Beast (2022) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Baltasar Kormakur

Starring:  Idris Elba, Sharlto Copley, Leah Jeffries, Iyana Halley

"You're in his territory now," our hero's friend warns when up against the realization that a vengeful lion wants to eat any human it sees.   As Beast opens, the lion's pride is killed by poachers, but he survives with a bloodlust that's excessive even for a hungry lion.   Whether a lion can actually harbor such resentments is debatable, but it sure sounds plausible, especially when the words are spoken by Martin (Copley), the aforementioned friend named Martin who has spent his life in the wilderness studying lions.  Our hero is Nate (Elba), who grew up in South Africa but moved to the States and became a doctor.   He returns to South Africa on vacation in hopes of reconnecting with his two resentful daughters (Jeffries and Halley), who are angry with their father because he was separated from their mother when she died from cancer.

Nate finds he has to reconnect quickly once Martin escorts his friends into the mountains for a safari.  Martin has befriended a pride of lions he has been looking after for a while.   They trust him and will protect against outsiders.   This information will come in handy later on.   Things go from pleasant to nasty quickly, as Martin and Nate encounter a village with any remaining inhabitants torn to pieces by our lion.   The lion soon attacks Martin's truck, ramming itself into the vehicle and soon disabling it.  Again, I don't know if a lion can inflict such damage, but for the sake of the movie we play along. 

The rest of Beast involves Nate and his daughters (with Martin sidelined with a serious leg injury) trying to stay alive while the lion stays on the periphery waiting to strike.   Martin believes the lion's pride was killed by poachers and is now exacting revenge on any human it sees.   During Nate's ordeal, he will encounter real poachers who are so evil they make you sympathize with the lion.  Elba provides a sturdy center to what soon resembles a horror film, in which things jump out at you in the dark.  The characters are mostly thin, but the actors make the most of them.   The camera seems to stalk Nate as he makes his way through unfamiliar territory.   Instead of making Nate a sudden action hero who can do anything required, he tells Martin on the radio, "I don't know what to do,"   This is a refreshing sentiment.  Beast is skillfully made for what is essentially a slasher film with a lion doing the dirty work.

The lions are CGI to be sure and soon Nate is wrestling our lion to the death.   By this time, the bad lion has become the Michael Myers of lions.   He survives a fall, a jeep landing on him, being burned, an explosion, and being stabbed with a tranquilizer dart which keeps him out of commission for only a few minutes.   I expect to see a Beast 2 in which our lion friend returns to stalk Nate and his daughters again.  

All the Right Moves (1983) * * *

 

Directed by:  Michael Chapman

Starring:  Tom Cruise, Craig T. Nelson, Lea Thompson, Chris Penn

If high school football meant as much to my community and school as it did in All the Right Moves, then I missed it.   I'm sure losing a game sucked, but it didn't take on the essence of tragedy as portrayed in this film.   However, the small borough in which I grew up wasn't the depressed Pennsylvania steel town in which All the Right Moves takes place.   In the tiny town of Ampipe, a football scholarship may be the only way to avoid working for the rest of your life in the local steel mill or becoming unemployed during economic downturns.   It is here where All the Right Moves ups the human stakes.   

One can compare All the Right Moves to Friday Night Lights, both of which center on the effect of high school football games on their communities.   Winning and losing isn't just winning and losing.  A Friday night loss can devastate the collective psyche of the town even more so than the players, who stand to have the most to win or lose.   A win can buoy hopes and dreams at least until the next game.  All the Right Moves documents the pressure not only the community places on the shoulders of its players, but the amount the players put on themselves. 

Stefan Djordjevic (Cruise) is one such player.  He is a star defensive back for the local high school football team on the cusp of the most important game of his life against a top-ranked rival.   A win will allow Stefan his pick of schools to attend.   A loss may limit his choices.   Coach Nickerson (Nelson) is also looking for an assistant-coaching position for a college team, so he has the same aspirations as his players.   Stef's team loses a heartbreaker in the final seconds, causing Stef and Nickerson to blow up at each other and the coach to kick Stef off the team.   Later that night, Stef tags along with boosters who dump trash on the coach's lawn and write graffiti all over his house.  Nickerson then further exacerbates the matter by blackballing Stef from being seen by college recruiters.   

Tom Cruise was fresh from the success of Risky Business when All the Right Moves was released.  Even then, he was a star in the making with a mature screen presence and a vulnerability which endears him to the audience.   We root for Stef, who understands the gravity of the mistakes he made, and we can also identify with Nickerson, whose motives are understandable although his actions are wrong.  Stef also has a plucky girlfriend (Thompson), whose wisdom beyond her years allows her to see that loving Stef means allowing him to go away.  

All the Right Moves is very 80's with its heavy synthesizer score and pop song soundtrack, but it doesn't detract much from the story and the intelligent performances.   The resolution is something you don't see much of even today:  Two people working out their problems not with violence, but with honest discussions that force each person to look hard in the mirror and understand the consequences of their actions.   It earns its happy ending, unlikely as it may be, but we are glad to see it happen.  

Fall (2022) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Scott Mann

Starring:  Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mason Gooding

The opening moments of Fall feature a married couple named Becky (Currey) and Dan (Gooding) rock climbing on the side of a mountain with their friend Hunter (Gardner) nearby, but not close enough to assist when Dan falls to his death.   Or, considering how phony the visuals look when he see Dan clinging to his rope while the camera looks down, he falls into a green screen abyss.   

Fast forward to "51 weeks later" and Becky is still mourning Dan while drowning her sorrows in alcohol and avoiding phone calls from her concerned father (Morgan), who not unreasonably wants Becky to move on with her life.   Becky resolves not to do this until she gets a call from Hunter, whom she hasn't seen in a while.   Hunter became a social media influencer performing daring and deadly stunts to the delight of her thousands of followers.    Hunter proposes to Becky to break out of her doldrums and climb an abandoned 2,000 foot-tall radio tower in the middle of some Southwestern state.  Becky surprisingly agrees, and Hunter documents the entire event for her Instagram account.  

Becky is still in remarkably good shape despite drinking nightly and not doing any climbing for the past year, but nonetheless the climb of the rickety ladder ascending the tower goes south quickly.   Hunter and Becky make it to the top and sit on a small, round platform nearly a half-mile from the ground, but when Becky attempts to descend the ladder, the ladder crumbles and strands Hunter and Becky on top.  Their cell phones get no signal, the drone Hunter brings along to provide aerial shots can only fly so far away, Becky dropped the bag which contains their water bottle onto the satellite dish below, and vultures being hovering and swooping as hours turn into days in which the friends are stranded.

It is here where Fall becomes an entertaining mixed bag.  Hunter and Becky try not to lose hope, but as each of their plans is thwarted by outside forces or just plain bad luck, it is almost impossible for the women to not start thinking of their mortality.   Fall keeps us involved because it functions as a nightmare in which you're stuck someplace and can't escape.   Granted, Becky and Hunter put themselves in their predicament, but you still can't help but feel sorry for them.  Some of the developments which pop up strain credulity to its limit, however, while the ending leaves you scratching your head.  The movie is reminiscent of the dark and menacing Open Water (2004), another movie in which two people are stranded (that time amongst sharks) with just enough wherewithal to understand their situation while falsely hoping they can escape it.  

Bullet Train (2022) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  David Leitch

Starring:  Brad Pitt, Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Logan Lerman, Michael Shannon, Hiroyuki Sanada, Andrew Koji, Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Bad Bunny, Zazie Beetz

Bullet Train is an ironic title for a movie that has to stop dead about every fifteen minutes to explain who did what to whom and why.   Despite some inventive action scenes and gung-ho performances by actors who are clearly enjoying themselves, Bullet Train overstays its welcome with too many characters to account for and too much plot.   In order to make time for every character to have his/her day in the sun, other ones have to disappear, and in some cases for so long we forget they're still in the movie.   Or they're simply killed off in quick, sometimes gory fashion.   

Bullet Train opens with Ladybug (Pitt) strutting down a Tokyo street to a Japanese version of Staying Alive.   We learn quickly through phone conversations with his handler Maria Beetle (Bullock) that he is a hired assassin, but after therapy wishes to leave his life of crime behind.   He refuses to carry or use a gun, but Maria assures him this latest gig is a snatch and grab job.   His mission is to board the Bullet Train which speeds around the city, steal a metal briefcase, and depart the bus.   Ladybug was brought in as a last-minute replacement for another operative who "called out sick".   The heist, of course, doesn't go as planned, because there are other criminals and hit men (and women) after the case as well.

Some of the element after the briefcase includes The Prince (King), a fashionably dressed young lady with a British accent which belies her steely interior, brothers and career hired guns Lemon (Henry) and Tangerine (Taylor-Johnson), a father (Koji) whose son was pushed from a building and now lies in the hospital in a coma, a cartel leader (Bunny) looking for revenge, and others who pop in and out and wind up fighting Ladybug or any combination of the characters listed above.   Characters switch alliances and turn on each other with lightning speed, so much so you wonder if they could sue for whiplash if they weren't bleeding to death from gunshot or stab wounds.   I won't even attempt to encapsulate these subplots.   

The one person each of the characters has in common is The White Death (Shannon), a Russian crime leader who is like a Keyser Soze to these people.   He is feared, but so many stories are told about him we wonder which parts are real and which are fiction.   Even though there is plenty of violent action to go around, Bullet Train stages it in a tongue-in-cheek manner.    Yes, a guy has blood spurting from his neck, but we're kind of, sort of kidding around.   Bullet Train, however, is not a parody, but a movie which owes its dialogue and style to The Usual Suspects and Tarantino.   Bullet Train doesn't lack for style, dialogue, blood, shooting, stabbing, or fighting, but despite moments of fun which don't come often enough, the movie begins to feel like an exercise in style more than something to care about. 

The Hurricane (1999) * * *

 

Directed by:  Norman Jewison

Starring:  Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Debra Kara Unger, Vicellous Reon Shannon, John Hannah, Dan Hedaya, Rod Steiger, David Paymer, Harris Yulin, Clancy Brown

The Hurricane is a heavily fictionalized movie based on the overturned murder conviction of middleweight boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (Washington).   Whatever plot points are discussed may not have occurred in real life and that's just fine.   The Hurricane works on its intended emotional level with a stirring Denzel Washington performance which hits all of the intended notes and then some more at its center.   

Rubin Carter was convicted of a ghastly triple murder in 1966 and spent nearly twenty years in prison.  Carter maintained his innocence throughout, as did another man named John Artis, who if you believe the movie, had the misfortune of offering Carter a ride home on the wrong night and wound up being convicted as a co-conspirator.   Rubin's past up to the night of the murders was checkered to be sure, having spent time in prison previously and a dishonorable discharge from the military.   The movie would have you believe he returned a hero, so there you are.   Carter even challenged for the middleweight crown and, if you believe The Hurricane, he was robbed of the title in a heavily disputed decision.   My understanding is the fight didn't turn out that way, but the movie is setting up the idea of how racism destroyed Carter's life and how he had to fight through it to clear his name.

To that end, Rubin Carter is shown as a sympathetic figure who soon befriends a fifteen-year-old boy named Lesra (Shannon), who bought Carter's book which he wrote while in prison.   Lesra provides Rubin with hope after years of hopelessness involving rejected appeals and a second trial resulting in a conviction.  Lesra, a Brooklyn-born young man who lives in Canada with three caring, almost saintly people named Sam, Terry, and Lisa (Schreiber, Hannah, Unger) who soon assist in investigating Rubin's case.   Rubin asks Lesra at their first meeting what is going with these three.   Is it a commune?  Are they just friends and roommates?   An unusual love triangle?   The movie sidesteps this, since their mission is to help Rubin prove his innocence when he appeals his case to a federal judge.   

Lurking around throughout Rubin's life is the racist and crooked cop Vincent Della Pesca (Hedaya), who hates Rubin with a particular passion and frames him for the murders.   Della Pesca wasn't a real person, but based on a composite of various cops who represent an entire racist system which put Rubin behind bars.   "Hate put me in prison, but love is gonna bust me out," Rubin tells Lesra while awaiting the judge's decision in the federal appeal.   The use of the word "bust" is a strong one and Washington delivers it expertly.   

The final courtroom scenes wield a certain power because by now we're invested in Rubin's fate.   His case became a cause-celebre among celebrities like Bob Dylan (who wrote the song which is featured prominently here), but in at least this version of events we want to see justice finally, while belatedly served.   Is this what really happened?   Probably not, but biopics rarely follow the real story because a movie's job is to generate drama and suspense, not necessarily behave as a documentary.   Despite its flaws, The Hurricane is still able to live within the moment and provide the audience with the emotional resonance it deserves.  

City on a Hill (2019-present) * * *

 

(on Showtime)

Starring:  Kevin Bacon, Aldis Hodge, Jill Hennessy, Lauren E. Banks, Jonathan Tucker, Mark O' Brien, Amanda Clayton

City on a Hill is entering its third season and I'm amazed to find I did not review previous seasons.  Set in early 1990's Boston, City on a Hill is a gritty crime and political drama focusing on the uneasy partnership between FBI agent Jackie Rohr (Bacon) and assistant DA Decourcy Ward (Hodge), who form an alliance to take down serial bank robbers in the first season and murdering drug dealers and crooked cops in the second season.   Ward originally tries to be a straight arrow, but he finds that won't do in Boston, where crimes are solved with integrity not always intact.   Sometimes the rules must be bent, broken, or run over with a car.   Jackie is the kind of agent who can help with that; a man who is ethically impaired in both his professional and personal life. 

Jackie's long-suffering wife Jenny (Hennessy) is growing tired at long last of Jackie's infidelities, drug habit, and long hours away from home.   She hasn't held a job in many years and finds she lacks the wherewithal to function on her own.   Jenny's breakthrough season is in season two, where she actually dares to go back to school and venture out into the sometimes cold, unforgiving world.   She befriends an earnest priest, but he is soon scared off by Jackie, who even though he is unfaithful would not dare let Jenny be.   Jackie is a politically incorrect throwback of a person with enough skeletons in his closet to fill a graveyard, but yet he sometimes wants to do the right thing.   Maybe to cover a past indiscretion or maybe because he kind of likes Decourcy.   He sees Decourcy as the man he was long ago before cynicism got the better of him. 

Decourcy's wife Siobhan, a high-powered lawyer who at times finds herself defending the suspects her husband is prosecuting.    She wants to support her husband, while doing her job, and these don't always mesh well.   Further fanning the flames is a local community leader who sees the Boston police as untrustworthy in its dealings with the Black community.   Siobhan is a longtime ally of the leader, but also discovers secrets about him which muddy the waters.    Jackie himself has a checkered past catching up to him, especially with the introduction of a new boss who wants to play by the rules and has no use for a guy like Jackie in her agency.  

What keeps City on a Hill moving along are the performances, with Bacon, Hodge, and Hennessy giving us nuanced portrayals of people trying to navigate their way through a Boston where the Big Dig is taking place as a microcosm of how things run there.   If you're trying to walk in between the raindrops, then you're performing a fool's errand, one Jackie gave up on a long time ago.   The end of the second season seemed like a perfect wrap-up for the series, but season three is off to a promising start.   Jackie, no longer with the FBI, serves as the head of security for a rich friend having an illicit affair with a college student.   Always looking for redemption, Jackie may be able to find it here, but time will tell.