Popcorn & Candy: Unlike a Rolling Stone
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
One could argue that in Mick Jagger's feature film debut, he's simply playing himself. Jagger plays Turner, a charismatic rock star living in a blissed-out drug haze with his two girlfriends, spending much of his time in bed with them and whomever else might pass through his sheets on any given night. The essential difference is that in 1968, when Performance was filmed, Jagger was at the top of his game; Turner is a dark mirror image of the star, an imagination of what might have happened had he lost his creative spark early and not captured enough fame to coast on his early success indefinitely. Turner lords over his house like a dark hippie king, but in reality he's plagued by fears of inadequacy and early burnout, and Jagger's performance in the movie is remarkably effective in that subtle regard.
For all the attention this movie always gets for Jagger, he's actually not the lead; the movie's central figure is Chas, played even more skillfully by James Fox, who nearly destroyed his career and his mind immersing himself into the character of a gangland thug on the run from his boss after he does some dirty work he was meant to keep his nose out of. When he ends up hiding out in the basement apartment of Turner's townhouse, the radical lifestyle change (and a timely dose of shrooms) blows his mind and his sense of self.
The film was a disaster in its time, held for release for two years after Warner couldn't figure out how to market a major rock star in such a subversive blend of graphic sex, violence, and drug use. Also complicating major distribution was the filmmaking itself. Editor Frank Mazzola was brought onboard (uncredited) to shuffle things around, and his choppy style of jump-cuts and chronological rearrangement can be as off-putting for some as it is exhilarating for others. Similarly, Jack Nitzsche's score is jarring in its use of screeching feedback and non-musical sounds to complement the music. And finally, there's the gorgeously dark, yet studiously unpolished look of the film, as imagined by co-directors Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg. The film served as the direct link between Roeg's previous career as a cinematographer, and in marking his transition to the director's chair, bears his distinctive visual stamp.
View the trailer
Friday through Monday at the AFI
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Michael Caine is receiving some of the best reviews of his life for his portrayal of Clarence, a career magician whose time pulling rabbits from hats is drawing to a close as he begins to experience the onset of dementia. At the rest home where he lives, he meets a 10-year-old boy (Son of Rambow's Bill Milner) also in residence there, the child of the home's owners, who has the sort of obsession with death and the afterlife one might expect from a kid who lives with roommates so prone to dying. The two form an unlikely friendship recalling Harold and Maude minus the sexual tension. This is the kind of material that can easily be done very badly, with a lot of maudlin hand-wringing, but on balance, the reviews seem to indicate that it side-steps that pitfall. Moreover, it's just great to see an actor of Caine's talent given a lead role at a time in his life when most actors are reduced to always playing the cranky grandpa.
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Opens tomorrow at E Street, Bethesda Row, Shirlington, and Cinema Arts in Fairfax.
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Another new movie taking potentially maudlin subject matter and reportedly doing an even better job of treating it with unsentimental realism is this Australian indie. Toni Collette stars as a mother with two teenage boys, the younger of which is severely autistic. The film focuses on the older brother as he attempts to care for his brother and navigate the shark-infested social waters of high school, particularly as he develops a relationship with a pretty blonde in his class. Director Elissa Down, who grew up with two autistic brothers, weaves her own history into a story that looks as if it succeeds based on her commitment to realistically portraying a family dealing with the difficulties inherent in this situation, and on the strength of the performance of Luke Ford as the autistic brother, Charlie.
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Opens tomorrow at The Avalon.
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This is included here not as a recommendation, but just to serve as a warning to all of those out there who are thinking of dropping their cash on the odds-on favorite for this week's box office championship: wait for DVD. The studio has already admitted that the leaked workprint that hit the torrent sites a few weeks ago was, in fact, not a different cut than that which is coming out tomorrow, just that its special effects were incomplete. Having seen that workprint, I can tell you that even if the unfinished effects come out spectacularly, they still can't save this from mediocrity. It's not particularly bad — in fact, it's far better than the third X-Men movie — it's just bland and fairly forgettable. Sure, Ryan Reynolds is actually quite good as Deadpool, and Hugh Jackman can do Wolverine effectively in his sleep by now. But Gambit's first appearance in the franchise is pretty much wasted, and overall it just lacks the smarts and flair that made X2 such a great comic book movie. And when the flick goes off the rails, it does so completely, as it does when, in a cringeworthy attempt at humor, it pits Wolvie in a boxing match in Vegas with The Blob, who is dressed in a fatsuit so pathetic your first thought will be that he's fighting Austin Powers' Fat Bastard. Save those geek dollars for seeing Star Trek at IMAX next week.
View the trailer
Opens all over the area tomorrow.
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We mentioned it yesterday on its own, but just to include it in this roundup: the 48 Hour Film Project is happening this weekend, and you can see the results of those fevered labors beginning on Tuesday of next week at the AFI.
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Last week, we incorrectly listed the starting time of tonight's grindhouse double feature at the Arlington Cinema 'n' Drafthouse as 6:30. That should actually have been 7:30.