Review: "Luxor"

 

As I've gotten older, I've found myself much more appreciate of slower, languid filmmaking. Movies that would have bored me to death with the lack of a strong narrative thread at age 20 can more easily worm their way into my heart now. 

I can't say, though, that "Luxor" was one of those.

Andrea Riseborough plays Hana, a woman at the crossroads of life, figuratively and literally. A surgeon who practices in some of the world's worst hot spots for conflict and economic strife, she has some time off before moving on to her next assignment. She's decided to spend it in and around Luxor, the Egyptian city where she made pleasant memories 20 years earlier.

Much of the movie, written and directed by Zeina Durra, consists of just following Hana around as she travels and looks at things. The wordless stretches are sometimes so long that when a character speaks again, we're momentarily jarred by the relative cacophony. 

I guess we would call this movie a romance, since not long into her journeys Hana stumbles across Sultan (Karim Saleh), an archaeologist she knew back in the day. It is soon apparent that they were lovers, and their respective career and personal paths diverged. But now rejoined, they find the mutual longing is still there.

We get the sense that Hana, with her seemingly random day trips to historical spots, was probably searching for Sultan -- even if she didn't know it herself.

Not much really happens after that in the traditional sense of film storytelling. He shows her a "feminist temple" where a pair of lovers of an insignificant king raided his burial place, scattering his remains and replacing his images with their own. They go to his current dig to meet up with some of her other friends from back in the day. 

Sultan follows Hana around like a presumptuous puppy, constantly with an arm on her or just encircling her body without touching, as if declaring ownership of her space. She is less receptive to a reunion than he is, but it feels like she's arguing with her own heart against the direction it's pulling.

With her omnipresent pulled-back blonde waves, thin face and shapeless clothes, Hana is playing the role of tourist in her own life rather than living it. She does cast sidelong glances at children playing nearby, and mentions to Sultan that she doesn't look at his Facebook page because it would be hurtful to see him happy on a beach with a wife and children.

I was never truly bored watching "Luxor," though I'll add I wasn't happy when its brief 85-minute runtime came to a close. I formed a pretty good idea of where the movie would end up, which it did exactly, and that's always a trifle disappointing.

"Luxor" is essentially the visualization of one woman wrestling with the first half of her life, which will end up deciding how the second one unfolds. That's ripe material for a really compelling story, but instead we just get the contemplation.

 

Review: "Possessor (Uncut)"

 

I'm a hi-lo man when it comes to horror. I grew up on the stuff, a true devotee devouring gory zombie flicks before I had down-there hairs. This continued into adulthood, but somewhere around 2000 either I changed or the fright flicks did, and horror films haven't held the same appeal for me since.

It's strange because a lot of horror diehards believe we're in the middle of the genre's golden age, with a lot of popular stuff going straight to video or niche streaming services along with a few high-profile theatrical flicks everyone insisted were so good and so scary where I was firmly ensconced in Meh-town.

"Heritage?" "Midsommar?" I didn't even so much as twitch an eyelid.

But "Possessor?" Yeah, this movie creeped me the hell out.

It's written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, a family name that is like the Cartier of scare flicks. Daddy David specialized in mind-twisty frightful films ("Videodrone," "Scanners") where our conception of reality was as much threatened as the characters' lives. "Possessor" is thoroughly of that bloodline, something that feels like it was hatched out of the mind of sci-fi pessimist Philip K. Dick ("Blade Runner").

Note: the film is being distributed with an "Uncut" suffix as if to suggest there was a previous, tamer version of the film (of which I'm unaware). It's not being released with an MPAA rating but would surely be NC-17 if it were, with hard-to-look-at violence, nudity and porn-adjacent activity.

The high/low concept is that assassins are recruited to invade the minds of an innocent victim through a neural link inserted in their brain and then use them as avatars to kill high-price targets with no risk to themselves. The possessor then has the host kill themselves, at which time they return to their own body and consciousness. 

To the rest of the world, it seems like a random murder-suicide rather than an orchestrated hit.

We see one of these to start the story, as dolled-up female entertainers enter a high-roller club, and one of them (Gabrielle Graham) plunges a knife into a lawyer somebody must really hate. And then she does it again, and again, and again, and many more agains. But it turns out the possessor isn't able to pull the trigger on her (borrowed) self, nearly fouling up the job.

This is Tasya Vos, played by Andrea Riseborough, the proverbial best of the best. Outwardly, she seems like an icy blonde but, as we shall see, there are cracks in her facade as a remorseless killer.

Her handler, Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh), treats Tasya almost like an adopted daughter, and is even grooming her to be her own replacement. Though Girder is a little worried Tasya's personal life is intruding on her work -- really best to snip out those pesky distractions like a husband (Raoul Bhaneja) and son (Gage Graham-Arbuthnot). 

Tasya has moved out of her home but clearly the pull to return is strong.

They've got a big job up next: taking out an egomaniac billionaire -- is there any other kind, apart from maybe Warren Buffett? -- named  Parse, played with delicious snarl by Sean Bean. The "in" is his wayward son-in-law-to-be, a former drug dealer named Colin (Christopher Abbott) who fell in love with one of his clients, Parse's daughter Ava (Tuppence Middleton).

Colin sort of reminds me of a young Richard Gere -- a low, impenetrable wall of wavy hair, slim almost boyish build, and a beautiful but bland face that needs some time and creases to give it  character. He could be on the cover of a magazine and yet you might walk right by him if you saw him on the street.

He also seems to be stronger-willed than anyone thought, and Tasya has to fight for control of the body, both before and after the deed. (Which is horrifyingly grisly, in how it happens and the ultimate outcome.) Girder scrambles to pull her top agent out, knowing that permanent brain damage has already occurred and will worsen the longer she's trapped inside Colin.

The special effect used to portray the possession is both novel and unnerving, as Tasya's face dissolves like melting wax and then is reconstituted into Colin's features. When things go wrong it becomes like a terrifying, half-formed mask they're both forced to wear.

This isn't really a deep character study, and yet we find ourselves closely identifying with both Tasya and her host. We desperately want her to get out of the body she's trapped in and we'd also like it so that somehow Colin doesn't wind up dead or in prison. 

That's a nifty trick to pull off for a filmmaker, to have the audience feel empathy for both the murderer and the victim. Thought he lines are a bit hard to draw, as both learn unpleasant things about themselves they'd rather not know.

"Possessor" is the rare modern horror movie that truly gets under your skin and is content to stay there, like happily burrowing worms.

Review: "Battle of the Sexes"

The match was a lark, a piffle, a silly spectacle, until it became something more. Likewise, the film version of the iconic 1973 tennis game between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs is much weightier and more substantial than you’d think.

It shows the game itself, of course, featuring Emma Stone and Steve Carell as King and Riggs. If the volleying looks slow and wimpy compared to what you’d see today, it’s not because a pair of Hollywood actors couldn’t make a better show of it. Go watch tapes of the real match; the movie copies it pretty well. All sports got faster and stronger; Serena’d kill either one of them.

But “Battle of the Sexes” focuses more on the year leading up to the faceoff, giving it context within changes happening in the sport and society as a whole. Directed by “Little Miss Sunshine” team Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, from a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”), it’s also an astute character study of two people who were more alike than we’d think.

The early 1970s was the era of women “libbers,” Roe v. Wade, the first large wave of women entering the workforce and finding the traditional corridors of influence barred to them. Men liked the free love stuff, but wanted to keep the country clubs and the reins of power. Naturally, they resented people like King who had the audacity to demand that the male and female tennis champions be paid the same.

Carell looks pretty well like Riggs, with the help of some false teeth and a wig. Stone resembles King not at all, and even a pair of glasses and dark brown shag haircut fail to close the gap. But each manages to carve an authentic character out of the fog of history.

Stone’s King is at once headstrong and retiring, very self-aware and also self-effacing. She squares off with Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman), the smug head of the chief tennis association, and starts her own competing league for the top women players. Sarah Silverman plays Gladys Heldman, who provided the business savvy and sponsorship -- from Virginia Slims, because doesn’t smoking and tennis go great together?

But King is also staggered by her attraction to Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), a hairdresser who eventually becomes her lover. This while she was married to Larry King (Austin Stowell), a former player who gave her unwavering support as a fellow athlete. The scene where he learns of their affair, but still tenderly applies ice packs to her knees with well-practiced efficiency, is sensitive to all three souls.

(The film fiddles with history here; King began to explore her attraction to women years earlier, and started the affair with Marilyn in 1971. And she was King’s secretary, aka employee, not a hairdresser. Years later she sued King for palimony, which resulted in her sexuality being publicly outed.)

Riggs is portrayed much as the world saw him: an over-the-hill former champ with a gambling addiction who was down on his luck and saw challenging the top women’s players of the day as a way to garner attention and money. With his own marriage to Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue) foundering, he used his gift of gab and natural showmanship to play up the King match, dubbing himself a “male chauvinist pig” and giving interviews about keeping women in the “bedroom or the kitchen,” stuff he may not have even half believed.

Largely forgotten today is that Riggs had already challenged and beaten the top-ranked female player of the day, Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee). Every film needs a villain, and Court is shoehorned into that role, sneering at King’s dalliance with full religious fervor. (This owes more to Court’s modern-day fight against same-sex marriage in her native Australia than anything she said or did at the time, methinks.)

Both Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King are revealed as flesh-and-blood creatures who lived behind the headlines. They make for an interesting pair: the hustler and the heroine, the lobber and the libber. They put on a show for funsies, and people paid attention and not a few minds were changed a wee bit.

In real life, King remained friends with Riggs until the day he died, which was awfully chivalrous of her.

Review: "Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"

I always thought “Watchmen” was the anti-superhero superhero movie, but this one takes the cake. It’s not so much against superheroes as movies based on their comic books, registering as a spit-flecked denunciation of the way such flicks saturate our culture, almost like a spreading disease that uses up actors’ careers and audiences’ time.

“Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” is an obsidian-black comedy about Riggan Thomson, an over-60 actor who played a costumed hero decades ago and has struggled to do anything equally consequential since. He’s played by Michael Keaton, who knows something about that.

If this sounds like stunt casting, that’s because it is -- but then this whole movie directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (“21 Grams”) is a gimmick, if a very clever one.

Thomson has now sunk most of his heart, soul and bank account into mounting a Broadway production based on the work of short story master Raymond Carver, which he also wrote and is directing.

At one point he finds himself facing off with a hostile New York Times theater critic (Lindsay Duncan), who announces that she’s going to close the play with a vicious review, even though she hasn’t seen it, because she resents Hollywood dilettantes invading her sacred space where real art is made, taking up a theater (the actual St. James) that could be better used for, well, just about anything.

We suspect her lips are channeling the thoughts of Iñárritu, who co-wrote the screenplay (along with three others), and they’re really talking about caped crusader movies.

Keaton is a marvel in this movie, providing an emotionally naked performance as a self-consumed man who has spent so much of his life worrying about being appreciated that he hasn’t ever really inhabited the present tense. Riggan is constantly reminded of this by his estranged daughter, Sam (Emma Thomson), recently graduated from rehab and hired as his assistant -- partly out of a sense of guilt and partly to keep an eye on her for his ex-wife (Amy Ryan).

Iñárritu created the role expressly for Keaton, which was deft, but then unwisely keeps getting in the way of his lead actor.

The director makes all sorts of showy creative choices, like constructing the entire movie out of (seemingly) uninterrupted tracking shots, so we’re constantly shadowing the actors like a ghostly presence. Similarly, the music score (by Antonio Sanchez) is made up almost entirely of percussion instruments, but the disjointed beats bump the movie off its rhythm rather than riding one.

Riggan professes not to think much about being Birdman, but in fact he’s verily haunted by his feathered former alter-ego. The voice of the hero speaks to him (Keaton’s guttural rasp is wonderfully eerie), offering alternate praise and scorn, trying to convince Riggan to give up his ridiculous dream and return to costume work. In private moments when the alter egos are conferring, Riggan performs feats of telekinesis that, even if imagined (?), help buck up his brittle psyche.

The play is teetering on the edge of disaster. Riggan replaces his awful second lead actor, injured during rehearsal, with Mike Shiner, who’s brilliant but notoriously difficult to work with, and he’s played by Edward Norton, who also has a reputation for… but I think you get it now.

Mike is greeted as the production’s rescuer but soon sets about as its chief saboteur, stealing Riggan’s limelight in the press and even stopping a preview performance cold when his (real) gin is confiscated. He’s also the boyfriend of the lead actress, Lesley (Naomi Watts), a bundle of neurotic self-doubt, who recruited him but soon comes to regret it. Meanwhile, Riggan is having an affair with the other, much-younger actress (Andrea Riseborough).

Flitting around the edges of the story is Jake (Zach Galifianakis), Riggan’s lawyer, producing partner and underappreciated fixit man.

The performances are delicious in “Birdman,” particularly Keaton, who will deservedly be the subject of a lot of Academy Awards conversations. I just wish Iñárritu had enough faith in his star to let him shine in the spotlight, instead of constantly distracting us with his showy, look-at-me direction.

Earlier in this review I called the movie clever, and it is that; but it’s the sort of feckless, selfish clever that feels compelled to keep reminding you how clever it is.

Video review: "Oblivion"

I seem to have gone sideways from the consensus on a lot of films in 2013 – none more so than “Oblivion,” a science fiction epic starring Tom Cruise that was greeted  unenthusiastically by ticket-buyers and critics. For my money, it’s the most engaging and thought-provoking sci-fi movie since “The Matrix.”

Set in the dying days of the Earth, the story is about the last two people left on the planet. Jack (Cruise) and Vicca (Andrea Riseborough) live in a glass pinnacle in the skies, tasked with guarding the massive machines that are turning the world’s oceans into energy. The rest of humanity has already decamped into space for the long journey to a new home.

The machines are under continual attack by the alien “scavs” that brought about this calamity. Jack repairs the drones that protect the transformers, while Vicca coordinates with headquarters in orbit.

Things begin to happen that make Jack doubt the truth of what he knows. Both his and Vicca’s memories were wiped as part of their mission, and it soon becomes clear that the situation is very different than he comprehended.

I can’t tell you much more without spoiling the experience. But suffice it to say that “Oblivion” is an ambitious mix of existential pondering, action scenes and unexpected plot twists.

Forget what the herd says – rent or buy this one today.

Video features are quite good, headlined by a feature-length commentary track that includes both director Joseph Kosinski and Cruise. There are also deleted scenes, a comprehensive making-of documentary and an option to watch the entire film with an isolated musical score.

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Extras:

Review: "Oblivion"

I wish I could tell you all about “Oblivion.” Actually, I’m dying to. But I can’t.

This new science fiction film starring Tom Cruise, directed by Joseph Kosinski and based on the unpublished graphic novel he co-created, is a slippery chimera of a movie. It misdirects and deludes us, making the audience think it’s about one thing when really it’s heading another way.

Much like “The Matrix,” it starts out as a seemingly straightforward sci-fi adventure and gradually deepens into something much more substantial. I will tell you that “Oblivion” is probably the most compelling film of its genre I’ve seen since “The Matrix.”

Revealing anything more than a smidgen of its nature would ruin the experience for you. Of course, being tight-lipped also makes it hard to write an effective review that gives enough of a taste to decide if you want to see it.

Cruise plays Jack Harper, an everyday man with an extraordinary job. He is a tech who services the drones that protect the Earth from alien attackers … or, at least, what’s left of it. The war, which came in 2017, split the moon asunder and ravaged the face of the planet. Mankind responded with its final option.

“We did what we had to. We used the nukes,” Jack intones. “We won the war, but lost the planet.”
Sixty years on, Jack and his partner, Vicca (Andrea Riseborough), are the only humans left on Earth. The rest have decamped to a moon of Saturn, leaving only the huge factories converting the oceans into the energy they’ll need to survive.

Jack and Vicca get their orders from Sally (Melissa Leo), commander of the space station orbiting above. Their own memories were willingly wiped to protect the mission, which after five years is coming to a close. Once they wrap things up, they’ll get transported to their new home.

The alien scavengers, or “scavs,” have other ideas. Enough still remain to cause trouble, damaging the drones that guard the energy stations. Every day, Jack sets out from their base in the clouds to repair the drones, while Vicca is the communications officer who keeps him in touch with the eye in the sky.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that things aren’t quite … right. Vicca and Jack are a team, a couple both in duty and in bed. We sense their sexual relationship is part of a plan designed to keep things stable and satisfied. That doesn’t stop Jack from having odd dreams about a stranger (Olga Kurylenko) in which they meet at the Empire State Building.

But that couldn’t be, since that was before the war – or even before Jack was born.

Sally is chipper but steely, insisting things be done just so. Vicca is with the program, but Jack has begun to have stray thoughts. Part of him thinks Earth is worth saving and shouldn’t be abandoned. He’s also piqued by what he finds on the blasted surface of the planet -- books and random junk that hold more meaning for him than they should.

Kosinski and his co-screenwriters, Michael Arndt and Karl Gajdusek, keep their storytelling cards very close to the vest, never revealing more than they should or a moment sooner than absolutely necessary.

For instance, it seems that part of Vicca’s job is exerting a certain level of control over Jack. He is allowed a measure of wandering and wondering, but when it begins to impede the mission, she uses her seductive powers to quiet his troubled mind. “Are you still an effective team?” Sally asks Vicca daily, and she’ll do anything to keep it so.

I noticed that Vicca’s eyes seem to be permanently dilated, which gives disquieting the suggestion of human-like doppelganger figures we’ve encountered in other movies, like Ash in “Alien.”

“Oblivion” doesn’t reinvent the science fiction wheel, freely borrowing themes and story elements we’ve seen elsewhere. But it synthesizes them in a wholly imaginative way that is both intellectually and emotionally engaging. This one falls into “don’t miss” territory.

Review: "Made in Dagenham"

Sort of a British "Norma Rae," "Made in Dagenham" is a well-acted tale about female auto workers demanding equal pay in the late 1960s. It's a classic underdog story whose outcome is never in doubt, where the lines between the good guys and the bad are practically marked onscreen in highlighter pen.

Sally Hawkins plays the Sally Field role of the low-key worker who rises up to become a respected leader of the union. As Rita O'Grady, Hawkins has a slightly awkward sort of beauty, the sort of woman who has to be told what a gem she is before she believes it herself. Hawkins used this quality to full effect in "Happy-Go-Lucky" a couple of years ago.

Director Nigel Cole brings the same sort of energy he did to 2003's "Calendar Girls" about another group of plucky women who discover they're a lot more capable than anyone gave them credit for. William Ivory's script, though, follows the diagram of a screenwriting class to a T, so we know the progression of the gals' struggle before it happens.

For example, Rita's husband Eddie (Daniel Mays) will be fully supportive at first, getting a kick out of seeing his wife photographed in newspapers and on the telly. But then there will be growing discord as he's forced to take up more of the cooking and cleaning at home, followed by a big spat when his own job is imperiled, culminating in rapprochement where he tells her how proud he is.

The story also tends to treat the other women as scenery rather than distinct individuals. There's the slutty one (Andrea Riseborough), the cute one who wants to be a model (Jaime Winstone), and so forth. Only Connie (Geraldine James), the steadfast older shop steward, is given anything like another dimension, including some trouble on the home front.

I didn't care for the wife of one of the company managers (Rosamund Pike), who befriends Rita without even realizing they live in separate camps. An educated, smart woman who resents having to bury her talents beneath her husband's, she secretly eggs the working girls on. The whole thing is a little too pat.

The history lesson aspect of the film is certainly engaging, though. In the 1960s Ford was the largest auto manufacturer in Europe, employing some 40,000 workers in England alone. The gals of the machinists union in Dagenham, some 187 of them, were classified as unskilled laborers and paid considerably less than their male counterparts -- quite often, their own husbands and brothers.

Bob Hoskins plays Albert, a union organizer impressed by the gumption of the women during a relatively minor disagreement with management. He encourages Rita to strike for equal pay -- much to the consternation of the union bosses.

Miranda Richardson plays Barbara Castle, the first (and still only) female British secretary of state, who was tasked with tamping down the machinist strike and keeping Ford happy.

Richard Schiff shows up as a Ford exec sent over from the States to twist some arms. He bellows and rants: We can't pay these women the same as men, because then women all over the world will want the same thing!

Of course, Ford eventually acquiesced and become something of a pioneer on gender equality, and even cooperated with the making of this film. So even the bad guys turn out to be decent blokes.

Sally Hawkins is eminently watchable, but it's too bad "Made in Dagenham" feels like it rolled off another kind of assembly line.

2 stars out of four