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The Weekend Warrior Home And Drive-In Edition August 7, 2020 – AMERICAN PICKLE, THE SECRET GARDEN, THE TAX COLLECTOR, OUT STEALING HORSES and WAY TOO MANY MOVIES!

Holy Effin’ Ess. It’s August, and I’ve been writing this column mainly as a series of capsule reviews for four months now and amassed over 80 reviews, and this week seems to be the most insane week for new releases since COVID hit five months ago. I’m also starting a new job this week (Associate Editor at Below the Line), so I’m not even sure I’ll be able to continue this column to the degree I have been. I guess we’ll have to see how far we get this week, although I’m generally going with shorter capsule reviews this week.

Seth Rogen plays a dual role in Brandon Trost’s comedy AMERICAN PICKLE, which will premiere on HBO Max this Friday. Based on Simon Rich’s short story “Sell Out,” the film starts in 1909 as Rogen plays Herschel Greenbaum, an Eastern European immigrant living in poverty in America when he falls into a pickle vat that’s sealed for 100 years, the brine keeping him the exact same age. He is put in touch with his great grandson Ben (also played by Rogen) who helps get him acclimated to the changes that have happened in 100 years, but it soon turns into a competition between the two relatives.

Using a fairly wacky take on the Rip Van Winkle-like premise, there’s a good chance that American Pickle will be more for the Seth Rogen diehards, myself included, because you get a LOT more Rogen maybe than ever before. His accent as Herschel might be a bit off-putting at first, maybe because you don’t want to laugh at him as a Jewish stereotype, but what ultimately makes the movie fun is watching Rogen playing two very different characters without being done in a way that the viewer gets distracted trying to figure out how they did it. (I guess ever since Moon, it’s become easier to have actors playing two different roles.)

Also, this is the first American movie in quite some time to shine a light on the Jewish faith and religion in a way we haven’t really seen in a while, going back to The Believer or Yentl. That’s nice to see in what started as a Hollywood release, although I’m just not sure this will connect with Rogen’s younger fans and probably was better off getting an HBO Max release.

Originally planned for theatrical release, STXfilms’ adaptation of THE SECRET GARDEN is instead getting a PVOD release this Friday just like many movies this past summer. Adapted from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 book, it stars Dixie Egerickx as Mary Lennox, as a young orphan who is sent to live with her uncle (Colin Firth) in England. Once there, she contends with his disabled son Colin (Edan Hayhurst) and discovers a secret garden…that is basically just that. A garden.

I’ll make no bones that I was enthralled by the concept of Burnett’s being remade with “Harry Potter” producer David Heyman putting it together because it looked so fantastic at CinemaCon last year. The film is directed by Marc Munden, who has directed a ton of television but nothing particularly significant in terms of film, and it’s a wonderful-looking film but it just doesn’t have the heart and wonder of the 1993 movie. I just don’t see a lot of kids loving this, and this is from the guy who kinda liked Artemis Fowl. By comparison, this really doesn’t have much to keep one entertained as none of the child actors have much personality, and the adult actors (including Julie Walters) aren’t given much to challenge themselves. Maybe this would have played better theatrically but just watching it on my computer? Did very little for me. A generally pretty but ultimately dull kiddie movie.

Suicide Squad director David Ayer returns to the streets with his crime-thriller THE TAX COLLECTOR (RLJEfilms), starring Bobby Soto as David, the eponymous “tax collector” for an L.A. crime family who has to contend with his boss’s old rival, putting his own family in danger. David’s enforcer, played by Shia LaBeouf, goes by the name “The Creeper.”

Like his Netflix movie, Bright, I have a feeling Ayer is not going to get a fair shake by the current critics’ pool since they’ll be writing all their reviews based on previous biases. Nothing new there. Fact is that The Tax Collector is on par with movies like End of Watch and is far better than Harsh Times, showing that the writer of Training Day and the original The Fast and the Furious has improved greatly as a director. (Honestly, this should have been proven by Fury six years ago, but you know how Hollywood is…)

I wasn’t particularly familiar with Bobby Soto before seeing this – he’s a fairly new actor – but he does a decent job carrying the movie and not letting the entertaining character played by LaBeouf completely steal the show. Likewise, Cinthya Carmona as Dave’s wife Alexis does a decent job keeping the film grounded with his domestic life. LaBeouf creates a fairly entertaining character that’s far more subdued than one might expect from LaBeouf.

There is one story decision made that I wasn’t crazy about, and honestly, it almost killed my enjoyment of the movie as a whole. Even so, the reason The Tax Collector works even as well as it does is because Ayer knows his shit, so instead of this being a tired tale of Crips vs. Bloods, it instead becomes one man’s journey, and in fact, he has to turn to his enemy for help in the final act, which is when it turns into more of a straight-up revenge thriller. If you like movies like Training Day and similarly authentic L.A. gangland tales, then The Tax Collector should be right up your alley.

Gillian Jacobs stars in Kris Rey’s comedy I USED TO GO HERE (Gravitas Ventures), playing first-time author Kate, who is contacted by her old college professor (Jemaine Clement) to return to her Illinois Alma Mater to do a reading. Once there, Kate ends up hanging out with a bunch of the students and getting a little too caught up in their lives.

I definitely was a fan of Kris Rey’s previous movie Unexpected (under her married name, Kristen Swanberg), and I was hoping this would be in similar vein, but it just seems like another self-reflexive filmmaker telling a story about a writer revisiting their past. In other words, one of the most overused indie movie plots ever used. Sure, Jacobs is good but not great, and the plot is so predictable, especially the fact that Clement’s professor is gonna be a sleazebag. Sadly, what might have brought more to the movie was getting to see more of Jorma Taccone and his girlfriend, played by Kate Micucci (who was so great with Jacobs in Mike Birbiglia’s improv comedy, Don’t Think Twice). They show up for one brief scene and they’re gone, leaving it up to Jacobs and the otherwise weak cast to try to do something with material that just isn’t particularly inventive. The only one of the students who really has much of personality is Josh Wiggins’ Hugo but again, the movie takes his relationship with Kate to the most obvious and expected place possible.

I Used to Go Here has some fun moments but when you compare it to the Lonely Island’s other recent production, Palm Springs, it just doesn’t compare, and that’s kind of disappointing, in itself.

Liam Neeson and his son Micheál Richardson star in MADE IN ITALY (IFC Films), the directorial debut of actor James D’arcy with Neeson playing Robert Foster, a bohemian artist from England who travels to Tuscany, Italy with his estranged son Jack to sell the house they inherited from his late wife.

I have to imagine Sony Classics’ Tom Bernard and Michael Barker must be fuming that they’re not releasing this movie, because this is just so much their kind of movie. Listen, I didn’t hate this movie, but I also didn’t love it, and that’s mainly because it was so obvious and predictable, reminding me so much of Ridley Scott’s A Good Year (which I also didn’t hate, mind you).

The real draw is seeing Neeson doing a movie with his son in his such a major role, and they’re both very good with Richardson clearly having gotten his parent’s genes in terms of acting skill. (I don’t really remember him in the revenge thriller Cold Pursuit, but I could see him getting more roles from this.) Unfortunately, D’Arcy decides to throw the guys into a cutesie romance subplot with a local (played by Valeria Bilello), and that’s really where things start to unwind. It manages to recover nicely with a particularly emotional and dramatic last act, but it has to work hard to get the viewer back.

The fact that it took Ridley Scott decades to make a movie like A Good Year (and angering his fans for it), so the fast that D’Arcy can make a movie even comparable on his first foray into writing and directing makes Made in Italy something commendable.

In Order of Disappearance (and its remake Cold Pursuit, starring Neeson and son!) director Hans Petter Moland reunites with that film’s star, Stellan Skarsgård, for OUT STEALING HORSES (Magnolia), an introspective adaptation of Per Peterson’s novel about a man in his ‘60s named Trond, who is reflecting on events from his childhood, including his relationship with his father and the mother of three who lived next door. Skarsgard is great as usual, but the film spends so much time in the past, and it starts to jump around between flashback time periods so much that I can only wish you luck that you can keep up with what is going on with all the characters. It’s pretty obvious this is based on a (presumably) beloved book – hey, it’s been translated into 50 languages! -- and I’m guessing that it probably worked better in that format, since I’m not sure those who haven’t read it will get much out of this film. I really don’t have much more to say about the film except that it looks absolutely gorgeous, really taking advantage of its setting, but it just didn’t do much for me generally.

Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra’s WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS (Samuel Goldwyn Films) may have the most apt title for a movie this week, because it feels like for a good long time, you are indeed waiting for those much-directed “barbarians.” Adapted by J.M. Coetzee from his own novel (which may or may not be beloved) the film stars Oscar-winner Mark Rylance as “The Magistrate,” who is in charge of a remote outpost in the Gobi Desert. He begins to question his loyalty to the British empire when the visiting Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp) conducts a series of torturous investigations on the detainees. Robert Pattinson also stars in a film that’s very different from Guerra’s previous films, Embrace of the Serpent and Birds of Passage, but mainly because it’s his first film in English.

The Barbarians in the title are the Mongolians threatening the British soldiers who treat them horribly while trying to expand their empire. Due to the sentencing, the movie may remind you of films like Beau Geste or even Lawrence of Arabia without really being as good as either.Rylance’s character is somewhat of a milquetoast, at least compared to the cold and heartless torturer played by Depp, but it’s obvious almost from the beginning that the rebellious nature of Rylance’s Magistrate is going to come back to hurt him, and it does.

There is no question that Rylance gives a great performance, and Depp isn’t terrible, but it takes quite some time for the story to really get to any place that’s particularly interesting. With such a great setting and characters, I was hoping for something just a little more interesting, and in many ways, it reminds me of Scorsese’s Silence where there’s a lot of interesting ideas and gorgeous images, but it just doesn’t come together in the end…. And it does indeed just end.

Let’s get to some docs…

Scott Crawford’s doc CREEM: AMERICA’S ONLY ROCK ‘N ROLL MAGAZINE (Greenwich) looks at the venerable music mag of the ‘70s and ‘80s that offered an alternative to Rolling Stone with its look at punk, metal and non-conformist rock that fit with the nature of its staff, including the great Lester Bangs.

I’ve been looking forward to this doc for quite some time, because while I read Rolling Stone religiously, as well as Spin,every once in a while, some band or musician I liked would be on the cover of Creem Magazine, and I’d buy it. Granted, this was the mid-to-late ‘80s when the magazine was already not as cool, as it used to be but this doc, produced by founder Barry Kramer’s son JJ Kramer does a great job telling the story of how the magazine, originally based in Michigan, managed to shake up the mainstream music scene with its snarky sense of humor.

I was hoping to get more out of the doc, but I did like the music Crawford uses to tell the story of Creem, and there’s some seriously great talking heads along with it, including Thurston Moore, Michael Stipe, Chad Smith, Cameron Crowe, Joan Jett and more. Maybe not the best music doc I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely very informative and recommended if you want to know more about music history.

The Russian hockey doc, RED PENGUINS (Universal Home), Gabe Polsky’s follow-up to his 2014 doc Red Army, covers how in the early ‘90s, the Pittsburgh Penguins decided to buy the Russian Army hockey team and how the new owners used marketing to make the Moscow Penguins world-famous – they even appeared in the ‘90s action film Sudden Death – before problems with the Russian MAFIA brought it all crashing down. Also a good doc, maybe not as solid as Red Army but Polsky once again has a lot of great characters to keep the movie entertaining, such as marketer Steven Warshaw and all the Russians who always seem to know more than they’re saying. If you’re a hockey fan, particularly this era in the ‘90s, you might enjoy Red Penguins.

Premiering on Disney+ this Friday is Don Hahn’s documentary HOWARD (Disney+) about the late lyricist Howard Ashman, who wrote the words for many of the popular Disney animated films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin before dying of AIDS in 1991. I really wanted to see this movie because Hahn’s other documentaries have all been fantastic, but I got no response

I didn’t have a chance to watch Marion Johnson and Anne Flatté’s doc, River City Drumbeat, which will be available via Virtual Cinema this Friday, including the Maysles Documentary Center in New York. It follows Edwar “Nardie” White who has devoted his life to the African-American drum corps he co-founded in Louisville, Kentucky thirty years ago, as a new person, Albert Shumake, has to take up the mantle and lead the corps.

The Australian horror film BLACK WATER: ABYSS (Screen Media) is directed by Andrew Traucki and written by John Ridley -- not the John Ridley you probably know who actually can write -- but it deals with a group of friends facing a killer crocodile in the caves of Northern Australia. I normally would love this kind of movie, but this feels a lot like the type of schlock you might see on Syfy but it’s not because the writing or cast are particularly bad, just that it seems like something we’ve seen so many times before from Crawl to 47 Meters Down and its sequel that it doesn’t feel like this has much to offer. The problem is that it spends so much time making it seem like the water itself is dangerous to anyone who goes in it, but we always know that there’s a crocodile involved. Traucki goes so over-the-top trying to make this terrifying but there’s only so serious you can take a movie where people start shouting “Victor!” over and over while Victor is flailing around in the water being threatened by a crocodile we never really see particularly clearly. In other words, you get what you pay for on this one, so try not to pay too much.

After opening in select drive-ins last Friday, Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow (NEON) will be available digitally and On Demand this Friday. If you missed it, I reviewed it last week. It was okay. Also, Sony Classics is returning to theaters, specifically with Guiseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy, which got a protracted release due to COVID but will now open up in some of the movie theaters that have reopened.

Then there’s all the stuff I didn’t get around to seeing…. And hopefully, I didn’t miss something good in favor of some of the mediocre movies above… (sigh)

As far as horror and genre, there’s Daniel Tucker’s Nothing but The Blood (Gravitas Ventures) about a journalist sent to investigate a controversial church. Rudolph Herzog’s How to Fake a War (Vertical Entertainment) stars Jay Pharaoh as a rock star who’s worried his charity concert might fail if peace breaks out in the Eastern European country where it’s taking place. 1091 is releasing the supernatural thriller Star Light, starring Scout Taylor-Compton from the Halloweenremake, and The Stand: How One Gesture Shook the World, which is actually not about the Stephen King novel but is in fact, Tom Ratcliffe and Becky Paige’s doc about Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ decision to raise their fist in solidarity at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, only to receive major fallout for the gesture. (Kind of wish I had time to see that one, actually.)

Uncork’d is releasing Paydirt and Limbo while Midnight Releasing is putting out Invasion Earth this week. All of these could be grand, but I just didn’t have the time to find out. Sorry.

Metrograph’s new Live Screenings series will continue this week with Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway’s Feed (1992) running through Friday along with a 10th anniversary screening of the Bill Withers’ doc Still Bill. Friday will begin the theater’s Satoshi Kon Retrospective, starting with Perfect Blue on Friday and then the equally-classic Millennium Actress starting next Monday.

Available via Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema is Ramona S. Diaz’s documentary A THOUSAND CUTS, that takes a look at the war between the Philippine government and the media after Filipino journalist Maria Ressa receives a guilty verdict in her trial. Ressa’s news site “Rappler” was investigating the government-sanctioned drug war against the country’s impoverished actors that had left the streets filled with bodies after Rodrigo Duterte is elected President in 2016.

Film Movement’s Virtual Cinema will be screening Peruvian filmmaker Melina León’s Song Without a Name about an indigenous Andean woman whose baby is taken from her.

Premiering on Netflix this week is the teen comedy Work It while Amazon Prime has the Scottish coming-of-age comedy Boyz in the Wood and Showtime has something called The Good Lord Bird. All great I’m sure but this is what happens when you dump so much stuff onto the same effin’ weekend.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #AnAmericanCollector #TheTaxCollector #TheSecretGarden #OutStealingHorses #CreemDocumentary #RedPenguins #IUsedToGoHere #WaitingForTheBarbarians

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