MOVIES: Rust with Alec Baldwin finally arrives but can't shake the accident he caused

National Observer

09-05-2025

The big news, shocker actually, in the movie world this week was Donald Trump's plan to impose a 100% tariff on some movies. So called runaway productions seem to be the main target. Films that could have been made in the US but went elsewhere to save money. Hello BC, Ontario and many other places. Think how often Vancouver has played Seattle, and Toronto has pretended to be Chicago. Marvel movies generally film in the UK. It goes on and on.
How it'll work is not clear at all. The best outline of the plan that I've read so far is at the entertainment website DEADLINE which reported on the ideas Trump got from the actor Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy, etc. etc.). You can read about them here:
Hollywood North will hurt but so will the streamers like Netflix and the smaller independent films especially will really hurt. There'll be fewer of those made, I've seen predicted. Ironically several are on my list today, although I start with this:
Rust: 3
Marcella: 3 ½
The Luckiest Man in America: 4
Clown in a Cornfield: 2 ½
Lucky Star: 3 ½
Unit 234: 3
Fight or Flight: 3
RUST: Alec Baldwin escaped the involuntary murder charge but his movie remains seriously damaged. Who can think about anything else but that he fired the gun that killed a woman cinematographer during the filming? How many want to see the film? That's too bad because, even though it has problems, it has some good ideas and nicely recreates the atmosphere of classic western movies. It starts like Shane and then shows a dark side of the old west, like Unforgiven, maybe. 'The only order that exists in this world is the order that we impose,' says one character. There's not enough in this story.
Baldwin plays Harland Rust who has a sketchy and violent history but tries to atone by doing right. He breaks his grandson (Patrick Scott McDermott) out of jail to save him from hanging after a false conviction for accidentally shooting a rancher. Since he had had arguments with him, the court took the easy route and assumed it was a deliberate act. Rust offers to take him to Mexico and off they ride with a hopped-up sheriff's posse and fanatical bounty hunters in pursuit.
The script brings in ideas that it doesn't integrate. A woman lawyer and distant relative (Frances Fisher) arrives but doesn't do much. There's talk on the ride south about Indian territory and wrongs done there, but only talk. And through the whole film there are biblical references, like a bounty hunter's assertion that he is 'God's angel of wrath.' Oddly, there's also a reference to Plato. And, of course, more gunplay, plus an ironic bit. Rust shows how to properly handle a gun. Joel Souza directed the film. Not all of it though. He was wounded by Baldwin's shot. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
MARCELLA: Many a home kitchen library contains the book Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking and it is cited as 'definitive.' The woman who wrote it, Marcella Hazan, is credited with teaching people in North America about the best of Italian cuisine and with her simple recipes learn how to cook it. This film tells you who she was. Born in Italy, worked as a teacher, brought to the US in the 1950s by the man she married, Victor Hazan, who had already been living there and met her when he went back for a visit. She had two science degrees but in the US her lack of English held her back. As a housewife she was eager to please her husband and learned to cook. That had always been inside her, she said, and just needed to come out.
Then she held small cooking classes which Craig Claiborne at the New York Times noticed and promoted. Julia Child noticed too, introduced her to her publisher and Marcella, with her husband doing the writing, produced the first book that's become so classic.
Those are bare facts, which include a return to Italy, for a while running a cooking class there and then a return to the US, to Florida. We get to appreciate what drove her. Part of that was overcoming a childhood accident that permanently maimed one of her hands. She refused to let that deter her, according to people in the film, including her son Giuliano, who has become a cookbook author himself. The other part was her love of Italian culture and food and her compulsion to see it done right. Foodies will love this film. (In theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
THE LUCKIEST MAN IN AMERICA: You'll have a very entertaining hour and half watching this true story and get a touching personal story as well. It's set in 1984 when a hapless overweight guy (Paul Walter Hauser ) who modestly describes himself as an air conditioning repair man and an ice cream truck driver applies to be a contestant on a CBS-TV game show called Press Your Luck. One of the producers (David Strathairn) recognizes a potential audience favorite and puts him on fast.
He's watched the show often with his daughter. He knows it and starts winning. And keeps winning. Over $100,000 the last time I noticed. The TV executives are alarmed. How can he do it? Is he cheating? Can they forget the audience and stop him? While that's going on, we sense there's a story behind it all. During a break, he wanders into another studio and into a live interview where he talks about feeling rejected by people he loves. We later learn that appearing on the show is a solution for him, but in a surprising way. The film which started out light and comical turns plaintive and affecting. Samir Oliveros directed; Walton Goggins plays the show MC and there's an unexpected cameo by Johnny Knoxville, of all people. (Now available from several digital services) 4 out of 5
CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD: It was Roger Ebert who named the genre: 'the dead teenager movie.' It, and its variations, is back. A new Final Destination arrives next week, I Know What You Did Last Summer soon after, and this matter-of-course example, now. Teens go for them. They deal with generational divide, disrespect from adults and their own feelings of victimhood. What better way to show all that than getting them terrified and killing them off one by one. The deaths here aren't as graphic as in some of these films; they come suddenly and startle more than gross out. And they're often combined with or surrounded by humor. The film is milder than some, as directed by Eli Craig. He made it in Winnipeg, lives in Vancouver and incidentally, is a son of Sally Field. (Off topic, but fun to mention).
Based on a popular novel, the film gives us Quinn (Katie Douglas) who, after her mother dies, moves with her dad from Philadelphia to a small mid-western town where he becomes the local doctor. She gets mixed up with a cool crowd at school including a rich boy (Carson MacCormac) and a blonde girl who resents her arrival. A teacher criticizes her unfairly and the local sheriff (Will Sasso, also from B.C.) advises her to stay away from that crowd. The problem is they mock the town, once the home of a syrup factory, now burned down. The teens produce U-tube videos showing its former mascot as a killer clown. Then it appears for real, first in a video, then in the cornfield where the teens go to play and then several at once coming out from the corn plants. The deaths follow but a later attempt to put a deeper meaning and explanation to all this is too sketchy. The killings are the main attraction. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5
LUCKY STAR: The Chinese are avid gamblers. By reputation anyway. This film based in Alberta takes up that idea as background to a family drama that could take place in any culture. That's even though the characters are all Chinese and the writer-director, Gillian McKercher, is half-Chinese. The story could resonate anywhere.
The father in this family (Terry Chen) has been convinced to give up his gambling addiction. He's asked about it constantly and says, yes, he's not gone back. But as the owner of small repair shop, he's short of money and his problems just keep coming. His wife (Olivia Cheng) asks if he's paid the mortgage, the suggestion clearly is that he's liable to miss doing that. His car is towed and he can't get it back until he pays all his outstanding parking tickets. When he's pressed about what he owes on his income tax, he falls for a scam. He borrows money, sends it off but it disappears. That draws him back to gambling. He finds a high-stakes game but is warned that the host 'can be a hard ass.' The real crux of this story is what it does to his family. McKercher says in Chinese society that would be secret, not talked about outside. Here, the wife takes a stand. This is a very smart film with no easy answers. (In theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
UNIT 234: Do you like movies with twists and surprises? Check this one out because here they keep coming. Several people turn out not to be what you think. Incidents are not what they seem. And a note in the end credits could also qualify as a surprise. It says this is a Canadian film, set in Florida but filmed in the Cayman Islands. I wonder what Trump and Voight would think of that.
The story takes place in a venue that's unusual in the movies: a self-storage facility. In one unit there a man found unconscious on a stretcher. He's got a wound; a kidney has been taken from him. The young woman who owns the place (Isabelle Fuhrman) and wants to keep it going to honor her father who left it to her is stuck working alone this weekend and having to deal with this problem. It immediately gets worse. Some thugs want the man's body; they're sent by a businessman played by Don Johnson and we think we know why because he's coughing repeatedly. When the comatose man (Jack Huston) comes to and asks 'Where am I?' we get his story, something about organ transplants for profit, his rare blood type and being passed from buyer to buyer. Even that doesn't explain much as we later find out. Or as one character says: 'We're all guilty of something.' The movie, directed by Andy Tennant, is improbable but compelling. (Video on demand) 3 out of 5
FIGHT OR FLIGHT: Here's a film that doesn't bother with sublety, character development or even explanation. Action is what is has to draw you in, from a frenetic fight on an airplane at the start to an over-the-top bit of ultraviolence at the end. And a mystery in between that's so improbable that it's almost absurd. But don't let that dissuade you. This is a brisk bit of fun.
Josh Hartnett stars as a disgraced ex-intelligence agent for the US now moping and drinking in Bangkok. But the woman who caused his ouster from the CIA (Katee Sackhoff) now needs him back. She has no one else in Bangkok on short notice. She offers to clear his reputation if he just does this: get on a plane for San Francisco (a passport is e-mailed) and find a computer hacker called The Ghost who'll be on the same flight. Seem like everybody has heard that too and there are several assassins who'll also be on that plane. Josh has to keep the Ghost alive.
It's the kind of story screenwriters dream up. First-time director James Madigan, who's background is in special effects, delivers it with a propulsive pace, lots of on-board intrigue and sprightly dialogue. Josh associates with two of the in-flight crew (Charithra Chandrand Danny Ashok)--who turn out to be suspicious--and fights off attacks by the assassins in various areas of the plane. Not much realism here but lots of action and comedy. (In theaters) 3 out of 5