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2 days ago
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‘Our Hero, Balthazar' Review: Asa Butterfield and Jaeden Martell in an Unnerving Dark Comedy About American Gun Culture
Social media identities, gun laws and the blue state/red state divide are but some of the issues touched on in Our Hero, Balthazar, the zeitgeist-tapping dark comedy receiving its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Alternately disturbing and brutally funny, and ending with the sort of capper that perfectly encapsulates its provocative ethos, this marks an auspicious directorial debut for Oscar Boyson. Not that it's particularly surprising, considering that the tyro director, who co-scripted with Ricky Camilleri, has previously produced such edgy films as Good Time and Uncut Gems. This effort, whose title is a sly riff on Robert Bresson's classic Au Hasard Balthazar, follows in the tradition of those Safdie brothers films that are designed to make you feel uncomfortable. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'State of Firsts' Review: Trans Congresswoman Sarah McBride Steps Into the Spotlight for a Doc That's More Than Your Average Political Puff Piece 'Andy Kaufman Is Me' Review: Solid but Unrevelatory Doc Uses Puppetry to Tackle the Iconic Comic 'Boy George & Culture Club' Review: An Affectionate Look at the '80s Band and Its Flamboyant Frontman That Entertains but Treads Too Carefully The title character, superbly played by Jaeden Martell (It, Knives Out), is the sort of rich Manhattan youngster with an indulgent mother (Jennifer Ehle), his own personal life coach (Noah Centineo), and a tony private school education. Social causes don't interest him, but a fellow classmate, Eleanor (Pippa Knowles), very much does. The two become friendly when they both play victims in a mass shooting simulation at their school, each covered in fake blood. Eleanor's pet cause is gun prevention, so to impress her, Balthazar, or Balthy for short, begins organizing protests and posting emotional videos on the subject online, his acting skills rising to the fore. But Eleanor quickly figures out that he's not really being sincere. 'Are you actually crying?' she asks him after watching one of his tearful videos. 'I think it's nice to be part of a community,' he says. Balthy's postings come to the attention of a young man in Texas, who taunts him and reveals his intention to commit a mass shooting at his school. In a daring stylistic move, the film then segues to introduce us to Balthy's online tormentor, Solomon, an aspiring 'supplement salesman' who doesn't even have any luck attempting to sell the guns his father gave him because they're lacking serial numbers. He's the sort of lost young man who angrily but unconvincingly denies that he's an incel. And he's brilliantly played by Asa Butterfield (Hugo, Sex Education), nearly unrecognizable with blond hair and goatee, in a revelatory performance. Convinced that Solomon will make good on his threat, Balthy impulsively travels to Texas and strikes up an IRL relationship with him, looking like a fish out of water. Despite their obvious differences, the two have a strange rapport, with Solomon teaching the urbanite how to shoot guns and telling him, 'You might be the first person I met who's weirder than me.' Balthy finds himself meeting Solomon's loving, invalid grandmother (the always good Becky Ann Baker) and abusive father (Chris Bauer). He also quickly figures out that Solomon is hardly the threat he claimed to be. 'I thought you were a school shooter!' he exclaims disgustedly. But things inevitably take a darker, violent turn that results in tragedy and a supremely ironic ending. Director Boyson expertly balances satirical social commentary with emotional truth and complex characterizations, infusing the proceedings with a Hal Ashby-style deadpan dark humor. Channeling the anxieties of a younger generation so infused by online culture that they have trouble separating fantasy and reality, Our Hero, Balthazar is very much a film of its moment. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
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2 days ago
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‘The Best You Can' Review: Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick Star in a Congenial but Unremarkable Dramedy About an Unlikely Friendship
Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick bring their vivid screen presence and expert timing to The Best You Can, elevating this low-key, Tribeca-premiering dramedy. With strong performances and a fresh premise about an unexpected friendship in middle age, but far too many creaky comic tropes, the uneven film is always watchable but never pops off the screen in a gripping way. It's the second feature written and directed by Michael J. Weithorn, a co-creator of The King of Queens and a veteran writer on other sitcoms. It's simply descriptive and not a disparagement to say that with its often strained plot and quick-hit sitcom timing, the film is most likely to appeal to an undemanding audience and an older demographic. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Our Hero, Balthazar' Review: Asa Butterfield and Jaeden Martell in an Unnerving Dark Comedy About American Gun Culture 'State of Firsts' Review: Trans Congresswoman Sarah McBride Steps Into the Spotlight for a Doc That's More Than Your Average Political Puff Piece 'Andy Kaufman Is Me' Review: Solid but Unrevelatory Doc Uses Puppetry to Tackle the Iconic Comic Sedgwick plays Cynthia, whose brilliant husband, Warren (Judd Hirsch, reliably on point), once on the staff of the Watergate committee, is now 83 and sliding into dementia. At the start she appears overly chatty and hyper, a character trying too hard for comic effect — especially when she first meets Stan, a security guard. Bacon slides easily into the role of Stan, but his character is also introduced as a comic cliché. In the most blatant of the sitcom-style tropes, Stan has a prostate problem and while patrolling neighborhoods at night uses shrubbery as a makeshift urinal. When the alarm in Cynthia's house goes off and calls him to the scene, he urgently asks to use her bathroom — and what a coincidence, she is the perfect person to treat his problem, as she announces with fluttery, over-the-top enthusiasm. The forced comedy calms down a bit when they also begin a friendship, often through text messages, which the actors deliver in voiceover. Cynthia tells Stan about grappling with her husband's situation, and he confides in her about his fraught relationship with his daughter, Sammi (Brittany O'Grady), a struggling singer-songwriter who lacks confidence. The text technique works more gracefully than in most films, but again lame stabs at humor intrude. As they get to know each other, Cynthia asks if Stan is in touch with his ex-wife, and he texts back, 'Only by voodoo doll.' Yikes. As the friendship between Stan and Cynthia develops, it has some touching moments. Sedgwick lets us see how much Cynthia still loves and is devoted to her husband, and also how lonely his condition has made her. And Bacon is so vibrant as the intelligent, sharp-witted Stan that he makes you wish Weithorn's screenplay had done more to fill in the character's backstory. How did this guy turn out to be such an underachiever and such an awkward father? Wisely, the film acknowledges but doesn't overplay the inevitable romantic overtones the friendship takes on. And Bacon and Sedgwick never let their status as a well-known married couple in real life intrude on their character's delicate, tentative relationship. Each gets a long, emotional monologue near the end that they deliver with smooth naturalism. It's easy to imagine how much more pedestrian the film would have been with lesser actors in those roles. Weithorn gets strong performances from the supporting cast, notably O'Grady, whose brief musical scenes as Sammi are solid additions to the film. The father-daughter relationship may be the film's most believable, as we see that Stan means well and tries to encourage her but says all the wrong things. Olivia Luccardi plays Stan's younger sometime-hookup, whose sexting with him is played for some effective laughs. Ray Romano appears in a brief cameo in a video call as a doctor friend of Cynthia's who advises her on Warren's condition. And Meera Rohit Kumbhani, as Warren's caregiver, has one of the film's stronger more unexpected twists when it turns out she has recorded the memories he is still able to recapture. If only the film had risen to that level of surprise and emotional poignancy more often, with more of the wistfulness that comes to infuse Cynthia and Stan's friendship and with humor that was less eye-rolling. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
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2 days ago
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‘Inside' Review: Guy Pearce Is a Lit Fuse of Internal Contradictions in Haunting Australian Prison Drama
The suffocating environment of a prison system depicted with maximum authenticity makes a combustible setting for Inside, a drama exploring inherited damage via three different convicted felons, each of them trying in his own way to circumvent a fate seemingly written in their DNAs. Offering further evidence that Guy Pearce, following The Brutalist and The Shrouds, has become one of our most gifted and versatile actors, Charles Williams' feature debut shapes a volatile triangle of broken men, fleshed out by an astonishing Cosmo Jarvis and impressive newcomer Vincent Miller. While not directly inspired by his own experiences, Williams drew on his working-class upbringing with family members in and out of prison and a father who disappeared from his life at age 12 to shape a view that's honest and unflinching but also tempered by compassion. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'The Best You Can' Review: Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick Star in a Congenial but Unremarkable Dramedy About an Unlikely Friendship 'Our Hero, Balthazar' Review: Asa Butterfield and Jaeden Martell in an Unnerving Dark Comedy About American Gun Culture 'State of Firsts' Review: Trans Congresswoman Sarah McBride Steps Into the Spotlight for a Doc That's More Than Your Average Political Puff Piece Inside is not the usual story of damnation or redemption, of the unbreakable cycles of crime or even the virtues of rehabilitation, like Sing Sing. Nor is it another attempt to grapple with the legacy of Australia's penal colony history. Instead, it's a bleak, often intensely heavy psychological character study, though not without fully earned glimpses of hope. The narrator whose voiceover passages bind the drama is 18-year-old Mel Blight (Miller), who has aged out of the juvenile detention center where he killed another kid in a violent outburst. A wobbly home video shows the wedding of Mel's mother (Georgia Chiara) and father (Angus Cerini) in the prison where the latter was serving time. He recalls his father telling him that being conceived behind bars was a sure sign that Mel would turn out bad. 'And he was right.' While prison staff admit that the situation is far from ideal, Mel is required to share a cell in his new home with Mark Shepard (Jarvis), a lifer whose conviction for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl when he was 13 made him one of the country's most hated criminals. Shepard, too, is a recent transfer to the lower-security facility after decades in maximum security, much of that time spent in solitary confinement. With his hunched shoulders, shuffling gait and mumbled speech, Shepard is clearly a troubled man, his mental stability an open question. But he believes he has found a spiritual path to salvation as a born-again Pentecostal. He enlists Mel to play electronic keyboard at the religious services where he preaches to a mostly jeering assembly of prisoners. They look on slack-jawed during the moments of rapture in which he speaks in tongues. Jarvis' performance is transformative, making Mark both pathetic and feverishly alive, his corrosive remorse seemingly genuine. (The English Shogun star's Oz accent is impeccable.) One scene is especially riveting, in which he indirectly explains a shocking act of self-mutilation by sharing the discovery that it's the spirit, not the flesh, that must change. There's remarkable empathy in Williams' writing and direction as Mark insists that Mel needs to be baptized to free himself from pain and guilt. The triangle's third point is Warren Murfett (Pearce), who is days away from parole eligibility after 15 years of incarceration and every self-help program on offer. Sporting a bushy salt-and-pepper beard and a world-weary look in his eyes, Pearce finds dimensions both tragic and devious in what could have been merely the stock character of the wily long-term inmate whose isolation has cost him his humanity. When he assaults his cellmate, a convicted pedophile Warren catches with a photo of his son as a boy, the tough warden (Tammy MacIntosh) suspects he is deliberately sabotaging his parole chances, as is often the case with prisoners who come to fear being shoved back out into the world after long sentences. As a disciplinary measure, she swaps out Mel as his cellmate, instructing Warren to keep the unpredictable livewire kid out of trouble. Warren's mentorship takes a tough-love approach, perhaps a reflection of his desire for reconciliation with his now-adult son, who has agreed to see him during a monitored day-release. But he also has his own selfish needs. Deep in gambling debt and unable to pay back prison thugs unlikely to let him be released alive, Warren manipulates Mel into killing Sheperd for the bounty on his head, instructing him on how to carry out the murder while making it look like self-defense. He even fashions a shiv for Mel in the prison workshop. Like Warren, Mel has his own motives for agreeing to the proposal, not for his share of the cash but perhaps in a cleansing attempt to rid the world of an evil human being and dissuade himself from the idea that people like him are infected with poison and should not be allowed back out into society. In his first screen role, Miller holds his own alongside his seasoned co-stars. He smartly underplays the twitchy nervousness that causes Mel to blink constantly, instead conveying his unease in more subtle ways, swinging between rage episodes and moments of quiet in which he looks like a lost child. His suppressed hunger for connection adds to the unpredictability of Mel's scenes with both Warren and Mark. There's a direct line from Miller's performance to that of Raif Weaver as the young Mel in the most unbearably tense of his triggering flashbacks. His mother informs Mel and his sister that their father will be out on day release but urges them not to share their address with him. From the moment his dad picks Mel up from school it's clear the boy won't be able to keep the secret. The car journey to the house, with a sheet of plastic taped over a broken window flapping noisily, is nerve-rattling, even more so because what follows is played out offscreen. Another standout scene — arguably Pearce's finest work here — is Warren's visit to the home of his son Adrian (Toby Wallace, terrific), during which his effortful geniality crumbles in the face of cold distance that builds into cruel betrayal. It's one of many instances in the film that force us to consider hardened criminals from different angles — as victims as well as perpetrators — and it adds shading both to the violent climactic developments and the surprising optimism of a poignant coda. Inside is not an easy movie. Its feeling of claustrophobia is amplified by the discomfit of being confined with messed-up men liable to do anything, and its brooding mood is deepened by the chilly, institutional blues and grays of Andrew Commis' cinematography and the enveloping somberness of Chiara Costanza's synth score. But the superbly acted drama yields rewards, making astute observations about mental health, inherited trauma, self-determination and absent or unfixable fathers. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
