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Hellion? …. verify on Mon/Tue. No
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Begin Again As with his 2007 hit Once, writer/director John Carney again presents such an optimistic story, with all its dreamers, losers, opportunists—and original score—this time framed in Manhattan instead of Dublin. Keira Knightley is Greta, faithful girlfriend to up-and-coming rocker Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) and an aspiring songwriter herself. (Knightley performs her own songs, which bear some resemblance to Aimee Mann’s.) After Kohl scores a record deal, the pair moves to Manhattan, where he’s quickly seduced by the industry’s trappings. When Greta turns to fellow busker Steve (James Corden), he whisks her out to an open-mike night in the Village, where she’s discovered by down-on-his luck record exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Obviously we expect these two to connect, just as in Once. That film worked for me (and many others) because I could buy the central couple played by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (both of them real musicians). Begin Again feels more like something purchased in a SoHo boutique. Greta’s supposed thrift-store chic simply reads as Knightley being expensively styled as Annie Hall. While Carney is again peddling the notion that a musician with a dream can get discovered, the reality of “making it” in the music biz has everything to do with hard work—not simple luck, as is the case here. (R) GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT Guild 45th
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Belle The English Belle, based on a true story, inspired by an 18th-century painting of two cousins—one black, one white—never lets you doubt its heroine’s felicitous fate. Dido (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is born with two strikes against her: She’s the mulatto daughter of a kindly English naval captain who swiftly returns to sea, never to be seen again; and she’s female, raised by aristocratic cousins in the famous Kenwood House (today a museum), meaning she can’t work for a living and must marry into society—but what white gentleman would have her? Writer Misan Sagay and director Amma Assante have thus fused two genres—the Austen-style marriage drama and the outsider’s quest for equality—and neatly placed them under one roof. The guardians for Dido and cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) are Lady and Lord Mansfield (Emily Watson and Tom Wilkinson); the latter is England’s highest jurist who in 1783 would decide the Zong case, in which seafaring slavers dumped their human cargo to claim the insurance money. Belle never surprises you, but it satisfyingly combines corsets and social conscience, love match and legal progress. (PG) BRIAN MILLER Varsity, Kirkland Parkplace, Ark Lodge
Chef There is nothing wrong with food porn or the happy camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. Nor can I fault writer/director/star Jon Favreau for making a midlife-crisis movie that lets slip his Hollywood complaints. The commercial pressures in directing formulaic blockbusters like Iron Man must surely be great, and film critics are surely all assholes. Chef is the simple though overlong story of a chef getting his culinary and family mojo back, and my only real criticism—apart from the constant Twitter plugs—is that absolutely nothing stands in the way of that progress for chef Carl (Favreau). Dustin Hoffman barely registers as a villain (as Carl’s gently greedy “play the hits” boss, who goads him into quitting); Robert Downey Jr., as the prior ex of Carl’s ex (Sofia Vergara), briefly shadows the scene—but no, he’s only there to help. If you like endless scenes of chopping vegetables, salsa montages, and juicy supporting players (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Scarlett Johansson), Chef is an entirely agreeable dish. Just expect no salt. (R) B.R.M. Sundance, Ark Lodge, TK others
Citizen Koch Perhaps you recall reading how directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin lost their public-TV funding for the project, then resorted to Kickstarter, because David Koch is on the board of two PBS affiliate stations. Editorial oversight may also have been lost, and one wonders how much Deal and Lessin have tailored Citizen Koch to suit their citizen financiers. Much of the film is set in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker seeks to break public-sector unions, then fights against a voter recall effort. He prevailed in both battles (aided by corporate money), as we know, because they took place over two years ago and were extensively covered by NPR, The New York Times, and company. Citizen Koch’s roster of talking heads is hugely disappointing: a few bloggers and activists, junior-varsity pundits, and the doomed 2012 Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer. As with their 2008 doc Trouble the Water, about Hurricane Katrina, Deal and Lessin do better with individual stories than the big picture. “I don’t get where regular people have become the bad guy,” says a Wisconsin prison guard about the barrage of TV ads implying his union (and others) have bankrupted the state. Well, we know where the money came from for those ads. I want to hate the Koch brothers. You want to hate the Koch brothers. But too much of Citizen Koch is old news. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Sundance
Cold in July The genre of Cold in July is the modern-dress Western, drawn from a novel by Joe R. Lansdale. Richard (Michael C. Hall), a mild picture-framer in a Texas town, shoots a home intruder in the opening scene. It’s the 1980s, which we know because Dexter star Hall sports a hideous mullet. The dead man was a real bad guy, and Richard was protecting his wife (Vinessa Shaw) and child; in fact the shooting is so justified that the sheriff (screenwriter Nick Damici) is downright eager to bury the body and close the case. Alas, the dead man’s hard-case father (Sam Shepard) shows up in menacing form—his introduction, suddenly looming within the off-kilter frame of a car window, is one of director Jim Mickle’s visual coups. His previous films, Stake Land and We Are What We Are, delved into horror, but with wry detachment and flickering humor. Cold in July is an uneven but densely packed drama that contains some alarming shifts in tone—suddenly we’re careening from suspenseful noir to buddy-movie hijinkery to solemn vengeance against the purveyors of snuff movies. One of the bigger shifts comes with the arrival of a private detective (Don Johnson, whose good-ol’-boy routine temporarily dissipates the film’s tension). Based on his previous work, these radical turns seem intentional on Mickle’s part—momentarily confusing as they might be, they keep us alert and wondering what kind of movie we’re watching. Mickle might be just a couple of steps from making a masterpiece, and while Cold in July is certainly not that, “stylish and unpredictable” is not a bad foundation on which to build. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance Cinemas
The Dance of Reality Bring on the legless dwarfs, cue the full-frontal nudity, and pass the peyote: Alejandro Jodorowsky has made a new movie. Born in 1929, Jodorowsky was already a veteran of wigged-out experimental theater when he devised El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973), films that crammed together intense violence, spiritual searching, and preposterous grotesquerie—guaranteeing their success as counterculture happenings. (Jodorowsky essentially invented the midnight-movie phenomenon.) His latest is an autobiographical look at the filmmaker’s youth in small-town Chile. There’s something almost heartwarming about the fact that this movie is—for all its zaniness—almost a normal film. Jodorowsky himself appears as the narrator, a dapper man given to trailing aphorisms in his wake. His youthful self (played by Jeremias Herskovitz) is a sensitive lad, coddled by a Rubensesque mother (Pamela Flores, whose dialogue is entirely sung) and bullied by a hard-backed Communist father (Brontis Jodorowsky, the director’s son—he was the kid in El Topo). We witness the father’s macho child-rearing habits and his mission against Chile’s right-wing president, a cause that leads to a long and curious third-act detour including dog shows and political torture. Around this curved spine of plot, Jodorowsky brings in a carnival sideshow, sharp childhood observations, and frequent bouts of on-camera urination. Dance of Reality has its share of mystifying moments. But the overall impression is energetic and imaginative, suggesting that all his past insanity had done wonders for this octogenarian’s creative process. (NR) R.H. Grand Illusion
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Edge of Tomorrow Earth has been invaded by space aliens, and Europe is already lost. Though no combat veteran, Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is thrust into a kind of second D-Day landing on the beaches of France, where he is promptly killed in battle. Yes, 15 minutes into the movie Tom Cruise is dead—but this presents no special problem for Edge of Tomorrow. In fact it’s crucial to the plot. The sci-fi hook of this movie, adapted from a novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, is that during his demise Cage absorbed alien blood that makes him time-jump back to the day before the invasion. He keeps getting killed, but each time he wakes up he learns a little more about how to fight the aliens and how to keep a heroic fellow combatant (Emily Blunt) alive. The further Cage gets in his progress, the more possible outcomes we see. It must be said here that Cruise plays this exactly right: You can see his exhaustion and impatience with certain scenes even when it’s our first time viewing them. Oh, yeah—he’s been here before. There’s absurdity built into this lunatic set-up, and director Doug Liman—he did the first Bourne picture—understands the humor of a guy who repeatedly gets killed for the good of mankind. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, Majestic Bay, Kirkland Parkplace, TK others
The Grand Seduction For all its super-nice intentions, attractive players, and right-thinking messages, this thing might’ve come out of a can. It is, literally, from formula: an English-language remake of the French-Canadian film Seducing Dr. Lewis, seen at SIFF ’04 and written by Ken Scott. A dying Canadian harbor town will see its only shot at landing a new factory shrivel away unless a full-time doctor settles there. The local fishing industry’s broken, but the movie mostly blames government regulation, not overfishing. By hook and crook, they get a young M.D. (Taylor Kitsch) to take a month’s residency; now every townsperson must connive to convince the guy this is the only place to live. I’m sorry to say that the great Brendan Gleeson is the leader of the Tickle Point conspiracy, supported by Canadian legend Gordon Pinsent (Away From Her) in the Wilford Brimley crusty-curmudgeon role. Kitsch comes off rather well; he looks far more relaxed here than in the blockbuster haze of John Carter and Battleship, perhaps because he isn’t shamelessly twinkling at every turn. The French-language original was just as overbearing. (PG-13) R.H. Guild 45th
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Ida After the calamity of World War II, your family exterminated by the Nazis (or their minions), how important would it be to reclaim your Jewish identity? That’s the question for Anna, 18, who’s soon to take her vows as a Catholic nun in early-’60s Poland. Now early-’60s Poland is not a place you want to be. The Anglo-Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (Last Resort, My Summer of Love) films his black-and-white drama in the boxy, old-fashioned Academy ratio, like some Soviet-era newsreel. Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), she discovers, is a Jew—an orphan delivered to the church as an infant during the war, birth name Ida. Her heretofore unknown aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza) insists they find their family homestead, and a desultory road trip ensues. The surly peasants won’t talk to them; Wanda smashes their car; and Anna’s too shy to flirt with a handsome, hitchhiking sax player (Dawid Ogrodnik) who invites them to a gig. The usual Holocaust tales celebrate endurance or escape. Ida suggests something simpler and deeper about survival and European history in general. Pawlikowski and his co-writer, English playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz, poke at the pit graves and pieties of the Cold War era and find an unlikely sort of strength for their heroine: the courage to turn her back. (NR) B.R.M. Sundance, TK SIFF Cinema Uptown
Jersey Boys This 2005 Broadway smash is a still-touring musical that revealed a few genuinely colorful tales lurking in the backstory of the falsetto-driven vocal group Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Clint Eastwood directs; and though more a jazz man, he appears to have responded to the late-’50s/early-’60s period and the ironies beneath this success story. Turns out the singers emerged from a milieu not far removed from the wiseguy world of GoodFellas. In the case of self-appointed group leader Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza from Boardwalk Empire), the mob connections are deep and troublesome, including the protection of a local godfather (Christopher Walken). The movie presents Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young, a veteran of the stage show) as a much straighter arrow, but even he understands the value of having friends in the right places. It would seem natural to apply a little Scorsese-like juice to this story, but Eastwood goes the other way: The film exudes a droll humor about all this, as though there really isn’t too much to get excited about. Despite some third-act blandness, Jersey Boys is quite likable overall. Eastwood’s personality comes through in the film’s relaxed portrait of the virtues of hard work and the value of a handshake agreement. This may be the least neurotic musical biopic ever made. (R) R.H. Sundance, Kirkland Parkplace, others
Le Chef In this French culinary comedy, the jokes are often corny and the plot twists as predictable as our hero’s classic menu. Chef Alexandre Lagarde (Jean Reno) is on the brink of losing his third precious Michelin star because he won’t bend to the trend of molecular gastronomy. (The new owners of his bistro demand it.) Meanwhile, Jacky Bonnot (Michael Youn) is a goofy aspiring chef and longtime Lagarde devotee who can’t seem to catch a break—until of course the hallowed chef “discovers” him. Together Jacky and Alexandre hatch a plan to save Cargo Lagarde. That familiar narrative—protege turns hero—has become a cliche in food films, but the subplots here make it slightly less derivative, as both men tend to their own botched personal relationships. Despite the flaws of Le Chef, directed by Daniel Cohen, foodies will still love its references to famous French dishes and poking fun at molecular cuisine—even though, like that style of cooking, Le Chef also borders on the absurd. (PG-13) NICOLE SPRINKLE Harvard Exit
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Life Itself For the last 25 years of his life, Roger Ebert was the most famous film critic in America. In his final decade—he died in April 2013—Ebert became famous for something else. He faced death in a public way, with frankness and grit. This new documentary about Ebert focuses perhaps too much on the cancer fight. This is understandable; director Steve James—whose Hoop Dreams Ebert tirelessly championed—had touching access to the critic and his wife Chaz during what turned out to be Ebert’s last weeks. It’s a blunt, stirring portrait of illness. The movie’s no whitewash. The most colorful sections cover Ebert’s young career as a Chicago newspaper writer, which included hard drinking and blowhardiness. Some friends acknowledge that he might not have been all that nice back then, with a nasty streak that peeked out in some of his reviews and in his partnership with TV rival Gene Siskel. Life Itself gives fair time to those who contended that the Siskel and Ebert TV show weakened film criticism. Ebert’s own writing sometimes fills the screen, along with clips of a few of his favorite films, yet this isn’t sufficient to explore Ebert’s movie devotion, which was authentic. Still, this is a fine bio that admirably asks as many questions as it answers. (NR) ROBERT HORTON Harvard Exit
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Obvious Child Written and directed by Gillian Robespierre, this movie has already been pegged as the abortion rom-com, which is great for the posters and pull-quotes but isn’t strictly accurate. The movie doesn’t embrace abortion. It doesn’t endorse cheesy love matches between unlikely partners. What it does—winningly, amusingly, credibly—is convey how a young woman right now in Brooklyn might respond to news of an unplanned pregnancy. And this fateful information comes for Donna (SNL’s excellent Jenny Slate) after being dumped by her boyfriend, told that her bookstore day job is about to end, and rejected at her comedy club, where a drunken stand-up set of TMI implodes into self-pity and awkward audience silence. Obvious Child is foremost a comedy, and it treats accidental pregnancy—caused by an earnest, likable Vermont dork in Top Siders, played by Jake Lacy from The Office—as one of life’s organic pratfalls, like cancer, childbirth, or the death of one’s parents. But as we laugh and wince at her heroine’s behavior, Robespierre gets the tone exactly right in Obvious Child. The movie doesn’t “normalize” abortion or diminish the decision to get one. Rather, we see how it doesn’t have to be a life-altering catastrophe, and how from the ruins of a one-night stand a new adult might be formed. (R) B.R.M. Guild 45th, Lincoln Square
Palo Alto Watching Gia Coppola’s humdrum high-school teen angst movie, I couldn’t help but wish she’d followed the route of her grandfather (Francis Ford Coppola) and chosen to cut her teeth on something less pretentious and meaningful—you know, like a down-’n’-dirty horror picture. Perhaps such a project would summon a little more oomph. Palo Alto is adapted from a book of short stories by the apparently inexhaustible James Franco, who also plays a supporting role in a handful of scenes as a sleepily lecherous soccer coach whose focus of attention is a confused 16-year-old named April (Emma Roberts). That’s not the center of the film, however; along with April’s issues, there are also promiscuous Emily (Zoe Levin) and diffident Teddy (Jack Kilmer, son of Val Kilmer—who cameos, daffily), a lad with poor decision-making abilities. This is California ennui born of an overabundance of privilege and living space, captured in a manner that seems weirdly pedestrian. If it weren’t for the excellence of Roberts (another scion: daughter of Eric, niece of Julia), Palo Alto would have an eerie lack of distinguishing features. (NR) R.H. Crest
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The Rover Like a Road Warrior writ small, The Rover skitters across a slightly futuristic Australia, a car chase pitched against a great void. But this doesn’t feel like an adventure movie—more like a stripped-down Western about a single-minded quest. The single mind belongs to Eric (Guy Pearce), a blasted soul whose car is stolen while he’s getting a drink at a desolate spot in the outback. His wheels have been taken by three criminals fleeing a robbery; they’ve dumped their getaway vehicle outside. Eric has to have that car. There’s no law enforcement around to set things right; the dog-eat-dog world is the result of an unexplained economic collapse, which has made people even more suspicious and corrupt than usual. Complicating the hunt is a wounded robber, Rey (Robert Pattinson, of Twilight renown), left behind by his confederates. His trajectory crosses Eric’s path at an inopportune moment, and the two men are uneasily joined in the search. The Rover is written and directed by David Michod, whose 2010 Animal Kingdom heralded a tough new talent on the scene. Maybe because it’s so lean on the bone, The Rover is even better. Michod is playing a tricky game here: Lean too far on the abstract nature of the quest, and the movie turns into a parody of itself. Mostly he’s gotten the mix right, and The Rover cuts a strong, bloody groove. (R) R.H. Sundance
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Snowpiercer Let me state that I have no factual basis for believing that a train would be able to stay in continuous motion across a globe-girdling circuit of track for almost two decades, nor that the people on board could sustain themselves and their brutal caste system under such circumstances. But for 124 minutes of loco-motion, I had no problem buying it all. That’s because director Bong Joon-ho, making his first English-language film, has gone whole hog in imagining this self-contained universe. The poor folk finally rebel—Captain America’s Chris Evans and Jamie Bell play their leaders—and stalk their way toward the godlike inventor of the supertrain, ensconced all the way up in the front. This heroic progress reveals food sources, a dance party, and some hilarious propaganda videos screened in a classroom. Each train car is a wacky surprise, fully designed and wittily detailed. (Various other characters are played by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Song Kang-ho, star of Bong’s spirited monster movie The Host.) The progression is a little like passing through the color-coded rooms of The Masque of the Red Death, but peopled by refugees from Orwell. The political allegory would be ham-handed indeed if it were being served up in a more serious context, but the film’s zany pulp approach means Bong can get away with the baldness of the metaphor. Who needs plausibility anyway? (R) ROBERT HORTON SIFF Cinema Uptown
Tammy Melissa McCarthy has earned her moment, and it is now. After scaring up an Oscar nomination for Bridesmaids and dragging The Heat and Identity Thief into the box-office winner’s circle, McCarthy gets to generate her own projects. So here’s Tammy, an unabashed vehicle for her specific strengths: She wrote it with her husband, Ben Falcone, and he directed. Tammy is an unhappy fast-food worker who gets fired the same day she discovers her husband with another woman. This prompts a road trip with her man-hungry, alcoholic grandmother, played with spirit if not much credibility by Susan Sarandon. Grandma hooks up with a swinger (Gary Cole, too little used) whose son (indie stalwart Mark Duplass) is set up as a possible escort for Tammy. This is where the movie gets tricky: We’ve met Tammy as an uncouth, foul-mouthed dope, but now we’re expected to play along as emotional realities are introduced into what had been a zany R-rated comedy. That kind of shift can be executed, but McCarthy and Falcone haven’t figured out the formula yet. (R) ROBERT HORTON Sundance, others
22 Jump Street Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are back, again looking too old for their class-in this case, college freshmen. Again filled with self-referential humor, 22JS is aptly timed for college grads wafting through nostalgia. As the film points out on multiple occasions, it’s the same plot as two years ago: Undercover cops Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) are again assigned to infiltrate the dealers and find the supplier. What’s changed from 21JS? This movie does feature more explosions, flashier police department headquarters, and more obvious physical and racial comedy. Hill and Tatum’s onscreen chemistry still works, and it still relies on the wavering hetero/homo overtones to the Schmidt-Jenko relationship. These two often ask whether or not “it should be done a second time,” then decide the second time is never as good. 22JS is not as good as 21JS, and the movie’s self-awareness suggests that the filmmakers knew this. (The team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, of The Lego Movie, directs; Hill oversaw the writers’ room.) This sequel just about having fun, backsliding into old habits, and disparaging the value of liberal arts degrees. (Jobless grads may share the feeling.) Movie franchises by nature stay in a state of arrested development; we wouldn’t expect anything less of Schmidt and Jenko. (R) DIANA M. LE Varsity, TK others
Words and Pictures This is a pretty hip high school. Not only do they employ a once-promising, now boozy, crushingly charismatic author as an English teacher, they’ve just hired an acclaimed painter—also loaded with charisma—whose career has been derailed by rheumatoid arthritis. Because of a trumped-up antipathy between these reluctant academics, this private school is about to witness a battle between, as the title puts it, Words and Pictures. Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche play wordsmith and picture-maker, respectively. The casting is a source of both appeal and disappointment in this one-note movie; the roles are large, but the material thin. Owen’s character, Jack Marcus, is about to get tossed from the faculty for his hungover manners and his declining commitment. Dina Delsanto (Binoche) is soured by her illness and suffering from creative block. That’s about it for those two, and the idea of the schoolkids choosing sides in the words-versus-pictures debate is also sketchily handled. That the film moves at all is due to veteran Aussie director Fred Schepisi’s ability to get a flow going. Schepisi is able to make the movie look good, and the interiors are always interesting. But all this effort is in the service of ideas that just feel so, so tired. (PG-13) R.H. Harvard Exit
