Wild and crazy? Maybe too much so

     

  Boots Riley directed an impressive and entertaining debut film with 2018's Sorry to Bother You, an eye-popping critique of telemarketing that hit a broad range of satirical targets. Riley boosted his distinctive aesthetic -- bold colors, sight gags, and preposterous turns of plot -- with giddy bursts of energy.

  Riley returns with I Love Boosters, a movie about women who steal clothing from a high-end store and sell it at a discount.

  Diving headlong into a sea of cartoonish chaos, I Love Boosters introduces two partners in crime -- Corvette (Keke Palmer) and Sade (Naomi Ackie). The duo has mastered the art of pilfering from retail outlets, stuffing purloined clothes under the clothes they're wearing. They waddle out of stores looking like parade floats.

   Don't mistake I Love Boosters for a caper movie. Riley has bigger aims. The movie's thieves target Christie Smith (Demi Moore), a big-name clothes designer who steals designs, one of them from aspiring designer Corvette.

   Thus begins a battle between working-class rogues and a corporate power broker who covers her thievery with elitism and arrogance.

  The rest of the cast includes Taylour Paige, Robin Thede, and LaKeith Stanfield. Stanfield turns up as a charming character with demonic abilities. Don't ask me why. Whatever the reason, he's part of what may be the year's most surreal sex scene. 

   Moving outward from the Bay Area, Riley adds an international twist. Poppy Liu appears as a rebellious worker at the Chinese factory where Smith's company makes its clothes, endangering workers' health by sandblasting jeans to make them look fashionably worn.

   That's a lot of movie, but as low-rent TV commercials used to say, "Wait. There's more."

    About three-quarters of the way through, Riley adds a teleportation device, which becomes a sci-fi goof and a source of silly sight gags.

   I Love Boosters gets off to a strong start, but three quarters of the way through, visual and plot overload begin to kick in, leaving us with sporadic giggles and lingering admiration for Riley's willingness to pull out every stop. 

   Riley's films have been taken as assaults on capitalist exploitation. If so, they're playful attacks from someone who, at his best, turns his films into  cornucopias of mischief. Some may even want to  categorize Riley's work as a form of cinematic performance art.

   In this second outing, though, Riley floods the screen with so many ideas and so much invention that not enough of it sticks. Perhaps it's a case of too much of a good thing.

'Nope': A big-screen letdown toys with ideas

   Director Jordan Peele’s third movie, Nope, should spark heated discussions among Peele’s legion of fans. Some will find the movie daring and provocative. Others may experience more consternation than they'd like. Still others will see the movie as a highly variable exploration of multiple ideas that proceeds without offering enough by way of thematic punch.

  I find myself in the latter group.

  It’s difficult to write about Nope without spoilers, so I’ll offer only a sketchy plot summary. 

   A rancher (Daniel Kaluuya) trains horses and works as a handler of those horses on movie sets. Kaluuya's OJ is joined on his failing ranch by his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer), a lively young woman whose personality contrasts with the cowboy stoicism OJ struggles to maintain.

   The major development: A UFO — often barely visible — hovers above OJ's ranch, causing fluctuations in power and wreaking more dangerous forms of havoc. 

    With visions of fame and fortune dancing in their heads, OJ and Emerald visit a local electronics store and arrange for a techie (Brandon Perea) to install cameras at their ranch. They want to capture this amazing alien arrival and enrich themselves in the bargain.

    They're looking for what they call "the Oprah shot," exposure on a validating scale.

     The alien visitor isn’t looking to make friends. Like a vacuum, the ship (it looks like a flying white pancake) sucks up objects, livestock, and people, most of them from a nearby attraction, a ranch-like theme park run by Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yeun). As a kid, the grandiose Park was part of a sitcom built around a chimpanzee named Gordy. More on that sitcom within the movie later.

  Peele, whose movies always invite a plunge beneath the surface, seems to have many things on his mind: a look at the way artificial effects are squeezing the life out of movies, a mildly parodic take on classic sic-fi, a sustained serving of dread, and a variety of other possibilities that audiences can uncover for themselves.

   For me, the problem  with Nope isn’t that it’s weird. It may not be weird enough. Peele puts a toe in Lynchian waters but doesn’t dive headlong into the pool. 

   Instead, Nope becomes a movie of hints and suggestions. Early on, Peele deals with the way Blacks played a pivotal but unacknowledged role in creating the movies. 

    Edweard Muybridge, a 19th Century English photographer,  is credited with having made the first moving picture, a man on a galloping horse. Nope tells us the rider was Black, one of OJ and Emerald's ancestors. 

   Now, the specialty business built by OJ's father (a briefly seen Keith David) is being supplanted by computer-generated horses that never bolt. 

   Perhaps we're meant to conclude that movies aren't evolving; they're betraying their origins.

   That idea -- the uncontainable often brutal nature of life -- echoes through a vividly presented episode from Park's sitcom day, an episode that’s dropped into the movie like a footnote.

   I wouldn’t call Nope an actors’ movie.  Kaluuya keeps things closes to the vest; Palmer juices the proceedings with verve; and Perea makes a credible techie who’s gradually pushed beyond his skill set.

   Michael Wincott shows up late in the movie as an assertive  cinematographer whom OJ — it stands for Otis Jr. — invites to film the UFO. OJ hopes that professional footage, as opposed to the original idea of using surveillance cameras, will enable him to save the ranch and taste some glory.

   There’s nothing wrong with a film that wants to play around with different ideas and tropes. But unlike Peele’s other two movies (Get Out and Us), Nope too often seems stuck in a creepy groove as Peele dishes out grinding sounds from the alien ship and numerous visual jokes, at least one of them qualifying as zany and inspired. Consider it a whopping goof on every spectacular sci-fi ending.

   Looking back on it, I wondered whether Nope wasn't its best when it was being playful, light on its feet and even silly.

    Given the expectations for Nope, I’d call the movie a letdown. Nope made me long for the moment when the film would find itself, and I, in turn, would find it. 

   For me, though, the movie's pleasures -- and there were some -- arrived only in piecemeal fashion. 

No classic but 'Lightyear' proves likable

 The Pixar universe keeps expanding. Based on a character developed in 1995's Toy Story, Lightyear begins by telling us that young Andy (remember him?) received a Buzz Lightyear action figure after seeing the movie that we're about to watch. Andy loved the that movie.

  Me? I’d say it’s more “like” than “love.”

  I guess that suggests a touch of disappointment. The expectations for Pixar movies remains high and the Toy Story franchise has endeared itself to both parents and children. 

  But, hey, “like” isn’t nothing.

  The movie finds Buzz (voice by Chris Evans) as full of himself as ever. He and his fellow Space Rangers have traveled to a distant planet where a mistake by Buzz strands his fellow voyagers, some of whom were hibernating on Buzz's ship. 

  A chastened Buzz must then wrestle with an epic-sized helping of guilt. Buzz, after all, isn't supposed to fail.

  Buzz's hoped-for redemption involves being able to fly at hyper-speed, which -- should he accomplish the task-- will enable him to save those he stranded on a forbidding planet which hosts lethal insects and vines that latch onto human prey. 

   Buzz keeps trying but each time he returns to base, everyone else but him has aged. He's gone for four minutes but those who remained behind have aged four years.

   This includes Buzz's buddy Capt. Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), a Space Ranger who marries a woman and becomes the matriarch of a couple of generations of space dwellers. Lesbianism is handled simply: It exists. No big deal.

   Eventually, Hawthorne's granddaughter Izzy (Keke Palmer) will form a ragtag crew with Darby Steel (Dale Soules), a felon with experience in explosives, and Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi), another in the movie's group of unlikely heroes.

    Evans, by the way, takes over for Tim Allen who did the Buzz voice work in previous Toy Story movies.

    Despite its sci-fi trappings, Lightyear isn't Pixar's most adventurous effort even though Buzz isn't a toy in this movie. He's a character in a futuristic adventure that gives him a robot companion, a cat named SOX (Peter Sohn). 

   Gifted with great computational powers, SOX proves a better problem solver than Buzz, who prides himself on finding solutions when the going gets tough.

   Eventually, Buzz learns to trust his new pals but not not before confronting Zurg (Josh Brolin), an emperor who  may remind you of evil imperial space characters from other movies.

   Director Angus MacLane (Finding Dory) may not have reached the stars with this one but Lightyear‘s animation upholds Pixar's standards of quality while telling a story that keeps us involved.

   

Jennifer Lopez dominates ‘Hustlers’

Flashy surfaces and energized performances keep this look at pole dancers on track — but it’s a narrow track.

Jennifer Lopez headlines Hustlers, an inside look at the world of pole dancers — in this case, pole dancers who scam Wall Street hotshots who wantonly spend money on booze, ego-indulgence and lap dances.

Director Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler) includes enough pole dancing and body exposure to keep the movie solidly in R-rated territory as she tells a story that revolves around the developing friendship between Lopez’s Romona and a fledgling dancer who goes by the name Destiny (Constance Wu).

Early on, Romona takes an eager-to-learn Destiny underwing, teaches her the rules of the pole, and offers to partner with her. When two women offer lap dances to drunken finance guys in the private rooms of clubs, the work proves more lucrative (and probably safer) than solo efforts.

Much of the movie consists of energetic sequences that gleefully chronicle the economic ascent of the two women. We also learn a little about each woman. Romona has a daughter. Destiny supports an aging grandmother who doesn’t offer much resistance when presented with thick wads of cash.

Mimicking the rush of a downed shot of vodka and buoyed by the abandon of the big-ticket shopping sprees in which the women indulge, Hustlers wastes no time getting down to business, drama on speed-dial. Written by Scafaria and inspired by a magazine article by Jessica Pressler, the screenplay races across a familiar dramatic arc.

In this case, the intoxications of the movie's early scenes receive sober comeuppance in 2008 when the market collapses. As stocks sink, so do the fortunes of the night clubs and strippers who have become part of the lower Manhattan scene.

After a few unsuccessful attempts to land day jobs, Romana and Destiny strike out on their own, pursuing an activity they call “fishing.”

They lure prosperous businessmen into nights of clubbing, drug their drinks with a combination of Ketamine and MDMA, and pretend to keep pace. The women then proceed to relieve the mark of his credit cards. Said cards get pushed to their limit. Romona and Destiny earn big bucks while ensuring that the clubs and any assistants receive their cuts.

It all seems too good to be true, crime with a safety net. These supposedly savvy sharks aren’t likely to admit they’ve been fleeced out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in their pursuit of a good time.

Lili Reinhart and Keke Palmer play strippers who join Romona and Destiny in their felonious enterprise. Neither character is especially well-developed but the movie gives them each comic moments. Reinhart's Annabelle, for example, tends to throw up under stress; i.e., at the worst possible moments.

I’m not sure that it adds much, but the movie employs a framing device. Destiny narrates the story as she’s being interviewed by a journalist (Julia Stiles) who plans to write a magazine article about how the women raked in money, did a fair amount of high living and ultimately got caught. The bond between them eventually eroded.

It’s worth noting that Hustlers adopts the women’s point of view in depicting men, nearly all of whom seem to be class-A jerks who deserve what they get. Many are married men who lord it over the lap dancers, often throwing money at them in a demeaning fashion. Hustlers is a movie about women -- not about the men who think they're entitled to exploit them.

I wasn’t looking at my watch, but my impression was that Wu receives more screen time than Lopez. If so, there's still no question that Lopez is the movie’s star. Her Romona exudes confidence and entrepreneurial savvy. When she teaches Destiny how to pole dance, you can tell that, no matter what anyone thinks, Romona controls her body. Smart enough to use her physicality to dominate any situation, Romona remains unscathed by her line of work. She's a force.

The women are motivated by a simple equation: Economic self-sufficiency equals freedom. So what if what they do is illegal? The whole country’s nothing more than a rigged game anyway. Why shouldn't they get their share?

Although deeply embedded in the fabric of the movie, this simplistically cynical ethos never seems entirely convincing. To paraphrase Romona: Some people have the money; others dance for it. Pole dancing as a metaphor for the way society works? I didn't buy it.

Full of flash and performance verve, Hustlers nonetheless remains a showcase for Lopez -- with entertaining cameo help from rappers Cardi B and Lizzo. I don't what it has to do with anything, but it seems worth noting: Cardi B's Bronx accent is thick enough to strip the pretension off just about anything.