Newsletter: Indie Focus: Crossing the spectrum with ‘John Wick: Chapter 2,’ ‘A United Kingdom’ and ‘Fifty Shades Darker’
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
It’s a busy time of year, as we shake off Sundance, look ahead to SXSW and Oscar season rolls right along. The Times’ Josh Rottenberg had a great sitdown with three Oscar-nominated directors, behind the films “Moonlight,” “Manchester by the Sea” and “La La Land,” to hear them talk about movies and the season. This talk with Barry Jenkins, Kenneth Lonergan and Damien Chazelle is a great read.
Of his first time in the awards-season spotlight, Jenkins said, “It’s definitely a deer-in-the-headlights feeling, but you kind of get used to it after a while. It’s weird to process. I don’t understand everything that’s going on, and I don’t have control over anything that’s going on.”
We’re excited that our first Indie Focus Screening Series event of the year on Wednesday will feature the 2017 Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize winner, “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.” We’re extra excited to have the film’s star, Melanie Lynskey, a longtime favorite around these parts, for a Q&A after the movie. And we’ve got at least one more event in the works for March. Keep an eye out at events.latimes.com if you want to spot what we’re up to.
‘John Wick: Chapter 2’
This time of year can leave you feeling like a strange forager at the movie theater, scrounging around for whatever you can get. This week brings a series of releases that run the gamut from genuinely good to so-bad-it’s-good to actually bad. Which is which is up to you.
Take “John Wick: Chapter 2.” The 2014 Keanu Reeves action film has become a critical favorite for its stripped-down tough-guy action and plot-motivating puppy. The sequel is arriving on a wave of high expectations and enormous goodwill. Audiences are hungry for fun right now, and the movie seems to deliver.
For The Times, Justin Chang wrote that stuntman-turned-filmmaker Chad Stahelski “films action scenes in much the same way Stanley Donen filmed dance sequences: in long, meticulously choreographed shots that allow us to savor the poetry of the human body in motion.”
Justin added, “And Keanu Reeves? He remains a cinematic law unto himself, an avatar of soulful kick-assery who — mockery be damned — might just be the most watchable movie star of his generation. … Reeves is, like the movie around him, a stunning object of contemplation.”
Josh Rottenberg sat down with Reeves and costar Laurence Fishburne. Regarding all that the character goes through in the film, Reeves said, “Chad takes great pleasure in really messing John Wick up: hit him with a car, throw him through windows, have him get shot. But I think that’s one of the reasons you root for the guy. Yeah, he’s got this huge myth and he’s ultra-dangerous, but he’s vulnerable. It’s not quite James Bond.”
For the AP, Lindsey Bahr calls the film “improbably fun” while adding, “Both ‘John Wick’ films are sendups of the tasteless excess of B-action pics and all-out celebrations of their vulgarity. ‘Chapter 2’ is the best one could hope for in an action sequel. … The only real question is when we’ll get the gift of a ‘Chapter 3.’”
At MTV, Amy Nicholson noted, “The fights are fantastic. But what makes ‘John Wick: Chapter 2’ special is those moments of quiet. … Any pulp flick can make a man bleed. Stahelski smartly keeps the focus on this universe’s crazy culture.”
In an ecstatic review for RogerEbert.com, Angelica Jade Bastién asked, “Has a film ever left you so joyful and drunk on adrenaline that it made you more hopeful about the world? Has a lead performance in an action film ever had such balletic grace it made you marvel at the possibilities of the human body itself?”
Bastién also wrote “The Grace of Keanu Reeves,” an insightful overview of Reeves career for Bright Wall/Dark Room.
‘A United Kingdom’
With his charisma and commitment to each role, David Oyelowo has simply become one of the most exciting actors to watch over the last few years. That he seems dedicated to making sure his work also has a social relevance only heightens that sense of energetic ambition. On “A United Kingdom,” he teams with filmmaker Amma Asante (who made the terrific “Belle”) and costar Rosamund Pike, in the fact-based story of an African prince who married a white Englishwoman in the late 1940s.
For The Times, Kenneth Turan calls the film “a romantic drama that grows more remarkable by the minute.”
Oyelowo spoke to The Times’ Tre’vell Anderson about the movie. On what the film might have to say about this country’s current political climate, Oyelowo said it might serve to “be reminded right now that love can overcome so much of the ugliness that is in the world, whether politically or from families that disagree. When you are operating from a place of love, it’s extraordinary what can be overcome.”
At the New York Times, Glenn Kenny declared Oyelowo “the best reason to see ‘A United Kingdom,’” while lauding his performance for “a disarming delicacy and vulnerability that make the strengths he is later forced to show all the more convincing. It is remarkable, genuinely riveting work.”
At LA Weekly, April Wolfe noted, “The story’s a wildly interesting history lesson on African poverty, the rise of apartheid in the late 1940s and Britain’s passive role in separating Botswana’s blacks from whites. But here all that complexity plays more Disney than drama … [turning] love into a montage and politics into a trite cartoon of good vs. evil.”
‘Land of Mine’
An Oscar nominee in the foreign language film category, the film “Land of Mine” tells of a little-known episode from the post-World War II history of Denmark. In the film, written and directed by Martin Zandvliet, young German POWs, some little older than 15, are forced to arduously undertake the dangerous task of removing mines from a beach.
Reviewing the movie for The Times, Kenneth Turan called the film “crisply and efficiently put together” while going on to praise it for its “inherent edge-of-your-seat concern about what kind of damage the bombs will inflict on which of these boys, but it is the psychological qualities of the situation that hold the greatest interest.”
At the New York Times, A.O. Scott noted that the story sets up an ethical tension between justice and vengeance and goes on to say that Zandvliet “tackles these themes in a way that is both effective and conventional. The ever-present danger of an explosion — and the certainty that someone is going to be blown up at some point — creates an undercurrent of dread that the director does not hesitate to manipulate. He takes a messy, murky reality and wraps it up into a compact narrative that is just a little too neat.”
‘Fifty Shades Darker’
Personally, I was interested in seeing the sequel “Fifty Shades Darker” out of curiosity for how director James Foley would handle both the style following up on Sam Taylor-Johnson’s work on the previous film and the storytelling of author E.L. James’ firm ideas of how she wants her books adapted to the screen. Lead actress Dakota Johnson transforms both films by seeming to be both giving an earnest performance and an ironic commentary on her own movie at the same time.
The reviews of the new film have brought out the best from the critical community, who seem to have all enjoyed the film while also acknowledging it is not, by any standard definitions of the concept, a good movie.
Reviewing the film for The Times, Kenneth Turan noted that “the darkest thing about this continuation of the story of domineering billionaire Christian Grey and his spunky romantic sparring partner Anastasia Steele are the black looks of audience members wondering where even the slight charms of the first picture have gone to.”
He added, “Despite its determination to make us gasp, ‘Fifty Shades Darker’ is finally too decorous for its own good. The most shocking information it conveys is the assurance that yet a third film, ‘Fifty Shades Freed,’ is exactly a year away. You have been warned.”
At the New York Times, Manohla Dargis declared the new film “almost bad enough to recommend” while adding “it’s always instructive to watch how many different ways one movie can go wrong and to guess what happened between a first feature and a second.”
At the Guardian, Catherine Shoard said, “The only thing aroused by this headache of a movie is a desire to see Sam Taylor-Johnson back at the reins … Taylor-Johnson’s genius was to handle such batty trash with pace and class. This time round, there’s neither.”
Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.
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