PULPY LOVE, PUPPY LOVE

Opening this weekend:

Love Lies Bleeding--It certainly does, along with a fair number of corpses, before this New Mexico noir has run its course. It's 1989--the Berlin Wall is coming down on TV in the background--and our heroine Lou (Kristen Stewart), a lonely employee at a low-rent desert gym, spends her days unclogging toilets and stonewalling FBI agents who would like to talk to her about her estranged arms-dealer dad.

Lou falls hard for Jackie (Katy O'Brian), a beautiful feral bodybuilder who's in training for a competition in Vegas. Jackie moves in with Lou, but as you might guess, all does not go smoothly. Jealousy, domestic violence, gang violence, PEDs and the rage to which they give rise all intrude on this sweet romance and lead to gruesome murder and desperate cover-ups.

Stewart and O'Brian are both believable, and their passion for each other is exhilarating, even as you see the collision course with disaster that they're on. Ed Harris is at his creepiest as Lou's Dad, but Dave Franco wins the award for most odious as J.J., Lou's brother-in-law who abuses her hapless sister Beth (Jena Malone). Anna Baryshnikov is wistful as Daisy, who has the bad luck to have a crush on Lou.

The director is Rose Glass, the Brit behind Saint Maud, working from a script she wrote with Weronika Tofilska. As with Saint Maud, Glass is adept at blending the horrific with the ecstatic and the erotic, and her style, abetted by Ben Fordesman's queasy fluorescent cinematography, shifts comfortably from bleak British nastiness to gritty, lurid '80s-style southwestern nastiness. While the story gets a bit chaotically close to running off the rails in the homestretch, Glass even manages a surreal, magical-realist flourish near the end that feels right.

Arthur the King--This isn't a new version of Malory or T. H. White or Camelot. The title character here is a scruffy third-world street mongrel of such dignified bearing that he's given the royal moniker by his new best friend. Said friend is Mike (Mark Wahlberg), an "adventure racer" who impulsively feeds the dog a meatball during a break in a grueling event in the Dominican Republic, after which the mutt shadows Mike's four-person team as they run, bike, free-climb, zip-line and kayak across hundreds of miles of jungle. He even steers them away from peril.

Directed by Simon Cellan Jones, this is based on the 2017 book Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home, by Mikael Lindnord. The script, by Michael Brandt, is fictionalized; Lindnord is a Swede, not an American; he met Arthur in Ecuador, not the Dominican Republic, and Wahlberg's teammates in the movie (Simu Liu, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ali Suliman) are likewise made-up.

More strikingly, the real-life circumstances of Arthur's adoption may have been more ambiguous: an Ecuadoran man later claimed that Arthur, originally named Barbuncho, belonged to him, and that Lindnord had essentially dognapped him. Many hardcore dog lovers, of course, will be unlikely to feel much sympathy for the owner of a "pet" who's at liberty to join a dangerous cross-country race.

In any case, Arthur the King is an unembarrassed and pretty effective hybrid of the venerable band-of-misfits, last-chance-for-glory underdog sports movie with an old-school "I think he's trying to tell us something" dog picture. It's admirably attuned to the plight of strays; there's a hint of reproach, probably unintentional, in the contrast between Arthur's struggles to survive on the streets and Mike's self-imposed travails in his rather bougie, corporate-sponsored sport.

Ultimately, though, the movie is really no less corny than any Rin-Tin-Tin or Lassie flick. But it's well-paced, and if, like me, you're a sucker for dogs there's a good chance you'll enjoy it. Wahlberg is agreeable as the boyishly earnest Mike, but neither he nor any other member of the human cast is a match for Ukai, who plays Arthur, and steals the movie like it was a meatball.

PRINCESS ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

Opening this weekend:

Spencer--In 2016 the Chilean director Pablo Larrain gave us Jackie, with Natalie Portman as JFK's shattered, furious widow. It was an impressive, well-made film that seemed curiously lacking in any real point beyond providing Portman with an award-bait role. Now Larrain is back with another portrait of an iconic, history-adjacent young woman suppressing her rage behind an expected public docility. Again, the role is nomination-bait, this time for Kristen Stewart as Diana, Princess of Wales.

The movie calls itself "A FABLE FROM A TRUE TRAGEDY," an elegant way of saying: we speculated freely about real people (which is, of course, true of all historical fiction). It takes place over a Christmas holiday in 1991. Diana is trying to drive herself to the "festivities" of The Queen (Stella Gonet), her already-estranged husband Charles (Jack Farthing) and the whole creepy clan at rural Sandringham House, but she's hopelessly late and lost. "Where the f**k am I?" is her first line, and one suspects there's a double meaning in that.

She's clearly in no mood to spend a second with any of these people except her boys. But as Spencer progresses, we see that this is more than just routine distaste; our heroine is in major psychological distress. Immersed in loneliness, resentment, sexual frustration, bulimia and bingeing, and isolation without privacy, she's teetering on the brink of a serious meltdown. A copy of an old tome about Anne Boleyn on her bedside table doesn't help her sense of well-being. 

Larrain takes his time, and gradually this slow, stately, hushed film, with its keening orchestral score by Jonny Greenwood, begins to generate some juicy tension in a way that Jackie never did. Toward the end, there are moments that could easily tip over into camp (which wouldn't necessarily be unwelcome) if not for Larrain's austere style. It's to screenwriter Steven Knight's credit that he doesn't offer us a hagiographic take on Diana's character; she's clearly a bit of, well, a drama queen, and early on you may find her obtuse tardiness as exasperating as Charles and the other Windsor waxworks do. After all, you may wonder, does she think she's the only person in the world who dreads family holidays?

But as the movie progresses, and we get a feel for the oppressiveness of the world into which Diana was swept as a teenager, her plight makes her sympathetic, and ultimately likable. This has a lot to do with Kristen Stewart. Often on the blank, slack-jawed side, Stewart came to life in 2016 in the somewhat overlooked, eerily sexy ghost story Personal Shopper, and this gothic seems to give her a charge as well; her Diana has a desperate eroticism and a sorrowful, self-lacerating anger so deep it frightens her, and those around her.

For a while it also seems as if the movie will be a pure vehicle, with the other characters mere bit players. But a few of them are permitted a candid scene or two with the Princess: Timothy Spall as an unflappable Equerry in charge of keeping her secure (and compliant); the excellent Jacki Nielen and Freddie Spry as her adored young princes; Sean Harris as Chef Darren McGrady. Best of all is Sally Hawkins as Diana's loyal dresser; their scene, laughing together on a beach, has the feel of a liberation from captivity, for both of them.

HATCHET PIECE

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Lizzie...

...the latest big screen whack at the Lizzie Borden case.

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.

SISTERS ARE BUSTIN' IT FOR THEMSELVES

Opening this weekend:

Ghostbusters—Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones assume the title roles in this “reboot” of the 1984 slapstick-supernatural fave. Anticipation of the film has ranged from enthusiasm to hysterical outrage. Maybe because I liked but didn’t revere the original—full of favorites of mine, but not representing the greatest work of any of them—I went in with neither attitude, and was pleasantly surprised.

I’ve heard it theorized that the sexist fury over the distaff casting may have been exaggerated and harnessed to help market the film. That’s possible, I suppose—and admirable, if so—but I doubt that it was whole-cloth fabricated. About a decade and a half ago, I worked as a publicist for a comedy club, and I can attest that the wearying belief that “women aren’t funny,” at least not to the same degree as men, is genuinely held within the comedy world (Christopher Hitchens also notoriously forwarded the opinion).

This sensibility—comedy as a kind of machismo—may be shifting, however. With the possible exceptions of Kevin Hart and Seth Rogen, I can’t think of any male American comedy stars that are currently as reliably bankable in the movies as McCarthy and Wiig, and none that are more so. Somebody thinks these women are funny.

All of this, however, is of more sociological than cinematic interest. The new Ghostbusters, directed by Paul Feig, is no more a masterpiece than the old one, but it’s an engaging variation, hitting most of its iconic aspects—the New York setting, the hearse, Slimer, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and many cameos—while allowing the stars their own characterizations. Wiig is prim, McCarthy is brash, Jones is openhearted.

The wild card is the certifiable McKinnon, with her avid sidelong glances and her through-the-teeth tone of sly, conspiratorial intimacy. Also amusing is Chris Hemsworth as their brainless secretary; this male lead seems happy in the role of ditzy eye candy.

Equals—This sci-fi romance is set in a distant future in which everyone wears summery white and maintains a blandly polite, emotionless manner. It could be called Planet of the Cater-Waiters. Coworkers Nicholas Hoult and Kristen Stewart realize they're suffering from a dreaded condition called SOS—“Switched-On Syndrome"; possibly the movie’s wittiest gag—when they fall in love, and have to hide it. Eventually they find an underground of fellow “hiders,” that is, secretly emotional people.

Directed by Drake Doremus from a script by Nathan Parker, this cross between Romeo and Juliet and Brave New World seems slightly campy at first—a hushed, austere version of '70s dystopias like THX 1138 or ZPG or Zardoz or Rollerball or Logan's Run. But it gradually finds its own voice, gathers emotional force toward the end, and proves an ingenious gem.