Tag: Tom Hardy

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Film Features Film/TV

Now Playing Oct. 25-31: Scary Monsters

It’s Halloween weekend, so there’s plenty of scary stuff on the big screen this weekend. Let’s get to it!

Venom: The Last Dance

Tom Hardy returns for the third time as Eddie Brock, a former journalist who is the host for an alien symbiote named Venom. After defeating Carnage in the last film, he’s now on the run from the law in Mexico. But the man he’s accused of murdering is still alive, and the folks at Area 51 (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Juno Temple) are also looking for him, because the creator of the symbiotes, Knull (Andy Serkis), is on his way to Earth.

Your Monster

If you like your monsters a little friendlier, this indie rom com is the movie for you. Melissa Barrera is Laura, a young woman who survived cancer, only to have her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) break up with her. As she’s trying to deal with all this trauma, a monster (Tommy Dewey) appears in her closet. And you know what? He may be boyfriend material.

I AM

Memphis filmmakers Jessica Chaney and Amanda Willoughby’s film about the mental health struggles of Black women will debut on WKNO on Friday, October 25th. The film, which was a hit at last year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival, is also screening at MoSH on Saturday, October 26th at 4 p.m., accompanied by a panel discussion with the film’s stars, Dr. Crystal DeBerry (Licensed Therapist), Angela Sargent (Educator), Angel Coleman (Hairstylist & Business Owner), and Jacqueline E. Oselen (wellness coach & certified Yoga Instructor), moderated by Indie Memphis programmer Kayla Myers. It’s free, but you’ll need to RSVP here.

Crosstown Fright-Tober

Crosstown Theater concludes their Fright-Tober series with a double feature on Saturday, October 26. First up is an all-time classic from Universal Pictures, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Here’s one of the most famous sequences from the 1954 film, a landmark in underwater photography. That’s actor Ricou Browning holding his breath for 4 minutes per take in the Gill Man suit.

The second film of the double feature is 1981’s Evil Dead. Filmed in Tennessee, it’s a horror classic that launched the careers of director Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and, indirectly, the Coen Bros. Later films in the series, like Army of Darkness, pioneered modern horror comedy, but Evil Dead is legit scary and over-the-top as all hell.

Haxän with Alex Greene and the Rolling Head Orchestra

One of the most influential horror films ever made is Haxän, director Benjamin Christensen’s hybrid documentary about the witch hunts of Europe in the Middle Ages. The recreations of black sabbath celebrations (with Christensen himself playing Satan) and inquisitions provide indelible images that have resonated through the decades. Wednesday, October 30th at the Crosstown Arts Green Room, Memphis Flyer music editor Alex Greene and his Rolling Head Orchestra with reprise the theremin-heavy live score he composed for the silent film, which was commissioned by Indie Memphis in 2022. I was there the first time, and it was awesome!

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Film Features Film/TV

Now Playing July 12-18: Nic Cage Kills

Maika Monroe wonders what it all means in Longlegs. (Courtesy Neon)

Looks like a busy weekend at the movies — which is good, because it’s gonna be a hot one.

Longlegs

The great Nicholas Cage stars as a serial killer motivated by his devotion to Satan. Maika Monroe (of It Follows fame) is Lee Harker, an FBI agent assigned to catch him. Blair Underwood (of Krush Groove fame) is her partner, and Alicia Witt (of Dune and Twin Peaks fame) is her mom. Writer/director Osgood Perkins is not super famous yet, but his dad is Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame. 

Fly Me To The Moon 

Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum star as NASA’s PR director and launch director for the Apollo 11 mission. His job is to get the astronauts to the moon. Her job is to fake the moon landing if the astronauts fail. This film probably sounded like a good idea at the time. 

MaXXXine

Ti West and Mia Goth’s trilogy of twentieth century terror concludes with a slam-bang finale. Read my full review.

A Quiet Place: Day One

Lupita Nyong’o leads this hit prequel to 2018’s alien invasion movie. She plays Sam, a terminally ill cancer patient who witnesses the silent alien invasion in New York City. Can Sam and her cat Frodo survive the mass slaughter? Djimon Housou reprises his role as Henri from A Quiet Place Part II. 

Despicable Me 4

You know those oval yellow Minons your batty aunty and drunk uncle are always sharing memes about? They’re from the Despicable Me franchise. And guess what? They made another one!

Kinds of Kindness

Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone follow the Academy Award-winning Poor Things with a triptych of stories about debasing yourself for the benefit of others. Read my full review.

Inside Out 2

The movie of the summer is all about anxiety, and it couldn’t be more timely. Amy Poehler reprises her voice role as Joy, whose hold on the mind of her 13-year-old charge Riley (Kensington Tallman) is jarred loose by Anxiety (Maya Hawke), just a a pivotal hockey game threatens her self image.  

The Bikeriders

Director Jeff Nichols’ gritty portrait of Midwestern biker gangs stars Austin Butler and Tom Hardy looking mighty manly. Read my full review.

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Film Features Film/TV

Now Playing in Memphis: Inside Out 2 and the Best of the Coens

Jodie Cormer and Austin Butler ride bikes in The Bikeriders. (Courtesy Focus Features)

It’s hot, and you need to be in an air-conditioned movie theater. Lucky you, the lineup is stacked this week.

The Bikeriders

Arkansan Jeff Nichols, who is brother to Lucero frontman Ben Nichols, directs Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, and Jodie Comer in this biker gang epic. The Vandals MC began in the 1960s as a simple club for outcasts who like to ride. Over time, the organization slowly evolves into a dangerous organized crime syndicate. Can the original founders turn things around before the law cracks down? 

The Exorcism 

Russell Crowe stars as an actor who is playing a priest in a movie that looks a lot like The Exorcist, but for legal reasons is not. When he starts to see real demons, his daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) suspects he’s using drugs again. But the truth is much more complicated. 

Inside Out 2

Pixar’s latest is the biggest hit since Barbie, breaking the box office cold streak that has had some predicting the death of the theatrical experience. Well, turns out all you have to do get people in seats is make a great movie and market it properly. Who knew? Read my rapturous review in this week’s Memphis Flyer.

Time Warp Drive-In: Odd Noir

On Saturday, June 22, see three Coen Bros. masterpieces under the stars at the Malco Summer Drive-In: The Big Lebowski, Fargo, and No Country for Old Men. “Nobody fucks with the Jesus.”

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Venom

By virtue of an odd look or a silly voice, Tom Hardy has been the best thing in event pictures like The Revenant or The Dark Knight Rises. In that context he’s the triumph of mannerism, of the strange and idiosyncratic winning out over supposedly epic but mostly empty things. In the former he delivers a strange monologue about how his Dad ate a squirrel that was God, and it’s the most sincere thing in the movie. In the latter he is so resolute while wearing a bondage mask in an otherwise contractual Batman trilogy ender that people have imitated his voice for years.

It is unfortunate that Ruben Fleischer’s Venom repeats the pattern, and doesn’t craft him a better vehicle. Venom sprang from Spiderman’s rogues’ gallery, which was divvied up to make a buck. Spiderman has been licensed back to Marvel Studios, but Sony still owns his nemesis. So we get a formulaic hero origin story for a nightmarish monster.

Venom is one of three alien Symbiotes (or parasites, as they don’t like to be called) brought back from space to merge with involuntary human hosts. Defined by his evil Spiderman look, lusty tongue and large number of teeth. Venom infects investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Hardy) when Brock gets too close to Steve Jobs/Elon Musk amalgam Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) and his alien experimentation on the homeless.

Tom Hardy (right) in Venom

In the opening minutes Brock loses, in the manner of an 80’s movie or a comic you bought and finished in 15 minutes, his job, his girlfriend Anne and “everything I ever cared about.” Michelle Williams, who plays Anne, has had a career similar to Hardy. She’s associated with sincere arthouse dramas, but like Hardy’s beginnings in Star Trek, she started in the Halloween franchise and Dawson’s Creek. Fleischer uses both actors well. He doesn’t try to chain their sincerity to the bargain basement blockbuster plot (color graded dark blue and green, so you know the world is tough), but instead plays up their sense of humor, emphasizing their mundane reactions to terrible and ridiculous things.

As Brock, Hardy’s built an entire character around the moment in Star Wars when Han Solo stammers “We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?” He is constantly interrupting his own apologies and muttered explanations, his voice breaking in a transplanted New York accent that Williams matches. Once infected, he’s wonderful, apologizing to henchmen as his CGI self disembowels them, sating parasitical hunger with gross meals of chocolate and tater tots, going to a restaurant and bathing in a lobster tank, then eating the lobsters. He also voices the interior Bane-like voice of Venom, who is everything Eddie isn’t: Suave, powerful, and prone to wax eloquent about how delectable pancreata are.

The tone doesn’t gel. The action scenes, when they get away from the comedy of a mild-mannered guy apologizing for his uncontrollable urge to violence, are the same ones that you’ve seen all your life, and which will continue after you’re dead. There is a long car chase with black SUVs, and a de rigueur end fight between two identical visual effects. San Francisco is mainly defined here by inclined streets and the homeless, though photographed at night so that it looks like cinematic New York. Paul Thomas Anderson muse Melora Walters shows up in another downtrodden role as a vagabond with grime on her face. Jenny Slate plays a scientist whose thick glasses define her non-character.

Michelle Williams on line one.

Another way in which it reminded me of a colorful 80’s movie: Poverty is just a fact of life, and the homeless are punchlines or plot points. The evil CEO is God-like. Or if not the 80’s, it’s like a 30’s B-picture: fun and funny in small bits, but unable to have the plot follow the choices of its characters in unexpected directions.

The scary images of the Symbiotes entering people’s skin and undulating beneath are just gatekeepers to a power fantasy, one the movie cops to when a character muses on how nice it was being possessed. The problem is there are more modes of being in the world than idiotic idealists and omnipotent CEOs. For example, the corporations that have messed with the Spiderman universe are not run by evil geniuses. They’re just part of a system that perverts art for money.

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Film Features Film/TV

Dunkirk

At this point, Christopher Nolan is a lot like Led Zeppelin. Both the English director of brainy blockbusters and the deans of English classic rock had a talent for big, crowd-pleasing riffs. Nolan dominated the multiplex box office of the aughts and early teens the same way Led Zeppelin dominated album-oriented rock radio in the 1970s. And both Nolan and Zep are taken very seriously by both their fans and themselves.

Nolan and Zeppelin’s technical mastery of their respective forms turned out to be mixed blessings. Jimmy Page had an idiosyncratic style that worked extremely well for him, but as the ’70s gave way to the ’80s, the audience was bombarded by mediocre imitators. Zep was great, but those who came after were not so great, and there were so many of them. Nolan likewise constructed a unique style combining classical technique with modern digital technology. It was great in Inception but not so great when it was regurgitated in The Maze Runner.

Nolan-itis hit the superhero genre especially hard. Somewhere on the backside of the two-hour mark in The Dark Knight Rises, watching a hyper-realistic depiction of a guy dressed like a bat punching out masked terrorists started to get old. But the grimdark wouldn’t die. From Hunger Games to Man of Steel, assaultive mirthlessness was the order of the day. After Nolan hung up the batarang, Warner Brothers wouldn’t make another watchable superhero movie until this year’s Wonder Woman, and even Patty Jenkins’ instant classic lifts the ending from The Dark Knight Rises.

newest feature film, the WWII-era Dunkirk.

Rather than weeping because he had no more worlds to conquer after Interstellar, Nolan decided to go small — only small for Nolan means recreating the Battle of Dunkirk, IMAX-size, with as little CGI as possible. Artistically, it was a good decision. By bringing Dunkirk in at a brisk (for him) 106 minutes, Nolan rediscovers his gift for concision that made his early gems like Memento so pleasing.

Nolan sets up the situation swiftly and nearly wordlessly. It’s May 1940, and Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) is a British soldier retreating from the Nazis in northern France. When his squad is attacked while looting for food and water in the abandoned French port town, he is left as the only survivor. Looking to find a place to relieve himself, he stumbles onto the vast beach where tens of thousands of British troops are waiting for rescue from the German blitzkrieg. For a moment, the assembled might of an army waiting to go home looks imposing, but once the German dive bombers arrive, their true vulnerability is revealed.

In real life, 400,000 British and French soldiers were trapped on the beach until an ad hoc flotilla comprised of practically every seaworthy vessel in the British Isles sailed to the rescue. Nolan’s cast isn’t quite that big, but I don’t envy the extras wranglers who had to find places for everyone to relieve themselves on the French beach. Like Spielberg, Nolan has an almost Soviet talent for visualizing great movements of people. There is no lead actor, per se, in this film. Nolan’s screenplay follows three groups: Tommy and his mysterious comrade Gibson, who repeatedly try and fail to get off the beach; the crew of the Moonstone, a modest pleasure vessel captained by Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) who volunteers to ferry soldiers across the channel; and a flight of Spitfires, led by Tom Hardy, whose numbers dwindle as they try to keep the Luftwaffe busy while the evacuation proceeds. The three storylines proceed linearly but at radically different paces until they all come together for a finale above, on, and below the English Channel.

Aside from Rylance’s warm humanity and Cillian Murphy as a shivering PTSD case, the characterization is paper thin, but the plotting and editing is as tight as is expected from Nolan. From balletic dogfight sequences shot with IMAX cameras and real airplanes, to the horror inside a capsizing troop ship, the images he conjures are among the best of his career. There are also moments of almost accidental political relevance, such as when a squad of soldiers in a leaky boat has a miniature version of the Brexit debate, only with guns. Nolan’s vision of war is not sweeping, heroic action and sacrifice. It’s fear, foggy goggles, and ratty comms. The victors are the ones who make it home alive.

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Opinion The Last Word

Tom Hardy’s Lips

CREDIT: Featureflash | Dreamstime.com

I get Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and Jane Eyre confused. I always remember that Heathcliff and Catherine are in Wuthering Heights because of that Monty Python sketch where they act it out in semaphore. Obviously, as problems go, this isn’t a bad one. There are just all those wailing women and wives in attics and silent, deeply disturbed men; who can keep up? I tried to watch a movie adaptation of one of these not too long ago. I don’t remember which because they’re all the same, but this had Tom Hardy in it. I couldn’t pay attention to the story because of Tom Hardy’s lips. Have you seen them? Tom Hardy is to lips as Milton Berle was to, er, uh, comedy.

Featureflash | Dreamstime.com

Tom Hardy

Here’s the thing. For every John Irving or Henry James novel I read, I read about 10 Nora Roberts romances. I know I’m supposed to be all cool and hip and be like, oh, I only read David Foster Wallace out loud to Honduran orphans while eating organic acorn tofu in the porch chair my ironically suspendered husband carved from a fallen Appalachian birch maple — very rare — and drinking yaupon beer. Sometimes I’ll watch the movie first, then read the book. That way I can make my holier-than-thou friends’ heads explode. I’ve read some good stuff this way. I’ve also seen some bad stuff this way. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men comes to mind.

People love to rag on Nora because of her formula. There’s a meet cute, they hate each other, they acknowledge their mutual attraction but ignore it, and they end up in an adorable restored bungalow. Like John Irving doesn’t have a formula? Kid has attachment to strange object, there’s a bear, someone is horribly mutilated or somehow disfigured, something gets blown up, and they end up in Amsterdam.

Because I love Steve Yarbrough doesn’t mean I have to hate Vince Flynn. What would we do when we’re stranded in the Charlotte airport if it weren’t for Vince Flynn? Just because I absolutely have to have a bologna sandwich with mayonnaise and Doritos on pasty white bread a couple times a year doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate Amish chicken breasts stuffed with chard and turnips in a balsamic reduction.

I think women are particularly susceptible to secret shames because of Lululemon.

First, whenever I see that name, in my head I pronounce it “Lulu Mon,” and I imagine happy steel drummers and jerk chicken. I think even my father knows what Lululemons are, and he thinks a “crack whore” means she’s good at her job. But in case you get out even less than my father, these things I speak of are fancy, stretchy yoga pants. Except in Jackson, Mississippi, where they are fancy middle-aged-woman-running-up-to-Whole-Foods pants. These yoga pants are well-made, expensive, and their size XL is a 12. Gentlemen, you might be confused. It’s like finding a great pair of Sansabelts and they only go up to a 32. So ladies such as myself, who could really use a good yoga class or 10, can’t wear them. Did I mention they’re expensive? Less than a yard of Spandex that you can’t even put in the dryer, and they won’t make your Cow Face Pose any easier for you.

Anyway, you get your Lululemons and your mandatory copy of Eat, Pray, Love, and then you start eliminating stuff from your diet. And I’m not talking through digestion. You give up wheat, nuts, beans, rice, and start drinking green kale sludge with chia seeds sprinkled on top. Your friend, a reader of Important Books, gives you Deepak Chopra, and you’re off. You hide your Michelob Ultra behind your organic goat’s milk. You realize you’ve never read anything by Joyce Carol Oates, so you buy her entire oeuvre used from Amazon but act like they’re old and came from an independent book store. You start using the word “encounter” instead of “meet.”

You want cool, but let me tell you something: You will never be cool. Read what you want. Eat fast food every now and then. Preferably something with the word “poppers” in the name. You know what? If you love Red Lobster cheddar biscuits, order them! Those biscuits are delightful. If your so-called friends can’t handle the truth of you, dump them. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life. What you need is more biscuits.

Susan Wilson also writes for yeahandanotherthing.com and likethedew.com. She and her husband Chuck have lived here long enough to know that Midtown does not start at Highland.

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Film Features Film/TV

The Revenant

Leonardo DiCaprio wants you to know that he ate an elk heart, raw. DiCaprio is a vegetarian, but he ate that raw elk heart because Alejandro Iñárritu asked him to. DiCaprio was ACTING.

Last weekend, the Hollywood Foreign Press awarded DiCaprio their Best Actor award, and The Revenant Best Picture. Given that Iñárritu’s last film, Birdman, won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, the Golden Globe wins makes The Revenant the front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar. But is it the best film of 2015?

The short answer is no, but that’s mostly because 2015 was a banner year that included the stone-cold masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road. But the longer, more interesting answer is that The Revenant is a monumental work from a filmic genius given free reign at the height of his power. And given that the film’s budget ended up ballooning from $60 million to $135 million, “free reign” seems like an accurate description.

Hardy slays as Iñárritu’s villain.

Iñárritu’s got his Oscar, but DiCaprio does not, despite working with Steven Spielberg in Catch Me If You Can; Martin Scorsese for six films, including Gangs of New York and The Aviator; and, of course, James “King of the World!” Cameron for Best Picture winner Titanic. DiCaprio thinks it’s time he took home some hardware of his own, which brings us back to the elk heart. DiCaprio wants you to know that he will do literally anything to get that statue. So DiCaprio teamed with Iñárritu at exactly the right time.

Or possibly, from the point of view of DiCaprio’s health and well-being, exactly the wrong time. The Revenant is based on the story of Hugh Glass, a trapper and frontiersman who, during an 1823 expedition to what is now Montana, was mauled by a bear and left for dead by his comrades. But when he awoke to find himself not dead, he dragged himself more than 200 miles across the hostile, frozen wilderness to the nearest American settlement. In the course of Iñárritu’s epic retelling of Glass’ story, DiCaprio repeatedly dunks himself in freezing water, eats unspeakable offal, and spends at least 30 minutes of the almost three-hour movie foaming at the mouth while tied to a makeshift stretcher and being thrown through the forest by a gang of grumpy mountain men. It’s a ballsy, committed performance, and DiCaprio knows it. Occasionally, in one of his many close-ups, he stares into the camera with a look that screams “Are you not entertained?”

The film The Revenant reminds me of the most is Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, the 1980 Western epic that was such a disaster that its director is blamed for ending the American auteur period of the 1970s, when the director’s vision was paramount. There are some people who, to this day, defend Heaven’s Gate as a misunderstood masterpiece. Those people are mostly French, and they’re wrong. But imagine a world in which Cimino was right, and Heaven’s Gate actually worked. Accompanied, as in Birdman, by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Iñárritu captures mind-destroyingly beautiful images of the West. The young crescent moon and Venus make frequent appearances in the sky, as do the shimmering red Northern Lights. At one point, they mix a giant avalanche with a normal reaction shot, and DiCaprio doesn’t even flinch. That’s how committed DiCaprio is: avalanche committed.

Somewhere along the way of this oversized adventure, the nonstop spectacle of inhuman endurance and existential questioning becomes overwhelming. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, The Revenant is like being beaten in the head with a gold brick. It’s actually an hour shorter than Heaven’s Gate, but still about 30 minutes too long. I do not envy the editor who had to decide what to cut from the constant cavalcade of beautiful shots, but that’s why they call editing “killing your babies,” and there needed to be more of that. I admit to having a love-hate relationship with Iñárritu, but I respect his skill and passion while still believing Birdman was a better distillation of his wild aesthetic than The Revenant. But yes, let’s give Leo his Oscar, please, so he can go back to eating healthy food, and maybe get warm.

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Film Features Film/TV

The Year in Film 2015

It’s fashionable to complain about how bad Hollywood movies have become. But from the perspective of a critic who has to watch it all go down, it’s simply not the case. At any given time in 2015, there was at least one good film in theaters in Memphis—it just may not have been the most heavily promoted one. So here’s my list of awards for a crowded, eventful year.

Worst Picture: Pixels

I watched a lot of crap this year, like the incoherent Terminator Genysis, the sociopathic San Andreas, the vomitous fanwank Furious 7, and the misbegotten Secret in Their Eyes. But those movies were just bad. Pixels not only sucked, it was mean-spirited, toxic, and ugly. Adam Sandler, it’s been a good run, but it’s time to retire.

Actually, I take that back. It hasn’t been a good run.

Most Divisive: Inherent Vice

Technically a 2014 release, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s ode to the lost world of California hippiedom didn’t play in Memphis until January. Its long takes and dense dialogue spun a powerful spell. But it wasn’t for everyone. Many people responded with either a “WTF?” or a visceral hatred. Such strongly split opinions are usually a sign of artistic success; you either loved it or hated it, but you won’t forget it.

Best Performances: Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, Room

Room is an inventive, harrowing, and beautiful work on every level, but the film’s most extraordinary element is the chemistry between Brie Larson and 9-year-old Jacob Tremblay, who play a mother and son held hostage by a sexual abuser. Larson’s been good in Short Term 12 and Trainwreck, but this is her real breakthrough performance. As for Tremblay, here’s hoping we’ve just gotten a taste of things to come.

Chewbacca

Best Performance By A Nonhuman: Chewbacca

Star Wars: The Force Awakens returned the Mother of All Franchises to cultural prominence after years in the prequel wilderness. Newcomers like Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver joined the returned cast of the Orig Trig Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in turning in good performances. Lawrence Kasdan’s script gave Chewbacca a lot more to do, and Peter Mayhew rose to the occasion with a surprisingly expressive performance. Let the Wookiee win.

Best Memphis Movie: The Keepers

Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson’s film about the people who keep the Memphis Zoo running ran away with Indie Memphis this year, selling out multiple shows and winning Best Hometowner Feature. Four years in the making, it’s a rarity in 21st century film: a patient verité portrait whose only agenda is compassion and wonder.

Best Conversation Starter: But for the Grace

In 2001, Memphis welcomed Sudanese refugee Emmanuel A. Amido. This year, he rewarded our hospitality with But for the Grace. The thoughtful film is a frank examination of race relations in America seen through the lens of religion. The Indie Memphis Audience Award winner sparked an intense Q&A session after its premiere screening that followed the filmmaker out into the lobby. It’s a timely reminder of the power of film to illuminate social change.

Best Comedy: What We Do in the Shadows

What happens when a group of vampire roommates stop being polite and start getting real? Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement and Eagle vs Shark‘s Taika Waititi codirected this deadpan masterpiece that applied the This Is Spinal Tap formula to the Twilight set. Their stellar cast’s enthusiasm and commitment to the gags made for the most biting comedy of the year.

Best Animation: Inside Out

The strongest Pixar film since Wall-E had heavy competition in the form of the Irish lullaby Song of the Sea, but ultimately, Inside Out was the year’s emotional favorite. It wasn’t just the combination of voice talent Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, and Phyllis Smith with the outstanding character design of Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness that made director Pete Docter’s film crackle, it was the way the entire carefully crafted package came together to deliver a message of acceptance and understanding for kids and adults who are wrestling with their feelings in a hard and changing world.

It Follows

Best Horror: It Follows

The best horror films are the ones that do a lot with a little, and It Follows is a sterling example of the breed. Director David Robert Mitchell’s second feature is a model of economy that sets up its simple premise with a single opening shot that tracks a desperate young woman running from an invisible tormentor. But there’s no escaping from the past here, only delaying the inevitable by spreading the curse of sex and death.

Teenage Dreams: Dope and The Diary of a Teenage Girl

2015 saw a pair of excellent coming-of-age films. Dope, written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, introduced actor Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a hapless nerd who learns to stand up for himself in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Somewhere between Risky Business and Do the Right Thing, it brought the teen comedy into the multicultural moment.

Similarly, Marielle Heller’s graphic novel adaptation The Diary of a Teenage Girl introduced British actress Bel Powley to American audiences, and took a completely different course than Dope. It’s a frank, sometimes painful exploration of teenage sexual awakening that cuts the harrowing plot with moments of magical realist reverie provided by a beautiful mix of animation and live action.

Immortal Music: Straight Outta Compton and Love & Mercy

The two best musical biopics of the year couldn’t have been more different. Straight Outta Compton was director F. Gary Gray’s straightforward story of N.W.A., depending on the performances of Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his own father, Ice Cube, for its explosive impact. That it was a huge hit with audiences proved that this was the epic hip-hop movie the nation has been waiting for.

Director Bill Pohlad’s dreamlike Love & Mercy, on the other hand, used innovative structure and intricate sound design to tell the story of Brian Wilson’s rise to greatness and subsequent fall into insanity. In a better world, Paul Dano and John Cusack would share a Best Actor nomination for their tag-team portrayal of the Beach Boys resident genius.

Sicario

Best Cinematography: Sicario

From Benicio del Toro’s chilling stare to the twisty, timely screenplay, everything about director Denis Villeneuve’s drug-war epic crackles with life. But it’s Roger Deakins’ transcendent cinematography that cements its greatness. Deakins paints the bleak landscapes of the Southwest with subtle variations of color, and films an entire sequence in infrared with more beauty than most shooters can manage in visible light. If you want to see a master at the top of his game, look no further.

He’s Still Got It: Bridge of Spies

While marvelling about Bridge of Spies‘ performances, composition, and general artistic unity, I said “Why can’t all films be this well put together?”

To which the Flyer‘s Chris Davis replied, “Are you really asking why all directors can’t be as good as Steven Spielberg?”

Well, yeah, I am.

Hot Topic: Journalism

Journalism was the subject of four films this year, two good and two not so much. True Story saw Jonah Hill and James Franco get serious, but it was a dud. Truth told the story of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes’ fall from the top-of-the-TV-news tower, but its commitment to truth was questionable. The End of the Tour was a compelling portrait of the late author David Foster Wallace through the eyes of a scribe assigned to profile him. But the best of the bunch was Spotlight, the story of how the Boston Catholic pedophile priest scandal was uncovered, starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing Spotlight all over the Oscars this year.

Had To Be There: The Walk

Robert Zemeckis’ film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who tightrope-walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, was a hot mess. But the extended sequence of the feat itself was among the best uses of 3-D I’ve ever seen. The film flopped, and its real power simply won’t translate to home video, no matter how big your screen is, but on the big screen at the Paradiso, it was a stunning experience.

MVP: Samuel L. Jackson

First, he came back from the grave as Nick Fury to anchor Joss Whedon’s underrated Avengers: Age of Ultron. Then he channeled Rufus Thomas to provide a one-man Greek chorus for Spike Lee’s wild musical polemic Chi-Raq. He rounds out the year with a powerhouse performance in Quentin Tarantino’s widescreen western The Hateful Eight. Is it too late for him to run for president?

Best Documentary: Best of Enemies

Memphis writer/director Robert Gordon teamed up with Twenty Feet From Stardom director Morgan Neville to create this intellectual epic. With masterful editing of copious archival footage, they make a compelling case that the 1968 televised debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal laid out the political battleground for the next 40 years and changed television news forever. In a year full of good documentaries, none were more well-executed or important than this historic tour de force.

Best Picture: Mad Max: Fury Road

From the time the first trailers hit, it was obvious that 2015 would belong to one film. I’m not talking about The Force Awakens. I’m talking about Mad Max: Fury Road. Rarely has a single film rocked the body while engaging the mind like George Miller’s supreme symphony of crashing cars and heavy metal guitars. Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa will go down in history next to Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Sigourney Weaver in Alien as one of the greatest action turns of all time. The scene where she meets Max, played by Tom Hardy, may be the single best fight scene in cinema history. Miller worked on this film for 17 years, and it shows in every lovingly detailed frame. Destined to be studied for decades, Fury Road rides immortal, shiny, and chrome.

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The Drop

When a famous actor dies in his or her prime, it can be a while before their final film is released. Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar in 1976 for Network, as did Heath Ledger, who won for his performance as the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight. James Gandolfini, who died in June 2013, was nominated posthumously for a passel of awards last year for starring opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Enough Said. But, it turns out, that wasn’t his final role.

James Gandolfini and Tom Hardy

The run down Brooklyn environs where The Drop is set was familiar territory to Gandolfini, who spent 8 years across the river in New Jersey playing crime boss Tony in The Sopranos. Gandolfini’s character in The Drop, Marv, was not much of a stretch for the late actor: He’s pretty much just Tony Soprano, only he’s not very good at being a gangster. He used to own his own bar, Cousin Marv’s, but then he got into some trouble with gambling debts and lost control of the place to a bunch of Chechen gangsters, led by Covka (Michael Aronov). But Marv is still a trusted, stand-up guy, and nowadays, his bar is one of many in the New York area used as a drop point for illegal gambling money destined for laundering.

These facts are laid out for the audience in an opening voice-over by Bob (Tom Hardy), the bartender at Cousin Marv’s and, not coincidentally, Marv’s actual cousin. The Drop is ostensibly Bob’s story, but as you may have intuited from the fact that I’m halfway done with this review and I’m just now getting around to mentioning him, Hardy is overshadowed by Gandolfini at every turn.

Bob doesn’t come across as too bright, and while he’s at home behind the bar, he seems to drift through life detached from the world. He goes to 8 a.m. mass every morning at the local Catholic church, but he never takes communion. Walking home from the bar late one night, he finds a beaten, bloody pitbull puppy in a trashcan in front of a house that belongs to Nadia (Noomi Rapace). Bob, being the stoic, kind of slow guy that he is, doesn’t know how to take care of a dog, so Nadia has to help him get up to speed on the subject, and sparks fly.

Actually, sparks completely fail to fly. Hardy has proven himself to be a good actor in roles such as this year’s Locke and in 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but here, he takes taciturn to its ridiculous extreme. Subtlety is a virtue for a screen actor, but Hardy sleepwalks through The Drop. His alleged love interest Nadia is given so little to do (besides being kind to animals) that the single facial expression Rapace wears for the entire movie is appropriate. When feminist film writers complain about women whose only apparent function is to be put in peril to motivate the hero, Nadia is exactly what they’re talking about. But if there’s no chemistry between the hero and the damsel in distress, then it’s pretty hard to care when she’s in peril.

But then again, it’s pretty hard to care about anything in The Drop. No one seems to express any emotion besides baseless machismo. The heist around which the plot revolves (robbing the drop bar on Superbowl Sunday when it is flush with cash) is pretty small potatoes — which, in a world where every movie hero has to save the world and/or universe, is actually kind of refreshing. Director Michael R. Roskam and writer Dennis Lehane are clearly going for a slow burn, but they turned in a no-burn. The camera loved Gandolfini to the end, and if you’re a big fan, it’s probably worth it to see him be the wiseguy one more time. But there’s no other reason to recommend The Drop.

The Drop
Opens Friday, September 12th
Studio on the Square

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A Review of Locke

When you get down to it, every film is just a series of conversations. Even the ones that depend on big explosions and space battles have to hold the occasional conversation to explain to the audience why they should care about the onscreen pyrotechnics.

The new film Locke by writer turned director Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) asks what happens when you boil a film down to that essential element and beyond. The entire movie takes place during a fateful car trip from the north of England down to London. The car’s sole occupant is Ian Locke, played by Tom Hardy, last seen onscreen beneath a frightening muzzle as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Christopher Nolan’s favorite actor is the sole face audiences see in Locke, sharing the screen with only the snazzy BMW crossover he drives and a whole lot of fashionably out-of-focus shots of the British road system at night. That Locke is much more entertaining than it sounds is a tribute to Knight’s skill as a writer and Hardy’s handsome, expressive mug.

Tom Hardy stars as Ian Locke in the surprisingly rich story written and directed by Steven Knight.

The film begins with a long, slow pan over a giant construction site at dusk. This is where Locke works, and he is apparently very good at his job as a construction executive. Tomorrow is a big day for Locke, as we come to find out that he is going to be responsible for “the largest concrete pour in Europe outside the defense and nuclear industries” that will (hopefully) be the foundation on which a 55-story building will rise. Construction, specifically concrete, is not only Locke’s job, it is his great passion. The only time he waxes poetic in the film is when he’s speaking about his job. “You don’t even trust God with concrete,” he says. So why is he driving away from the jobsite at 90 kilometers per hour? I don’t want to give too much away about the surprisingly rich story Knight wrings out of the bare-bones premise of an almost real-time chronicle of the worst night of a guy’s life, as the gradual revelation of the circumstances leading up to the night drive are a key component of the film’s delicate pleasures.

When artists first start out, we tend to believe that unfettered freedom of thought is necessary to create great things. But in practice, imposing limitations on some aspects of your craft can lead to big breakthroughs in the remaining aspects. Such is the case with Locke, which puts all of the pressure on the dialog and Hardy’s canny growl to deliver the goods. The film bumps up against its limitations early and often; by the end, the bokeh photography crosses the line from hypnotic to tedious. While it is not as effective a one-hander as 2013’s Bob Birdnow’s Remarkable Tale Of Human Survival and the Transcendence of Self, Locke does manage to pack a wide range of emotions onto the M1 highway to London.

Locke
Now Showing
Studio on the Square