The artefact at the heart of the action in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is a time shifting device called the Antikythera. This ancient, analogue computer with the power to find fissures in time, however, isn’t the only thing about the movie that revisits the past.
Everything old is new again in director James Mangold’s vision of the classic action-adventure. There’s the much talked about de-aging of Ford, the grand old man of action-adventure which effectively brings backs the classic Indy of the original film, and the reappearance of much-loved characters like John Rhys-Davies as Sallah. Even the new characters, like Helena, played by “Fleabag’s” Phoebe Waller-Bridge, feels like a throwback to the characters invented by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas when Ronald Reagan was still in office.
The action begins in 1944. Indy (the de-aged Ford) risks everything to help his colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) keep Nazi scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) from getting his hands on
a mysterious dial known as the Antikythera. Used properly, the dial has the ability to manipulate time, and say, change the outcome of a certain war. “Hitler made mistakes,” says Voller. “And with this, I will correct them all.”
Cut to twenty-five years later. America has just landed on the moon, and the nation is jubilant but it is a jubilation the weathered Indy does not share. In the wake of his separation from
Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and the death of his son, he starts each day with a shot of booze and a bad attitude.
On the eve of his retirement from teaching, a face from the past shows up. Helena Shaw (Waller-Bridge) is Basil Shaw’s daughter, Indy’s estranged goddaughter, an archeologist and a thief. Her interest in the Antikythera lures Indy back into a world of international adventure, former Nazis and the echoes of history come to life. “You’ve taken your chances, made your mistakes,” Helena says to Indy, “and now, a final triumph!”
Nothing is likely to ever live up to the adrenaline rush of seeing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” for the first time. The expert balance of action, comedy, suspense and mysticism is a cut above and nearly impossible to duplicate. The retro newness of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is an attempt to recapture the magic, and it does deliver a hefty dose of whip-crackin’ thrills, but like the de-aged Ford in the film’s opening twenty minutes, it doesn’t exactly feel like the real thing.
It is, however, respectful of what came before. Mangold transcends the film’s recycled nature with some exciting action set pieces, and even if the stunts don’t feel as organic as they did the first time around, they deliver a welcome blast of vintage Indy action. There’s even a callback to Indy’s well-known fear of snakes. A highlight is a wild chase through the streets and alleyways of Tangier that mixes humor, action and peril in equal measure.
Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael captures the classic Indy look, an aesthetic and color palette that disappeared sometime around “Crystal Skull.” Visually, it’s like a warm hug that spans back decades.
Of course, the crucial element is Ford. He may need more CGI to hopscotch around on the top of trains and through sunken caves these days, but he brings the OG 70s movie star mojo and a Traveller’s hat full of charisma that has not diminished over the years. There is a poignancy to Ford’s lion-in-winter portrayal of the character, and, as a result, (NO SPOILERS HERE) there is an emotional component to the film’s final reel, as Indy confronts the anguish he feels, that may be the most touching moment in the entire series.
He’s ably assisted by the wisecracking Waller-Bridge and stoically evil Mikkelsen.
The story and action in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” gets slowed down from time-to-time by too much talk of the Lance of Longinus, Polybius Squares and the Ear of Dionysius. Mangold makes up for those moments with John Williams’s rousing, signature score and a wild, and unexpected third reel payoff. The movie may not turn back the clock to have the cultural impact of the original, but it is a lot of fun.
In 2011, I accused the first movie in the “Puss in Boots” franchise of neutering the once-charming character. We fell in love with the frisky feline, as voiced by Antonio Banderas, in the “Shrek” movies, but his journey from supporting to leading character was far from purrfect. The movies were predictable and worse, had none of the purr-sonality (OK. I’ll stop with the cat puns now) of the “Shrek” movies.
Now, one television series, sequel and video game later, comes “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” a movie, now playing in theatres, that raises the stakes.
The new film opens with the plucky ginger cat (once again voiced by Banderas) in a life-or-death battle against a fur-midable (last one, I promise) opponent. “I am known by many names,” he brags. “Stabby Tabby. El Macho Gato. The Leche Whisperer. I am Puss in Boots!”
He’s been in sticky situations before, but this one is different.
“I have bad news,” says the doctor who attends to his wounds. “You died.”
It looks like the end for Puss in Boots, until he reminds the physician, “Doctor, relax! I have nine lives!”
“And how many times have you died already?”
“Oh,” says Puss, “I’m not really a math guy.”
Turns out, Puss is on his last life and must give up his adventurous ways if he wants to survive.
Rather than become a lap-cat, the swashbuckling Puss, along with love interest Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and chatty therapy dog Perro (Harvey Guillén), sets off to into the Black Forest to find the mystical Last Wish and restore the lives he lost. “I need to get my lives back,” he says. “Without them, I am not the legend.”
But after eight lives lived, Puss has many enemies, all of whom want track him down. “I find the idea of nine lives absurd,” says the Big Bad Wolf (Wagner Moura), “and you didn’t value any of them.”
Animation is generally thought of as entertainment for kids, but legends like Don Bluth and Ralph Bakshi made their careers creating films that addressed darker subject matter. Now, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” is no “The Secret of Nimh” or “Fire and Ice,” but it is bleaker and more experimental than anything else in the franchise. Like the recent “Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio,” “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” treads into adult territory theme wise, with higher stakes than we’re used to in a film aimed at kids– the Cave of Lost Souls, anyone?—but does so with family audiences in mind.
The character of PiB may be in peril, but the flamboyance that made him such a scene stealer in “Shrek 2” is still on full display. He’s a huge personality in pocket-size, and Banderas brings a perfect combination of roguishness and righteousness to the voice work.
Fun, villainous voice work from Florence Pugh, John Mulaney, and Wagner Moura, as Goldilocks, “Big” Jack Horner and Big Bad Wolf / Death respectively, add some spice and beautiful animation lifts the adventure sequences skyward.
Best of all, the film’s underlying life lesson, that time is precious and we should enjoy it while we can—”When you only have one life,” says Kitty Softpaws, “that’s what makes it special.”—is nicely woven into the film’s fleet-footed, if slightly predictable plot.
Movies based on videogames are either entertaining or eye-rolling. An interactive videogame that works at home on your PlayStation may not offer the same dopamine rush when translated to the one-way interactivity of the big screen. For every “Detective Pikachu” that hits the mark there’s a dozen “BloodRaynes” or “Mortal Kombat: Annihilations.”
“Uncharted,” a prequel to the wildly successful PlayStation series starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, and now playing in theatres, is the latest entry in the videogame sweepstakes.
Holland plays Nathan Drake, who, unlike Spider-Man, the actor’s other cinematic alter-ego, uses his sticky fingers to steal stuff, not scale the outside of tall buildings. Either way, both characters are adventurers who live outside the margins. In Drake’s case, it comes naturally. He’s a direct descendant of 16th century pirate Sir Francis Drake.
By day Nathan is a bartender in New York, by night he’s a thief. Day and night, he hopes to reunite with his long-lost treasure-hunting brother Sam who he hasn’t seen since he was ten years old. Big brother hit the road, with a promise to return, leaving behind memories and some cryptic clues to the location of $5 billion worth of Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s lost gold. “The gold isn’t gone,” he said, “it’s lost and if it is lost, it can be found.”
When fast-talking slickster Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) asks Nathan to help track down the lost treasure, he agrees, hoping to find the gold and information on his missing brother. “There’s only one rule,” says Sully of their dangerous mission. “Don’t get caught.”
The pair, along with fortune hunter Chloe (Sophia Ali), travel the world in search of two crosses that serve as a key to the mystery, all the while trying to stay one or two steps ahead of ruthless rich guy Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who has a personal connection to the gold, and his team of mercenaries.
“Uncharted” mixes and matches the adventure elements of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Tomb Raider” and “National Treasure” into a generic action movie that loses its way early on. Not even the combined charisma of its stars, Holland and Wahlberg, can put it back on track.
Both play thinly sketched versions of characters we’ve seen before and better. When he’s on-screen Wahlberg plays a riff on his trademarked sarcastic smart alecky character but this is a Where’s Waldo style role for him. He disappears for long sections as Holland takes center stage.
Holland plays Nathan as a cocky young man with a special set of skills. Sound familiar? It’s like watching Peter Parker do parkour without the webs but with an unnatural gift for figuring out puzzles that have confounded others for centuries. He’s fun on screen but he’s not doing anything here that feels new.
Together they banter in playful dialogue that often has the all the charm of an in-gown toenail.
Then there are the action scenes. The movie opens with a frenetic fight scene, heavy on the CGI, that sees Nathan flying through the air, battling bad guys. It’s high-flying action, but don’t worry if you are five minutes late getting to the cinema, the scene is repeated later in the movie. The large-scale action scenes are loud, frenzied but often feel like leftovers from Pierce Brosnan era 007. They fill the screen, but the movie’s flippant, light tone ensures there is very little jeopardy involved for any of the main characters.
“Uncharted” does have a pretty good villain, and no, it’s not Banderas who does little other than speak in a low whisper. Tati Gabrielle as the ruthless killer and schemer Braddock brings some spark to her scenes, but not enough to kickstart this inert action flick.
Another franchise, another eccentric genius. Robert Downey Jr. laves Tony Stark behind to return to the big screen in a reboot of a remake of a classic story of a man who could talk to animals.
When we first meet Dr. John Dolittle (Downey) he’s at the Howard Hughes recluse stage of his life. The passing of his wife has left him despondent, unable to enjoy the company of humans so he lives in seclusion with only a menagerie of animals for company.
To pass the time he plays chess with a timid gorilla named Chee-Chee (voice of Rami Malek) and in conversation with the various animals who crowd his home, including his trusted macaw advisor Polynesia (voice of Emma Thompson) and Jip (voice of Tom Holland), a bespectacled dog.
“I don’t care about anyone, anywhere, anymore,” the doctor says.
Of course, that’s not true. When animal lover Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett) shows up at Dolittle’s gate with an injured squirrel (voice of Craig Robinson)—“I’m too beautiful to die,” the squirrel says.—on the same day the doctor is summoned to Buckingham Palace to see the ailing Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley), he is brought back into the human world. Her Majesty is gravely ill and if she dies the treasury will take the animal sanctuary Dr. Dolittle calls home. Worse, all his animals will be thrown out into the world during hunting season.
To save the Queen‘s life he must embark on a journey to find the Eden Tree and its magical, healing fruit. It’s trip fraught with danger and is the same journey that cost his beloved wife her life. Add to that some palace intrigue, an island of misfits and thieves, turbo boosting whales, a vengeful squirrel and even a dragon and you have a new chapter in the life of the man who can talk to animals.
Kids will likely find “Dolittle’s” chatty animals amusing but this isn’t simply a movie about wise cracking beasts. At its beating heart it is a movie about pain, but, as one character says, not the kind of hurt inflicted by a bullet or a knife. It’s about the agony of losing someone. Dolittle’s heart is broken by the death of his wife, and that ache is the engine that propels the entire movie. So, while the young’uns may giggle at the animals but the movie’s underlying downer vibe and generic approach suggests that Dolittle’s wife isn’t the only lifeless part of this movie.
Downey plays the character with a sense of bemused confusion, topped with a mealy-mouthed Billy Connolly impression that changes from scene to scene. It’s a pantomime performance that makes the best of his finely tuned comic timing but feels sloppy and needlessly mannered.
“Dolittle” contains some good pop psychology for children about working together—”Teamwork makes the dream work!”—and facing their fears but overall a movie featuring talking animals shouldn’t be this banal.
Based on “Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite” by Jake Bernstein “The Laundromat” chronicles the rot that festers on the corrupt body of our financial institutions.
Divided into chapters with names like “Secret Number One: The Meek Are Screwed,” “The Laundromat” is a funny, star-studded portmanteau of thematically linked stories involving tax loopholes, exploitation and financial malfeasance. “All these stories are about money,” says Ramón Fonseca (Antonio Banderas), “the secret lives of money.” Like “The Big Short” it takes the spoonful-of-sugar-to-help-the-medicine-go-down approach to telling a story so dripping with bile you have to laugh to stop from crying.
Meryl Streep is at the helm of this cinematic op-ed playing Ellen Martin, a steely woman whose husband’s death leads her by the nose into the world of fake insurance policies and a shady Panama City law firm run by slicksters Jürgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Fonseca. The flamboyant represent “drug lords, sex traffickers and destroyers of the planet” and also colorfully narrate the action. “Tax avoidance and tax evasion,” says Mossack. “The line between them is as thin as a jailhouse wall.” They’re more interested in the shell companies they control that help line the pockets of their very wealthy clients than the regular Joes affected by their actions. “Bad is such a big word for such a small word.”
As the story splinters into chapters, cameos from Jeffrey Wright (as a secretive insurance broker), Nonso Anozie (as a billionaire who tries to buy his way out of trouble) and David Schwimmer (as a business person screwed by his insurance company) pile up, revealing personal aspects of the dirty business of money laundering. The story wanders here and there but Streep stays on course, lending this ragged movie a strong emotional core.
“The Laundromat” features lively performances—I’m looking at you Oldman and Banderas—timely commentary about whistleblowers and fraud and a rousing fourth-wall-breaking ending and yet, feels like less than the sum of its parts. Director Steven Soderbergh provides some well-crafted big moments but the stories are too far flung and too brief to inspire any real interest in the characters. They come and go with little development (save for Martin), often representing ideas rather than fully formed characters.
Streep plays a double role, an ill-advised choice that feels like a stunt and doesn’t lend much to the telling of the tale, but wraps things up with a wake-up call, asking basic questions—Who is accountable? Where and how do you get justice?—that put a period on this story but should be a starting point for more discussion and thought.
If the title itself didn’t give it away, fans of the sappy television hit “This is Us” will know what to expect from “Life Itself.” The new film from “This is Us” guru Dan Fogelman is a Xerox of his TV show. Grab some Kleenexes and cue the schmaltz.
Divided into chapters, Fogelman goes multigenerational in “Life Itself,” guiding us through the lives of a handful of people on a couple of continents. Anxious New Yorker Will (Oscar Isaac) bends his therapist’s (Annette Bening) ear, droning on about his failed marriage to Abby (Olivia Wilde) and Bob Dylan.
Cut to the future. There’s Will and Abby’s daughter Dylan (Olivia Cooke), an angry punk chanteuse who specializes in, SURPRISE, Bob Dylan songs.
Jump across the pond to Spain. There the wealthy Mr. Saccione (Antonio Banderas) promotes one of his workers, Javier (Sergio Peris-Mencheta). With the extra money is able to marry his girlfriend Isabel (Laia Costa), but later a tragedy, witnessed by their son Rodrigo (Àlex Monner), traumatizes the boy. Saccione pays for therapy and later, after some turmoil, pays for Rodrigo to go to school in New York, which co-incidentally is where the story comes full circle.
See how everything connects in the grand soap opera of life?
There’s more. Mandy Patinkin pops up as Will’s father, a cancer diagnosis rocks a family and don’t forget molestation. It’s a litany of tragedy—suicide, mental health issues, abandonment and family dysfunction—that feels like a sappy Afterschool Special written by Nikolai Gogol, coated in a fine dusting of schmaltz. It longs to be a rich, complex look at life, love, loss and olive oil but is instead a metaphorical Crock-Pot—a slow burn of the story that never comes to a boil—that, unlike the one on Fogelman’s TV show, never actually catches fire.
Director Hugh Hudson put some spring into the step of “Chariots of Fire,” his Oscar winning account of runners in the 1924 Olympics but fails to bring the story of the discovery of stone age cave paintings to vivid life.
Set in 1879, Antonio Banderas is amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola. A free thinker with an interest in Darwin and prehistory, he creates controversy in his community when he and his daughter uncover Maria (Allegra Allen) unearth cave paintings depicting life two million years ago. “This discovery in our province is of enormous significance in the history of mankind,” says Sautuola.
Not everyone agrees.
Although a university of Madrid archaeologist dates the etchings to the Palaeolithic Era other scholars disagree. “A vast fresco painted by a tribe of Palaeolithic Michelangelos,” says on mockingly. Church leaders fume at the suggestion of life beyond their historical parameters—“Monkeys with paint brushes!”—and even his own wife, Conchita (Golshifteh Farahani) has a hard time reconciling his science to her deeply held religious beliefs. “You have lost your faith and want to take mine,” she says. The discovery, a profound challenge to the entire country’s belief system, exacts a toll on Sautuola both personally and professionally.
“Finding Altamira” is a handsomely rendered movie. The period details add to the overall feel of the film, even the computer generated bisons that spring to life from the drawings don’t seem that out of place. Hudson shot on location—including inside the cave itself, now a Unesco site—but all the pretty pictures can’t make up for the mannered dialogue and reserved performances. Banderas and Farahani seem to have stepped out of a “Masterpiece Theatre” episode, handing in work that would have benefitted from fewer restraints. Only Rupert Everett as the villainous Monsignor seems to be having any fun.
The film documents an important discovery plus the intolerance and jealousies that it was met with. It’s just too bad the film isn’t more interesting. As it is “Finding Altamira” feels like the kind of movie your science teacher ran in class when they didn’t feel like lecturing.
The movies have looked to the news for inspiration almost since the first time film was projected on screens.
As far back as 1899, a film called Major Wilson’s Last Stand dramatized scenes from the First and Second Matabele Wars, including the death of Major Allan Wilson and his men in Rhodesia in 1893.
The trend of reel life emulating real life continues this weekend with The 33, an Antonio Banderas film based on a famous mining accident. In 2010, 33 men spent 69 days trapped underground in a copper-gold mine located near Copiapó, Chile when a rock the size of the Empire State Building blocked their exit.
“I can’t think of a better story than this one to bring to the screen,” says producer Mike Medavoy.
The trick is getting the story right. Director Patricia Riggins worked with the miners, Medavoy and screenwriters to create a story that, according to everyone involved, features more fact than fiction.
That isn’t always the case.
According to IMDb the Jim Sturgess movie 21 calls itself a “fact based” story about a group of MIT students who used a complicated card-counting system to fleece Las Vegas casinos for millions of dollars.
The bare bones of the story are true — blackjack was played and MIT students counted cards — but Hollywood diverged from reality when casting the leads. In truth the main players were mainly Asian-Americans, including ringleader Jeff Ma who consulted on the movie.
Ma called the controversy surrounding the casting of Sturgess and Kevin Spacey “over-blown,” adding “I would have been a lot more insulted if they had chosen someone who was Japanese or Korean, just to have an Asian playing me.”
The Michael Bay film Pain & Gain is listed as an action-comedy and stars Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie certainly play up the jokes. Everyone laughed, except for Marc Schiller, the real-life inspiration for the film’s kidnap victim.
“It wasn’t that funny when they tried to kill me,” he said. “They did run me over with a car twice after trying to blow me up in the car. The way they tell it made it look like a comedy. You also gotta remember that not only I went through this, but certain people were killed, so making these guys look like nice guys is atrocious.”
Last year’s Oscar winner Whiplash saw Miles Teller as a young drummer driven to extremes by a fanatical music teacher played by J.K. Simmons.
The movie draws parallels to the famous story of Jo Jones and Charlie Parker. The legend goes that Jones threw a cymbal at Parker’s head after a lackluster solo, prompting the sax player to go away, practice for a year and return as one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. Trouble is, the story isn’t true. A cymbal was let loose, but according to eyewitnesses it was dropped on the floor at Parker’s feet and not at his head.
“Not attempted murder,” wrote Richard Brody in the New York Times, “but rather musical snark.”
How does Hollywood get away playing fast and loose with the facts? Black Mass director Scott Cooper says, “I don’t think people come to narrative features for the facts, or for truth. I think you go to documentaries for that. What you do come to narrative features for is psychological truth, emotion and deep humanity.”
More people die in the first five minutes “The Expendables 3” movie than in any other two war movies combined. There is death by bullet, bazooka and bomb. It’s a wild but oddly bloodless beginning to the movie. Perhaps its because they have scaled back the rating to PG1the from the hard Rs the last two Expendables enjoyed, but removing most of the over-the-top violence leaves an absence of the over-the-top fun of the originals. Why arm Stallone and Company up the wazoo and then skimp on the fake blood and faux carnage?
A mission to stop a shipment of bombs brings grizzled mercenaries Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunner (Dolph Lundgren), Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Caesar (Terry Crews) face to face with their toughest adversary yet, arms dealer Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson). Determined to bring down Stonebanks, Ross retires the oldtimers—“We aren’t the future anymore,” says Ross, “we’re part of the past.”— and recruits a fresh group of soldiers—Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Victor Ortiz and Glen Powell—but just may find that his old dogs have some new tricks.
“Great plan,” says Luna (MMA fighter Rousey) of Ross’s old-fashioned bulldozer approach to mercenary work, “if it was 1985,” and this might have been a great movie if it was 1985. Despite the lack of overly gratuitous blood and guts, it feels like one of those direct-to-video action movies from the Reagan years. With no sense of nuance and clichés aplenty, it ploughs ahead, relentlessly reveling in its own stupidity. Kind of the like everything, but especially the action movies, in the 1980s.
But for much of the movie, that’s OK. How could you not love Wesley Snipes saying that his character was put in jail for tax evasion? It’s art imitating life! Or something.
Most of the other performances aren’t so much performances as they are action star posturing. Kelsey Grammar, as a recruiter for a new batch of Expendables, stands out because he does some actual acting. So do many of the obvious stunt doubles. The rest are all bulked-up chunks of machismo floating in a sea of testosterone.
Still, as an old-school action movie, it works well enough, despite the lack of gallons of fake plasma. I liked the attempts of creating new catchphrases—which are a must in these kinds of films—like Crews yelling, “It’s time to mow the lawn,” before spraying thousands of bullets into a dock packed with baddies. Also, the action scenes are shot clearly and effectively, and unlike last week’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” you can actually see who is shooting-punching-blowing up-kicking-garroting-etc who. It makes it easier to cheer for the good guys when you can tell who the bad guys are.
