All posts by Peter A. Martin

Raised in Los Angeles repertory movie houses before spending a decade in tiny Manhattan cinemas, Peter Martin has been freely roaming in DFW multiplexes and art houses for most of the 21st Century. Founder and Editor of Dallas Film Now, Peter also serves as Managing Editor for ScreenAnarchy.com and is a contributing writer for Fandango.com. He also writes the weekly Everything But Horror.substack.com newsletter. He is a proud member of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Film Critics Association.
review, Reviews

Review: ‘Showing Up’

Michelle Williams and Hong Chau star in director Kelly Reichardt’s gentle, lovely slice of creative life.

We are surrounded by creativity. How did it get there? 

Hard work and perseverance, according to Showing Up, the newest film by director Kelly Reichardt. The title, apparently quoting Woody Allen — “Ninety percent of success in life is just showing up” — is apt, though it only begins to explain what drives the titular artist (Michelle Williams), a sculptor making final preparations for her next show in Oregon. 

The artist sculpts out of her home studio with her roommate, a cat. To support herself, she works as a commercial artist at an arts & crafts combine, managed by her mother (Maryann Plunkett). She visits her father (Judd Hirsch), a retired artist, and worries about her brother (Jean-Luc Boucherot), an artist with an unsteady grasp on life. 

She crosses cordial paths with fellow artists all day long, though she has become angered as of late with Jo (Hong Chau), an artist on the rise. Their point of contention is a hot-water issue in the house owned by Jo, of which the artist rents space for living and working.

All these are little matters that only become bigger issues when they veer from distractions  to obstacles that impinge upon the artist’s free flow of creativity. They may seem small, if not outright petty, yet they grow into mountains when ignored. 

Written by frequent collaborators Jonathan Raymond and Kelly Reichardt, Showing Up flows by with casual grace, capturing the gentle push and pull of daily life for an artist. She’s not a ‘struggling’ artist, in that she has food to eat and a safe place to live. Still, hers is a modest life, like that of many of her fellow artists. Occasionally, some may break through and start to enjoy greater success, as Jo appears to be doing. 

More often in life, the artist does not have greater success; the only success they can hope to achieve is to do the work, to finish the work, and then live for another day, so they can start on a new piece of work. The end goal is not necessarily to achieve great success, but to express what is inside, what they may not be able to explain to anyone else, except for showing the work. And to do that, first they just have to show up. 

Director Kelly Reichard does that better than most, as expressed delicately, yet with great passion, in all her films to date. Without the noise of genre films, she captures great big slabs of life, and then distills them into tasty slices that resonate and echo, like a flat stone skipped on a calm lake, rippling quietly yet memorably.

The film opens Friday, April 21, Angelika Film Center (Dallas), Cinemark West Plano, and Alamo Drafthouse Richardson, via A24 Films. It will expand April 28 to additional theaters in Addison, Arlington, Dallas, Fort Worth, Hurst and Plano, . For more information about the film, visit the official site.

Reviews

Review: ‘Air,’ Just Do It, Sonny

Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, and Ben Affleck star in an absorbing drama, directed by Ben Affleck. 

Kudos to Ben Affleck for starring in and directing the first movie I can recall that revolves entirely around … a shoe-endorsement deal. 

It’s not just any shoe, though, and it’s not just any athlete. To be precise, Air whisks the audience back to 1984 and the small circus that surrounded the signing of pre-G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) Michael Jordan, then an 18-year-old college freshman, and soon to be a professional basketball legend. 

In that ancient era — which Affleck and his production crew take pains to recreate lovingly, repeatedly, and incessantly — a pudgy, 40-something salesman named Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) relentless pursued the signing of Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal with Nike, then only the #3 shoe company in the world. Brought on by Nike’s founder Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) to boost the basketball division, Sonny has proven to be unsuccessful in doing so and may be in danger of losing his job if he doesn’t improve the basketball division’s financial performance. 

A born gambler, Sonny bets everything on convincing Jordan to sign, even though the kid reportedly hates Nike and loves Adidas, the #1 shoe company in the world. (Converse lags at #2 and barely figures into the film.) In a desperately bold move, Sonny even flies to North Carolina in order to pay an impromptu visit on Michael’s parents, Deloris and Julius (Viola Davis and Julius Tennon, husband and wife actors who are acting together in a film for the first time), bypassing Jordan’s irascible and incredibly foul-mouthed agent, David Falk (Chris Messina).

If all this sounds like a movie made for streaming, and not necessarily a traditional cinematic experience, it’s hard to disagree. Yet what makes the movie consistently absorbing — and, I would say, quite cinematic — are the marvelously low-key performances by Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker (?!), Matthew Maher, Ben Affleck and Viola Davis. 

Damon takes the lead as the persistent, never-say-die salesman who is convinced that he has seen early glimpses of a man who will become the greatest basketball player of all time, who also oozes charisma and confidence. Bateman and Tucker play Nike execs, with Maher as the nerdy genius shoe designer/engineer/artist, and Afflect as the genius barefoot executive Phil Knight, who is Weirdness Incarnate, yet also pretty relatable and surprisingly supportive. 

The film positions Michael Jordan as a god-like creature who has already soared beyond the confines of puny humans. With only a single line of dialogue, and without his in-person face being shown, it’s as though he emits beams of light that would blind anyone who foolishly dares to look upon his face. 

As silly as that may sound, it’s absolutely essential to the manner in which director Affleck tells the story. Everyone and everything in the movie revolves around a god-like creature. Everyone, though, knows this; they acknowledge that they are lowly people who don’t deserve to be in Michael Jordan’s presence, and will do anything to bask in his reflected light. 

What makes all this tolerable, and even charming, is that genuflection sounds and plays as genuine, authentic, and kind of funny, especially when you know how this all plays out. It’s a key, authorized chapter in the corporate lives of Nike and Michael Jordan, playing out to its finish like a warmly-remembered basketball game with an incredible buzzer-beater.

The film opens April 5 in Dallas, Fort Worth and surrounding cities, via Amazon Studios, ahead of its eventual global premiere on Prime Video. For more information about the film, visit the official site.

review, Reviews

Review: ‘Tetris,’ Video-Game Cold-War Thriller

Taron Egerton stars in a nostalgic film that gradually becomes a thriller. 

Who knew falling blocks can be so much fun? And serve as building blocks for a retro cold-war thriller? 

The opening scene establishes Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) in a high-rise office building, making a sales pitch to a Japanese bank executive (Rick Yune) who looks bored as Henk tells what sounds like a slight variation on his usual sales pitch. The difference is that Henk is genuinely enthusiastic about the true potential of what he’s selling. 

As Henk makes his pitch, his globe-hopping is dramatized as he narrates his introduction to an instantly-addictive video game at a trade show, followed by his relentless pursuit of the sales rights. Frankly, even though the narrated sequences are handsomely produced and propulsively sown together —  Colin Goudie, Ben Mills, and Martin Walsh are credited as film editors —  the ceaseless globe-hopping of what appeared to be a video-game origin movie was starting to wear out my patience. 

Then, as Henk arrives in Russia, sometime around 1988, director Jon S. Baird slows the pace down. Written by Nick Pink, the opening portion of the film is merely a prelude to what happens to Henk when he seeks the sales rights from the game’s creator, Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov), stumbling into a hornet’s nest, where Communist Party security officials, the Russian beauracracy, Japanese interests, a software salesman, and Nintendo all compete against each other to acquire the rights to publish a video-game that would become a worldwide smash. 

After one viewing, I could not decipher the many layers of legitimate business dealings, as opposed to those cloaked in duplicitiy and criminality. How much of this “inspired by a true story” movie is, in fact, true, and how much is pumped-up artifice?

By the end of the movie, I did not care. 

Taron Egerton is very convincing as a good-hearted family man, married to a loving and supportive wife (Ayane Nagabuchi), with multiple adorable children, and doing his very best to pull off a deal to ensure their financial future. He’s the owner of a small software copmany in Japan, where he met his wife, has a working knowledge of the language, and also wants to keep his company viable for the sake of his devoted employees. 

Multiple other colorful supporting characters populate the film, which moves at a pace that slowly picks up speed and resembles a video game. 

But it’s a good video game, and one that is irresistible. 

The film opens Friday, March 24, in select theaters nationwide. In Dallas, it opens at Alamo Drafthouse Lake Highlands. It will be available to stream March 31 on Apple TV+. For more information about the film, visit the official site. 

Reviews

Review: ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,’ Much Ado About Nothing

Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathryn Newton and Michael Douglas star in a three-quel without equal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

O Ant-Man, Ant-Man, wherefore art thou Ant-Man? Oh no, not the Quantum Realm again!!

The latest Marvel movie extravaganza cleverly disguises itself as a continuation of the Ant-Man saga, rather than an introduction to the so-called Phase V of the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe. It features a slew of talented actors doing their very best to treat the extremely silly movie as though it were Serious And Actually Meant Something. 

The first few minutes are perfectly fine, as Scott Lang, the tiniest Avenger of them all, jauntily walks the streets of San Francisco, timed to the rhythm of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive,” as though it were the opening sequence for an updated, comic West Coast version of Saturday Night Fever (1977), only starring Paul Rudd rather than John Travolta. Instead, though, we hear “Welcome Back, Kotter,” which prompts comparisons to the sitcom, debuting in 1975, that served as a breakout role for … John Travolta. 

It’s not long before Ant-Man and his nuclear family — Hope van Dyne, aka the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), her parents, Hank and Janet (Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer, respectively) and Ant-Man’s daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton) — get sucked into the Quantum Realm, aka Several Large Indoor Studio Lots in Atlanta that are filled with colorful lights and shapes, representing millions of hours of dedicated artistry by thousands of workers throughout the world.  

The family is trapped there for centuries, aka Nearly The Movie’s Entire Running Time, where they perform magnificently under pressure and extreme stress, and also crack jokes, when time permits. They encounter Kang (Jonathan Majors), aka The Next Big Bad Villain Who Is Even More Evil And Powerful Than The Last Guy Who Destroyed The Universe. We don’t know why he’s so evil, except that Marvel needed a new villainous character to build their movies around. Also Jonathan Majors is a fierce presence, able to leap tall mountains in a single bound and also Do Anything He Wants To Do Before He’s A Marvel Supervillain. 

Really, the movie is divorced from reality, logic, and common sense, but I’m sure that everyone involved tried very, very hard to make a movie that everyone would want to see in movie theaters. Occasionally, the combined star power manages to pierce the animated atmosphere by wisecracking or evincing genuine humanity. And the story revolves around the importance of a strong family unit, which isn’t a bad thing at all in fighting off evil villains from another realm, if your entire family is superpowered. 

Moments of joy are few and far between for jaded adults, though younger ones may well find unbounded delight in the light show, as did one young person at the critics screening I attended last night. He continually beamed, often broke out in laughter and displayed not one iota of cynicism throughout the endless running time, which made it pass a little more quickly for me. 

Indeed, this movie may be perfect family entertainment. The IMAX presentation looks smashing and sounds spectacular. Never mind the ceaseless death and destruction. Let the kids go and enjoy. Just keep repeating to yourself: “It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie.” 

The film opens in Dallas, Fort Worth and surrounding cities on Friday, February 17, via Walt Disney. For more information about the film, visit the official site.

Reviews

Review: ‘The Son,’ Chronicles of Unhappiness

Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, and Anthony Hopkins star in an agonizing drama.

By all appearances, it’s a tragedy in the making. 

Unhappy Nicholas (Zen McGrath) lives unhappily with his unhappy mother, Kate (Laura Dern), and wants very much to live with his happy father, Peter (Hugh Jackman), nevermind that Peter entered into an adulterous affair with happy Beth (Vanessa Kirby), thereby ruining his marriage and breaking up the household. Peter now lives happily with Beth and their newborn infant, but upon hearing Nicholas’ plea, he quickly caves, overruling Beth’s natural concerns. 

Very soon, everyone is unhappy. 

Two years ago, Anthony Hopkins starred in The Father, an adaptation of an acclaimed French-language play by novelist Florian Zellner that was then translated into English by Christopher Hampton (Les Liaisons Dangereuses). Hampton wrote the screen version, helmed by Zellner in his feature directorial debut, and I was very much impressed by the film, which staged the lead character’s splintering existence “as a horrifying reality.” I could relate to it on a personal level, too. 

The film raised my expectations for The Son, which is adapted from Zellner’s stage play of the same name, which, like The Father, was translated into English by Christopher Hampton and staged in London. (In between the stage versions of The Father and The Son, The Mother premiered, but that’s not yet been adapted.) The script for the screen version is credited to both Zellner and Hampton, with Zellner once again directing. 

Unlike The Father, though, The Son is a forthright melodrama, and suffers from any comparison. Its narrative proceeds, inexorably depicting the slow self-strangulation of a teenager who is not merely unhappy, but is clinically depressed. Unable and unwilling to address Nicholas’ serious mental-health issue, Peter continues on his merry, busy way, leaving Nicholas in the hands of Beth, who is consumed with caring for their newborn child, and is already stressed out herself. 

Acting more out of guilt over his adulterous affair, which clearly destabilized the unsteady Nicholas in the first place, Peter steadfastly pursues his own career goals, while throwing money at Nicholas and pretending that he has any idea how to raise or help him. He thinks he is acting differently than his own father did, but in truth, he is acting just as horribly, though perhaps in a more dignified manner. 

It’s agonizing to watch the slow decline in Nicholas, whose simmering anger and seething resentment gradually becomes manifest, mostly expressed against the long-suffering Beth, who is trapped at home, while Peter skips above the fray. With a self-confidence born of his upbringing and professional success, Peter thinks he knows how to “fix” Nicholas, yet in truth, he hasn’t a clue. 

The actors all bring their anguished characters to life, which only makes watching them all dance toward doom all the more difficult to watch. It’s like watching a slow-motion automobile accident, frame by frame, without being able to do a thing to stop it. 

What made The Father freshly disturbing to watch was that it developed empathy for its characters in an unexpected, cinematic fashion. What makes The Son difficult to watch is that it evinces no sympathy for its beleaguered characters, and does so in a profoundly straightforward fashion. 

The film opens Friday, January 20, in Dallas, Frisco, Fort Worth, Garland, Grapevine, and Plano via Sony Pictures Classics. Get tickets here. For more information about the film, visit the official site. 

Reviews

Review: ‘Broker,’ Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, the absorbing drama stars Song Kang Ho.

'Broker' (Neon)

Who would sell a baby? More importantly: why? 

As he demonstrated in Shoplifters (2018), writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda knows that family units are not always bound by blood. Instead, some of the tightest families are those who come together for a single purpose, and then remain united for a variety of reasons, no matter the obstacles they may face.

His latest film, Broker, begins with a young woman (Lee Ji-eun) leaving a newborn child at a church’s so-called “baby box,” where loving care will, presumably, be provided thereafter. Except that two miscreants have been abusing the charitable provision for some time, stealing babies left in the overnight hours and then selling them on the black market. 

Sang-yeon (Song Kang Ho) runs a clothing repair shop and has a gambling problem; he has teamed with the younger Dong-soo (Gang Dong-wan), who works part-time at the church-run orphanage and serves as  his ‘inside man.’ They don’t know it, but they are under surveillance by two police officers, the more-experienced Soo-jin (Doona Bae) and the less-experienced Lee (Lee Joo-young), who have caught wind of their scheme and are determined to bring them to justice. 

On the night in question, Soo-jin and Lee are watching as the young woman, and follow up in the morning when she returns to the scene, where they observe her heading off with Sang-yeon and Dong-soo. Things do not go as planned, as the baby brokers, accompanied by the infant’s mother and, later, a young boy, traipse around South Korea in search of qualified buyers, with the police in slow pursuit. 

The film steadily becomes more absorbing as it moves forward, as the characters are gently fleshed out through casual conversations and memories that turn poignant, haunting, and wistful, sometimes all at the same time. Song Kang Ho, who led the family unit in the brilliant Parasite, here plays a man who isn’t much of a father, even of the criminal sort; mostly, he’s just someone who wants to do the right thing, but doesn’t know how to do it.  

The other actors are similarly fine, with Doona Bae showing a believably desperate side to match her steely determination. Cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo (Parasite, The Wailing, Burning) captures the grungy beauties of everyday life and gorgeous landscapes that appear also at random, as finely edited by the director himself. 

From the premise, it’s easy to expect something routine or tawdry. Hirokazu Kore-eda is not an ordinary filmmaker, however, as the simple yet profound Broker demonstrates yet again.

The film opens at Angelika Film Center in Dallas on Friday, January 13, via Neon. For more information about the film, visit Angelika’s official site.