REVIEW: “Palm Springs” (2020)

July 15, 2020 by Keith Garlington

For the sake of honesty I have to admit that I’ve never quite connected with Andy Samberg’s brand of comedy. To be fair I’ve only seen glimpses of his television work (none of it stuck with me), but when it comes to his movies I’ve struggled to lock onto what others consider to be funny. That may have put me behind the eight ball when it came to seeing his new film “Palm Springs”.

Directed by Max Barbakow and written by Andy Siara, “Palm Springs” is a movie with a bit of an identity crisis. Obviously it’s a comedy first, one that can be mildly amusing but that insists on vainly going the low-hanging, low-brow route. It’s also a romance that takes too long getting going and then cuts it short just as the characters are taking shape and their relationship is becoming interesting. And it’s a half-baked science-fiction flick with a time loop, some kind of magic cave, and one character who becomes an quantum physicist after an online class and a few Google searches.

Samburg plays a wisecracking downer named Nyles who is in Palm Springs for a wedding with his spacey girlfriend Misty (Meredith Hagner). Meanwhile the sister of the bride and maid of honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti) earns her reputation as the troubled black sheep of the family. Both Nyles and Sarah are essentially outcasts but for much different reasons. Sarah is fed up with herself and the life she lives. And witnessing the bliss of her highly accomplished younger sister (Camila Mendes) doesn’t help. Nyles, well he’s stuck in a time-loop where he relives the same day over and over again. Whenever he falls asleep he wakes up on the day of the wedding. If he dies, same thing.

Photo Courtesy of Hulu

That may sound like a spoiler but it’s actually revealed within the first 15 minutes or so. Nyles has watched the wedding play out countless times. He knows all the players and all the scenarios. It’s no wonder he comes across as bored and disaffected. He lives in a world of no consequences and no repercussions. That’s why he can show up to the wedding in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, and chugging a can of beer. For him it’s all meaningless and no matter what he does (good or bad) it’ll all be erased once he wakes up again.

Then something unexpected happens. Nyles saves Sarah’s bacon at the reception leading to a walk under the stars and eventually the two of them making out. Then out of the blue Nyles is shot with an arrow by a lunatic commando wannabe named Roy (the always sturdy J.K. Simmons). A wounded Nyles gets away from his assailant and crawls into the glowing light beaming out of a mysterious nearby cave. But Sarah finds him and against his warnings enters the cave too. Poof! Guess who else is now caught in the time loop?

Throw aside the obvious questions like ‘What’s up with this cave?’ and ‘Why would Nyles take Sarah a few yards from said cave to make out?’ The movie isn’t interested in those things. Instead it slowly attempts to develop a believable relationship as Sarah comes to grips with her predicament while Nyles attempts to teach her the rules. We end up in a rom-com purgatory of sorts full of carefree hijinks leading to an eventual (and utterly predictable) romance.

Photo Courtesy of Hulu

Yes Sarah falls for Nyles (something you can see coming a mile away) but I’m still not sure why. Her optimism does start to soften his nihilism which makes him slightly less obnoxious. But while Samberg and Milioti have a playful chemistry, there isn’t an ounce of romantic sizzle. It’s not the fault of the actors. Instead it’s Siara’s script which spends more time goofing around rather than digging into his characters. They say things that sound like depth and dimension, but it rarely gets below surface-level.

It’s a shame because you see the ingredients for something better especially when it comes to Sarah. There is a sadness and melancholy with the character that’s never fully explored. Yet it’s sold through Milioti’s strong conviction and go-for-it performance. Meanwhile Samberg is basically playing the same kind of goof he has many times before. I’m sure fans will love him here, but I didn’t find him (or the movie itself) all that funny. I will say Samberg has a dance number that initially doesn’t make sense at all, but it’s actually quite funny once you get your footing and see where it’s coming from. Otherwise the laughs are pretty sparse.

“Palm Springs” is essentially a less attractive and less nuanced “Groundhog Day”. It tries to differentiate itself by throwing out some new ideas but it doesn’t do enough with them. Instead it’s so beholden to its raunchy comedy ambitions that we end up with more cheap sex gags than meaningful character moments. And when we do finally get some of those moments they’ve had such little time to germinate that they end up feeling hollow. That’s how I felt about the movie as a whole and not even a wild-eyed, coked-up J.K. Simmons could change my mind. “Palm Springs” is now playing on Hulu.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

REVIEW: “First Cow” (2020)

July 14, 2020 by Keith Garlington

Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow” opened in a handful of cities earlier this year around the start of the Coronavirus outbreak. Within days it’s run was over, cut short by the wave of theater closings across the country. Surprisingly distributor A24 decided against making the movie available on VOD saying they were going to relaunch the film “once the marketplace has rebounded“.

A few months have passed and the market has yet to rebound, but “First Cow” is finally making its way to home television screens. This is a Kelly Reichardt film through and through which is sure to thrill critics who frequently praise her unique brand of filmmaking. At the same time her minimalist style, slow-moving stories, and ambiguous endings have often stymied general moviegoers.

Photo Courtesy of A24

I understand both sentiments. I like Reichardt’s working-class focus, contemplative rhythms, and deep affection for her characters. But I’ve long wrestled with ambiguous endings and the fine line between challenging the audience and shortchanging a story. The idea of getting us to write the finish is fine when the movie leaves behind enough for us to do so. But when it doesn’t the results can be frustrating. Take a movie like Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff”. It clearly worked for many, yet by the end I was far more conscious of the intentional ambiguity than challenged to ponder the fate of the pioneers.

“First Cow” is indeed slow-moving, it has a simple focus, and it leaves you with questions. But the difference here is in the film’s ability to both encourage thought and tell a fulfilling story. As you would expect, the movie informs us without holding our hands. Instead much is gleaned through its rich character development and the immersive frontier setting. Both sufficiently give us all we need to connect with the story and add our own interpretations. This may be Reichardt’s best film.

From the very first scene Reichardt let’s us know she is working towards something. A series of shots show a young woman discovering two human skeletons near a riverbank. Too shallow for a grave, these bones have laid there undiscovered for years and there’s no doubting that they have a story to tell. Normally a discovery of two skeletons in the opening minutes would loom over the film like an ominous dark cloud. But as we’re transported back to 1820’s Oregon, Reichardt does such a good job pulling us into the period that we almost forget the cryptic opening.

Photo Courtesy of A24

We’re first introduced to the gentle, kind, and soft-spoken Cookie (John Magaro) as he picks mushrooms in a lush patch of forest. Turns out he’s a cook traveling with a group of surly, burly fur trappers. In a subtly comical first meeting, Cookie discovers a naked Chinese man named King Lu (Orion Lee) hiding in the bushes. He’s cold, hungry, and on the run from some really bad Russians. Cookie gives him some water, a blanket, and a place to sleep for the night.

They go their separate ways but meet again later in a small settlement. King Lu remembers Cookie’s act of kindness and invites him out to a shack he has turned into a home. The two develop a friendship that form the backbone for the entire film. Through their seemingly natural rapport we learn all we need to know about the pair, their character, their ambitions. Cookie is every bit the big-hearted tender soul while the chatty King Lu is a dreamer with an entrepreneurial spirit. It’s also glaringly obvious that they’re misfits in a harsh and unforgiving land.

Then a conversation about biscuits sparks an idea. The two begin sneaking onto the property of a wealthy Englishman (Toby Jones) in the dead of night to extract milk from the territory’s first and only cow. It’s used to make Cookie’s delicious “oily cakes” which they take into town and sell to the homesick frontiersmen for a tidy sum. In the burgeoning spirit of capitalism Cookie and King Lu keep building their business which means swiping more milk in order to make more cakes (‘Supply and Demand’ and all that jazz). They keep going despite clear indicators that they should take their profits and skedaddle.

Photo Courtesy of A24

“History isn’t here yet, but it’s coming,” Lu prophesies. “Maybe this time we’ll be ready for it.” Of course they aren’t and that’s the sad part of this otherwise warm and slyly funny frontier drama. Reichardt and her co-writer Jonathan Raymond deeply root their script in the human experience. Cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt’s Academy box ratio draws our eyes inward and concentrates our focus on the characters. Plus the film is bathed in an array of colorful faces including a special little nugget, a terrific cameo marking the final appearance of the late René Auberjonois. In other words, “First Cow” isn’t worried about beautiful vistas or untapped lands. It’s the people within each frame that we’re urged to explore.

Before a single image hits our screen Reichardt greets us with a fitting William Blake quote: “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” It simply means friendships (like the one Cookie and King Lu share) are natural, complex, and essential parts of our being. But the film reminds us that even the tightest and most earnest bond can be seduced by the sinister allure of “just a little more”. “First Cow” is now available in select theaters and on VOD.

VERDICT- 4.5 STARS

REVIEW: “The Painted Bird” (2020)

July 13, 2020 by Keith Garlington

In a key scene from “The Painted Bird” a young boy, not even 10-years-old, holds a small blackbird while a grizzled old man brushes white paint across its feathers. The man then releases it to a flock of blackbirds flying overhead. Immediately the swarming flock savagely attack the painted bird and within a few violent seconds it’s plummeting back to earth, pecked to death by its own kind.

The analogy is a grim and potent one. Humanity is like the flock of birds, willing to attack, destroy and devour their own, even the weak and especially those who dare to look different. For a young Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe that was a vivid and painful reality. For this particular boy the ugliness of humanity extends far beyond the German invaders. Wickedness is found in every village and farmhouse he crosses; iniquity in most of the peasants and soldiers he meets.

Photo Courtesy of IFC Films

“The Painted Bird” is a horrifying and intense 169-minute epic from Czech writer-director-producer Václav Marhoul. His film is based on Jerzy Kosiński’s 1965 controversial novel which was first published as a fictional work, marketed to appear autobiographical, and now widely considered fictional once again. Marhoul’s adaptation debuted at last year’s Venice International Film Festival and was marked by several walkouts in response to the movie’s graphic subject matter and unrelenting bleakness. But as Marhoul told the Venice press when defending his film, “Only in darkness can we see light.”

Make no mistake, “The Painted Bird” is not for the faint of heart. It can be shocking, at times savage, and for some it will be unbearable to watch. It’s a story told through the eyes of a young Jewish boy trying to survive in a war-ravaged land where shells of the living, drained of every drop of love and compassion, do nothing more than exist in a swell of unfettered human depravity. It’s a land full of people desensitized to their own indecency and reverting back to their most primitive instincts. As a result the boy both witnesses and experiences acts of unbridled brutality and unspeakable abuse.

Photo Courtesy of IFC Films

We first meet the boy (played with heartbreaking innocence by Petr Kotlár) as World War II nears its end. He’s living with an old maid on a dusty isolated farm, left there by his Jewish parents after the Nazi roundups began. When the woman suddenly dies the boy loses his caregiver and safety net. So he sets out into the wild hoping to find his way home and into the arms of his mother and father. Instead he finds a cold, rotting world gutted by the war and where ‘the kindness of strangers‘ is as foreign as the ruthless invading forces.

The film is broken into nine chapters, each named after people the boy meets on his hellish odyssey. Among them Stellan Skarsgård as a disillusioned German soldier, Udo Kier as a jealous and obsessed miller, Harvey Keitel as a sympathetic priest, and Barry Pepper as a hardened Russian sniper. Most of the encounters end horrifically with barely a shimmer of light. And in heartbreaking fashion each chisel away at the boy’s innocence and humanity. Christian symbols speak to the idea of grace, but it’s smothered out by a society handed over to their own lusts and violence.

Photo Courtesy of IFC Films

Marhoul communicates mostly through the camera and what little dialogue there is is spoken in an invented Slavic-like language in order to avoid indicting any one single nation. Cinematographer Vladimír Smutný shoots in stunning 35mm black-and-white with a CinemaScope ratio providing us with the film’s lone bits of beauty. The brilliant use of light and shadows, his searing and evocative close-ups, the meticulous compositions and eye-catching backdrops. Whether Smutný’s camera is gazing up at the gentle sway of birch treetops or peering around a corner at some unthinkable horror, the film’s most profound voice comes from its visual language.

“The Painted Bird” is an unorthodox Holocaust drama that puts its audience face-to-face with the inhumanity of humanity. It’s pitiless and unyielding conviction forces us to endure scene after scene of appalling cruelty, daring us to grow numb to it and therefore proving its bigger point. By the end you genuinely feel like you’ve been on a traumatic near three-hour journey, one I’m not sure when I’ll want to take again. But that doesn’t negate the sting of the film’s thought-provoking message. Nor does it nullify Vladimír Smutný’s unforgettable and award-worthy imagery. It simply makes it a hard movie to recommend to all audiences. Some will be absorbed, others will be repulsed. I’ll let you decide which you’re likely to be. “The Painted Bird” opens July 17th on VOD.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

First Glance: “Made in Italy”

July 10, 2020 by Keith Garlington

Liam Neeson has made a name for himself as a tough-talking, no frills action star. That leads some people to forget that he is also a very good dramatic actor. I like his punch-and-shoot thrillers, but I always enjoy seeing him taking on weightier, more serious roles. He can also be very funny. James D’Arcy’s new dramedy “Made in Italy” looks to be tapping into Neeson’s dramatic and comedic sides.

The film appears to be a father-son story set in the beautiful Tuscan countryside. Neeson inherits an Italian villa from his recently deceased wife. He and his estranged son (because they’re always estranged in these things) travel to Italy to get the house ready to put on the market. But old memories resurface and fixing up the house proves to be just what their strained relationship needed.

“Made in Italy” releases August 7th. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.

REVIEW: “The Old Guard” (2020)

July 9, 2020 by Keith Garlington

How does the idea of a movie featuring Charlize Theron leading a band of age-old immortal mercenaries sound to you? What if it tossed in the likes of Matthias Schoenaerts, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and “If Beale Street Could Talk” standout Kiki Layne? I posed that question a few weeks ago after the first trailer dropped for “The Old Guard”, a new action-superhero mashup from Netflix that sounds a lot better than it ends up being.

The film is based on a comic book by Greg Rucka who also wrote the screenplay. It’s set in present day and follows a group of immortals, the only ones of the kind, who throughout history have tried to fight for what’s right. They’re led by Theron’s Andy (aka Andromache of Scythia), the oldest of the group but don’t dare ask her how old (“Scythia” is a pretty good indicator). Booker (Schoenaerts) fought with Napoleon. Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) met during the Crusades.

Photo Courtesy of Netflix

So basically the four never grow old although they somehow grew to the ages of the cast members who play them. Then apparently they stopped aging. Who knows? I don’t remember the movie explaining it although it could have been crammed in the various info dumps we get throughout the middle of the story. Also they don’t die thanks to their Wolverine-like healing factor. Bullets, bombs, blades – they can live through it all. That is until their supernatural healing just suddenly stops for no real reason whatsoever. Then they can die.

That kind of lack of detail plagues much of “The Old Guard” whether you’re talking about the characters or the story itself. It glazes over backstory with an almost casual disinterest, mentioning things from the past and even tossing in some flashbacks. There’s also an oddly developed love angle that doesn’t feel remotely organic. None of it amounts to much except for setting up a sequel. The ending leaves no doubt about the movie’s franchise aspirations.

The main storyline revolves around an evil pharmaceutical company ran by a weaselly young exec named Steven Merrick (Harry Melling) “The youngest CEO in pharma” he proudly boasts. Predictably his plans are to capture the immortals and replicate their powers for his own nefarious purposes. And he has an entire army of indistinguishable and utterly disposable soldiers to make sure he gets what he wants.

Photo Courtesy of Netflix

Meanwhile the perpetually sullen Andy has grown frustrated with the lack of impact their group’s work is having. “The world can burn for all I care” she mutters. But before she and the team can throw in the towel, they all have an interconnected dream (don’t ask) letting them know that another immortal has emerged. Enter Kiki Layne, so good in “Beale Street” but a bit out of her element here. She’s fine when it comes to pure physicality. But she has a tougher time selling her character dramatically, often overacting and rarely given a quieter moment to show off her strengths. As for Ejiofor, he’s given little to do other than stand to the side and offer stunned reactions to the things he sees.

“The Old Guard” has some good names attached and the idea of immortal mercenaries, each with a John Wick-like gift of nailing headshots, has promise. But director Gina Prince-Bythewood can’t wrangle it all together and Rucka’s script leaves too many questions while offering characters who need more heft. So you’re left with the action which offers a smattering of ‘wow’ moments with an occasional touch of style. Sadly there aren’t enough of them to rescue the film from its more mediocre genre impression. “The Old Guard” opens this Friday on Netflix.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

REVIEW: “Becky” (2020)

July 8, 2020 by Keith Garlington

If co-directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion had the goal of making an unorthodox action-thriller full of crazy B-movie gore and with an undeniable “Die Hard” vibe that sees a 13-year-old girl as their John McClane, well…mission accomplished. “Becky” checks all of those boxes, sometimes repeatedly just for good measure. It may sound wacky (and it kinda is) but it’s really well made and sports one particularly surprising performance.

The film begins with a young girl named Becky Hooper (Lulu Wilson) answering questions from a sheriff and a social worker. Clearly something bad has happened and Becky is at its center. Hop back two weeks earlier where the film craftily intercuts two storylines happening simultaneously. One sets up Becky’s story while the other introduces the film’s main antagonist, a vile neo-Nazi named Dominick (Kevin James).

Photo Courtesy of Quiver Digital

Obviously the casting choice that sticks out is James. His transformation from funny man to cold-blooded white supremacist is astonishingly good. James is a menacing presence, giving us a character tattooed with swastikas and Nazi SS bolts, and with a chilling disregard for human life. He and four of his acolytes break out of a prison transport and within seconds cement themselves as dangerous and deadly killers.

At the same time Becky is struggling. Her pent-up anger over her mother’s death to cancer has led to her lashing out at school and at her father Jeff. He’s played by a sorely miscast Joel McHale whose seemingly perpetual grin has you waiting for punch line at the end of his every line of dialogue. Daddy and daughter set out for the family lake house to spend the weekend. Once there Jeff informs Becky that he is planning to marry his new girlfriend Kayla (Amanda Brugel). It’s hard to tell whether he is incredibly naive or incredibly stupid, but his news (predictably) goes over with his daughter like a lead balloon.

As you can probably guess, the two stories intersect when Dominick and his crew show up at the lake house. Turns out there is a key buried in a crawlspace under the house marked by a symbol matching one of Dom’s tattoos. The key becomes a cleverly utilized McGuffin that does a lot of essential tablesetting. Jeff doesn’t know anything about it. Becky ends up with it. Dominick will do anything to get it.

Photo Courtesy of Quiver Digital

Family drama and home invasion thriller is just a part of the genre blend we get. “Becky” is just as much a revenge-fueled splatter film as the 13-year-old protagonist unleashes her sorrow and rage in a number of grisly, blood-soaked ways. Some of the violence is shocking, some of it is uncomfortable, some of it is laced with humor. But it works both metaphorically and as an old-school action gore-fest.

Milott and Murnion do some really interesting things with their camera while at the same time steadily building tension. While James may be the show stealer, Lulu Wilson is vital and makes for a strong, sympathetic rooting interest. She’s intense, troubled, and seemingly on her own (in more ways than one). While a bit outlandish at times, both she and the script (penned by Nick Morris, Lane and Ruckus Skye) handle things smartly and make the story surprisingly believable. And their little John McClane makes Bruce Willis looks like a choir boy. So be prepared.