Week Ending 6/14/24
It’s not looking good for the Edmonton Oilers to end the drought of Canadian Stanley Cup Champions (last one was Montreal in 1993). The Florida Panthers are now one win away from their first title and it will mean a lot of ex-Sabres getting their names engraved if they pull it off: Sam Reinhart, Brandon Montour, Evan Rodrigues (the first Evan ever), Dmitry Kulikov, and Kyle Okposo. Not too shabby.
I also used to live in Sunrise, FL … years before hockey was ever a whisper of coming to the area. I didn’t even know what hockey was until moving back to Buffalo at age eight, so that should tell you how weird it was when they got the team a couple years later. There? Really?
Here’s hoping the ring gets designed with a bejeweled rat somewhere.
What I Watched:
GHOSTLIGHT
(limited release)
When Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) exclaims how the ROMEO AND JULIET movie is “old but good,” I anticipated seeing Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey on-screen—not Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Denis. Making me feel old aside, the reveal cements the lasting power of the play through an uncertainty that only exists when there are too many adaptations to truly know which is being talked about upon being mentioned. Add Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s GHOSTLIGHT to the mix—not just because it includes a performance of the play put on by the characters within, but also because it adapts Shakespeare’s tragedy through its depiction of grief in the aftermath of its similar horror.
I don’t want to speak too much on the specifics of that fact since the film does well gradually revealing the details of what happened one year ago, but know that someone is missing from this troubled nuclear family—the absence of which has them all unable to get a grip. Daisy is about to get expelled. Dan (Keith Kupferer) has completely shut down emotionally. And Sharon (Tara Mallen) is hanging on by a thread as her daughter becomes a monster and her husband a ghost. Therapy only goes so far if the process seems like a punishment to one over the others. A lawsuit attempt at closure threatens to bring up everything they’ve tried so hard to suppress. And if anyone dares mention the pain, someone will likely be putting a fist through a wall.
It’s precisely that rage that Rita (Dolly De Leon) latches onto when running across Dan one day. He’s working construction and zoning out to the point where he cannot control his emotions anymore. She’s trying to find a replacement actor for her amateur troupe’s show. Will Dan be good in the role? Probably not. But he obviously needs a change and the attempt might just provide the escape he needs. Except, of course, that he should be finding that escape through his family instead. Or, at least, be keeping them aware of his need for one so everyone can be on the same page. Dan’s old school, though. He bottles-up his feelings and hides while the world implodes around him.
I love the juxtaposition of a blue-collar guy stumbling through iambic pentameter with a look of absolute confusion on his face. To see Dan gradually come out of his shell while Rita, Lanora (Hanna Dworkin), and the rest of the gang lead theater exercises is like watching a baby taking its first steps. And the more entrenched he becomes in the activity, the more willing he is to let himself speak about all the things he’s refused to confront. Yes, he’ll eventually need to get his family on-board too, but don’t expect O'Sullivan and Thompson to do so with a convenient bowtie. This is a messy situation made messier by the amount of time their sorrow has festered. One good laugh isn’t going to solve everything … but it will be a start.
Everything is therefore on the table and effective even if it’s not shown to be for Dan as the de facto lead. Therapy starts to work for Daisy in a way that has her trying to get him to join her. Acceptance has begun to set in for Sharon even as he sees it as a slap to the face since he will not allow himself to leave his pain behind. The play is thus a one-stop-shop for Dan to meet them halfway. It’s art therapy to work through his emotions thanks to the subject matter so closely mirroring what occurred in reality—a fact that never feels fake in its presentation due to the lived-in authenticity of Dan’s ignorance towards a love that strong leading to death. By playing the part himself, though, he might finally understand.
De Leon is a great catalyst for change at the narrative’s center, but this is all about Keith Kupferer and his real-life family traversing the heartache weighing upon their characters’ every action. When will the release come? During the play or the deposition? In what form will it arrive? Destructive anger or anguished empathy? The line Dan walks is thin and you can feel that O'Sullivan wrote his trajectory through the character’s voice to discover which side he’ll fall at the same time he does. Every move has the potential to create a seismic shift in their lives, but that doesn’t mean they should stand in place to prevent it. The world has already changed around them. Choosing to ignore the impact creates the biggest rifts.
- 9/10
THE GRAB
(limited release & on VOD)
It can get frustrating to always hear the words “It can be solved if we’re willing to solve it” at the end of a documentary. How often must we watch and learn about an important issue being detrimental to the sustainability of life itself only to realize the “willingness” on our part as citizens means nothing compared to the unwillingness of government and corporate entities that only care about profits? Apparently, this truth must be endured until the end of time because nothing is changing. If anything, things are actually getting worse.
Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s documentary THE GRAB, focusing on Nathan Halverson’s investigative journalism on the topic of our world’s latest resource war over food and water, proves as much by revealing how corrupt things are. Wall Street facilitating the international takeover of American land. Foreign money exploiting US states without regulatory barriers to enrich themselves at the expense of the communities they’ve destroyed. Mercenaries like Erik Prince pivoting to private security and consulting in Africa by using military might to displace people from ancestral land so it can be commercially farmed. Russia salivating at the prospect of global warming turning its frozen tundra into untapped fertile soil. We’re heading towards MAD MAX water scarcity territory.
It’s all the obvious continuation of everything we’ve seen over the past few decades with through lines drawn to the newfound understanding that food and water is the greatest political tool for government control today. Keep the people full and it doesn’t matter what else you do. Hunger is what starts uprisings. Not necessarily unrest. That’s why China bought American pigs. It’s why Russia invested in cattle and why the Ukraine invasion was less a tyrant’s impulsive act than a calculated dice roll for future power via grain production. Cowperthwaite and Halverson lay it all out. It’s now on us to force our politicians to adjust … if voters still have the ability to do such things anymore. I often wonder if we’re too far gone.
That’s why it’s not therefore on the filmmakers to give us answers. Yes, it’s frustrating to constantly hear the same question over and over again, but that question is quite literally their job. The real nightmare will be when no one is left to ask it. That they do so here with a level of cinematic suspense and drama only makes it more exhilarating to watch. The more enjoyable the experience, the better chance the information sinks in. Maybe the structure plays up the danger a bit (narratively speaking since anyone researching these topics are in real danger regardless of whether they must overtly confront it), but you cannot erase their fear just because it proved unfounded this time.
THE GRAB is ultimately a companion piece to the larger “Work”—the diversification of it through an additional medium for wider exposure (most notably seen via a text-based epilogue that finishes the stories of people we’ve met briefly without ever going deep enough to realize they deserved such pointed closure). It is a director following a team of investigative journalists, becoming part of said team to document and participate in the process while providing visuals and context for the writing. Pull the threads, follow the money, and report the facts. The rest is up to those listening and willing to take a stand.
- 7/10
HIT MAN
(streaming on Netflix)
What if Gary Johnson, a Vietnam veteran and college professor who moonlighted as an undercover sting operative with the local police, turned that implausibly fantastic resumé into an adventure on the dark side a la Chuck Barris and his “biography” CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND? That’s pretty much where Richard Linklater’s head is at with HIT MAN—an inspired by reality, fictitiously embellished thriller wherein Gary (Glen Powell, who co-adapts with the director from Skip Hollandsworth’s Texas Monthly article) inches a bit closer to the line than fact would reveal. Maybe the act bleeds into life. Maybe it helps him get the girl. And maybe … a couple bodies get dropped along the way.
I was skeptical at the start of this lark. Powell’s introverted eccentric was a fun character to flesh out and the fish-out-of-water, sink-or-swim act of having to move from being a behind-the-scenes tech assistant to in-person entrapment specialist sans notice once the real detective (Austin Amelio’s Jasper) gets suspended is primed for unhinged comedy, but the payoff proves borderline atrocious. Gary is too effective with his performance from the start to be funny, the scene goes on way too long as the script tries to manufacture a rhythm, and the subsequent montage of “costumes” is over-the-top to the point of cartoon. Thankfully, it’s just the preamble.
Enter Madison Figueroa Masters (Adria Arjona). Here is where the film really begins—and not because of laughs. Her introduction finally grounds things in some semblance of emotion as her purpose as a mark (the police need her to ask Gary to kill her husband while handing over payment for the arrest) becomes usurped by a genuinely empathetic moment of compassion. Madison doesn’t want to kill her husband. She’s simply so drained and exhausted from his domineering ways that she feels she doesn’t have a choice. So, Gary tells her to leave. He makes sure she doesn’t say anything that will incriminate herself in order to escape and build a new life for herself.
Yes, the parallels are obvious (Gary also wants to escape his doldrums and build a new life for himself), but that convenience actually makes the resulting romance and drama better. They both see something in each other that allows them to be who they’ve always wanted to be. It doesn’t matter that it’s based on a lie since neither are necessarily looking for love anyway. They want to exist in a bubble. They want these new identities and the person helping to coax them out to be free of the limitations of their otherwise stale existences. Unfortunately, because of what that lie entailed (a murder-for-hire plot), the bubble will burst.
While it’s not the missed-salvation-of-cinema piece that so much hyperbole on the internet wants to exclaim because people think it’s fun to bag on Netflix and, by extension, filmmakers who “dare” to let streamers “kill” the theatrical experience, HIT MAN is great. Would it have played better with a crowd? Probably. But I would never know since our country’s response to COVID has made it so I never would have seen it with a crowd. So, stop clutching your pearls and spouting gatekeeping rhetoric while wrongly labeling studios that pay for this art to get made (yes, I know they didn’t produce this one) as the gatekeepers instead (they are guilty of that crime in many other ways already).
Powell is a star. Arjona is a superstar. And Amelio shows that he deserves a long look from casting directors after a very successful run on THE WALKING DEAD. This trio makes the plot sing once the other shoe drops and the electricity on-screen is never better than when they are forced to react to revelations their “real brains” cannot fathom (despite those around them thinking their “fake brains” would). That’s the beauty of the final two-thirds: it’s never as perfect as that first sting. It’s messy—maybe not always in the moment, but definitely before it’s over. It’s superego, ego, and id. The delivery device isn’t as heady as a WAKING LIFE, but Linklater makes certain to keep things intellectually relevant just the same.
- 8/10
REVERSE THE CURSE
(limited release)
Twenty years after his underrated directorial debut HOUSE OF D, David Duchovny returns to the director chair for an adaptation of his novel BUCKY F*CKING DENT, now retitled as REVERSE THE CURSE. The film centers on an estranged father and son brought together by a courtesy call from the nurse watching after the former. This hospital stay is the first Ted (Logan Marshall-Green) has heard about his dad’s (Duchovny’s Marty) terminal cancer diagnosis despite it being months old. He doesn’t necessarily want it to affect him considering the resentment he holds for the man, but he sees reconnecting as a chance for closure if not reconciliation.
The gimmick: Marty’s immovable psychosomatic connection to the Boston Red Sox. He sees his life as being an integral part of the so-called “Curse of the Bambino” and thus devotes these final days to staying alive long enough to see it end—a victory becoming his permission to pass away. So, when the Sox are winning (as they are throughout the first two-thirds of the 1978 season), Marty is dancing in the streets. And when they’re losing, Marty can barely get out of bed. His nurse Mariana (Stephanie Beatriz) tries her best to keep his spirits up and ease his suffering en route to his inevitable demise while Ted’s presence helps brighten the good days and darken the bad.
What might therefore happen if Ted, Mariana, and Marty’s old friends (two of which are played by CALIFORNICATION alums Evan Handler and Jason Beghe—with Pamela Adlon making a cameo at the very start) stage a pennant run by creating a bubble around the dying man that falsely doctors the truth of the standings? Will it give Marty the verve for life that he needs to keep going and patch things up with his son? Or will the excitement ultimately not prove enough to stop the cancer from its unrelenting attack? And as Ted grows closer to his father again, will that proximity also spark romance between he and Mariana?
The answers to those questions are obvious. The path towards them is janky. In many regards, REVERSE THE CURSE proves two very different films jammed together with seemingly no interest in softening the jarring shift halfway through. Thankfully, both halves are enjoyable. Neither is perfect, but you cannot deny the heart given by the filmmakers and expressed to us by the work. Hour One is a farcical comedy with dumb jokes, deflected emotion, and whatever Marshall-Green’s “running” form is. Hour Two is the unavoidable reckoning of authentic emotion and memory that gives clarity to the unspoken fears and regrets held by all three of its lead characters.
Many of the choices made are convenient. Many of the plot diversions are so abrupt that you hope Duchovny rendered them better on the page. And the acting is, unfortunately, all over the board when it comes to keeping up with the resulting tonal incongruities (although, if anyone on-screen can be commended for a consistently strong performance, it’s Duchovny himself). There are zero surprises (beyond a quick subplot to answer why Marty disconnected from his family that’s resonant if also a throwaway eventually replaced by another reason altogether), few narrative missteps as far as letting these men re-learn to love, and an ending populated by the hope amidst grief you always knew it would possess.
- 6/10
Cinematic F-Bombs:
Nancy Meyers completes a hat trick on the site this week with THE HOLIDAY (2006) joining THE INTERN and SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE in the collection. I also put a few more titles up once I realized my flash drive of ready-to-be-gif’d titles reached capacity after so long a respite. MEN AT WORK (1990), THE HOUSE BUNNY (2008), BURLESQUE (2010), and WARRIOR (2011) are now up too.
Jack Black dropping an f-bomb in THE HOLIDAY.
New Releases This Week:
(Review links where applicable)
Opening Buffalo-area theaters 6/14/24 -
CHANDU CHAMPION at Regal Elmwood
FACE OFF 7: ONE WISH at Regal Galleria
FIREBRAND at Regal Transit & Quaker
INSIDE OUT 2 at Dipson McKinley, Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge & Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
KUDI HARYANE VAL DI - JATT & JAATNI at Regal Elmwood
LATENCY at Regal Galleria
TREASURE at Dipson Capitol; AMC Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit & Quaker
TUESDAY at Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
Streaming from 6/14/24 -
EXHUMA – Shudder on 6/14
MONKEY MAN – Peacock on 6/14
ULTRAMAN: RISING – Netflix on 6/14
CLOTILDA: THE RETURN HOME – Disney+ on 6/18
OUTSTANDING A COMEDY REVOLUTION – Netflix on 6/18
BLACK BARBIE – Netflix on 6/19
INHERITANCE – Netflix on 6/19
KLEKS ACADEMY – Netflix on 6/19
THE ACCIDENTAL TWINS – Netflix on 6/20
SLAVE PLAY. NOT A MOVIE. A PLAY. – Max on 6/20
Now on VOD/Digital HD -
HARD MILES (6/11)
UNSUNG HERO (6/11)
BAD BEHAVIOUR (6/14)
“The filmmaking is imperfect with the pacing leaving a lot to be desired, but there's some real potent stuff happening beneath the surface—especially via Connelly's intensely emotional performance.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
THE GRAB (6/14)
Thoughts are above.
I SAW THE TV GLOW (6/14)
RIDE (6/14)