San Diego Reader April 20, 2017 59


in the realm of cyberterrorists — the tie-the-previous-films-together storyline echoes James Bond’s latest outing in Spectre — but folks are here for the sweet rides and muscled-up bromance, not the geopolitical maneuvering. (Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham bicker like a jacked up Benedick and Beatrice.) And just when the Fast-and- the-Furious-on-Ice finale threatens to drag on past the point of action-setpiece endur- ance, director F. Gary Gray has the grace to send a supercar from heaven as an actual answer to prayer. 2017. — M.L. ★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Frantz — At the close of World War I, a young French soldier, tormented with guilt, travels to Germany to visit the family of the boy he killed in combat. I’m all for remak- ing bad movies so long as the do-over team apply the right amount of creative glazing and spot putty to Bondo over the flaws of the original. But there was no pressing call for a remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s mournful and unjustly pushed aside anti-war drama Broken Lullaby aka The Man I Killed. Still, even if he can’t improve on Lubitsch, director Francois Ozon remains faithful to the director’s vision — at least for the first half. Then things take an uncalled-for turn in the direction of a whodunit that left me looking at my watch more than the screen. The perhaps too-beautifully manicured black-and-white ‘Scope cinematography and Paula Beer’s bravura turn as the Ger- man girl who got left behind make it worth your while. 2016. — S.M. ★★ (LAND- MARK HILLCREST)


The Freedom to Marry — Eddie Rosen- stein’s historically sweeping documentary kicks off 102 days before the Supreme Court is set to begin hearing arguments over whether America is ready to greet the day when gay couples are allowed the same rights as everybody else. For someone like Evan “The Marriage Guy” Wolfson — founder of the titular organization and a man who devoted the past 35 years of his life to championing gay marriage — the wait is almost over. The film has not yet been made that’s persuasive enough to flip- flop the minds of those who firmly believe that Adam was meant for Eve, not Steve. Instead, Rosenstein’s greatest achievement is his recognition of the massive efforts put forth by Wolfson, lawyer and civil rights advocate Mary Bonauto, and many others. 2016. — S.M. ★★★ (DIGITAL GYM CINEMA)


Free Fire — A hearty “Suck on this!” prefaces a shooting in Ben Wheatley’s new film — an homage to Travis Bickle that even Helen Keller could make out. Martin Scorsese recently confessed that He no longer wastes time watching meaningless, image-free multiplex fodder, but that didn’t stop Him from taking a producer’s credit on this piece of plagiaristic slag. Here’s the gimmick: anchored in a vacant warehouse, a pair of rival gangs participate in a feature- length shootout. Cornfed curse words fuel a script that doesn’t amount to much more than a hateful snatch of Tarantino’s set-bound posturing, spiked with a blend of pre-Madonna, semi-intelligible Guy Ritchie oddballs. In her second performance since taking home an Oscar, Brie Larson again falls short of the dramatic shading needed to make her part work — making this and Kong: Skull Island little more than well-paid walkthroughs. Sharlto Copley, meanwhile, continues to let his period costuming and clenched dialect do most of heavy lifting. 2017 —S.M. ● (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Get Out — Cultural appropriation shifts from “problematic” to “horrific” in writer-director Jordan Peele’s sharp take on the scary world of stuff white people like — starting with the “total privacy” of isolated country estates, like the one black photographer Chris Washington


(Daniel Kaluuya) visits with his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) on a meet-the-parents weekend. (On the drive up from the city, the car hits a deer, and when Washington goes to check the body, there’s a telling shot of his foot leaving the asphalt and stepping into wilderness.) The jigsaw-tight structure is that of conven- tional horror done right — mercifully light on jump scares (instead opting for a number of disturbing reveals via moving camera) and mostly smart about mechan- ics. (Why go walking through a dark house in the middle of the night? Because you’re trying to sneak a cigarette, away from your disapproving girlfriend and her even more disapproving family.) And layered atop that structure is a squirmingly funny portrayal of tortured race relations, even among people of ostensibly good will. It’s not subtle, but it is clever, and besides, this is a horror movie — one in which the black


guy is determined not to die. 2017. — M.L. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


The Grateful Dead Movie (40th Anniversary) — Has is it really been 40 years since I stayed up past 2 a.m. watching a scratchy 16mm print at a college film society midnight screening? My introduc- tion to the band left a mighty impression, so strong that after seeing the band perform nine times in person, the movie still holds a soft spot in my heart. 1977. — S.M. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


In Search of Israeli Cuisine — Writer-director Roger M. Sherman’s docu- mentary follows Israel-born chef Michael Solomonov on a culinary tour of Israel. Turns out it’s a regular melting pot. 2017 (LANDMARK KEN)


Kedi — A feature-length alternative to a YouTube kitty video. It doesn’t matter if one’s a cat person or a dog person; the film person inside all of us knows full well that just because humankind has reached a point in history where anyone with a phone can make a movie doesn’t mean they have to. This latest example of “shoot now, figure it out later” digital craftsman- ship finds Turkish documentarian Ceyda Torun dogging a half-dozen or so felines with a Steadi(cat)cam through the streets of Istanbul, hoping to find a hook — or at least cough up a golden furball or two. He doesn’t. The result is a wisp of a film that barely sticks to the screen. The 80 minutes would be better spent at home scratching your best friends belly fur or tossing around a catnip mouse. Better yet, rent any of the Benji films to brush up on how to tell a story from a housepet’s POV. 2016. — S.M. ★ (LA PALOMA; LAND- MARK HILLCREST)


Life — Okay, so it’s like Alien, in that a bunch of people in space wind up with a smart, deadly xenomorph on board and have to figure out how to stop it. And it’s like Gravity, in that one of those people would rather be melancholy among the stars than miserable on earth. And it’s like The Martian, in that smart scientists are constantly having to innovate and recalculate based on new difficulties. And it’s like Independence Day, in that the critter has tentacles and sort of a rudimentary face. And it’s like Deadpool, in that Ryan Reynolds cracks wise and suffers horribly. What of it? It’s also unlike all of those films, in that director Daniel Espinosa is capably doling out tension over horror, personal sacrifice over personal crises, the limits of intelligence over its glories, animal instinct over alien malice, and genuine, endless darkness over its chuckleheaded imitation. Here is a story that knows how to put the nihilism in the vast nothingness of space. If you’re into that sort of thing. With Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Fergusun. 2017. — M.L. ★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


The Lost City of Z —James Gray’s hand- some adaptation of David Gann’s book lops off the subtitle — A Tale of Deadly Obses- sion in the Amazon — in favor of some- thing a little more righteous (but alas, less compelling) than mere obsession: a crusade against European notions of superiority. While surveying in Bolivia on behalf of the Royal Geographic Society, aging, frustrated army officer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hun-


nam, square-jawed and resolute) discovers evidence of civilization in the jungle. Bro- ken pottery, carved tree trunks, that sort of thing. He also hears native talk about a city no white man has seen. Clearly, it’s time to ditch the wife and kids for years at a stretch so that history can have a new chapter, one that allows for indigenous agriculture. Or so that people can stop being so steeped in the bigotry of the Church. Or so the


Americans don’t get there first with their guns. Or, or, or. It’s a pity, because the obsession is still there in the background, unexplored and mysterious. (It’s not like Fawcett stops his quest following the 1911 discovery of Machu Picchu, even though it proves his ostensible point.) For a moment here and there, it looks like Mom and the kids will force Fawcett to confront himself instead of ranting about the world, but


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