A boxer's search for redemption

 

At times while watching director Jack Huston's Day of the Fight, I felt as though I were watching an advanced acting class. You can almost feel actors digging to wring every bit of flavor out of every scene. Shot in black-and-white, Day of the Fight tells the story of a one-time middleweight champion trying to pull his life together after being released from prison. Michael C. Pitt plays Michael Flannigan, a boxer we follow on the day of his comeback fight at Madison Square Garden. Mike spends the day trying to mend fences with some of the major people in his life, notably his former wife (Nicolette Robinson) and teenage daughter. He also meets with his trainer Ron Perlman, an uncle (Steve Buscemi) who has been a major influence in his life, and a friend (John Magaro) from the old neighborhood who has become a priest.  Mike also visits the father (Joe Pesci) who tormented him as a kid but now is a demented old man staring out the window of the nursing home where he lives. Flannigan also makes a major bet on himself to win his bout. Huston's gritty New York story aims at the heart, but its beat is slowed by the extra weight of genre familiarity.

An animated edition of ‘Transformers’

    I admit it. I've never spent a second wondering how an ordinary bot could become Optimus Prime. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can stop here. If you do, I’ll tell you that I’ve enjoyed a couple of Transformers movies, but would resist rending any garments should the series fade into the mists of memory. 

   That, of course, isn’t going to happen. The new animated Transformers One not only charts a path for sequels, it boasts enough inventive animation to push noise-weary watchers past its loud, repetitive battles. 

    Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, and Scarlett Johansson lead the voice cast, and director Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4) adds enough cheeky humor to stave off Transformers fatigue. 

    Hemsworth provides the voice for Orion Pax, a bot who’s subjugated to the oppression that consumes the planet Cybertron. Orion and his pal D-16 (Henry) work as miners, drudges who are expected to revere Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm),  the autocratic Transformer who runs the place. 

     The story centers on Orion’s attempt to reach Cybertron’s surface. Once there, he and a trio of bots that includes D-16, Elita-1 (Johansson), and B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key) try to win freedom for Cybertron's downtrodden. 

     Elita adds assertiveness, and B-127 brings humor. Whatever the situation, he won't shut up.

      Eventually, the quartet revives an older bot (Laurence Fishburne) who remembers the time before Sentinel enslaved ordinary bots, who lack the power to transform.

      In a welcome addition, Steve Buscemi gives voice to the treacherous Decepticon Starscream,

     Transformers One takes shape as a buddy movie, an action onslaught, and a story about underdogs who triumph. Perhaps to add political spin, the screenplay pits the dedicated unity of rebellious bots against Sentinel’s selfish authoritarianism.

     Cybertron puts the team's visual chops on display -- both above and below ground.

      I’m always a little put off by movies that require glossaries. Transformers, of course, has its share of ear-challenging names. To take one example, Cybertorn worker droids mine a substance called Energon, which provides the planet’s energy. Ordinary bots lack the “cogs” that allow for transformation, the key to power on Cybertron. Qintesson invaders add to the problems the defiant bots face.

      And, oh yeah, our quartet of  bots searches for the Matrix of Leadership, the object that serves as the movie’s MacGuffin.

      Who'd have guessed that anyone could get this much mileage from a Hasbro toy? Not me. But that’s the world we live in, and if we can’t change it, we should at least appreciate attempts to give it humor, visual invention, and a simple ethos.

     That’s the transformation audiences deserve. Credit Transformers One for trying to provide it.

          

A comic-of-age story set in Staten Island

Pete Davidson plays a guy who can't seem to get his life started -- and likes it that way.

Exactly what makes Pete Davidson worth watching isn't easy to pin down. For one thing, he's an SNL guy who now finds himself at the center of a movie with The King of Staten Island, a coming of age story set in (where else?) Staten Island. But so what? Davidson joins a long parade of SNL people who have made big leaps to the big screen —- or, in this case, to the big stream. In case you've forgotten, the coronavirus has closed down the nation's theaters.

Davidson is one of those rare people who seem to be able to stand in front of a camera and be himself — or at least some version of himself: a sometimes savvy, sometimes jerky New York kid who says what he thinks, reeks with attitude and (here’s the part that matters) isn't quite as together as he sometimes pretends to be.

At his best, Davidson projects a ragged authenticity and it’s that sense of authenticity that allows The King of Staten Island to get by, even when the movie begins to lose itself in its final going.

King of Staten Island teams Davidson with director Judd Apatow, who has helped the young comic shape a variety of scenes that slide toward something resembling a coming-of-age movie. And that’s the worst part about this semi-autobiographical effort, it pushes into the kind redemptive territory that has marked other Apatow work (both as a director and producer) and sometimes looks like an apology for any raunch that has proceeded the wrapup.

As its title makes clear, Davidson's movie tries to be inseparable from its much-abused setting, Staten Island being the one place low enough that New Jersey can look down on it, as Davidson's character says.

Like many characters in coming-of-age films, Davidson's Scott is stuck. He’s directionless, living with his mom (Marisa Tomei) and watching his younger sister (Maude Apatow) prepare to depart for college and a life beyond the narrow confines of Staten Island.

Scott insists that his life is fine, except, of course, it isn't.

Scott’s father, a NY City fireman, was killed fighting a fire. (Davidson’s fireman father was killed on 9/ll). Scott never really has gotten over his father's death. Loss and the bitterness it breeds underlies everything in a screenplay that Davidson wrote with Apatow and David Sirus.

Fear of loss might be why Scott doesn’t take his girlfriend (Bel Powley) seriously. They sleep together, but he’s unwilling to define their relationship.

Scott also has a crew, young men who, like Scott, spend their time hanging out, exchanging insults, and, at one point, getting involved in a burglary at a pharmacy.

Despite what looks like an apparently underdeveloped drawing style, Scott aspires to become a tattoo artist. Having tattooed all his friends, Scott has run out of skin on which to practice. At one point, he persuades a nine-year-old kid to sit for a tattoo, an incident that brings the kid's furious father (Bill Burr) to Scott's doorstep.

As it turns out Burr's Ray is a fireman, a job that triggers Scott's anger. He thinks people who risk their lives at work shouldn't have families. After a testy confrontation with Scott’s mother, Ray decides that it’s time for him to put his divorce behind him and start dating. Scott’s mom hasn’t dated since her husband died. It's a match made in screenwriter's heaven.

Like a train that’s headed in one direction, the script then pulls into a roundhouse and changes course in a way that you can see coming and which (if you’re me) makes the heart sink a little.

Although he’s initially threatened by the relationship between Ray and his mother, circumstances force Scott to start spending time at the firehouse where Ray works. The banter and camaraderie of the firehouse replace the banter and camaraderie of Scott’s peer group, pushing him into a world of new - albeit still undefined -- opportunity.

I didn’t really want to join Scott's dive into the pool of self-improvement, and the movie isn’t substantial enough to fill its two hour and 17-minute length, but Davidson's take on his Staten Island experiences is well-grounded enough to push the movie into the plus category.

Jim Jarmusch makes his zombie movie

Every now and again, I come across a movie that I watch without being able to form much of a connection. That certainly was the case with The Dead Don't Die, director Jim Jarmusch's belated entry into the world of zombie movies. Employing a cast led by Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chloe Sevigny -- all of whom play small-town cops — Jarmusch deadpans his way through a dreary foray to a small town where the dead are popping up from their graves. There's little point making this kind of movie without taking aim at a decaying world. To that end, Steve Buscemi portrays a racist farmer who wears a "Keep America White Again" hat, a take on ... well ... you know. Strange things begin to happen in the tiny fictional town of Centerville and it doesn't take long for the dead to begin chewing on the living. Murray and Driver display little emotion as the movie progresses. Tilda Swinton adds to the weirdness quotient. She shows up as the town's mortician, a woman who also happens to wield a mean samurai sword. At one point, Jarmusch shatters convention. Driver's Ronnie justifies his gloomy outlook by telling Murray's character that he knows things will end badly because he’s read the script. Jim, he says, showed it to him. Oh, I forgot to mention that Tom Waits portrays a hermit who wanders through the woods outside of town and that Danny Glover appears as the owner of the town's hardware store. The idea of riffing on zombie movies, a deadened American culture, global warming, and small-town insularity isn't exactly new. Because The Dead Don't Die was selected as the opening offering of the Cannes Film Festival, I expected a more robust movie -- even if that movie kept faith with Jarmusch's low-key style. The Dead May Not Die, but this movie sometimes feels as if it's in need of life support. Oh well, maybe it’s me. I’ve admired some of Jarmusch’s movies and been unimpressed by others. For me, this one staggered its way onto the negative side of the ledger.

When hope has all but vanished

Andrea Riseborough plays the title character in Nancy, a movie set on a landscape in which love has all but died.

In Nancy, a debut feature from director Christina Choe, all the characters have been made miserable by loss or neglect. Nancy -- the movie's title character -- lives with her demanding mother (Ann Dowd) in a rundown house in a nameless town. Mom's dying of Parkinson's and relies on Nancy to tend to her every need -- small and big acts that Mom accepts without ever showing a trace of gratitude.

Given the roles that Dowd typically plays, her appearance instantly triggers an expectation of bad things to come. Dowd's portrayal of Aunt Lydia in Handmaid's Tale stands as a brutal study of tyrannical conformity. In the recent Hereditary, she played a seemingly compassionate, grief-stricken woman, but -- with Dowd -- we've learned not to trust the surface.

Dowd isn't the main character in Nancy, but she helps to set the movie's bleak mood.

Andrea Riseborough portrays Nancy, a character who makes no effort to be likable or even comprehensible. Nancy invents stories about herself. At one point, she feigns a pregnancy as a means of consoling a grieving man (John Leguizamo) whose infant daughter died a while back.

Leguizamo's character asked to meet Nancy after reading a blog post she wrote. He has no ulterior motives; he only wants to talk to someone who might give him hope, someone with enough faith in life to bring a newborn into it. Even if well-intended at first, Nancy's deception becomes an act of cruelty.

When her mother dies of a stroke, Nancy sees an opening. She attempts to insinuate herself into the lives of a couple (J. Smith-Cameron and Steven Buscemi) who long ago lost a daughter to kidnappers. Having seen the couple discussing their lives in a recent TV interview, Nancy decides to contact them, claiming to be that long lost child.

What unfolds is an intimate exercise in acceptance and delusion, an exploration of grief and diminished hope conducted by a trio of highly skilled actors.

As a professor of literature, Smith-Cameron wants to believe in Nancy. Buscemi's Leo, a psychologist by trade, proves more skeptical, but never aggressively so. It's a pleasure to see Buscemi give a subdued performance as a man who has known pain but has struggled to keep his balance.

Leo orders a DNA test to determine whether Nancy's story is true. But the meat on this movie's bone has little to do with the results of that test. Choe's doesn't aim for pin-point specificity; she doesn't even bother to develop an entirely credible plot. We don't so much watch Nancy as we sink into the bleak lives of its severely damaged characters.

Choe doesn't spell things out; she gives us plenty of room to discover. As a result, Nancy turns out to be a small but troubling movie about the way hope can flicker in lives that have all but abandoned it. Is that flicker a saving grace or the cruelest of delusions? Could it possibly be both?

Vipers in the Soviet hierarchy

Laughs, terror, and dramatic punch mingle in The Death of Stalin.

I can’t think of another movie exactly like The Death of Stalin, which is part of the reason this movie feels so unsettlingly original. Best known for creating HBO’s Veep, director Armando Iannucci gives us a movie in which farcical, dramatic, and satirical elements bump into one another with collision force. If The Death of Stalin ultimately qualifies as a comedy, it's one that refuses to allow us to drop our guards.

If you want an indication of just how daring Iannucci has been, consider this: He has cast Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev. Now, if you were to make a list of actors who might play the table-pounding former head of the Soviet Union, I doubt whether Buscemi’s name would have crossed your mind.

As it turns out, Buscemi does an impressive job portraying an aide to Stalin who eventually rose to a top position in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. Buscemi's wily Khrushchev has a sardonic streak that makes it clear that he's not about to be out-maneuvered.

The movie begins when Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) dies at the age of 74, after an evening of gathering his top staff to watch an American western, a ritual they've endured many times before. After his evening with cronies and alone in his room, Stalin drops to the floor. He has just read a note wishing him dead that was sent by a favored Soviet concert pianist (Olga Kurylenko).

Before Stalin expires, we learn that he keeps a list of those he plans to kill — usually for capricious reasons or perhaps for no reason at all. The head of Stalin’s secret police Lavrenti Beria (a frightening Simon Russell Beale) executed (pun intended) Stalin’s orders with a particularly perverse relish. Beria was feared — not only by ordinary folks but by those in Stalin’s inner circle.

Iannucci obtains fine work from the actors who play members of Stalin’s coterie, a group that has been cowed into ceaseless expressions of admiration.

Michael Palin appears as Vyacheslav Molotov, a major Bolshevik figure who unwittingly managed to find his way onto Stalin’s feared hit list. Jason Isaacs has a wonderfully robust turn as Georgy Zhukov, a swaggering Red Army officer with a major World War II record. Jeffrey Tambor appears as Georgy Malenkov, an indecisive “yes” man who succeeds Stalin and who, like a frightened dog, keeps sniffing the air to see if something dangerous might be approaching.

Based on graphic novels by Fabien Nury and Theirry Robin, the movie brims with scorching dialog as the vipers try to navigate the choppy waters of intrigue that begin to roil after Stalin’s death.

It’s never certain which of these men will emerge from the conspiratorial muck. Gradually, it becomes clear that Khrushchev might out-maneuver the rest of the group. He reacts against the worst of Stalin’s excesses, favoring a modicum of reform by freeing political prisoners and putting an end to the hated hit list.

The clash between Khrushchev and Beria takes the form of an epic piece of internecine warfare; Khrushchev's no saint, but Beria's barbarous cruelty and child molestation stand as the corrupted core of Stalin’s insidious regime.

At one point, Stalin’s flustered daughter (Andrea Riseborough) arrives to add an element of hysteria. She’s followed by the entry of Stalin’s massively deluded son (Rupert Friend).

I’ve seen quotes describing The Death of Stalin as hilarious. I didn’t find it hilarious, although much of it is funny.

More importantly, The Death of Stalin is marked by an acute trenchancy, a look at men attempting to fill a sudden power vacuum in ways that illustrate the darker side of their ambitions. It makes us laugh, yes, but this is one comedy that's deadly serious.

A man who knows how to wheedle

Richard Gere takes a risk with Norman, a movie about a wannabe Jewish big shot. Surprisingly, it pays off.

Richard Gere seems to welcome risk. I say this based on movies such as Time out of Mind (2015) in which Gere played a mentally ill resident of the streets and also because of Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer. In his latest movie, Gere -- an actor hardly known for ethnic portrayals -- plays Norman Oppenheimer, a persistent Jewish man of enormous aspiration and very little capital. Norman does, however, have one gift: He's nothing if not persistent. He can't be shamed or deterred.

By the conclusion of the movie, Norman has overreached in terms of a plot that involves the prime minister of Israel and a possible peace settlement in the Middle East. If you can forgive Israeli writer/director Joseph Cedar for such inflation, you'll find an amusing story about a man whose entire life seems to have been devoted to exaggerating his connections to the rich and powerful. Norman knows how to wheedle.

Joining Gere in what's presented with the frolicking spirit of a caper movie are Michael Sheen (as Norman's nephew); Steve Buscemi (as a rabbi whose congregation is desperate for funds), and Charlotte Gainsbourg (as an Israeli investigator).

Divided into acts separated by title cards, Norman buzzes along pleasantly as we're exposed to Norman's first hustle. He tries to wangle an invitation to an exclusive dinner by developing a relationship with an Israeli deputy minister (Lior Ashkenazi). The minister resists, but ultimately decides that there may be something genuine about Norman.

It also doesn't hurt that Norman, in an effort to impress the fellow, buys the deputy minister a pair of shoes that costs more than $1,000 or that the deputy minister regards Norman as someone who boosted his spirit during a low point in his career. Norman knows something about low points; his life seems to have been at a perpetual low point.

Norman wears the same camel-colored overcoat throughout the movie, doesn't seem to have a home, and conducts his business by ducking into quiet spots around Manhattan to make phone calls. He's always trying to worm his way into high-rolling company, and eventually does make the score he's dreamed of -- but even that gives him only a tenuous grip on the ladder of upward mobility.

Thanks to Gere, Norman shows moments of self-awareness that sometimes push him toward pathos, and there's something believable about Norman's desire to connect people -- even if he happens not to know the person to whom he promises an introduction.

Some of Cedar's scenes are over-stylized, but he gives his movie a tonic spirit, which (I think) means we're not supposed to take it too seriously. That's a good thing because Cedar's picture of New York's Jewish community, or at least its economic upper echelon, isn't entirely flattering.

I wouldn't have thought Gere could play a wannabe macher (Yiddish for someone who gets things done), but he's on target. For him, Norman was a risk worth taking.

Magical? Not really. Funny? Often

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone conjures up laughs.
Silly, sloppy and totally lacking in trenchancy, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone has something richer comedies often lack -- a decent supply of laughs.

Steve Carell joins forces with Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, Alan Arkin and James Gandolfini for a comedy about a couple of fading magicians (Carell and Buscemi) who have overstayed their welcome as Las Vegas headliners.
In their prime, Burt Wonderstone (Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Buscemi) were good enough to have a hotel theater named for them, but they've stagnated: Their act hasn't changed in years.

The movie opens with a nice little prologue in which two geeky elementary school kids form an alliance built around magic. It all starts when young Burt is given a magic set for his birthday. Rance Holloway's Magic Kit transforms his life, stimulating him to learn a variety of rudimentary tricks. He thinks magic will enhance his popularity.

Burt and Anton grow up to conquer Las Vegas, where they work for a hotel owned by Gandolfini's Doug Munny, whose name signals his undisguised capacity for greed.

Director Don Scardino (of 30 Rock fame) may not be the greatest of stylists, but what he lacks in visual chops, he makes up for by giving the movie an affable and sometimes dippy spirit.

The story's principal development involves the introduction of another magician, Carrey's Steve Gray. Gray, who becomes an instant rival for Burt and Anton, doesn't exactly do magic tricks. Rather than creating illusions, he puts himself through a series of physical tortures -- like spending a night screaming on a hot bed of coals. He's his own reality show.

The complex illusions cooked up by Burt and Anton seem passe when compared to Gray's death-defying stunts, which -- the movie suggests -- are precisely what a thrill-hungry public craves.

A bewigged Carrey -- he looks a little like Fabio on a bad day -- brings his customary intensity to the role of a crazed performer; it's a one-note performance, but the note is so strikingly manic, it almost sustains itself for the entire movie.

The script may be trying to for a bit of satirical edge with Carrey's character, but members of the pretension police can relax: No one's likely to accuse The Incredible Burt Wonderstone of trying to make any kind of statement.

Carell begins the movie as a self-absorbed, womanizing egoist with long hair, the biggest bed in Vegas, a tan that looks as if it came out of a bottle and an act so transparently showy, it borders on self-parody. Carell smartly tones down his performance as the movie progresses, bringing a little normalcy (and a better haircut) to his portrayal. He also picks up a love interest (Olivia Wilde) along the way.

Buscemi mostly plays second fiddle to Carell as the beleaguered Anton. Not surprisingly, the partnership between Burt and Anton becomes increasingly shaky, slipping into its final collapse with a disastrous trick called "The Hot Box." Eager to compete with Gray, the two suspend themselves in a class cage and wait for the Vegas sun to fry their brains.

Once he's on his own, Burt's career founders. He's eventually reduced to working assisted living facilities. At one such facility, he meets the aging Rance, who long ago abandoned his career as a magician. Burt and Rance develop a friendship that helps revive both their spirits.

It hardly needs to be said that Arkin fulfills his comic obligations with sarcasm, rue and what -- in this movie -- passes for wisdom.

The movie doesn't do much with other supporting characters. Jay Mohr (as the wonderfully named Rick the Implausible) adds little, to cite one example.

Of course, the movie builds toward the inevitable reunion and resurgence of the Wonderstone/Marvelton act, arriving at its destination in awkward but funny fashion.

It's possible that The Incredible Burt Wonderstone will become little more than a footnote in the careers of a lot of talented folks, but it's an amusing footnote -- and that counts for something.