62 San Diego Reader November 3, 2016


between Hanks and whomever (usually Felicity Jones). The first 20 minutes or so are dotted with visions straight out of the book’s pages: damned souls with their heads turned backwards, or their hands lopped off, or their heads buried in lava. Whispers about sinners paying for their sins. A spectral figure in a birdlike Plague Mask. Creepy stuff ! Alas, it doesn’t last, and soon we’re back among the usual assortment of govern- ment agencies, secret organizations, and double agents. Even Langdon’s supposed erudition is dull here: he doesn’t sort out symbols so much as he conducts history lessons. And then the world’s lam- est ethics lecture. 2016. — M.L. ● (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Keeping Up with the Joneses — There was a decent idea here: what if a couple of international superspies (Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot, appropri- ately fabulous to behold) were forced to go undercover in the subtle social labyrinth of American suburbia? A place where you risked blowing your cover by not knowing which dress to wear to a neighborhood barbecue? Oh, and what if one of those agents was tempted to adopt the cover full-time and settle down? Could’ve worked! But instead, the film centers on the comic relief: real-life suburbanites Zach Galafianakis and Isla Fisher. The kids are off at camp, so what is there to do but spy on the new neigh- bors? Fisher is a gifted comic, physical and otherwise, and Galafianakis gets to be a character instead of a trait. But the film has it both ways with his skills as an HR manager: he’s either bumbling or excellent, depending on the needs of the moment. It also has it both ways with the whole spy-life/settled-life debate. Which makes for a middling movie. Greg Mottola directs. 2016. — M.L. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


King Cobra — A lurid dime-store novel come to life. Also a nearly perfectly orchestrated murder thriller set in the time after the internet made pornog- raphy — in this case, the gay variety — widely available, but before it made it free. Though based on a true story, it’s presented with none of a docudrama’s ragged, lumpy oddity: the narrative is on the lean side, but as taut and burnished as the bodies it depicts. And while the characters may be types, they’re excel- lent examples of those types. Christian Slater’s lonely, leering producer mourns the years he spent in a closet and grooms


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gorgeous twink Garrett Clayton for stardom — exploiting the same youth he lusts after. Meanwhile, James Franco’s muscled-up, rage-addled Daddy figure can’t bear to fail his own beautiful boy-toy (Keegan Allen), not after what Stepdad did to the kid way back when. But when love, money, damage, and ambition get mixed, can violence be far behind? Director Justin Kelly makes the most of his talented and commit- ted cast, mostly by managing the mood (alternately fabulous and sad) and stay- ing out of their way. 2016 — M.L. ★★ (DIGITAL GYM)


A Man Called Ove (En Man Som Heter Ove) — What is a cynic other than a failed romantic? Director Hannes Holm adapts Fredrik Backman’s popular German novel about a know-it-all curmudgeon (Rolf Lassgård) who, after being let go from 43 years on the job, turns his attention to the project of making the lives of his fellow condo association members into a living hell. Flashbacks — Ove is played by two different actors in the early stages of his life — show us how the jagoff earned his stripes. It starts well, but the deadpan humor quickly runs out of gas. What would have worked in a 20-minute


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Miami neighborhood. Bullying, poverty, closeted sexuality, drug abuse, and racial strife combine to form an overworked agenda of cultural woes that’s more concerned with rubber-stamping issues than telling an original story. Suffocating close-ups, rocking-chair camerawork, and a few unnecessary 360-degree pans lifted from the Christopher Nolan playbook do little to elevate the visual storytelling, while the script — based on the life of playwright Tarell McCraney — is content to churn out one cliché after another. The three actors who share the lead are all first-rate, while Mahershala Ali actually manages to breathe new life into the character of a good-natured drug dealer. That’s more than can be said of Naomie Harris’s standard-issue hysterical crack mom. Here’s just what liberal-minded, visually challenged Academy voters need to make up for last year’s lily-white ceremony. I predict Oscars all around. Written and


directed by Barry Jenkins. 2016 — S.M. ★ (ANGELIKA CARMEL MOUNTAIN, LANDMARK HILLCREST)


short is stretched thin by a running gag involving several comedically botched suicide attempts (Ove returns the frayed rope to the store he purchased it from), a syrupy romance with his ill-fated wife (Ida Engvoll), and a resolution that takes a lethal turn for the sentimental. All this makes it difficult to muster much enthu- siasm. 2015. — S.M. ★★ (ANGELIKA FILM CENTER; LOT; LA PALOMA)


Moonlight — Best suited for those who found brilliance in Beasts of the Southern Wild, this movie is a hackneyed tale of a young black man’s passage from childhood to maturity in a tough


Sully — The title’s a two-edged nod to both titular pilot and what the NTSB wanted to do to his reputation. Consid- ering the guaranteed happy ending, it’s amazing how much suspense director Clint Eastwood is able to mine. A huge “what if?” opens the show as the Cap- tain, experiencing a form of pilot PTSD, dreams what might have happened had a decision to reroute to Laguardia ended in disaster. It’s a question that haunts our hero and drives what Harry Callahan would have called “the pencil-pushing sons-of-bitches” at the NTSB. Sully is as much a sock on the nose that big government insists on sticking where it doesn’t belong as American Sniper was a negative appraisal of the American military. No actor currently at work is better suited to play this type of hero than Tom Hanks, and it’s been ages since a director put his congeniality to the test the way Eastwood does here. Hank’s Sullenberger is by far Eastwood’s most untarnished standard-bearer to date. Not even Nelson Mandela came off looking this good. 2016. — S.M. ★★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Trolls — DreamWorks’ quest to animate these vertically coiffed toys is finally brought to an end, in a story that has the bad guys eating them in order to feel a moment’s happiness. 2016 (IN WIDE RELEASE)


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