The Olympics on TV have been drawing big audience numbers but you might want some ideas for afterwards. I've got five today. One, as you'll see below, is highly recommended.
Borderlands: 2 stars
It End With Us: 3
Sugarcane: 4
The Instigators: 3
Cuckoo: 2 ½
BORDERLANDS: There's one big question here: what's Cate Blanchett doing in this space adventure based on a popular video game? She's known for taking on diverse roles, a symphony conductor recently and, in the past, Katherine Hepburn, Bob Dylan and Elizabeth I (twice). She's won two Academy Awards but this is the first time I've seen her wield huge guns and a flamethrower to blast bad guys. Her acting is second to the action in the protracted series of battle scenes that come at us.
She's a bounty hunter hired by a shady tycoon to find his kidnapped daughter, travels to a mysterious planet Pandora, which is unrelated to a planet with the same name in other films, and assembles a group of misfits for the job. Kevin Hart plays a wisecracking but not too funny mercenary, Jack Black voices a wisecracking robot, Ariana Greenblatt is a pre-teen demolition expert, Florian Munteanu is a bodyguard and Jamie Lee Curtis is a scientist. They battle aliens in a wasteland that looks like a copy of the Mad Max Films and as in the game simply move on from one exertion to another. Cate's character, Lilith, who is originally from Pandora, has regrets about events in her past but that drama doesn't have much of an impact in the film. Eli Roth, well-known for horror films, directed it. There's energy, a close facsimile of the game but not much that's new. (In theaters) 2 out of 5
IT ENDS WITH US: Coleen Hoover's novels consistently get high up in the New York Times best seller list. Pretty good for an author who started out by self-publishing. She now has millions of readers. This is from her best-known book, the first made into a film, and watch out Nicholas Sparks, you've got a competitor in the romantic fiction field. This one goes a somewhat uncomfortable step further though: this story of one woman's self-reliance and achievement includes domestic violence as an issue.
Blake Lively, you know TV's Gossip girl and Ryan Reynolds' spouse, plays Lily Bloom, who's parents gave her the middle name Blossom. She moves to Boston, starts up a, wouldn't you know it, flower shop and meets a handsome neurosurgeon on the roof of her building. Coincidence, sure, but it works. They're flirty and through several teasing scenes become steamy for each other.
He, played by Justin Baldoni, who is also the director, seems to have an anger problem. Fleeting she hopes. (She's haunted by memories of her father). Recurring it turns out when he spills a casserole he's cooking, “accidentally” pushes her down some stairs and becomes upset when she seems to be attracted to a guy (Brandon Sklenar) she met years before. He was homeless. She gave him food. Now he works in a restaurant she patronizes. So who is better for her: a nice guy from the past or a man with status and a volatile nature? The film rushes the story too fast to fully get how and why it resolves. You do get her self-reliance and also he fears in this modern example of what used to be called women's movies. (In theaters) (3 out of 5)
SUGARCANE: This, the latest of the recent films about Indigenous issues, is the most stunning yet. We already know much of what it says and yet it still hits with a chill and a punch. The evils of the residential schools are recalled by people who were sent to them and by activists who want them better known. Canada saw them as a solution to “the Indian problem” which amounted to an effort to drive the Indian out of the children and integrate them into modern society. The schools ran for over 100 years, the last one closed only in 1997, and left behind a broken culture of violence, alcoholism and drug addiction. All that is forcefully recounted by Charlene Belleau, Chief Willie Sellars, former chief at the Williams Lake reserve Rick Gilbert and others.
When ground-penetrating radar found the unmarked graves of children who died in the Kamloops Residential School, the news shocked us in Canada, confirmed rumors that many had already heard and prompted journalist Emily Kassie to suggest she and her colleague Julian Brave NoiseCat produce this film. They've uncovered shocking details about abuse (physical and sexual) plus cover-up and hypocrisy. One punishment: kids talking in class were forced to hold a heavy book high above their heads for an hour. Far worse: some priests begat children with students. Births were kept secret and sometimes newborns were burned in an incinerator. There's an emotional scene in the film when the co-director's father, Ed Archie Noisecat, tells that he was fathered by a priest. There are stories of suicides and deaths during escape attempts. And how damage done can travel down through the generations. But also signs of a revival. As one activist puts it: “Our people are going to stand up”. (Theaters in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal and others, Williams Lake, of course and a special screening in Squamish Aug. 22 sponsored by the Whistler Film Festival with the director doing a Q&A.) 4 out of 5
THE INSTIGATORS: Apple TV put this into theatres for week before streaming it starting today. And the big screen is where I wish I had seen it because it's huge and action-filled and exciting. You haven't seen this many police cars wrecked in crashes in a long time. Or look at all those firetrucks smashing through. Or that armored car. All that in a story that's nicely cynical and often funny about a motley crew that tries to steal money from a mayor's office in Boston. His safe is full of cash that he took in bribes. The heist is carefully planned but, of course, goes wrong and our guys have to try to get away with police, crooks and bureaucrats chasing them. The director, Doug Liman, combines his action experience (from the Bourne movies) and comedy (as in his film Swingers) to make this a rousing guilty pleasure.
CUCKOO: I'm tempted to do a play on that title word because frankly I don't know what's going on in this film. And at times it gets absurd. It starts obscure, explains itself a while in, but doesn't clear much up. And at times gets absurd. The cuckoo is a symbol here for surrogate childbearing. It lays eggs in other birds' nests and lets them raise the hatchlings as their own. That's what Dan Stevens playing a resort owner and genetic scientist tells us but how that connects to whatever he's doing in his research facility in the Bavarian Alps isn't clear. The creepy atmosphere will keep you attracted though and the clues will keep you interested and guessing,
A young woman played by Hunter Schafer, of the TV series Euphoria, is brought from the US to a Bavarian resort by her father, who we later find out had been there before. Gretchen, is her name, appropriately. She takes a job there and is soon stalked by a wild-looking woman. There are other weird things going on, including guests throwing up in public. It seems the resort is also a location for genetic research that Mr. Konig, Stevens' character, is carrying on. He says it is to improve humanity. We don't comprehend how, but we do learn that Gretchen was conceived at that very same resort when her parents stayed there. There's a good mystery spinning out, calling for a good explication. Maybe you can puzzle it out. Meanwhile there are jump scares and a general unsettling ambience that you might enjoy. The film was a best picture nominee at the Berlin Film Festival. The director, Tilman Singer, also German, is known for a much-admired film Luz, from 2018. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5
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