BURDEN OF ROOF

Opening this weekend:

Roofman--The story of Jeff Manchester, known as "Roofman," sounds like a tall tale. After serving in the U.S. Army, the California native robbed dozens of McDonalds restaurants, among other businesses, usually by cutting through the roof before opening time, politely and apologetically sticking up the arriving employees at gunpoint, locking them in the freezer, and looting the registers.

He was caught in North Carolina in 2000 and sentenced to 45 years in prison--his gentleman bandit routine cut no ice with the judge--but escaped in 2004. He then hid out inside a Toys "R" Us in Charlotte, subsisting on Peanut M&Ms and baby food, for around half a year.

But even that isn't the most astounding part of the story. During his Toys "R" Us residency Manchester, calling himself "John Zorn," slipped out into the community. He started attending a Presbyterian Church, dating a local single mother with two daughters, and generally acting like he was putting down roots.

The title role in this new film about Manchester's exploits seems tailor made for Channing Tatum. At one point in this film a cop remarks that Manchester is extremely smart, probably genius level, but "also an idiot." Few contemporary stars seem better equipped to get across that combination of resourceful ingenuity with extravagantly imbecilic recklessness, or of sweet, guileless, well-intentioned decency with dangerous obtuseness.

Most of Tatum's costars seem shrewdly cast to come across as sharp and intelligent by contrast to Manchester: Kirsten Dunst as Leigh, the Toys "R" Us employee to whom he takes a shine; Peter Dinklage as Mitch, the store's snide, toxic manager; LaKeith Stanfield as Manchester's shady old army buddy and Lily Collias as Leigh's elder daughter all seem, if they don't always act, dauntingly smart and perceptive. The faithful, led by Ben Mendelsohn as the pastor and Uzo Aduba as his wife, amusingly show us the seductive aggression with which a new face in church, especially a young single man, may be greeted. 

Directed by Derek Cianfrance from a script he wrote with Kirt Gunn, the movie unfolds in an America in which many of us live--fast food restaurants and chain stores and apartment buildings--but which we only occasionally see convincingly depicted. It's skillfully crafted, but it depends for its light tone on us finding Roofman lovable. Because no irrevocable tragedy resulted from Manchester's crimes, but perhaps even more importantly because he's played by Channing Tatum, we can.

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Opening this week, hopefully only in the movies...

Civil War--Such a conflict has broken out in the contemporary United States. Fighting seems largely confined, so far, to the northeast, between the government and the "Western Forces," a confederation between Texas and California (!), though there also seem to be guerilla fighters around, and I couldn't always tell which side, if either, they were supposed to support.

We're told that in places like Missouri and Colorado people are still "pretending this isn't happening." But the country between New York and D.C. is lawless and shattered and bloody, with refugee camps and burning buildings and mass graves and bodies hanging in car washes or from overpasses. Canadian cash is needed if you want to buy gas.

The focus of writer-director Alex Garland's gruesome road movie is on four Reuters journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson) trying to make their way south down back roads, in a van marked "PRESS," from New York to D.C. They're hoping to interview the three-term President (Nick Offerman) before the capitol falls to the Western Forces.

If some of these alliances sound improbable or confusing to you in the context of our current real-life partisan divide, all I can say is that they did to me, too. Garland seems to quite deliberately make the ideologies behind his clashing forces vague, and both sides are shown to be equally ruthless; no quarter is granted in this combat, no prisoners taken.

The movie grips, evoking a potent sense of a nightmare that many of us fear. But it's also unsatisfying, even maddening. In the movie's best, most terrifyingly believable scene, for instance, our heroes are at the non-mercy of a murderous soldier (Jesse Plemons) who articulates an overtly racist, nationalist vision of America. But again, we aren't sure which side this guy is on, or even if he's officially on either side.

What I hope is that Garland's insistent, evasive non-partisanship isn't the result of commercial timidity; of a wish for the movie to play equally well in Red and Blue markets alike. Even more so, I hope that it isn't a result of sincere ideological false equivalence. Rising above partisanship is a laudable goal, certainly, and few reasonable observers would suggest that decent people on both sides don't have legitimate grievances, even if they're often directed at the wrong targets. But the idea that both sides are somehow morally equal is indefensible.

In the absence of conviction about what's at stake in the outcome of this conflict, Civil War takes shape as an earnest journalism drama. Dunst is effectively haunted as the disillusioned photographer; Spaeny, who looks like she should be home studying for a 9th-grade algebra test, is the newbie who Dunst doesn't think belongs on this treacherous trip. Moura is the febrile, adrenalin-stoked reporter and Henderson is the wise old veteran correspondent. About all we're left to invest in is that old-school newshound standard--will they get the big story?

Unless, of course, another investment is possible. It's hard to shake the question of to what degree this movie may be aimed at that part of the audience that thinks this sort of anarchy would be cool. One sometimes has this sense with the zombie movies--a feeling that part of the appeal is that of shooting people in the head with impunity--and the Mad Max style postapocalyptic actioners.

Intentionally or not, Civil War carries a queasy whiff of this same twisted wishful thinking. But in this case, the fantasy is sickeningly attainable.

VICTORIA IS HERS

Opening this weekend:

Victoria & Abdul--Judi Dench returns to the role of Queen Victoria in this jaunty historical drama, which serves as a sequel to 1997's Mrs. Brown. Both films have roughly the same point: That poor old Vickie, famed for her dour asperity, was as capable as any schoolgirl of developing painful crushes, even into her dotage.

In Mrs. Brown her favorite was John Brown (played by Billy Connolly), a Scottish groom who had the temerity to treat her like an adult human during her lonely widowhood. The naughty nickname was bestowed upon her, behind her back, by the courtiers and lackeys who were, essentially, her jailers.  In this new film, set many years later in the last stretch of her life, she develops an infatuation with an Indian servant named Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), and the same sniggering, disapproving lot refer to him as "The brown John Brown."

He's one of two Indian Muslims sent to make a ceremonial presentation to Victoria who, stuporous with boredom, happens to glance up and notice him. Later she pronounces "I thought the tall one was terribly handsome" and requests him as a personal manservant. Eventually he becomes her "Munshi," or teacher, tutoring her in Urdu and accompanying her on trips. Her family--especially her son and heir apparent Edward (Eddie Izzard)--and the servants grow increasingly scandalized over the relationship. His less dreamy fellow flunky Mohammed (the dryly fatalistic Adeel Akhtar) likes it no better, calling Abdul an "Uncle Tom" and predicting disaster.

A sly, winking title at the beginning of the film admits that this is a "mostly" true story, but there really was an Abdul Karim, he really did become close to Victoria in the last decade and a half of her life, and it really did drive those around her crazy. An attempt was made to destroy most of the correspondence and other records of the relationship after the Queen's death, but a diary survived and was published in 2010.

The director is Stephen Frears, a master of this sort of thing, and he keeps it bouncing along merrily, even though much of the story is sad, from the point of view of both title characters. Dench makes us see, once again, the appalling personal powerlessness that was the price, for a woman of passionate nature, of serving as the figurehead of that particular crime family. Fazal, a Bollywood star, is harder to read. The smiling, unctuous Abdul does indeed seem like a bit of an Uncle Tom, and it's hard to see whether he's a calculating climber, a sincerely besotted gull, or a heroic self-appointed ambassador of his culture. Or a bit of all three?

It's also hard to see exactly what Frears and screenwriter Lee Hall want us to take away from this interesting but enigmatic historical episode. Is it the story of a woman, isolated all her life at the heart of an Empire, getting an improbable belated broadening, or of her getting worked by a conman? Karim lived lavishly for a time, at Victoria's insistence, and was accused, among other things, of steering Victoria to sympathy with Muslims over Hindus.

Again, these are not mutually exclusive possibilities, but the way the movie declines to dig too deeply into them leaves it less satisfying than Mrs. Brown. All the same, it's perfectly enjoyable, in an undemanding, Masterpiece Theatre sort of way. Dench is always worth watching, Fazal is charming, Izzard is impressive as the furious "Bertie" and there are nice supporting turns by Olivia Williams, Michael Gambon, Fenella Woolgar and the late Tim Piggot-Smith, whose last film this was. Simon Callow also pops up, in an amusing cameo as Puccini, so if you like the sort of movie where Simon Callow might pop up in a cameo as Puccini, this is probably for you.

Woodshock--With the abundance of redwood trunks, wooden paneling and cut lumber, I began to wonder if "woodshock" might be a condition into which this movie could put you. In shot after shot, Theresa (Kirsten Dunst) wanders languorously and depressively, usually wearing a white camisole, around her mother's beautiful old house in northern California, or among the titanic trees nearby, caressing the wooden surfaces.

Near the beginning, we see Theresa use a vial of some unnamed drug to assist her terminally ill mother in ending her life. Seemingly poleaxed by grief, she nonetheless returns to work at a medical marijuana emporium. Trouble ensues, first when she attempts another such mercy killing, and later when she starts smoking the lethal stuff herself, and grows increasingly paranoid.

Dunst is good, intense without hamminess and with a low-key, gentle manner that's believable and touching. But Dunst is always good, has been ever since she was a kid. Alas, Woodshock isn't the sort of movie that can be carried by a fine lead performance alone. It's the feature debut of Rodarte fashion designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy, and it's too self-consciously an exercise in directorial style to work as a vehicle for a performance.

Peter Flinckenberg's gauzy cinematography gives the picture a lovely look, but the persistently ominous score and the Easy Rider-like flash-cutting give it the unearned portentousness of a student film, stretched out wearyingly to feature length. It's also more than a little reminiscent of cautionary drug movies of earlier eras, like Psych-Out or The Trip, minus the energy.  I kept waiting for a scene at a hippie club, with low-angle, solarized shots of The Seeds or Strawberry Alarm Clock jamming. Couldn't have hurt.