Phantasm (1979)

As low-budget shockers go, Don Coscarelli's Phantasm (1979) is as assured and imaginative as they come. Working from his own script, Coscarelli crafts a trippy little adventure that blends monster horror and fantasy and science fiction quite nicely. It's loaded with jolts and a fair amount of gore but the whole notion of a reed thin undertaker stealing bodies with a crew of robed dwarves for their masters in another dimension is ghoulishly warped and entertaining.

In A World

Lake Bell's In A World has so much clever quirkiness (quirky cleverness) that you'll catch yourself checking with your movie mate to make sure he / she heard that line or caught that bit of stage business you saw because it's all so fresh. Bell, who wrote the script and stars, has crafted a fine film about a talented, though emotionally stunted, vocal coach an dvoice-over artist (Bell) in a disjointed family who is trying to catch a break into the big time. Her disapproving father (Fred Malamed), a big dog in the voice -over business, and her self-involved, concierge sister (Michaela Watkins) are of little help as she tries to crash this boys-only party. She does have champion, however, in studio engineer Louis (Demetri Martin), who loves her and her voice, but not necessarily in that order. It's funny and refreshing and highly recommended. Note: Kids won't get it.

Things Never Said

Things Never Said is screenwriter Charles Murray's directorial debut and it's a fine one -- a refreshing and sparkling addition to the black cinema catalog that is currently overrun with Medeas and miscreant ministers. Set in Los Angeles, the film focuses on the struggles of a dreamy young poet Kalindra (a radiant Shanola Hampton of Summerville), whose painful marriage to a defeated and bitter man (Elimu Nelson) and a recent miscarriage fuel her art. A waitress during the day, Kalindra has become a regular on the open mike / poetry slam circuit. It is after one of her appearances that she meets a fellow poet, Curtis (Omari Hardwick), who is carting baggage not unlike her own. They start an affair -- the development of which is one of this film's strongest points -- which, of course, leads to a host of confrontations and revelations. Make no mistake, though this summary suggests the film is dripping with melodrama (and it has its share) it is so much more than some random infidelity potboiler. Those films lack elegance and intimacy and authenticity and Murray's film has all three in abundance. It is real and, yes, poetic and, in its way, inspiring. Highly Recommended.

Generation Iron

Documentarian Vlad Yudin's Generation Iron is an engrossing trip into the world of international bodybuilding. He follows a half dozen world-class competitors as they prepare for the 2012 Mr. Olympia contest in Las Vegas. Yudin devotes most of the film's 100 minutes to the rivalry between the arrogant though affable title holder Phil Heath and the reflective zen master Kai Greene. Though both men are finely sculpted behemoths, they come from starkly different backgrounds and take starkly different approaches to their quests. Yudin plumbs the depths of bodybuilder culture, it's obsessions and excesses in this fascinating film. Recommended.

The Fifth Estate

Director Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters (1998), which starred Ian McKellan, Brendan Fraser and Lynn Redgrave, was a sort of bio-pic about filmmaker James Whales' (Frankenstein) obsession and manipulation. Condon's latest film, The Fifth Estate, contains similar themes as it is a re-telling of  Julian Assange's founding of the Internet watchdog website WikiLeaks and its mission to present unedited documents regarding governmental and commercial corruption. An impressive though narcissistic Aussie, Assange (played by the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch) recruits a fellow disaffected hacker, German Daniel Berg (Daniel Bruhl of Rush), in his quest for domination of world news. Assange's claims to be the deliverer of a new form of web-based journalism (The Fifth Estate) that would speed the obsolescence of old school practices and liberate oppressed people around the globe -- something the mainstream media are either unable or unwilling to do -- draws many to him, including media powerhouses like The New York Times and The Guardian newspapers. It's the leaking of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cable messages and classified documents related to American operations in Afghanistan that seals Assange's fate as persona non grata and leads to his seeking asylum in an Ecuadorian embassy in London. (That and charges, which are not depicted in the film, that he sexually assaulted two women in Sweden.) The film is not completely satisfying because the intricacies of WikiLeaks' cyber-assault on corporate and governmental structures are truly byzantine. However, when Condon focuses on the relationship between Assange and his unwitting enabler Berg, the film becomes much more engaging.

Metallica: Through the Never

Metallica: Through the Never is a visually arresting treat for both fanboys (and girls) of the venerable metal band and for cinephiles wanting to see a successful experiment in which 3D technology actually enhances and doesn't detract from the film. Directed by the Hungarian filmmaker Nimrod Antal, the picture combines pristine, eye-popping footage of a faux arena concert with the tale of a hapless roadie (Dane DeHaan of Chronicle) who is sent on an errand that turns into an urban nightmare of apocalyptic proportions (much like the band's songs). Antal is credited along with the four band members (singer James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo) with crafting the story, episodes from which are scattered among the dozen or so blistering odes for head-bangers that are actually the purpose of the film. It's a generally entertaining movie that appears to be targeted at a decidedly niche market.

The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete

George Tillman Jr.'s The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete is the  distressingly familiar tale of children imperiled by their parents' inattention and dysfunction and the animosity of a world that seems to despise young people when it's not preying on them. I tried hard to like this film -- and was helped in my quest by the two young actors in the title roles (Skylan Brooks as Mister and Ethan Dizon as Pete). Tillman clearly loves these dead end kids, and their faces, and we quickly fall for the endearing Pete, an engaging Korean lad with "privacy" issues. It takes a little longer for us to warm up to Mister, an angry, skinny black kid who wants to be an actor but whose mother (Jennifer Hudson) is on the needle and turns tricks for a neighborhood pimp named Chris (a weirdly bearded Anthony Mackie). After his mother is arrested in the most nonsensical sting operation I've witnessed in quite a while, Mister is left to fend for himself and young Pete, whose mother is also a junkie hooker and avoid the social service workers until his mom returns. The days stretch into weeks as the boys wait, mount scheme after scheme to keep themselves fed and out of the way of a bushy-headed project loud mouth Mister calls Dipstick.  As much as I wanted the Mister and Pete to not be defeated and pulled for them through every turn, I felt, in the end, enervated by the two-dimensional flatness of the story, a quality that detracted from the few resonant moments in the movie. One involved a homeless veteran (played by one of finest and most under-employed actors on the planet Jeffrey Wright), Mister and a military service medal and another between a tearful Mister and a burly police officer (Lost's Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Though I feel it is meant to be uplifting, in the end the heaviness of the subject matter keeps it weighed down. Recommended with reservations.

Captain Phillips

Paul Greengrass's The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) was a finely crafted film totally lacking in humor -- which is not to say that's a bad thing. Aside from star Matt Damon and some marvelous location shooting, it bore little resemblance to the first in the Bourne trilogy, Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity, which featured welcome smatterings of humor amidst the car chases and sniper shootings. Greengrass is an action-adventure master who knows how to turn up the heat and the intensity both on audiences and his leads. And so he does in his new, no-nonsense film, Captain Phillips, the true story of an attempted hijacking of an American cargo ship by Somali pirates near the horn of Africa. After thwarting the pirates' attempts to take his vessel, Phillips (Tom Hanks) is taken hostage by the pirate captain Muse (Barkhad Abdi) and his crew, who set off in the ship's lifeboat, a big orange motorized boot, and set course for Somalia to deliver Phillips up for ransom. When the action shifts to the confining quarters of the lifeboat, the film's intensity increases markedly and becomes nearly unbearable. Hanks, whose work in this film is truly splendid and deserving every accolade it will undoubtedly receive, becomes the epitome of desperation and dignity. It's a wonderful, and exhausting, movie. Highly recommended but not for the little ones.

Parkland

Peter Landesman's historically based Parkland raises many questions but none about the event at the center of this film -- the assassination of President Kennedy. The main question it raised for me is what did Landesman hope this film, his directorial debut, would be? It doesn't seem to have a unifying idea or premise for the audience to ponder or respond to. It's just sad recreation of a sad day for our country. Named for the hospital where Kennedy was taken after the shooting, the film is a collection of characters swirling around the action -- medical personnel, Secret Service and FBI agents, Dallas police, members of the presidential motorcade -- but also Abraham Zapruder, whose home movie at Dealy Plaza captured the assassination, and accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, his brother and his mother. There are far too many people for the movie's 93 minutes, and no emotional investment in any of them despite having some pretty solid Hollywood wattage in Paul Giamatti as Zapruder and Billy Bob Thornton as special agent Forrest Sorrells.

Don Jon

In this wonderful and winning film, writer / director / star Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a Jersey bartender who loves the gym, beautiful women and pornography -- not in that order. And that's the film's central conceit -- Jon, a handsome and fit stud, has no problem picking up women while out with his wingmen (Ron Brown and Jeremy Luke) but he does have trouble connecting with women emotionally because he's fixated on the fantasy girls of online adult films. When he meets the winsome Barbara (a sparkling Scarlett Johansson), Jon thinks she's a true "dime" (on a 1-to-10 scale) but is not ready to commit. At her insistence, he takes her to meet his parents -- Tony Danza and Glenne Hedley -- who are enamored of her. Soon his passion for the seductive Barbara has him blowing off rounds with his buddies and committing to take night classes for upward mobility, all while dry humping her in the hallway of her apartment building. Jon tries to dump the pornography cold turkey and keeps his parish priest updated on his progress during confession on Sunday. An observant audience member will catch on to Jersey Girl Barbara way before Jon does but that doesn't mean the film is not full of surprises and thoroughly engaging because it is -- in spades. Gordon-Levitt, who kills as the randy and conflicted Jon, is clearly one of the smartest and brightest stars in Hollywood. His script is immaculate and funny and insightful and his direction hits every mark. He's assembled some heavy hitters for this work, including a marvelous Julianne Moore as a boundaries-challenged classmate who teaches Jon a few lessons about life and love. Highly Recommended but in no way is it for children.

Gravity

Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity is a spectacular film with what is being touted as revolutionary film-making technology in the service of a special survival adventure. Hollywood A-listers Sandra Bullock and George Clooney portray astronauts stranded in space after their shuttle is bombarded by orbiting junk from a Russian satellite catastrophe. Both Bullock (the lead in this perilous tale) and Clooney are on their game but the biggest attraction, for me, was the jaw-dropping scenes of the rotating Earth from 370 miles above ground and the backdrop of stellar eternity stretching out behind the players. How small we are. Highly recommended but it is likely too intense for the youngest of the youngsters.

Enough Said

Judging by the charming Enough Said, Nicole Holofcener knows middle age -- it's weariness, ironies and pain. And the director and screenwriter, known mostly for her work on television, also knows actors and gets the coterie of true pros -- Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener -- to deliver wonderfully affecting performances in this story about battered and cynical divorced people (Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini) who meet at a party and wonder if they might indeed have a second-chance at love. Eva and Albert take small tentative steps toward each other, often retreating back to the comfortable familiarity of their lives as a masseuse and curator of vintage television programs and both with daughters preparing to leave for college. As luck -- or Hollywood -- would have it, Eva discovers after becoming BFF's with a new client who is a morose New Age poet (Keener) that she is Albert's ex-wife. Torn between abandoning her new friend and dumping her new lover, Eva decides to do nothing and therein, if you would pardon the pun, lies the rub. This is the late Gandolfini's last filmed performance, and it is totally endearing. Highly Recommended

Rush (2013)

Ron Howard's better films are character studies of interesting men (A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon, Apollo 13). His latest film, Rush, is about two interesting men -- Formula One racers James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) -- and their pursuit of the world championship in 1976. Working with a smartly crafted script by Peter Morgan (The Queen), Howard neatly dissects the drivers' heated rivalry, which leaves one of them disfigured after a fiery wreck during the Grand Prix event in Germany. That event is the focus of Howard's real interest: what drives these men? Hunt, a rowdy and rakish Brit, appears to be all about conquest (cars and woman), and Lauda, an austere Austrian, is all about discipline. Both Hemsworth and Bruhl (a Spaniard who I first noticed in a small part in The Bourne Ultimatum and later in Inglourious Basterds) are fine in their roles though their performances are overshadowed by the sensational scenes of the motor races. Marvelous camerawork and editing throughout. Recommended.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints

David Lowery's beautiful Ain't Them Bodies Saints is an atmospheric tone poem of a film consisting of one lovely languorous movement. It's the story of young lovers (Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck),Texas robbers parted by fate and foolishness. Into the gulf is introduced an unprepossessing but kind young sheriff's deputy, drawn to the young woman and her toddler daughter, who was born while the child's father was imprisoned, and both of whom are the wards of an aging criminal (Keith Carradine). Each of these characters is artfully and intimately draw in this elegiac work. Comparisons to Terrence Malick's masterful Badlands (1973) are inevitable.

Prisoners

 

French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve's "Prisoners" is grimly relentless in its presentation of its premise that virtue if properly manipulated quickly morphs into vice. Villeneuve, an Oscar nominee for 2010's Incendies, and writer Aaron Guzikowski (Contraband) cynically explore the panic around the disappearance of two small girls on Thanksgiving Day. The father of one of the girls, played by Hugh Jackman, is a seemingly devout and devoted family man who immediately after the disappearance shifts into alpha dog mode, demanding action from the police detective assigned to the case (Jake Gyllenhaal), his family (Maria Bello and Dylan Minnette)  and the parents of the other missing girl (played by Terrence Howard and Viola Davis). When a simple-minded suspect (the ever-reliable Paul Dano) is questioned and then released, Jackman's character conducts his own bloody interrogation. Guzikowski's script contains a few neat twists and a couple of painfully convenient coincidences but overall it's an engrossing tale, tough to watch at times and, ultimately, sad and embittering. Recommended for the performances by Jackman, Dano and Gyllenhaal.

The Spectacular Now, The Grandmaster, The World's End

Three quick hits from the past couple of weeks.

 



 

The Spectacular Now, directed by James Ponsoldt, is a lovingly tender film about two bruised teenagers in their senior year of high school who help each other to some "sobering" revelations. The two young leads -- Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley -- give wonderfully unaffected performances. Highly Recommended.

Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (the team that delivered Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) are the cinematic descendants of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Their latest film, The World's End, is as brilliantly unhinged as anything Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones put on the big screen but with less visionary artistry and more snark and glibness. This tale of a quintet of aging friends trying to relive an aborted night of pub-crawling frivolity from their youth is chock-full of brews and belly laughs. Highly Recommended.

Kar Wai Wong's The Grandmaster is as lovely a film as I've seen this year. It's balletic battles between Northern and Southern Chinese schools of kung fu pay homage to the masters of martial arts surrealism (Yimou Zhang and Ang Lee) while the quieter scenes of romance and introspection evoke Bergmanesque blousiness. Highly Recommended.

Blue Jasmine

Cate Blanchett's performance in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine is so rarefied that it is nearly impossible for me to imagine another actress (aside from, of course, Meryl Streep) matching it this year. It is remarkable. This photo is from an alchemical scene in which Blanchett's Jasmine reveals the depths of her pain to her sister's 10-year-old boys who have been left in her charge. Jasmine's life as a New York trophy wife and socialite was capsized by the arrest, conviction and suicide of her unscrupulous husband (Alec Baldwin). Impoverished and addled by fistfuls of Xanax, Jasmine goes to San Francisco to live with her sister, Ginger (a tremendous Sally Hawkins), whose cramped day-to-day existence with a coterie of brutish men pushes all of Jasmine's neurotic buttons. This is Woody Allen at his best. Highly recommended.

You're Next

Giving away the plot of Adam Wingard's horror show splatterfest You're Next (2011) would not diminish the bloody goodness of the movie. The sly twists and reveals are delivered matter-of-factly (without musical "stings") which leaves plenty of room for the marvelously zany attacks and counter-attacks by three butchers in sheep masks. The occasion of the bloodletting is the 30th anniversary celebration of parents Paul and Aubrey at the family's wooded estate. All four children and their significant (and insignificant) others are in attendance. It becomes apparent fairly quickly that this is a despicable group of people (10 fat sitting ducks), and, suitably, the "offing" commences posthaste. The gutsiest of the "plus-ones" -- the lovely Erin (Sharni Vinson) is wonderfully resourceful as she marshals her ever-dwindling troops. Of course, when you gather sibs together, it's inevitable that one of them will be a rat. In this case, they're all rats caught in a deliriously demented trap. Recommended but it features barrels of blood flowing from the hackings, stabbings, gougings and garrotings.

Lee Daniels' The Butler

Lee Daniels' The Butler is a melodramatic piece of filmmaking that sidles up to interesting but ultimately plops itself squarely on the lap of mediocrity. I feel this despite good performances by Forest Whitaker as the eponymous character who was butler to seven presidents, Oprah Winfrey as his loving though neglected and boozy spouse and David Oyelowo as their elder son, who rejects his father's seemingly ineffective obsequiousness for a more radical path. The rest of the cast includes some solid Hollywood actors -- Cuba Gooding Jr. as the White House chief butler, John Cusack as Richard Nixon, Liev Schreiber as LBJ -- who don't seem to know what to do with their parts and I wonder if they understood what the movie's ultimate message is. I'm not sure I can tell you.  Maybe it is contained in the scene that features Nelsan Ellis as Martin Luther King Jr., who describes the importance of the American domestic in challenging stereotypes about blacks as lazy and undisciplined. It's a good scene with resonance but does not offset the film's weaknesses.
The script by Emmy-winning scribe Danny Strong relies on ironic juxtapositions of events to piece together the story of the American Civil Rights Movement as seen by Whitaker's Cecil Gaines, a fictionalized version an actual longtime White House butler. It follows Gaines from the cotton fields of Georgia -- where his mother is raped by an overseer and his father shot dead by the same man --  to luxury hotels where he must endure serial assaults from bigots who see him only when they're seeking affirmation from a good Negro. I don't know that this man's story (as worthy as it is)  -- much less the story of revolutionary change in this country -- can be told in 140 minutes without resorting to some unconvincing and annoying tropes. But it would have been interesting to see someone try.

2 Guns

Baltasar Kormakur's 2 Guns stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as bantering, double-crossing buddies on the hunt for 3 million dollars of ill-gotten gains deposited in a border town bank by a Mexican drug lord played by Edward James Olmos. Little is as it seems in this story based on a graphic novel, and that's most of the fun. In addition to a smart story line (and repartee between the two leads taken from the David Mamet school) there are more than a handful of sweet action / adventure cinematic touches (stuff blowing up real good). But the bottom line is it's a cynical and brawny summer action bromance that fetishizes guns and money and testicles. If that's your cup of tea you'll have a ball. Or maybe two. Also stars Paula Patton, Bill Paxton and James Marsden.

Elysium

South African director Neill Blomkamp has a distinctive cinematic eye, which is not to say his vision is wholly original but it IS arresting, I think. His film District 9 (2009) merged science fiction and the sociopolitical. This is not a first, I grant you. Nearly every important work of science fiction film I know is actually a treatise on some social or political structure. But District 9 was a bold and refreshing comment on apartheid (actually any systemic disenfranchisement and corralling of indigenous peoples). Set in the squalid wards of Johannesburg (Blomkamp's hometown), the film starred fellow South African Sharlto Copley as a field agent whose job was to be an intermediary between the government and members of an alien race that had settled in J-burg and been ghettoized in a crowded and polluted reserve. Through the course of events, the agent is exposed to alien DNA and begins to mutate, form bonds with aliens and become radicalized against the government. It was a meticulously crafted and intriguing film.
Blomkamp's latest, Elysium, plows similar ground but lacks the freshness of the earlier film. In this movie, the Earth has been overrun and gutted and the richest 1 percent of the planet's inhabitants have escaped to an orbiting Skylab monstrosity called Elysium, where all is lush luxury for its Francophone residents. This Eden is ruled ineffectually by an Armani clad and coiffed council of Benetton wannabes but protected by the ballsy defense secretary Delacourt (an imperious Jodie Foster). The biggest fear of Elysium leaders is the illegal immigration of the earthly unwashed and they take particularly decisive and punitive actions to halt the smuggling of immigrants.

Most of the film is set in a bombed out Los Angeles, where our hero Max (I don't know if the name is an homage to Mad Max but the film's design and texture certainly are) labors in a factory that builds robots used by the elevated 1 percent to police the masses on terra firma. After an industrial accident exposes Max (a paroled car thief played with typical assurance by Matt Damon) to a lethal dose of radiation, he is recruited by his former comrades in the radical underground to undergo the surgical grafting of a fighting exoskeleton to his body so he can lead a team on a mission to steal valuable data that will ultimately heal the planet. In short order, the team is decimated by a brutal earthbound Elysium agent(Copley).  The final battle between the two men is terrifically, grungily gladiatorial. This entertainer movie contains a patchwork of swatches from 1984, Blade Runner, Robocop and the aforementioned Mad Max. Recommended but features scenes of bloody viscera and gore.

The Way Way Back

Oscar-winning screenwriters and first-time directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (The Descendants) have crafted a sparkling gem of a movie in The Way Way Back, a charming and hilarious film that follows a morose 14-year old named Duncan (a wonderful Liam James) who is suffering through the indignity of watching his divorced mother (Toni Collette) be courted by a raging asshole (Steve Carell) during a stay at his home in a dingy summer vacation town. While there, Duncan, a Cinderfella who has been labeled by his mother's boyfriend as a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10, meets a kindred spirit in the form of the doe-eyed older girl next door (AnnaSophia Robb), her oversexed and over-tanned mother (the brilliant Allison Janney) and, most fortunately for the boy, a rambling, marauder of sardonic wit named Owen (the ever-reliable Sam Rockwell), who runs the area water park. Sensing the kid's pain, Owen hires Duncan to do odd jobs and for a few weeks one hot summer changes his life. The movie is brimming with sharp observations and tender resonant moments that offer lessons about our responsibility for our own happiness. Marvelous and highly recommended.

20 Feet From Stardom

Documentarian Morgan Neville's entertaining film 20 Feet From Stardom artfully describes the lives and loves, successes and failures of about a dozen women, mostly women of color, whose voices as background singers have enhanced (in some in...stances immeasurably) hundreds of pop, rock and soul recordings since the early '60s. Among them Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, Claudia Lennear, Judith Hill and Lisa Fischer. All of these women are gifted vocalists whose stories and backgrounds differ quite a bit, but whose musical heritage can be traced to black churches. Many of the performers and music historians tell Neville that the spirited interactions among choir members and soloists was the key to the background singers' success on the stage and in the studio. And yet, these women's dreams of individual stardom have nearly to a person been deferred -- some by circumstances and some by chicanery. The story of Phil Spector's treatment of Darlene Love is especially infuriating. The film is blessedly free of rancor; it's actually more of a celebration. Though the stories of these women's lives is inspiring, it's the music that makes this wonderful film such a resounding treat. Highly Recommended.

 

The Wolverine

James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma was a cinematic highlight of 2007, and his 1999 character study Girl, Interrupted, was a strong film, for which Angelina Jolie won the Oscar for best supporting actress. Mangold is probably not gifted, but he is talented, as is evidenced by earlier works (including the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line) and the latest in the Marvel comics film franchise, The Wolverine, which stars  the estimable Hugh Jackman. In this outing, Wolverine has disappeared into the wild after killing his true love, fellow X-man Jean Grey / Phoenix, after her mutant telekinetic powers went berserk and threatened to destroy the planet (or at least a sizable portion of it) in X-men: The Last Stand. Blessed / cursed with exceptionally long life because of his ability to heal from mortal wounds, Wolverine is summoned out of seclusion to the bedside of a dying friend, whom he saved during the bombing of Nagasaki in World War II.  The friend, the head of a power Japanese family and biomedical concern, hopes to persuade Wolverine, who has occasional dreams of joining his beloved Jean in the after life, to pass along his healing abilities and restore vigor and vitality to the dying man. Layered on throughout the narrative are threads involving corporate intrigue, kidnapping, family jealousy, social status prejudice, and a secret society of Ninja warriors in league with a poison spitting dominatrix named Viper. It's a real goulash and not an entirely satisfying one but I would wager for fans of the X-men series it will be entertaining enough.

Fruitvale Station

Michael B. Jordan is the heart and soul of Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station, an engrossing and distressing recounting of the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, a Bay Area  man aching for redemption after doing prison time for drug dealing who is killed by a police office in the early morning of New Year's Day 2004. As Coogler presents it, Grant was not entirely mended but was determined to create a life for himself, his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz) and their daughter, Tatiana, (Ariana Neal), when random elements converged on a BART train while Grant, Sophina and a group of their friends were returning from a New Year's Day celebration in San Francisco. One of the more devastating scenes in the film (aside from the fatal shooting on the BART station platform) is the recreation of a prison visit between Grant and his mother (a masterful Octavia Spencer). The truth pealing throughout the scene, the crystallization of a mother's uncompromising love for her damaged and damaging child, is deafening. Jordan will most assuredly get an Oscar-nod for his passionate portrayal of the doomed Grant, who was felled by fate and fear but whose end resonates through the Bay Area (and now the world) to this day. Highly recommended.