This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
San Diego Reader November 3, 2016 61


It’s Hall’s show. With her bent frame, pursed Ziploc bag lips, and eyebrows you can plant corn in, her performance is a portrait of repression that’s at times too much to bear. (It doesn’t help that her character comes off as thoroughly unsympathetic.) Part of me wishes that I had skipped this in favor of the docu- mentary telling, Kate Plays Christine, released earlier this year. 2016 — S.M. ★ (ANGELIKA CARMEL MOUNTAIN)


Deepwater Horizon — If it’s a choice between heroes drawn from real life and costume-clad warriors, give me the civvies life every time. Admittedly, the TV-friendly character exposition that opens Deepwater Horizon – Mark Wahlberg’s young daughter reveals what daddy does for a living in the form of a class paper read aloud over breakfast – gave cause for alarm. But after that, this fast-paced tale of the “well from hell” that generated the worst oil spill in U.S. history bridles both melodrama and hys- teria, and in exchange detonates steady torrents of tension. The cast boasts typically strong supporting work from Kurt Russell and John Malkovich, with actor-turned-director Peter Berg (Lone Survivor, Battleship) handing in his most assured performance behind the camera to date. Berg’s relaxed handling of small talk among the crew members makes the set-up a delight to watch, while the ensuing disasters are convincing enough to give multiplex armrests a gripping workout. 2016. — S.M. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Denial — The lead Holocaust contender in this year’s awards derby is more stal- lion than nag. When a denier levels a lawsuit against her publisher, it’s up to author and historian Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) to prove the existence of the Holocaust. The first film in 14 years from director Mick Jackson (L.A. Story, The Bodyguard) is bolstered by a fact- based story that long ago slipped from the public consciousness, and dialogue by playwright and screenwriter David Hare (Plenty, The Reader). An evidential visit to the gas chambers by Lipstadt and her legal team packs a wallop, as does Weisz’s struggle not to fall victim to a defense team that refuses to let her testify. But it’s the ever-spellbinding Timothy Spall who will make audiences squirm. His knotty-pouted advocate for the myth of the six million displays all the seductiveness and in-built logic of a pedophile luring a kindergartner into the back seat of a Buick. With outstanding supporting work by Tom Wilkinson and Andrew Scott. 2016. — S.M. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Desierto — What happens when a van containing a group of hopeful border- jumpers breaks down a few miles outside of Tijuana? Nothing we haven’t seen in dozens other well intentioned cautionary fables. Never mind revenge or collect- ing a bounty: the only motivation the screenwriters endow cartoon bad guy Jeffrey Dean Morgan with is a healthy hatred of Mexicans. As the most danger- ous game in Morgan’s desert shooting gallery, Gael Garcia Bernal gives it his best Florence Nightingale, placing the care and safety of others first, and looking sufficiently bummed after each one eats lead. As drama, it’s predictable, simplistic, exploitative, and otherwise wholly unredeemed. Fault the mislaid good intentions of co-writer and first- time director Jonás “Son of Alfonso” Cuarón. Dad should spank the lad and send him to bed without supper. Why one star? Morgan’s sidekick is a Belgian Malinois named Tracker and damn if it’s not the most riveting performance by a four-legged trouper to hit the screen in


and visage clear enough to let through anger, fear, hurt, and aggression all at the same time. Or, if the moment requires


MOVIES@HOME Gomorrah


ANTONIO IANNOTTA San Diego Italian Film Festival artistic director


The Innocents


JEFF ALDERMAN Horror geek


The Innocents follows Debo- rah Kerr as a lone governess confronting diabolical forces manifesting power through her young charges (the stakes rival The Exorcist). It gives the sensation of see- ing ghosts on film, usually in the distance, silently menac- ing. Fear looking out the window to find a face look- ing in? This movie delivers on the chills. Ripe for analy- sis of the governess’ mental state first and always, it delivers as a ghost story. Horror Hotel is another not-to-be-missed classic. It’s a truly creepy, clever tale of an evil witch and her coven. Full of trap doors, secret pas- sages, and ominous warnings from stock horror characters, its sets are reminiscent of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu.... Christopher Lee stars but for me the real prize is the per- formance by Patricia Jessel.


THE INNOCENTS (USA/ United Kingdom) 1961, 20th Century Fox Available on YouTube and iTunes


HORROR HOTEL (aka City of the Dead) (United Kingdom)1960, Trans Lux Available on Amazon Video and Vudu


years. The rest is strictly for the dogs. 2016. — S.M. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Doctor Strange — Director Scott Der- rickson brings his predilection for the supernatural into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, telling the story of a man’s transformation from nuts-and-bolts neu- rosurgeon into master of the mystic arts. Review forthcoming at sandiegoreader. com. 2016 (IN WIDE RELEASE)


The Free World — Writer-director Jason Lew’s debut feature is very much a


On air finally in the U.S., Gomorrah is an extraordinary TV series that peels off all the glamour of a gangster on a screen. This is a bleak yet compel- ling account of Camorra in action, with guns, drugs, political corruption, and impenetrable, linguisti- cally very accurate dialect. Curated by Stefano Sollima, the series also hosts directors such as Claudio Cupellini, Francesca Comencini, and Claudio Giovannesi. In short: a brutal take of reality. Reality is a social experi-


ment that has to do with all of us. Acclaimed director Matteo Garrone closely fol- lows his extraordinary main character — a Neapolitan fishmonger who tries out for the Italian version of Big Brother — with a great num- ber of close-up shots and details filming his decline, in a bitter and caustic way. Through a glimpse of one man, Garrone articulates a funny and terrible metaphor of our western society.


GOMORRAH (Italy) 2014 to present, Sky Atlantic Available on Sundance TV and Netflix


REALITY (Italy) 2012, Oscilliscope Available on YouTube and iTunes


Mozart in the Jungle


DIANA AGOSTINI San Diego Italian Film Festival associate execu- tive director


In The Best of Youth (La meglio gioventu) Marco Tullio Giordana explores the different seasons of life of characters that develop on parallel paths, as their individual and personal lives become strictly intertwined with the political events of their country. It’s six hours long, but it’ll keep your eyes glued to the screen. Looking for romance,


laughs, quirky characters, passion, and classical music all concentrated in 30-minute episodes? Then try Mozart in the Jungle, about the New York Symphony’s new flamboyant and eccentric maestro who’ll bring color and spice to the stiffness of the orchestra. Produced by Jason Schwartzman and with Gael Garcia Bernal as Rodrigo and Lola Kirke as young oboist Hailey. I assure you’ll finish the first season in a day. Perfect timing, since season two is coming out in December, and while waiting you can listen to the show’s wonderful music on Spotify.


THE BEST OF YOUTH (Italy) 2002, Miramax Available on Netflix DVD


MOZART IN THE JUNGLE (USA) 2014, Amazon Available on Amazon Prime


it, plain old happiness. 2016. — M.L. ★★★ (DIGITAL GYM CINEMA)


Gimme Danger — Wanting to avoid a lawsuit, then-19-year-old musician Ron Asheton called Stooge ringleader Moe Howard, asking if it would be alright to name his band the Stooges. “I don’t give a fuck what you call them,” growled the kiddie-TV favorite, “so long as it’s not the Three Stooges.” That’s just one of the many delightful anecdotes contained in Jim Jarmusch’s sprightly love letter to Iggy Pop’s bad behavior. His eyes are a milkier shade of blue, but at age 69, Pop — rock’s originator of the washboard abs — is far from pooped. Neither is Jar- musch, whose use of stock footage and snippets of old movies provide perfect backup for the personification of punk nihilism. It’s true that he’s a victim of his own lack of professionalism, but listen- ing to Pop deride record producers who committed cultural treason by pushing shit songs created by committees in corporate boardrooms should be music to anyone’s ears. 2016 — S.M. ★★★ (LANDMARK KEN)


The Girl on the Train — Tate Taylor’s adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ novel (the source is worth mentioning, given the morose chunk of voiceover that opens the proceedings and the appearance of high-octane lines like “she loved you in ways that people only dream of being loved” — this said to a distraught hus- band immediately after telling him the “she” in question was having an affair) is as sour and slippery as it is polished and pretty. The film’s central symbol is New York’s Untermeyer Fountain: three lissome bronze ladies dancing hand in hand around its rim. In the film, they are Rachel (Emily Blunt), a blackout drunk who turned to the bottle when she found she couldn’t conceive, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), the pampered new mother who had an affair with Rachel’s husband before eventually marrying him, and Megan (Haley Bennett), the hot mess of a young wife who lives next door to Anna in suburban paradise and also works as her nanny(!) But what, oh what, could be indicated by the rising jet of water about which those ladies circle? As a thriller (one of the women turns up missing), its hothouse elements are smartly assembled; as a psychodrama, it relies heavily on extreme closeups for implied intimacy; as a redemption story about the conquest of personal demons, it’s a copout. 2016. — M.L. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Hacksaw Ridge — Reviewed this issue. 2016 — M.L. ★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Harry and Snowman — 2016 (LA PALOMA THEATRE)


Find more S een on DVD re views at SDReader.com/dvd


religious picture, dealing as it does with a wrongfully imprisoned man’s conver- sion to Islam and the subsequent test of that conversion. But while the religious stuff is clearly set forth and left in plain sight, it’s easy to overlook, given the abundant humanity radiated by leads Boyd Holbrook and Elisabeth Moss, the hothouse atmosphere of the murder investigation that threatens them both, and the explosion of violence that forces the issue. Lew is blunt with symbols (dogs in cages standing in for people trapped in prisons both literal and figu-


rative, the literal crossing of a river when our heroes cross their own personal Rubicon) and with images (lots of shots feature one strong light source, one well- lit object or person, and an abundance of shadows all around), and he’s sometimes clumsy with pacing. But he knows the story he’s telling, and so does his highly engaging cast. When Holbrook smiles — which is, understandably, not often, given his past, his present, and his likely future — he looks like a scruffy young Brad Pitt. But Elisabeth Moss is always initimably herself, her eyes wide enough


Inferno — A thoroughly pedestrian adventure that might have been better titled Hell is Lots and Lots of Other Peo- ple.. At least, that’s the belief of the bil- lionaire bad guy in Ron Howard’s latest adaptation of Dan Brown’s series featur- ing symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks). What to do about overbreed- ing humanity? Well, the Black Plague helped out way back when; maybe we could use another one of those. “Maybe,” as our baddie intones, “pain can save us.” What does the Dante poem about hell referenced in the actual title have to do with any of this? Very little. But it does afford the viewer a moment of hope that Howard has decided to make a psycho-horror movie instead of a scenic walk-and-talk about olde-timey stuff


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88