'Knives and Skin'

Writer-director Jennifer Reeder’s high school noir drama “Knives and Skin” feels like the unwanted love child of David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson — a dozen different stylistic ideas going off in different directions, often canceling each other out.

It starts with two teens at Makeout Point, or whatever kids call it these days. Andy KItzmiller (Ty Olwin) is the star of the football team, and Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) is the nerdy marching-band drummer who will be Andy’s latest conquest. When Carolyn gets scared and repels Andy’s grabby advances, the jock leaves Carolyn on the gravel road.

Carolyn doesn’t come home that night, leaving her single mom, Lisa (Marika Engelhardt), a wreck. The girl’s disappearance also has an effect on the other kids in school — particularly Andy’s sister, Joanna (Grace Smith), who knows something is up with her brother. Joanna is having her own problems, like running scams like selling used underwear belonging to her agoraphobic mom, Lynn (Audrey Francis), to the skeevy principal (Tony Fitzpatrick).

Meanwhile, Joanna and Andy’s dad, Dan (Tim Hopper), is having an affair with Renee Darlington (Kate Arrington), the glitter-obsessed wife of the sheriff, Doug (James Vincent Meredith). And the Darlington’s cheerleader daughter, Laurel (Kayla Carter), is falling in love with Bridey (Genevieve Venjohnson), a classmate in Mrs.Harper’s girls’ choir class.

There are surely some subplots I missed in Reeder’s “Peyton Place” plot. It’s easy to get lost in Reeder’s random flashes of oddness, like the choir’s funereal renditions of ‘80s pop songs (including “I Melt With You” and “Whisper to a Scream”) or the way Carolyn’s corpse becomes a subject of the camera’s fascination, somewhere between “Twin Peaks’” Laura Palmer and “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

Reeder settles down in the second half, letting the angst-filled teen girls of her story wrestle back some emotional honesty from the onslaught of cinematic showboating. But it’s not enough to rescue “Knives and Skin” from its pretensions.

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‘Knives and Skin’

★1/2

Opens Friday, December 6, at the Megaplex at The Gateway (Salt Lake City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan) and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Not rated, but probably R for violence, sexuality and drug use - most of it involving teens. Running time: 112 minutes.

'Marriage Story'

Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” is the filmmaker’s most assured, emotionally mature and heartbreaking work to date, a tender yet lacerating drama of divorce and its aftermath.

At first, it seems like Baumbach is living up to his title, with montages that show Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) in the happy throes of a productive marriage. The images are accompanied with paired voiceovers, in which each describes what they like best about the other — whether it’s Charlie’s ability to remember every name in the New York theater troope he leads or Nicole’s acting talent in that same troupe. Each mentions how competitive the other is, and how well both treat their son, Henry (Azhy Robertson).

The audience soon realizes this cascade of compliments was an assignment by a counselor to help the couple ease into their impending divorce. They have agreed to an amicable parting, without lawyers. The only question is how much time Henry will spend with Charlie in New York, where he’s prepping his troupe’s production of “Elektra” for Broadway, or in Los Angeles, where Nicole — a former teen movie idol — has been cast in a pilot for a science-fiction series.

Once in L.A., though, Nicole has doubts about the lawyer thing. On the advice of a crew member on her TV shoot, Nicole visits a prominent divorce lawyer, Nora (Laura Dern). Their first meeting is a powerful moment of acting, as Dern’s Nora carefully asks the questions that get Johansson’s Nicole to ask, for the first time, what she really wants out of this divorce.

Charlie, feeling blindsided, has to lawyer up quickly. He meets with, and rejects, a suave shark of an attorney, Jay (Ray Liotta), opting instead for the avuncular — and not very effective — Bert (Alan Alda). But when Charlie faces losing custody of Henry, because of Nora’s demands that the boy live in Los Angeles, Charlie reconsiders going cutthroat with Jay.

Baumbach’s riveting screenplay captures the nuances of a couple who may still love each other, but find that’s not enough to sustain their marriage. Issues big and small play out, most intensely in an argument between Charlie and Nicole that lets both actors really tear into their roles and each other.

Baumbach also includes moments of absurdist comedy, like when Nicole asks her suburbanite sister Cassie (Merritt Wever) and their flighty mom (Julie Hagerty) serve divorce papers on a visiting Charlie. Those lighter moments become a necessary balm, to counter the sting of the break-up and the ache the soon-to-be-divorced spouses feel as they figure out their new roles.

Some have argued that Baumbach is too much on Charlie’s side, but I think a repeated viewing — a possibility made easier when the movie debuts on Netflix on Dec. 6 — will reveal that the filmmaker is fairly even-handed. Charlie’s emotional journey is more front-and-center in the narrative, but in a way that’s because Nicole has known longer about the cracks in the relationship, and her epiphany comes  before this movie’s timeline.

Baumbach assembles a stellar ensemble cast for “Marriage Story” — including Dern, Liotta and Alda as three very different types of lawyers, and Hagerty and Wever as Ncole’s family. But it’s the paired leads, Driver and Johansson, whose compelling performances bring the passion as Charlie and Nicole hash out unrealized dreams, obstacles the other set in their way, and how they might be able to survive as co-parents, if not as husband and wife.

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‘Marriage Story’

★★★1/2

Opened November 6 in select cities; opens Wednesday, November 29, at the Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), and Friday, November 29, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City); will debut Friday, December 6, on Netflix. Rated R for language throughout and sexual references. Running time: 136 minutes.

'Honey Boy'

To watch director Alma Har’el’s drama “Honey Boy” is to witness an act of personal redemption by its star and screenwriter, Shia LaBeouf.

The oft-maligned LaBeouf, whose offscreen public acts of self-destruction have frequently overshadowed his onscreen talents, has penned an intensely intimate and semi-autobiographical story of a fractured father-son relationship.

Otis, played as an adult by Lucas Hedges, is a movie star in the middle of a personal meltdown in 2005, which ends with a car crash for which he is arrested and placed in a rehab facility. The psychiatrist there (Laura San Giacomo) gives him an empty journal and a writing assignment, to recall every memory he can think of from his childhood. Otis writes his in screenplay form, a nice bit of meta-storytelling, considering LaBeouf wrote this under similar circumstances.

In flashback, in 1995, we meet 12-year-old Otis (played by Noah Jupe, the little brother in “A Quiet Place”) as a juvenile movie star, during production of a family comedy. Also on the set is his chaperone, his father, James (played by LaBeouf). James is a former rodeo clown who drills young Otis on his comic skills after hours in their dingy motel room. James is also an ex-convict, combat veteran and recovering drug addict with a hair-trigger temper.

That temper springs into action when Otis’ mom, James’ ex-wife (Natasha Lyonne), is on the phone, or whenever Otis mentions Tom (Clifton Collins Jr.), his mentor through the Big Brothers program. Sometimes, most distressingly, that anger comes out against Otis, when the child asserts his authority over the parent because the kid is the meal ticket.

When James isn’t around, Otis is left to his own devices, and he strikes up a tender relationship with Sky Girl (played by the singer FKA Twigs), a young prostitute who lives in the motel.

Har’el, whose resumé includes music videos and the documentary “Bombay Beach,” handles this explosive material — as well as the sometimes comic, sometimes wrenching rehab scenes — with a sensitive yet unflinching eye. She makes room for LaBeouf, in an achingly powerful performance, to delve into the pain James is feeling without dismissing the pain he inflicts on those around him.

Hedges (“Ben Is Back,” “Boy Erased”) once again shows why he’s the go-to guy to play anguished young men. But the standout is young Jupe, who has great chemistry with LaBeouf and FKA Twigs, and seems to possess the same acting chops LaBeouf did when he was a kid. Here’s hoping Jupe’s path through movie stardom is smoother, and here’s hoping “Honey Boy” is a sign that LaBeouf is exorcising his personal demons and can continue to create challenging art.

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‘Honey Boy’

★★★1/2

Opened November 8 in select cities; opens Friday, November 29, at the Broadway Centre Cnemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for pervasive language, some sexual material and drug use. Running time: 94 minutes.

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This review ran on this website on January 31, when the movie premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

'Knives Out'

Writer-director Rian Johnson clearly loves a good whodunnit, as evidenced by the crafty, witty and deliciously devilish murder mystery he concocts in “Knives Out.”

He also really loves actors, as proven by the juicy material he gives to the stellar ensemble cast he has assembled.

The Thrombeys are your typical bickering, back-stabbing rich family, rattling around an old mansion and fretting over what the old man — crime novelist Harlan Thormbey (Christopher Plummer) — will leave them in the will when he finally croaks, Somebody, though, decided not to wait for the answer, because Harlan is discovered in his private study, with his throat cut.

His progeny provides a ready array of suspects. Harlan’s daughter, Linda Drysdale (Jamie Lee Curtis), is a real-estate mogul straight out of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” with a rigidly Republican husband, Richard (Don Johnson). Harlan’s son, Walt Thrombey (Michael Shannon), has run the publishing company that produces Harlan’s books — and fought his father over selling the film rights. Another daughter, Joni Thrombey (Toni Collette), is a lifestyle expert who has relied on her dad to put her social-activist daughter, Meg (Katherine Langford), through school. 

And there’s a late entry in the race: Linda and Richard’s spoiled son Ransom (Chris Evans), who openly despises pretty much all of his relations.

A couple of other characters also merit notice: Walt’s nervous wife, Donna (Riki Lindhome), and their right-wing troll of a son, Jacob (Jean Martell); Greatnana Wanetta (K Callan), Harlan’s not-all-there mother; and Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), Harlan’s nurse and seemingly the only person Harlan actually liked.

It’s a puzzle for Lt. Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield), the police detective assigned to the case, so he brings in some help: Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a renowned private investigator hired by a mystery client to solve the case. “I read a tweet about a New Yorker article about you,” Joni says when she first encounters Blanc. Ransom, on the other hand, is unimpressed with the southern-accented Blanc, asking, “What is this? CSI: KFC?”

Going much further would deprive viewers of the fun of discovering the clues and connections alongside Blanc, and in trying to figure to exactly what Johnson has up his sleeve. The structure isn’t quite the traditional whodunnit, as Johnson in part follows the model of the old “Columbo” TV series,  where the killer was known from the beginning and the mystery was how Columbo would prove it. Emphasis on the “in part,” because Johnson’s script takes some devious twists before the final reel.

And Johnson — making his first movie since wowing the world with “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” — digs deep into the atmosphere of an old-time murder mystery. The Thrombey mansion, thanks to production designer David Crank (“Inherent Vice,” “The Master”), has enough wry details to make any Agatha Christie fan happy — or illustrate a new edition of “Clue.”

Best of all, Johnson’s cast provides surprises at every turn. It’s great to see Curtis as a ball-buster, or Collette as a spoiled brat, or Craig play a cornpone Poirot, or Evans get some tarnish on that Captain America persona. The breakout is the Cuban-born de Armas (“Blade Runner 2049”), who brings wit and fire to the role of Marta, the lamb in the den of vipers, and a character so refreshingly honest that lying makes her puke.

“Knives Out” takes a few swipes at current politics — Richard supports Trump, mostly for the tax cuts, while Meg and Jacob trade insults across the red/blue divide. But the fun in this whodunnit is how wonderfully nasty the members of the Thrombley family are to each other, in completely nonpolitical ways.

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‘Knives Out’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, November 27, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including brief violence, some strong language, sexual references, and drug material. Running time: 130 minutes.

'Queen & Slim'

Director Melina Matsoukas and writer Lena Waithe have been making their voices heard on TV, but they explode on the big screen with “Queen & Slim,” a searing drama about two African Americans on the run and running out of options.

It begins with a first date in a diner in Cleveland. She (Josie Turner-Smith) is a defense lawyer who just learned a client is going onto Death Row. She didn’t want to be alone tonight, so she hooked up on Tinder with the guy (Daniel Kaluuya), a working-class guy whose profile looked good. They aren’t really hitting it off, so it seems like the date will end with him taking her home, and that will be the end of it. (The movie doesn’t tell us their names until late in the film, and never uses the nicknames of the title.)

On the drive home, though, a cop (played by the country singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson) sees our guy swerve a bit, and uses that as an excuse to pull him over. He’s being cooperative, if exasperated by the familiarity of a white cop hassling a black man over nothing. The cop reads his eye-rolling as defiance, and orders him to step out of the car. She gets out of the car, demanding the cop’s badge number. Shouting ensues, until the cop suddenly shoots her in the leg. Our guy then struggles with the cop, gets the cop’s gun, and in a fateful instant, shoots the cop dead.

The details are important, because the way Waithe’s sharp screenplay and Matsoukas’ pinpoint direction depict it, the shooting can be interpreted so many different ways. Some may wonder why the couple didn’t just get on the ground or stay in the car. Others may recognize the cop’s actions for the racial profiling that they are, and see that the couple was doomed no matter what they did. What viewers see depends on where they stand, based on one’s experiences with authority — which, all too often, is determined by race.

Our couple kicks into survival mode. She tosses his cellphone out the window, aware that it could be used to track their location. They ditch his car and steal a truck from a Kentucky lawman (Benito Rodriguez). Their immediate goal is New Orleans, where her Uncle Earl (Bokeem Woodbine) might be able to help.

Along the way, they hear news reports of the interstate efforts to arrest them. They also discover that black folks along the way know all about their case, and have turned them into folk heroes — the black “Bonnie & Clyde,” as Uncle Earl puts it. But even that leads to tragic consequences.

Waithe (who shares story credit with James Frey, the infamous author of the fake memoir “A Million Little Pieces”) creates a nuanced, but electrifying, portrait of two mismatched people who turn to each other when everything is stacked against them. They know the odds of surviving this nightmare are against them, but their shared desperation provides hope that they can find a way out. Waithe also captures the intense atmosphere of an underground South, a land of marginalized people so in need of a voice that they’ll elevate this couple into legends.

Matsoukas, whose resumé ranges from music videos (notably Beyoncé’s “Formation”) to several episodes of Issa Rae’s “Insecure,” brings fascinating detail and pops of color everywhere this couple turns. And she highlights the intensity of emotions — even love and lust — that come out when the pair are looking over their shoulders.

The actors playing the title characters are compelling. Kaluuya (“Get Out,” “Black Panther”) is soulful and dynamic as a good man trying to follow the rules of surviving in America, someone who thinks fast when those rules fail him. Turner-Smith, in her first leading movie role, emerges as the emotional engine of the film, channeling righteous fury and a keen sense of preservation as they travel deeper into the South.

“Queen & Slim” will ignite arguments about the way it depicts racial injustice. One thing that can’t be argued is that Matsoukas and Waithe definitely know how to make thought-provoking, incendiary drama that isn’t afraid to dig into the fault lines between the races to see what shakes out.

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‘Queen & Slim’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, November 27, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence, some strong sexuality, nudity, pervasive language, and brief drug use. Running time: 132 minutes.

'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood'

Early on in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” Andrea Vogel (Susan Kelechi Watson) learns her husband, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), is going to profile Fred Rogers for Esquire magazine, and she gives him a warning: “Please don’t ruin my childhood.”

It’s a fear the audience shares as director Marielle Heller begins this loving biographical drama, when she first reveals a version of the “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” opening, with its diorama of a suburban neighborhood. But then the door opens, and Tom Hanks enters as Mr. Rogers, one national treasure portraying another, and our fear dissipates.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'21 Bridges'

Sometimes a police thriller can be violent, loud, dumb and fun — or, in the case of “21 Bridges,” it can be larded on with such self-importance that it’s just violent, loud and dumb.

Chadwick Boseman, the go-to actor for playing black superheroes (Black Panther, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, James Brown, etc.), stars as Andre Davis, an NYPD detective with a reputation for shooting first and justifying his actions later. To some, that makes him the perfect guy to investigate a horrific crime: The shooting of eight cops at a Brooklyn restaurant that was also a depot for cocaine trafficking.

The script, by Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan, starts by showing us these cop killings from the side of the killers. They are Ray (Taylor Kitsch), a veteran who served in Afghanistan, and Michael (Stephan James, from “If Beale Street Could Talk”), the brother of Ray’s deceased Army buddy. They were planning to haul away 30 kilos of cocaine and were surprised when they found 300 kilos at the restaurant — and when things go bad, they drive over the bridge into Manhattan.

Davis arrives at the crime scene with tempers already on edge. Capt. McKenna (J.K. Simmons), from in whose precinct the deceased cops worked, vows to give Andre all the manpower he needs, and partners him with a narcotics detective, Frankie Burns (Sienna Miller). Davis drops a bombshell order: Close all 21 bridges leading in and out of Manhattan, as well as the tunnels, ferry terminals and subway lines that go off the island. 

The audience is well ahead of Davis here, because the script and director Brian Kirk lay everything out in such a ham-handed way. There’s a moment where a character walks in, and you’d half expect the character to say, “Hi, I’ll be your dirty cop this evening. Have you had a chance to look at the menu?” Things are that obvious.

Things are also incredibly violent. The body count extends far past the eight officers gunned down in Brooklyn, and Kirk seems to wallow in the ferocious gunplay and bloodshed, as the movie lumbers toward a finale that’s equal parts preposterous and predictable. By the finale, though, those bridges are open and we in the audience can make a grateful escape.

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’21 Bridges’

★1/2

Opens Friday, November 22, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence and language throughout. Running time: 99 minutes.

'The Irishman'

Martin Scorsese’s 3-1/2 hour mobster drama “The Irishman” stands at a crossroads in American movies, when we are reconsidering how we watch movies and arguing about what is cinema instead of mere entertainment.

“The Irishman,” which in many ways is a culmination of the 77-year-old director’s astonishing career, provides plenty of ammunition in both of those discussions.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.