Destroyer: Nicole Kidman Undercover

Nicole Kidman plays Erin Bell, an undercover cop, whose soul has been scarred by the time she was immersive in a violent criminal gang, headed by an unstable charismatic leader. The Scientology jokes just write themselves, right? As a bonus, it also happens to be a good movie, but it is hard to watch at times (or at least it is supposed to be). Bell gets the heck beat out of her badly and often in Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer (trailer here), which opens tonight in New York.

Bell is such a haggard wreck, she has become a walking cautionary example for the entire LAPD. When she was young and idealistic, she joined “Chris” from the FBI in an undercover sting operation to take down Silas’s drug-fueled gang of hippie armed robbers. They worked so well together, their cover as lovers became true in real life, at least as far as they could tell the two apart. However, things still turned out badly—really, really badly.

Frankly, Bell never truly got over the fiasco (that viewers see unfold during a series of flashbacks), so when she receives one of the ink-stained bills from the fateful armed robbery in the mail, she is only too willing to dive back down the rabbit hole. Soon, she is shadowing or shaking down Silas’s known associates, only occasionally stopping to pay some belated attention to her resentful daughter.

No kidding, that really is Nicole Kidman on the one-sheet. Obviously, this is not Moulin Rouge. She has taken her share of flak for being “box office poison,” but you have to give Kidman credit taking such a grungy, anti-glamorous, dissolute anti-hero role. She takes worse abuse than Jack Nicholson gets as Jake Gittes in Chinatown. This is a ferocious performance that shows tremendous range and takes her to some very dark places. Honestly, nobody should begrudge her the awards talk. It is such a good performance, it can’t even be sabotaged by the film’s narrative gamesmanship.

Kidman owns the movie, plain and simple, so it is hard to fault most of her co-stars for getting blown off the screen. However, Bradley Whitford (from Cabin in the Woods and the Broadway revival of Boeing, Boeing) somehow manages to briefly outshine her as Silas’s spectacularly sleazy attorney, DiFranco. Tatiana Maslany also matches Kidman’s willingness to glam down and roughen up as Petra, Silas’s former lover, down-graded to errand-running hench-person.

At times, Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi’s screenplay is too clever for its own good, but Kusama always keeps it totally grounded in LA seediness. She makes viewers feel all the city’s heat and grime. She also stages a brutally effective bank robbery-turned shootout. This is some bravura work from Kidman and Kusama that not surprisingly comes with some rough edges. Recommended for thriller fans who take their coffee black and their hard alcohol without chasers, Destroyer opens tonight (12/24) in New York, at the Angelika Film Center and the Landmark 57.

Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Cincinnati is a very livable city, but it will probably never live down the shame from giving the world Jerry Springer. In contrast, a prominent cardio surgeon will be given the chance to repent for his sins through a wicked three-way Sophie’s Choice. The situation is highly surreal, but emotions are scrupulously held in check during Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer (trailer here), which is now playing in New York.

Dr. Steven Murphy has it all: a thriving practice, a lovely ophthalmologist wife, a daughter he adores, and a son he is okay with. He is also giving back by spending time mentoring Martin, a disadvantaged teenager—except there might be something more sinister to their relationship. Nonetheless, he introduces Martin to his family, all of whom find the moody lad inexplicably charming—especially his daughter Kim.

Inevitably, Martin starts taking liberties, even attempting to fix Murphy up with his single mother. The doctor tardily tries to re-establish boundaries, but by this time the resentful teen has gained a strange hold over the Murphy family, especially Kim. Unfortunately for them all, Martin blames the Martin patriarch for the death of his father—and not without some justification. More to the point, Martin also seems to have some mystical unexplained power that will force Steven Murphy to become an active accomplice in his own karmic retribution.

Within Lanthimos’ maddening filmography, Sacred Deer is a conspicuously frustrating film. If you were blown away by The Lobster, but detested his Greek Freak films, like Dogtooth and Alps, you will find Sacred Deer sits uneasily between those two poles. Lanthimos manages to wring high tragedy out of his fantastical premise, but getting there is a bumpy ride. Problematically, it features the same extreme expressive reserve that distinguished The Lobster, but it was better suited to that dystopian universe and its absurdist rules everyone accepted at face value. In contrast, Deer is essentially set in our world. It is just viewed from acute angles.

As a result, we have to sit through a lot of mumbling and shrugging, before Lanthimos finally kicks it into gear. Yet, somehow the film mostly comes together during the chilling climax—or maybe almost, but not quite. Either way, it is a close call.

Colin Farrell similarly feels like he is repeating himself from The Lobster, but while his prior sad sack character always seemed to be screaming under his blandly nebbish exterior, Dr. Murphy really comes across as a shallow jerk, who is quiet because he doesn’t have anything to say. Likewise, Nicole Kidman seems to be recycling previous ice queen roles in films like Eyes Wide Shut, Strangerland, and, Heaven help us, Trespass. Frankly, Barry Keoghan’s sullen mouth-breathing makes it hard to believe Doc Murphy would ever bring Martin within one hundred yards of his family. At least, Alicia Silverstone hits some poignant notes while playing against time as Martin’s Mother—wow, Cher from Clueless playing a widowed mom.

Even though we are still wrestling with our misgivings, we would re-watch Sacred Deer five times than sit through just the first fifteen minutes of Alps again. Granted, this is a highly idiosyncratic film, but the ways in which Lanthimos makes it conform to the aesthetics of The Lobster actually work against it. Earning a deeply mixed review, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is still the sort of weirdness cult film fans need to see to keep current. Use your own judgment. It is now playing in New York, at the Regal Union Square downtown and the AMC Loews Lincoln Square uptown.

Grace of Monaco: From Cannes to Lifetime

Alfred Hitchcock very nearly lured Princess Grace out of retirement to star in Marnie. He wasn’t known as “the master of suspense” for nothing. Unfortunately, her return to the silver screen was scuttled by the French campaign to dominate the tiny principality of Monaco. Once again, French saber-rattling ruined things for the rest of us. Fortunately, the former Grace Kelly will stand tall in her Cartier diamonds, facing down threats to her adopted home’s sovereignty, both foreign and domestic, in Olivier Dahan’s now notorious Grace of Monaco (trailer here), which premieres on Lifetime this Memorial Day, after getting booed off the Croisette at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Rumor has it, Princess Grace’s marriage to Prince Rainier is on the rocks. Of course, tensions with France have not helped much. With the Algerian War hemorrhaging cash, De Gaulle issues the House of Grimaldi an ultimatum: start taxing all the French business re-incorporating in Monaco and turn the proceeds over to France or face a blockade and possibly even an invasion. Unfortunately, Princess Grace’s American habits of speaking her mind and having her own career rock the boat at an inopportune time.

Despite the fissures in her marriage, Her Serene Highness is determined to serve the interests of Monaco. With the help of Rainier’s American Chaplain, Father Francis Tucker, Princess Grace will undergo a crash course in courtly etiquette and assemble her own kitchen cabinet. Frankly, they can hardly do worse than Rainier’s advisors, including the sleazy big-talker, Aristotle Onassis.

It is easy to see why Grace of Monaco crashed and burned at Cannes. In all fairness, the first two thirds play out like a relatively competent TV movie, but the puffed-up self-importance of the third act is almost offensive. This is the sort of film that acts like all the world’s problems can be solved with a heartfelt, ramblingly incoherent speech. Honestly, the supposedly Oscar-baiting climatic address basically boils down to: “Oh Monaco, you’re just so swellaco.” Is that enough to shame De Gaulle into behaving? Did Hitch like blondes?

Of course, gingerish Nicole Kidman is not exactly a classic Hitchcock type, but she is about the only name actress in Hollywood who can play classy convincingly. She is not bad as the reserved but vulnerable Princess. Even though he apparently put on some poundage for the role, Tim Roth is relatively restrained as Rainier. Unfortunately, Roger Ashton-Griffiths and Sir Derek Jacobi go all in for shtick as Hitchcock and decorum guru Count Fernando D’Aillieres. For the first time probably ever, Parker Posey is also boring (or maybe she was just bored) as the Princess’s officious staffer, Madge.

It is sort of entertaining to watch Kidman and Roth glide through the opulent world of 1960s Monaco. Unfortunately, any good will they manage to accrue is undermined by the third act cheesiness. Frankly, Dahan and screenwriter Arash Amel completely miss the film’s most relevant takeaway: high taxation inevitably leads to capital flight. Cinematographer Eric Gautier makes it all look glitzy enough, but there is just no way to recut the laughable climatic speech into a presentable cut with any sort of dramatic credibility. Yet, given all the off-screen notoriety and behind-the-scenes recriminations, it is impossible to avoid a certain morbid curiosity. Those so intrigued should watch Grace of Monaco in all its awkward clunkiness when it airs on Lifetime this Monday (5/25), before Harvey Weinstein locks it away in the old vault for good.

Sundance ’13: Stoker

India Stoker is sort of a female Hamlet.  After her father died under mysterious circumstances, her mother is all eyes for her uncle.  However, Uncle Charlie is more interested in replacing his brother as a pseudo-father-figure for India in Park Chan-wook’s first English language film, Stoker (trailer here), which screens during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

India Stoker and her father were always very close, having bonded during their regular hunting trips.  Yes, she is a gothic protagonist who can handle a firearm.  Her relationship with her mother is another matter.  Evelyn “Evie” Stoker is a woman so chilly and severe, by law she has to be played by Nicole Kidman.  When Uncle Charlie shows up after the funeral, the widow turns to him for “comfort.”  India is not impressed, rebuffing all her Uncle’s overtures of friendship.  Kindly Aunt Gin appears quite alarmed by Charlie Stoker’s presence, but she disappears before she can explain why.  People seem to do that around the Stoker family.

Stoker is exactly the sort of film Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows should have been, but totally wasn’t.  Park’s mastery of mood is reflected in every scene, particularly some visually arresting transitions.  While the lurid nature of the material often approaches camp, Park emphasizes the repressed brooding and eerie atmospherics.  It also helps that Wentworth Miller’s screenplay tells a fully fledged story that mostly comes together down the stretch (rather than stringing together a series of gags).

It would be spoilery to explain why, but it is safe to say audiences have never seen Mia Wasikowska like this before.  Yet, in a way, India Stoker is something of a psychologically troubled cousin to Jane Eyre.  Matthew Goode holds up his end, bringing all kinds of creepiness as Uncle Charlie.  Although Kidman is often relegated to the sidelines, she perfectly delivers some scathing Mommie Dearest lines in the pivotal third act confrontation that audience members were quoting immediately after the screening.

Park’s accomplished hands have transformed a V.C. Andrews-ish yarn into an unusually stylish dark fable.  The Oldboy auteur’s admirers should be well pleased with his English debut and it also ought to earn Wasikowska a whole new level of fanboy appreciation.  Elegantly sinister, Stoker is recommended for sophisticated genre patrons when it screens again today (1/25) in Salt Lake and tomorrow (1/26) in Ogden as a Premiere selection of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

NYFF ’12: The Paperboy

In the Deep South, there is not much to do except have graphic sex and commit senseless acts of violence.  At least, that is the portrait Lee Daniels chooses to paint in The Paperboy (trailer here).  However, the biggest mystery of his adaptation of Pete Dexter’s 1995 crime novel is why anyone would screen it as part of a gala tribute to co-star Nicole Kidman.  Yet, that is what happened last night at the 50^th New York Film Festival.

It is the late 1960’s or so in Florida’s swamp country.  Tarty death row groupie Charlotte Bless has convinced a pair of Miami newspapermen to look into her “boyfriend” Hillary Van Wetter’s case.  Ward Jansen is actually coming home to the town where his father W.W. publishes the local birdcage liner and his younger brother Jack does not really do anything at all.  Of course, the junior Jansen will fall head over heels for sleazy femme fatale as he shuttles her, his brother, and Ward’s African American colleague Yardley Acheman about town.

There is a crusading journalist-legal thriller in Paperboy somewhere, but it often gets lost in Daniel’s heavy-handed but discursive narrative, told in flashback by the Jansen’s family maid, Anita Chester, who is never in any position to witness the events she relates.  Instead, we see Bless going number one on young Jansen’s jellyfish stings and sit through several scenes of autoerotica.  Eventually showing the audience Matthew McConaughey’s elder Ward Brother naked on the porcelain throne, Daniels will clearly spare us nothing.

This is bad movie, but Daniels does his best to dress up his lurid material with some visual flare and a soulful R&B soundtrack.  It helps, but only so much.  Too preoccupied with sex and race, Daniels often lets the crime story founder, distracted by his characters’ hang-ups.

Frankly, it is rather baffling why Kidman would accept the role of Bless.  Regardless of her box office track record, she is one of the few actresses in Hollywood who can play it smart and classy, as well as sexy.  However, the lingering aftertaste of Paperboy could damage that image.  In truth, she is not bad revisiting To Die For terrain, provided viewers are okay with the obscure motivations and rash decision-making endemic to all the film’s characters.

Zac Efron is also adequate enough as young Jansen, largely reprising his bid for respectability in Me and Orson Welles, but with more sex and less earnestness.  As the supposedly mercurial Van Wetter, John Cusack just looks like a sad Muppet.   Deep dark secrets notwithstanding, McConaughey does his regular Lincoln Lawyer thing as Brother Ward.  Most frustratingly, the great Scott Glenn is criminally wasted as old man Jansen.

Just a big humid mess, viewers will want to shower after seeing The Paperboy.  Yet, it is hard to turn away from it, like the sight of a wrecking ball demolishing a building.  Call it a career-wreck.  Not recommended, The Paperboy opens tomorrow (10/5) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine and AMC Loews Lincoln Square, following its gala screening at the 2012 New York Film Festival.

Hemingway & Gellhorn: Papa Met His Match

Ernest Hemingway deliberately cultivated his notoriously macho image.  Yet, he somehow he found four women willing to marry him at various points of his life.  That was a lot of optimism, on everyone’s part.  Though she had the shortest tenure as a “Mrs. Hemingway,” war correspondent Martha Gellhorn was the most notable.  Matching and at times surpassing his feats of war zone journalistic daring, Gellhorn fired his passion and inspired his professional respect and jealousy.  Their tempestuous relationship is dramatized in Philip Kaufman’s HBO Film Hemingway & Gellhorn (trailer here) now currently airing on the network.

When ambitious young magazine writer Martha Gellhorn first meets the funky, grungy Hemingway in a Key West bar, they can barely resist tearing the clothes off each other.  The fact that he is married hardly matters to either of them.  However, their animal attraction will have to briefly wait until they reunite covering the Spanish Civil War, at the behest of ardent Spanish Republican supporter John Dos Passos.

Working with Dutch Communist documentarian-propagandist Joris Ivens, Hemingway and Dos Passos film The Spanish Earth (with Gellhorn tagging along), for the purpose of rallying American audiences to the Republican cause.  Frankly, it is considerable more compelling to watch their run-and-gun shooting process in H&G than the historical documentary itself.  That adrenaline also fuels the war reporters’ torrid affair.

Just like Hemingway and Gellhorn’s relationship, the film really clicks during their time together in Spain.  Viewers are served a liberal helping of Nationalist atrocities, but the portrayal of the Soviet forces is also refreshingly unvarnished, particularly with respects to fatal purging of heroic Loyalist soldier Paco Zarra, a stand-in for Dos Passos’ doomed friend José Robles.  While the literary power couple is shown fawning over Chou En-lai and sneering at the gauche Chiangs in China, Gellhorn also reports from Finland, unequivocally siding with the Finns against the Soviet invaders.

Unfortunately, the film loses vitality with the aging Hemingway, sliding into the long denouement of his dubious u-boat chasing Cuban years and sad final days in Idaho.  By the time America enters WWII, screenwriters Jerry Stahl and Barbara Turner clearly suggest Gellhorn was more of a man than Hemingway.  Of course, this is a common problem with bio-pics.  To be accurate, they can almost never end with the good stuff.

Regardless of his character arc, Clive Owen totally goes for broke as Hemingway.  One of the few actors working today who can come across as both manly and literate, he bellows and carouses with relish.  It is a larger than life performance, bordering on camp, yet he is still able to convey Hemingway’s inner demons and nagging self-doubts.  He also manages to dial it down periodically for some saucy Tracy-and-Hepburn bantering with Nicole Kidman’s Gellhorn.  Likewise, Kidman is on a very short list of actresses who can play smart, sophisticated, and alluring, simultaneously.  In fact, she could be channeling Hepburn and the Rosalind Russell of His Girl Friday as the fast-talking, khaki-wearing journalist crusading against injustice, which is frankly pretty cool.

In addition to the strong chemistry between the leads, H&G boasts a strong supporting ensemble.  David Strathairn is particularly engaging as the disillusioned idealist, Dos Passos, serving as a subtle corrective to Hemingway’s ethical malleability.  Metallica’s Lars Ulrich adds notable color as Ivens, while Tony Shaloub conveys a sense of both the menace and tragedy of the Stalinist true believer Mikhal Koltsov, who is considered to be the source for the Karkov character in For Whom the Bell Tolls.  Again, the most inspired work comes during or prior to the Spanish Civil War sequences.

Frequently approximating the look of black-and-white news reels and Ivens’ documentary footage, H&G is highly cinematic (getting a vital assist from cinematographer Rogier Stoffers).  Kaufman is a big canvas filmmaker, with sufficient artistic stature to merit a recent MoMA film retrospective—a high honor indeed.  While steamier and gossipier than The Right Stuff, it is downright staid compared to his Henry & June and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 

An appropriately messy film sprawling all over the place, H&G is rather rowdily entertaining, capturing good deal more historical insight than one would expect.  Definitely recommended for those who appreciate the Hemingway oeuvre and persona (as well admirers of Gellhorn or Dos Passos), Hemingway & Gellhorn airs again on HBO June 2^nd, 7^th, 10^th, 11^th, 15^th, and 19^th and on HBO2 on June 4^th, 6^th, 12^th, 17^th, 21^st, 25^th, and 30^th.

Ben Mendelsohn’s Trespass

Witness the next logical step of Occupy Wall Street’s escalating class warfare: violent home invasions. Diamond dealer Kyle Miller ought to “have” plenty. A desperate drug dealer deeply in debt to the mob “has not.” The fact that Miller was wiped out by the recent crash is an unfortunate complicating factor in Trespass (trailer here), Joel Schumacher’s latest bit of hyperventilating silliness, which opens today in New York.

Miller is married to Sarah, a beautiful architect who designed the tony new home they have not yet paid for. They have a rebellious teen-aged daughter, Avery, who looks like a porn-star. Trying to hustle freelance commissions, Miller has not told his wife and daughter he was let go by his firm. Ironically, his attempts to keep up appearances have enticed a gang of thugs with connections to his security company. Ostensibly led by Elias, the home invaders want inside his conspicuous wall safe. A highly motivated man, if Elias cannot pay off his debts with this score, he and his junkie girlfriend Petal are in a world of hurt. Thus begins the battle of wits, such as it might be.

To be fair, Miller’s attempts to negotiate with Elias are written relatively sharply. In contrast, the subplot involving Elias’s brother and his delusional attraction to Sarah Miller is just mind-numbingly dumb. Likewise, all the teasing near-escapes and aborted mayday calls quickly become tiresome. Still, production designer Nathan Amondson’s team created a cool looking, ultra-sleek architectural set that might be the second most interesting character in the film.

At least Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn understands what makes a great villain. He gives a ferocious performance as Elias, projecting savage cunning and major screen presence, even when concealed by his mask. It is pretty telling when the new Joel Schumacher movie starring Nicholas Cage and Nicole Kidman is best pitched as the latest Ben Mendelsohn film, but that seems to be about the size of things. He almost single-handedly earns the film an extra star and a half it does not deserve.

With his constant nostril flaring and ludicrous mangling of Air Force One style catch-phrases (“Get out of my house!”), the strung-out looking Cage is absolutely laughable as Miller, in the worst way possible. Still, he is trying his hardest throughout. Though she periodically tries to knuckle down and power out some kind of characterization, Kidman mostly just mails it in as Sarah Miller (and who can blame her?).

True, Trespass provides scads of unintentional comedy. That is all very fine for Saturday morning hangover viewing, but it is nowhere near sufficient to justify a suburban senior matinee ticket price, let alone the full fare in Midtown Manhattan. Basically just a big clumsy mess, Trespass opens today (10/14) in New York at the AMC Village 7.