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.

Statham strikes again in 'Shelter'

    Jason Statham has become a brand. The British actor has become so associated with tough-guy action that some fans refer to his movies without mentioning titles. A Statham picture is good enough, as someone at a preview screening described the phenomenon.

   Shelter, Statham's latest, finds him playing a bearded loner who lives in an abandoned lighthouse on a tiny rock pile of an island in the Scottish Hebrides. Statham's Michael Mason drinks vodka, wanders about with his dog, and plays chess games with himself. 

   If you know Statham movies, you can bet he'll soon be on the move.

   A series of early contrivances put Statham's Mason on the run with 13-year-old Jesse (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). Circumstances make him the girl's lone protector.  

   A former Special Forces assassin, Mason was part of a super-secret group called Black Kite. When Mason refused to assassinate a good guy, he went into hiding. An agency ally with computer skills (Daniel Mays) hacked the system and faked Mason's death. But the moment Mason leaves the island, his foes will know he's still alive. He'll become a target, and one with "baggage," as he puts it. 

    The baggage, of course, is Jesse, who found herself on the island when her uncle's boat stopped to deliver supplies. She nearly drowned trying to leave, but Mason saved her. The uncle didn't survive a vicious storm that sank his boat.

   The supporting cast includes Bill Nighy as Manafort, Mason's former boss and the man who most wants him eliminated. Naomi Ackie, who plays an uncorrupted MI6 officer.  Harriet Walter takes a turn as the British Prime Minister, a character as crooked as Nighy's Manafort. 

  Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Greenland, and Greenland 2: Migration) loads the screen with fights, gunplay, and assorted examples of genre violence that build up the movie's prodigious body count.

   I guess you could say that Statham and Breathnach give the movie some heart, but relentless action rules with Mason adhering to the school of heroism that says little, fires many bullets, and proves inventive with anything that's available to be used as a weapon. When an industrial-strength chain fells one of Mason's foes, much of the audience applauded.

   Nothing much else to add here, other than to reinforce the notion that Shelter demonstrates its competence at delivering what's expected of it -- if not much more.

    

On dealing with very bad things

 

   Sorry, Baby, a debut movie from director Eva Victor, who also wrote the screenplay and plays the main character, begins as if it's going to be one of those indie efforts that load up on bright characters who are meant to be amusing, but who often prove annoying.

    To be sure, Sorry Baby casts an indie spell, but Victor has something more complicated in mind; she delivers a series of small scenes, some including humor, that revolve around a large issue: the sexual assault of a student by a professor.

   Victor portrays Agnes, a graduate student whose thesis adviser (Louis Cancelmi) has praised her extraordinary writing. But he's one of those professors who shares too much, making sure to mention his ex-wife and the sick child he has to pick up from daycare.

   In a smartly designed scene, Victor stations her camera outside the professor's house, holding the view through various times of the day. When Agnes emerges, we know that she's gotten more than a one-on-one tutorial.

    Allowing a pivotal moment to unfold beyond view might seem gimmicky, but Victor makes it feel natural, perhaps as an act of courtesy. She's not going to exploit the situation or rub our noses in it. It's not the moment but the aftermath that interests her. 

    The movie, which unfolds in segments that move back and forth in time during a five-year span, watches Agnes try to cope with traumatic kickback, the way it triggers disturbing memories, becomes a signpost her friends recognize, and explains references to suicidal thoughts.

   In a finely written and well-played scene, Agnes tells her lesbian roommate Lydie (Naomi Ackie) what happened to her, making it clear that the assault in Sorry, Baby has none of the earmarks of dark-alley violence. It takes place in the professor's home and presumably gets mixed in with the tutorial we never see. 

    It took me a while to get in synch with Victor's performance. Smart, witty, and a bit gangly, Agnes doesn't display the immediate charm of a typical movie character.

    Victor defines the supporting cast mostly in terms of their relationship with Agnes. Lively and self-assured, Ackie plays a devoted friend who has a life of her own life. John Carroll Lynch shows up as the kindly owner of a sandwich shop who encounters Agnes while she’s in the middle of an anxiety attack. Kelly McCormack adds satirical bite as an obnoxious graduate student who's envious of Agnes's success. 

      Lucas Hedges makes the most out of a small role as Agnes's neighbor and occasional sexual partner. 

      I'm a bit fearful about making the movie sound like a manual on recovery. Agnes is damaged by the assault, but her life continues and Victor delivers a message about coping in a touching soliloquy Agnes offers to Lydie’s  baby during an extended visit. 

     So how can one live in a world in which pain is unavoidable? When Lydie accompanies Agnes on a doctor's visit after the assault, a clueless male doctor makes it clear that he has no idea how to deal with them. Agnes and Lydie appreciate the ridiculousness of trying to follow form when discussing something that resists  procedural analysis.

      Perhaps the awareness that allows Agnes to step outside the situation is the quality that enables her to continue to be herself when, as the movie might put it, "bad" things happen. 

 

'Mickey 17' fails to stick a landing

    Korean director Bong Joon Ho finds his way to Hollywood for Mickey 17,  a teeming, cockeyed adaptation of a novel by Edward Ashton. Ashton titled his novel Mickey7. 

    I don't know whether Bong has upped the ante by adding more Mickeys. I haven’t read Ashton’s book. I did, however, approach Mickey 17 with high hopes. Bong, after all, has directed some of my favorite movies. The list includes The Host (2006), Snowpiercer (2013), and Okja (2017). He also directed Parasite (2019), which won him best-picture and best director Oscars.

   Given my expectations, I’d say Mickey 17 registers as a disappointment. Although the movie can be funny and audacious, its many tonal shifts (from serious sci-fi to blatant slapstick to broadly expressed satire) never cohere into a satisfying whole.

   Bong again deals with class divisions and the human tendency to destroy anything regarded as alien, but Mickey 17 lacks the controlled brilliance with which Parasite vaulted over the top.

   The casting  features a variety of acting styles. A groggy- looking Robert Pattinson plays Mickey, a desperate young man who signs on for a space voyage to escape a vindictive loan shark on Earth. 

   Aboard the ship, Mickey becomes a human guinea pig, a so-called “Expendable.” He’s exposed to lethally extreme conditions so that the vessel’s scientists can develop vaccines to protect the crew when the ship concludes its four-and-a-half year journey to the distant planet of Niflheim, which evidently lacks an atmosphere conducive to human life.

   Thanks to advances in cloning, Mickey's body is replicated after each of his deaths, but Mickey isn’t entirely obliterated. A memory storage brick allows the proliferating Mickeys to retain the same basic identity. Mickey remembers his many deaths.

   As the story's dystopian future unfolds, Mickey 17 survives one of his dangerous forays, a situation that prompts the authorities — who think he has died — to print another Mickey. Also played by Pattinson, he's Mickey 18. Bold and crass, Mickey 18 —known as a “Multiple” -- begins to figure into an already crowded plot.

   Two women enter Mickey’s life. Naomi Ackie plays Nasha, a security officer on the ship who falls for this schlub of an everyman. Anamaria Vartolomei portrays Kai, a woman rising in the ship’s rigid hierarchy. 

   Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo in a clownish hunk of exaggerated performing) presides over the ship with his devious wife Yilfa (Toni Collette). A former congressman, Marshall is followed by enthusiasts who wear red hats. (Draw your own conclusions.)

   Steven Yeun plays Timo, the guy who got poor Mickey into the trouble that caused both of them to flee Earth. In space, the shrewd Timo fares better than Mickey. He becomes a pilot.

   When the ship reaches the snowy planet of Niflheifm, the crew encounters Creepers, creatures that look like a cross between insects and armadillos. Fascistic and racist, Commander Marshall wants to kill the planet’s inhabitants and seize it for those humans he deems as genetically superior.

   All of this builds toward an epic battle in which the two Mickeys try to save Zoko, a baby Creeper that has been kidnapped by Marshall. What worse crime could occur than threatening to drop a wiggling hunk of Creeper cuteness into a flaming shipboard incinerator?

    A messy overreach of a movie, Mickey 17 may not satisfy sci-fi fans or those looking for satirical rigor. Thematically, Mickey 17 digs no deeper than the average Star Trek episode.

    Sure, Bong’s darkly hued comic inclinations ensure that parts of the movie succeed and some of its images compel, but, for me, Mickey 17 emerged as an intermittently amusing smorgasbord of scenes rather than the masterful directorial performance I expected.

Alluring surfaces enliven ‘Blink Twice’

 

  Actress Zoe Kravitz makes her directorial debut with Blink Twice, an energetic, often entertaining variation on a theme in which luxury-hungry women suddenly find themselves living lavishly on an island owned by a tech billionaire played by Channing Tatum.

  Kravitz, who co-wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum, understands the need to seduce an audience before letting the other shoe drop. Kravitz optimizes the pleasure offered on a tropical island, where the point is to have a good time with fine food, carefully curated drugs, and no money worries.

   Blink Twice is about being captivated by surfaces that promise ease and pleasure, while ignoring indications that something sinister looms.

   Naomi Ackie, who gave a strong but overlooked performance in Whitney Houston: I Want To Dance With Somebody, plays Frida, an ambitious woman who works for a catering company that's running a fund-raising gala for Tatum's Slater King. 

   King says he's stepping down from his company to reflect. He also wants to atone for an offense that presumably went public but which the film never defines. 

    Laying on the soft-spoken charm, Tatum presents Slater as a model of newly acquired consideration and empathy that he attributes to a recent therapeutic epiphany.

    Posing as a partygoer rather than the help, Frida embarrasses herself when she stumbles. Slater puts her at ease.

     Before you can say "glitz," Frida and pal Jess (Alia Shawkat) are elevated from the ranks of servitude. They find themselves on Slater's private jet, living a fantasy of style and privilege.

      Ackie’s performance also suggests that Frida may have found someone who cares about her. If he owns an island, so much the better. It beats the hell out of gig work.

      Other women have been taken on the trip. Slater is also accompanied by a posse of fun-loving male loyalists, played by Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, Christian Slater, and, later, Kyle MacLachlan.

       Geena Davis portrays Stacy, Slater's assistant, the woman who tends to the details that are supposed to make everyone happy while the women compete for Slater's attention. Stacy also makes sure to collect everyone's cell phone upon arrival on the island, where the women are given the same white outfits to wear. 

        Adria Arjona plays Sarah, a woman who begins to suspect that something terrible may be happening, particularly after Shawkat's Alia disappears. Several of the women can't even remember that Alia had been there. 

      Another sign that there's a dark side to paradise arrives in the form of a stern maid (Maria Elena Olivares), whose forbidding look makes it seem as if she might have dropped in from a horror movie. 

        In some sense, Blink Twice needs the audience to be ahead of its characters. We've been schooled to go along with such things as we wait for Slater's true intentions to emerge.

        Despite its upbeat tempo and sustained glamor, the film eventually must deliver what we know is coming -- a serving of horror that steers Blink Twice into the choppy waters of revenge.

        Kravitz could have done more to modulate the movie's propulsive rhythms, and she takes the movie's  opulence beyond the point of diminishing returns. A concluding coda seems as tricky as it is meaningful.

        Still, Kravitz’s increasingly nasty tropical shenanigans glide through a lively one hour and 42 minutes that suggest a career behind the camera may take Kravitz far beyond Blink Twice's island.

Naomi Ackie dazzles as Whitney Houston

 As a biopic, director Kasi Lemmons’ Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody breaks little new ground. If you're familiar with Houston's story, you may not find many surprises. 

 Moreover, two  documentaries -- Nick Broomfield's Whitney: Can I Be Me and Kevin Macdonald's Whitney -- already have covered some of the same ground. 

  Happily, though, that's not the whole story. 

  Lemmons approaches the movie with an obvious love for Houston's work -- and a willingness to put plenty of it on display.

   I Wanna Dance With Somebody may not be a great movie but it boasts a terrific, star-making performance from British actress Naomi Ackie. 

   Ackie doesn't look like Houston but she projects the singer's undeniable power -- as an up-and-coming New Jersey kid, as an established star, and as a drug-addicted woman caught in a destructive celebrity spiral.

 Houston's voice was dubbed into the movie. Ackie may not be singing but she nails the songs as bravura performances. By the end of the movie, Ackie has so fully absorbed Houston's style that her work ranks as a memorable achievement.

   Of the supporting cast, Tamara Tunie has an impressive turn was Whitney's stage-mom mother; a stern Clarke Peters plays her controlling dad, and Stanley Tucci turns down the volume to portray Clive Davis, the record mogul who discovered Houston. 

   Written by Anthony McCarten, who also wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, which told the story of Freddie Mercury, the film samples Houston's off-camera life, including the developing conflict between Houston's husband Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders) and her best friend and one-time lover Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Wiliams).

   Thankfully, Lemmons spares us the sight of an overdosed Houston who was found dead in a bathtub at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2012.  

   Lemmons sets us up for that scene near the movie's end but only implies it. Instead, she flashes back to a recreation of Houston's performance at the 1994 American Music Wards. Houston sings sang three challenging tunes: I Loves You Porgy, And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going, and I Have Nothing.

    The scene becomes a statement about all that was lost with Houston's death. Lemmons allows Houston to write her own musical epitaph, and I Wanna Dance With Somebody brings Ackie to the spellbinding moment she's earned.