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Reports are that movies took a dive, not a leap, this year on American thanksgiving. The World Cup may have helped. More likely is this: families aren't going out yet, not in great numbers anyway. They're watching the streamers like Netflix. I review its best choice for Academy Award consideration today. It's new version of Lady Chatterley's Lover came in too late for this week. Maybe next.
Meanwhile CRAVE has some strong additions in their line up today: all four Hunger Games movies, six Spider-Man movies and an original with Jessica Chastain and Michael Shannon playing that country music power couple Tammy Wynette and George Jones. That sounds promising.
Doesn't look any easier for the theaters, but here's what new out there:
White Noise: 3 ½ stars
All The Beauty And The Bloodshed: 3
The Inspection: 2 ½
Hunt: 2 ½
WHITE NOISE: The annual Oscar-hopeful from Netflix is now in theaters for a while. It also opened the current Whistler Film Festival. It deserves a place in your watching plans. It's absurdist and serious, funny and dire, and very involving all the way. It's not perfect though. It sags near the end and doesn't have much to say about a topic it more and more focusses on. But enjoy the rest.
Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig lead a family that lives out what the source novel by Don DeLillo satirizes. People listen to the white noise around them, radio and TV chatter, tabloid scare stories, conspiracy theories, consumerism, drugs, idolization of celebrities, to distract themselves from thinking about what they really fear: their inevitable death. Here they have to face a real disaster plus an airborne toxic cloud. They have to evacuate their town, endure bumper-to-bumper traffic on the road and get to safety although they know nothing about the threat. Much of this is very funny and exactly what you imagine disorganized chaos is like. Driver is a professor of "Hitler studies" and a colleague (Don Cheadle) studies Elvis. There's a great scene in which they stage a duel flinging facts about the two back and forth. Gradually thoughts about death and how to face it take over and that's less interesting. Still, director Noah Baumbach's film is memorable. And whether it's his or DeLillo's insight I really liked the explanation why people flock to demagogues. They just want to be part of a crowd. (Select theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED: Nan Goldin made a name for herself in the 1980s with her photography and short films about addicts, sex workers, down-and-outers and bohemians. In this film by Laura Poitras she's advanced: she's an angry activist. She takes on the people who pushed the opioid oxycontin as a painkiller and helped cause the overdose crisis that's raging. The Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, made billions and bought themselves respectability with gifts to museums and art galleries. Their name appeared on many buildings. Goldin started a campaign to have that name taken down.
We see several demonstrations at and in places like the Guggenheim and The Met. Prescription bottles are thrown around by the dozens. There's a “die-in” at the Arthur Sackler Museum at Harvard. She gives an emotional presentation at a public inquiry and all through this film. She's a survivor of the opioid crisis herself. Her description of withdrawal is strong: “darkness of the soul … unbearable.” She lost a sister to suicide and herself had a troubled youth. This all makes for a compelling story. There is a lot of downtown New York free spirit seen here among artists and gays and a lot of moral outrage from Goldin. It was chosen best film at the Venice festival. (Toronto and Vancouver now, other cities next week) 3 out of 5
THE INSPECTION: The story is poignant: young black man with a mother who disaproves that he's gay goes off to join the Marines. But I found the second part of that synopsis more interesting than the first. That's because the gay part is much lower, subtle, sometimes not discussed. Sure mom says she loves him but not what he is. But at the Marines boot camp the “don't ask, don't tell” protocol applies. Yes, there are scenes that hint or tease but not a lot of gay and even anti-gay stuff happens.
These are the memories of Elegance Bratton, who wrote about his life and directed the film. Jeremy Pope plays him as Ellis French. Gabrielle Union plays his mother. The film is far less direct about being gay than about life in general in the military. I haven't seen so much shouting and yelling from the drill sergeant before in the movies. And his second is even worse. He shouts at full volume right into Ellis' ear. The point seems to be to belittle him as much as possible. The sergeant says his job is to make his trainees “invincible” and even “monsters”. Ellis says he joined for status. “Even if I died, in this uniform I'm a hero.” That's probably a realistic motivation for many who enlist. Pope plays that part very well. Who for? Well that's another question. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5
HUNT: You don't really need to know much about South Korean history to understand this film. Just that after a coup in the 1980s, a new president turned out to be a tough guy and a despot. Student demonstrators were beaten. “Trampled democracy” and “massacres” are the film's words. That leads to a fictional story which gets so frenetic it's enjoyable but so convoluted it's also confusing.
It seems there's a plot to assassinate the president. He just about gets shot by a sniper on a state visit to Washington, D.C. (Hard to believe, but it is fiction. The motivation is credible).
Back in Soeul, where the North Koreans are always suspected, the Korean CIA has a new leader and he feels there's a mole in his agency. He has to find him before the president goes on another trip, an Asian tour. The director suspects the mole may be the head of KCIA's international section or the man leading the domestic division. He orders them to compete to find him and other agents to watch both for any giveaway signs. Good plot possibility, John LeCarre-like. But it's hard to keep track of the two. Each one seems to be protecting or trying to kill the president at various times. If you don't mind that, you'll let the energy draw you in. Lee Jung-jae is the director and also plays the head of the foreign division. He became famous on the Netflix series Squid Game for which he won the best actor Emmy, the first Asian to win that. (In theaters in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and London) 2 ½ out of 5
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