Movie review by Greg Carlson

Once its cult bona fides were established at the 2002 Butt-Numb-A-Thon (when Eli Roth presented a VHS dub to Harry Knowles as a birthday gift), the adaptation of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” made by kids over the better part of a decade in the 1980s enjoyed a run of successful public screenings – including a stop at the Fargo Film Festival courtesy of Ellen Shafer and Margie Bailly. While Steven Spielberg and George Lucas graciously looked the other way concerning rights issues, audiences finally enjoyed the opportunity to be thrilled and delighted by the time-capsule oddity that saw a trio of childhood friends painstakingly recreate a shot-for-shot homage to the screen debut of Dr. Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones, Jr.

Mississippi teens Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb accomplished what many movie geeks now call the ultimate “sweded” artifact, the subject of new documentary “Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made.” Directed by Jeremy Coon and Tim Skousen, the curious “making of a making-of” giddily covers the saga that Alan Eisenstock wrote about in the official companion book of the same title. Quick sketches color many of the highlights of the disaster-courting production: multiple failed attempts to construct the giant boulder; setting fire to basement walls to achieve the Nepalese tavern inferno; an industrial plaster mishap requiring an emergency hospital visit; the endearing and hilarious age and voice fluctuations caused by the necessity of shooting out of sequence.

During post-screening interactions with viewers whenever the “Raiders” remake was shared, one question inevitably got asked of the moviemakers: how come your version didn’t include the Flying Wing scene where Indy dukes it out with the hulking, bald Nazi mechanic? Given the seemingly never-ending blessing/curse of Strompolos and Zala’s childhood dream, it’s a minor stroke of genius for Coon and Skousen to use the “lost” sequence as the backbone of their account. Once again with personal safety at risk and this time with careers on the line, Zala and Strompolos decide to capture the ambitious and elusive puzzle piece and insert it into their epic.

While Strompolos and Zala are the public faces of “Raiders!” and the co-founders of Rolling Boulder Films, “visual effects wizard” Jayson Lamb emerges in the documentary as an instrumental contributor to the success of the adaptation. Commendably, Coon and Skousen clarify and explore Lamb’s partnership with Strompolos and Zala, allowing Lamb to address several of his most innovative DIY solutions to thorny challenges like melting faces, exploding heads, and ghostly angels of death flying out of the Ark of the Covenant. Lamb’s eccentricities are a welcome addition to the narrative, especially as he continues to insist that the Flying Wing should be accomplished with a scale model.

The only significant complaint is the scant amount of time afforded to Angela Rodriguez, the actor who portrayed a spirited version of Marion Ravenwood. As the only significant female participant, her commitment to the project is noteworthy, especially since she was not close friends with the filmmakers and still stuck it out – including her return as an adult for the completion of the Flying Wing content. Rodriguez and Strompolos generated heat when the camera rolled, and it was no accident that the cabin kissing scene was handled early and with plenty of takes.

Practically designed to be shown as a companion to the adaptation in a double feature, “Raiders!” draws on vintage local news packages, TV interviews, outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage, clips of Spielberg directing the actual “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and of course, a healthy collection of shots from the final cut of the lo-fi love letter that inspired all the attention. Following Eisenstock’s lead, Coon and Skousen concentrate on the offscreen divorces and rivalries that partially account for the fire-and-ice alchemy of Strompolos and Zala’s complex relationship and their need to keep an impossible dream alive.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Pitch-black absurdist Yorgos Lanthimos uncorks another of his signature brain-scramblers in “The Lobster,” an allegorical examination and satire of human behavior framed by the filmmaker’s speculative imagination. As divisive as any of his previous films, “The Lobster” marks the Greek auteur’s first principally English-language feature, as well as his first to employ several actors well-known to Hollywood, including Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Reilly. “The Lobster” is marked by the catnip of its logline: the lonely and unattached must find a suitable love match at a well-regulated hotel/resort within 45 days or face the consequence of being irreversibly transformed into an animal.

The film’s title refers to the chosen creature of new arrival David (Farrell), who registers with his now-canine brother in tow. Acclimating to the byzantine regimen of decorum (anyone caught masturbating, for example, awaits a steep penalty), David befriends Lisping Man (Reilly) and Limping Man (Ben Whishaw), who help him get his bearings. Prior to meeting Short Sighted Woman (Weisz, whose voiceover fills in a few blanks), the desperate and forlorn David experiences harrowing near misses with Biscuit Woman (Ashley Jensen) and Heartless Woman (Lanthimos regular Angeliki Papoulia), the latter a cold-blooded hunter skillful enough to extend her hotel stay and countdown clock by tranquilizing loners who have lit out for the woods.

While the story wobbles somewhat once Lanthimos ditches the fascinating rules and inhabitants of the hotel for the equally inscrutable etiquette of Lea Seydoux’s rebel leader and her band of forest-dwelling fugitives, the latter sections of the film explore the paradox of two avowed loners falling in love outside the sanction and governance of societal requirements – ironically placing themselves at great physical risk. Winston Smith and Julia are clear inspirations for the characters played by Farrell and Weisz, who share with Orwell’s famous pair “rebellion from the waist downwards.”

Parallels to “Nineteen Eighty-Four” extend beyond allusions to the Junior Anti-Sex League, even though several of the best scenes in “The Lobster” revolve around expressions of sexuality and romance, including some hilariously agonizing stimulation by hotel staff to encourage guests and the simultaneously funny and heartbreaking sight of David and Short Sighted Woman breaching the borders of their ruse during a passionate make-out session. Alternately, some audience members will be put off by Lanthimos’ previously established flair for the comically gruesome, as shocking flashes of the typically cinematic taboo – including self-harm and cruelty to animals – sneak up with little warning.

Several critics have identified the movie’s awkward courtship rhythms as symbolic stand-ins for internet-age dating expectations, but as with the director’s previous films, one’s enjoyment can hold without the application of logic or explanation. Like Lanthimos’ spiritual cinematic inspirations Luis Bunuel and David Lynch, the subjectivity of reality provides the viewer with a special compass, even if the needle spins away from true north. In a time of franchises and sequels, Lanthimos offers a film of ideas, even if he is unable to successfully harness all of them. The singular filmmaker argues that love is not only resistant to the mathematical formulae of computer-assisted matching algorithms, it is hard of hearing, incapable of speech, and in the case of “The Lobster,” most certainly blind.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Shane Black’s most satisfying film to date, “The Nice Guys” absolutely pulverizes lurid period milieu, shaggy dog private investigation, “Chinatown” corruption narrative, odd couple buddy bromance, and slapstick noir parody in an industrial blender set to emulsify on maximum torque. Pairing Ryan Gosling – as the world’s worst shamus – with a teddy bearish and relaxed Russell Crowe as a stone-faced straight man, “The Nice Guys” works, against the odds, as a metafiction that manages to simultaneously send up and celebrate the tropes and formulas originated in the hardboiled pages of master stylists Chandler, Hammett, and Cain, minus most of their cynicism and misogyny.

While some of the too-good-to-be-true predicaments endured by Gosling’s Holland March are reportedly based on the exploits of Joel Silver acquaintance Jay Joseph, whose personal experiences also showed up as part of the Black-penned “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” Black inscribes the 1977 Los Angeles setting with a generous dollop of post bicentennial nostalgia (love that early “Jaws 2” billboard). The plot, such as it is, burrows deep into the salacious environment of cocaine-fueled Hollywood Hills porn production and distribution, drawing inevitable comparisons to Paul Thomas Anderson’s cult favorite “Boogie Nights,” with which “The Nice Guys” shares some sensibility and soundtrack.

As ringmaster, Black is unafraid to allow Gosling and Crowe, and the rest of the ace supporting cast for that matter, to go big or go home, but the gags – from a ridiculous pants-around-the-ankles toilet stall confrontation complete with uncooperative door and pesky lit cigarette to a hysterically bleak encyclopedia of gruesome gravitational violence that gets serious mileage from Newton’s three laws of motion – don’t diminish the film’s verisimilitude as a keep-‘em-hooked procedural.

While the easy chemistry between the leading men has received plenty of attention, the big find and breakout of “The Nice Guys” is Angourie Rice as Holland’s teenage daughter Holly, a resourceful and competent kid who provides the story with its moral center. Rice steals scene after scene, convincingly inhabiting a whip smart daughter one step ahead of her blundering papa, no matter how many times she is banished from the danger. Rice is joined by a higher than expected number of women who leave marks in smaller roles. Yaya DaCosta, Lois Smith, Margaret Qualley, Daisy Tahan, and Kim Basinger thoroughly enliven the proceedings, although I would have appreciated at least one more juicy scene between the latter and her “L.A. Confidential” costar Crowe.

Holly is Black’s shrewdest move, particularly because the character alleviates some of the inevitable monotony of the opposites-attract buddy bonding (for which Black earned his cinematic doctorate decades ago). The differentiation in the relationships she develops with her father and with Crowe’s Healy, for whom she instinctively and openly worries, digs deeper than required in search of answers about what it means to be a good person. Additionally, Black knows that Holly will be able to extract information from characters who would otherwise be uncomfortable and guarded if approached by the men, showing that “The Nice Guys” understands the predicament faced by young women in an exploitative and hypermasculine industry at a particularly sleazy point in time.

Movie reflection by Greg Carlson

As an unapologetic admirer of all things Prince, I for one was pretty grateful that “Under the Cherry Moon” was a radical departure from “Purple Rain.” Several years before “Graffiti Bridge” offered a sorta/kinda sequel to the 1984 smash, Prince – with enough earned clout and power to essentially do whatever he wanted to do – sent Mary Lambert packing (a shame) and busted out a black and white quasi-period fantasy that chilled the blood in most critics’ veins and bombed at the box office. Despite a few champions then – nobody will ever touch J. Hoberman’s brilliant original review – and even more now, Prince’s directorial debut is a tougher sell than the sweaty, throbbing first feature. For one thing, the phenomenal music is simply not as smoothly and thoroughly integrated into the narrative as the songs in “Purple Rain,” perhaps defiantly so.

That’s no slam on the brilliance of “Parade” as an album or the welcome presence of composer/arranger Clare Fischer (who received the memorable credit thanking him “4 Making Brighter the Colors Black and White”), but I maintain that “Under the Cherry Moon” would have been much, much stronger had it included fully staged performances a la “Girls & Boys” instead of burying the music as background and extradiegetic score. Shot by the great Michael Ballhaus, who is so widely believed to have guided Prince during principal photography that the Internet Movie Database lists him as an uncredited director, “Under the Cherry Moon” has earned its cult status largely on the basis of Prince’s otherworldly screen image.

An entertainer in every sense of the word, Prince’s Christopher Tracy puts on one hell of a show. Inviting our gaze in and out of his unbelievable wardrobe, the number of eye rolls, double takes, nostril flares, and eyebrow raises merit any number of perverse drinking games. Jerome Benton’s comic timing in “Purple Rain” drew enough notice for Prince to poach him from the Time, and Benton largely repeats his sidekick function, playing Christopher’s partner in crime Tricky. In her screen debut, Kristin Scott Thomas appears as Mary Sharon, the woman who will inspire Christopher to abandon his occupation.

While neither “Purple Rain” nor “Under the Cherry Moon” boasts the most sophisticated dialogue scripting, the two films share in common several motifs, most prominently a love triangle to fuel some level of tension regarding the development of the inevitable romantic relationships that will favor Prince’s protagonists. While Apollonia could see through Morris Day’s silver-tongued lothario right along with the audience, it is far less clear whether Mary or Tricky resides at the center point of Christopher’s affections.

Close readings can support two seemingly incompatible arguments: that Christopher and Tricky derisively joke about and ridicule homosexuality or that the two men enjoy the kind of flower-petals-in-the-bathtub intimacy that suggests their roles as relocated Miami hustlers/gigolos swindling wealthy women on the French Riviera are constructed performances. The third option, of course, is that Christopher and Tricky, much like Monsieur Gustave H. in “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” are epicures with voracious omnisexual appetites. The suggestion of rent exchange ménage a trois payments is but one element of a subtext that, if pursued, represents a radical fearlessness for a figure as public as Prince in 1986.

“Under the Cherry Moon” is so batshit crazy, the presence of real bats driving a terrified Christopher and the other patrons from a restaurant makes perfect sense. As Old Hollywood glamour fantasia/melodrama, the movie name-checks Bela Lugosi, pays homage to “Casablanca,” and still accomplishes several of Prince’s ongoing career objectives blurring racial, gender, and sexual boundaries. That each of these occurs in relief to a class commentary adds another layer of interest.

Hoberman’s first paragraph ends by asserting, “The flaming creature who calls himself Prince may be the wittiest heterosexual clown since Mae West; black as well as campy, he’s even more threatening.” The rest of that essay is even better, and still ahead of the curve. I agree with Hoberman that the film’s Achilles heel is the frustrating tease (“all talk and no dancing”) of production numbers that never materialize, even though the heavenly performance of “Mountains” during the closing credits soothes a little of that sting.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Money Monster” is Jodie Foster’s first feature directorial effort since 2011’s curiosity “The Beaver,” blending elements of social satire, bomb vest thriller, and conspiracy drama – all of it unfolding in close to real time. Stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts, reuniting in roles they can manage while asleep, play cable TV host Lee Gates and director Patty Fenn of the titular investment/infotainment spectacle. The two, along with the rest of their crew, are forced to continue a live broadcast after being taken hostage by a blue-collar prole whose life savings vanished into the gaping jaws of Wall Street’s rigged system. Armed with a pistol and holding a dead man’s switch, Jack O’Connell’s Kyle Budwell demands the answers Foster will attempt to deliver.

With hints of old favorites like “Network” and “Dog Day Afternoon” looming over the wild, scattershot script by Alan Di Fiore, Jim Kouf, and Jamie Linden, “Money Monster” periodically evokes the edgy 1970s terrain of Sidney Lumet. The new film, no matter how admirably it attempts the kind of risks and outrageousness displayed in Lumet’s great movies, never reaches the level of scorching black comedy and penetrating critique demanded of a classic. Even so, “Money Monster” is as reliably entertaining as it is unrealistic and farfetched.

Foster’s inclusion of several humorous motifs and deliberately comical asides are initially surprising given the underlying seriousness of the David versus Goliath conflict at the film’s heart. In one off-the-rails scene, Gates cajoles his producer into applying an erectile cream that leads to some unexpected broom closet shenanigans. In several others, Foster smoothly upends expectations when humanity fails to embrace the better angels of our nature. While some critics have questioned Foster’s application of comedy, the movie’s sense of humor communicates a tonal lightness that fits the script’s breezier approach to the ongoing global financial crisis.

While “Money Monster” features a skewed ratio of male principal, secondary, and background actors, including a disappointingly underutilized Giancarlo Esposito, Foster makes room for several significant exchanges between named women characters addressing topics other than men. Roberts’ Fenn, whispering instructions to Gates through his IFB earpiece from her position in the control room, stays one step ahead of the deteriorating situation, piecing together components of the algorithm “glitch” with the help of “Outlander” star Caitriona Balfe’s Diane Lester, the CCO and spokesperson for the felonious financial organization that cheated its shareholders, including Budwell.

Two other women, Condola Rashad and Emily Meade (who completely steals her big scene), also provide memorable moments. Unlike “The Big Short,” another film that dealt with the unbelievable and unconscionable lack of ethics within banking institutions trusted to protect the interests of their clients, “Money Monster” won’t be remembered during award season. The demands of the action-oriented standoff tension, especially as the plot ramps up to a melodramatic climax, overshadow any potentially deep political critique. And no matter how many unnecessary side trips the movie makes to South Africa, South Korea, and Iceland, the best location is also the most intimate one: the electric signals sent from Fenn’s intercom microphone to Gates’ in-ear monitor on the studio set of “Money Monster.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Green Room,” writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to the taut and terrific revenge thriller “Blue Ruin,” is one of the year’s best, an elegantly realized nightmare made with savvy and smarts. The simple logline – a touring punk quartet runs afoul of a gang of murderous, racist skinheads – belies the level of craft Saulnier brings to what could so easily be another Old Dark House/And Then There Were None genre exercise. In my 2014 review of “Blue Ruin,” I concluded by noting that one of Saulnier’s strengths could be found in the way he invested in some humanity for the antagonists, and that impulse continues in “Green Room.”

A number of critics who praised “Blue Ruin” have claimed that “Green Room” is an even better movie. I will not necessarily argue with that position, keeping in mind that the two films share several similarities but also demonstrate some key differences. Both movies apply surgical precision to the structural elements and pacing conventions of their respective subgenres. Both movies also deliberate on the kinds of details that bring the protagonists and the villains to life. Both movies also draft strong senses of place. “Green Room” is not the first movie to capitalize on the frightening image of the neo-Nazi, even though Saulnier’s agenda differs from those witnessed in films like “Romper Stomper,” “American History X,” and “The Believer.”

One pure, crystalline example of Saulnier’s diabolical sense of pitiless, wrong-place-wrong-time circumstance is the achingly unfair and unfortunate way in which the four members of the Ain’t Rights (finely inhabited by Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner, and Joe Cole) and their unlikely ally Amber (Imogen Poots) find themselves in the slowly clenching jaws of doom: an unlocked door and a forgotten phone lead to the accidental but fate-sealing knowledge of an awful crime. I actually believed that the white supremacists would have much preferred to send the band quickly on their way.

The presence of beloved Patrick Stewart in the role of Darcy, the cold and brutal father figure to the nest of rural hatemongers in suspenders and red-laced combat boots, makes for a wicked piece of unexpected casting and further cements Saulnier’s against-the-grain construction of the familiar (as opposed to the alien) evildoer. Darcy’s relationship with the seemingly luckless Gabe, played by key Saulnier collaborator Macon Blair, as well as to several other “true believers,” confronts the viewer with an uncomfortable, even grotesque level of sympathy for the eager followers yearning to belong to something.

A.A. Dowd’s perfect description of “Green Room” as the “bastard lovechild” of “one of Kelly Reichardt’s portraits of life on the Oregon fringe with one of John Carpenter’s castle-siege action vehicles” hints at the directorial confidence of Saulnier without fully accounting for the filmmaker’s mesmerizing, even disturbing, consideration of violence. Gorehounds will be attracted to “Green Room” for the sophisticated renderings of all manner of grisly trauma, but as he did with his previous feature, Saulnier really soars by making space for the audience to recoil in horror at the consequences of senseless mayhem.