Review: "The Curse of La Llorona"

I was genuinely creeped out by “The Curse of La Llorona.” I’m an old-school horror fan from way back who has generally been unimpressed by modern scare flicks, which all seem to substitute jump-scares for tension and foreboding. “Llorona” employs a few of those, but judiciously and skillfully.

And PG-13 horror? Please.

While this isn’t by any means a “hard R” gross-out gorefest, it’s got enough of the ol’ ultra-violence to whet the appetite for those who have one.

The story is based on a famous Mexican folktale about a mother who drowned her own children as retribution for her husband cheating on her. There have supposedly been man sightings of the “weeping woman,” who now wanders the land as a ghost bringing misfortune to those who encounter her.

For the movie version, this mythology gets woven into the existing world of “The Conjuring” movies, a vastly-expanding horror franchise with multiple sequels and spinoffs. Set in 1973 Los Angeles, it does not feature the Warren couple of occult investigators played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, although a secondary character, a priest named Father Perez (Tony Amendola), makes an appearance.

“You don’t have to be religious to have faith,” he says. Thanks Father! Now go find something good for stabbing with.

Linda Cardellini plays Anna, a social worker who was widowed about a year ago, leaving her to toil with two kids, Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) and Chris (Roman Christou), who are around 10. Early on she catches a bad case involving a mother, Patricia Alvarez (Patricia Velasquez) who has been keeping her sons locked in a closet.

Anna gets the boys put into protective custody, but they wind up drowned and Patricia curses her to have La Llorona haunt her family next.

Marisol Ramirez plays the creature, and it’s a pretty gnarly get-up: white (wedding?) dress and veil, chalky skin with pitch-black tears eternally streaming down her face, the mouth splitting into a yawning chasm and the hands blackened as if by charring. When she grabs one of her victims, it leaves burn marks.

Apparently there’s a bureaucracy involved in getting the Warrens’ help, so Father Perez hooks Anna up with Rafael Olvera (Raymond Cruz), a former priest turned ghost-hunting shaman. He’s got a dour attitude and a closet full of holy artifacts and potions to fight La Llorona. Wait till you see what he can do with eggs.

I like that the screenplay by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis has little to no fat. There are only really three or four setups before we get to the scaring inside the family’s house. Director Michael Chaves keeps things moving nicely, with a minimum of existential pondering and a maximum of eerie weeping lady frights.

Is “The Curse of La Llorona” an especially groundbreaking or original bit of horror? It is not. It relies a little too much on familiar tricks, like the wind that is constantly blowing open doors, windows, etc. and heralding the ghost’s arrival. Somebody needs to keep an eye on the barometric pressure.

But it’s an enjoyable scary flickershow with lots of inky shadows and tense moments. I don’t know why female horror villains are scarier, but they just are.

Video column: "Green Book"

I didn’t think “Green Book” could win the Academy Award for Best Picture, but I’m thrilled that it did. It’s very rare for my favorite movie to take the top prize at the Oscars. Furthermore, its chances seemed dimmed after a concerted (and I think largely unfair) backlash against it.

I’m even now hearing people offhandedly refer to the film as “racist.” A movie recounting an unlikely friendship between a famous black artist and a bigoted Italian-American tough in the early 1960s is racist? Apparently not being sufficiently “woke” is now grounds not just for dismissal, but castigation as representing the very evil institution the movie exists to assail.

The assault on logic aside, I care not. The loss is theirs.

Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen play Don Shirley and Tony “Lip” Vallelonga, two men as different as they could be. Shirley is black, educated, imperially slim, proud and serenely confident. Tony is squat, rude, earthy, unpretentious and unsophisticated. Both are sure of themselves and equally dismissive of the other.

Shirley, a jazz pianist, is about to embark on a lengthy concert tour in the South and needs somebody to drive him and watch his back. Tony needs a paycheck while the nightclub where he works as a bouncer is closed for repairs.

They predictably clash and confront, needle and rebuke. But slowly, gradually, they start to form a bond.

First it’s over little things like contemporary pop music and friend chicken. There are moments, confrontations with rednecks and such, in which Tony is obliged to stand up for Shirley. Likewise, the musician finds himself inclined to show grace toward his backward employee, such as helping him write beautiful letters to his wife.

These are some of the finest performances of Ali and Mortensen’s careers. They fully inhabit their characters, showing us their grace as well as their faults. In the end, their friendship becomes a balm that soothes the ache in their souls.

Ignore the haters, and revel in this beautiful story about overcoming hatred.

Bonus features are not terribly expansive. There are three making-of documentary shorts: “Virtuoso Performances,” exploring Mortensen and Ali’s turns; “An Unforgettable Friendship” about the real-life friendship between Shirley and Vallelonga; and “Going Beyond the Green Book,” which looks as the film’s cultural impact.

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Review: "Green Book"

Tony Vallelonga, aka Tony Lip, stumbles out of bed to find his Bronx apartment filled with friends and relatives -- all men. It’s been another hard night working at the Copacabana, another face split open by his fists. It’s what he does. His people are there because a couple of plumbers are working in the kitchen while he was sleeping, and they are black.

How could you leave my sister alone with those “eggplants,” demands his brother-in-law (Sebastian Maniscalco). His father refers to the men (in Italian) as “sacks of coal.” After Tony spies his wife (Linda Cardellini) giving the plumbers lemonade, he quietly slips the offending glasses into the trash.

This is the opening for “Green Book,” one of the finest films of 2018. It’s about two very different men who forge an unexpected bond while traveling in the Deep South in 1962. It’s a historical tale that has an urgent relevancy to our very divided times.

Few films move me to real tears; this one did, and not just once.

The Copa is closing down for a couple months for renovations, and Tony needs a paycheck. The slicked-back-hair types can always find work for him; Tony has a talent for the rough stuff but doesn’t relish it. Another prospect presents itself: chauffeur a doctor around for eight weeks.

It turns out this is Dr. Don Shirley, a famous pianist (and owner of several doctorates) who is about to embark on a private concert tour in the Midwest and South. He is everything Tony is not: black, educated, literate, well-dressed, finely mannered, aloof. Shirley is put off by Tony’s Guido manners, but knows that when the tour turns left into lands of overt segregation, he will need not just a driver but a bodyguard.

The physical divide between the lead actors is striking. As Shirley, Mahershali Ali seems to have grown taller and leaner from when he won an Oscar for “Moonlight.” His Don Shirley is a man of very refined tastes. He plays only Steinway grand pianos and drinks nothing but Cutty Sark. Riding in the back of a brand-new turquoise Cadillac Sedan De Ville, he places a fine cloth over his legs, as if creating a barrier from the ordinary.

Vigo Mortensen’s Tony Lip has simple but voracious appetites. He is seemingly perpetually eating, stuffing his hole with sandwiches, steaks, burgers, whatever he can get. I’d guess Mortensen packed 40 pounds on for this role. Affecting a stumblebum patois, he seeds his speech liberally with “deese and dose,” along with plenty of epithets.

They cruise around the country, sharing extended conversations that gradually move from boss/worker to adversaries to something like an alliance. Tony isn’t hateful, but grew up with racism seeped into his skin. Shirley is a more complex character, proud of his blackness but aware of his estrangement from regular folks with his skin color.

Shirley sits atop a throne of his own making, but as he tells Tony, a high castle can be a lonely place.

Food and music are the fuel that drives their journey. Tony is astounded to learn that Shirley has never tasted fried chicken, and promptly pulls over in Kentucky for a bucketful. He’s also amazed that Shirley is unaware of celebrated black pop singers of the day like Aretha Franklin, Chubby Checkers or Little Richard. In a fit of hyperbole, Tony declares himself more authentically black than his passenger.

Shirley’s band, the Don Shirley Trio, plays intricate jazz with a deep overlay of classical music that belies his training. He’d prefer to play Chopin, but the record label doesn’t think that would sell. Shirley goes along, both for the sake of his own ambitions and for ulterior motives, which prompted this tour of swanky rich folk’s homes and country clubs.

As they turn south, their fortunes follow. There are expected run-ins with police and rednecks, but also the subtler kind where well-heeled types invite Shirley into their mansions but won’t let him use the bathroom. He’s a man of massive resolve and dignity, but there are limits.

At first Tony helps Shirley because it’s his job; he will not receive the back end of his contract if they miss any performance dates. But later, he stops seeing Shirley as an “other” but one of his own, to be backed up and stuck to.

People will no doubt be surprised to learn “Green Book” is directed by Peter Farrelly, best known for the “Dumb and Dumber” flicks. He co-wrote the script with Brian Hayes Currie and Nick Vallelonga, Tony’s son. The title comes from real publications of the day that instructed black travelers on safe places in the South where they could eat or sleep.

I kept waiting for the film to stumble or a strike a false note, but it never does. As the men face adversity together, their natural enmity falls away. It’s a simple tale, personal yet timeless. With so much in the world beating us down every day, I savored being uplifted.

Review: "A Simple Favor"

"A Simple Favor" is not a particularly good film, but it is an interesting one. Sometimes it's better to to be mediocre and interesting than decently unoriginal.

At first I thought this was going to be a romcom. Anna Kendrick plays a mommy vlogger who becomes ensorceled with a beautiful, bitchy mother of one of her son's 1st grade classmates, played by Blake Lively. I figured it would be an odd couple romp as they bond while dealing with various man issues.

There is indeed bonding and romantic entanglements, but they're a sideshow to what is essentially a comedy whodunit.

Tonally, this is a brash outlier movie. Coming from director Paul Feig ("Bridesmaids," "Spy), it appears at first blush to be a broad R-rated comedy with the ladies spouting a lot of filthy talk. I haven't read the book it's based on, though it's been compared to "Gone Girl" and "The Girl on the Train" -- pretty much the polar opposite of funny.

But screenwriter Jessica Sharzer, adapting the novel by Darcey Bell, layers in plenty of laughs even as she introduces film noir elements as the two women trade roles as admirer and admired, pursuer and pursued. There are a couple of head-whipping plot twists, though they aren't hard to guess if you've been paying attention.

It starts out fun and flirty, then turns darker, and then darker still, though there are still laughs spliced in between the doom and gloom.

Kendrick plays Stephanie Smothers, a widowed single mom to adorable Miles (Joshua Satine) who makes helpful videos aimed at other mothers. She's sort of a downmarket Martha Stewart, living in quaint (fictional) Warfield, Conn., a New York City exurb. The other moms of their class see her as this busy bee of energy, friendly to everyone but close to no one.

Then she meets the mom of Miles' pal Nicky (Ian Ho), the class troublemaker. Emily Nelson (Lively) is everything Stephanie is not -- tall, flawless, rich, self-confident, careerist and seemingly indifferent to the joys of motherhood. She wears swank suits with vest pocket chains, fedora hats, ladybug shoes and a permanent smirk.

After some play dates and lots of gin martinis, they're soon fast friends. Stephanie is deferential and apologetic, and Emily acts as her muse and mentor to live larger. Emily is like a caricature of feminism: controlling, manipulative, arrogant. We would hope Stephanie would be smart enough to see through her facade to the depth of her problems, but then we wouldn't have a movie.

Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that Emily suddenly disappears after leaving Nicky with Stephanie. Her husband, Sean (Henry Golding), a once-promising writer, was away in London and wasn't aware she vamoosed. Her posh clothing designer boss (Rupert Friend) though she was on a business trip in Miami.

Soon the police are brought in, Stephanie's vlog becomes a hit when she starts doing updates on Emily's case in between making friendship bracelets, and the web of suspicions quickly spreads.

There was a point about two-thirds of the way through the movie where I was literally scratching my head, wondering what the heck was going on and where the film was heading. It felt schizophrenic and weird. But it was also on some level enervating to watch a movie that keeps throwing wild haymakers at you. Many of them don't land, but some do.

I can't exactly recommend "A Simple Favor." But it's a sporadically entertaining flick that has something to say about the state of the mommy wars.