San Diego Reader July 21, 2016 71


in-the-moment background work, not the impersonal CG slop hack director Paul Feig puts before us, deserves an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. 2016. — S.M. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Hunt for the Wilderpeople — You can take the wannabe gangsta out of the city, but taking the gangsta out of his sweet rebel soul is another thing entirely. Ricky (Julian Dennison) is a mound of urban teenage misery whose last stop before juvie is a tumbledown farm at the edge of the New Zealand wilderness. Bella (Rima Te Wiata) is his saintly new foster mom, an unstoppable wellspring of love who is unfazed by his out-of- shape attempts to run away. And Hector (a bushy-bearded, teddy bear-lovable Sam Neill) is his laconic, leery “uncle,” a man who has called bullshit on most of the world, excepting, of course, his wife. It isn’t long before the two men find themselves, through circumstances both lamentable and ludicrous, in the bush and on the run. Director Taika Waititi, (who also adapted the screenplay), proves expert in his management of tone, such that the farcical elements, however numerous, don’t detract from the very real friendship the renegades develop as they elude the world’s most dedicated social services officer. Also such that the grimmer, more ultimate realities of life — death and bureaucracy, to name two — are given their due without being allowed to overshadow all. 2016. — M.L. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Ice Age: Collision Course — Reviewed this issue. 2016 — M.L. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Independence Day: Resurgence — Independent from original thinking. Director Roland Emmerich and his band of four co-screenwriters waited 20 years to crap out a sequel, and this is the best they can come up with? Even the updated CG effects effects aren’t an improvement. If Independence Day was, as my predecessor Duncan Shepherd observed, “A conscious and conscientious throwback to the invaders-from-space fables of the Eisenhower era,” its sequel makes a contentious and contemptible retreat towards ‘70’s disaster films. The performances range from mediocre (the generally unblemished Jeff Goldblum, this time unable to fidget his way out of a role) and barely intelligible (Charlotte Gainsbourg, unhooked on phonics), to douche chill-inducing (a wacked Bill Pullman) and bush league (everything about Nicolas Wright’s antsy spaz is wrong). And depicting America’s first woman President (Sela Ward) as a global- ist hawk committed to exposing Area 51’s little green men as alien truthers? How stupid does Hollywood think we are? 2016. — S.M. ● (IN WIDE RELEASE)


The Infiltrator — Overboiled based- on-a-true-story cops-and-druglords pic that aspires to portray the strain that act- ing bad has on good people, and to con- vey the tension that arises from pretend- ing to form friendships with folks you’re trying to bust. One or two scenes do elicit a wince — co-star John Leguizamo makes the most of his moment in the garish, grimy spotlight — but mostly, we never quite gets past star Bryan Cranston’s weathered exterior. When director Brad Furman isn’t focusing on huge closeups (which seems to be an awful lot of the time), he’s focusing on all the wrong details: accounting strategies for launder- ing money instead of how an accountant became a genius undercover operative; the potential consequences of being dis- covered instead of how a cover gets built in the first place; that sort of thing. Then there’s the weirdness: a weirdly choppy


The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble — Yo Yo Ma stands waiting in the wings, a string of self-effacing jokes muttered under his breath making light of his host’s introductory remarks. Before the opening credits draw to a close, we’ve been treated to a sprightly, open-air performance ensemble by the film’s actual stars: a group of musicians — all with different roots in folk — who travel the world to create and stage new music. Oh, were this but a documentary portrait of the enduring cellist, or even a concert film. Anything but propaganda for longhairs. The premium cable channel production touts Ma’s global project, The Music of Strangers, but as storytelling, it amounts to nothing more than an infomercial with “Aren’t we all wonderful?” as its subtext. Commendable intentions be damned; one can’t hear the music for the self-applauding. Archive the HBO broadcast on your DVR until the device reaches full capacity and automatically erases it to make room for more shows. Morgan Neville directs. 2016. — S.M. ★ (LANDMARK HILLCREST)


Star Trek Beyond: Kirk and Scotty argue over who should tell the scary alien lady that that she shouldn’t slouch like that.


narrative, a weirdly inconsistent visual palette, and a weird level of speechify- ing all ’round. 2016. — M.L. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


The Legend of Tarzan — At one point in David Yates’ lush depiction of Lord John Greystoke’s reluctant return to Africa, plucky damsel in distress Jane (Margot Robbie) taunts wicked schemer Leon (Christoph Waltz) by telling him that his moustache is a trifle lower on one side than the other. But the really remarkable thing is that it isn’t long enough to twirl. This is a man whose murder weapon of choice is a Catholic rosary, whose white linen suit hides a heart of utter darkness. He’s got a plan to enslave and exploit the Congo, and all that remains is to is deliver Tarzan the Ape Man (a buff, brooding Alex- ander Skarsgaard) to a seething tribal chief. Yates’ moral hand is heavy (viz. an underperforming, speechifying Samuel L. Jackson, lamenting violence the world over), and his action can be tricky to fol- low (let alone enjoy). But he’s got a knack for conveying the grandeur of Africa, the fierce power of the animals, the currents of straightforward emotion (love, rage, hate, grief, etc.), and the thrill of nature (human and otherwise) unleashed. 2016. — M.L. ★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Life, Animated — Reviewed this issue. 2016 — S.M. ★★ (AMC LA JOLLA)


Lights Out — Director David F. Sand- berg made a three-minute short horror film about a woman being terrorized by something she first spies when she turns out the light. Reigning horrormeis- ter James Wan got a gander, met with Sandberg, and bada bing, bada boom, we have ourselves a feature. 2016. (IN WIDE RELEASE)


The Lobster — Expands writer-director Yrgos Lanthimos’s linguistic palette to include English, and widens his hermetic vision from a modest suburban household to an imperious resort, where recently dumped schlub David (Colin Farrell) joins a group of lonelyhearts with exactly one thing in common: they have 45 days to find a romantic replacement or they will be transformed into the animal of their choosing — in David’s case, the titular marine edible. At first, Lanthimos finds much humor to mine in his hal- lucinating amalgamation of mandatory Herbalife faculty retreat and well-


regulated eHarmony seminar. But surreal signification can buy only so much good will. (One of the most dangerous rules of the game asks that guests participate in random hunts for homeless people.) With love always just around the corner, and our hero forever unable to make the necessary turn, David ultimately joins up with the hunter’s targets, a rebel bloc known as The Loners who operate in diametric opposition to all things romantic. It’s here that David encounters the forbidden object of his affection, a nameless woman (Rachel Weisz) who is instantly smitten by him. This change of direction trifles away the crazed satiric setup in favor of a more traditional saga of romantic survival of the fittest. 2016. — S.M. ★★ (LA PALOMA; LANDMARK HILLCREST)


Love & Friendship — Call me down- turned crabby, but I can’t bear 90% of the current spate of British costumers. Restless leg syndrome began tapping out an SOS just moments after the conde- scendingly- captioned photoplay credits hit the screen. Pictures of fancied up actors reciting Jane Austen’s prose, lit by a team of Allied Vans, and set to the beat of Whit Stillman’s snarky metronome made for the longest 92 minutes of the year. Though shot in Dublin and directed by a Yank, the film somehow managed to renew in me a desire to dig Francois Truffaut out of the grave and give the critic-turned-New-Wave-architect a big French kiss for having once arrived at the perspicacious conclusion, “British cinema is an oxymoron.” Yes, there’s plenty of good acting at its finest to go around, but please don’t gush on about “beautiful cinematography” when the reverse angle lighting doesn’t match during intimate two-character dialog scenes. Give this one four D’s for being dry, droll, dreary and drained of romance. You’re gonna love it! 2016. — S.M. ● (LA PALOMA; LANDMARK HILLCREST)


Lucha Mexico — What has more masked participants than an Eyes Wide Shut Halloween orgy? Lucha libre! Direc- tors Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz play up the local color, moving from arena to arena in pursuit of today’s biggest names in the CMLL, Mexico’s World Wrestling Council. (The last half hour of my life was spent “research- ing” KeMonito, a midget mascot in a cheap blue monkey suit — think “Made in China” animatronic Ewok — who


gets beat on like a ragdoll at baby’s first birthday party.) Instead of recycled video montages of scripted matchups that enthusiasts have long committed to mem- ory (and greenhorns can do without), our dynamic duo should have devoted a little more time to the origins and cin- ematic legacy of the unique pop-culture phenomenon. The sacred name of His Holiness, El Santo, is evoked but twice, and gosh only knows if they’ve ever feasted on Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy. And lest one think it’s all faked, two luchadores died during the making of this picture. In Spanish with English subtitles. 2015. — S.M. ★★ (DIGITAL GYM CINEMA)


Me Before You — Jojo Moyes adapts her own novel, Thea Sharrock directs, and Emilia Clark stars as a funny girl who starts up an unlikely romance with wheelchair-bound rich boy Sam Claflin. Bring your own hankie. 2016. (REGAL SAN MARCOS)


Men Go to War — Kentucky brothers get into a fight on the family farm; one runs off to join the Union, the other stays put. Directed and co-written by Zachary Treitz. Review forthcoming at sandiegore- ader.com. 2015 (DIGITAL GYM)


Microbe & Gasoline — Reviewed this issue. 2015 — M.L. ★★ (LAND- MARK KEN)


Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates — Ditzy dipsomaniacs (Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick) bucking for a free Hawaiian vacation fill the need of the titular siblings (Adam Devine, whose performance fails to live up to his last name, and Zac Efron). The laughs never start as these four knotheads, whittled from the same block of wood, keep going in an f-bomb stuffed jumble of longform improv in which the dirtiest word is structure. This is the first feature from former SNL director Jake Szymanski – thus the overall skit-ish design – and his sluggardly handling of narrative-based makeshift dialogue plays like rehearsal footage. In a roundly unsatisfactory turn, Kendrick, generally a schmendrick, matches Plaza skank for skank. Spoiler alert: screenwriters Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien (Neighbors and its sequel) do a complete 180, ending their raunch-a-thon with an inapt scramble for the rom-com gold. 2016. — S.M. ● (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Mustang — An innocent splash with male schoolmates capsizes the lives of five orphaned sisters. Accused of disgracing their family, the girls are in turn exposed to untold humiliation at the hands of an uncle determined to make them prisoners in a home with but two escape routes: marriage or death. Given the subject mat- ter, for her first feature, Turkish director Deniz Gamze Ergüven remarkably never lets the messages drive the bus. Unfolding like the rippling pages of a giant — and at times surreal — Golden Book, Mustang gives us girls who are refreshingly aware and open about their sexuality, the word “feminist” heard but once (and then only in passing on the radio), and no overt references to religion. By turns heartbreakingly tragic and, for at least one expertly executed sight gag, side- splittingly hilarious, in the end, Mustang’s biggest takeaway may very well be the significant part teachers play in a young child’s upbringing. 2015. — S.M. ★★★ (DIGIPLEX MISSION MARKETPLACE)


Neon Bull (Boi neon) — Lesson #1: there’s no such thing as a bad story, just bad storytellers. How else does one explain the hypnotic sensation that awaits in this surrealist tale of an ordinary tail- sanding bull handler? Iremar (Juliano Cazarré) works behind the scenes on the rodeo circuit. He’s a traveling man, at heart a frustrated fashion designer who daydreams by drawing panties on naked pinups. On the great totem pole of life, Iremar finds himself positioned somewhere between the dumb animals he shares his sleeping quarters with and the even dumber humans whose macho task it is to use the bull’s tail as a lanyard to bring it down. With all the grace and symmetry of a peacock fanning its tail, director Gabriel Mascaro reveals his hand in quixotic blasts of expressionistic color, graphic sensuality, and a few things we’ve never before seen on film, notably a plot to siphon premium horse semen that goes terribly wrong and a climactic sex scene that won’t soon fade from mind. In Portuguese with English subtitles. 2015. — S.M. ★★★★ (DIGITAL GYM CINEMA)


Now You See Me 2 — The big reveal at the end of a magic trick is supposed to leave you shaking your head in wonder and asking, “How on earth?” But the big reveal that Morgan Freeman’s skepti- cal antagonist lays on Mark Ruffalo’s wounded trickster at the end of this sequel to 2013’s surprise hit about magi- cian bank robbers is more likely to have you screwing up your face in puzzlement


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