Movie Review: "Good Time"

"Good Time": B.  Robert Pattinson, whom we last saw earlier this summer in The Lost City Of Z (reviewed here on May 15; B), continues to prove that he is not merely a one-trick zombie, as he stars in newly released Good Time.  Pattinson plays Constantine "Connie" Nikas, an unintentionally humorous small time crook who, for unexplained reasons, decides to bring along his mentally challenged brother Nik on an extremely ill-conceived bank heist.  Apparently the thought never entered Connie's mind that Nik would be useless even if things went smoothly, and a hindrance if things went poorly.  And, poorly they did!  Did Connie never see a TV show or movie where the bank teller surreptitiously plants an exploding red dye canister in the robbers' satchel?  

The entire story is replete with one bad decision after another.  Most, but not all of them, are made by Connie.  Nik picks a fight with a muscle-bound prisoner in a cell filled with hardened criminals, and gets pummeled.  A grandmother allows the fugitive brothers into her Queens residence late at night, falling for some flimsy explanation that they lost the keys to their "nearby" apartment.  The woman then retires for the evening, leaving her sixteen year old granddaughter (Taliah Webster) unattended.  Connie's girlfriend, Corey (Jennifer Jason Leigh), fraudulently attempts to use her mother's credit card to charge $10,000 in a bail bond office, and then is astonished when the bank not only declines the transaction but calls her mother with a fraud alert.

Nik is played by Ben Safdie, who also co-directed the movie with his brother, Josh.  The opening scene in which a psychiatrist (Peter Verby) administers a test to the phlegmatic Nik, asking the patient to explain such common sayings as "The squeaky wheel gets the most oil," is done to perfection, offering a combination of tension and comedy.

But, this is Pattinson's movie, and the story itself does not do justice to his stellar acting.  It is at least initially hard to get a read on Connie.  Is he clever or stupid?  Maybe he's just a victim of bad luck, but stupidity certainly rears its head.  For example, while in the grandmother's apartment, he dyes his dark hair blonde in an attempt to avoid recognition on the streets, yet he leaves his copious facial hair untouched.  When he initially evades the cops he dumps his bright red jacket into a trash can.  What does he wear next?  A different red jacket.  Brilliant!

Pattinson's Connie brings back memories of Al Pacino's Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon from 1975 (graded B in my Quarterly Cinema Scan on April 1, 2012).  Both are amateur bank robbers who can't get out of their own way.  There's something about both actors and both characters that wins our hearts, even while they are committing felonies.  The funniest line in Good Time is when clueless Connie, a certified loser, yells at another character, "You're nothing but a [expletive] loser!"  He says it with a straight face, and means it!  

A tip of the cap to David Lopatin, who goes by "Oneohtrix Point Never," for the musical score.  Unlike the music in Dunkirk (reviewed here August 4; C) which drowned out a lot of the dialogue, the music in Good Time has the right combination of relatively high volume during non-verbal scenes, thereby adding to the excitement, but smartly toning down while the characters are talking. 

The story goes from fourth gear to second at the point of the movie when Connie enters an amusement park.  It stays in second too long for my liking, thus slipping its grade to B. 

Movie Review: "Wind River"

"Wind River": B+.  At its core, Wind River is much like the police procedurals which have over-populated television lately.  A teenage girl is murdered, the cops talk to her family and attempt to retrace her steps, and the usual suspects, especially current or ex boyfriends, are interviewed.  If there is a car chase or a shoot out, so much the better.  These things usually don't end with a whimper.

What sets Wind River apart from the ordinary is the setting, which comes into play in at least two important ways.  First, the mountains.  Although the film was shot in Utah, the story takes place in the snow-covered, majestic mountains of Fremont County, Wyoming.  Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) is an agent of the US Fish & Wildlife Service.  One of his main responsibilities is to assist ranchers in protecting their livestock from four-legged predators such as wolves, coyotes and mountain lions.  When he is asked how well he knows the territory, his response is, "Like I live here."  So true.  Every peak, canyon, plateau, mountain pass, creek, ranch, fence line and trail is embedded in his mind.  Although he usually wears a cowboy hat, Lambert comes prepared for the cold.  He drives a pickup, but this is western Wyoming where the roads are not only few but often impassable.  Hence Lambert's winter mode of travel across this remote terrain is a snow mobile.  He carries with him all the gear and equipment necessary for his line of work.  Such items include a powerful rifle with a telescopic sight, binoculars, crampons, a hunting knife, goggles and blankets.  He might look silly in his camouflaged white 'biler suit, but nobody's gonna call him a sissy.  He is an expert hunter and tracker.  What he is not is a law enforcement officer, which brings us to our second "setting" topic, the rez.

Wind River is a 2.2 million acre Indian reservation.  Poverty, alcoholism and drug abuse run rampant.  It is an extremely sad irony that in a jurisdiction which theoretically should qualify for a beefed up police presence, just the opposite is true.  The criminal justice system on a reservation is unlike any other part of the country.  The Bureau Of Indian Affairs is in charge.  The local sheriff is Ben (Graham Greene) who knows Agent Lambert very well.  Ben has only a half dozen men to keep the peace in an area the size of Rhode Island.  Lambert and Ben hold each other in high regard.  When the situation calls for it, the two cooperate.

The dead teenager's body is discovered by Lambert who has followed a trail of blood up a steep ridge into the wilderness.  He alerts Ben, who calls in the FBI, hoping they will take over the case.  Lambert and Ben are disappointed, but not surprised, when the Feds send in a neophyte FBI agent, Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen).  She tells the men that she flew in from Vegas, but she hails from Florida.  In truth she looks like she belongs on a beach, not in the treacherous rez mountains.  When the coroner advises that, notwithstanding evidence of rape, he cannot establish that the girl was a homicide victim -- she may have frozen to death -- Agent Banner realizes that she will have to solve this crime without FBI resources.  "We're used to not getting backup around here," Sheriff Ben laments to her.  What he is intimating is that the Feds put crimes involving Native American victims at the bottom of the triage.

It doesn't take five more minutes for Banner to admit she is in over her head. The first indication is that she does not have clothing which would enable her to survive the high altitude wind chills.  She is smart enough to know she's going to need Lambert's help.

There have been news articles throughout the year about the criminal activity which has run amok on several Indian reservations.  Within the last month, the opioid epidemic, which has been labeled a national health emergency, has taken the lives of hundreds of people throughout the country, including a noticeably disproportionate number on the Red Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.  A couple of years ago, a multi-page spread in the Star Tribune labeled Cass Lake, on the Leech Lake Reservation, the most dangerous town in Minnesota.  The same dreaded conditions on Wind River exacerbates the challenges faced by Lambert, Ben and Banner.  Couple that with the added crime associated with the nearby oil drilling operation, a magnet for trouble makers who curse the western plains and the Rockies, and the prospects for law-abiding peace are glum.

The script for Wind River was written by forty-seven year old Texan Taylor Sheridan, who also directed.  Sheridan's ability to incorporate the hostile, dangerous environment of the reservation into its ironically beautiful surroundings is praiseworthy.  He keeps the central plot advancing yet spends time developing his main characters.  The first time Agent Banner unloads her service revolver into a loathsome scoundrel, we realize her girlish good looks belie her professional toughness.  Lambert, once married to an Arapahoe, still mourns his daughter who was murdered a couple of years back.  This puts him in a unique position to empathize with and give comfort to the newly deceased girl's father, Chip Hanson, well-played by Native American actor Martin Sensmeier.

Sheridan also wrote the scripts for two other highly acclaimed movies which I intended to see but missed: Sicario, a 2015 crime thriller focusing on murderous Mexican drug lords, and last year's Hell Or High Water, which Sheridan also directed, a modern western nominated in the Best Picture category for an Academy Award.  Sheridan has become one of a small group of filmmakers whose very name alone attached to a movie is probably reason enough to see it.   

Movie Review: "Maudie"

"Maudie": A-.  When the Canadian film Maudie hit town almost two months ago, there was not much buzz about it.  Its stars, Ethan Hawke and Sally Hawkins, are veteran actors, but not the marquee names which guarantee box office success.  The film was invited to play in a handful of well-regarded festivals, including Toronto and Telluride, but took top honors only in Vancouver; maybe not that big a shock given the geography of the pertinent parties.

Be that as it may, Maudie has turned out to be one of the surprises of this summer, at least on the Twin Cities scene.  It has been playing at the Edina Theater since late June, with no short-term end in sight.  Although the film was not heavily promoted here, its popularity may be attributable to word-of-mouth and repeat paying customers.  Minnesota movie goers might also relate to the Nova Scotia setting as well; beautiful for three seasons of the year, and miserably cold and snowy for much of the fourth.

The film, based on the true story of Maud Lewis, is a fascinating tale of how one woman overcame imposing odds and downright cruelty to become a successful artist and appreciated wife.  When the story opens, Maud (Hawkins) learns that her heartless, scheming brother Charles (Zachary Bennett) has sold the house which once belong to their deceased mother.  He coldly tells Maud that he had the right to do so, since their mother bequeathed the house to him alone.  Maud, who seems like a gentle, happy soul in spite of her severely arthritic condition, gets no sympathy from her cold-hearted Aunt Ida (Gabrielle Rose) with whom she lives.  Shortly thereafter, Maudie determines to change her living conditions and get out from under the thumb of Ida.

Hawke, as Everett Lewis, makes one of the great screen entrances I can remember witnessing in the last decade.  Everett is a gruff fish monger who lives like a hermit in a small shack on the outskirts of the seaside village, Marshalltown.  The shack is in total disrepair, and the interior has probably never seen a broom or a mop.  Everett, finally deciding he needs a housekeeper, walks into the general store to post a notice for a cleaning woman.  Since he is illiterate, he prevails upon the shopkeeper to write the notice to be tacked onto the store's bulletin board.  Everett's frustration over being unable to come up with the exact wording for the notice card causes him to go briefly ballistic.  His profane tantrum had me laughing out loud.

At the same time, Maud is in the shop but unseen by Everett.  When he exits she plucks the card off the board and the next day shows up at Everett's shack to apply for the position.  And thus begins the relationship between the sweet but crippled Maud and the stern humorless Everett.  The evolution of that connection is the heart of the movie.

The movie is superb on so many levels, starting with the writing and the acting.  There are not many scripts calling for the subtle change and development of even one character, but Maudie, written by Canadian Sherry White, features two of them.  Most obviously, Everett starts out barely tolerating Maud's presence in his cabin, even though he is the one who hired her.  He doesn't want her to move any of his "stuff," which is next to impossible since it's scattered all over the small space.  He looks upon her as more or less an obscenely underpaid slave, and a maltreated one at that.  He shows her no respect and is embarrassed to be seen with her in public.  In short, he is lewd, crude and rude.

Everett's behavior would drive most women away.  No job is worth putting up with that insolence and lack of dignity.  But thick-skinned Maud sticks it out, working hard and turning to painting as a distraction from Everett's abuse.  The two dynamic leads gradually, very gradually, come to a meeting of the minds, and more.  Every step of the way impressed me as being authentic and realistic, a tribute not only to the acting chops of Hawkins and Hawke, but to the mastery of Irish director Aisling Walsh.

I loved the performance of Hawkins.  Her character is physically weak, which causes other people in her life to equate that mistakenly with dullness.  In fact, she is quite intelligent, with a keen wit and the ability to read others accurately.  The proverbial wheels in her mind are always spinning.  I liked her from the moment she first appeared on screen, through to the end.  I have always thought of Hawke as underrated, perhaps because 1995's Before Sunrise in which he starred with Julie Delpe is one of my favorite romance stories.

The scenes of Marshalltown are gorgeously shot by cinematographer Guy Godfrey.  Walsh cleverly marks the passing years with periodic shots of the snow-covered terrain  The story is straightforward and simple but with interesting main characters.  Additionally, there is a new, almost mysterious arrival in the form of an elegantly dressed woman named Sandra (Kari Matchett, who faintly resembles Lisa Kudrow from Friends) from New York, and the revelation of a heart-wrenching secret.

Two of my granddaughters have shirts with a heart drawn on the front.  Inside the heart is the word "Loved."  I thought of those shirts while watching Maudie.  When Maud was living with her Aunt Ida, she was unloved.  Going to work for, and living with, Everett did not initially fill that void.  We viewers' hearts go out to her.  Maud's hope, basically but in her case seemingly unreachable, is one day to be loved.  The story of her quest to reach that point in her life is one of the best I have seen.

Movie Review: "Dunkirk"

"Dunkirk": C.  Despite the use of hundreds of extras to populate several scenes, Christopher Nolan, writer-director of the war movie Dunkirk, has taken a minimalist approach to telling the story of the 1940 rescue of British troops from the north coast beaches of France.  There is hardly any introduction to the setting, thus leaving it up to the viewer to figure out for herself how the infantrymen managed to find themselves not only stranded but fearful for their lives as they await evacuation before the Germans annihilate them.  Nolan's strategy might have worked better if the audience was limited to history majors and World War II buffs, but for the rest of us it was not user-friendly.

Exacerbating the problem is that the dialogue is, naturally, spoken with a British accent which is often hard to decipher.  Many of the young men facially resemble each other, especially with their helmets pulled low just above their soot-stained cheeks.  On second thought, maybe it's not so important that the audience is able to distinguish the characters because their is no character development to speak of; except for a handful of officers, the men are fungible.  That point is driven home in the closing credits, where many of the soldiers are not even given the honor of having a name.  Instead we see characters listed as "second gunnery mate," "third rifleman" and the like.

Another related topic given short shrift is the rationale for the Germans basically ignoring their cornered enemy, the Allies.  Only a couple of Luftwaffe planes appear sporadically to strafe the human sitting ducks below.  By the same token, only a pair of Spitfires are on hand to help out their British brethren.  I found the midair dogfights to be the most entertaining facet of a film which otherwise drags.   We learn in the second half of the movie that the English brain trust, most notably Prime Minister Winston Churchill, came to the conclusion that only a single destroyer could be spared, from other parts of the war effort, to sail across the Channel to rescue the semi-abandoned troops.  Still, that does not explain why the Germans were practically no-shows.

Because of Churchill's questionable decision regarding use of military assets, it was left up to civilian mariners to tackle the hazardous rescue mission in their own vessels.  Another odd choice by Nolan is to show only one such boat owner, Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance, who won an Academy Award for his work in 2015's Bridge Of Spies), taking on the perilous challenge.  We wonder, "Is Mr. Dawson the only boat-owning English civilian who was up to the task?"  The answer is not disclosed until near the end.

The story rotates, at times almost in staccato fashion, among the land, the air and the sea.  Some critics might find that approach creative.  I found it to be annoying and artificial, rendering the film choppy and disjointed.

Finally, a couple of notes about two other actors appearing in the movie.  Kenneth Branagh is a heralded and highly decorated Irish actor known mostly for his portrayal of many of Shakespeare's leading men.  He is wasted in Dunkirk as Commander Bolton, the pier master during the evacuation.  Bolton's main (and apparently only) duty is to stare out to sea, as if in a hypnotic trance, searching for any rescue ship that may appear on the horizon.  Sometimes, for variety, he glances up at the sky.  Those vacant, distant glares cause me to nominate Branagh's performance for the Henry Fonda Bad Acting Award.

I knew Harry Styles was cast in this film, and as someone familiar with the pop boy band One Direction, I predicted that I'd easily be able to identify him in Dunkirk.  Wrong!  I had to search the cast list to find out which of the several distraught yet brave young soldiers was he.  Answer: Alex.  Maybe if I were a thirteen year old girl it would not have been a problem.