Wild Horse Nine, the latest darkly funny slow-burn from Irish filmmaker Martin McDonagh, is his third with Searchlight Pictures and further cements his indispensable voice as both a writer and director. With a McDonagh movie, there’s no telling exactly where and when you’ll be but in any case, you’ll be in the presence of profane protagonists trying to make sense of their world. I’ve loved McDonagh’s work since his sharp-tongued feature-length debut In Bruges but since that film, I’ve come to even more appreciate just how evocatively he captures time and place with his stories. 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri perfectly captured the incendiary post-election mood in the American Heartland, while The Banshees Of Inisherin used the picturesque backdrop of an isle off Ireland during their Civil War to mirror interfriend strife.

His latest outing takes place on Easter Island in 1973, where CIA agents Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) are taking a break from their post in nearby Santiago. There, they’ve been keeping tabs on the newly-elected Chilean president and early in their trip, Chris plays fast-and-loose with privileged information around Monica (Mariana di Girolamo) and Alicia (Ailín Salas), two college students they meet in the airport. It’s a disturbing trend that Chris and Lee’s boss MJ (Steve Buscemi) has noticed, which is why he’s instructed Lee to keep Chris on a short leash as they sightsee the stone statues. In addition to keeping a lid on his mentor’s increasingly erratic behavior, Lee is also juggling his marriage with his stateside wife Marge (Parker Posey), who doesn’t know an hour that’s not happy hour.

McDonagh’s witty script, which opens with humorous sparring between Chris and Lee about their exploits in the agency, soon introduces a melancholic thread as we learn Chris has terminal cancer and may not make it off the Island. John Malkovich, who’s had a suspect on-screen résumé as of late, reminds us just how good he can be with an outstanding performance as an ailing agent whose years of high-profile espionage have caught up with him. One minute, Chris can be waxing poetic about the connections between functional democracies and good cheese and the next, he can be arranging a suicide codeword with Lee. As the conversations in McDonagh movies go, the interactions between two guys tend to have their edge but when Chris talks with the two students when they reconnect on the Island, there’s a resignation in his tone that’s earth-shattering.

Wild Horse Nine is more Wild Strawberries than The Wild Bunch but despite their foibles, McDonagh treats Chris and Lee a bit like cowboys of the Old West making their way across the frontier. They sort of glide over their conversations with non-CIA folk, with a confidence that they have knowledge about how things around them are soon to go down. They’ve had covert hands in seismic geopolitical events of the past ten years, including the assassinations of John Kennedy and Patrice Lumumba — Chris facetiously laments people only remember when white presidents are knocked off. For all their chatter, we’re reminded that these are stone-cold killers in both moments of poignant violence or even the suggestion of such action, as with a potentially lethal briefcase adorned with an goofily incongruous photo.

There are filmmakers who push themselves across various genres and shift their demeanors to the milieu in which they find themselves during each project. Naturally, some do this well, while most do not. In McDonagh’s filmography, his voice can always be heard loud and clear. If that means that he tackles similar plot elements and themes across his work, then it’s simply because he isn’t done commenting and expanding on them. When you’re dealing with lofty subjects like death, regret and loneliness, there’s so much room to iterate on them that I can’t blame McDonagh for continually circling back to them. There’s pleasure in seeing a debut come out of nowhere from an up-and-coming talent but there’s also comfort in knowing (to a degree) what you’re getting from an exemplary storyteller. When the credits rolled on Wild Horse Nine, I felt as though I’d spent two hours catching up with an old friend who I hope I don’t need to wait four years to see again.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Ebenezer, starring Johnny Depp and Rupert Grint, retells Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol as a miserly businessman is forced through visions of the past, present, and future during a supernatural journey toward a chance at redemption.
How To Rob A Bank, starring Nicholas Hoult and Zoë Kravitz, centers around a crew of bank robbers who have been using social media to document heists that they have pulled off, leading to pursuit from the police.
Victorian Psycho, starring Maika Monroe and Thomasin McKenzie, finds an eccentric young governess whose arrival at a remote gothic manor coincides with inexplicable disappearances within the staff there.

In his 40+ year career as an actor on screen, born-and-bred New Yorker John Turturro is best known for his memorable supporting turns but outside the films in which he’s directed himself, he has surprisingly few leading credits to his name. Fellow actor-turned-director Noah Segan adds one to his résumé with The Only Living Pickpocket In New York, a well-intentioned but underwhelming character study of a hustler who feels the tides of time turning against him. It’s a worthy theme but across its scant 85-minute runtime, the film doesn’t elaborate on it enough in the screenplay — also by Segan — to give the story richer resonance. This movie is the cinematic embodiment of the trope wherein an urbanite looks out his window at the changing cityscape, shakes his head and laments “this city used to be different…” under his breath.

Turturro stars in the title role (well, sort of; Simon & Garfunkel reference aside, I imagine there are actually other pickpockets still alive in the Big Apple) as Bronx-based thief Harry Lehman. We get a sense of his routine from the jump, as he bumps into a wealthy-looking businessman on the morning subway, lifts his wallet and watch and goes to his pawn shop mover Ben (Steve Buscemi) to see what he can get for the latter. That evening, he spots a mark in Dylan (Will Price), a young gun whose duffel bag Harry lifts from his vintage sports car. It turns out Dylan, the heir of a powerful criminal organization, was the wrong guy from whom to steal. Just because the crypto wallet in Dylan’s duffel has little value to Harry, who doesn’t even carry a cell phone, doesn’t make the almost $1 million in funds loaded on it any less valuable to Dylan. After Harry assumes it’s a worthless knick-knack and sells it, Dylan demands he return the stolen goods or suffer serious consequences.

Though most of The Only Living Pickpocket In New York involves Harry running from shop to shop throughout Manhattan and the stakes are clear, the movie doesn’t much register like a thriller. The laid-back jazzy score from Gary Lionelli and the handsome cinematography by Sam Levy give the proceedings a cosmopolitan, polished feel, despite the setting in the criminal underworld. It brings home the cool confidence that Harry seems to have, being an old hand at this who’s been grifting since before I was in diapers. But in doing so, the film forgoes a more pressing and urgent tone found in the 70s gritty, street-level capers like The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three and Mikey And Nicky upon which it seems to take inspiration. At least the absence of a pressured timbre allows for some nice character moments with the likes of other talented veteran actors like Buscemi and Giancarlo Esposito.

With the exception of Will Price as the cocky young mobster, all the performances work and make The Only Living Pickpocket In New York a pretty good hang for a while. Esposito plays Detective Allan Warren, who’s developed a bit of a symbiotic relationship with Harry in the years they’ve known one another. In their first scene together, they meet in a subway car and complain about arthritis and technology before Allan shows Harry some mugshot photos, in the hopes he’ll have info about the perps. Later on, Harry looks to Allan for the address of a pawn shop owner who may have the USB crypto key and Allan “accidentally” pushes his computer monitor towards Harry while going for coffee. I enjoyed their shared energy to the degree that I could’ve watched a whole movie centered around them over the other subplots, like Harry trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter or Harry taking on a protégé.

It’s in trying to tie these various plot threads together into one self-satisfied ending that Segan’s approach is as inelegant as a pickpocket who realizes he’s been caught and instead resorts to mugging. The film has one of those third acts that is mainly comprised of flashbacks to scenes where the main character was secretly working in the background to get the upper hand on the antagonist. But since Turturro is in pretty much every scene in the movie, it’s not a matter of the audience potentially getting distracted by other elements of the story as opposed to willfully obtuse editing. As good as the interplay between Harry and Allan is during their scenes, the proper ending to their story is so ham-fisted that it actually made me chuckle. I’m sure The Only Living Pickpocket In New York will play just fine when it’s available to watch on Netflix in a few months but as a theatrical excursion, it’s not worth the across-town scramble.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Cat in the Hat, starring Bill Hader and Matt Berry, is an animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ classic tale about a magical creature who is tasked with cheering up a pair of glum siblings who struggle with their move to a new town.
Wild Horse Nine, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, finds a pair of CIA agents whose assignment in Easter Island shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup d’etat is threatened by interloping from a pair of rebellious students.
Drummer Boy, starring Joel David Smallbone and Lucas Leach, is a historical musical drama set during the Revolutionary War, which finds a set of brothers with divided loyalties between the American and British Armies.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

At the risk of suggesting that Alejandro González Iñárritu change the first letter in the title of his catastrophe (and nigh-catastrophic) comedy Digger, the auteur’s latest swing for the fences could just as easily be called Bigger. Shot on VistaVision for premium formats and carrying a budget that bubbled up to $180 million after production delays, the distended satire at least has the courtesy to let you see where all of that money ended up. The immaculate production design, led by Academy Award winner Dennis Gassner and Richard Johnson, is some of the finest you’re likely to see this year — any year, really. Every frame is so rich with detail, so packed with visual clues into how this exquisite world revolves, the film practically flows off the edges of the screen and extends infinitely in every direction. It’s the digging beyond this spectacular surface that proves perilous.

In his most intrepid performance since 2008’s Tropic Thunder, Tom Cruise leads the way as Digger Rockwell, a rowdy, rootin’ tootin’ oil tycoon who oversees extraction facilities all over the world. After brushing off numerous warnings from his team in Greenland, methane released from drilling the ice below the production plant has led to a massive explosion. Now, not only is their platform on fire but a gigantic ice shelf has separated from the coast and, according to Rockwell United’s Head of Environmental Safety and Security Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), is on its way to Norway. With no time to waste, U.S. President Compson (John Goodman) and members of his cabinet rush over to Digger’s mansion and put their heads together as to how to run damage control before the rogue iceberg spells disaster for European sea levels.

By design, Iñárritu positions Cruise, and his larger-than-life persona on and off the screen, at the epicenter of Digger and for the film’s opening stretch, it’s a gamble that mostly pays off. Peripheral characters, like Digger’s sister Emma (Sandra Hüller) and his assistant Lina (Emma D’Arcy), float in and out of his orbit as he scrambles from one lavish room to another. Before the fracking fracas commences, the morning’s first emergency is the immediate health concerns of Digger’s geriatric cat Maggie and it’s immediately clear he doesn’t take bad news well. When the on-call veterinarian comes in to give the latest on her myriad ailments, Digger hastily fires him and seeks the counsel of his personal doc instead; “Yes, you are an expert, and you are not remotely afraid to disappoint me,” Digger barks at the vet before dismissing him.

It’s not surprising that the primary Digger trailer that’s been playing in theaters the past few months has literally been two and a half minutes of a Tom Cruise retrospective, followed by 30 seconds of actual footage from the movie. There’s star power, there’s bankability and then there’s whatever level of religious-adjacent fervor Cruise and his team are hoping to inspire with this marketing. The miscalculation is in putting the type of character he’s playing as the film’s gravitational force, since Digger is quite a chore to spend long periods of time with. If you look at Cruise’s most “off-brand” roles, like Les Grossman from the aforementioned Tropic Thunder or his tell-it-like-it-is pickup artist from Magnolia, there’s a reason these fellas aren’t our protagonists. Cruise is working as hard here as when he’s performing his death-defying stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise but Iñárritu and his three credited co-writers don’t have his back.

Early on, Digger treats a subordinate to an anecdote about how he hit a home run as a kid in the only one of his baseball games that his grandfather attended. He wasn’t impressed, commenting that hitting it out of the park is easy but actually having to run the bases for a triple is more challenging: “Triples is what’s impressive. Triples requires hustle,” he determined. It’s a meta commentary not only on Cruise and the effort he puts into his work but also on Iñárritu and his career. If winning back-to-back Best Director Oscars for Birdman and The Revenant in the mid-2010s qualify as his “home runs”, then Bardo and now Digger solidify that he’s in his “triples” era. They’re not films that work for everyone but he’s certainly working hard to make them happen. The same can be said for Warner Bros., whose big bets on visionary directors also gave us two of last year’s best films in One Battle After Another and Sinners. Digger marks the studio’s final release before their imminent acquisition by Paramount Skydance and while the shift in strategies remains uncertain, I’ll miss their triples.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Other Mommy, a supernatural horror film starring Jessica Chastain and Jay Duplass, which follows a mother who must do everything to protect her 8-year-old daughter from a supernatural entity that resembles her.
Also coming to theaters is The Social Reckoning, a legal thriller starring Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White, which tells the true story of a young Facebook engineer and a Wall Street Journal reporter working together to blow the whistle on the social network’s most guarded secrets.
Streaming on Netflix is Animals, a crime thriller starring Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington, centering around a mayoral candidate and his wife as they resort to extreme measures in paying the ransom for their kidnapped son.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

He breaks through the curtains, like a superhero. He knows his lines, he hits his mark. His name is Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC, and since he’s played in the compulsively watchable thriller Primetime by Robert Pattinson, it’s hard not to think of Batman as he proceeds down the stairs of a Long Beach home in 2006. The low camera angles and deliberate pace of his steps connote dominance but Pattinson’s not dealing with the Rogues Gallery he squared off against in 2022’s The Batman. Instead, it’s a would-be child predator (played by Tony Revolori), who has a seat, right over there, helpless as Hansen slowly reveals the trap he’s walked into. Anyone familiar with To Catch A Predator, the hidden camera phenomenon that ran for three seasons in the mid-aughts, has seen this scene before but you’ve never seen it quite like this.

Given the response from the real-life Hansen, who has predictably made quite the stink about Primetime in the press, perhaps the biggest surprise director Lance Oppenheim offers in his narrative feature film debut is parity in screen time for the numerous forces behind Predator machine. There’s Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), the show’s executive producer, who manages the delicate logistics behind the sting operations that make up the climax of each episode. We meet Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo), an actor looking for his first real credit so he can score that SAG card, who gets more than he bargained for when he’s cast as a “decoy” to lure in potential pedophiles. Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher), the founder of the vigilante group Perverted-Justice, poses as a minor in online chat rooms to get the perverts to agree to meet in real life.

What Primetime isn’t is an exposé about how everyone who worked on this show, which took on the tricky task of attempting to thwart sexual criminals before they could act, is bad and wrong. I think it’s fair to say a film that moralized that unambiguously would seem foolish and somewhat pointless. Instead, Oppenheim and his screenwriter Ajon Singh (adapting from the Luke Dittrich article “Tonight On Dateline This Man Will Die”) use the pursuit to make To Catch A Predator a hit an allegory for the corrupting influence of fame and money on ridding the world of evil. Much like the reality series it’s covering, the movie gradually becomes less interested in punishing pedophilia through the justice system and more attuned to the insatiable bloodlust of network execs and viewers alike. A conversation Hansen has with a plane passenger, played by a face that will be familiar to those who watched sitcoms around the Predator era, highlights how audiences came to desire violence for the perps over their day in court.

Like Marty Supreme last year, which incidentally sported Robert Pattinson in an uncredited voice cameo, Primetime features audacious casting choices that further bolster its bonafides as an ensemble piece. Bokeem Woodbine is a hoot, as always, as a Texas sheriff who is so revved up to catch him a pederast that he brandishes a comically oversized pistol and promises to do the job himself. Singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers proves she could have more cinematic roles in her future with a nice turn as a decoy that schools Dan in the ways of vocal manipulation for phone calls with the creeps. Somehow, Oppenheim even convinced NBCUniversal executive Jeff Zucker to portray an exaggerated version of himself as he pushes Hansen and Bender to compete against ABC’s Wednesday night juggernaut LOST.

Even though it’s an important meeting, Hansen is actually a few minutes late to it, sparring with his wife (played by Anna Faris) over the phone while glaring at a dangling Rice Krispie Treat in the vending machine in front of him. He hangs up on her, not to run to the face-to-face, but to call the vending service number and protest that one of their machines stole from him. It’s a perfect encapsulation of Hansen’s twisted sense of priority when it comes to right and wrong in the universe and Pattinson plays his pomposity perfectly. Merritt Wever is stellar as his collaborating producer who sees his talent and knows how to wrangle his savior complex but slowly reveals her exasperation at having to constantly smooth over his smug demeanor. Primetime isn’t the measured look at To Catch A Predator that last year’s spellbinding documentary Predators is but it’s certainly an electrifying white whale tale.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Digger, starring Tom Cruise and Riz Ahmed, finds a power-mad wealthy oil tycoon embark on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.
Verity, starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, follows a ghostwriter hired to complete the work of a bestselling author who’s unable to continue her successful book series due to a mysterious accident she’s kept from the public.
Opening at Cinema Center is The History Of Concrete, an idiosyncratic documentary from the creator of How To With John Wilson that turns into a humorous and philosophical exploration of urbanism, the built environment, and the mundane textures of American life.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup