Julia Roberts engages in a lot of bad behavior and gives a career-high performance as a Yale professor caught up in scandal in “After the Hunt.” Meanwhile, Rose Byrne stakes a strong claim for a best actress nod with her wring-you-out performance as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”
Here’s our weekly review roundup.
“After the Hunt”: Luca Guadagnino’s he/said, she/said, they/said provocation knocks high-minded institutions off lofty pedestals but it spends nonstop time reveling in showing humanity at its worst. It’s a movie that aims to make you angry, and it does it so well you all but wonder, in the end, if it has anything new to say. First-time screenwriter Nora Garrett assembles a viper’s nest of academics and one star student, but no one is likable. That absence of a decent character what happens cold and soulless. What sustains us is Julia Roberts and the cast. Roberts delivers what could well be the performance of her career as philosophy professor Alma Imhoff. The poised Alma basks in the idolization of others an holds court often with her intellectual counterparts, including the bucking-for-tenure charmer of a professor Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield channeling roguish smarminess better than you’d ever think possible). When Alma’s star pupil Maggie (“The Bear’s” Ayo Edebiri) comes to Alma the day after a party held at Alma’s posh house and claims Hank sexually assaulted her, the charge hurls a grenade into this high-minded place for higher learning and exposes the rot inside each and every character. No one is sympathetic here, even Alma’s culinary-inclined husband (Michael Stuhlbarg who has appeared in other Guadagnino films) and Alma’s confidante Dr. Kim Sayers (Chloë Sevigny). As more backstabbing, shaming and shocking revelations ensue, “After the Hunt” becomes repetitive and outlandish and outlives its welcome (2 hours, 19 minutes). But Roberts is on fire. A scene in which Alma all but verbally eviscerates a student who challenges her all but scalds the screen. Part of the reason for her eruption comes about because she too lands in the crosshairs of the #Metoo movement and embarks on a coarse cerebral smackdown that pits a veteran versus a member from a young generation who believes it is their time to shine. Who wins? Who loses? In this game, no one’s a winner – including the audience who might just want to shower after all this nastiness and cruelty ends. Details: 2 stars out of 4; opens Oct. 17 in theaters.
“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”: Linda isn’t just having a bad day, she’s have a bad life with every second turning more stressful in Mary Bornstein’s hold-your-breath knockout of a film. Watching Linda self-destruct because of colliding outside forces — a symbolic hole in the ceiling in the family’s Long Island apartment; a sick daughter who requires vigilant care since she has a feeding tube; an absentee husband who’s disappointed in her; and demanding therapy clients including one who fantasizes about her — is like watching someone whose anxiety is edging her towards a cliff. And her disinterested therapist (Conan O’Brien, in a tone-perfect performance) is no help. It takes a bold and brave actress to make Linda’s unraveling bearable, and Bornstein’s film has found that in Rose Byrne, who gives a phenomenal performance. The camera nests tightly, intently on Byrne and you can practically feel and smell her escalating desperation. Her Linda is no saint, but she’s likable and flawed and real. The men in her life demand and expect perfection from her, and there is no way that she or anyone else can deliver. “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” introduces other intriguing characters, in particular A$AP Rocky as helpful James, a next-door neighbor and worker at a motel where Linda and her daughter have relocated due to that ceiling. He’s a natural onscreen. Another standout is Danielle Macdonald as an overly apologetic new mother. She seeks Linda’s counsel for depression and doesn’t understand the word boundaries. All the parts fit well in this sometimes surreal, sometimes darkly humorous journey into the crumbling mind of a stressed woman. Yet it is Byrne’s all-in, high velocity but very human performance that sucks you in and swallows you whole. It is next level. Details: 3½ stars; opens Oct. 17 in theaters.
“Fairyland”: After her mother’s tragic death in a car accident, Alysia moves in with her gay poet dad (Scoot McNairy) in 1970s San Francisco, a bustling magnet for creative types and artistic expression. In some ways Steve’s ill-equipped to care for a kid, given he’s starting to explore his sexuality and is focusing on building a writing career too. But in some important ways he makes for a good, loving father. As director Andrew Durham’s wistful adaptation of Alysia Abbott’s memoir reflects, there was much love and freedom to be had in the unconventional household in which she grew up, and Durham takes great care in re-creating San Francisco of that era as well as in depicting what happens next: the tragic and harrowing AIDS crisis. The performances from McNairy, Nessa Dougherty as a young Alysia and Emilia Jones as a teen/adult Alysia capture her aches and longing. Adam Lambert appears briefly. Details: 3 stars; opens Oct. 17 in limited release.
“Mr. Scorsese”: Documentaries about filmmakers often end up cursory and not all that revealing, a collection of interviews with the subject and notables and colleagues and a greatest hit selection of film clips. While Rebecca Miller’s enlightening five-part Apple+ series relies on those techniques, it goes beyond the obvious for a deep dive into Scorsese’s upbringing with the director providing a backstage view on his iconic films – the segments on “Taxi Driver,” “Casino,” “Goodfellas” and “Raging Bull” are fascinating – and the varied reactions his film received from critics and the public; the outrage too. One of the best parts to it are the recollections from his Little Italy friends and relatives, many of whom served as inspiration for his sometimes unsavory characters. Miller is an expert interviewer and has given cinephiles a real gift as a candid Scorsese talks about his battles with drugs and his connection to faith. Details: 3½ stars; 5 episodes; drops Oct. 17 on Apple TV+.
“Boots”: Comparisons to “Full Metal Jacket,” perhaps even to “Private Benjamin,” are inevitable but they don’t capture what creator and co-showrunner Andy Parker’s sweet and tart coming of age/coming out (sort a) eight-episode Netflix series is all about. Told from the winning perspective of gay teen Cameron Cope (“13 Reasons Why’s” highly likable Miles Heizer), it is based somewhat on a real memoir and shifts the time period from 1979 to 1990, a time when being queer in the military was still considered illegal. Parker’s series starts out with too much bellowing and yelling along with hazing and bullying but loosens up and broadens out to peer into the lives of other recruits who are wrestling with demons and sometimes each other. “Boots” improves as it goes along and the plot veers into the odyssey of closeted servicemen who have to hide their love and live in fear of being revealed. Farmiga’s self-absorbed opportunistic mom doesn’t add much until near the end while Max Parker expertly expresses the pain chained inside of his character Sgt. Sullivan. “Boots” kicks open the door for perhaps another season, and I think many would fall in line and gladly enlist for it. Details: 3 stars, now on Netflix)
“Urchin”: Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut sets the talented actor off an exciting new course. Highly regarded as someone who makes interesting choices and is comfortable at playing characters who have hard edges to them, it then shouldn’t be a surprise that the film he has both written and directed is a John Cassavetes-like character study about addict and hustler Mike (Frank Dillane in a gritty but charismatic breakthrough of a performance). When we first meet Mike he’s a mess, scraping by on the London streets and doing drugs. He tries to come clean and legit after assaulting someone for their watch and ditching drugs. But the safety net that surrounds him has holes in it and Mike finds entering the workforce to present its own challenges. Dickinson infuses his film with some heady surrealism that works OK, not great, but he excels at being what you would call an actor’s director, and screenwriter. He hands Dillane a role that deserves to get him noticed. While the surreal elements don’t entirely work, “Urchin’s” joyful outbursts and a supporting turn from Dickinson do, turning what could have been a resolute downer into a far-more realistic portrait of a guy at war with himself finding moments of spontaneity, even hopefulness with those around him. Details: 3 stars; opens Oct. 17 at the Roxie and the Metreon in San Francisco.
“The Woman in Cabin 10”: There’s an art to pulling off a somewhat convincing twist, such as the shocker author Gillian Flynn and director David Fincher gobsmacked us with for “Gone Girl.” The WTH moment that mystery novelist Ruth Ware invents is a doozy, even if it doesn’t hold water. But what happens after that big reveal is the real problem and “The Woman in Cabin 10” and the film takes a hairpin turn away form the novel and then goes way overboard – into the land of hamfisted theatrics that makes it laughable and ridiculous. Keira Knightley fails to get a bead on a Spartanly written role as a journalist in need of R&R after covering a big story that went wrong. She accepts an invite to take an exclusive yacht cruise organized by a wealthy dying woman and her husband (Guy Pearce) that benefits her foundation and then write a rather fluffy piece about it. The premise creates a locked-door Agatha Christie-like murder (think “Death on the Nile”) in which one passenger gets pitched overboard but she’s not on passengers list. Director Simon Stone seems lost about what to do with this contrived premise and fails to take advantage of its natural claustrophobic nature. But it is really the wafer-thin screenplay that doesn’t help him or his actors – sticking us with a boatload of forgettable suspects played by actors such as Hannah Waddingham who deserve better. Knightley and Pearce coast and their characters never come alive and resort to doing silly things at this misfire’s absurd, regrettable finale. Book a passage elsewhere; this one is bad. Details: 1½ stars, available on Netflix)
Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.
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