25 IN DOGMA YEARS

Opening this weekend:

Dogma--God really enjoys the occasional game of Skee-ball. That's a sample of the startling theology we learn from Kevin Smith's Dogma. I'm not sure that's official Catholic dogma, but parts of the movie's twisty plot rely on genuine, if pedantically and literally interpreted, church law, like plenary indulgence. Two cast-out angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) are hoping to exploit this doctrine to sneak back into Heaven after centuries of wandering the Earth (Wisconsin, specifically).

A Cardinal (George Carlin), hoping to get more "asses in the pews" is offering the ally-ally-in-free to anyone who comes to his church in New Jersey. The trouble is that if the fallen duo succeed in doing so, it will negate Divine infallibility, which will wipe out all existence.

This, at least, according to a rather irritable Seraphim (Alan Rickman). For some reason he presses Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), a woebegone Illinois woman who works in an abortion clinic, into service to stop this from happening. So Bethany hits the road for Jersey, picking up strange allies and enemies along the way.

I'm not sure I would have guessed that Dogma had a sufficient following to warrant a 25th Anniversary re-release, but it's back in theatres this weekend to celebrate its quarter-century mark, and I'm glad. I've always had a fondness for this messy, irreverent, sometimes offensive yet oddly devotional comedy.

It's a little overlong, and laden with some really dumb gags and gross-out effects. But there's something moving about Smith's grappling with the contradictions of a religion and tradition he clearly loves. And the ruminations and debates he puts in the mouths of his characters seem to me more thoughtful and reflective than those in, say, the Da Vinci Code flicks.

Besides, it's hard to beat Dogma's cast. Along with Affleck, Damon, Carlin and Rickman, the ensemble includes Chris Rock as the 13th Apostle, cut from the Gospels because of his race, Jason Lee as a snide demon commanding a trio of hockey-stick-wielding minions on rollerblades, glorious Salma Hayek as a muse-turned-stripper, and Jason Mewes and Smith himself as the inevitable Jay and Silent Bob, who join the quest to save the universe.

In smaller roles are the likes of Janeane Garofalo, Bud Cort, Alanis Morrisette and even Betty Aberlin (Lady Aberlin from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood) as a nun. Best of all is Fiorentino, deeply likable in essentially the lead role, maybe the richest, most complex part she ever got to play in movies. Somebody ought to coax her out of retirement.

Ballerina--As it happens, I'm one of the handful who had never seen a John Wick movie. Until this week, that is, when I saw Ballerina. Wick, played as always by Keanu Reeves, appears briefly but bloodily in this action melodrama, which I found myself quite able to follow without a heavy remedial course.

The central character this time is Eve (Ana de Armas), orphaned daughter of an assassin. She winds up at a dance company run by the ever-imperious Anjelica Huston; the place is a front for an assassin school. Once grown up, Eve strikes out on her own in search of the people who killed her dad. These turn out to be members of a death cult of professional assassins who live together in a picturesque Alpine village, governed by the diabolical Gabriel Byrne.

The gore-splattered brawls and shoot-outs that ensue are all but non-stop, and the movie, directed by Len Wiseman, is very watchable and well-done for what it is, which is something fairly stupid. The bad guys here reminded me of the similar sect of murder fanatics in the Sylvester Stallone action flick Cobra (1986), and, as there, they feel trumped-up, spun out of whole cloth. They aren't full enough characters to be satisfyingly hateful.

Ana de Armas is a soulful and amusing presence, however, and vets like Huston, Byrne, Ian McShane, Norman Reedus and the late Lance Reddick provide some fun. But there's an artificial quality to this film's thrills that excludes it from the annals of the great revenge pictures.

Also, I had to wonder: What if you had great assassin skills, but two left feet? Would they reject your application to the ballerina school, or would they look the other way, like with college athletes?

WIFE HACKS

Opening in theaters June 16:

Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard--Samuel L. Jackson was the chortling, foulmouthed hitman and Ryan Reynolds was the fussy bodyguard in the 2017 action comedy The Hitman's Bodyguard. About all that really stood out in my memory from that film, however, was Salma Hayek, startlingly sexy and funny as the Hitman's imprisoned badass wife. I will confess I have always had a slight weakness for the divine Ms. Hayek, so I was particularly pleased to hear that she'd been moved front-and-center for this sequel.

Well, insofar as I can be objective, she's fabulous. But the movie, in which our bickering heroes are trying to prevent some (no doubt all-too-plausible) cyberattack against Europe by Greek archvillain Antonio Banderas, is really stupid; aggressively and obnoxiously stupid. It's obnoxious even by comparison to The Hitman's Bodyguard, which is certainly saying something. That film, despite the excellence of its stars, had a disagreeable adolescent jocularity that contrasted poorly with its bloody violence. The sequel is equally bloody but even more cartoonishly broad and by-the-numbers.

This robs Jackson and Reynolds of the chance to bring any shade of subtlety or complexity to their performances. Ultimately it even sabotages the angelic Hayek. The first time we hear her spewing obscenities it's kind of amusing; the fiftieth time even she starts to wear out her welcome.

WIDOWER & WIDOWMAKERS

Opening in Arizona today:

Menashe—Yiddish movies used to be a thing; more than a hundred of them were made, mostly in Poland or the U.S., in the decades before the Second World War. After that, they became rarities—this indie drama is thought to be the first American feature made mostly in Yiddish since 1975’s drama Hester Street.

The title character is a Hasidic widower in his thirties who works in a grocery store in Brooklyn. He’s a genuinely loving father to his ten-year-old son Rieven, and doesn’t agree with the requirement that the boy go to live with his uncle and aunt until Menashe remarries, because of the belief that a child must not be raised by a single parent. He’s in no hurry to remarry, but he wants his kid back.

The simple story that ensues provides director and co-writer Joshua Z. Weinstein ample opportunity for a peek into a little-understood world. The movie was shot, not quite surreptitiously but with a very low profile, in the Hasidic enclave in Borough Park, Brooklyn, with a cast of non-actors. While this generates a neo-realist, almost verité atmosphere, Menashe transcends cultural anthropology. It’s a character study, brought to life by a gifted first-time star—Menashe Lustig, on whose life the story was loosely based.

Menashe is described as a schlimazel by his own family members, ungenerously but perhaps not inaccurately—he’s a nice fellow, but he’s chronically late, late with the rent, broke, and so forth. He insists on mild rebellion from his culture—not wearing the full Hasidic regalia on the street, for instance—in ways that nettle his family and do him no favors.

As played by Lustig, however, the character is also quietly, unsentimentally, even a little exasperatingly endearing. Lustig gives us a naturalistic portrait of the man’s humor, his guilt, his anger, his mischievousness. At one point Menashe’s disapproving brother-in-law says he’d like to see him become a mensch, but we in the audience see him this way already.

The Hitman’s Bodyguard—Samuel L. Jackson is the Hitman, Darius Kincaid, who specializes in killing rich, powerful scumbags; Ryan Reynolds is the Bodyguard, Michael Bryce, who escorts such scumbags to safety. Michael is recruited to get Darius, his longtime enemy, safely from prison in Manchester, England to The Hague, so that he can testify at the International Court of Justice against a brutal Belarusian dictator (Gary Oldman, who else?).

Apparently the imprisoned tyrant is pretty well-connected, as massive numbers of mercenaries try to kill Darius enroute. Hitman and Bodyguard bicker jocularly through mayhem, slaughter, even torture. Michael is persnickety, orderly, a planner, while Kincaid flies by the seat of his pants.

There's nothing new here, but strictly on its own terms, this cartoonishly overscaled buddy picture, directed by the Australian Patrick Hughes, is perfectly executed. Well, almost perfectly; it has the genre's annoying sentimental streak. And like most big-budget action flicks of the last few decades, it could be trimmed by at least ten minutes without losing anything it needs, but as it clocks in at just under two hours it doesn't quite wear out its welcome.

Yet despite the skill with which it's made, there is an imbalance to The Hitman's Bodyguard, in the unsavory contrast between the cutesy comedy and the shocking violence. When the dictator kills a man's family while he watches, and then minutes later we're back with Reynolds and Jackson and expected to crack up at their bantering, it's really jarring, and it doesn't feel like a deliberate black-comedy effect. It just feels like an adolescent sensibility, willing to use the sufferings of people under such regimes as a summer blockbuster plot point.

The leads keep us diverted from this ugliness, however. Reynolds has never been a favorite of mine, but he 's a good sport here, embracing the role of a prim foil to Jackson. That great actor has rarely gotten the chance to cut loose to quite the degree he does here. He seems to have a blast, singing fatalistic blues lyrics (there's a pretty good one written by Jackson himself, and reprised under the end credits) and cheerfully guffawing at the twists of fate that fling him about. Darius is out of his cell, so despite the carnage around him and the constant peril, anything else is gravy.