Author: Joel Copling

**** (out of ****)
Kevin Costner, Kevin Bacon, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci, Sissy Spacek.
Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Stone and Zachary Sklar, based on the book by Jim Garrison and Jim Marrs.
Rated R. 201 minutes. 1991.

Note: This mini-review is based on a viewing of the director’s cut of JFK.

The late, great Roger Ebert once said, “I don’t have the slightest idea whether Oliver Stone knows who killed President John F. Kennedy,” and that pretty much sums up my own thoughts on the matter. Oliver Stone’s JFK is, purely, simply, and truly, an examination of so-called “facts,” a conclusion that those facts are likely made of whole cloth, and a hypothesis that fills in the gaps with what Stone believes are probably the events. He is imparting truth here, not procedural facts about the killing of the 35th President of the United States of America. He tackles, through his protagonist Jim Garrison, the man on whose book (co-written by Jim Marrs) Stone’s screenplay (co-written by Zachary Sklar) is based and who is played by Kevin Costner, the facts of the assassination as provided to the American public by the government who investigated it. Garrison finds damning evidence in every nook and cranny, as witnesses and accomplices are killed with impunity and under curious circumstances or otherwise bought to keep silent, a series of connections are uncovered between the American government, the Dallas Police Department, and the branch of the Dallas mob that resided in the metroplex, and supposed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s guilt begins to appear increasingly coincidental. The footage of the actual shooting, captured by onlooker Abraham Zapruder, establishes, rather unexpectedly, evidence of more than one rifle used in the crime. A mysterious former military man lays the groundwork for Kennedy’s assassination at the feet of a U.S. government that desires war for financial viability. Stone’s most monumental achievement lay in Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia’s editing, which makes sense of the labyrinthine investigation laid out before Garrison, and in the astounding cast: Costner, sympathetic as Garrison; Tommy Lee Jones, superbly indifferent as primary defendant Clay Shaw; Gary Oldman, adopting Oswald’s unique vocal inflection and affording great humanity to a man seen around the world as a villain; Joe Pesci, a bundle of nerves as getaway pilot David Ferrie; Sissy Spacek as Liz Garrison, increasingly tired of her husband’s seeming obsession with the assassination; Jay O. Sanders, Michael Rooker, Wayne Knight, Gary Grubbs, and Laurie Metcalf as Garrison’s army of investigators; Donald Sutherland, fascinating in his single-sequence appearance as “X,” the mysterious whistle-blower later identified as Fletcher Prouty, who offers crucial points in Garrison’s investigation; Ed Asner, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Kevin Bacon, and John Candy, all solid as various figures within the investigation itself. The film weaves in, around, and through the varied ways that Oswald could not have acted alone. This, Garrison and the film reckon, was a conspiracy, and the result was a murder of great mystique, political expediency, and, worst, arrogance that led a consortium to believe a story with this many holes would survive scrutiny.

**** (out of ****)
Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino.
Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi, based on the book by Pileggi.
Rated R. 148 minutes. 1990.

As far back as I could remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.

These words, both a fond reminiscence and an ominous foreboding, open Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, a brutal epic that takes inventory of the blue-collar mafia of Brooklyn from the point-of-view of an associate and rising star, Henry Hill. But Scorsese’s film, adapted by the director and co-screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi from Pileggi’s book on the subject, never shies away from the fact that the people at the forefront of their narrative are bad, very bad, people. They are members of the Cicero crime family, headed by Paul or “Paulie” to those who know him intimately, and Hill’s mentors are Jimmy Conway, a truck hijacker, and Tommy DeVito, a psychotic ex-armed-robber without a conscience. The film tracks nearly 15 years of history, from the family’s involvement in the Air France Robbery of 1967 until the moment that Hill, played with alternating but nuanced arrogance and eagerness by Ray Liotta, entered the Witness Protection Program after turning family secrets into the Federal authorities. In between, Scorsese and Pileggi approach the gangster epic as an American story, avoiding most of the temptation in a “just the facts, ma’am” approach for something more character-based, while still adopting the forward style of a biographical picture. Hill meets Karen, a tough, spirited, opinionated, independent woman who finds it galling that Hill doesn’t call after their first night together, and Lorraine Bracco’s performance is the film’s good-hearted center, even as Karen becomes embroiled with a thinly veiled lifestyle she’s not stupid enough to think doesn’t exist. These are intelligent people, doing their job, and when you’re a man, your job is your honor. The cast is uniformly stellar, with Robert De Niro offering slick professionalism as leader-of-the-pack Conway and a reliably fire-ball Joe Pesci as DeVito, a man whose sense of humor is accentuated by a lack of remorse and a guttering violent streak. Michael Ballhaus’ live-wire cinematography swerves in and around these violent lives, keeping in time with Thelma Schoonmaker’s sleek editing. Goodfellas is a great film, Scorsese’s finest, and the reason might be that he approaches the end of this particular story grasping a tragic sense of the easily avoidable.

Rating in Stars: **** (out of ****)
Cast: Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams
Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez
MPAA Rating: R (for language)
Running Time: 1:21
Release Date: 07/14/99 (limited)

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.
— Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

We fear the silent darkness because it seems such an unnatural thing; we fear the noises that penetrate it, not because of the potential source of those noises, but because the unnaturalness is now layered on top of itself. A bear in the dark woods is far less frightening than the suggestion of the bear in the dark woods. Alfred Hitchcock once posited that suspense was a bomb placed underneath a table, refusing to explode far past the point at which it would, for the purpose of drama, comfortably explode. The bomb itself is secondary: What frightens is the mere suggestion, and if you doubt this, think about the adage regarding yelling, “Fire,” in a crowded place.

The Blair Witch Project applies that thesis to yet another source, layering the unnaturalness threefold: We are also frightened (sometimes in a playful way, it is true) by ghost stories. Writers/directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez concoct quite the corker. Stories are told of an ancient town in Maryland known as Blair that was discovered abandoned and renamed Burkittsville and of a woman who lived there before being condemned for witchcraft. Since her own vanishing, disappearances and gruesome murders have followed. The early parts of the film detail the legend through faux interviews with the townsfolk of Burkittsville in precisely the anecdotal fashion shared by all ghost stories.

Myrick and Sánchez’ method introduces a fourth bit of layering to the unnaturalness by choosing to frame the story from the point-of-view of a documentary crew investigating the local legend. Heather (Heather Donohue) is the host and leader of a school project. Josh (Joshua Leonard) is the cameraman. Mike (Michael C. Williams) is the sound guy. They are the only primary characters we see as they interview the townsfolk, including a particular woman who saw the Blair Witch up close and somehow survived to tell about it, and then head into the Black Hills woods toward the campsite where, in the 19th century, five men were ritualistically murdered.

In the years since the film’s release, the number of so-called “found footage” films has increased, so that the method now effectively leads a sub-genre within horror. Here, in one of the first examples of the method, is a film that would not work without it. The intimacy of Neal Fredericks’s camera works to dig into the psychology of three young adults who entered into a situation far beyond their ability to control it, and by doing so, he makes the audience a participant in the terror. A member of the group goes missing, his screaming for help useless when the others cannot locate him. At some point, they find they’ve gone in a circle. The most frightening aspect of the film is its rising psychological terror, causing anxiety, panic attacks, and even something near a mental breakdown.

Eventually a more traditional kind of horror must be introduced, as two among the trio enter an ancient house with ties to this legend. What does transpire will not be revealed here for those who haven’t seen the film, but the filmmakers leave much — nearly everything — to the imagination. The audience does not need to know what happened, because, again, the suggestion is far more horrifying than being shown what happened. The performances, especially Donohue’s, are exceptional at conveying a sense of deteriorating sanity. They help to make The Blair Witch Project a positively, desperately, relentlessly horrifying experience, and that’s before the haunted-house tour.

Rating in Stars: **** (out of ****)
Cast: Jesse Plemons, Molly Shannon, Bradley Whitford, Maude Apatow, Madisen Beaty
Director: Chris Kelly
MPAA Rating: NR
Running Time: 1:37
Release Date: 09/09/16 (limited)

Its almost clinical mastery of tone is captured in the opening sequence of Other People, in which the mother of a family of five has, just seconds previous, succumbed to the human curse known as cancer. Her husband, son, and daughters are sprawled across her body, weeping openly for the loss they have just suffered, and then the phone rings. No one, of course, answers it, just as no one would capture this moment with a camera, because courtesy dictates the death must be treated with respect, but it does eventually go to voicemail. The caller is a friend, just checking in after years of not having heard from the woman now lifeless in bed, until the call is interrupted by a menial drive-thru transaction. I’m sorry, says the friend, for the inconvenience of hearing that interaction.

Director Chris Kelly’s screenplay hypothesizes a lot, both good and unintentionally humorous, about human nature in that opening sequence, and he spends the remainder of the film’s 97 minutes, which rewind to the makeshift beginning of the story, confirming those hypotheses. This is a film about the kind of good in people that is inherent, that is not always apparent on the surface, and that is shared by everyone (and anyone) who has had this shared experience. Losing a parent is a universal occurrence, except that for David  (Jesse Plemons) it comes as just one awful thing about the awful year he’s been having.

He’s a comedy writer on staff for Saturday Night Live (an autobiographical element of Kelly’s life that makes one wonder what else might have been borrowed for the purpose of this drama), but he’s also been trying to sell a pilot spec script for a comedy program that will be shown on one of the big, prime-time channels. That thread resolves itself in exactly the way one might expect from the news that this is shaping up to be the worst year of his life. Not only that, but he and his ex-boyfriend Paul (Zach Woods) have called it quits, with David’s part of the lease on their apartment about to end. Some resentment about David’s close-knit, traditional father Norman’s (Bradley Whitford) inability to accept David’s sexuality and choice of partner seems to have led to this.

And then David’s mother and Norman’s wife, Joanne (Molly Shannon) announces her illness, which is an inoperable cancer. Focus shifts onto David’s attempt to help his only major support system before the inevitable. Plemons is terrific as David, never offering an affectation of a queer individual or becoming anything less than completely authentic in his portrayal of a man under the heaviest strain, and Whitford, in the film’s trickiest role, must build a portrait of a confused man intimidated by his wife’s condition and his son’s “lifestyle” until a particularly heated exchange levels the playing field. Kelly’s screenplay has compassion for both men, refusing to make Norman a broad caricature as thoroughly as Whitford does.

Shannon is heartbreaking as Joanne, a woman who successfully puts on an air of strength she musters from her very intestines, even as she loses her hair and voice. The most painful scene here is a PTA meeting in which she must either use another person to speak louder than she can, the woman’s sense of dignity evaporating all the slower as the exchange goes on and then moves to the outside. Shannon is at the film’s aching but beating heart. This is a phenomenal film about family, about the strength of the bond within that family, and about the understanding that, through thick and thin, blood is blood. It is a great film.

Rating in Stars: *** (out of ****)
Cast:  Jane Levy, Stephen Lang, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto
Director: Fede Alvarez
MPAA Rating: R (for terror, violence, disturbing content, and language throughout including sexual references)
Running Time: 1:28
Release Date: 08/26/16

There is a lot to commend in Don’t Breathe, a compact thriller that seeks to perform a volte-face on the home-invasion movie. Here we are asked to sympathize with the intruders, who form a trio of protagonists, specifically with regard to their victim, here positioned as the antagonist. For the first hour, the screenplay by Rodo Ayagues and director Fede Alvarez essentially splits the difference. We understand the motivations of the intruders, for whom the burglary represents the only method by which they might escape their current living situation. We empathize with the victim, who is blind, presumably divorced or widowed, grieving father to a girl who died in a car accident, and a veteran of the Gulf War, the well-documented effects of which are more than likely at the center of this man’s sad existence.

The film, then, seeks to apply all of this emotional baggage to a horror exercise, and it’s an effective one, not least because of how Alvarez and cinematographer Pedro Luque navigate the geography of the centerpiece house. It rests in a deserted suburb of Detroit, a canny decision on the parts of screenwriters who understand that much of this story’s impact will come from the fact that there is no one for miles around. The house is in shabby condition but kept well-maintained by its owner. The number of rooms in the house suggests a once-happier life, poisoned, perhaps, by years of grief and neglect. The basement, though, is another matter entirely.

What (or who) might reside in that basement is a question answered almost the moment the halfway mark of the film is reached, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The set-up is terrific, especially as we are introduced to the three anti-protagonists. In descending order of moral clarity, there is Alex (Dylan Minnette), the son of the man who runs the security company that provides the locks to houses he burgles with two others; he spends the majority of the film questioning the escalating legal circumstances of this particular burglary. Rocky (Jane Levy) has survived a terrible childhood with a disengaged, oft-abusive mother, only to see her younger sister faced with the same possible childhood; her wish is to escape to California. Money (Daniel Zovatto) is Rocky’s boyfriend, who proposes they hit this particular home, believing it to hold $300,000 from a legal settlement.

We never learn the name of the blind man whom they target, but it’s really of no enormous consequence to the director and his co-writer, nor does it seem to be of great importance to Stephen Lang, an actor whose performance here is heavily focused on the man’s physicality. Lang is convincing enough that the man’s blindness never doesn’t seem like a lack of sight (Think of the many actors who treat physical handicaps as having a built-in toggle switch and know that this is not one of those instances), and his swift gait as he moves inexorably forward is downright unsettling. A lot of the film rests on believing this man poses a threat, and on that front, it is very effective.

What (or who) resides in the basement is also important, though it would be criminal to reveal anything further. What I can reveal is that the cloudy morality of the final act is troubling, particularly in a scene that hinges upon a threat of sexual domination seemingly for the thrill of it and muddies whatever might follow it. Alvarez also interrupts his solid method with some narrative silliness (An extended sequence involving the man’s foaming, growling dog is marred by obvious fakery), but it matters little in the long run. Don’t Breathe is a crafty thriller for so long that a recommendation in spite of such hiccups is easy to make.

Rating in Stars: ***½ (out of ****)
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg
Director: J.J. Abrams
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sci-fi action and violence, and brief sexual content)
Running Time: 2:07
Release Date: 05/08/09

It would, on face value, be easy to dismiss Star Trek as fan service by its very existence as another adaptation of Gene Roddenberry’s television series of the same name (which spawned four spin-off series, as well as a number of movies) and by a plot that seems to want to connect it to those movies (especially by including one of the old-guard cast as an older version of a character already present in the timeline). Fortunately, screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are respectful of the source material they are updating for a new audience, while injecting, if not new life, then a different kind of vivacity into the proceedings. This is a more-than-efficient spectacle, featuring some truly glorious set pieces and a welcome sense of humor. The fan-service aspects are only a minor distraction.

Following a prologue in which George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) must sacrifice himself moments after the birth of his son when a massive Romulan ship emerges from a black hole in space and threatens the crew of the U.S.S. Kelvin, we are introduced to James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine), George’s son, and Spock (Zachary Quinto). The former is bitter as a grown man who never knew the father he resented for his sacrifice and a mother who remarried, but he’s influenced to join the Starfleet Academy by Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who maintains that he sees greatness in the potential cadet. The latter is a logic-driven, half-human half-Vulcan whose place among his fellows is insulted when it is insinuated that his human mother (Winona Ryder) is a “disadvantage.” Through a combination of solid performances and writing, we get a sense of who these men are from minute one.

We are also introduced to the various elements that make up the U.S.S. Enterprise, the ship on which Pike currently resides as captain and Spock as first officer. There is Zoe Saldana as Nyota Uhura, the resourceful, multilingual lieutenant who had Kirk’s eye from the moment they met and is now dating the guarded Spock, John Cho and Anton Yelchin as Hikaru Sulu and Pavel Andreievich Chekhov, the two lieutenants in charge of maintaining the craft’s speed and orbit, and a very funny Simon Pegg as Montgomery Scott, the warp science expert hired on by way of strange, convoluted circumstances involving Kirk’s abandonment on a dangerous, arid planet where he runs into another version of Spock played by Leonard Nimoy.

That last part requires some context, and the context is occasionally labyrinthine. The villain is the captain of that Romulan ship, a vengeful individual named Nero (Eric Bana), who has traveled from almost two centuries in the future to exact his justice upon Starfleet for what he saw as the unjust genocide of his people and destruction of his world. That involves a MacGuffinesque red matter that can create a wormhole in space, and through the older Spock’s unintentionally tragic mistakes, Romulus was destroyed. When Vulcan is destroyed and the younger Spock’s mother dies, the plot kicks in: Nero must be defeated, but not in a way that carelessly causes more red matter to explode.

There is an efficiency to the plotting here in spite of its busy nature, with the screenwriters allowing us to become accustomed to the crew’s interactivity while ducking in and around stretches of action sequences that thrill on the basis of their seamless visual effects. Director J.J. Abrams, cinematographer Dan Mindel, and co-editors Mary Jo Markey and Maryann Brandon expertly devise and execute these sequences, such as a showdown between Kirk and an indigenous animal on the snowy planet, a dive in which Kirk, Sulu, and another officer must disable an enormous laser drill, and a climax that variously involves chases, shootouts, hand-to-hand combat, and a layering of desperate emotion just underneath the surface. Star Trek might be busy, but it’s as good as the original movies ever were. What a ride.

Rating in Stars: ***½ (out of ****)
Cast: Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne
Directed by: Taika Waititi
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements including violent content, and for some language)
Running Time: 1:41
Release Date: 06/24/16 (limited)

Here is a goodhearted film, delightful and somber, zany and full of truth. Hunt for the Wilderpeople weaves a tale of a patchwork family whose members all came from different places nevertheless united in loneliness. The father was a bushman who fell in love and subsequently became civilized. The mother was already a part of this civilization, charmed by the man from the woods in spite of the probability of a future with no children. The son has arrived at his newest foster house, after an absentee father left the mother who in turn abandoned her child. Writer/director Taika Waititi’s comedy of manners eventually becomes a road-trip comedy, but for about twenty minutes, he allows us to examine the chemistry of this unique trio.

The father is a lovable grump who clearly finds his own situation almost entirely improbable. He is Hector (Sam Neill)–“Hec” for short–who has applied his formerly wild ways to something of an adaptation to rural life. The mother never knew her own family growing up, and one can imagine that she might have taken to fostering children even if she had met a man capable of producing them. She’s just that kind (and kind of) a woman, Bella (a phenomenal Rima Te Wiata, whose all-too-brief performance deserves every positive accolade one can afford). The foster son is a “real bad egg,” according to the child services official (Rachel House) who drops him with this elderly couple. But even after we receive a lengthy list of Ricky’s (Julian Dennison) wrongdoings, we actually meet the kid and are reminded that one’s attitude rarely truly reflects one’s character.

That’s all the wrongdoing was, after all: a personification of his attitude. He’s a lost kid who, though he denies it the one time he’s asked, desperately wants to meet his own mother (As for his father, well, some may know how that is). Bella is welcoming and kind, singing him a silly song for his birthday, and then suddenly the character exits the narrative in a way that is, perhaps, predictable but not easily acceptable. The film is divided into chapters (The idiom used by the official to describe is the title for one of them), and the occurrence happens right at the end of the first. Hec’s solution to retreat into the woods, and then Ricky gets the bright idea to join him.

Tracked by the government official and her bumbling policeman of a sidekick (Oscar Kightley) under the suspicion that Hec has kidnapped Ricky, the two spent almost half a year on the run through the New Zealand, and their excursion makes up roughly six of the remaining chapters. Waititi (who also has a funny cameo as an entirely unhelpful priest with a curious allegory for finding faith after tragedy), adapting a novel by Billy Crump, then turns on the comic switch, with Hec and Ricky meeting the likes of a forager named Psycho Sam (Rhys Darby) whose governmental paranoia knows no boundaries and a father/daughter pair who take Ricky in one night and treat him like a celebrity and saving the life of a diabetic park ranger.

All of this is funny stuff, which means that the touching moments work all the more because of the chemistry between Dennison, whose Ricky is a loner this close to bursting out of his cocoon, and Neill, whose Hec is a very sad man who merely wants to be alone for a while after losing the only person for whom he became civilized (One guesses from his decision to retreat back into the woods that he probably wasn’t always a man of the woods anyway). Some ancillary distraction occurs with the inclusion of a trio of hunters who infer something scandalous and proceed to pop up now and then, but even so, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is often–to adopt Hec’s mistaken but well-meaning replacement for the term’s real counterpart–majestical.

Rating in Stars: *** (out of ****)
Cast: Andy Samberg, Tim Meadows, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer, Sarah Silverman
Directors: Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone
MPAA Rating: R (for some graphic nudity, language throughout, sexual content and drug use)
Running Time: 1:26
Release Date: 06/03/16

The entitlement within celebrity culture is an easy target to paint but a harder one to hit, which means that, even when Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping seems a bit conflicted about whether it wants to be satirical or simply silly, the screenplay (by Andy Samberg and directors Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone) still has its laser sight pointed on that target, and that’s a good-enough reason to get behind the film’s particular modus operandi. Our protagonist (of sorts, as he isn’t the easiest person to sympathize with until a third act introduces him to actual humility) is an obvious conglomeration of Justin Bieber’s appropriation of black music culture and Kanye West’s mountainous ego. Those are also easy targets.

Of course, this is not a film that wants to venture far into the complexity of its targets. It is positioned as a documentary in the format of an E! True Hollywood Story, with various members of the music business making cameos as talking heads in the “special” and leading us through the rise and fall and second rise of Conner Friel (Samberg), the pop star in question who goes by the name Conner4Real. He was once the face of a boy band called the Style Boyz and has now been enjoying a privileged, blessed life as a solo artist whose first album, Thriller, Also, topped Billboard charts. His follow-up album, CONNquest, is the “most anticipated of the decade,” boasting 17 songs that Conner personally wrote (with a small village of producers) and a wrongheaded, Macklemore-esque leading single about civil rights (which barely veils his own masculinity, of course).

The other members of the Style Boyz include Owen (Taccone), who now acts as Conner’s oft-ignored DJ, Lawrence (Schaffer), who quit music after a writing credit was ignored to run a farm in Colorado, and its manager Tonee (Tim Meadows), himself the former member of a musical group. Conner’s publicist (Sarah Silverman) wants him to be as omnipresent as clinical depression, and so she sets up a deal with a kitchen appliances company to play his music every time one is opened. This causes a national blackout, and Conner’s reputation gets flushed down the toilet until Hunter (Chris Redd), another rapper with whom Conner gets along, presents him with the opportunity for more fame.

Plot is kept at the bare minimum, which means that the film is primarily focused on comic set-pieces that pretty consistently amuse. A gag involving exposed human anatomy of two kinds milks its potential for all its worth, then follows through with the punchline that has been set up. One performance of a Conner4Real track juxtaposes sexual intercourse with the killing of Osama bin Laden, while another one mollifies the artist’s exceptional brain capacity at an awards show by pairing him up with a vocal legend well beyond his league. R&B artist Seal turns up at a public marriage proposal, only to be attacked by wolves belonging to a company who employs them for parties.

The gags don’t stop here, and neither do the cameos, with the film’s closing reel crediting more celebrities as themselves than I can remember (Faces with names like Nas, Usher, Questlove, Simon Cowell, and even two of the members of Arcade Fire are just a handful of the onslaught) and other celebrities filling bit roles of their own, such as Justin Timberlake as an aspiring singer and creepy caterer and a certain parodist in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance that showcases his chameleon talents. Silliness like this is where the charm of Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (an amusingly redundant title that reflects this silliness) lies, so it’s ok that the laser-guided satire segues to random humor. It’s still funny, which means the film succeeds in either direction.

Rating in Stars: ***½ (out of ****)
Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Xavier Samuel, Morfydd Clark, Stephen Fry, Chloe Sevigny
Director: Whit Stillman
MPAA Rating: PG (for some thematic elements)
Running Time: 1:32
Release Date: 05/20/16 (limited)

Love & Friendship gambles with our good will from the get-go with a protagonist who would be, in any other movie, the antagonist by trying to control everything with her manipulative hands. By positioning her as the head of a small ensemble and, thus, the person with whom we are supposed to empathize, writer/director Whit Stillman (adapted a novella by Jane Austen) tests our ability by then attempting to force us to buy into the woman’s motivation. It is an experiment that works, because Lady Susan Vernon, the recently widowed woman who deals with her grief by vainly clutching everything and everyone dearest to her close to her chest, is a once-in-a-blue-moon creation.

She is also played by Kate Beckinsale in a performance that receives the majority of the quick-witted dialogue (Imagine if Aaron Sorkin had written a period piece, and this character is that creation in microcosm), transforms itself into an art piece of its own, and then transcends all expectations we have for this character–even the ones higher on the list. This is a truly magnificent turn from the actress, who doesn’t merely chew but eats and digests the scenery, all the while remaining empathetic. It might be a rather cliché sentiment, but one is unable to take one’s eyes off of her.

Her husband, who was entitled with great wealth that has now passed onto her and their daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark), has indeed died, and Susan has arrived to stay with his family–her in-laws–including his brother Charles (Justin Edwards) and Charles’ much younger wife Catherine DeCourcy (Emma Greenwell). Susan must also contend with the husband (Stephen Fry) of one of her best friends, an American named Alicia Johnson (Chloe Sevigny), who believes she will be sent back to the States if her husband has his way. Meanwhile, the dashing Lord Manwaring (Lochlann O’Mearáin) has left his wife (Jenn Murray) in a tizzy about potential infidelity.

That latter subplot doesn’t have much significance until a development at the end, but until then, the film is concerned with affairs of the heart, as two potential suitors enter the picture. The first is Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel), Catherine’s brother, who is younger by far than Susan but falls head over heels for her nevertheless. Sir James Martin (an uproariously funny Tom Bennett) courts Frederica, much to the young woman’s dismay, for the gentleman is, not to put too fine a point on it, foolish in the extreme. He means well, though, and is well off when it comes to money.

It takes about 15 minutes for Stillman to catch his stride and for us to engage with the film’s breakneck pacing, but once Love & Friendship hits, it’s impossible to dislike. It even provides a bait-and-switch for an audience expecting the narrative to go in one direction while the film’s two love stories take sharp left turns in a final few minutes. The cast are all on-target, the tendency for the film to introduce us to characters by way of close-ups and profiles with his or her name and a non sequitur description underneath never fails to garner a chuckle, and generally speaking, everything that could have come off precious and quirky gains a richness through the film’s capturing an era wherein a woman has no place to be manipulative. Even more surprising: We get a sense of why she is and how she got there. Here is a delightful surprise.

Rating in Stars: *** (out of ****)
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley
Director: Shane Black
MPAA Rating: R (for violence, sexuality, nudity, language and brief drug use)
Running Time: 1:56
Release Date: 05/20/16

One man is a bouncer of sorts, hired by contract to threaten or coerce physically those who terrorize his clients. The other turned private investigator following a tragedy that left him a single father to his daughter. The Nice Guys, as written by Anthony Bagarozzi and director Shane Black, is the buddy comedy of contradictions in which these two men are the co-leading protagonists. That isn’t a complaint. If the second man’s character history is largely left a blank space to be filled by the viewer, the first man’s must be played as a joke. If a running gag is that the case they have been hired to investigate results in an increasing body count, at least one of the deaths that occur needs to shake up the tone a bit. If the daughter is introduced to be a less bungling detective than her father and his new partner of a sort, the film needs to introduce her to real danger to justify the choice.

The actors filling these two major roles are crucial to the roles’ success. Russell Crowe is Jackson Healy, the hired hit-man, in the literal sense of the term, whose marriage ended as a result of some surprising infidelity on his wife’s part (That’s the joke part of his character’s set-up, and it’s a good joke). Since then, he’s dedicated his life to making the lives of half the people he meets better by making the other half pay for their trouble. Healy wears brass knuckles as a form of wedding ring and lives above a bar. Crowe’s performance is the clever “straight man” to his co-star, relatively speaking, weaving a story involving a diner that is one of the few high points in his life, but he has solid comic timing, too (a surprise for an actor who usually chooses those roles that stretch how far he can grimace).

Ryan Gosling is Holland March, the former cop who is now a detective on his own payroll asked to investigate the silliest things. One woman asks him to find her husband, and one glance to his left tells March that the man has not only died but been cremated. It’s a sometimes thankless job, and March occasionally calms down by drinking whatever he can whenever it is possible. Gosling is fantastic here as a whirlwind of unpredictable features and a source of great physical comedy (such as when he tries to act tough while in a precarious position during a bodily function). His daughter Holly (Angourie Rice, very good in her first and certainly not last performance of any real significance) is a Nancy Drew type, having inherited her father’s gift for observational technique.

The plot runs in circles, presenting a series of red herrings and a MacGuffin to give us a case of the usual odd mystery. A popular actress of adult-film legend has died in an over-the-top and messy car crash, and another, the daughter (Margaret Whalley) of the head of the Department of Justice (Kim Basinger), has gone missing. The pieces of the mystery are odd, but the particulars of them are only vague for the intention of hiding a fairly obvious motivation involving politics and corruption (A particularly lazy scene involving a character acting ostentatiously suspicious further undermines any attempt at suspense). Nevertheless, we get an assembly line of memorable tertiary characters, such as an assassin (played by Matt Bomer) with a curious nickname and cold, blue eyes or a couple of henchmen (played by Keith David and Beau Knapp) who have the misfortune of getting on Healy’s wrong side.

It’s all very funny, with few elements interrupting Healy and March’s repertoire. The dialogue is as punchy as Healy’s choice of profession, with more lines to quote than can be counted on two hands (Highlights include a scene involving a protest group who didn’t fully think through their use of an apparatus, March’s literal stumble into two major developments in the case while so drunken his speech is slurred, and a hallucination during a potential race to the finish line). Few real surprises for that case are in store, and the end of the movie brings not much more than a shrug where that is involved, but other surprises, such as Holly’s able response to danger or Healy’s unexpectedly complex methods of intimidation, allow The Nice Guys to elevate itself above its familiar trappings. It may not be new, but it acts like it is and has the go-getter attitude to prove it.