Video review: "The Invisible Man"

A lot of remakes of old movies say they’re “putting a twist on an old tale,” but in the case of “The Invisible Man” this is legitimately true.

Start with the fact that the titular character is not the center of the story, and in fact is a tertiary character. The real protagonist is Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss), the kept girlfriend of Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a young optics technology tycoon. As the story opens she is fleeing from his beachside mansion because their relationship has grown abusive.

Curiously, writer/director Leigh Whannell never depicts any of Cee’s life prior to the split, so we’re left to guess at the nature of their dysfunction. Mostly it appears to have taken place on a psychological level, as Adrian tried to control every aspect of her life.

She hides out with the help of her sister, Emily (Harriet Dyer), and police detective friend, James (Aldis Hodge) and his preteen daughter Sydney (Storm Reid). Cee is shocked when Adrian soon commits suicide, and even more surprised when his brother, Tom (Michael Dorman), reveals that he has left her $5 million in installments.

But, as they say, strange things start to happen. Invisible forces begin to move objects around, and gradually grow more invasive and hostile. Cee is convinced it’s Adrian, who has somehow made himself invisible to torment her. Of course, no one believes her, and much of the film’s energy is spent probing the question of whether the harassment is real or all in her mind.

As is often the case with modern horror films, or horror-adjacent ones like this, “The Invisible Man” could have benefited from some judicious editing. At 124 minutes, it drags a bit here and there. I got a bit tired of repeated scenes of Cecilia wandering around the house, looking at empty open doorways, etc. Instead of building tension, the sprawling nature of these sequences drained it away.

Moss gives her usual solid performance, though I’ve always found her somewhat emotionally remote as a performer. She’s a very good actress, but in a very self-conscious way -- “Wow, what great acting!” The roles disappear into her, not the other way around.

Still, “The Invisible Man” succeeds as a genuinely creepy film that stands an ancient tale on its head with a modern #MeToo framing.

Bonus features include a feature commentary track with Whannell, deleted scenes and the following documentary shorts:

• “Moss Manifested” -- Moss talks about playing a woman who is not believed.
• “Director’s Journey with Leigh Whannell” -- A tour through 40 days of shooting.
• “The Players” -- A look at the cast.
• “Timeless Terror” -- Re-imagining an iconic character.

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Video review: "Us"

I think the best kind of horror films, particularly those with a supernatural edge, are the ones that don’t try to explain everything to you. They just present a confounding mystery, and let it hang there.

One of my favorite of recent years was “It Follows,” in which people are inexplicably pursued by relentless doppelgangers. I would add “Us” to the list.

Writer/director Jordan Peele’s sophomore effort is superior, in my opinion, to his previous venture, the smash hit “Get Out.” Lupita Nyong’o stars as a seemingly normal woman with darkness in her past that will catch up to her and her family.

Thirty years ago as a child, Adelaide had a chilling experience inside a carnival funhouse, where the image in the mirror turned out to be a real live reflection. Now that person, who has grown up just as she did, returns to the “real” world to exact a blood-soaked revenge.

I don’t want to give away too much, since the very appeal of “Us” lies in its teasing out information and surprises. Suffice it to say, Adelaide isn’t the only one with a nefarious shade following her around.

Winston Duke plays her husband, Gabe, a good-natured guy; Evan Alex plays their son, Jason, who has a few disturbing aspects to his own personality; and Shahadi Wright Joseph is teen daughter, Zora, who makes a show of her independence until it’s time to fall back on her family.

The big twist of the movie wasn’t a surprise for me, but I watch a lot of films and there’s only so many tricks in the bag. But it’s still a very satisfying ending to a terrific movie fraught with frights.

Bonus features are quite expansive and include six deleted scenes, funny outtakes and an extended version of the dance sequence. There’s also an in-depth exploration of the making of three pivotal scenes and five documentary shorts.

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Review: "Us"

“How many of everybody is there going to be?”

“Us” is top-drawer horror, a creepily convincing modern fable that haunts our hearts without getting caught up in the busy semantics of explaining everything. Like “It Follows” from a few years ago, there is a weird, existential threat and all you really need to know about it is that it’s coming for you.

Being of the horror genre its effectiveness is somewhat attenuated by obedience to tried-and-true tropes. The story moves quickly from brutal house-to-house disturbances to systemic society-wide chaos in a hurried way that feels like a reach. And because you know there’s going to be a big twist, it turns out to be not nearly twisty enough.

Seriously, I had it figured out halfway through. So would anyone who’s watched movies, I think.

That quibble aside, this is a much more interesting and better picture than Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” which I thought solid but overpraised. “Us” has a tactile feel to it, and it’s almost as if we can sense the scrape of scissors against skin or the globby drops of sticky blood.

Lupito Nyong’o plays Adelaide, a 40ish wife and mother of a prosperous, happy family. They are heading to their summer home near the beach: her husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), is big, goofy and loveable; their daughter, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), is a typical teen girl, plugged into her phone and tuned out of her family; and son, Jason (Evan Alex), is pleasant if a bit odd, prone to occasional epithets and wearing a monster mask wherever he goes.

This same beach town, though, holds tragic memories for Adelaide. In the flashback prologue, we witness her being separated from her parents as a little girl in 1986, wandering away from the carnival into the “Vision Quest” funhouse, which for some reason has been built facing the beach rather than the boardwalk.

There she encounters her own reflection -- except it’s not a simple refraction in a mirror.

Without giving too much away, it turns out that this twin is not just a figment of her imagination, but a very real figure. It seems she has been living in shadow ever since their childhood encounter, nurturing a growing resentment that has turned into a murderous rage.

There are others who come along with her and act as her companions, an inverted version of the family. They all wear red denim jumpsuits and carry large golden shears.

Nyong’o uses an eerie breathless voice while playing the “other mother,” which at first may tempt you to laugh but quietly burrows under your skin like a seeking insect. Her followers are even less verbal, confined to beastly growls and howls.

“Us” starts out like a standard horror thriller, as the marginal hunted are quickly sliced up, though more pivotal characters escape their tormentors, fight back and eventually become the hunters. Then the story gets bigger and bigger, losing the intimacy of close-bodied assaults and strangled threats. By going meta, it loses the wonderfully uncanny minutiae that made it sing.

It wraps up in a satisfying way, though as I said one that won’t come as much of a shock to horror veterans. Sometimes, though, knowing the blade will sink deep doesn’t make it bite any less.

Review: "The Old Man & the Gun"

There’s a moment in “The Old Man & the Gun” where Robert Redford appears suddenly in a doorway backlit by a sunrise, and I swear it could have been from the 1970s. The ol’ California blond still has that ineluctable twinkle that just makes you grin.

His character, Forrest Tucker, is known for his smile. He’s a well-aged bank robber who’s always charming and polite to those he steals from. He barely even bothers with a disguise, just donning a fake mustache. He even wears the same blue suit and brown fedora hat when he’s tooling around on his non-robbing days.

Granted, those aren’t a lot: this is a man born to steal.

This film, written and directed by David Lowery (“A Ghost Story”), is based on the true-life story of Tucker, a man who spent most of his life in prison for his various crimes. The movie looks at the period in the early 1980s when he and a couple of confederates (Danny Glover and Tom Waits) knocked over banks all over the country, becoming a media sensation as “The Over the Hill Gang.”

He also robs banks solo when he’s not part of the gang. His M.O. is simple as can be: show the bank teller or manager the gun, order them to fill a briefcase with money, tip your hat and walk out the door, calm as can be. Robberies often occurred without anyone else in the bank even knowing it was happening.

That’s what happens to John Hunt (Casey Affleck), a Dallas police detective who was starting a bank account for his son when Forrest robs the place. He’s miffed that it happened right under his nose. The case becomes a personal obsession for him. He hunts up clues from other law enforcement agencies, and is the first one to put together that all the robberies are related.

If you think this is another tense cinematic cat-and-mouse game where the criminal taunts the cop on his tail, you’d be only half right. The movie isn’t really about the hunt, but both men’s need for the hunt.

John has just turned 40 and is contemplating giving up police work because he’s tired of never fixing anything. The deep stack of cash in Forrest’s floorboard cache proclaims that he doesn’t really need the money. What they both need is a purpose, and for a time that’s squaring off with each other.

The film actually spends relatively little time with the usual procedural stuff: hunting up clues, a near miss, taunts traded through the appropriate communication vehicle of the day. When Forrest sees a TV news segment featuring John chasing him, he inscribes a $100 bill to him at their next heist.

Forrest is wooing Jewel (a glowing Sissy Spacek), a lonely farmer/widow he happens across after one of his jobs. He tells her he’s a traveling salesman, but then he tells her he’s actually a bank robber, and finally he says he was just pulling her leg.

That’s how it is with Forrest Tucker: you may not get the truth, but you will always get the authentic man.

There’s been some talk that Redford has declared “The Old Man & the Gun” his final film, though he’s pulled back from that since. If it turns out to be true, it would be a fitting coda to one of the finest careers Hollywood’s ever seen. It won’t stand among his most memorable films -- of which there are too many to name -- but it left this critic smiling wide.

Review: "The Square"

The Cannes Film Festival's highest award, the Palme d'Or, has increasingly become an emblem of European disdain for American/British cinema rather than a token of respect for the film that wins it.

Once a major indication of the best foreign films coming down the pike, it's reached the point of such irrelevance that it's now uncommon for the Palme d'Or winner to even receive an extensive theatrical release in the U.S. If you can name last year's winner without the help of Google -- it was Ken Loach's "I, Daniel Blake," for the record -- then I bow before your film trivia superiority.

This year's winner, "The Square," is a refreshing departure, a Swedish film that's actually thoughtful and engaging -- and will actually be seen by people outside of New York, L.A. and Chicago. Written and directed by Ruben Östlund, who made the terrific "Force Majeure" a few years ago, it's a rumination on art, morality and power.

Our protagonist is Christian (Claes Bang), the chief artistic director of a major museum housed in the former Stockholm castle of the Swedish royal family. In the opening scene he is interviewed in English by an American television journalist, Anne (Elisabeth Moss), who seems entirely dim and unprepared for the questions she is to ask. Christian labors not to be condescending, talking intelligently and passionately about the role between art, the museums that present it and their patrons.

His museum is about to debut a new outdoor exhibit, from which the film takes its title, a square of light amidst the stone tiles that is, well, a trifle boring. It's supposed to challenge guests to think about how they regard each other and the spaces they share. "The square is a sanctuary of trust and caring. Within it, we all share equal rights and obligations," reads the display plaque.

Challenged to drum up excitement and donations, Christian and his team have engaged some young hotshot marketers who have very... bold ideas about how to promote The Square. Unfortunately, Christian is too engaged in his own personal events to properly oversee the plan.

Early in the film Christian has his pocket picked by some inspired thieves with a complex con job. Rather than simply call the police, Christian pressures a young employee (Christopher Læssø) to help him find his smartphone via its internal locator. Then they hatch a scheme to  have his effects returned, and things grow more and more dire.

I was occasionally bewildered by "The Square," but never bored by it. For example, in one character's apartment we are surprised to see a gorilla, apparently living there as a companion -- a fact that goes uncommented upon by anyone.

Later, the theme of beastly behavior is reprised in what is undoubtedly the film's most pivotal scene. At a lavish fundraiser at the museum for its wealthiest patrons, a piece of performance art is debuted in which a man (Terry Notary) portrays a great ape. The guests are warned they are about to encounter a savage creature, but they will be in no danger if they acquiesce to its dominance -- don't look him in the eye, etc.

The dynamic shifts as the scene plays on, and it becomes a parable about when and how we should separate performance and reality. Are acts really deplorable if they are committed under the rubric of "art?" At one point should the artist and audience interact? Be opposed?

These questions are further explored in the audience's relationship to Christian. At first a seemingly benevolent figure, he gradually shrinks in our eyes as he becomes more and more willing to trade his integrity in order to protect himself and his position.

At one point he becomes engaged in a conflict with a boy of about age 12. The kid is being entirely unreasonable, and acting as if a grown man should be subservient to his demands. But how Christian responds is even more troubling.

Men and beasts, adults and children, artists and audiences -- these are relationships that often balance according to the whims of those who hold power, and how they choose to wield it. There are times in life where we must agree to be dominated, and others where we are the one who dominates, and not enough occasions upon which we simply exchange trust.

Review: "Chuck"

Chuck Wepner was a big ugly mook who became semi-famous as a footnote in both the sports and entertainment worlds. You may not think you know me, he narrates at the beginning of his biopic, “Chuck,” but you do.

It’s long been said that Muhammad Ali and his manager, Don King, picked the New Jersey boxer out of obscurity in 1975 as his next opponent after downing George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle” because they wanted a white opponent. But as this enlightening new film directed by Philippe Falardeau (“Monsieur Lazhar”) and starring Liev Schreiber shows, Wepner may have been a blue-collar club fighter, but he was hardly a nobody.

Wepner was the eighth-ranked heavyweight fighter at the time, a 6-foot-5-inch brawler known for his uncanny ability to take punch and not go down. “The Bayonne Bleeder,” they called him, a nickname Chuck detested but accepted when it bought him a round of free drinks or a salutation on the street.

As skillfully depicted by Schreiber, Chuck is somebody who revels in the affirmation of others. He carouses his little corner of Jersey, puffed up by locals who call him “The Champ,” accepting overtures from women not because he’s a philandering cad at heart but because he’s almost genetically incapable of not returning any affection shown to him.

He’s the man who bleeds -- from his face, prodigiously, but also his heart.

Liev, an elegantly handsome actor, is surprisingly convincing as Wepner, with his permanently swollen features, arched eyebrows and fu Manchu mustache. His face resembles last night’s hamburger. Mostly, he seems like a guy trying desperately not to embarrass himself.

The story -- screenplay by Jeff Feuerzeig, Jerry Stahl, Michael Cristofer and Schreiber -- actually wraps up the Ali fight about a third of the way through. Chuck never harbored any illusions about beating possibly the greatest of all time -- he was already 36 and losing a step -- but was determined to go the full 15 rounds to prove the naysayers wrong.

Instead, the rest of the movie focuses on Chuck’s life after, when he coasted on his bit of celebrity as the nobody who stood toe-to-toe with the champ. (Pooch Hall plays Ali.)

Then, of course, “Rocky” happened.

The similarities between Sylvester Stallone’s breakout movie and Wepner’s real life are too close to pass the credulity test that Sly made it up on his own. In the film’s version of events, Chuck saw the movie winning a boatload of box office and a trove of Academy Awards as his own victory, too.

But he was too embarrassed to tell anyone, even his best friend, John (a fine Jim Gaffigan), that he wasn’t paid a dime for his story. Eventually, though, pride gets the better of him and he reaches out to Stallone (Morgan Spector), and a surprising connection forms.

One of the film’s disappointments is it completely sidesteps the legal wrangles and war of words between Stallone and Wepner, which went on for decades after “Rocky” came out. In some ways, “Chuck” takes too many pains not to make anybody look bad.

The movie gets the look and feel of 1970s Jersey right -- the loud clothes, the big Cadillacs, the dim bars.

Wepner’s relationship with his wife, Phyllis (Elisabeth Moss), follows the familiar up-and-down tropes of cinematic married couples, and we can’t wait for the marriage to end fast enough. Chuck runs into Linda (Naomi Watts), a hard-scoured bartender, who continually puts him off. But there’s something there, so we’re not surprised when she keeps turning up.

I also liked Ron Perlman as Al, Chuck’s manager and cut-man. Al uses Wepner as a piece of meat he could stitch up and put out there, just trying to get through the next round and the next fight, but genuinely cared about the man underneath the scar tissue. When his boxing career is clearly over, Al sets up a bout with wrestling star Andre the Giant to keep the money and the attention flowing.

“Chuck” stands out from a pantheon of boxing movies, the story of a guy who wasn’t the most skilled fighter or possessed of drive far above his talent level. Wepner was a guy who stumbled into and out of trouble, became famous almost by accident and struggled with that, too. Chuck always took his lumps, and endured.

Review: "On the Road"

I'm not quite sure how to judge "On the Road." If it existed on its own as a film, separated from any notion of the seminal Jack Kerouac book, I'd probably dismiss it as rambling and unfocused. But since the Bible of the Beats is defined by its poetic embrace of chaos -- both in life and literary endeavors -- to knock it for its quivery plot would be like criticizing a flamingo for being too pink.

Brazilian director Walter Salles and Puerto Rican screenwriter Jose Rivera previously teamed up for "The Motorcycle Diaries," a similar project about young men rambling about the countryside looking for themselves, also based on a book by a person of note (in that case, revolutionary Che Guevara). Since "On the Road" has generally been regarded as unfilmable, perhaps it required a foreign perspective to adequately capture the peculiar rhythms of this quintessential, quirky American tale.

Certainly "On the Road" has verve and gutso. In chronicling the on-again, off-again travels of Kerouac stand-in Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) and his best friend/muse Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) during the late 1940s, the actors and filmmakers have probably made as good a translation of the book as possible.

It's a booze-soaked, drug-riddled, sex-filled escapade with no real point other than casting off whatever yokes chain them and seeing what's out there. It captures the pure exhilaration of freedom for its own sake.

Some portions of Kerouac's  narrative are skimmed over or eliminated, while others are pumped up -- particularly those involving Dean's teenage wife (soon to be ex-wife) Marylou, played by "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart. Stewart has a vibrant, erotic presence as a wanton girl who enjoys her escapades with Dean -- including three-ways in bed with some of his friends -- even as she knows it must all come to a crashing end, with her grasping the stick's short end.

One scene, where Marylou and Dean are shaking it to a raucous jazz song as others look on, is scorching hot. Stewart's small but steamy role should do much to banish her adolescent image.

Much of the heart of the book dealt with Sal idolizing Dean as a sort of vagabond holy man, a con artist and liar who nonetheless embraced the concept of living in the moment, and inspired others to do the same. Dean is a car thief, treats women as disposable objects and leeches off his friends, but others are drawn to his audacious individuality.

Hedlund is terrific as Dean, the distilled essence of American manhood, especially his use of his voice to command and compel those around him. Riley is also good in the less showy role of the introspective writer and chronicler of the group. Tom Sturridge has an abbreviated but effective turn as Carlo Marx, a self-destructive poet who struggles with his homoerotic fixation toward Dean, which Dean uses to tease and taunt.

Viggo Mortensen turns up as Old Bull Lee, an older writer and heroin addict who acts as a mentor and father figure to Sal. It's notable that he is the one person who is instinctively disdainful of Dean's flights of fancy, recognizing them as more narcissism than revelation.

Kirsten Dunst plays Camille, Dean's much put-upon second wife; Amy Adams is Lee's mentally fractured wife; Alice Braga is an itinerant love of Sal's; and Elisabeth Moss and Danny Morgan play a recently married couple sundered by Dean's need to always be on the move.

Kerouac lovers probably know that the book "On the Road" was written in long, frenetic sessions using rolls of paper so he wouldn't have to stop typing. The movie erratically but vividly captures that freewheeling sense of losing oneself -- in the act of creation, or consumption, and even self-destruction.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Get Him to the Greek"

I was not expecting much out of "Get Him to the Greek." It's a quasi-sequel to "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," which I was only too eager to banish from memory. And the appeal of British comedian Russell Brand had so far eluded my senses.

But "Greek" is one of the consistently funniest movies I've seen in a good long while, and it's got some genuine heart, too.

Consistency was actually my biggest beef with "Sarah Marshall": It had three or four uproarious moments, and a whole lot of drag in between. "Greek" builds laugh upon laugh, to the point where you're missing jokes because the audience is hooting so loud at the previous one.

This film is a coming-out party for Jonah Hill, who's been a reliable comedic sidekick closely associated with Judd Apatow (who's credited here as a producer). Now Hill moves to the front of the stage, and proves an engaging and witty leading man.

Hill actually has quite handsome features underneath all that blubber, and his liquid blue eyes are capable of seeming meek one moment, hard and brazen the next. He plays Aaron Green, a nebbish who comes out of his shell when he's assigned to escort a notorious rock star to a big gig, and it's to Hill's credit that the shy guy doesn't lose his innocence even when he's wallowing in sex and drugs.

Sean "P. Diddy" Combs plays against his smooth persona as egotistical record mogul Sergio Roma, who cares only about sales, not making quality music. At first he rejects Aaron's suggestion of a 10th anniversary concert of Aldous Snow's watershed show at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre, since everyone seems to think the drug-addled rocker is on the downside of his career.

Snow (Brand) is still famous and fabulously wealthy, but has lived inside the celebrity bubble for so long he isn't even aware that his last single, "African Child," was an embarrassing piece of condescending pop puffery. After seven years of sobriety, he's fallen hard off the wagon after being dumped by his special lady, Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), a fellow star singer.

Part of the film's appeal is the hard shots writer/director Nicholas Stoller takes at the music industry -- not just its excesses, but the sheer awfulness of so much of what it produces. (One of Aldous' hits is "I Got the Clap.") Watching Jackie Q or Aldous writhe and bluster in some music video, blurping out lunkhead lyrics to overproduced techno beats, one can't help be reminded of some of the drek that's popular on the air waves.

A ton of celebrities make cameos, including Lars Ulrich, Pink, Christina Aguilera and Billy Bush.

Sergio eventually signs off on the show, and it's Aaron's job to get Aldous safely and soberly from London to the Greek in 72 hours, stopping off to appear on the "Today Show" along the way. Of course, the rocker is much more interested in drinking, doping and partying.

Soon enough Aaron is flying high, rubbing up against strippers and puking all over himself. He sobers up long enough to remember his duties, and frets at his lapses -- and what effect they'll have on his relationship with Daphne (Elisabeth Moss).

We learn that Aldous, despite his asshat front, actually has a little soul to him, underneath mounds of narcissism.

Even though it's kind of a modern-day knockoff of "My Favorite Year," I still loved spending time with the duo of Hill and Brand. "Get Him to the Greek" rocked my funny bone -- hard.

3.5 stars out of four