Bob's Cinema Diary: Feb. 24 -- 'Linoleum' and 'Juniper'

 Linoleum

Few of us are lucky enough to live up to our own expectations. Those who have difficulty accepting this harsh truth often wind up bitter as they sift through the shards of crushed dreams. That's a tough way of talking about Linoleum, a mostly gentle comic movie that explores the life of Cameron Edwin (Jim Gaffigan), a once aspiring physicist who uses his garage to host a makeshift science show for kids. When the remnants of a wayward satellite fall into Edwin's backyard, he decides to redeem his life by building a rocket that will take him to the moon. Director Colin West offers some startling sights -- notably, a red car falling from the sky -- to kick off his story. Somehow the driver of the car (also played by Gaffigan) survives and reveals that he's a former astronaut. Not only that, Edwin's show has been picked up for syndication with the former astronaut taking over Edwin's spot. To make matters worse, Edwin's wife (Rhea Seehorn) wants a divorce. His daughter (Katelyn Nacon) forms a relationship with the astronaut's son (Gabriel Rush).  By the end of the movie, West clears up the movie's mysteries and we realize that he has taken an unconventional approach to a story about recognizable themes. Brace for a scene of abuse that are tougher than the film's oddball tone might suggest. But credit West with imbuing his quirky (in the best sense of the word) movie with something more than novelty: the source and torment of unrealized potential. 

Juniper

In Juniper, Charlotte Rampling plays an alcoholic who spent her professional life as a war photographer, a career that presumably led  her to consume massive quantities of a mixture composed of gin and water. Debilitated by a broken leg, Rampling's Ruth travels from England to New Zealand to visit her widowed son (Marton Csokas)  and her rebellious teenage grandson (George Ferrier). Csokas's character promptly leaves to settle business in Britain, asking his son Sam to help with Ruth's care, a prospect that Sam greets with unsurprising resentment. The presence of a traveling nurse (Edith Poor) helps ease Sam's torment. Rampling has no trouble conveying  Ruth's bitterness and her demanding sense of superiority. Still, it's too easy to see where Juniper is heading. What could have been a hard-edged look at an alcoholic and her troubled grandson softens into the story of a redeeming relationship between grandmother and grandson. Director Matthew J. Saville's efforts benefit from Rampling and the rest of the cast but I couldn’t buy a story in which grandma proves she can be one of the boys -- for the good of her grandson, of course. Rampling's astringent performance deserved a movie to match it.

Bob's Cinema Diary 8/21/'20 -- 'Tesla' and 'African Violet'

Tesla

     For most Americans, the name Tesla refers to an electric vehicle that was brought to the market by Elon Musk. It’s also true that Nikola Tesla was an inventor who did pioneering work in the field of electricity. In Tesla,  a distractingly artsy offering from director Michael Almereyda, Ethan Hawke plays the reticent genius who got crosswise with Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan). Tesla's inventing life also intersected with both George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan) and J.P. Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz). Morgan’s daughter Anne (Eve Hewson) provides narration for a film that includes bold theatrical strokes and touches on Tesla’s relationship with actress Sarah Bernhardt (Rebecca Dayan). Almereyda pushes the film's artifice to the forefront: Such cinematic sleight of hand can be entertaining but also can distance us from both the characters and the story. Hawke turns Tesla into an oddball genius while Almereyda adds anachronisms (Anne using a MacBook) and visual jests (Tesla and Edison shoving ice cream cones into each other’s faces). Not willing to settle for a standard biopic, Almereyda tries for ... well ... I'm not sure what he's trying for. The lighting is dim and so is the movie’s overall impact. Put another way, I'd rather have the car or maybe I'll take another look at The Current War (2017), a movie that deals with some of the same characters. Or maybe I'll just move on.

African Violet

        If you’re looking for a film that piles complication on complication, the Iranian import African Violet more than fills the bill. Director Mona Zandi Haghighi tells the story of a family in which conflict begins when Shokoo (Fatemeh Motamed-Aria) travels to a nursing home to retrieve her aging former husband (Reza Babak) and bring him to her home. The twist: Shokoo already has remarried and her current husband (Saeed Aghakhani) isn’t especially happy about having a house guest, particularly because he and Shokoo’s first husband once were best friends. Although African Violet flirts with both sitcom and soap opera, the movie manages to tell a convincing story that touches on issues of mortality, loyalty, obligation, and jealousy. To make a living, Shokoo dyes yarn, which allows Haghighi to add some color but African Violet hardly qualifies as a triumph of style. And because the movie takes place away from Tehran, it has a slightly remote feeling. No matter.  Haghighi's obvious respect and affection for her characters carry the day.  

A quirky story about young outcasts

Set in 1977, Troop Zero tries (boy does it ever) to uphold the rights of young outcasts to claim their place in the world, maybe even in the entire universe. Directors Bert & Bertie, a British directing team, build their story around Christmas Flint (Mckenna Grace), a girl who’s an outsider in the small town of Wiggly, Georgia. Christmas's widowed dad (Jim Gaffigan) plies his trade as an attorney, losing most of his cases and seldom being paid for his efforts. Gaffigan’s Ramsey Flint expects his assistant (Viola Davis) to look after his daughter, a task she approaches responsibly but not happily. The plot begins when Christmas makes friends with a girl who formerly bullied her (Milan Ray). She then assembles a group of girls to join the Birdies, scouts who are vying to see which of them will win a chance to record a message that NASA will send into space. The local Scout Master (Allison Janney) reluctantly accepts Christmas's crew as Birdies, labeling them Troop Zero. Lest boys feel left out, Birdie Troop Zero includes Christmas's best friend, Joseph (Charlie Shotwell). Of course, a group of by-the-book Birdies demeans the outcasts. The young actors do well enough and Davis’s portrayal suggests unexpected complexities for a movie that seems to want to be quirky and endearing at the same time. Christmas’s individuality takes a strange form: She’s a bed wetter, which the movie tries (weirdly, I think) to turn into a gesture of assertive defiance set to the tune of David Bowie's Space Oddity. A real emotional issue (grief over a lost mother) rises to the surface at the end, but an over-commitment to quirkiness can make Troop Zero feel like a song played out of tune.

Snakes as a pathway to the divine

If you have an aversion to snakes, particularly poisonous snakes, you may not want to see Them That Follow, a backwoods drama about an isolated group of snake-handling Pentecostals. Directors Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage employ a powerhouse cast as they examine the terrible impact of those whose beliefs not only are literal -- but weirdly dangerous. Pastor Lemuel (Walton Goggins) uses rattlesnakes to purify sin: Handle a rattler without getting bitten and you're clean. If you get bitten ... well ... the devil hasn't been banished from your tarnished soul. The drama centers on Mara (Alice Englert), the pastor's daughter. Englert's Mara finds herself caught in a love triangle between the devoted Garrett (Lewis Pullman) and the non-believing Augie (Thomas Mann), a young man whose only desire is to escape this stifling community. Matters are further complicated because Mara has become pregnant after a brief but guilt-inducing fling with Augie. Olivia Colman -- fine as ever -- and Jim Gaffigan, equally good, portray Augie's believing parents. The directors fill the movie with Appalachian flavor as the story works its way toward a conclusion that may shake you, even if you see it coming. The mood is somber and the movie flirts with back-country cliches, inducing a degree of skepticism: Doesn’t anyone who might be called “normal” live in these woods? Kaitlyn Dever appears as Mara's best friend, a young woman who's understandably confused by the tension between religious dictate and human impulses. Nice work all around, with Goggins giving a stand-out performance as a pastor who can seem level-headed around the dinner table but who exerts sinister control over his followers. There's nothing particularly profound to be realized -- or at least nothing you don't' already know about the dangers of fanatical belief -- but Them That Follow catches you up with its mood and performances. And, yes, scenes involving the snakes will give you the shivers.

Guess what? Dad is a bigamist

Being Frank can't wring enough laughs from an outrageous situation.

Comedies sometimes pick a twisted premise and then play variations on the themes it suggests.

So goes Being Frank, a comedy about a son who discovers that his father is a bigamist. In comedy, almost everything is fair game, but in this case, the premise seems a little too twisted and the variations aren't funny enough to make up for any lapses of taste.

Jim Gaffigan portrays Frank, a father who mistreats his son, 17-year-old Philip (Logan Miller). An aspiring musician, Philip can't please his highly critical father.

Dad, who presides over the family ketchup factory, claims that he frequently must travel to Japan to take care of business. The catch: Dad never really visits Japan.

Instead, he spends time with his second family, another wife (Samantha Mathis), another son (Gage Polchlopek) and another daughter (Isabelle Phillips). Frank's first wife (Anna Gunn) suspects nothing. Same goes for Philip (at least initially) and his younger sister (an amusing Emerson Tate Alexander).

As it turns out, tyrannical Frank transforms into his polar opposite when he's with his second family; he becomes a fun father who can't heap enough praise on his football-playing son.

Working from a screenplay by Glen Lakin, director Miranda Bailey tries to wring laughs out the confusion that mounts when Philip discovers Frank's long-running ruse and begins hanging out with Dad's second family -- never, of course, disclosing his real identity.

Bailey, who sets the story in the 1990s, tries to make the movie more palatable by giving Frank an opportunity to explain how he got himself into this predicament in the first place. I guess we're supposed to think Frank's not the worst guy in the world. Some last-minute father/son bonding may also be part of the attempt to soften the movie's rough edges.

But bigamy and deceit don't have a ton of laugh potential, particularly when kids are involved and women are being exploited.

No faulting a game cast, but even talented actors can't make this creaky and marginally creepy farce hit enough of the right notes.

Was he a contender or a pretender?

Liev Schreiber scores a knock-out in a so-so boxing picture about Chuck Wepner, the reputed real Rocky Balboa.

If I were considering making a movie about Chuck Wepner, the obscure New Jersey boxer who rose to sudden prominence when he fought Muhammad Ali in 1975, the last person I'd think of to play Wepner would be Liev Schreiber. Wepner was a hulk of a man whose native Bayonne left him with a raspy Jersey accent. Schreiber, on the other hand, has one of the most melodic and precise voices in show business.

But something about Wepner evidently caught Schreiber's fancy because he not only stars as Wepner in the new movie Chuck but serves as one of the movie's producers.

Schreiber knew what he was doing. His portrayal of Wepner, a boxer who was treated as the Rodney Dangerfield of boxing (no respect) is spot-on. Wepner was dubbed "the Bayonne bleeder," not exactly a moniker to strike fear in the hearts of opponents.

Schreiber ably captures the struggle that marked much of Wepner's life: He wanted to be somebody important -- not just a guy many regarded as a Bayonne-based club fighter.

For Wepner, a loss to Ali became a triumph as well as the reputed inspiration for Sylvester Stallone's Rocky. Wepner made it all the way to the fight's 15th round before Ali finished him off. Most sports people thought Wepner wouldn't survive three rounds.

Wepner became a kind of fill-in fight for Ali after the champ's fabled Rumble In the Jungle with George Foreman. But Wepner, who actually had a respectable pro record, became one of the few men ever to knock Ali down, landing The Greatest on his butt in round nine.

Director Philippe Falardeau (The Good Lie and Monsieur Lazhar) sets Wepner's story against the well-defined Jersey backdrop that bred Wepner and his pal John (Jim Gaffigan). The two men drink, snort cocaine and party hard enough to ruin Wepner's marriage to his wife Phyliss (a terrific Elisabeth Moss).

Wepner later meets Linda (Naomi Watts), the woman credited with helping him straighten out his life after a stint in the slammer. Wepner was busted for cocaine possession about 10 years after his championship bout.

Additional support is provided by Ron Perlman, as Wepner's manager, and Michael Rapaport as Wepner's disapproving brother. Rapaport's John hated the way the increasingly dissolute Wepner treated his daughter. Wepner always seemed to be seeking public adulation rather than accepting the love of those closest to him.

Perhaps in an effort to distinguish his movie from Hollywood's large boxing-movie card, Falardeau puts the big fight in the middle of the movie, devoting most of the Chuck's post-fight story to Wepner's precipitous, self-induced decline.

At one point, Wepner meets Sylvester Stallone. I had trouble buying Morgan Spector as Stallone; Pooch Hall makes a more credible Ali, but these are minor distractions in a movie in which every actor works overtime trying to capture his or her inner Jersey.

None of this is to say that Chuck makes it through its 98-minute running time without being bloodied. We've seen too many movies about the way lives were ruined by drugs during the 1980s. We've also seen too many movies about the way a boxer reaches a peak and then squanders any success he might have achieved. The great distinction with Wepner is that his stature derived from a loss.

The movie also belabors Wepner's obsession with movies. His favorite: 1962's Requiem for a Heavyweight, which starred Anthony Quinn as Louis "Mountain'' Rivera, a down-and-out pug who spent his time clinging to a dream about what he could have been. When Rocky becomes a smash, Wepner totally identifies himself with the movie, so much so that he thinks he deserves congratulations when Rocky wins an Oscar for best picture.

Wepner's delusions are meant to be sad, but by now, we've seen so many boxing films that chart rises, declines and redemptions that the scenario feels played out, almost to the point where there's not enough film to support its many fine performances.

Still, Schreiber's knock-out work may be enough to carry you through the movie, and Moss, familiar from TV's Mad Men, again proves that she's one of the most capable actresses around. Her Phyliss is not a woman to be messed with.

So, a reserved endorsement for Chuck. Like its main character, the movie stumbles and lumbers, but manages to survive.