28 Years Later

 P

Oscar-winner Danny Boyle returns to the director's chair for the third installment in the "28" series about the walking un-dead, which began more than 20 years ago. The second film in 2007, which was a worthy sequel, was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

Boyle knows well how to match the visceral with the cerebral, and this continuing story of a viral catastrophe that has wiped out most of human life in the British Isles offers audiences bucketfuls of blood and gore but also the biggest of beating hearts at its center.

On an isolated Scottish island that has been converted into a fortress against the ravenous zombie hordes on the mainland, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) takes his young son, Spike (Alfie Williams giving a nicely assured performance), across the channel so that the boy might kill his first infected resident with bow and arrow. They left ailing, delusional mother Isla (Jodie Cromer) in the care of a neighbor.

As one might expect, the expedition is dreadful and the lad only successful is making one kill, his tenderness getting the best of him. While hiding from the pursuers in an empty loft, young Spike sees a fire burning in the distance and wonders about its source. After narrowly escaping a swift and determined alpha male, the boy learns from another man in the compound that the fire is quite likely tended by a mad physician who has lived on the mainland for decades.

After seeing his father keeping company with another woman, Spike decides to sneak his mother out of the encampment, across the channel and to the doctor, who he hopes can determine what is wrong with her and make her better. 

Their journey is not without peril, and Boyle masterfully ratchets up the tension while simultaneously putting essential meat on the bones of the relationship between the boy and his mother.

Fans are undoubtedly curious if 28 Years Later will be the end of the run. The final five minutes of the picture strongly suggest much more is in the wings, waiting to spring out on audiences.

 

Brokeback Mountain redux

 

Only a few Hollywood filmmakers rival Ang Lee's directorial sensibilities. This scene from Brokeback Mountain (2005), a film that is appearing in a lot of movie buffs' newfeed recommendations for Pride Month, shows Lee's mastery of tone, pacing and environment and the magic he can pull from actors.

It is clear to me that the three cast members in this brief scene -- Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar, Roberta Maxwell as Jack Twist's mother and Peter McRobbie as Jack's father -- understand intimately what this painful meeting means for each of their characters: loss, regret and disconnection through their estrangement from the murdered Jack.

That the Twists' home has been whitewashed -- inside and out -- is important to note but not because of what happened to their son. It was (is) common practice to whitewash what can't be replaced or or restored to newness. We do that with structures and sometimes with ourselves. In this instance, the house is old and in need of brightness, but the dinginess is bleeding through.

The cross on the wall in the kitchen tells viewers this is a "Christian home," ruled by a man who both loved and resented his son. He knew who his son was and, in so many words, attributed Jack's death to his own poor choices. He's hurting FOR his son and BECAUSE of his son but he won't let his son go with Ennis to the mountain that, in the father's eyes, took his life.

It's the near silent connection between Ennis and Jack's mother (Maxwell's performance is so powerful) that lifts the sadness of this scene just a bit. Her invitations to Ennis to visit Jack's room -- where Jack is still her son, innocent and alive -- and to visit the Twists again filled the frame with sincerity and truth. Lee trains the camera's lens on the mother tenderly putting the bloodied shirts in a paper bag, like she's handling Ennis heart -- which, in a way, she was.

Yes, the film is a classic for its uncompromising depiction of love between Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar but it is also celebrated for its unblinking portrayal -- in these five minutes -- of how hate can sear all of us to the bone.

 

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina

 

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina has the kinetic mayhem that has made the venerable series so addictive, but it lacks the elegant grace notes that made Wick's World so freaking entertaining, both unbelievably violent and surprisingly droll.

 

Director Len Wiseman certainly has an appealing star in Ana de Armas, whom I first noticed in her star turn as the lovable but gutsy caregiver in the original Knives Out (2019). In that film, she faced down an enraged family of entitled brats who resented being cut out of the patriarch's will while his wealth is bequeathed to his gobsmacked nurse (Armas).

 

In the latest Wick chapter, Armas's Eve doesn't let her exotic beauty detract, too much, from her deadliness -- she's all business as an orphan reared and trained by the doyenne of death, The Director (Anjelica Huston), in the same murky world of the Ruska Roma that created John Wick's Boogeyman. 

 

Eve is determined to avenge her father's death when she was a child, a hit by a clandestine cult led by a character called The Chancellor (a menacing Gabriel Byrne). Fan favorite Ian McShane has a cameo as Winston, the cagey manager of the New York Continental hotel, who rescued Eve from a shelter when she was a child. She visits Winston as an adult, and he, reluctantly, gives her information on a cult member (Norman Reedus of The Walking Dead) who is hiding in Poland. And she's off. 

 

Ballerina delivers the exotic scenery and runway fashions of previous entries but little of the knowing winks that lightened the murderous proceedings and amazing body count.

 

Keanu Reeves makes an appearance in Ballerina as Wick, but his part feels underwritten and, frankly, that is disappointing but understandable, I suppose. Wick's future in the franchise's narrative world is not certain; Reeves has said he doesn't have the knees for the balletic hand-to-hands that have driven the action in 80 percent of the series.

The Phoenician Scheme

 

Oscar-winner Wes Anderson is a contemporary absurdist filmmaker. His peers include Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster), Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich) and Lars van Trier (Melancholia). Fans know when they sign on to screen a film by any of these or the dozen or so other masters of the irrational that it won't be easy sledding -- but it will be rewarding.

 

I am fascinated by Anderson's approach to movies and admire his pictures more than I enjoy them, usually. That is, Anderson never fails to stun me with the complexity of his constructions, but they don't generate warmth. His worlds are like architectural dioramas in their precision and that seems to be where he enjoys putting most of his attention. Still, he draws cinematic A-list actors to his projects for the unique experiences. 

 

Even though each of his films, including his latest The Phoenician Scheme, has leading actors -- in this case, Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton and Michael Cera -- the performances are deliberately monotonic -- impressive in their lack of expressiveness. There is nothing classical about the casts' line deliveries because the movies' resonance is in their visual sumptuousness. One could study stills from The Phoenician Scheme's opening credits for the depth of its scenic design -- colors, shapes, textures. The art direction for all of his pictures -- including his animated features -- is brilliant. And therein lies my fascination with his work.

 

The Phoenician Scheme, like others of Anderson's more recent features, has a story (co-created with frequent collaborator Roman Coppola) that bobs and weaves between sense and nonsense. Del Toro plays an unprincipled industrialist, Zsa-zsa Korda, who has a plan to get investors to foot the bill for a plant of ambiguous purpose built in an area that one might assume is the Middle East. 

 

The lucky survivor of multiple assassination attempts, including one that opens the film, Korda has arranged for his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) to sign on as his heir and executor in case his luck runs out. He does this despite his having nine male heirs and Liesl's intentions to soon take vows to enter a convent.

She accompanies him on a ridiculous tour of his investment partners to see which of them can be convinced / coaxed / tricked into covering an anticipated shortfall, the Gap. They are joined by a German tutor named Bjorn (Michael Cera), who Korda assigns additional duties as his administrative assistant. Little goes as planned -- as one might expect -- but lessons are learned, identities clarified and trust earned or restored.

 

At least, this is MY reading of The Phoenician Scheme's convoluted plot. It actually might be about something else, but that hardly matters, as the point of the movie is not in the story but in the telling.

 

Friendship

 

 

To say that Tim Robinson's brand of cringe comedy is an acquired taste is to understate the obvious for those familiar with his Netflix comedy series "I Think You Should Leave, " and, frankly, I was only able to hang with this champion of discomfort for two episodes before having to bail -- ditto for Dave, Rami and Fleabag.

For Friendship, Robinson (primarily a television performer) teams with writer / director Andrew DeYoung and perennial chummy good-guy Paul Rudd to tell the story of bad relationships getting worse despite the efforts of all parties involved to .... nah, I can't say they work hard or smartly to avoid the series of disasters that follow Robinson's Craig meeting new neighbor Austin (Rudd).

Craig is a gratingly clueless manchild married to cancer survivor / floral designer Tami (Kate Mara), who has renewed a relationship with her ex-husband. Craig and Tami are parents to the weirdly oedipal 16-year-old Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer). They live in suburbia in a stateless town named Clovis and are trying to sell their house.

When Craig, a predatory marketing consultant with no filter, meets local weatherman Austin, their friendship blossoms quickly but just as quickly starts to lose its petals ... in fistfuls.

The film is a series of bad notions that lead to worse problems and disastrous fixes. Though frequently hilarious -- both Robinson and Rudd are totally committed to the chaos -- the friendship spin-out might be exhausting for those who do not give themselves over to the insanity.

For those who stick with it, the genius in all of this stupidity might be in how it gets the audience to reflect on these enormously unlikable characters to see if we have any of their distasteful traits.

When viewed that way, Friendship might be a good thing.