Oscar
Hangover?
I was less dismayed than some at Green Book taking best picture. Notwithstanding the controversies, the movie is quite good, and Mahershala Ali deserved his second Oscar for his role as the African-American pianist Don Shirley. Still Roma was in a class above, a masterwork by every measure. In 91 years the big Oscar has never gone to a non-English language film and here was a golden chance to end that. (Compare Roma’s 96% rating on metacritic.com to the reverse numbers of 69% for Green Book; the critical consensus is clear.) Was it the fact that Netflix produced Roma? A black-and-white movie with no big-name stars? (Netflix also produced and is streaming the winning documentary short Period. End of Sentence. Then again theatrical distribution is not an issue for shorts.)
Bohemian
Rhapsody was another Oscar-favoured film dogged by
controversy and hated by some critics with a passion. But there
were also the Spike Lee and Olivia Colman moments. And Roma’s Mexican
writer-director-cinematographer Alfonso Cuarón did personally pick up three
Oscars (even if he should have had five), so not such a bad night after all.
Current
Releases: Kids Stuff, Liam, and Mads x 2
Let me start with some family-friendly
fare. I quite enjoyed The
Kid Who Would Be King (UK https://www.foxmovies.com/movies/the-kid-who-would-be-king)
which casts Louis Serkis, the son of actor-director Andy Serkis, in the central
role of the boy hero of the title. Louis
plays Alex, a bullied young boy who accidentally pulls the magic sword from
stone in a mashup of contemporary boyish fantasy and Arthurian legend. Missing an absent father, Alex gets help from
a young/old wizard who can transform into an owl. There are some clever
elements and virtuous life lessons inserted into the narrative as a chivalrous
Alex bring his tormentors to his side and mobilizes a children’s crusade to
save Britain from subterranean dark forces during a solar eclipse. It’s all very far-fetched of course, but
given the stormy spectacle of Britain tearing itself apart over “Brexit”,
there’s something to be said for the ennobling faith of children.
I
loved the first Lego Movie from 2014
with its toy characters going up against the sinister ‘Lord Business”. This was
Lego storytelling far beyond the simple bricks I played with as a kid. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
(U.S./Denmark/Norway/Australia http://www.thelegomovie.net/)
isn’t quite up to that high standard.
The fantasy scenario involves an alien invasion with the threat of
“Ourmomageddon”. Still some favourites
are back—especially Emmet Brickowski (voiced by Chris Pratt), Lucy (Elizabeth
Banks), and Batman (Will Arnett). Emmet has to resist turning into a grownup
meaner version of himself named Rex Dangervest. Although everything isn’t
awesome this time around, the outcome is positive with a moral lesson for human
children (a boy and kid sister) learning to get along.
Cold Pursuit (U.S./UK/Norway/Canada
https://www.lionsgate.com/movies/cold-pursuit)
The best thing about Norwegian director
Hans Petter Moland’s inferior English-language remake of his excellent 2014
crime drama In Order of Disappearance
(criminally underseen in North America) is the witty Oscar Wilde aphorism of
the opening frame: “Some bring happiness wherever they go; others whenever they
go.” Ponder that a moment.
Still
Moland does try to mimic some of the original’s arresting elements. The main character is a snowplow operator
who’s just received his small town’s “citizen of the year” honour. Stellan Skarsgård—who also stars in Molland’s latest
feature Out Stealing Horses that’s
already premiered to acclaim at the Berlin film festival—has been replaced by
Liam Neeson who seems to have made a specialty of the revenge thriller genre. The
location has been switched to snow-swept Colorado (actually Alberta and B.C.)
and the town is the fictional ski resort of Kehoe. Neeson plays Nels Coxman whose son Kyle is
murdered by a cocaine-smuggling gang, his death faked to look like a heroin
overdose. Nels grieving wife Grace (an underused Laura Dern) asks few questions
then departs for good, leaving a wrathful Nels, averted from a suicide attempt,
determined to track down those responsible—right up to the nasty control-freak
kingpin in Denver nicknamed “Viking”. So
the nicknamed targets start falling like bowling pins, sent to hell, the bodies
cleverly disposed of.
In
the Norwegian original the plot included a bloody drug turf war with Serbian
gangsters. Here the warfare erupts with the henchmen of a rival drug-smuggling
Native American band led by “White Bull” (played by Canadian Tom Jackson). That
allows for a bit of Indigenous satire. (There’s even a fleeting gay moment
between two of Viking’s heavies … say what?) In the climax Viking’s young son is kidnapped
and a mass shootout ensues. Although the
disappearances have caught the attention of a mismatched pair of Kehoe cops,
they mainly serve as spectators to the mounting body count. No joke, Coxman
works for an outfit called “Open Road”—which proves to be a snowy road to
perdition indeed. B-
Polar
(U.S./Germany)
The farthest north this blood-soaked
Netflix production gets is Montana in winter.
Swedish director Jonas Åkerlund, adapting
a graphic novel, doubles down on the gore as ace assassin Duncan Vizla (aka
“The Black Kaiser”) gets even with the sleazy killer-for-hire outfit “Damocles”
that employs him. Duncan is played by
Danish star Mads Mikkelson, which is frankly the only reason to give it a
look. You see Duncan is about to retire,
owed a multi-millions payout, and Damocles, led by a cartoonish psychopath Mr.
Blut (Matt Lucas), would rather save by eliminating Duncan. So Duncan has to put his skills to work on
Damocles. It’s a very messy business. There’s a gruesome torture scene, and a
twisty subplot involving an aggrieved young woman Camille (Vanessa Hudgens)
holed up in a nearby Montana cabin. It’s
hardly a spoiler to say that Mads is still standing at the end, though Camille
is the only borderline sympathetic character. Polar’s dismal 19% rating on
metacritics.com is generous. D
Arctic (Iceland https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/arctic)
Mads Mikkelsen commands the screen in this
harrowing survival tale helmed by first-time director Joe Penna which premiered
at last May’s Cannes film festival.
Iceland, where it was filmed, actually lies below the Arctic Circle
except for a slice of the tiny northern island of Grimsey which I visited last
July. Still its fantastic landscapes in
winter provide an effective backdrop for the unnamed remote location.
Mikkelsen’s character is the sole occupant of a small
plane that has crashed in the wilderness.
Fortunately he appears uninjured and the plane’s interior can still be
used for shelter. He has carved a huge
“SOS” in the surrounding snowscape. He is resourceful in getting water and
catching fish through an ice hole while trying to obtain a radio signal. But disaster strikes when a helicopter that
spots him crashes in a blizzard, killing the pilot and badly injuring the young
female passenger (Maria Thelma Smáradóttir).
The man attends to her wounds as best he can. After a few days with no sign of any rescue
aircraft, he decides they must go for help using the map he has found. That means bundling up the almost comatose
woman and pulling her on a makeshift sleigh.
Can both lives be saved or even one? The journey involves terrible
ordeals—impassable terrain, an encounter with a polar bear, a near-fatal
fall. With no sense of a Hollywood
ending, all we have is this man up against the odds right to the movie’s last
second. Somehow a movie with almost no
words manages to tell a gripping human story.
A
Comments
Post a Comment