The Little Mermaid (2023)

 

Disney's live action remake of its 1989 animated feature The Little Mermaid, which was also staged on Broadway in 2008, has opened to large audiences.

When Disney announced that Halle Bailey was being cast as the lead underwater damsel who longs to walk among the humans, fans got to work crafting posters.

To my eye, the fans' renderings of Ariel, which looked sort of like Bailey but not really, were much more provocative, featured more decolletage, than what Disney's artists had imagined.

Few had imagined that, as in the case of Bailey, that the winsome mermaid would have braided hair in the style of many Black women.

And Disney, who introduced the idea of the high-concept motion picture boondoggle with accompanying merchandise, has a number of Ariel dolls for sale. One has brown rotini hair.

Master Gardener

 

Paul Schrader is a formidable cinematic moralist whose movies almost always depict failed and failing men wrestling with demons.

His latest, Master Gardener, tells the story of a surprisingly erudite horticulturist named Narvel Roth, played by Joel Edgerton, who works for Norma Haverhill, a pleated and plain-spoken doyenne of the property classes (Sigourney Weaver) in an unnamed Southern town with streets lined with palmettos and festooned with moss.

Norma asks Narvel to take over the tutelage of her grand-niece, Maya (a radiant Quintessa Swindell), her deceased sister's granddaughter, who recently experienced the death of her mother.

Narvel is to apprentice the young woman and prepare her to maybe one day take over the maintenance of the estate.

Narvel, a crisp and immaculately barbered presence whose torso bears witness to his dark past, takes the assignment and quickly grows fond of the young woman, who is struggling with drug addiction. Her habit compromises not only her future but, possibly, the lives and safety of everyone around her.

Edgerton, Weaver and Swindell, especially, are all fine and their interactions are clean and on the money. They are hitting all of the marks dutifully in this story of secrets and lies, but it is not one of the celebrated screenwriter's best efforts. The script is layered but the dialogue often feels stagy and artificial.

Hypnotic

 

The poster for Robert Rodriguez's latest feature, Hypnotic, a mind-bender (some might prefer appending the f-bomb to "mind"), superimposes star Ben Affleck over an intricate domino run.

This image is (unintentionally) ironic because the movie itself is scattered and chaotic, nothing like the ordered toppling of domino tiles.

Affleck plays an Austin, Texas, detective who is just returning to street duty following the disappearance of his daughter three years before. This is the first clue that something in the narrative is amiss. When the film opens, Affleck's Danny Rourke is in his therapist's office, recounting the last time he had seen his daughter, on the day of her abduction from a city park, while he was just a few feet away.

The session appears inconclusive, but Rourke is cleared to return to duty. He and his partner, Nicks (J.D. Pardo), respond to a report of potentially criminal doings at a bank. During the course of their investigation, they discover a mysterious man with mind-control powers (William Fichtner) who might know where Rourke's missing daughter is. Pursuing him leads Rourke and Nicks to another psychic played by Alice Braga, and the story starts to bend in another direction.

Illusion and delusion is the name of the game in this picture, a fairly humorless pseudo-sci-fi trifle whose level of narrative confusion makes it really hard to punch through.

Still, despite his muted aging frat daddy vibe, Affleck gives a credible performance as a distraught and distracted father with a huge secret.

Silo

 

The last half of Episode 3 of Apple TV's marvelous steampunk mystery series Silo, starring the amazingly versatile Rebecca Ferguson, was the most intense 30 minutes I've spent with a television program in quite some time.

Created by Canadian writer/producer Graham Yost and based on the books by Hugh Howey, Silo is a post-apocalyptic tale of an underground city contained in an enormous vertical bunker built before the memory of anybody currently living. The city is powered by an enormous generator that is showing troublesome wear and tear.

Ace mechanic Juliette Nichols (Ferguson) convinces the powers-that-be that the generator must be repaired before it fails permanently, casting the thousands of residents into airless darkness. It must be shutdown for Juliette and her teammates to make the repair, but time is not a luxury as the steam that drives the turbines will quickly build and threaten the whole operation.

Episode director Morten Tyldum masterfully paces the crisis that emerges, set against a backdrop of a suspicious death and the Silo's bizarre expulsion ritual. Tyldum makes every dropped tool and slipped knot potentially earth-shattering -- literally.

Blackberry

 

Actor / writer/ director Matt Johnson's film Blackberry is a hefty mix of cautionary tale and historical document that chronicles how the once ubiquitous Canadian smartphone came to life and how it was killed by Apple's iPhone.

Johnson plays second-banana / puppet-master Doug Fregin to Jay Baruchel's Mike Lazaridis, Fregin's brilliant bestie and former fellow engineering student at University of Windsor. They founded Research in Motion in 1984, employing other computer geeks in Waterloo, Ontario, to create circuit boards and modems for larger companies -- and watch classic fanboy films on Movie Night.

When discovered by the ethically challenged Jim Balsillie (a terrifically unhinged Glenn Howerton), RIM is deeply in debt and being strung along by big firms intent on stealing their ideas. He buys into co-ownership of RIM and commits to making them all rich.

Though slimy and unprincipled, Balsillie is indeed a rainmaker for RIM, pushing Fregin and Lazaridis to move forward on a smartphone prototype that he will pitch to Verizon and that will eventually be called the Blackberry. (The source of the name is a tiny bit of understated genius.)

Balsillie drums up business with the kind of jet-setting hyperbole and corner-office profanity that makes the ears of decent people bleed. But he delivers and over-commits RIM time and time again. He's incorrigible and greedy and the best thing to happen to RIM -- until he isn't.

This entertaining picture's narrative of a David becoming a Goliath intercuts passages about the science of communication technology with sections about the unsavory aspects of this schizophrenic first-world sector, where socially challenged outcasts put the rest of the world in touch with one another in mere milliseconds.

Baruchel, under a stringy silver wig and behind face-framing plastic aviators, personifies this dichotomy, evolving over the course of the film from meek "idea man" to an icy mercenary. It's a fascinating, and chilling, metamorphosis.

Joyland

 

Columbia University film student Saim Sadiq's first full-length feature, Joyland, is set in his native Lehore, Paskistan, and tells the story of Haider, an unemployed young man (Ali Junejo) in an arranged marriage to Mumtaz, a dynamic beauty salon owner (Rasti Farooq).

Haider finds himself tending to his three growing nieces and his aging, fiercely paternalistic father (Salmaan Peerzada). Haider's brother, Saleem (Sameer Sohail), and sister-in-law, Nucchi (Sarwat Gilani) are pleasing to Abba (the father) because they are pregnant again and the doctor has predicted this time with a boy, a continuation of the family line. Haider and Mumtaz have yet to have children, which seems to be a mutual decision.

Sadiq presents all of this with wonderful economy and pathos; it is clear he has lived within those crowded walls and mulled over the traditions that appear to be stifling Haider and Mumtaz.

When Haider gets a lead from a neighbor friend, he follows it and discovers it is a job as a backup dancer in one of the exotic clubs, which features a transwoman performer, Biba (the transgender actress Alina Kahn).

Haider is not a dancer but is entranced by the mercurial Biba, which may or may not be a signal of his own sexual awakening. He works hard to learn the steps but lies to Mumtaz, who has stopped working to help run the household, and the others about the job, saying he is the theater manager and does not perform, as that would bring shame upon the family.

Shame and secrets are common themes in this fascinating film about religious tradition and human agency. Mumtaz's relationship with Nucchi is especially interesting, as they are two modern Pakistani women who still feel inhibited by society's expectations. Their only relief appears to be an occasional excursion to the amusement park, Joyland, where they work through their frustrations on carnival rides.

But the central relationship in the film is between the diffident Haider and Biba, whose fire lights a dormant spark in him that will either enliven or incinerate him.

The Diplomat

 

Netflix's absorbing political thriller series The Diplomat has that stimulating feeling of cultural and political urgency that made The West Wing so successful.

Created by Debora Cahn -- veteran television writer / producer long associated with Aaron Sorkin's White House machinations series and with Shonda Rhimes' medical drama Grey's Anatomy -- The Diplomat stars Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, career foreign service officer to the Middle East who is reassigned as ambassador to the Court of St. James's and stationed in London with her fellow State Department operative and husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell).

The reassignment follows the bombing of a British naval vessel off the coast of Iran that killed more than 40 sailors; early surveillance suggests Iran was behind it but the Wylers, who know the region and the players, receive intelligence that is not the case.

The early episodes involve Kate finding her footing. Though brilliant, she has neither the background nor the temperament for what has essentially been a plush posting for presidential patrons that involved little, if any, diplomacy. The attack changes the game substantially, and Cahn and crew explore not only the complexities of foreign service, international communications and exchange but the interpersonal dynamics of the large number of players involved in these matters.

Adding to this absorbing narrative is the fact that the Wylers may or may not be in a middle of a divorce; their lives seem to be at once in tandem and fiercely opposed. There is heat but Kate doesn't trust her mendacious husband, whose ego is enormous. The scenes between the two are rendered flawlessly by Russell and Sewell.

Also outstanding in the early going are Ato Essandoh as American embassy attaché Stuart Heyford, Nana Mensah as presidential Chief of Staff Billie Appiah and David Gyasi as British Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison, three Black actors with whose work I am not familiar but who deliver wonderfully layered and refreshingly atypical performances.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3

 

Reviewing James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy films is a redundant enterprise.

Moviegoers on the Guardians team will go reflexively. Those who don't dig the franchise's jokiness and cockeyed views on good and evil, justice, duty, family, romance, and, well, most every big issue featured in the Marvel Cinematic Universe will take a hard pass.

Marvel will bank another several hundred million and keep rolling.

The just-released Volume 3 -- named that because of the prominent role the soundtrack has played in the pictures' narratives -- has been telegraphed as the last featuring the complete original lineup -- Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, David Bautista as Drax, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Karen Gillan as Nebula and Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot. But the mid-credit tease suggests there might be more in store.

One thing we know about the MCU, turning off the faucet is not something they do quickly, especially if the fanbase still has an appetite for the fare, as evidenced by the third installment of the similarly irreverent Deadpool series, which stars Ryan Reynolds, set for release next year.

Still and yet, Volume 3 boasts impressive, eye-popping alien world set pieces and stellar insider humor that comes fast and furious (*wink*).

Some viewers have objected to the sentimental elements Gunn has written into the latest story -- and the scenes of animal experimentation are indeed disturbing -- but I feel the movie holds together well, much of the glue being provided by Chukwudi Iwuji's villainous High Evolutionary, a worthy candidate to join Marvel's pantheon of evil -- along with Cate Blanchett as Hela and Josh Brolin as Thanos.

And, of course, the playlist kicks ass.

RRR

 

S.S. Rajamouli's Bollywood epic RRR (Rise Roar Revolt) is unlike anything Western cinema creates -- probably because of the enormous costs associated with such productions. The movie's large cast, period costuming and sets, complex musical numbers and action set pieces and the many CGI stunts are estimated by IMDB.com to have cost 3.5 billion rupees (36 million U.S. dollars).

Currently streaming on Netflix, RRR, which runs a bit over three hours, is set in pre-independence India where maniacal and blood-thirsty British colonialists terrorize the Indian population -- killing, imprisoning and impoverishing millions. The villains are truly villainous. The heroes, practically Olympian.

The story, which was written by Rajamouli and his team, stars Ram Charan and N. T. (Tarak) Rama Rao Jr. as two friends who are insurgents working separately and unknown to the other to overthrow the British occupation. One, Charan, within the British army, and Tarak in the Indian forests where he has become a kind of druidic spirit.

A bit of a bromance is suggested in the two men's attraction and devotion to one another. Their first meeting, during a spectacular train explosion and derailment, contains all of the movie's production values in one 10-minute segment that sets the standard for the film's action, as does the friends' dance number -- the Oscar-winning "Naatu Naatu."

Rajamouli does not spare the audience scenes of graphic brutality and mayhem; the death toll is high, with many women and children, usually exempted from Western film carnage, prominently featured among the dead.

To my mind and eye, RRR does an admirable job of balancing style and substance, although the elaborate nature of Indian film tips the scale in favor of fire and fury -- which makes for a riveting viewing experience.

Happy as Lazzaro

 

I don't think there's much mystery why Alice Rohrwacher's superb 2018 film Happy as Lazzaro, streaming on Netflix, is so beguiling: it's the face of the movie's title character played by Adriano Tardiolo.
Tardiolo's face is always open and accepting, utterly free of guile or irony. He is by every indication a "good boy," as several other players tell us.
Lazzaro is a young peasant, of uncertain parentage, in a large extended family that works the Tuscan fields and flocks of an Italian noblewoman (Nicoletta Braschi). He labors steadily alongside the others, who take full advantage of his good nature, calling his name incessantly for help, which he offers without hesitation, especially to young mother Antonia (Agnes Graziani). Yes, a good boy.
His goodness leads him to befriend the marchesa's rootless and resentful son, Tancredi, played by Luca Chikovani, and to conceal the son's plot to fake his own abduction. The marchesa is indifferent to news of Tancredi's disappearance, giving attention only to the tobacco crops that sustain her wealth and keep the peasants tied to the land.
Rohrwacher's story is a mix of naturalism and fantasy, with the former rooting the first half of the film and the mystical taking flight in the second half. The presence of a lone howling wolf is a unifying element between the two sections of the film.
Some will no doubt find Happy as Lazzaro's message of innocence in the face of nearly universal cynicism and exploitation inspiring and energizing. Others might well wish the story offered Lazzaro more for his unflagging goodness. But maybe it was the young man's knowledge that goodness is its own reward that carried him through. Quite a lesson.