Right thing

Southside with You

Crit

Near the end of this first-date movie (about a, not ideal as a, though probably that too, though irrelevant to my purposes), I asked myself, "Would this be as moving and as funny and as charming and as thoroughly involving if it were just about two fictional young lawyers or whatever color?" And I had to admit, no, probably not.

But--and I don't bandy this clause about promiscuously--it is what it is, a chunk of somewhat fictionalized history important to where we are today, and as that, it is simply irresistible, at least to those who don't believe the president is a foreign socialist crypto-Muslim. And I'm guessing the nationwide audience among those who believe that will be less than the 7 in my audience.

Public offering

Equity

Crit

Hey, guess what? Women can be as ambitious and as venal and as duplicitous and as disloyal as men--and that's a really high bar. Good performance by Anna Gunn (who to me is still Mrs. Bullock in Deadwood, not whatever her character was named in Breaking Bad), and excellent performance by Alysia Reiner (who to me is still the corrupt prison administrator in Orange Is the New Black), but this was one of those films I couldn't like as much as I wanted to, and whose execution I couldn't admire as much as its intentions.

Oh, also: seriously? High-powered investment bankers use Blackberries?

Trailers

• Complete Unknown--One of 3 Rachel Weisz films trailered at this screening, and the 1,041st exploitation of a lyric from this song.
• The Eagle Huntress--Whale Rider, but in Mongolia, with golden eagles.
• Queen of Katwe--Whale Rider, but in Uganda, with chess.

Cowboy's lament

Hell or High Water

Crit

Smart, steady brother Toby (Chris Pine) enlists crazy, criminal brother Tanner (Ben Foster) in his plan to rob enough money from the banking chain that stole the family ranch from their late mother to pay off the reverse mortgage and taxes and then put the place in trust for Toby's sons--administered by the same bank.

Nothing could go wrong, right? Nor does anything, until they find a target branch failed and padlocked, and shift to a bigger and better-protected branch than they're used to, and people get killed.

It's a story about hierarchy of crimes, of course--as one witness says, he's seen a bank robbed that has been robbing him all his life--but it's a love story, too, or rather a pair of them: between the brothers, neither of whom can make eye contact when saying "I love you," and between the Texas Rangers on their trail (Jeff Bridges, chasing another Oscar, and Gil Birmingham), who would never say the words at all. Ranger Marcus's declaration of love is vengeful, and comes from the business end of a rifle.

Bleak, hopeful, ambivalent, and ambiguous.

Trailers

• Hacksaw Ridge--Andrew Garfield as a pacifist soldier.
• Mechanic Resurrection--Jason Statham, OK?
• A Monster Calls--Big friendly arboreal giant.

Market price

Little Men

Crit

An unsettling story by writer-director Ira Sachs of gentrification, privilege, and friendship, focused on the titular Jake and Tony (Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri, two more additions to the growing roster of brilliant young actors), sons, respectively, of the inheritor of a town house in a trending Brooklyn neighborhood and the Chilean immigrant who runs a dress shop on the ground floor, and whose rent the new owner plans to triple.

Our good liberal sympathies are firmly in place, yet the Jardines (Greg Kinnear and the ever-welcome Jennifer Ehle) are villains only if you believe that an economically challenged family is evil to demand 60 percent of market value rather than settling for 20 percent.

Still, what matters is not what happens to the parents but what happens to the boys' friendship (which, in one direction at least, is pretty clearly and agonizingly a bit more than friendship). The villain, if you must have one, is a world where real estate has come to have more value than love.

Baked goods

Sausage Party

Crit

Far be it from me to encourage the consumption of criminally proscribed substances, but if you live in one of the increasing number of locales where cannabis is legal or legalish, I think this would be a pretty good flick to see high. Since noted pothead Seth Rogan is among the creative forces as well as the voice of the protagonist, that's no surprise.

But see it straight, too. You'll appreciate more fully the qualities that might surprise you: the excellence of the Pixar-tweaking-while-admiring animation, for example, and the depth of the theological exploration and the conviction of the geopolitical satire, for a couple of others.

Mostly, though, it's just funny and obscene and anarchic as hell.

Florence Foster Jenkins

Crit

Meryl will probably get yet another Oscar nomination for this, and I wouldn't argue--or with nominations for Hugh Grant or Simon Helberg; it is without doubt an actorly picture--and I'm glad to have more of the tone deaf diva's medical background, something closer to the real-life source's real life, but I remain partial to the French telling earlier this year of the same story, Marguerite.

Trailers

• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter--Good, maybe we'll see whether there's anything left in Milla Jovavich worth saving.
• Doctor Strange--In the lower half of my Marvel fandom back in the day--but that doesn't mean I didn't buy & read every issue (mostly shared w/ the [Incredible, natch] Hulk in those days, as I recall), or that I'm not inclined to see Benedict Cumberbatch as the good doc.
• Rules Don't Apply--Star-studded cast in a flick about Howard Hughes and Hollywood, written and directed by Warren Beatty; back in the days when Jennie Tonic and I pre-rated flicks, I'd have given this a 5, as in it would take unimaginably bad reviews to keep me away.

The butcher's boy

Indignation

Crit

This was the last novel I loved in my Year of Reading Roth, and the film made from of it is altogether worthy. But whereas in the book I was most engaged by the relationship between the brilliant but naïve Marcus Messner and troubled shiksa queen Olivia Hutton (portrayed beautifully in the film by Logan Lerman and Sarah Gadon), what's riveting here is the clashes between Marcus and Winesburg College's Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts).

I've had some experience with rhetorical bullies--a Dominican sister in grade school, a supermarket boss when I was in college, even a newspaper executive when I was an ostensible grown-up--but they were all, you should forgive the boxing metaphor, Sonny Liston types, boring in relentlessly and unsubtly on the weaker, scareder, totally overmatched opponent.

Caudwell floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee, or maybe a hornet, rhetorically rope-a-doping the smart and studied but callow Marcus, teasing him into launching what he thinks is an unstoppable haymaker, only to slip it and deliver a deadly counterpunch. Caudwell is--appropriate to Roth--a master baiter.

Trailer

• The Light between Oceans--Great cast, but frankly, it looks kinda Wally Lambish.

Fight the power that bee

Star Trek Beyond

Crit

So Stringer Bell decides to waste civilization . . .

But wait, didn't I say the last time around that the film was fun but overstayed its welcome by about 20 minutes? No, I guess I didn't, though I'm pretty sure I thought something like that. Sure was the case with this one.

Trippiest newbie by light years is stripey-faced Jaylah (Sofia Boutella, who is Algerian!). I look forward to her kicking further ass next time around. Which will, I hope, be just the right length.

Trailers

• xXx: The Return of Xander Cage--Thank god Vin Diesel is getting work.
• Jack Reacher: Never Go Back--Ditto Tom Cruise.

Mistake by the Lake

The Land

Crit

As in Cleve-.

Man, I was not far from opting for Jason Bourne instead of this; I loves me some Jason, but I'm glad I made the choice I made. A little more than a year ago, Dope made great comedy from the kids-in-over-their-heads-selling-Molly plot. This one, though it is not humorless, has little space for the back half of tragicomedy. Instead, the net we see being spun gets drawn in successively tighter, with predictably bleak results. It reminded me a lot of season 4 of The Wire, and that is high (no pun intended) praise indeed.

Tell me about your rotten day

Don't Think Twice

Crit

First, a warning: this probably isn't as funny as you think. Yes, it's about an improv troupe, and yes, there are moments of improv brilliance (and yes, you pray that those scenes were genuine improv, and if they were scripted, you don't want to know), but it's less about what happens on stage than it is about the 24/7 dynamics of the group, and specifically about the effort, mostly unsuccessful, to be happy for the one of them who is asked to join the cast of "Weekend Live," a completely fictitious long-running Manhattan-based comedy sketch show whose martinet producer, I'm confident, bears no resemblance whatever to Lorne Michaels.

So if you're OK wincing more than laughing, and if you go in with that expectation, you will admire, if not quite love, Mike Birbiglia's tough writing and directing follow-up to Sleepwalk with Me.

Trailers

• Office Christmas Party--Sucking seems likely, but the cast is great, and maybe it'll be a guilty pleasure.
• The Hollars--I'm more confident in this one, though it has the potential to slide into sentimentality.
• The Edge of Seventeen--Yes, we've seen this many times, but not often enough with a girl, and Hailee Steinfeld can carry it.
• Bad Santa 2--What do you need to know?