its subject head-on.

      Given current preoccupations — wars in Gaza and the Ukraine, National Guard troops in major cities, and a government shutdown — A House of Dynamite may seem a little out of sync with today's worries.

    Perhaps that’s the point. Bigelow’s movie serves as a sobering tap on the shoulder from someone intent on reminding us that other dangers lurk. Heaven forbid that one day a missile makes a mockery of the quotidian unfolding of what, for most of us, will begin as just another day. 

 

A look a cheesy world that's pretty 'gouda'

Boxtrollscan be both distinctive and amusing.

The folks who made the popular animated movies Coraline and ParaNorman are at it again. The Boxtrolls falls a trifle short of previous Laika Studios work, but still manages to be both entertaining and distinctive, an expression of the appealingly cracked thinking we've come to expect from Laika.

This time, Laika imagines an inherently absurd world in which status in the town of Cheesebridge is signified by white, stovepipe hats that look as if they've been borrowed from Dr. Seuss.

True to the town's name, cheese has become the currency in which the status-hungry deal. Nothing in Cheesebridge exceeds the privilege of gathering in a tasting room to sample fine cheeses with other White Hats.

Loosely based on author Alan Snow's Here Be Monsters, The Boxtrolls focuses on a boy named Eggs (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) who lives among the Boxtrolls, lumpy-looking creatures who wear cardboard boxes and who run around the city scavenging from garbage piles.

For nourishment, the trolls pop multi-colored insects as if they were M&Ms. They also collect discarded objects from alleys as a way of furnishing their underground home.

Of course, the Boxtrolls have a nemesis. An exterminator named Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) plans to eliminate all trolls. In true fairy tale fashion, he libels the poor creatures, blaming them for capturing and killing children.

Unwilling to wait for an elevated status, Snatcher sometimes gains entry into society's loftier regions by dressing in drag and posing as Madame Frou-Frou, a singer in full chanteuse regalia.

Snatcher hopes to shed his disguise and become a bona fide member of the White Hat society so that he, too, can feast on fine cheeses with Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris).

A cheese obsessive himself, the snooty Lord Portley-Rind pretty much ignores his young daughter (Elle Fanning).

Left to her own devices, Fanning's Winnie meets Eggs, and the two eventually join forces to save the Boxtrolls and bring balance to a world gone lopsided in its quest for status.

The world we discover in The Boxtrolls tends to be darkly hued, a look that isn't helped by 3D, which proves entirely superfluous in establishing the Dickensian mood directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable seem to be after.

I would have preferred a less action-oriented finale, but The Boxtrolls, with musical numbers by Eric Idle, has a fair share of off-kilter charm.

Be sure to stay put for the end credits, which are both amusing and instructive.