San Diego Reader April 21, 2016 69


he just wanted a cool badge for his collec- tion.) Step one: stop by the White House — uninvited, unannounced, and mostly unwanted — for a chat with the leader of the free world, and task his two buddies with making it all work out. Michael Shannon effectively makes his tender voice and feline movements cover for the physical discrepancies between himself and Presley, but it’s Kevin Spacey’s Rich- ard Nixon who slouches into the spotlight as a man determined to understand and engage the strangely dressed creature sit- ting in the Oval Office, eating his candy and drinking his Dr. Pepper. Director Liza Johnson (Hateship Loveship) brings warm humanity and delightful tension to the proceedings, and even slips in a point: something about what the mighty must do for the rest of us to live happy. 2016 — M.L. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Everybody Wants Some!! — A cheer- fully bullshit, oddly handsome daydream about the glories of pre-collegiate life (the three days before classes start, to be precise) in early ‘80s Texas. Why oddly handsome? Because the early ‘80s may not have been a pretty time, but writer- director Richard Linklater has buffed this particular cow patty to a high shine, and then slathered on the lacquer and oiled up the lens. The result is pleasant to look at and listen to, and not much more. The guys — top-tier ballplayers living off- campus in houses donated by the city — are mustachioed Adonises, built like the late-20s specimens they actually are. They give each other crap and slap each other’s asses and play, play, play: baseball, foos- ball, ping-pong, darts, basketball, pinball, pool, knuckles, you name it. It’s bonding, bro. Now and then, they dress up and chase tail. The girls are gorgeous and eager: either easy lays or sweetly roman- tic, depending. The booze and drugs are plentiful and mostly free, and impart no discernible after-effects. (In general, there are no consequences for anything.) Toss in some mild adventures, some arch self- awareness, and some earnest talk about self-discovery, and you’ve got yourself a pretty sweet coming of age. The whole thing feels like a fond reminiscence con- ducted under the influence of some bliss- ful chemical that allows you to remember things the way they should have been: is Handsome Daydream a registered strain yet? 2016. — M.L. ★★ (AMC FASHION VALLEY; ANGELIKA FILM CENTER; ARCLIGHT LA JOLLA)


Eye in the Sky — A sober but not- quite-somber drone drama that ably portrays the complicated moral calculus involved in modern warfare. (General Sherman said that war is cruelty and there is no use trying to reform it, but there persists the sense that we have to try any- way, especially when we’re firing missiles into civilian neighborhoods.) Helen Mir- ren is a British officer who has been hunt- ing a British terrorist for six years: this is her big chance to capture the enemy. But when the situation escalates, she is forced to negotiate a formidable set of obstacles — er, people — in her quest for permis- sion to use deadly force. Alan Rickman is her military liaison with what seems like a fair portion of the British government, and there are the Yanks to consider as well — it is, after all, an American finger on the remote-control trigger. Barkhad Abdi’s on-the-ground spycraft keeps things from feeling like a filmed play, but there’s nothing like a live video feed to highlight the astonishing distance


between predator and prey. 2016. — M.L. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


The First Monday in May — It’s the Super Bowl of fashion, and Andrew Rossi (Page One) takes us backstage at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual


like a man explaining his superhuman stamina by saying he’s made of “bourbon and bad choices.” Or lecturing a bad guy on how America is an idea and not a man even as he’s trying to rescue the president. And there are bigger things, like a bad guy who is basically a good American capitalist (except he’s from somewhere else), agitating the market in order to cre- ate demand for his product. Granted, his product is arms, and agitating the market means fostering political instability. But hey, business is business. And as he notes, he’s never come after America — at least, not until America killed his daughter on her wedding day via drone strike. He may plan to chop off the president’s head with a sword, but he’s no religious extremist. He’s a grieving father. In any other story, he’d be the hero, possibly played by Liam Neeson. But since he’s coming after us, well...America, heck yeah. Anyway, it’s something to think about while you wait for the shooting to stop and the credits to roll. 2016. — M.L. ● (AMC MISSION VALLEY; REGAL RANCHO DEL REY)


A Hologram for the King: What hath Hanks (and the rest of corporate America) wrought?


celebrity-studded fundraiser. Positioned in the cellar, the Met’s Costume Institute appears to be operated by a vampire academy of haute couture zombies, scut- tling under the spell of gala chairperson, editor of Vogue, and all around malignant spirit Anna Wintour. She’s the Wintour of her hirelings’ discontent, colder than an igloo filled with Kubricks and quickened by a snap-to-it stride more determinedly menacing (and reiterated) than Lee Mar- vin’s in Point Blank. Unless it’s a slideshow you’re after, uninhabited apparel, no matter how stunningly stitched, doesn’t lend itself to cinema. Juxtaposing Her Dourness with a clip from Shanghai Gesture that highlights fashionista/ dragon woman, “Mother” Gin Sling is a good indication of director Rossi’s eye for satire. It’s a view he quickly obstructs in favor of coverage as conventional as his leading lady’s trademark pageboy bob. With Wong Kar-Wai (The Grandmaster) as “the Artistic Director.” 2016. — S.M. ★ (LANDMARK HILLCREST)


Hardcore Henry — At long last: an action movie rendered in the manner of a First Person Shooter video game, right down to the regeneration of characters, humorous and/or expository cutscenes, the acquisition of bonus life packs along the way, and the endless final battle against the taunting big boss and his minions. There’s a story here, or at least the idea of one: something about memory and identity and the way they inform our hero, who wakes up at the outset with little of either and a mostly mechani- cal body. But the story exists mainly to provide reason and shape for the frenzy of carnage: constant, numbing, and in the film’s view at least, occasionally funny. (A would-be rapist getting his testicles crushed and then being forced to deep throat a nightstick — that sort of thing.) But despite the constant visual stimula- tion, it’s easy to imagine viewers growing impatient while they wait for their turn with the controller. Sharlto Copley makes the most of his turn as a bunch of dif- ferent personas named Jimmy; Ilya Nai- shuller writes and directs. 2016. — M.L. ● (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Hello, My Name Is Doris — Appar- ently, so many resources went into creating Sally Field’s late-period showcase role that there wasn’t much left over for the plot, or the other characters. And it is a showcase: Doris is a woman for whom life begins again just as she reaches


retirement age. Mom’s death releases her from the role of dutiful caretaker, but the years of self-abnegation have taken their toll. Socially awkward, prone to hoard- ing, and deeply lonely, she wars over her childhood (and current) home with her bullish brother and his bitchy wife, and also begins fantasizing about a young fellow at work. The romantic angle might have worked as a subplot — comic relief from the sorrow of finding yourself alone and without purpose after a lifetime of service, clutching the past and defending yourself from those who should be most grateful to you. Instead, l’amour fou serves as the film’s engine, even if all manner of nonsense is required to keep it running. (Mind you, it’s not the May-December romance that’s absurd; it’s the behavior and thinking of the parties involved.) Even so, Field does a good job of making Doris feel like a person, and manages to finish with grace even as all around her crumbles and stumbles. Directed by Michael Showalter. 2016. — M.L. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


A Hologram for the King — Follow- ing his embodiment of American foreign policy in Captain Phillips, Tom Hanks looks to embody American economic policy as Alan Clay, a man who once voted to move Schwinn’s bicycle produc- tion to China, and who now finds himself trying to hawk IT for an unbuilt city of the future in Saudi Arabia. The surreal opening, which features Hanks riffing on Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” while his comfortable life disappears in puffs of purple smoke, quickly gives way to a calmer, more plausible brand of sur- reality: an American businessman trying to do business in the desert when there is no business to be done. The wheels spin, the family falls apart, the center cannot hold. But the weird growth on the back? That can grow apace. Director Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), who also adapted the screenplay from Dave Eggers novel, displays a fine eye and a light touch with cultural detail, and isn’t nearly as harsh on his hero as he might have (ought to have?) been. A handsome lady doctor delivers the kindly moral: “the thinnest filament separates us.” 2016 — M.L. ★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


The Huntsman: Winter’s War — Snow White and the Huntsman did $396 million worldwide on a $170 million budget, which is pretty good, I guess. Good enough for a prequel that loses Kirsten


Stewart’s Snow White and brings in Emily Blunt as the Ice Queen, anyway. Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, who did the special effects on the first film in the series. Review forthcoming at sandiegore- ader.com. 2016 (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Hostile Border — It’s being sold as a “very relevant thriller...about a segment of our population who want to embrace the American Dream, but their hope is shattered by unfortunate circum- stances.” First-time director Michael Dwyer pushes hard to elicit sympathy, but the unfortunate truth is our young undocumented martyr’s idea of embrac- ing the American dream is committing credit fraud to underwrite her QVC bills. Caught and deported, Claudia (Veronica Sixtos) reluctantly takes up housekeep- ing at her estranged father’s ranch. She builds fences by day, and by night she plays partners-with-benefits with a slimy gringo (Roberto Urbina) who slips her a few Franklins in exchange for smuggling privileges. Other than Sixtos’s com- manding performance, nothing rings true, including an overbold Hollywood ending — if in the second act you have a flamethrower, then in the following one it should be fired. Credit rookie screen- writer Kaitlin McLaughlin for daring to bookend her story with not one, but two “last runs.” 2015. — S.M. ★ (DIGITAL GYM CINEMA)


The Invitation — Reviewed this issue. 2015 — S.M. ★★★★ (DIGITAL GYM)


The Jungle Book — Bill Murray attempts to fill the shoes (paws?) of the incomparable Phil Harris as Balou the Bear in Disney’s live-action remake of its animated version of Rudyard Kipling’s book about animal politics. Jon Favreau directs. 2016. (IN WIDE RELEASE)


London Has Fallen — Somewhere along the line, it may occur to you that Babak Najafi’s sequel to 2013’s president- in-peril pic Olympus Has Fallen is a sly attack on America masquerading as a celebration of same. It’s more than the one-man-army absurdity of aging security chief Gerard Butler as he winningly fights the war on terrorists. It’s more than the starry-eyed devotion of his pregnant wife as she tells him, “You go and do what you have to do and we will be right here when you get back.” All that might be satire by exaggeration, or it might just be thud- dingly sincere. But there are little things,


Marguerite — With Catherine Frot starring in a biopic based on the life of Marguerite Dumont — a grandiloquently pretentious diva who has buffaloed friends into thinking the tonsil-jangling that comes out of her pipes is the stuff coloratura sopranos are made of — it’s impossible not to think of the fifth Marx Brother, Margaret Dumont. While the Marxes packed more laughs per minute than any comedy team on record, writer- director Xavier Giannoli is content to stretch a one-joke premise — the delusional diva can’t sing a note — to pad a feature. It works for about half the film, until Dumont decides it’s time to take her show on the road and the cheap shots Giannoli begins to lob at his character make Groucho’s verbal salvos look gentlemanly. It doesn’t help that cinematographer Glynn Speeckaert’s singularly ashy palette has a tendency of sucking the life out of the painstak- ing costume and production design. With André Marcon as her agonizing husband and Christa Théret, lovely in the Eve Harrington role. 2016. — S.M. ★★ (LANDMARK HILLCREST)


Midnight Special — Lapsed cult- ist Geppetto (Michael Shannon), and vacationing state trooper Jiminy (Joel Edgerton) kidnap Pinocchio (in this case an immaculately conceived nine-year-old starchild played by Jaeden Lieberher) and race to reunite the lad with the Blue Fairy (Kirsten Dunst) and his mother ship. Is it really a good idea to leave the Messiah unattended in the backseat of a Chevelle while you stop at a filling station for din- ner? And how does a cop at a roadblock not notice the bloody shoulder of the freshly winged driver before letting him pass? With every turn, it gets dumber and dumber, until there’s nowhere left to go but Tomorrowland by way of E.T. Shan- non, generally known for giving audi- ences something new to look at, flashes two expressions throughout: pained and more pained. A tremendous letdown from director Jeff Nichols’s previous film, the critically acclaimed Mud, which itself was a major step down from his personal best, Take Shelter. 2016. — S.M. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Miles Ahead — Miles Davis biopic, less about making art than it is about everything that gets in the way of that — mostly commerce, but also relationships: some old (a lost love), some new (a pesky journalist looking to tell a comeback story), and some ongoing (an even more pesky recording industry looking for a session tape). At the story’s outset, the jazz trumpet legend is entombed in his apartment: it’s been five years since he’s


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