Demange, Weiss & the brothers Miller's WHITE BOY RICK: a feel-bad film done very, very well

The only other full-length film we've seen from Yann Demange -- a born-in-Paris-but-raised-in-London filmmaker who has worked mostly in British television -- is the behind-enemy-lines action thriller, '71. His latest work, WHITE BOY RICK, is set in Detroit during the last half of the 1980s and is often as quiet and slow-moving as '71 was fast and slick. It is also a kind of real-life bio-pic about the sort of character most bio-pics might avoid: a not-very-bright kid from a not-very-bright family who makes just about all the wrong choices.

And yet, by the end of this sad and surprisingly moving tale of failure and family, I think you'll be glad you got to know Richard Wershe, Jr., and learned his unusual story. Filmmaker Demange, shown at right, along with his screenwriters Andy Weiss and twin brothers Logan and Noah Miller, take their time building story and characters -- especially that of their main one, the young man who became known as "White Boy Rick" because of his seemingly oddball entry into the Black bourgeoisie of the 1980s Detroit. (He was also a leading cog in the Black drug trade of that time and place, which we see and learn a lot about from this more realistic, less melodramatic film.)

The title role is played by a newcomer to film named Richie Merritt (above center), who offers a nearly affectless performance for much of the film that works surprisingly well. Rick seems like a fairly typical "dumb teenager" who keeps his thoughts and feelings close to the vest, only very occasionally letting them go "public." Because he and his family are borderline poor, always living on the brink, you can understand why Rick is so ready to embrace the drug trade.

Playing against young Merritt's affectlessness is that ever-energetic actor Matthew McConaughey as his dad, and the two make an appealing and believable combo. McConaughey tamps down some of his excesses (the kind that made his performance in Gold so much fun) but still brings "Dad" to vibrant life, never more so than in the sweet and moving scene in which he greets his new granddaughter (above).

The supporting ensemble includes a wealth of well-known and quite capable actors, from Jennifer Jason Leigh (above, center) to Rory Cochrane (above, right) and Bel Powley (shown two photos below, at left), plus a raft of excellent Black actors, each of whom nails his or her role and all of whom ought to be better known at this point.

The movie, however, belongs to its two leads, and to its tale of lower-middle class America, black and white, struggling to simply manage a decent life but being used, mostly ill-used, by the establishment and turning to crime to make ends meet.

This is an old story, which Demange and his writers give new life -- even if they do leave out where our "hero," Rick, resided after the end-credits sequence, which is all the more moving for simply using Rick's voice rather than an accompanying image of the "real" person.

From Columbia Pictures and running 110 minutes, the movie opens tomorrow, Friday, September 14, in a number of cities around the country. Click here to find the theaters nearest you.

  

Diane Bell explores women, class and violence in her sophomore effort, BLEEDING HEART

TrustMovies must admit that watching BLEEDING HEART, a new film written and directed by Diane Bell, can often seem like a stretch. Overall though, this is the kind of stretch that's good for you -- rather like that of the palm tree able to bend with the wind instead of breaking in two. Also, it stars two good actresses, one of whom, Jessica Biel, I go out of my way to see in just about anything she does. Ms Biel, along with Jake Gyllenhaal, even saved David O. Russell's Nailed (aka Accidental Love) from total obscurity.

Filmmaker Bell, shown at left, has tackled a disturbing set of subjects -- including feminism, class, violence; parentage, prostitution and yoga; drugs, friendship and love -- and then created a scenario in which all these come into play. If this occasionally makes for a few more contrivances and coincidences than we might wish, the movie still manages to work well enough to get us to its crackling and seemingly inevitable finale. In addition to the unusual situation Ms Bell has set up and the pretty decent dialog she's put in the mouths of her cast, it's that cast itself that does the movie proud, helping carry the film to fruition, while forcing us to consider all the problematic possibilities along the way. Once set in motion, and given the characters on view, the plot here can pretty much go only in one direction.

Early on in Bleeding Heart, one of our two heroines, May, played by Biel (above), hones in on the other one, Shiva, played by Zosia Mamet (below). We soon learn why, and the reason will probably prove either the deal-breaker or the deal-maker for most viewers. It becomes, in any case, the force that drives May onwards, pushing through Shiva's attempts to stall or derail it,

and leading to further and further confrontations with Shiva's pimp boyfriend (well-played with a smart combination of intelligence, style and ferocity by Joe Anderson), below, left). The only important remaining cast members include Kate Burton (as May's cold, adopted mom), Edi Gathegi (as May's business partner/boyfriend) and Harry Hamlin as a wealthy "john."  Each is first-rate, offering a performance that adds luster to the proceedings.

Finally it is Ms Bell's concept and execution that, despite its occasional overly-schematic feel, brings the movie home. It is bracing to see a film that attempts to meld feminism, class and violence with nature and nurture. And Biel and Mamet make a fine pair of protagonists: bouncing off each other believably and with the necessary finesse, offering up character arcs that move in opposite directions, bringing these two very different women together in an inseparable way.

Bleeding Heart (nicely ironic title, that!) -- from Gravitas Ventures and running a swift 80 minutes -- after being available On-Demand and Digitally since early November, opens in a very limited theatrical run this Friday, on the date, at the theaters, and in the cities shown below.

DVDebut: Dirty cops reign in THE SEVEN FIVE, Tiller Russell's alarming-but-entertaining doc about a Brooklyn precinct in the 1980s

How do you become a dirty cop? According to Michael Dowd, the dirtiest of THE SEVEN FIVE, the documentary (making its DVD debut this coming Tuesday) about the New York Police Department's 75th Precinct, located in Brooklyn, the key can be found in the very training of the new recruits -- when they learn that to be a "good cop" means never ratting out a fellow offier, no matter what that officer has said or done. Maybe this sort of training has changed some since Dowd's day, but I rather doubt it. Couple that training to character traits present in people like Dowd and his partner, Kenneth Eurell, and you've got a recipe for crime and corrruption that goes from stealing drugs and cash to what the current Black Lives Matter movement has been railing against.

Tiller Russell's documentary (the filmmaker is shown at right) spills out the story of the corruption within the 75th Precinct in a manner that is very nearly as entertaining as it is disturbing. As far as halfway or more into the movie, you may experience, as did I, a queasy feeling that the film is practically saluting Michael Dowd for being so fucking clever and fun in all the ways he manages to make himself rich at the expense of everyone from us taxpayers to the drug dealers he both works for and steals from.

Mr. Dowd -- shown above, in his salad days (said salad was sprinkled with cocaine rather than parmesan cheese) and below, in felon-wear -- indeed proves an entertaining and informative narrator. As do a few other folk, including his partner, Mr Eurell (shown back in the day in the penultimate photo, below), along with a noted drug dealer named Adam Diaz. (Since many of these poeple are -- or were -- lawbreakers, you'll wonder just where they are now -- and why. Do stick around for the end credits, during which you'll learn much of what you wanted to know.)

At one point during the hearings devoted to the "work" of The Seven Five, a public official asks Dowd , "Whom did you consider to be your employer: the NY City Police Department or the drug traffickers?" And the man does admit he made a ton more money off the drugs than from his salary. When a cop gets shot and killed in the line of duty, and our boys go all sad and sentimental, you may want to toss in the towel. Hang on.

Things do change, and once Internal Affairs and a little betrayal enter the picture, the darkening that any thinking person will have been demanding finally sets in. Russell's desire to weave all this together -- the various narratives, incidents, characters and interviews -- entails some first-rate editing, and co-editors Chad Beck and James Carroll are more than up to the task.

So why are dirty cops so loathesome and yet so important? Dirty politicians are worse (almost all of them are dirty these days because they acccept campaign donations and then serve the money that elected them rather than the people they're supposed to be serving), but dirty cops hit us on a more personal level. betraying everything that police are supposed to stand for. "To protect and serve" becomes "protect each other and serve only oneself." In a way, you could hardly ask for a more fitting example of what our country continues to become: a populace and its leaders dedicated to making a fast buck by any means necessary and screw everybody else. Donald Trump for President, anyone?

The Seven Five, from IFC Films and running rather long for a documentary (104 minutes), becomes available on DVD this coming Tuesday, September 15. 

The content explosion continues: Tom O'Brien & Jessie Barr's yoga-themed series, OM CITY

"Content." It's fucking everywhere. Movies: big, small and in-between. Television and Cable: at broadcast time or anytime -- if you're hooked into on-demand. Digital streaming from more locations than you can shake a Roku stick at. And lately, one after another new web series, most of them of the mini variety. Sure, all this is quite the blessing. But let's admit it, people: You have not even begun to watch most of those independent, documentary and foreign films you've been wanting to stream off Netflix or Amazon Prime. And let's admit something else: You probably never will.

So stop beating yourself up and instead try something new, short and a little different: a web series created by writer/director Tom O'Brien (above) and his lead actress and star Jessie Barr (below) entitled OM CITY that appears to want to explore the world of New York via the life of a young, attractive and quite interesting Yoga instructor. Or maybe the series' real intent is to explore that Yoga instructor and how she tries, with some success, to make her chosen career and life remotely manageable in the current environment of that storied and ever-more-difficult-to-exist-in land of the Big Apple. Or maybe Om City is just trying to reach us viewers with the message that Yoga itself is something worth exploring. Whatever, this new series actually manages to do all of the above and maybe a bit more. That's TrustMovies' judgment, having now viewed the first seven mini episodes.

The initial three chapters last around ten minutes each; the final four run five, six, eight and seven respectively. All told, if you view the entire first seven segments (which we critics were given for appraisal), you'll only have invested a tad less than one hour of your time. And each episode is so short that you can watch one or two on your tablet or smartphone as you take your bus or subway ride to the office. (I wouldn't watch while walking, however: The series is too much fun and you'll probably knock someone over or get hit by a car.)

Mr. O'Brien is the fellow who a couple of years back gave us the under-seen and under-appreciated Fairhaven, and here he is again in the role of writer, director and supporting actor and doing a fine job as all three. He plays Mitchell, the semi-sleazy boss of the yoga business at which Ms Barr, who plays Grace, teaches. In fact, she is his best instructor, a woman who believes in the benefits of Yoga -- to mind, body and soul -- and hopes to share these with the world at large.
Good luck.

Each little episode opens up a new area of Grace's life, with her clients, her family, her boss and her rather lean love life, and by the end of episode seven -- which features a date set up online with a young actor clearly vying for the World's Narcissistic Asshole award and played to perfection by Michael Godere of Loitering With Intent -- we know our Grace and her life pretty damned well. And we're enjoying them, too.

The writing here is both realistic and smartly specific, exploring character and event with equal ease. O'Brien creates and performs Mitchell as an entrepreneur trying to succeed and cutting as many ethical corners as needed to do this. Grace is a good girl, but not insipidly so, and Ms Barr, as likable as she is attractive, quickly ropes us in. (She also appears to either do Yoga very well or has been amply trained as a dancer to be able to move her body in the necessary ways.)

In the supporting cast are a raft of good performers, especially Chris Messina (who starred in O'Brien's Fairhaven); Maryann Plunkett (still the best Saint Joan I've ever seen), who plays Grace's ever-a-hippie mom with charm, sass and sadness; and Ean Sheehy as Grace's pot-dealing, floundering brother.

All in all Om City is a series I'd be happy to keep up with wherever it decides to go. It offers us a New York City and its boroughs teetering on the brink of becoming a closed-off and uber-weathy enclave with less and less room for the kind of people and work and life that Grace and her group represent.

You can watch it beginning this Sunday, August 30, at either the series' own web site or via Vimeo. Who knows? You might even decide to finally try the "Y" word....

Blu-ray/DVDebut: James Franco & Kate Hudson in Henrik Ruben Genz's thriller, GOOD PEOPLE

You might imagine that the combination of housing, home construction, the economic downturn, fertility, morality, robbery and murder would make for a fairly heady stew. Add to this an internation-al cast of Brits, Americans, Scandinavians and France's Omar Sy (of The Intouchables), all helmed by Danish director Henrik Ruben Genz (of Terribly Happy), with a screenplay adapted from Marcus Sakey's novel by Kelly Masterson (the Snowpiercer scribe), and you might think, "Wow." Or at least "semi-wow." Maybe this is just too much of a good thing, as GOOD PEOPLE (yes, this is a very ironic title) comes off as both a little too predictable and a lot unbelievable, though it does provide some genuine excitement and dumb fun along the way.

The filmmaker, shown at right, is adept at his action scenes, which begin and end the film, and he draws OK performances from his starry international cast. But Masterson's screenplay piles far too many charac-ters and events into too little time, and thus the plotting feels rushed and too pre-ordained for belief. That said, the movie begins with a knockout scene of drugs-for-money robbery and betrayal, which should have you glued to the screen and waiting for more. But then the actual plot and main characters -- played by James Franco and Kate Hudson -- kick into action and the movie begins immediately to stall.

This is less due to the OK work of the two stars (shown above, in fear, and below, with money) and their co-stars than to a screenplay that gives them so many problems that seem so insoluble that we want to run for cover. But of course we know that, if movie history be our guide, things will all come out for the best.

Money might solve our main couple's woes, but not that of the police inspector on the case (Tom Wilkinson) who suffers from guilt regarding the death of his daughter due to the same drug lord who is now on Franco/Hudson's case.

Toss in Anna Friel who plays a single mom with little baby in tow (guess who is going to be used as kidnap bait?), some scenes of torture-to-obtain-information (one of these is shown above), and the very cinematic M. Sy (below) and you've got a lot on your plate. If there were only some way to make it all coalesce believably.

The prolonged (but I must admit quite exciting) finale puts that home construction theme to interesting use, and adds to the violence on display (Mr. Franco gets beaten to a pulp in the course of things -- this happens so frequently on film to the poor guy that I am guessing it must now be an ironclad clause in the contract he signs for each new movie).

And that's about it. After a very brief theatrical foray, Good People -- from Millennium Entertainment and running 91 minutes -- makes its Blu-ray and DVD debut this coming Tuesday, October 28, for sale and rental.

SIDE EFFECTS opens: Steven Soderbergh's so-so (and supposed) swan song to cinema

Damn us critics! We're always claiming we want something new (at least sort-of new, which is about as much as can be seen, under this sun). But then when we get it, we don't much care for it. I'm afraid that's the case with TrustMovies and SIDE EFFECTS, the new and quite spiffily outfitted film from Steven Soderbergh, the noted director who has told us that this will be his final film, though not neces-sarily the end of his output. In a very interesting conversation with this director pub-lished recently, the filmmaker makes it clear that he's quite willing to work in cable television and maybe other venues in which the format is more to his liking. But no more "cinema." (Oh, well -- Frank Sinatra was always giving "final" concerts, too, so who knows?)

I've long run hot and cold to Mr. Soderbergh's output (the director is shown at right), and I'm only lukewarm to this latest/last work. Though it has a lot going for it initially and up to maybe the halfway point, eventually it falls apart due to the unbelievable shenanigans set before us in almost "shorthand" manner to make everything go click-click-click into its clockwork-like finale. People's behavior suddenly turns on a dime and characters who were, oh, so smart now appear awfully dumb in order to bring the movie home. I cannot get more specific without giving away spoilers, and part of the movie's fun is how it quietly morphs from genre to genre to genre, becoming by its end something entirely different from what you imagined you were viewing at its beginning.

This clever genre-mashing has been done previously, but not, I think, as quietly and un-showily as Soderbergh manages it. If only he and particularly the film's screenwriter, Scott Z. Burns, had found a way to handle it all so that everything did not click into place without using what seems like every tried-and-true movie method -- making one character suddenly jealous of another, using the old hidden-recorder trick -- in its rush to completion. By trying to turn something interestingly nuanced into near-mainstream fodder, the movie ends up a neither-fish-nor-fowl concoction.

So lets get back to the good stuff, of which there is plenty, starting with the filmmakers' look at today's society and its dependence upon pharmaceuticals to solve problems, together with how easily doctors are willing to jump into bed with the companies that make those pharmaceuticals. Especially commendable is how Side Effects -- such a telling and inclusive title -- incorporates everything from the behavior of society's public servants to Wall Street's bumps (and grinds) into such an effectively sleazy scenario.

The movie's cast is part of the good stuff, as well, and, yes indeed, they all deliver. Jude Law, above, moving smartly into middle-age roles, makes a very believable therapist and johnny-come-lately protagonist.

Catherine Zeta-Jones is aces as another therapist (both her character and Law's have treated the movie's initial protagonist) who goes from bright and sunny (above) to something a bit more complex. Channing Tatum, below, hot off the Soderbergh hit (but again, only so-so in my book), Magic Mike, is here a bit wasted (in a couple of senses of that word) but he is absolutely confined by the movie's script and so does what he can valiantly enough.

More than any other cast member, it's Rooney Mara (below and at bottom) who delivers the film's knockout performance. It's not enough that she envelopes us with her neediness and sadness, but then she... ah, you'll see. Though I was disappointed in the movie overall, I have to recommend it for Mara's work alone.

Supporting roles are cast and handled expertly down the line. Everyone from Mamie Gummer (the wife of a business friend) and Polly Draper (Mara's understanding boss) to Vinessa Shaw (Law's significant other), Ann Dowd (Tatum's mom), and Peter Friedman and Laila Robins as Law's business partners) do a spot-on job.

Side Effects, from Open Road films, opens wide tomorrow, Friday, February 8. To find out where, click here and then click on BUY TICKETS NOW.

DVDebut: BROOKLYN'S FINEST -- better than you've heard, but not good enough

Antoine Fuqua is developing quite a name and a repu-
tation. He may be the most commercially successful black filmmaker working today. A journeyman director of the dark and gritty, his movies always promise more than they deliver. Yet, from his first full-length effort, The Replacement Killers, he has shown such promise that each of his films has proven worth seeing, though none truly satisfies -- including his most successful:
Training Day.

Fuqua (shown, right) never writes; he just directs.  This may be a good thing, as he has a penchant for grit and the streets. He chooses projects in which sleaze is everywhere, in every color and class, and trust is rarely to be found.  However, if this director knew more about screenwriting -- plot, set-up, fruition and the like -- his films might be a lot better. It is inevitably the plot mechanics -- too-frequent use of coincidence, unbelievable last-minute heroics -- that bring his movies down.

BROOKLYN'S FINEST begins exceptionally well, with a toss-you-into-the-middle-of-it set-up and some terrific dialog between Vincent D'Onofrio (great, as usual) and Ethan Hawke (above, right).  Much of the dialog in the entire film is first-rate (the writer is Michael C. Martin); I used the Blu-Ray's English subtitles, in fact, so as not to miss any of it. Hawke, too, is excellent, but appears again in the kind of role (playing either side of the coin) he does so often -- Training Day, Assault on Precinct 13, Staten Island, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and now this one -- that he may soon be relegated to it.  Also on board is Richard Gere (above, left) who is as good as he's been in some time, playing a cop about to retire who has major trouble playing by the rules.

Playing by the rules is something few in this film manage, either because the rules keep changing, aren't there in the first place, or, when they are, seem to be in direct opposition to someone else's guidelines. This is especially true of the characters played by Don Cheadle (above, right) and Wesley Snipes (above, left). The latter is just out of prison and toying with going (semi)straight, while the former is a dirty undercover cop, vying for a promotion yet! Standing in the way of same is a new power broker on the block, played by Ellen Barkin, below. (Women figure but tangentially and remotely in Fuqua films.)

That sharp and funny dialog at the movie's beginning has to do with the concept of right and "righter," wrong and "wronger," as the D'Onofrio character puts it.  And this pretty much provides the theme for the movie itself, which then expands into dirty, dirtier and dirtiest -- with the cops, drug dealers and sex traffickers all vying for pride of place.  But once again, as good as is the set-up, the resolution is crap: full of coincidence (from finding a missing girl to setting up your best friend) and ridiculous, one-man heroics (or, in Hawke's case, one-man sleaze-oics) to save the day. As with all of Fuqua's films, I end up seeing it, being initially impressed and finally disappointed.

Brooklyn's Finest, an ironic title if ever there was one, is out this week on Blu-Ray and DVD for sale or rental.