George Miller returns to the big screen with two of the best actors working today. John Boyega reminds us that he has tremendous depth as an actor. Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline’s son made a remarkable movie. Good options – plus two to skip – in this movie week’s rundown.
Three Thousand Years of Longing
In theaters
by Hope Madden
The logic seems inarguable. If Idris Elba wants to be in your movie, you say yes. If Tilda Swinton wants to be in your movie, you say yes. If both of them want in? You dance a jig.
To be sure, Swinton and Elba are excellent in George Miller’s new fantasy Three Thousand Years of Longing. Swinton is Alithea, a self-satisfied, hyper-intelligent, solitary creature who finds connection to her fellow humans through stories. She’s a narratologist. She studies stories, their structure and their meaning.
Elba is a djinn, a supernatural force Alithea has unintentionally let out of his bottle. He has some stories to tell. He is a maelstrom of weary tenderness and raw emotion, a wonderful balance of wisdom and naïveté. Swinton’s chilly reason and childlike curiosity make a similar balance, and the two together are a delight.
Miller hasn’t made a film since his 2015 masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road, and those are big boots to fill. His new effort looks gorgeous, as Elba spins yarns of his previous wish fulfillment mishaps across time.
Miller’s storytelling here is fanciful but meaningful. He is exploring storytelling, what it means to write your own story, and how authentic and original storytelling transports you. In this case, it transports Alithea from her modest hotel room to palace intrigue, battlefields and lustful chambers.
Both actors — two of the most talented and versatile working today — breathe life, love and dimension into their characters. It seems effortless, the way they make you believe them: two beings long resigned to being alone, slowly awakening to like-minded company.
They’re so good you can almost forget that they are playing the literally magical negro and the white heroine his magic helps on her journey. It’s a trope I think we all hoped was dead by now, but the truth is that the only way to avoid this trope with this particular film would be to deprive us of Elba, Swinton, or both.
It’s a conundrum and not the only flaw in the tale. The act three romantic plot feels a bit forced, though charming. Where Miller really succeeds is in delivering a layered consideration of the power and wonder of stories—even in the land of artless blockbusters, sequels and superheroes; even in an era of content creation.
It’s not a masterpiece and it falls into some old-school storytelling traps, but Three Thousand Years of Longing offers much originality and two undeniable performances.
Grade: B+
The Invitation
by George Wolf
If you thought Get Out was too nuanced, Ready or Not too wickedly funny, and what they both needed was some trusty Twilight obviousness, The Invitation is waiting for you.
Nathalie Emmanuel (Some Furious films, Game of Thrones) stars as Evie, a struggling art student in NYC who takes a DNA test and finds she has some new kin overseas.
Evie lost her dad when she was just a teen, and is still hurting from her mother’s recent passing only months ago, so this news lifts her spirits enough to accept a free trip to London for a lavish, new-family wedding.
The country estate reeks of wealth, and Walter, the Lord of the Manor (Thomas Doherty) is handsome and charming. Flirtations help distract Evie from the ghostly apparitions, bumps in the night, and blood-sucking.
Everyone’s very interested in Evie, giving little thought to the bride and groom who seem nowhere to be found.
Huh.
Director and co-writer Jessica M. Thompson borrows liberally from better films while leaning on tired devices such as red herring jump scares, waking from a nightmare, and handy clues that are nice enough to present themselves right when you need them.
But even those clues seem subtle next to the contrived exposition that takes liberties with vampire lore while it telegraphs the get-out-of-jail free card that Thompson and co-writer Blair Butler (the dreadful Hell Fest) have for Evie. And by that time, all the character names taken from Stoker feel less like homages and more like desperation.
This invite promises only bargain-priced goth, watered-down frights and surface-level commentary on classism and white privilege. The pivot from the Get Out setup to the Ready of Not revenge tour is much too long in coming, with a payoff that just isn’t worth the wait.
So wherever that bride and groom are, I bet they’re having more fun.
Grade: C-
Breaking
In theaters
by Hope Madden
John Boyega is here to remind us that he is more than Finn.
He has been, of course. He burned right through the screen in the raucous Attack the Block. He simmered with contempt and resignation in Detroit. And he charmed as the well-meaning hero in some light galactic fluff.
He explores something entirely different in Abi Demaris Corbin’s heartbreaking true story, Breaking. The filmmaker delivers a bleak look at bureaucracy and the plight of the Black American veteran without fanfare or sentimentality. Instead, her film aches with compassion.
Boyega is Brian Brown-Easley, a retired Marine on the verge of homelessness due to a clerical error made by the VA. He is about to do something very rash.
The set-up is pure high drama, a tension-fueled action flick waiting to happen. And it can wait, because Demaris Corbin and her cast take a profoundly dramatic situation, one exploited for its tension for as long as we’ve made films, and drain it of hyperbole, finding something not mundane but intimate.
Films like this are loud, but Breaking is quiet. Demaris Corbin builds relentless tension with very little volume, the silences only emphasizing the fear felt by a small group of characters inside an uncomfortably intimate situation.
Boyega disarms and devastates with clarity, tenderness, and touches of paranoia. You never know exactly what to make of Brown-Easley, but any tendency to underestimate him is met with rejection.
Nicole Beharie (Miss Juneteenth) meets that performance with fierce but terrified honesty. Her fiery performance demands that the film never resign itself to Brown-Easley’s fate, and reminds us clearly that the plight of the Black veteran looks different than that of a white one.
Michael Kenneth Williams, in one of his final performances, joins mid-film, playing against-type as a thoughtful hostage negotiator. He carries a sense of optimism with him that only deepens the tragedy the film tells.
Please prepare to be heartbroken, particularly when Brown-Easley’s daughter Kiah (London Covington – oh, that little face!) reminds her panicking father to breathe, imitating the proper way to do it as if it’s a ritual the two have. Covington is wonderful, heartbreakingly natural, and the scene offers a gorgeous piece of realistic tragedy, or day-to-day struggle and resilience.
Demaris Corbin uses visuals to move seamlessly from present tense to flashback, and one particular image of a blood trail across worn bank carpet is particularly effective. For a film trapped primarily in a single space, Breaking creates something tragically universal, but it never betrays its hard-won intimacy.
Grade: A-
Funny Pages
At Gateway Film Center
by George Wolf
It’s Christmas Day, and the one place Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) finds his comfort and joy is the comic book store.
And though the feature debut from writer/director Owen Kline may instantly earn a place alongside American Splendor, Ghost World and Crumb on the comic nerd movies Mt. Rushmore, a love for the funnies isn’t required for Funny Pages to cast its wild, weird spell.
Through massive bites of hamburger at a local New Jersey diner, Robert informs his parents (Maria Dizzia and Josh Pais, both perfectly exasperated) that he won’t be finishing his senior year of high school.
All Robert cares about is drawing comics, and he can work any boring job while he pursues his artistic dreams, so why not get right to it?
So he does, renting half a sweltering room in Trenton and working a few hours for Cheryl (Marcia DeBonis), a public defender with a list of several clients. And as luck would have it, one of those clients, Wallace (Matthew Maher), used to work for the famous Image Comics.
Sure, Wallace is angry, aggressive and openly hostile, but knowing him puts Robert one step closer to where he wants to be. And that means Robert wants to stay close to Wallace, whatever the consequences.
And there are plenty of awkward, often hilarious consequences.
Kline (son of Pheobe Cates and Kevin) develops memorably offbeat characters you don’t let go of easily. Zolghadri brings a wonderful zest to Robert’s coming-of-age, showcasing a sweetly resonant mix of resolve, confidence and vulnerability.
And from Wallace to roommates, from coworkers to best friends, there’s a universe of weirdos populating Robert’s journey up from square zero. Kline envelopes you in so many layers of nerdery that the film races past disbelief and circles back, crashing cars and dropping pants with a surprisingly lived-in abandon.
In the early moments of Funny Pages, Robert’s enthusiastic art teacher proclaims that his art should “always subvert!” That sounds like something Kline might have been told some time ago.
I’d say he was paying attention.
Grade: A-
Into the Deep
by Isaiah Merritt
After an hour of holding it in, I began to scream at the screen. “You’re stupid. You’re stupid.”
The poor decision-making of the characters in Kate Cox’s thriller Into the Deep, written by David Beton, had finally taken its toll on me.
Into the Deep, starring Ella-Rae Smith, Jessica Alexander and Matthew Daddario, follows the budding romance of two strangers that become shipwrecked when a mysterious third party joins their affair.
The premise of this slow-burn thriller has so much potential: an isolated location, strangers harboring potentially criminal secrets and twisted motives. But the film as a whole fails to bring these delicious ingredients together to create a cohesive, entertaining work.
Problems begin with the character development of the lead, Jess (Smith). Her amazingly promising backstory ties perfectly into the setting and action of the film. However, this backstory is never effectively delved into or utilized.
Not every mystery in a narrative needs to be spelled out. Based on the way certain mysteries were presented here, it seems as though the filmmakers did not know how to use them as devices in the film.
While there were no major plot holes, except perhaps in the very last moment, many of the decisions each lead character makes are truly nonsensical. Additionally, the characters will inexplicably overlook or ignore things directly in their faces.
For example, if you pour a gallon of gasoline around someone who has a reasonable sense of smell, you are not going to need to point out to them that they are surrounded by gasoline. That might be fine once or twice, especially in a thriller like this, but not every 15 minutes.
Into the Deep’s runtime hovers roughly around 90 minutes, which I was excited to see at first. However, this film could have been shortened easily by 20 minutes.
Not only was there far too much pointless exposition, the action did not commence until about an hour into the runtime. No real action, mystery or discovery in a mystery-thriller for almost two-thirds of its runtime.
The saddest part in all of this is that it is more than evident that the cast of this movie is uber-talented. I cannot wait to see what each player does next, even Nikkita Chadha, who had a supporting role.
Unfortunately, the wasted talent could not overcome the shallow characters and muddy vision of Into the Deep.
Grade: C-
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