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Film Features Film/TV

Now Playing in Memphis: Gran Turismo, Jurassic Park, and Indie Rock

 

Jann Mardenborough loved the auto racing simulation Gran Turismo, and was picked to compete on GT Academy, a British reality show where video game players competed to get a shot at driving in a real Formula One race. He went on to a successful career driving for Nissan. In Gran Turismo, his story has been dramatized by District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, starring Midsommar’s Archie Madekwe as Mardenborough and Stranger Things‘ David Harbour as his trainer. Expect inspirational speeches about cars that go vroom.

Blue Beetle, the latest superhero story from DC, stars Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes, a Hispanic college student who is unexpectedly gifted with superpowers by an alien robot scarab. As he tries to come to terms with his new identity and new responsibilities, he has help from his large extended family, including comedian George Lopez as his uncle. 

While Barbie and Oppenheimer dominated the headlines this summer, Talk To Me, the debut horror film from Aussie YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou has become a sleeper hit. 17-year-old Mia (Sophie Wilde) tries to use a mummified severed hand to contact the spirit of her dead brother, and gets a lot more than she bargained for. 

In Golda, Helen Mirren stars as Golda Meir, the prime minister who led Israel to victory during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  

Speaking of biopics, here’s one about baseballer Ricky Hill, who overcame a physical handicap to … play baseball.

What would late summer be without Liam Neeson receiving a mysterious phone call which thrusts him, an everyman, into an unfamiliar world of violence and danger? Just so happens, he possesses certain skills. This time, they got a little Speed in the mix to liven things up a little.

Remember when Jurassic Park movies were good? If so or if not, the still unconquered original Jurassic Park is getting a 30th anniversary run in theaters starting Friday.

Thursday, August 31, the Crosstown Arts Film Series presents The Elephant 6 Recording Co. The music documentary traces the Ruston, Louisiana collective which produced indie wonders like Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, and Of Montreal.

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Film Features Film/TV

Silence

If God is good, and everything he does is good, then why is man doomed to a lifetime of suffering? That’s a problem that has bedeviled every philosopher since Plato put stylus to goatskin. All religions must address it at some point, even if it is just to wave it away. It’s also the central question around which Martin Scorsese built his epic, Silence.

It’s 1633, and the age of colonialism is in full swing. Jesuit missionaries, Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), find out that their mentor, Cristóvão Ferreria (Liam Neeson), has gone missing in Nagasaki, Japan, amidst a crackdown by the shogunate on the country’s small but fervent Christian population. Worse still, the last word on Ferreria was that he had denounced Christianity before meeting his uncertain fate. Rodrigues and Garupe can’t believe that and ask permission to sneak into Japan and clear their teacher’s name. Reluctantly, their superiors agree, and they book passage with smugglers from Macau to Japan. Their guide, the only Japanese person they can find, is a drunken lout named Kichijiro (Yôsuke Kubozuka), who takes them to a tiny fishing village on the Japanese coast. There, they find a population terrified by the Inquisitor Inoue Masashige (Issei Ogata), a ruthless hunter of Christians.

Jesuits have a reputation as something like Christian ninjas, so laying low in the neighborhood priest hole is no big deal for Rodrigues and Garupe. As word spreads through the Christian underground, Rodrigues, whose internal monologue provides the narration for the early part of Silence, finds himself amazed at the hardscrabble faith of the downtrodden fisher people who brave the shogun’s patrols to come to confession. When he sneaks off to a neighboring village, he converts hundreds of souls. Maybe the difficulties of Japan have been overstated, he thinks, and his simple faith will be enough to save a country.

He is completely wrong. The Inquistor’s men catch wind of the presence of the priests and descend on the village, forcing Rodrigues and Garupe to flee as the villagers sacrifice themselves on their behalf. Watching three villagers suffer for days as they are crucified in the ocean is just the first of the unimaginable spiritual and physical torments that await the priests, and the audience, as the 161-minute film rolls on.

There is much to admire about Silence. In his skill as an image composer, Scorsese has few, if any, peers. Working again with The Wolf of Wall Street cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto, he creates one stunning tableau after another, beginning with the opening sequence in a misty hot spring that recalls Kurosawa’s “Mt. Fuji in Red” segment from Dreams. Garfield, only two years removed from hanging up his Spider-Man tights, gives it all in the portrayal of a priest whose worldview slowly crumbles around him. Driver is, as usual, fantastically physical. In one breathtaking long shot on a beach, an emaciated and filthy Driver towers over his captors, communicating his fear and defiance with only his gait. Ogata, a Japanese comedian, is a revelation as the surprisingly hospitable Inquisitor. And it’s good to see Neeson getting some meaty roles to chew on where he doesn’t have to rescue any kidnapped girls.

Scorsese has been trying to get this film through development since 1990. In the ensuing decades, he seems to have identified a little too strongly with his protagonists. Silence doesn’t so much question suffering as wallow around in it. The priests’ mission is difficult, but frankly, they don’t seem to be very good at their jobs. Instead of bringing peace to their flock, they bring only misery, and their famed Jesuit spy craft leaves much to be desired, as they are are easily flushed out by the authorities’ superior knowledge of the land and culture. When Rodrigues is being ferried in secret to a village by a grumpy boat captain, he has a moment of clarity: “I’m just a foreigner bringing trouble to these people.” Indeed, when he reaches his destination, it has already been destroyed by troops looking for him.

Scorsese has been in these theological waters before, helming the vastly superior The Last Temptation of Christ. Garfield is good, but he’s no Willem Dafoe. The controversial 1988 film found transcendence in the material world, while the message of Silence seems to be “Suffering sucks. Get used to it.”

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Film Features Film/TV

Third Person

What turns a comedy into a drama? It’s a good question that Third Person writer-director Paul Haggis would never deign to answer. But it’s a question the film raises, and you might come up with a few theories after watching it.

Like his Oscar-winning 2004 film Crash, Third Person is a sprawling and ambitious network narrative powered by pretty people in big cities trying to connect. One story set in NYC follows a downtrodden former soap opera star (Mila Kunis) engaged in a custody battle with her ex-husband, a world-renowned finger painter (WTF?) played by James Franco. A second story, which features a sad-sack corporate lackey (Adrien Brody) who slowly and justifiably grows infatuated with a mysterious beauty he meets in a bar (Moran Atias), takes place in Rome. The third story concerns a successful writer (Liam Neeson), who, when he isn’t staring meaningfully at the MacBook on the desk in his gigantic Paris hotel room, is carrying on an affair with a woman (Olivia Wilde) young enough to be his daughter.

As Third Person‘s stories unfold, a few provocative cross-cuts combine with some odd coincidences and repetitions to suggest a deeper connection among these people.

Wilde, however, stands out. Like Cameron Diaz, Wilde uses her intense, playful sexiness to go two places instead of one; the way she lounges about on couches and beds also heightens her cutting coolness, intelligence, and emotional distance. Wilde’s aspiring writer and gossip columnist character may be smarter and more attractive than anyone around her, but even she can’t breathe the necessary life into the perfectly sculpted and obviously written dialogue she’s given.

When the script’s literary aspirations mix with the rough-draft incompleteness of its interpersonal encounters, Third Person‘s deliberate yet roughed-in feel starts to undermine the weightier moments. Big emotional scenes can’t be trusted, and any bite or zip in smaller moments is lost; every meaningful frame, gesture, and slow-motion action sequence starts to look funny. Humorless ambition may be the currency of dictators and football coaches, but it makes for lousy art.

Third Person

Opens Friday, July 18th

Studio on the Square