#Hellboy Little MissingLink Movies HerSmell TeenSpirit Reviews

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND April 12, 2019  - HELLBOY, LITTLE, MISSING LINK, AFTER

We’re almost midway through April (already?) but that also means that we’re one week closer to Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, which is probably the only movie everyone is really waiting for anyway, going by advance ticket sales.

For those who can’t wait for more super-heroics, Mike Mignola’s HELLBOY (Lionsgate) gets another go in theaters, this time played by David Harbour (Stranger Things) and directed by Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones). I wish I could say I was looking forward to seeing this, but frankly, I loved Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy: The Golden Army, and I have secretly wished for the last ten years that he would be able to continue that story with Ron Perlman, Doug Jones and the rest. This one has some interesting casting including Ian McShane, Milla Jovovich as the main baddie, Sasha Lane and Daniel Dae Kim. I guess with that cast, maybe it won’t be so bad? I expect the movie will be more geared towards the fanboys and girls rather than the mainstream audiences that have been flocking to other comic movies. (My review is now over at The Beat… and I hated it!)

Universal and Will Packer Productions are offering some interesting counter-programming to Hellboy in the comedy remake (of sorts) LITTLE, written and directed by Tina Gordon and starring Regina Hall, Issa Rae and Marsai Martin (from ABC’s Black-ish). This is the type of body-swapping comedy that’s delivered some great laughs in movies like both Freaky Friday, Tom Hanks’ Bigand others like Jennifer Garner’s 13 Going on 30. I mean, there’s still so much that can be done with this sort of thing as seen by Shazam!, and this sort of high-concept premise is also fairly easy to sell audiences. I missed the press screening of this, but if I have a few moments in April (it might happen!) I’d go check it out.

The other movie I saw that’s opening this weekend is LAIKA’s new stop-motion animated film MISSING LINK (Annapurna/UA Releasing), featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana and Zach Galifianakis. I’m not going to review the movie even though I generally liked it, mainly since it’s been a minute since I watched it, but if you like some of LAIKA’s other films (particularly director Chris Butler’s earlier film ParaNorman) then you should enjoy this one, and like with all of LAIKA’s movies, I

Lastly, there’s Aviron’s AFTER, another teen romance drama, this one based on Anna Todd’s fan fiction that pairs Hero Fiennes Tiffin (Ralph’s nephew) and Josephine Langford in the type of Y.A. romantic drama that has had mixed results in recent years. Sure, the recent Five Feet Apartdid fine but others, like last year’s Midnight Sun, released by the defunct Global Road, barely made $10 million. Since I haven’t seen the movie – honestly, I haven’t even watched a trailer -- I’m not really sure what the appeal of this is going to be except that some younger women may not have much interest on other options this weekend.

LIMITED RELEASES

Well, I totally screwed up last week… including one movie that was delayed until this week and neglecting a movie which I thought opened this week. (This is why you need to keep me apprised on date changes, publicists!)

Actor Max Minghella makes his directorial debut with TEEN SPIRIT (Bleecker Street), starring Elle Fanning as Violet, a young woman from the Isle of Wight who hopes to get out of her smalltown blues by performing on a popular talent television show called “Teen Spirit.” Helping her out is the scraggly Vlad (Croatian actor Zlatko Burik, who starred in Nicolas Refn’s Pusher trilogy) who was an opera singer in Croatia and offers to manage Violet and help her get to the finals of the show.  While Elle is no Aretha Franklin, I was truly impressed with her singing voice as well as Minghella’s screenplay and direction of the film which has a distinctive look and tone but is also a movie with quite a lot of mainstream appeal. If you like television shows like The Voice and American Idol, you might be interested in seeing one contestant’s (fictional) journey to get onto one of those shows.

You can read my interview with writer/director Max Minghella over at the Beat.

The movie I left out of last week’s column is HIGH LIFE (A24), the new movie and first in English from French auteur Claire Denis, which stars Robert Pattinson, André Benjamin, Juliette Binoche and Mia Goth. I saw the movie at the New York Film Festival last year, but I guess I never got around to writing about it, but I wish I did. Not that I particularly liked the movie, but if I wrote about it, at least I could remember what it was about. I know it takes place on a spaceship with a bunch of astronauts including Pattinson and his young daughter, all of them trying to survive.

But my absolutely favorite new movie of the weekend is Alex Ross Perry’s HER SMELL (Gunpowder and Sky), starring Elisabeth Moss as Becky Something, the lead singer of an all-girl punk band who have hit the big time but are about to implode due to Becky’s addictions and eccentricities. Becky also has a baby daughter who she is constantly neglecting and her bandmates (Agyness Deyn, Gayle Rankin) and everyone is worried about her. I’ve liked some of Perry’s past work, but something about this one really connected, maybe because I spent a couple decades working in the music business, so I can relate to the frustrated engineer in the recording studio section of the film.  Moss, obviously, is amazing as Becky, a role that puts her through all the highs and lows of success and fame, but I also liked the cast around her, actors like Cara Delevigne and Amber Heard who I barely could recognize in their respective wigs. I actually saw this at the New York Film Festival, and I liked it even more when I watched it again recently.  It opens in New York on Friday and in L.A. and other cities next Friday, and I hope to have an interview with Perry, probably over at NextBigPicture by next week some time.

A movie that I hoped would play the Toronto Film Festival in 2017, but instead got up in the Harvey Weinstein scandal was Garth Davis’ MARY MAGDALENE  (IFC Films), the follow-up to his Oscar-nominated film Lion.  It stars Rooney Mara as the title character and her real-life boyfriend Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus… and just hat last part gets me worried just because I remember Rodrigo Garcia’s Last Days in the Desert a few years back, starring Ewan McGregor as Jesus. This is being released this weekend into about 50 theaters in select cities after playing in just about every other country in the world last year as it sought out a new U.S. distributor.

Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone of Gamorrah fame returns with DOGMAN (Magnolia), a crime thriller set in a small seaside village where a dog groomer named Marcello (Marcello Fonte) is being coerced into committing petty crimes by an ex-boxer bully named Simoncino. Apparently, this is based on true events, and I generally liked it, particularly the performance of Fonte. It opens at the Film Forum and at the Film Society of Lincoln Center Friday, as well as the Landmark Nuart in L.A. It will expand to more California theaters on April 19.

Martial arts fans will want to check out master fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping’s latest The Ip Man Legacy: Master Z (Well GO USA), starring Max Zhang as Cheung Tin Chi, who is trying to make a life in Hong Kong with his young son after being defeated by Master Ip.  The movie also stars the legendary Michelle Yeoh (in a great sequence with Zhang), Tony Jaa (ditto) and Dave Bautista… yeah, well I guess two out of three isn’t bad, but Bautista is pretty terrible, and the movie is disjointed in its storytelling. But the action is cool, so there’s that! It opens in select theaters this weekend.

Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun (Cohen Media Group) stars Golshifteh Farahan (Pasterson) as Bahar, commander of the “Girls of the Sun” battalion, who are set to free their hometown from extremists, while also freeing her son. Emmanuelle Bercot (My King) plays a French journalist who is embedded with the warriors during the mission. Husson’s film opens at the Quad,Landmark 57and the FIAF Florence Gould Hall (now showing first-run films) on Friday, as well as the Laemmle Monica Film Center in L.A.

A movie I sadly had to miss at this year’s Oxford Film Festival is V. Scott Balcerek’s doc Satan & Adam (Cargo), a movie that took twenty years to make, as Balcerek pulls together two decades of documentary footage of the blues duo that were a fixture in Harlem in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. “Satan” is Sterling Magee, who played with so many greats but felt exploited so he walked away from the music scene, before being joined by Adam Gussow, an Ivy league scholar…but then Magee vanished, and the film follows what happened after that.

I had heard great things about Kaili Blues director BiGan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night  (Kino Lorber), when it played a number of film festivals last year. It follows a man, played by Huang Jue, who is haunted by a woman from his post who he goes looking for her. And it includes a substantial single shot in 3D… for no particular reason that I could ascertain. To call the movie a “slog” would be an insult to actual slogs, and I barely could stay awake while watching it. It’s playing at the Metrograph and Film Society of Lincoln Center starting Friday.

Also now playing at Film Forum is Camille Vidal-Naquet’s debut feature drama Sauvage/Wild (Strand Releasing) following a gay sex worker, played by Felix Maritaud from BPM (Beats Per Minute).

Tim Disney’s William, opening at New York’s Cinema Village and L.A.’s Laemmle Monica Film Center, is a love story between two scientists who fall in love while trying to clone a Neanderthal from ancient DNA creating William, the first Neanderthal to walk the earth in 35,000 years. The film stars Will Brittain, Waleed Zuaiter, Maria Dizzia and Beth Grant.

Gilles de Maistre’s Mia and the White Lion (Ledafilms Entertainment Group) is an ambitious film about a ten-year-old named Mia whose family moves to Africa to manage a lion farm, bonding with a white lion she names Charlie. The film was shot over three years, so that the film’s young starsDaniah De Villiers and Ryan Mac Lennan could bond with their lion co-stars. The film also stars Melanie Laurent and Langley Kirkood, and it opens in select cities.

LOCAL FESTIVALS

I’m finally shifting my gaze over to Chicago where the 21stAnnual EBERTFEST kicked off yesterday with Alan Elliot’s Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace, as well as a special showing of the Wachowski’s Bound with special guests Jennifer Tilly and Gena Gershon. It continues through the weekend with showings of recent and older movies, including Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married and more.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Late Nites at Metrographwill screen Werner Herzog’s Bad Liuetenant: Port of Call New Orleans, starring the inimitable Nicolas Cage, while the Playtime: Family Matineesthis weekend is Danny Kaye as Hans Christian Anderson. Although I forgot to include it last week, Michael Blackwood’s 1968 docs Monk and Monk in Europe(as in Thelonious Monk) will continue for the next week, as does King Hu’s The Fate of Lee Khan from 1973. This Saturday night, the Metrograph is presenting a cast and crew reunion for Sidney Lumet’s 1988 movie Running on Emptywith Christine Lahti, screenwriter Naomi Foner and producers Amy Robinson and Griffin Dunne

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

L.A.’s hottest newish rep theater will show Michael Ritchie’s 1975 film Smile as well as his 1992 film Diggstownon Weds and Thursday (and apparently, Bruce Dern appeared in person on Weds!), Friday and Saturday are Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry  (1971) and Escape from Alcatraz  (1978), while Sunday and Monday screens David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai  (1957). This weekend’s KIDDEE MATINEE is Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, while the midnight offerings are The Hateful Eight on Friday and The Blues Brothers (1980) on Saturday. On Monday afternoon, there’s a screening Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

On Saturday, Film Forum will screen Jaime Chávarri’s 1976 documentary El Desecanto, introduced by author Aaron Shulman, who wrote a book about the Spanish literary family, the Paneros, on which the movie is based. (FYI, Chávarri’s film was never released in the States, and there is only one screening on Saturday.) Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) will screen Saturday and Sunday as part of Film Forum Jr, and Francesco Rossi’s 1973 film Lucky Lucianowill screen a 4k restoration for a single screening on Sunday afternoon.

AERO  (LA):

The late Luke Perry gets a tribute with Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) shown on Thursday, and then the Aero is doing its own Claire Denis tribute (cause everyone else is doing i!) with Salt, Sweat and Sunshine: The Cinema of Claire Denis with a double feature of her debut Chocolat  (1988) and White Material  (2009) on Friday, a screening of Beau Travail (1999) on Saturday, Nenette and Boni (1996) and 35 Shots of Rum (2008) on Saturday, and then Trouble Every Day  (2001)and Let the Sunshine In (2017) on Sunday. Most of those will be showing on 35mm and Denis will be there, at least for the first two nights.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: B is for Bacall continues with 1948’s Key Largo on Thursday and Jonathan Glazer’s Birth (2004) on Friday. The What Price Hollywood series will screen George Cukor’s Sylvia Scarlett (1935) and John Waters’ Female Trouble (1974) on Thursday, Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place  (1950) and Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess  (1973) on Friday, Mitchell Leisen’s Midnight  (1939), Clarence Brown’s 1931 film A Free Soul and George Cukor’s What Price Hollywood  (1932) on Saturday and Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night  (1952) and Joseph Lewis’ Gun Crazy  (1950) on Sunday.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

The Quad begins its new series Wild Things: The Ferocious Films of Nelly Kaplan, a tribute retrospective to a pivotal filmmaker in the French New Wave, which I know next to nothing about, so I won’t even try. Just click on the title to see the movies playing.

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

This week’s series is The Anarchic Cinema of Věra Chytilová, a celebration of the filmmaker who emerged during the Czech New Wave, which I know even less about than the French New Wave. Just click on the link if you know who she is.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This Friday’s midnight screening is the ‘70s classic Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974), starring Peter Fonda and Susan George. I’m not sure when was the last time I had a chance to see this movie but if I were in L.A., this is where I would be on Friday night.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Streaming on Netflix starting Wednesday is THE SILENCE, the new apocalyptic thriller from director John R. Leonetti  (Annabelle), starring Stanley Tucci, Kiernan Shipka and Miranda Otto. In this twist on Netflix’s hit Bird Box (and rip-off of A Quiet Place?), this one involves a world being terrorized by primeval beings with acute hearing and a family trying to survive. Also streaming Friday is the high concept teen rom-com The Perfect Date, starring Noah Centineo as a guy who is payed to take a friend’s cousin to the prom.

Next week, another horror movie in New Line’s The Curse of La Llorona, plus the faith-based drama Breakthrough from Fox and DisneyNature’s Penguins.