Tag Archives: fiction

Mutiny

For a film director, a cat and mouse game on a large container ship presents a world of opportunities. Such a ship has all sorts of nooks and crannies, ladders and stairs to climb up or down, corners to lurk behind or spring from. Not to mention the containers and what might be inside them.

Intrigue in the innards of a ship (or above on various decks) has been a movie staple for decades, most famously maybe in Titanic.

Director Jean-François Richet has exploited these possibilities well in his new film Mutiny. It helps that he has the excellent action-adventure actor Jason Statham in the lead role. 

Cole Reed (Statham) is the security guy and driver for a Bangkok billionaire Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram) who is selling his shipping empire. On the evening of the event marking his stepping away from the business, the billionaire is murdered and Reed is blamed. Reed, needing to disappear, manages to stow away on a cargo ship, the Artemis, that he discovers is involved in human trafficking.

In an early scene aboard the Artemis, captain Marko Madsen (Roland Moller) fondles a necklace in what may be a reverential nod to The Caine Mutiny in which Caine (Humphrey Bogart) nervously rolls steel balls around in his hands.

Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis) is a last-minute addition to the ship’s crew. She quickly sniffs out that something is not quite right. She soon becomes Reed’s ally in the effort to control the ship. She and he are the mice, moving throughout the ship to avoid being caught by the cats, the captain and his henchmen. She also adds sex appeal to a male-dominated cast. 

You might guess what some of the key elements of this drawn out battle are. Gunplay for sure. Knives and other weapons get their turn too. 

After Reed departs the Artemis, there’s more revenge to be taken before the film ends. Run time is just over 90 minutes. The film is tight. Never drags. Yes, it is filled with action-adventure clichés, but it satisfies. Director Richet and star Statham accomplish exactly what this sort of film sets out to do. Kudos to all!

Mutiny is rated R. No sex or nudity but violence galore.

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Tony

A 19-year-old college student spends his summer break in a strange town far away from his school and his family home. He sees and hears new things, has new experiences. The summer for the young man is… LIFE CHANGING!

That’s MY story. That summer happened for me when I was 19. 

And it happened to Anthony Bourdain when he was 19. The new movie Tony is his story. To a small degree, I can relate.

In his 2000 book Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain writes about his culinary experiences, starting with the summer he spent in the resort town of Provincetown, Massachusetts working in a restaurant. This film is fictional, based on (inspired by? Adapted from? What’s the legal term here?) Bourdain’s recollections he shares in the book. 

Tony (Dominic Sessa) takes a bus to Cape Cod mainly because Nancy (Emilia Jones), a girl he likes, tells him she’s spending her summer there. Sessa, who was excellent in his rookie outing in The Holdovers, is convincing as the smart ass who keeps telling people he’s a writer. His first restaurant gig is washing dishes. Meanwhile, his pursuit of the girl moves along slowly.

Here are the real Anthony Bourdain’s words that appear on screen at the beginning of the film: “I was—to be frank—a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”

Sessa is good. He looks a bit like Bourdain, tall and lanky. But it’s the supporting cast that makes this movie better. 

The restaurant owner (Antonio Banderas) provides Tony with a gig and a place to stay. But it’s his guidance and tolerance in the kitchen that makes this fictional portrayal so appealing. When it’s time to hand out awards in a few months, Banderas should be in the mix.

Kitchen crew mate Sal (Leo Woodall) turns young Tony on to various vices including cocaine. Sal is a lady killer who, when a wedding party celebrates at the restaurant, has his way with the bride.

Tony, the movie, and Sessa, the actor, demonstrate palpable changes in the young future media giant. Does a person grow up that much over one summer? As noted, this is a fictional depiction and there’s been embellishment. Then again, was Bourdain’s book, the source material,  fact-checked? Should we take his words in the book at face value? Hmmm.

For Tony Bourdain, at the start of the summer he turns 19, he wanted to be a writer. At the end of his summer, he wanted to pursue a culinary career. He learned a lot about the industry and about himself. Of course he had a restaurant career and then went on to hone his talent as a writer years later.

Tony is one of my favorite movies of the year. And not just because it has led me to recall a similar summer in my life. It has an enjoyable story and an overall good vibe, not to mention a few big laughs.

Tony is directed by Matt Johnson who is a co-writer of the script with three others. Tony is rated R.

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Drop

A suspense thriller has to be intense. Enough to make a filmgoer a tad uncomfortable but not so much as to be off-putting. Drop is just intense enough without going over the line. It’s rated PG-13, not R.

Violet (Meghann Fahy) is a widow with a 5-year-old son. She’s finally ready to date again. She agrees to meet Henry (Brandon Sklenar) for dinner. When she arrives at the restaurant she has quick encounters with a few staff members and patrons.

After Henry arrives, she begins getting threatening messages on her phone and wonders what’s going on. As the tension builds, it also occasionally ebbs throughout the ordeal via Henry’s gentle demeanor and a comic-relief goofy server.

As relatable as a constantly pinging cellphone can be, and as annoying as text messages from unknown sources can be, coupled with the awareness that we are often being surveilled, Drop takes our modern tech and the constant attachment we have to our cellphones to a different level. 

As Meghann monitors camera shots from her home and considers the potential peril her son Toby and her babysitting sister Jen (Violett Beane) may face, she wonders who is behind all this troubling harassment. Another restaurant customer? The piano player? The goofy server?

During their conversation, Meghann reveals to Henry that she is a survivor of domestic abuse. Interestingly, Brandon Sklenar played a key character in last year’s It Ends With Us, another film involving an abuse survivor. 

Director Christopher Landon and writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach have crafted a film that feels very “of today” with its focus on phone messages delivered via Air Drop. Still, Drop seems like a rather generic title. 

Drop clocks in just under an hour-and-a-half, so the suspense which some filmmakers stretch to ridiculous limits, is kept to a reasonable extent. Like the film’s intensity level, it’s not too much. Just enough.

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