8 x 8

Pawn Sacrifice

Crit

With great power comes great responsibility, and jingoistic Americans in the early '70s found in a lunatic chess genius the superhero to humble the evil empire (yes, I know: it hadn't been called that yet, but not because we didn't think it). Tobey Maguire brilliantly embodies Bobby Fischer, a man for whom the universe was contained by 64 squares.

Trailers

• Trumbo--Looks potentially cheesy, with the always potentially cheesy Bryan Cranston in the title role, but the trailer had me. Not to be confused with the 2007 documentary of the same title.
• The Martian--Speaking of films my skepticism about which was blown away by a great trailer . . .

He ain't heavy

Ich seh, Ich seh (Goodnight Mommy)

Crit

Another young-twins goosebumper. You figure out one essential what's what early on, but there's still a lot to puzzle about--is Mama (Susanne Wuest) really Mama, her face at first bandaged and then exposed as slightly reshaped in the wake of some semimysterious trauma, or is this some usurping creature trying to fuck with Elias and Lukas (Elias and Lukas Schwarz)? And what's the damn deal with all those Madagascar hissing cockroaches?

Class struggle

Grandma

Crit

Few actors can do as much with 10 minutes of screen time as Judy Greer and Sam Elliott, and both get their licks in here. And it goes without saying (he said, saying it anyway) that Lily Tomlin holds up her end of the bargain. Furthermore, if there's an Oscar® for Best Vehicle in a Road Picture, the vintage Dodge in this one is a lock. Oh, and one more thing: the film gives us a chance to say goodbye to Elizabeth Peña. But ultimately what we have here is a lazily written, mechanically plotted melodrama that telegraphs its every step.

Que horas ela volta? (The second mother)

Crit

Like Grandma, this could be read as anti-career womanist, but I prefer to think of both as anti-bad parenting-ist. Val (Regina Casé) has done an excellent job of raising Fabinho (Michel Joelsas), for whose neglectful parents (Karine Teles and Lourenço Mutarelli) she keeps house. Meanwhile, her own daughter, Jéssica (Camila Márdila), has been raised by a friend far from São Paolo. Jéssica's arrival in hopes of pursuing an architectural degree--and, more to the point, her stubborn resistance to the antidemocratic assumptions her servant mother has internalized--drops the snake in the middle of the garden, or perhaps the rat in the swimming pool.

The first two acts present an appealing clash of cultures and sympathies, which the third act ties up rather too neatly. 

Trailers

• About Ray--Elle Fanning as a transitional boy; I'm eagerly awaiting this, but I hope the film is more complex and less affirming after-school-special than the trailer suggests.
• By the Sea--Unhappy marrieds; written and directed by a new name: Angelina Jolie Pitt.

If nobody sees it . . .

Black Mass

Crit

"Unrecognizable" is a word tossed around promiscuously in film writing. An otherwise excellent profile of My Future Wife Julianne Moore in the current New Yorker calls her unrecognizable in a still for her role as Laurel Hester in the upcoming Freeheld. Well, I haven't seen the still, but I've seen the trailer for the film several times, and from the first, in early scenes and late, cancer-invaded ones, the face, the smile, the grimace are all unmistakably Julie.

In contrast, there was a moment about an hour and a half into this film when I looked at the alien, shark-eyed face that I'd been looking at in almost every scene and thought, for the first time, "Oh, yes: I see Johnny Depp there." Not a great film, and probably not even one of Depp's top ten performances (which is not to say it's not excellent; it is), but if there's not a makeup Oscar® nomination here, somebody wasn't paying attention.

Oh, and one other thing (well, actually about a million): Julianne Nicholson's freckles.

Trailers

• Our Brand Is Crisis--U.S. political wonks wonking in South America.
• My All-American--"Based on the inspirational true story"; 'nuff said.
• Legend--Holy shit--Tom Hardy as the Krays. I'm all in.

Tow zone

Learning to Drive

Crit

Oh, I get it! It's a metaphor! See, she (My Future Wife Patricia Clarkson, striving heroically to add a third dimension to her cardboard cutout, and except for the future wife part, that applies equally to the whole excellent leading cast, including Ben Kingsley, Grace Gummer, and the shamefully caricatured Sarita Choudhury) gets dumped by her husband and has to learn how to drive forward into a new life! Get it? A grotesquely heavy-handed parable in which the ostensible characters consistently behave according to the dictates of the plot, and if that should differ with behavior of human beings motivated by the things that motivate human beings, well hey, what do you want, good drama or good metaphor?

I paid nothing for this (MoviePass prepay) or for my popcorn & Diet Coke lunch (Criterion Club freebies)--nothing except 2 hours of precious life that I'll never get back.