Currently making its rounds across the festival circuit, “Armageddon Time” is the upcoming period drama from writer-director James Gray. It’s a coming-of-age movie inspired by Gray’s own childhood in Queens during the 1980s. A stellar cast is attached including Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Anthony Hopkins. As an autobiographical piece, this is clearly close to the filmmaker’s heart. But the new trailer is hard to read. In one sense the film looks captivating. It also comes across as heavy-handed which I hope isn’t the case for the film itself.
The trailer introduces us to two classmates, Paul (Banks Repeta) who is white and Johnny (Jaylin Webb) who is black. They develop a close friendship based on mutual interests. But racism soon surfaces as various people, including some within Paul’s own family, warn the boy to stay away from his friend. Will Paul stay quiet or stand up against the heartbreaking bigotry? Gray looks to be following in the footsteps of Cuaron’s “Roma” and Branagh’s “Belfast”. But how will his film hold up against those two Oscar winners? Will it be too on-the-nose? We shall see.
“Armageddon Time” hits theaters October 28th. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.
Walt Disney teams with Robert Zemeckis in the latest iteration of Pinocchio, the classic children’s tale taken from Carlo Collodi’s 1883 Italian book “The Adventures of Pinocchio”. More directly, it’s based on Disney’s 1940 animated feature film and follows their recent string of live-action adaptations that has included “Dumbo”, “The Lion King”, and “Aladdin”. (“The Little Mermaid” is next in line).
You could say Disney overplayed their hand, dropping four of these live-action adaptations in 2019 alone. Mixed box office results led to “Lady and the Tramp” and now “Pinocchio” skipping theaters altogether and going straight to their Disney+ streaming platform. It’s a shame because “Pinocchio” is a visual delight which would have sparkled on the big screen. And while many of us have seen and heard this story countless times, Zemeckis offers a heart-filled, semi-fresh, and reasonably sanitized take that maintains the charm of the original.
Image Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios
In a small Italian village, a woodcarver and clock-maker named Geppetto (an unsurprisingly great Tom Hanks) runs a quaint little shop along the town square. He enjoys spending his time with his computer-animated kitty Figaro and goldfish Cleo, making toys out of blocks of wood and building cuckoo clocks that he can’t bring himself to sell. Yet deep down, the kindly Geppetto’s heart is heavy as he still mourns the recent loss of his young son.
In what seems like an act of therapy, Geppetto builds a marionette boy made out of pine wood who he (of course) names Pinocchio. After an especially tender wish upon a star, Geppetto retires for the night. As he sleeps, The Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo) grants Geppetto’s wish and brings Pinocchio to life, telling him that if he proves himself to be brave, truthful, and unselfish, he’ll become a real little boy. The fairy appoints Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a lost soul and the movie’s infrequent narrator, to be Pinocchio‘s temporary conscience which proves to be a tougher job than he bargained for.
Voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, the sweet and playful Pinocchio fills Geppetto with a happiness he hasn’t felt in while. But that joy is interrupted after Geppetto sends his wooden boy off to school. And so begins a day-long storybook adventure that sees Pinocchio being duped by a conniving Fox named Honest John (Keegan-Michael Key), sold to a cruel and abusive puppeteer Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston), picked up by the mysterious Coachman (Luke Evans), and whisked away to Pleasure Island, an extravagant theme park for deliquent children that turns out to be something shockingly more sinister. Meanwhile, along with Figaro and Cleo, a worried Geppetto sets out to find his lost boy.
Thankfully, Zemeckis (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Chris Weitz) has more to offer than a simple rehash of the 1940 film. It’s certainly not as audacious as Netflix’s “Pinocchio”, the stop-motion passion project from Guillermo del Toro due out later this year. And you can see where it takes a few shortcuts in its storytelling. But Zemeckis captures the sweetness and pathos of the original while also wonderfully mixing computer animation with live-action to give the classic story a zesty new coat of paint.
Image Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios
It also doesn’t hurt to have Tom Hanks onboard. He and Zemeckis have previously worked together on “Forrest Gump”, “Cast Away”, and “The Polar Express”. Here Hanks falls into the role of Geppetto, bringing gentleness, sincerity, and a palpable sorrow. We also get good performances from Erivo, Evans, and Battiston. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a little shaky as Jiminy Cricket, but most of the voice-work, particularly from Ainsworth, is solid.
While it may not fully sell itself as necessary, “Pinocchio” has enough flavor of its own to stand on its own. There are some gorgeous visuals to go along with the heartfelt storytelling, and we get yet another fine performance from Tom Hanks who (unlike in “Elvis”) embodies every facet of his character. Mileage may vary depending on how ready you are for yet another “Pinocchio” adaptation. Personally, I wasn’t looking one. Yet I left Zemeckis’ film with a pretty big smile on my face. “Pinocchio” premieres this today (September 8th) on Disney+.
A star-studded new Western was enough to capture my attention. Having it written and directed by none other than Walter Hill makes it even more intriguing. A quick gander at Hill’s filmography reveals an eclectic blend of genre films dating back to 1972. At 80-years-old, Hill slides on his boots, puts on his Stetson, and heads back to the Wild West, joined by Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Rachel Brosnahan, Hamish Linklater, and Benjamin Bratt. I love the idea and I love the cast, even if I don’t particularly love the new trailer.
Set in 1897, Waltz plays a notorious bounty hunter (a role he knows well) named Max Borlund who’s in Mexico in search of a wealthy businessman’s daughter (Brosnahan). While there, he runs into an old foe named Joe Cribbens (Dafoe). It turns out Joe is still upset that Max sent him to prison years earlier. Other players come into the mix and (as often happens in Westerns) things turn violent. While the trailer may be a touch bland, its hard not to be excited with this much talent on screen. Hopefully it delivers on its potential.
“Dead for a Dollar” opens September 30th. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.
The Tamil action blockbuster “Vikram” has made its way to US streaming (Hulu) giving American audiences the chance to see their highest grossing film of the year. Written and directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj, this is the second film in his shared universe of action thrillers. It’s a movie loaded with ambition, and the craft is undeniable. But it takes some time getting into it. That’s because there are layers upon layers of plot mixed with a seemingly never-ending buildup. But once it gets its footing and all of the story threads start coming together, there’s a reasonably good crime thriller to be found.
Tops among the film’s many characters is Amar (Fahadh Faasil), the leader of an off-the-grid special unit called Black Squad. They’re an elite group who are brought in to solve crimes through methods not readily available to the more law-abiding police. Whenever they’re given a mission, Black Squad stealthily enters and melds into a city or community, connects with the locals for information, tracks down their targets, and brings them to justice by any means necessary.
In this specific case, Black Squad is called in to hunt down a masked killer who has been targeting and brutally slaying cops. Among his victims was a police inspector named Prabhanjan (Kalidas Jayaram). But what made his murder stand out from the others was that the masked man also killed Prabhanjan’s adopted father, Karnan (Kamal Haasan) who has no connection to the police department. Amar and his team latch onto this inconsistency in the killer’s pattern and make it the centerpiece of their investigation.
Through a heavy dose of flashbacks we begin learning more about Prabhanjan and especially Karnan, who becomes a raging alcoholic after his son was killed. As the mystery unfolds, Karnan’s story takes some unexpected turns. Meanwhile separate links to police corruption emerge. And a notorious drug lord Sandhanam (Vijay Sethupathi), the leader of the violent Vetti Vagaiyara gang, becomes a key player and one the main antagonists for the rest of the movie.
Layers continue to be peeled back like onions, and even more characters are introduced as the mystery at the heart of story gets less and less murkier. While the first half will test your endurance, the second half finally gets to a decent enough payoff – one that both (kinda) finishes this story while teases an inevitable sequel. And of course we get the style-heavy action scenes that offer a healthy dose of fight sequences and shootouts. They range from tense yet wildly fun to utterly preposterous.
Yet despite its more attractive pieces, “Vikram” never quite comes together as a whole. That’s because too much of its hefty 174-minute running time is spent weaving together a story that’s more complicated than it needs to be. We spend too much time waiting for the movie to kick into gear and deliver the big action beats we know are coming. These are nagging issues that the film’s star power and impressive style can’t quite make up for. “Vikram” is now streaming on Hulu.
Netflix has dropped the teaser trailer for one of my most anticipated movies of the year. “All Quiet on the Western Front” is the latest feature film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s acclaimed 1929 novel. Directed by Edward Berger, the film is Germany’s submission for Best International Feature at the 95th Academy Awards. Beginning with the words “This is neither an accusation, nor a confession, and least of all an adventure”, the trailer reveals a vision that’s dramatically different than what we’re used to seeing from ‘war movies’.
The film marks the first time the novel has been adapted in its original German language, and it offers a uniquely German perspective. While Daniel Brühl gets top billing (playing vocal World War I opponent Matthias Erzberger), it’s newcomer Felix Kammerer who looks to be the soul of the movie. But this is mostly a tone-setting trailer, and it’s extremely effective. The film is sure to be a bleak and harrowing look at war through a gritty, unvarnished, and brutally honest lens. I can’t imagine it being an easy watch. But when dealing in truth, the results aren’t always pretty.
“All Quiet on the Western Front” opens in select theaters this October and streams on Netflix October 28th. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.
The new feel-good drama “Gigi & Tate” taps into that well-worn but tried-and-true ‘a boy and his dog’ formula. Except this time it’s a boy and his capuchin monkey. Directed by Nick Hamm from a script by David Hudgins, “Gigi & Nate” tells the touching true story of an unexpected friendship and shows how it saved a young man’s life and brought a hurting family together following a devastating tragedy.
Charlie Rowe plays 18-year-old Nate Gibson who we first meet only a couple of weeks before he’s to head off for college. He has big plans and a bright future ahead. That is until his life is forever changed. Nate contracts bacterial meningitis after cliff diving. Nate is med-flighted to a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee where his parents, Claire (Marcia Gay Harden) and Dan (Jim Belushi) and his two sisters, Katy (Josephine Langford) and Annabelle (Hannah Riley) are given some heart-shattering news.
Image Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
The movie leaps ahead four years where we learn Nate is a quadriplegic. Confined to a wheelchair and spiraling into depression, he finds solace in a capuchin monkey named Gigi. She was rescued from an abusive petting zoo in California and nurtured and trained to be a service animal. After some initial hesitation (by both Gigi and some of his family) Nate and the pint-sized primate bond. They develop a tender relationship that not only helps Nate and his outlook on life, but helps bring a splintering family back together.
But these days it seems like we always have to have an antagonist. Here we get it in the form of an absurdly one-note animal rights activist named Chloe Gaines (Welker White). She heads a group called Americans for Animal Protection, and she immediately puts Nate and Gigi in her legal crosshairs. The second half of the movie gets bogged down in their room-temperature conflict that includes a laughably phony protest sequence outside the Gibson’s home and some tensionless courtroom drama.
The clunky storytelling doesn’t exactly help things. The movie tends to skimp on details, often bypassing opportunities for some good character building. For example, there’s an early scene where we seen Nate in such a bad state of mind that he attempts to take his own life. But less than a minute later we see him at a service animal training facility, smiling and eager to meet Gigi for the first time. There’s not a single scene devoted to showing how Nate went from completely broken and suicidal to optimistic and excited. It turns out to be a reoccurring frustration.
While it’s hard not to take note of the Gibson family’s wealth, Hamm and Hudgins do a good job of helping us see the people beyond the privilege. The filmmakers put in the effort to connect us with this tight-knit family as they each try to cope with Nate’s condition in their own ways. As with other story elements, sometimes the movie breezes past opportunities to make this family dynamic even richer. But as a whole, we get a good sense of who these people are and of their efforts to recover individually and collectively.
Image Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
And then there’s Gigi. She’s brought to life by blending the work from a real capuchin monkey named Allie with digital effects. Of course we get a few saccharine scenes of animal cuteness meant to melt our hearts. But as a whole, the filmmakers use Gigi smartly and to great effect. She plays a pivotal part, not just in realizing the story, but in opening up a number of themes the movie is interested in. She too ends up undercut by some of the second-half sloppiness. But as animal portrayals go, Gigi is used well and has an undeniably heartwarming presence.
I can’t say enough about the movie’s message of hope and triumph. I love what it says about coping with tragedy and overcoming adversity. Yet while “Gigi & Nate” is full of compelling themes and scenes that are tender and earnest, it’s hampered by some nagging frustrations that make it hard to focus on the more meaningful moments. The corny villain angle, the jolts in the pacing, some wobbly performances – they pulled me out of a movie that really hinges on our emotional investment. “Gigi & Nate” is out now in theaters.
Keith & the Movies 