TRUDGE MATCH

In theaters this weekend:

The Long Walk--In the late '70s and early '80s, the young and already prolific Stephen King, not wishing to glut the market with his name, published five pungently entertaining novels under the pseudonym "Richard Bachman." Only one of them, Thinner (1984), was a supernatural horror story; two of them were dystopian tales which seem disturbingly prescient in their anticipation of competitive "reality TV." One of these, The Running Man (1982), was filmed in 1987, and a remake is scheduled for release this November. The other, The Long Walk (1979), opens this weekend.

This harsh, bitter film looks like a period piece, set the '70s (it was filmed in Manitoba). But it's an alternative version of the '70s, in a shabby, impoverished America under the rule of "The Major" (Mark Hamill) a gravel-voiced and rather seedy-looking military dictator. It's unclear whether The Major is the ultimate power or just a regional tinpot, but he's the lord of the title competition, an odious annual death sport.

The event is simple: a cross-country walk down a rural road for young men--boys, really--accompanied by soldiers in vehicles. Participants must maintain a speed of three miles per hour; if they fall below this pace, they are given a series of warnings, and if they fail to keep moving after the third and final warning, they are shot dead. If they step off the course, they are shot without warning. Last man still walking wins a huge monetary prize, and the granting of an extravagant wish.

Our focus is on Ray (a fine everyman turn by Cooper Hoffman), a local favorite who gets dropped off by his anguished Mom (Judy Greer) like he's going to play high school football. Director Francis Lawrence, working from a generally faithful adaptation by JT Mollner, then keeps the movie on the literal straight and narrow; except for a very quick flashback or two, it's just Ray and his competitors, walking and talking, and occasionally getting their brains graphically blown out (we're also, in case you're wondering, shown how they manage their other bodily needs on the hoof).

Along the way, Ray bonds with Peter (David Jonsson, terrific here as he was as the guileless robot in Alien: Romulus) and they realize that they're true friends, not just allies of convenience. This is the emotional core of the film, and the intractable, ambiguous heart of its drama. The book, written in the shadow of the Vietnam war and its hideous squandering of young men, packed a punch; but it's possible the movie, despite its inevitable monotony and the morbid self-pity common to "young adult" fiction, is even more unsettling and troubling. The excellence and value of this ensemble cast adds to the weight of seeing the walkers senselessly slaughtered.

Most of the boys are supportive and encouraging of each other, despite the ultimate disadvantage of such behavior in the vile, survival-of-the-fittest nature of the competition. And even after years of Big Brother and Survivor providing non-lethal examples to the contrary, somehow I found this weird and generous-hearted esprit de corps believable, and touching. It's what makes The Long Walk not just horrific but genuinely tragic.

KNIFE GOES ON

Now in theaters:

Halloween Kills--Well, it certainly seems to, at the box office, at least. The new installment in the slasher series slaughtered at the multiplexes this weekend, even though it was available to stream for free on video. This suggests that people may still want the communal experience of moviegoing, at least for certain kinds of movies, horror flicks being an obvious example. I find this a cheering thought.

Unfortunately, it's not very good. It's handsomely produced, with a look and a premise and some cast members that link it nostalgically to John Carpenter's 1978 original, and it has some good ideas. But it fumbles almost all of them, and fails to be deeply scary.

Despite being burned alive at the end of the previous sequel (2018) generic masked killer Michael Myers still is not quite dead, and he plods around Haddonfield racking up more victims. Jamie Lee Curtis is back as Laurie, hospitalized with a wound and fretted over by her daughter (Judy Greer) and granddaughter (Andi Matichak). The focus this time, cleverly, is on the characters who were little kids in the '78 movie: Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy, Robert Longstreet as Lonnie, and Kyle Richards, who returns to the role of Lindsey which she played in the original (the fact that the little girl from Halloween is now in her fifties is scarier than anything onscreen). Tommy raises an angry mob of townies to kill Michael, just like the torch-and-pitchfork-bearing gang at the end of Universal's Frankenstein.

I was irked when I saw clips of these scenes in the trailer; this does not strike me as the most auspicious moment in our history to extoll the virtues of mob uprisings. I was pleased that screenwriters Scott Teems, Danny McBride and director David Gordon Green did not, at least, fall into this trap; indeed, mindless mass rage is repudiated by the film, and Michael is described as a personification of fear, and the reckless destruction that can arise from it. The reactionary subtext of Michael's hostilities is also hinted at; his targets this time include a middle-aged gay couple and a middle-aged interracial couple.

Something really interesting could have been done with all this, but the movie is muddled and slow and clumsily structured, and--very much unlike the original--it falls back on gore. Buckets more blood are spilled, but Halloween Kills never comes close to capturing that pervasive sense of archetypical dread that Carpenter's film had.

Certainly I'm a fan of the idea of flinty old Jamie Lee Curtis, past her fear and ready to rise up and kick Michael's ass. The trouble is, they already made that movie, back in 1998. It was called Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, and while it wasn't in the same league as the original, it wasn't a bad picture. It's where the series should have ended, but of course, the prospect of the kind of box office that Halloween Kills is having is the surest way to make a masked killer rise again.

MORE THAN THE SUMMER OF ITS PARTS

Opening this weekend:

Measure of a Man--In 1976, chubby fourteen-year-old New Yorker Bobby Marks (Blake Cooper) spends the summer with his family at a cabin in a rural upstate town. Mostly to avoid getting stuck at camp again, Bobby gets a job at a beautiful nearby manse, mowing lawns and cleaning gutters and doing other such disagreeable chores for an imperious and exacting Jewish doctor (Donald Sutherland).

Based on Robert Lipsyte's novel One Fat Summer (written in the mid-'70s but set in the '50s), this movie is about as prototypical as coming-of-age stories get: A sensitive teenage kid is challenged to be a better version of himself by a gruff but wise mentor, and applies what he learns to other conflicts in his life. It feels almost like the result of an assignment:  Encounters with local bullies, who of course loathe "summer people"--check. Platonic friendship with charming girl next door (Danielle Rose Russell)--check. Wild behavior by Bobby's older sister (Liana Liberato) and turbulence in the marriage of his parents (Judy Greer and Luke Wilson)--check and check.

In short, there's nothing especially new or surprising here. That said, the familiar episodes we're given are nicely executed by director Jim Loach, working from a script by David Scearce. The period of the Bicentennial summer is convincingly evoked without heavy-handedness, and the performances are capable. Young Cooper, from The Maze Runner, carries the movie easily. The supporting players don't get a lot to do, but Greer is sweet as the Mom, who's trying to keep up a cheerful front, and in his brief but strategically-placed scenes, Sutherland makes the doctor's forbiddingly formal old-country manners amusing. Beau Knapp is scary, but not without pathos, as Willie, the leader of the bullies.

The scenes in which Bobby is tormented by Willie and his pals are frightening and infuriating, but not, alas, implausible. Like Bobby, I was fourteen in 1976. I was one state over in rural Pennsylvania, and while I was socio-economically a lot closer to this movie's locals than to its "summer people," I can attest that whatever its shortcomings, Measure of a Man gets its bullies right.

Check out my short column, on Phoenix Magazine online, about a special free sing-along screening of the original Mamma Mia! at Harkins Camelback at 10 a.m. this Sunday morning, for Mother's Day. Also, check out my Phoenix Magazine "Four Corners" column about new restaurants that have, like culinary hermit crabs, taken over the spaces left behind by notable earlier eateries.

TRIUMPH OF THE WILSON

Opening this week:

 
Wilson—Woody Harrelson plays the title character in this adaptation of the 2010 graphic novel by Daniel Clowes of Ghost World fame. Wilson is long divorced and all but friendless, and it's not hard to see why—he's appallingly socially inappropriate, cheerfully making unsolicited, often bluntly insulting pronouncements to total strangers as he galumphs around Minneapolis. He lives over a karate school, in a small apartment cluttered with popular paperback novels—including, for some reason, two copies of QB VII—and alienates almost everybody he meets.

His only companion is his little dog Pepper—Umberto D is seen on a movie marquee, and Pepper looks very much like Umberto's dog Flike in that film. But when Wilson, even more emotionally adrift than usual after the death of his distant father, tries to broaden his social circle a bit, he reconnects with his ex-wife Pippi (Laura Dern), a recovering addict, and their dour seventeen-year-old daughter Claire (Isabella Amara) that she gave up for adoption after leaving him. Finding himself the head of this forlorn little family unit gives him a sudden giddy, reckless euphoria.

Chaos ensues, both hilarious and painful. Hilarious because of Harrelson's delivery; he makes Wilson's unfiltered assertions rude yet bright and outgoing and friendly (not to mention that he often seems right on the money). He genuinely wants people to benefit from his perspectives, and his smiling manner suggests a congenial warmth and intimacy, as if to say ''no need to thank me."

It's painful because of his utter obliviousness, not only to the offense he gives but to his atrocious bad judgement and its consequences. The rambling story, which covers years, takes turns that are completely unpredictable, yet entirely and cringe-inducingly believable. Director Craig Johnson (of The Skeleton Twins), working from a script by Clowes, unfolds the narrative cleanly and gets strong acting not only from Harrelson but from Dern, Amara, Judy Greer, Cheryl Hines and others.

Not everything about Wilson works, even on its own cracked terms. A couple of scenes that escalate into slapstick violence seem forced and overbearing. And as it progresses, the movie seems to invite us to laugh at Wilson's intolerable behavior at the same time it's asking us to recognize his very real pain in a way that makes our laughter feel ungenerous. But even this response, though possibly unintentional, makes the film complex and interesting.

Personal Shopper—By day, our heroine Maureen works in the title capacity for a famous fashionista in Paris. Maureen’s twin brother Lewis has recently died, and so she’s taken to staying in the beautiful house he shared with his girlfriend by night, in hopes of receiving word from The Great Beyond—she’s a medium, as was he.

Eventually Maureen sees some fairly goosebump-raising ghostly manifestations, and she also starts receiving disturbing, provocative texts on her phone, and wonders if they might have a paranormal origin. Then matters take a more sinister turn.

It’s all very cool and chic and sexy and ambiguous and European. Writer-director Olivier Assayas manages to get Kristen Stewart, who plays Maureen, into some of the haute fashion items she’s been sent to fetch, and also out of them, which does no harm to the picture’s marketability.

But it should also be said that Personal Shopper transcends mere glossy glamour. Stewart comes to life here in a way that I haven’t seen from her in the past. Assayas gets past the blank, slightly slack-jawed quality she showed in the Twilight movies and finds a directness and a sullen, skittish bravery that’s quite touching. She’s in almost every scene of the picture, and she carries it convincingly.