FILM REVIEW
Ben Foster and Chris Pine in Hell or High Water.
AMERICAN DREAMS HELL OR HIGH WATER / WAR DOGS BY M. FAUST YOU MAY NOT CARE TO SEE SUMMER WINDING DOWN,
but you have to admit there’s one good thing about it: Having exhausted its supply of superhero and comic book movies, Hollywood goes back to releasing product aimed at relatively adult audiences.
High on that list is Hell or High Water, a crime drama set in West Texas, where even the bank managers wear string ties and Stetson hats. The opening sequence sets the mood: In a small town as ugly as an army barracks, all that breaks up the monotony are signs advertising “Debt relief ” or simply announcing “Closing down.” This is where two brothers launch a spate of bank robberies. Tanner (Ben Foster) is an old hand at bad behavior, having recently been released from prison. Toby (Chris Pine) is new to it, but he’s the brains behind their operation. They’re targeting banks not simply for Willie Sutton’s famous rationale—because that’s where the money is—but as part of a plan that becomes apparent as the movie unfolds. Suffice to say that while everyone in this depressed part of America considers the banks the bad guys, no one hates them more than Toby, who feels they took advantage of his dying mother to steal the family land. The brother’s method sets of the suspicions of Marcus Hamilton ( Jeff Bridges), a veteran Texas ranger not looking forward to his approaching retirement. (I know what you’re thinking: a cop
AT THE MOVIES A selective guide to what’s opening and what’s playing in local moviehouses and other venues
BY M. FAUST & GEORGE SAX
OPENING THIS WEEK BEN-HUR—Sight unseen, what has to be the most uncalled for remake of the year. Starring Jack Huston, Toby Kebbell, and Rodrigo Santoro. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov (Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter). Dipson Flix, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker Crossing, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria DOWN BY LOVE—Adèle Exarchopoulos of Blue Is the Warmest Color stars as a convict who falls in love with her prison’s director (Guillaume Gallienne) in this true story. Directed by Pierre Godeau. A review will be posted at dailypublic.com. North Park HELL OR HIGH WATER—Indie action drama starring Chris Pine and Ben Foster as Texas brothers driven by desperation to robbing banks while lawman Jeff Bridges pursues them. Directed by David Mackenzie (Young Adam). Reviewed this issue. Area theaters KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS—A boy in medieval Japan searches for a magic suit of armor that will help him fight an evil spirit in this animated adventure from the studio that made Coraline and ParaNorman. Directed by Travis Knight. Area theaters OUR LITTLE SISTER—From Japan, a drama about three sisters who discover that they have a younger half sister at the funeral of their estranged father
about to retire? I know what that means. But the script by Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote last year’s Sicario, knows that you’re thinking that. Don’t try to get ahead of things.) He and his deputy Alberto (Gil Birmingham) set out to get one step ahead of brothers, a waiting time that requires Marcus to indulge in his favorite pastime, making jokes about Alberto’s half-Mexican half-Comanche heritage. A cast like this doesn’t hire onto a modestly budgeted feature just to shoot guns and chase around in cars. Toby’s plan, as we find, is both ingenious and touching. And there’s a clever structure involving the two sets of brothers (one real, one uniformed) that isn’t immediately clear underneath the depressed ambiance (the score is by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis) and dry humor. Director David Mackenzie, who has had a steady career making minor films since his internationally acclaimed Young Adam 12 years ago, is one of those Brits with a keen eye for American landscape and an equally keen ear for its language: watch an actress named Margaret Bowman steal a scene from Bridges as a waitress in a café that sells nothing but T-bone steaks. Hell or High Water hearkens back to the great Warner Brothers gangster dramas of the early 1930s, which were about hard times driving criminal activity. It would make a great double feature with No Country For Old Men.
and invite her to live with them. Starring Haruka Ayase and Masami Nagasawa. Directed by Hirokazu Kore-Eda (After Life). Reviewed this issue. Dipson Eastern Hills THE STUDENT AND MISTER HENRI—Veteran French actor Claude Brasseur stars as a curmudgeon who is pressured by his son to take in a young student as a boarder. With Noémie Schmidt, Guillaume de Tonquedec, and Frédérique Bel. Directed by Ivan Calbérac. A review will be posted at dailypublic.com. North Park WAR DOGS—Miles Teller and Jonah Hill as David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, two Miami schlubs who made millions of dollars selling arms and ammo to the Pentagon under the Bush administration. With Bradley Cooper and Kevin Pollack. Directed by Todd Phillips (The Hangover). Reviewed this issue. Area theaters
ALTERNATIVE CINEMA
DR. NO (1962)—The first and leanest of the James Bond films. Starring Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman, a pre-Hawaii 5-0 Jack Lord, and, of course, Lois Maxwell. Directed by Terence Young. Sat-Sun 11:30am. North Park HIERONYMUS BOSCH: TOUCHED BY THE DEVIL—Documentary about art historians researching the medieval artist in preparation for a 500th anniversary celebration of his life and work. Directed by Pieter van Huystee. Wed Aug 17 9:30pm. North Park HOW TO LET GO OF THE WORLD AND LOVE ALL THE THINGS THAT CLIMATE CAN’T CHANGE—Gasland director Josh Fox returns with a documentary about activists working to reverse or at least slow the course of climate change. Presented by Cultivate Cinema. Wed Aug 24 8pm. Burning Books, 420 Connecticut St.
20 THE PUBLIC / AUGUST 17 - 24, 2016 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM
••• The last few weeks in August are when Hollywood tends to dump its dogs, the stinkers they’re contractually obligated to put into theaters even though it’s clear they’re going to flop. This is why I have little hope for the remake of Ben-Hur opening this week: If it was any good at all, it would have been released any other time of the year. It’s also way I wasn’t eager to see War Dogs, an apparent (from the ads) buddy comedy directed by Todd Phillips, known for summer slob comedies like the Hangover series. But just as Will Ferrell collaborator surprised everyone by tackling a serious subject (albeit in a grimly funny way) in The Big Short, War Dogs shows Phillips going after another enormous waste of public funds, the military budget. Based on a true story, the movie stars Miles Teller and Jonah Hill as David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, high school friends from Miami. Diveroli had moved away to Los Angeles to go into business with his uncle, who showed him how to make money buying guns collected by the police and selling them online. When he runs into Packouz at a funeral, he enlists him in an even more lucrative (but legal) scheme: supplying the seemingly endless Pentagon demand for arms and ammo to outfit the Afghan army. It’s a market he found on the internet. As he puts it, once the military got caught buying too much stuff from Dick Chaney’s buddies, they had to make a big show of buying from smaller vendors. All they have to do is find supplies for the items on demand, and they can clean up as middlemen. Of course, the business spirals out of control as they go after bigger opportunities that present ore risk. Phillips borrows openly from Martin Scorsese’s style for this kind of story, especially Goodfellas, but he’s got the story to stand up to the style. And the finale won’t exactly make you feel that these problems in military procurement P have been solved.
THE STING (1973)—Paul Newman and Robert Redford in their second and last collaboration, as con men working an elaborate scheme in 1930s Chicago. Oscar winner for Best Film. Co-starring Robert Shaw, Charles Durning, Ray Walston, and Eileen Brennan. Directed by George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). Fri, Sat, Tue 7:30pm. Screening Room STOOGEFEST—25th anniversary of the series celebrating the Three Stooges. The program of classic Stooges shorts will be preceded by a performance on the Riv’s Mighty Wurlitzer at 3:30pm. Sun 4pm. Riviera THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) and UNDER THE RAINBOW (1981)—This week’s drive-in retro double feature may be one that all viewers won’t stay all the way through, pairing what is probably the most beloved film in Hollywood history with a comedy about the making of it that depicts the Munchkins as troublesome, lecherous prima donnas. Tue dusk. Transit Drive-In
CONTINUING BAD MOMS—Coming soon: Bad Father-in-Law, Bad Maiden Auntie, and Bad Dutch Uncle. Starring Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell, Christina Applegate, and Jada Pinkett Smith. Directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Dipson Flix, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker Crossing, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria, Sunset Drive-In, Transit Drive-In CAFÉ SOCIETY—This year’s Woody Allen movie revisits one of his favorite periods, the 1930s, to follow a Bronx youth (Jesse Eisenberg) who heads to Los Angeles in the hopes that his uncle (Steve Carell) will help him find work in the movies. What he finds instead is love with Kristen Stewart, who is reluctant to get involved because of her attachment to
an older man. It’s one of Allen’s best-looking films, both for Vittorio Storaro’s gilded-to-amber-toned photography and the director’s uncharacteristically imaginative use of the camera. But Allen never quite nails the note of rueful poignance he seems to want. With Corey Stoll and Jeannie Berlin. —GS Dipson Amherst, Dipson Eastern Hills CAPTAIN FANTASTIC—How far would you as a parent go to protect your children from the evils of the world? Probably not as far as Ben (Viggo Mortensen), who with his wife raised their six kids completely away from society, deep in a forest in the Pacific Northwest. Those kids’ first contact with the world as they travel to their mother’s funeral is the focus of this movie written and directed by Matt Ross. (Was he inspired by the years he spent playing polygamist cult leader Alby Grant on the HBO series Big Love?) It’s an intriguing subject for a drama, maybe even too much so: Despite a running time of nearly two hours (which zip quickly by), you come away wishing that there was more to it. But Mortensen is ideally cast as a man who is both physically and intellectually capable of carry out his task, yet unable to see the damage he is doing to his family along the way. With Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, and Frank Langella. —MF Dipson Amherst, Dipson Eastern Hills DOUGH—British comedy-drama starring Jonathan Pryce as an aging Jewish baker struggling to hold on to the bakery he inherited years ago from his father. Business picks up when he hires a new apprentice, a young African Muslim (Jerome Holder). What he doesn’t know is that his new helper is an aspiring drug dealer who is spiking the challah with marijuana. It’s a feel-good movie about making connections across cultural and religious barriers that doesn’t do much to earn its warm fuzziness, with slack plotting and few laughs. With Phil Davis, Ian Hart, and Pauline Collins. Directed by John Goldschmidt. —MF North Park (ENDS THURSDAY)