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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND November 15, 2019 – Ford Vs. Ferrari, Charlie’s Angels, The Good Liar, The Report and More!

Another week where I found myself falling behind on writing just because I have so much else going on. Sorry for the tardiness of this column… again.

In case you hadn’t heard, I’ve returned to my role as house manager at David Kwong’s Off-Broadway show “The Enigmatist” so that’s taking up some of the weekend I use for writing. It’s also awards season, which means I’m being invited to a ton more events that I don’t necessarily want to turn down. Plus there’s a little something called “Disney+” which I haven’t actually had much of a chance to get into.

That be as it may, the last few weekends have been so pitiful at the box office that things can only get better, right?

My favorite movie of the weekend, as well as the year, is James Mangold’s FORD V FERRARI (20thCentury Fox), starring Christian Bale as British racecar driver Ken Miles, who is hired by Matt Damon’s racecar designer Caroll Shelby to help him create a sportscar for the Ford company to race at Le Mans in 1963 with the sole intention of defeating regular winner Ferrari. It’s an amazing film – you can read my review below – which includes a fantastic cast that includes Caitrioni Balfe from Outlander, Noah Jupe (also in Honey Boy, currently in theaters), Jon Bernthal, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas and more. I probably don’t have to say too much more about this because you can read my review below, but since it will be in my Top 5 for the year, it’s highly recommended and a movie that you will not want to miss in theaters.

My Review of Ford v Ferrari

I wish I was as bullish on Elizabeth Banks’ remake of CHARLIE’S ANGELS (Sony), co-starring Kristen Stewart, newcomer Ella Balinska and Naomi Scott from Aladdin, as well as Patrick Stewart, Djimon Hounsou, Sam Claflin (staying in asshole mode after co-starring in The Nightingale) and more. It’s a female-friendly version of the action-comedy that McG made in 2000 with a sequel called Charlie’s Angels: Fully Loaded in 2003. The latter is one of my personal guilty pleasures, even though it’s probably not a very good movie. As far as Elizabeth Banks’ movie?

Mini-Review: I really wanted to like this movie, mainly since I’ve been a fan of Elizabeth Banks for so long. I really want her to shine as a filmmaker, especially in this case where she’s both written and directed this attempt to relaunch the popular ‘70s television show that often focused more on its stars T ‘n’ A than their brains and abiliites.

We meet two of the new Angels, Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and Jane (Ella Balinska), as they’re dealing with a horny millionaire in Brazil, played by Chris Pang from Crazy Rich Asians. Sabina is in the midst of pulling a big-time seduction on the sleezeball before Jane comes in with other ninja women to deal with his bodyguards. That opening scene gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect from the movie, but then the needlessly overt and deliberate “girl power” opening credits is a bit worrying of the direction where things might be going.

We then meet Naomi Scott’s Elena Houghlin, a trod-upon programmer at a big corporation getting ready to release an Amazon Echo-like device that can do anything from powering an entire building to being weaponized in dangerous ways. She tries to tell her obnoxious and sexist supervisor, played by Nat Faxon, but he refuses to tell the big boss Alexander Brock (Sam Claflin). Elena turns to the Townsend Agency and its Angels to help her blow the whistle on how dangerous the device can be in the wrong hands, so her, Sabina and Jane proceed to break into the Brock Corporation to steal one of the devices.

That’s the basic and quite derivative premise, and frankly, it’s rarely enough to keep the viewer entertained, especially once you realize that the entire movie is just a means to introduce Naomi Scott’s character as an Angel. This Townsend Agency isn’t just one small agency with a few women and one Bosley, as it has expanded worldwide with many, many Bosleys, including one retiring one played by Patrick Stewart. You see, like the Kingsmen, Bosley is just a rank of handler in between “Charlie,” who apparently is a woman, and her Angels. Stewart’s Bosley is being replaced by a former Angel, played by Banks, but first, they go on a mission with another Bosley, played by Djimon Hounsou, whom has a close relationship with Jane. (Don’t get too used to him as he’s barely in the movie.)

There’s a lot to take in as all this information is thrown at you, including a number of homages to earlier Charlie’s Angels incarnations, but the biggest problem with the movie is the fact that Kristen Stewart just doesn’t have a lot of on-screen charm. Watching her spending an entire movie trying to be funny and sexy and failing at both – well, that’s one-third of the movie that just doesn’t work at all. Fortunately, the other actors are generally better. I was really impressed by newcomer Ella Balinska, who handles a lot of the best action scenes, and I also enjoyed seeing Scott playing a character so different from Princess Jasmine in Aladdin. Even so, the attempts at comedy in Charlie’s Angels frequently falls flat, except a few moments later on.

This leaves Banks in a position where she’s forced to lean quite heavily on her soundtrack and locations to keep things interesting. While Bryan Tyler’s soundtrack is pretty good overall, I really had no interest in the pop songs written specifically for the movie.

The overall issue is that Charlie’s Angels just doesn’t offer much beyond the very basics. The fact it essentially uses the same general idea that didn’t work in Men in Black International as its basis just makes the movie derivative of another Sony movie that fell flat.

Sure, mileage is going to vary with those who see Charlie’s Angels based on how much they’ll put up with from the lackluster Stewart as the lead, but this just seemed like an idea that was destined to fail from the beginning, regardless of who was directing it.

Rating: 6/10

Last as far as the wide releases go is THE GOOD LIAR (Warner Bros.), directed by Bill Condon (Beauty and the Beast) and starring Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Ian McKellen, a psychological thriller about a man who isn’t what he says he is, who makes the mistake of getting on Helen Mirren’s bad side.

Mini-Review: Sometimes, it’s nice going into a movie thinking you know what to expect and then be continually surprised as it pulls the rug from under you, not once or twice, but many, many times.

At first, Bill Condon’s psychological thriller seems like a nice movie about the relationship between an older couple who meet online – Helen Mirren’s Betty, a kindly widow with an overprotective grandson, who goes on a date with Ian McKellen’s Roy Courtnay, who is a lot more than meets the eye. We quickly learn that Roy is involved in a number of grifts in trying to steal mucho bucks from some very rough Russian sorts, but we also see that Roy can be just as tough and cruel. This is all going on as Betty and Roy are getting closer, her offering Roy a place to stay in the house she shares with her grandson Steve. We know quite quickly that not everything is what it seems as far as Roy is concerned, but it’s the way we’ll learn the truth behind him and his relationship with Betty that keeps you on the edge while watching The Good Liar.

Obviously, the big draw for Bill Condon’s psychological thriller are his two fantastic actors, and neither of them disappoint, particularly Mirren, who is absolutely on fire with her performance. Since we already know that not everything about Roy is on the level, you would think that you have this film sussed, but that just isn’t the case. Even after a major revelation about Roy’s past, the relationship between him and Betty and her grandson Steven (a decently laid-back performance by Russell Tovey) just gets more interesting.

Unfortunately, I can’t say too much more about the third act where things really turn on their ear, and there’s some extremely disturbing revelations that might make the difference for some between liking or loving the movie. Me, I thought it was quite good, definitely better than similar thrillers like the recent Greta, which starts out with a suitably twisty premise but then fell flat. I was also surprised by how violent and even bloody The Good Liar gets, really earning its R-rating and not from language.

The Good Liar is a movie full of surprises that, like its characters, is never what it seems. It may not be as good as some of Condon’s influences – Hitchcock the most obvious one – but few will be disappointed by the two hours they spend in the company of Mirren and McKellen.

Rating: 7/10

You can read more about the above movies and how I think they will fare over at The Beat.

LIMITED RELEASES

One limited release opening today I highly recommend is Scott Z. Burns’ THE REPORT(Amazon Studios) aka “The Torture Report,” an in-depth political thriller based on Daniel T Jones’ investigations into the CIA’s use of extreme torture to get torture from detainees in the name of national security. Jones is beautifully played by Adam Driver in another one of his performances that really has made this a great year for the young actor as Jones is assigned by his boss, Senator Diane Feinstein (an equally brilliant performance by Annette Bening) to investigate the CIA’s use of torture techniques to get information from detainees. This is an intensely brilliant bit of filmmaking from Burns, only directing his second feature after writing some great films for Steven Soderbergh, such as Contagion and Side Effects. (I wasn’t a big a fan of The Informant! Or the recent The Landromat.) But Burns clearly did his research to tell a story that has a lot of talking and exposition but also great filming and editing to keep things moving at a fast pace, which also can be attributed to the dramatic fireworks he gets out of a cast that’s an abundance of riches, including the likes of Moira Tierney, Corey Stoll, Tim Blake Nelson and other wonderful surprises. The Report offers another of the year’s most impressive ensembles, but it’s always kept centered on Driver’s Jones and his long journey to get the report he’s writing out to the public. Burns uses some great techniques to create tension without going overboard on the thriller aspects of this story, but this is a fantastic bit of investigative exposé work for a movie that isn’t a doc. If you miss it in theaters when it’s playing in two weeks, you can catch on Amazon Prime in a couple weeks, but I do recommend giving this a look when it’s in theaters if possible since it does require the type of concentration few have while watching movies at home.

I’ll have an interview with Burns over at Next Best Picture next week.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to catch It Comes at Night director Trey Edward Shults’ WAVES (A24) before opening, but it involves the journey of a suburban African-American family led by a domineering father (Sterling K. Brown) as they “navigate love, forgiveness and coming together in the aftermath of a loss.” (Sorry, that’s the best I can do without having seen the movie.) It stars Kelvin Harrison from Luce, Lucas Hedges, Taylor Russell and more.

I also seemed to have missed Swati Mhise’s THE WARRIOR QUEEN OF JHANSI (Roadside Attractions) – this is the running theme of this week’s column, by the way – but it looks like a cool biopic about the legendary Rani (or Queen) of Jhansi, a freedom fighter in 19thcentury India, who led her people into battle against the British Empire at the age of 24. It led to the shift of power that took down the notorious British East India Company and Queen Victoria’s reign over India. It’s opening moderately wide this week, possibly in as many as 300 theaters.

I also haven’t seen Mark Landsman’s doc SCANDALOUS (Magnolia), which explores the 60 years of the National Enquirerand it’s salacious and shocking stories.

A couple Netflix movies will get limited releases before their debut on Netflix. Jeremy Clapin’s French animated film I Lost My Body, based on the novel “Happy Hand” by Guillaume Laurant. It follows a hand as it explores the romance between a pizza delivery boy and his lady love, a librarian named Gabrielle. It seems to be opening at the Cinema Village in New York, and I assume somewhere in L.A. as well.

There’s also the French film Atlantics by Mati DIop, which won the Cannes Grand Jury prize, which is quite an achievement. Somehow, I managed to miss this at the New York Film Festival and haven’t had a single chance to see it since. Odd. It’s set in a suburb of Dakar where a 17-year-old girl named Ada is in love with a construction worker named Souleimayne, although she’s been promised to another man in a fixed marriage. After he disappears at sea, Souleimane and other workers return to get revenge on the people building the tower that has cast a shadow on the city. That will open at Film at Lincoln Center

I also didn’t get a chance to see Amp Wong and Ji Zhao’s Chinese animated film White Snake (GKIDS), which will open in L.A. at the Landmark NuartFriday and then in New York City on November 29. It’s a classic fable about a young woman named Blanca who is saved by a snake catcher named Xuan, the two of them going on a journey to discover her true identity, as she’s lost her memory. According to its PR, it offers “a sumptuous tale of trickster demons, deadly mythical beasts, assassins, wuxia action, and the promise of eternal love.” So basically, everything that I look for in a movie and life.

An intriguing doc I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival was Matt Wolff’s Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (Zeitgeist/Kino Lorber), opening at the MetrographFriday with LOTS of QnAs planned. It documents the thirty-year efforts of African-American left wing activist Marion Stokes on recording television 24 hours a day, and that includes almost every channel, becoming one of the most impressive television archivists with over 70,000 VHS tapes at the time of her death. Wolff edits the footage together to tell an amazing story.

Opening Wednesday at Film Forumis Annabelle Atanou’s debut feature MICKEY AND THE BEAR (Utopia), which takes place in the mining community of Anaconda, Montana with newcomer Camila Morrone playing a teenager who must care for her father Hank (played by James Badge Dale), who is afflicted by PTSD from serving in the Iraq war and in grief from the death of his wife.s

BAMhas the exclusive New York run on Brett Story’s documentary The Hottest August, which deals with the future of New York City following Hurricane Sandy and a particularly hot summer in 2017, and how climate change affects the city’s many denizens. It played at this years’s BAMCinemaFest and will include a repertory series called “In This Climate: Brett Story Selects” which unfortunately ends tonight.

A few other movies out this weekend in various combinations of theatrical and On Demand and digital that I just won’t have time to right about:

Feast of the Seven Fishes (Shout! Studios) The Shed (RLJE Films) Bluebird (Cleopatra Entertainment) Line of Duty (Saban Films/Lionsgate) A Reindeer’s Journey (Screen Media) To Kid or Not to Kid (Helpman Productions)

LOCAL/REGIONL FESTIVALS

Not too many festivals of note, although Doc-NYC ends tomorrow with a few last films. If you’re in Atlanta, you can check out the Buried Alive Film Fest, a straight-up horror film festival that opened last night with the 4thAnnual Sinema Challenge for horror shorts. It will include a wide variety of features and shorts running through the weekend.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Lots of stuff hitting Netflix this week, including the animated Klaus, which had a short theatrical release last week. Also Earthquake Bird, the movie I haven’t seen and missed in the column a couple weeks back hits the streaming service after a short theatrical run. It’s a romantic drama that stars Alicia Vikander and Riley Keough, but that’s pretty much all I know.Another thing that I haven’t watched, and it’s a great shame considering what a bit Peter Morgan stan I am, but The Crown will begin its 3rdseason on Netflix with the wonderful Olivia Colman in the role of Queen Elizabeth, and man, do I need to catch up on this show.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

The Metrograph begins an intriguing new series this weekend called “On the Process,” a collection of docs and narratives about famous painters and their process, including Raul Ruiz’s 2007 film Klimt, Derek Jarman’s 1986 film Caravaggio, and more to come as it runs through November 20. Metrograph is also continuing its “Noah Baumbach in Residence” series with screenings of Baumbach’s 1997 debut Mr. Jealousy on Sunday, followed by a screening of Peter Bogdonavich’s Saint Jack (1979). On Saturday, the Metrograph is also screening The Complete Works of Edward Owens, a collection of the queer Black artist’s short films from 1966 to 1967, and then on Sunday is a 30thanniversary screening of Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langstonwith Julien in person. Welcome To Metrograph: Redux continues this weekend with Peter Cohen’s 1989 doc The Architecture of Doom and Cinda Firestone’s 1974 film Attica. Late Nites at Metrograph will show Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host (2006) a couple more times and also show Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), starring Johnny Depp. This weekend’s Playtime: Family Matinees is Joe Dante’s Gremlinsfrom 1984. Downtown 81 continues, probably forever?

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Glad to see Tarantino’s rep theater get back on track, and you can catch a double feature of Medium Cool (1969) and The Don is Dead (1973) tonight. Friday’s Cronenberg matinee is Videodrome, a supremely weird movie starring Debbie Harry, while the weekend’s Kiddee Matinee is Jason and the Argonauts (1963), featuring amazing stop motion visual FX from the late Ray Harryhausen. Saturday night’s midnight movie is Kevin Tenney’s 1990 movie Peacemaker, starring the late Robert Forster, with Tenney in person. Monday’s 2pm matinee of David Lynch’s Lost Highway is already sold out. Monday night’s double feature is The Stalking Moon (1968) and 1970’s Pieces of Dreams, both starring Forster.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Thursday will be your last chance to see the new DCP’s of Yasujiro Ozu’sTokyo Story and Toyko Twilight, but that’s mainly because the Film Forum is starting a new series calledThe Romanians: 30 Years of Cinema Revolution, a 12-day series showing some of the best from that country, some which have been seen in the States like Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu from 2005 and Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest from 2006 and many others that have not. My knowledge of Romanian cinema is not good enough to recommend anything specifically but there should be some good stuff in there. Another series beginning this weekend is a longer-running series called Lee Grant: Actor. Filmmaker. Running through February and this weekend screening Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light and Norman Jewison’s 1967 film In the Heat of the Night. This weekend’s Film Forum Jr. is George Roy Hill’s 1967 movie Thoroughly Modern Millie starring Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Well, at least the Egyptian finishes its run of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman(not repertory!) to begin a series called “Nitrate Nights 2019,” which as it sounds is about showing rare nitrate 35mm prints of film like Powell and Pressburger’s Disney film Gone to Earth from 1950 on Friday, Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) on Saturday, and then the master’s 1940 film Rebecca with special guests Christopher Nolan and Jared Case of the George Eastman Museum, that provided the print for the series. Otto Preminger’s 1940 film Laura screens Sunday, also with guests, and then Sunday night, Alexander Payne presents Edmund Goulding’s 1948 thriller Nightmare Alley, which Guillermo del Toro is in the process of remaking. Eddie Murphy will be in person at the Aero on Tuesday to show his new movie My Name is Dolemite in a double feature with Frank Oz’s 1999 film Bowfinger, both in 35mm.

AERO (LA):

Aero is mostly doing awards-campaigning screenings of movies like Her Smell (with Elisabeth Moss in person!) and a FREE 70mm screening of Joker with Todd Phillips, but let’s get to the repertory stuff. At midnight Friday, the AERO will screen the sci-fi “classic” Zardoz (1974) starring Sean Connery. Saturday night is a double feature of David Finch’s Wild at Heart and Blue Velvet as part of “Laura Dern: A Life on Screen” with Dern appearing in person! That series continues Sunday with a double feature of Rambling Rose (1991) and Small Talk (1985), that one with Rambling Rose director Martha Coolidge in person. On Tuesday, there’s a matinee screening of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven as part of “The Hidden Lives of Terrence Malick,” which makes reference to Malick’s upcoming film A Hidden Life.

MOMA (NYC):

MOMA is beginning its annual “The Contenders” series showing a number of smaller movies you may have missed, as well as continuing Vision Statement: Early Directorial Workswith a number of first films by foreign filmmakers, on Sunday showing Mira Nair’s 1988 film Salaam Bombay! MOMA also has a number of weekly series but since I don’t think this column will be up by Weds next week, we’ll have to explore them later. One cool thing they’re starting is Open Door Fridays, and this week they will be showing the Maysles Brothers’ concert movie classic Gimme Shelter all day long, which is free with a ticket to the museum.

Modern Matinees: Iris Barry’s History of Film also continues with more silent films from the 20s with piano accompaniment every weekday afternoon at 1:30pm.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

FilmLinc’s new series this weekend is Rebel Spirit: The Films of Patricia Mazuy, whose work I’m sadly not familiar with, so you can check out what’s playing here. Next week is the big series that I’ve been waiting for!

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Sadly, the Quad has been slowing down on its series, but this weekend, it will be bringing out a 4k restoration of Buster Keaton’s 1926 film Battling Butler, as well as a 2k restoration of his 1924 film The Navigator. Both films are preceded by shorts.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: May All Your Christmases be Noir shows the late Harold Ramis’ 2005 The Ice Harvest, starring John Cusack ad Billy Bob Thornton, while Waverly Midnights: Spy Games will screen the original 1962 The Manchurian Candidate, starring Frank Sinatra. Late Night Favorites: Autumn 2019will show Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fictionand Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange this weekend.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

MOMI in Astoria begins a new series called Moments of Grace: The Collected Terrence MalickFriday, which runs through December 8 and is pretty self-explanatory. Friday, it’s showing Badlands (1973), Saturday is Days of Heaven (1978)and Stuart Rosenberg’s 1972 film Pocket Money (written by Malick), plus the first two will be shown on Sunday as well. (If you miss this series or don’t feel like going to Astoria, four of Malick’s first movies will be shown at Metrograph in December.) On Saturday, MOMI is also screening the 2017 animated The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales for its Family Matinee, plus it’s also showing Ildikó Enyedi’s My Twentieth Century (1989) in a new restoration.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

Tonight, the Roxy is showing Francis Ford Coppola’s 1986 film Peggy Sue Got Married, starring Nicolas Cage and Cathleen Turner, plus tomorrow, it will show Coppola’s The Cotton Club Encoreone more time.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Next week’s Terror Tuesday is the 1986 film The Wraith while the Weird Wednesday is Ralph Bakshi’s half-animated 1992 film Cool World.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (LA):

This Friday’s midnight movie is Akira.

Next week, hopefully I’ll get back on track in terms of timing re: posting this column (fingers crossed!) The big movie is Disney’s Frozen 2, which I won’t have seen. Great.

#WhatToWatchThisWeekend CharliesAngels FordvFerrari TheReport TheGoodLiar Repertory movies Reviews

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