David Mackenzie's in-depth look at the fraught way we live now, HELL OR HIGH WATER

The only ordinary thing about HELL OR HIGH WATER, the marvelous new film from David Mackenzie, is its somewhat tired and certainly overused title. Otherwise, this compact, subtle, surprising little marvel of a movie gets under your skin and has you thinking about, understanding, and feeling for our fractured country and its poor (and not only financially) populace in ways that very few films have managed -- including even last year's terrific-and-should-have-won-the-Oscar movie, The Big Short.

How ironic that a British director should be able to nail today's America so sadly and beautifully. Mr. Mackenzie, shown at left, has a number of good films to his credit -- from his early and somewhat problematic Young Adam through the under-seen/under-rated Hallam Foe to one of the most profound and moving sci-fi dramas ever, Perfect Sense. This new one hits his high mark so far: a tale of bank robberies (that work both ways: Banks continue to rob us, so we them), brotherhood that is shown us in bonds of both family and friendship, and a search for justice that proves as difficult, sad and quietly unsettling as any you'll have so far witnessed, movie-wise.

Mackenzie and his casting directors (Jo Edna Bolden and Richard Hicks) have rounded up a truly wonderful cast -- both well-known leads and simply fabulous supporting players that lend the film the necessary gravity as well as a lot of tart truthfulness and humor. As the bank-robbing brothers, Chris Pine (above, right) and Ben Foster (left), whom I would never have imagined as siblings, work beautifully together  -- bouncing off each other with the kind of rivalry, annoyance, and deep love built up through decades (along with a certain brotherly lack of respect).

As their eventual adversary, we have an actor who just seems to deepen and improve with age to the point that he effortlessly owns any role (often any movie, too) in which he appears. That would be Jeff Bridges (above) as the Texas Ranger who, along with his partner (played wonderfully well by Gil Birmingham, below, right) dogs the bank robbers cleverly if sedentarily from very nearly the point of their initial foray into heists.

This is, as befits its tale, a "male" movie, but it does offer some choice supporting roles for women, in which every last one of them shines. The various bank tellers, in particular, are given wonderfully real moments, and one particular waitress -- a lovely job from Katy Mixon -- registers quite strongly. Another waitress (Margaret Bowman, below, center), in what is the film's funniest scene, registers even more strongly, and the always-fine Marin Ireland does a terrific job in making us understand why her character is Mr. Pine's "ex."

Working from a rich but lean screenplay by Tyler Sheridan (this one is much better than his earlier, more overwrought but less believable screenplay for Sicario), Mr. Mackenzie keeps everything on a low simmer throughout. Even when he gets to what would be, for lesser filmmakers, the chance to pull out the stops, he holds back -- which makes his audience appreciate all the more the opportunity to think about the consequences -- intended and not -- that one's actions incur.

This is the beauty of the film: how it forces us to confront the needs of all its characters and how it muddies up "right" and "wrong" until we, just as some of the characters here (those who are still alive, at least), are left pondering not-so-easy answers, along with as what that next and all-important step ought to be.

Most filmmakers would never allow the chance for additional action and bloodshed to go wanting. But this is what separates, movie-wise, the men from the boys. Hell or High Water is one of those rare "adult" motion pictures that asks for every bit of our attention and willingness to empathize and contemplate -- and then offers the kind of reward we seldom experience. (The musical score, too, by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is appropriate -- and then some.)

From CBS Films and running a just-about perfectly-timed 102 minutes, the movie, I hope, will be one of those up for multiple awards come Oscar time (unless it is just too subtle for Academy members to appreciate). A better film in every way than the over-the-top and crammed-with-violence No Country for Old Men, after opening in New York and Los Angeles this past week, it hits cities nationwide this Friday, August 19. Here in South Florida it will Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

Oh, lordy! Timothy Woodward, Jr.'s jaw-dropping CHECKMATE make its DVDebut

If you've a mind (and the patience or maybe courage) to discover what bottom-of-the-barrel currently looks and sounds like, movie-wise, by all means watch CHECKMATE. This brain-boggling, jaw-dropping piece of nonsense features a bunch of actors who've all seen better days and now make utterly disposable films -- the least of which may be this one, which occasionally comes very close to entering the realm of unintentional camp. It's almost bad enough to be good.

Why is Checkmate so terrible? The director/co-producer, Timothy Woodward, Jr., shown below, hasn't a clue to most anything from pacing to action, and he is saddled with one of the worst screenplays imaginable, credited to Calvin Cox, Jr., Jennifer Lynch and Henry Mitchell, who are, according to the IMDB, neophytes all.

These writers' objective, it soon appears, is to discover how many times they can cram the word "fuck" (and its many variations) into a single full-length film. If you start tallying from the beginning, Ill bet you'll be well into the triple digits before the movie ends. Their one remotely original idea (perhaps only because this particular reviewer has not seen it done previously) is to make one of their characters a priest who doubles as a paid assassin.

In any case, the bank robbery around which the film revolves is embarrassingly staged, as are the actions of the police on hand. There's lots of over-acting on view, to be expected when the script is this bad. And, perhaps because the filmmaker is a Southern boy who wants to toss a bone to Christian fundamentalists, we get a simultaneous sub-plot involving God and the devil in a chess match. But the filmmaker clearly doesn't know chess well enough to allow us to see any of the moves being played. So this, too, fizzles out. Whew.

Films like Checkmate do serve a purpose. They act as a kind of touchstone for all else you might view. After this one, just about anything you watch will appear to have some merit. The movie hits the street this Tuesday, September 8, on DVD.

MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE, Marc Bauder's classy doc about a German sleaze, opens at AFA

What a guy! There will be times during the course of MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE -- the Austrian/German documentary in which ex-banker Rainer Voss tells a-lot-if-not-all about the current economic crisis as experienced from the European side -- when you'll feel like sticking your fingers into the eye sockets of Mr. Voss and simply pushing as hard as you can. Unless, of course, you yourself are a banker or European-equivalent Wall-Street sleaze. Then, depending on your particular level in the hierarchy, you'll do everything from snicker in fond reminiscence (if you were anywhere near Voss' level) or simply wave all this away as "old news" and utterly unimportant now (if you're closer to the top of your respective organization, à la  Lloyd Blankfein, CVS -- Chief Vampire Squid -- of Goldman-Sachs).

One of the more interesting scenes in this new film, released in Europe in the fall of last year, and now opening for a week's run here in New York City at Anthology Film Archives, is that involving Jérôme Kerviel and Société Générale, the French multinational banking and financial services company for whom Kerviel worked and was eventually convicted of fraudulent trading, even though he claimed his practices were widespread within the company, and that making a profit resulted in the hierarchy's turning a blind eye. Under a little pressure from the film's director and co-producer Marc Bauder (shown above), Voss explains why traders get punished while the higher-ups never do.

Voss (shown above and below) also explains that in the old days, not that many years ago, when a share in a particular company was purchased, it was held on to for an average of four years. In our current times, that average is 22 seconds. What's the point -- other than to make a quick buck -- and where does this leave the company and whatever work it is supposed to be accomplishing? The film takes place in an empty building, not that long ago abandoned, in which one of those huge international bank/financial services companies used to be housed. The cinematography (by Börres Weiffenbach) is aces down the line. This movie at times looks better even than Cosmopolis. And the accompanying music (by Bernhard Fleischmann) works very well, too. But the center, the dead heart of the film, is Herr Voss' narration.

This guy tells us all about how to gyp your client, then excuses himself, contradicts himself, makes more excuses, and finally goes silent. This happens periodically. "You're always trying to get more out of me!" he exclaims at one moment to someone we assume is the filmmaker. Well, yes: That's the point, dear. Herr Voss began his career at around the time computers first came upon the scene, and so he smartly acquainted himself with this new machine, which helped his rise in the industry. The film's first half takes us up to the crash, the second half covers post-crash.

We learn a lot of interesting stuff along the way about our new "banking and investment services" industry. Lesson one would be this: Just because a transaction is highly complicated doesn't mean that it makes any sense. Regarding whether or not we're remotely "out of the woods" just yet: "It's going to blow up in our face; there's no way this is going to have a happy end."  We see our own American Congressional hearing, as congressmen try to pin Goldman-Sachs employees to the wall, and later we watch one of those "We want to help YOU!" commercials for a new German bank.

"The bigger the shit, the thicker the Corporate Responsibility Brochure," remarks Voss. In that case, this guy's CRB should be thickest of all, for he comes across as one cynical, self-satisfied son-of-a-bitch. But a smart one, it must be said, and one who has helped further lift the cloak of secrecy from the worthless (except to itself, of course) industry that has wrecked -- and continues to keep wrecking -- the world economy.

Master of the Universe -- in some English but mostly in German with English subtitles and running 88 minutes -- opens this Friday, June 6 (D-Day!) in New York City at Anthology Film Archives. You can check for performances times, tickets and directions by clicking the appropriate link.

Stop and Frisk? Really? Who's stopping and frisking Wall Street & our sleazy banking system?

Yes, yes: I know it's not a movie, but maybe someone'll grab the idea and run with it. All this hoo-haw about stop and frisk and whether or not it's constitutional -- when all along we've been stopping and frisking the wrong guys. Whenever anyone mentions crime, the very first thing that ought to come to mind is: Wall Street and the banks. That's the really unconscionable and still-unpunished crime of our post-millennium (aside from the Bush regime's illegal war, of course).

Instead, at the dropping of the "C word, the first thing out of anyone's mouth is some neighborhood in Brooklyn or the Bronx. Witness the ridiculous interview that New York magazine ran with Mayor Bloomberg last month. At the mention of crime, sho 'nuff, back we go to the neighborhoods and all that puny, individual stuff. And the interviewer, as ever, didn't even raise an eyebrow, as though that was the only kind of crime anybody cares about. Our mayor should be run out of town on a rail for fomenting this kind of shit. Will Bill de Blasio be any different, really? We shall see.

So the next time you hear anybody mention crime, immediately chime in with "You mean Wall Street and the banks, right?" And if Stop and Frisk comes up, tell 'em who it is that actually needs to be stopped and frisked. Don't let the powers-that-be get away with this fakery over and over and over again. Start stopping and frisking the more important criminals now, via some genuine oversight of Wall Street and the banking system -- and just like the Mayor and the Police Department insist, "We'll catch 'em for the small stuff -- and that'll help prevent the big stuff."

I'll be back with more movies tomorrow.

Jay Chandrasekhar's BABYMAKERS offers a bit of the Broken Lizard Comedy Team....

...but not to terribly good effect. Broken Lizard's movies have always been hit-and-miss affairs, with a good one following a bad one following a so-so one following an OK one. And so on. After 2009's slick, fast and very funny The Slammin' Salmon -- set in a Miami restaurant and by far the best of the Broken Lizard lot -- comes their new one THE BABYMAKERS, which, to get it over with fast, is simply not-so-hot.

The premise itself -- a young-ish couple (Paul Schneider and Olivia Munn above) has trouble conceiving -- is not exactly novel: You may recall a supposedly ground-breaking film from 1970 entitled The Babymaker, starring a very young Barbara Hershey that dealt with a similar problem and used an at-the-time somewhat surprising solution. Since then we've seen countless films around this same scenario, each with its own bit (or lack) of originality.

Even as I recall the plot and assemble the various stills from the films, funny moments are coming back to me, so it seems the movie did have a certain amount of clever situa-tions and/or events along the way. But it so often manages to be both frenetic and flaccid -- no mean feat, when you think about it -- that it rarely offers the kind of comedy that is at all engaging. I attribute this mostly to its director and co-star Jay Chandrasekhar (shown at left), who as both actor and filmmaker seems to be losing much of the easy charm he had as a younger man and is now replacing it with louder volume and heavier-handed methods. Jay, honey: Relax a little, and come back to us!

On the other hand, Broken Lizard veteran Kevin Heffernan, above and hanging on for dear life (he directed -- and very well -- The Slammin Salmon, but in this one he's only performing), plays things down to smart effect and easily gets his laughs.

Ms Munn, shown below, left, with her posse, is fine as the straight girl (reduced to reactions only, I don't think she gets a laugh in the entire movie), but Mr. Schneider (above, in bank-job apparel), who is generally a very fine actor (from All the Real Girls through Lars and the Real Girl, Bright Star and the upcoming French film Beloved, in which he is superb), seems here to be a bit at sea. Schneider's particular qualities as an performer do not mesh all that well with this kind of low-level, frenetic comedy. (The screenplay is from Peter Gaulke and Gerry Swallow.)

There are a couple of pretty funny scenes. One involves the actual robbing of a sperm bank; the other has to do with the couple who plans to use the last of the Schneider character's donated sperm to create its own baby. Broken Lizard loves being tasteless and hopes to render this in ground-breaking ways. It comes closest in the scenes involving a pair of gay partners and how they figure into the mix. Some gay/bi's may take offense, but they'll probably also be laughing. I was, anyway.

TrustMovies was hoping to enjoy this one a lot more. While fans of Broken Lizard will certainly want to check it out, TM remains doubtful that it will bring in that many new recruits. The Babymakers, from Millennium Entertainment and running a too-long 98 minutes, opens this Friday, August 3, in ten cities across the USA, including New York (AMC Loew's Village 7) and Los Angeles (AMC Loews Broadway 4). Click here and then click on TICKETS to find the other cities. Also note: Simultaneous to its theatrical release, the movie will be available via VOD and iTunes.