Review: 'American Traitor' is a misguided bore, a sad mingling of courtroom drama and melodramatic weepie

I’m not sure what happened to Michael Polish — but whatever led him from making offbeat and daring films like “Twin Falls Idaho” and “The Astronaut Farmer” to helming schlocky nonsense like “American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally” is a tragedy worthy of its own movie.

The title character in this “based on a true story” courtroom drama is Mildred Gillars (played by Meadow Williams), an American living in Germany in the 1930s, working as a lounge singer and sometime radio host. Her lover, radio producer Max Otto Koischwitz (Carsten Norgaard) is close to Joseph Goebbels (Thomas Kretschmann), Hitler’s propaganda chief — and Goebbels thinks Mildred has what it takes to be the Third Reich’s secret weapon.

Soon, Mildred is reading scripts, in English, extolling the might of the German army, and suggesting to American GI’s that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill are putting troops in harm’s way for their own greed purposes. As Mildred tells it, Goebbels forced her to say those lines — holding Mildred’s passport, forcing her to sign a loyalty oath, and raping her and threatening to kill her.

The script — by Wayne Owen (based on a book he co-wrote and Darryl Hicks, with a rewrite by Polish — jumps from these scenes to an American courtroom in 1948, where Mildred is on trial for treason. Her only hope is a gruff and sometimes theatrical lawyer, James Laughlin, played by Al Pacino, who apparently jumped at the chance to ham it up in a courtroom drama.

Where to begin on where “American Traitor” fails? Maybe with the idea of trying to wring tears out of Gillars’ claims of being a cog in someone else’s propaganda machine — or painting herself as a subversive satirist, pitching Goebbels’ propaganda message in a way no one could take seriously.

It might be possible to buy either of Gillars’ lines if a decent actor was performing the role. Instead, we get Williams, a B-movie queen who apparently watched too many ‘40s noir thrillers and couldn’t decide between playing the damsel in distress or the femme fatale.

Pacino manages to tone down his usual scenery chewing, but he doesn’t give much to replace the histrionics. It says something about a movie when Lala Kent, the Utah native and one-time “Vanderpump Rules” reality star, gives a mediocre performance as assistant to the prosecutor (Mitch Pileggi) and isn’t the worst thing in the movie.

Polish seems torn between making a courtroom procedural and a ridiculously melodramatic biopic. He ends up shortchanging both ends of the narrative spectrum, and completing the circle of incompetence that hangs on “American Traitor” like a noose.

——

‘American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally’

★

Opens Friday, May 28, in select theaters and streaming on demand. Rated R for sexual assault. Running time: 109 minutes; in English and in German with subtitles.

Review: 'Cruella' gives sympathy for DeVil, with a wickedly witty origin story for Disney's puppy-snatching villainess

Turning one of Disney’s meanest villains — a would-be puppy killer, no less — into a sympathetic character is a tall order, but director Craig Gillespie is up to the task in the spirited and wickedly fun “Cruella.”

Gillespie has a track record of finding the tender side of unpleasant people. Early in his career, in “Lars and the Real Girl,” he gave us Ryan Gosling as a lonely nerd in love with a realistic sex doll. In “I, Tonya,” he and Margot Robbie conspired to make us take pity on Olympic skater and tabloid sensation Tonya Harding. And he’s signed up next to tell the twisted love story of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee for Netflix. So humanizing a maniacal fashion designer should be a snap.

“Cruella” is an origin story that begins with a little girl named Estella (played at age 12 by Tipper Seifert-Cleveland), a girl bullied at her boarding school because her hair is half black and half white. She retaliates by letting her proto-punk nasty side out — an alter ego her mother (Emily Beecham) dubs “Cruella.”

When Estella’s mum suddenly uproots her daughter, and they are set to move to London, they make a fateful stop at Hellman Hall, home of the famous fashion designer known as The Baroness (Emma Thompson). Estella is traumatized when she sees The Baroness’s attack dogs — dalmatians, of course — push her mum off a cliff.

The now-orphaned Estella lands in London and is befriended by two young thieves, Jasper and Horace. The three become fast friends, and partners in crime. A decade later, in the late ’70s, Estella — now played by Emma Stone — wants to fulfill her dreams of being a designer. Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) thinks it’s an angle for a new crime spree, but Jasper (Joel Fry) believes in Estella, and finagles a job interview for her at a posh department store.

The department store gig leads Estella to a bigger job, as an assistant and junior designer to The Baroness. Estella, her two-tone hair covered by a dye job, labors intensely to satisfy her imperious boss. At the same time, she wants to take revenge on The Baroness. So she enlists a secondhand-store operator, Artie (played by John McCrea, soon to be world-famous as the star of “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie”), to create an alternate fashion persona — named Cruella.

One of the joys of “Cruella” is how the screenplay — credited to Dana Fox (“How to Be Single”) and Tony McNamara (who co-wrote “The Favourite”), with three other writers getting story credit — escalates the public fashion battle between the established Baroness and the punk-minded Cruella. The frock fight is made more entertaining by the outlandishly stylish work of costume designer Jenny Beavan (an Oscar winner for “A Room With a View” and “Mad Max: Fury Road”). 

Gillespie guides us through Estella’s transformation from punk pre-teen to fashionista to scourge of London with devilishly fun set pieces and a rollicking pace. He also is smart to deploy the movie’s best weapons, the two Emmas, for maximum cattiness. Both Stone and Thompson are clearly having the time of their lives chewing the scenery and taking swipes at each other — with Stone’s snide derision matching Thompson’s haughty high maintenance at every turn.

Disney purists may be put off by the rewriting of canon — what comic-book fans call “retcon,” short for “retroactive continuity,” the act of reverse-engineering the past to sync up to the present — that makes Cruella more sympathetic than her character was in the original “101 Dalmatians.” If viewers can get past that, as Disney asked them to do with “Maleficent,” this “Cruella” is a DeVil of a good time.

——

‘Cruella’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 28, in theaters everywhere, and available on Disney+ Premier. Rated PG-13 for some violence and thematic elements. Running time: 134 minutes.

Review: 'Dream Horse' runs a familiar route as an inspirational sports movie, but with plenty of charm from its cast

It’s almost a given that “Dream Horse” will hit every plot point and emotional high spot a based-on-a-true-story sports drama is supposed to. What makes it fun is how director Euros Lyn and a top-drawer cast get there.

The story is a charming one, of how Jan Vokes (played here by Toni Collette), a supermarket cashier and part-time bar waitress in a small town in Wales, overhears a pub regular talking about how he lost 5,000 pounds as part of a syndicate that invested in a racehorse. Jan works with that chatty pub regular, tax adviser Howard Davies (Damien Lewis), to start a syndicate among the townsfolk — two dozen of them, each pitching in 10 quid a week at first.

Jan and her husband, Brian (Owen Teale), have turned their allotment — their backyard, we’d call it into the states — into a small farm. So they buy a brood mare, named Rewbell, and add her to the menagerie. With Howard’s help, they plow the syndicate’s money into a stud fee, and soon Rewbell gives birth to a foal, which they name Dream Alliance.

Screenwriter Neil McKay’s script is centered on Jan’s efforts to get Dream Alliance up to racing fit, by hiring a veteran trainer (Nicholas Farrell) who sees “spirit” in this unlikely thoroughbred. There’s some solid humor in scenes where these small-town investors get to rub elbows with the rich in the owners’ club. And there’s a tender subplot involving Howard and his wife, Angela (Joanna Page), who vowed to leave him if he ever got mixed up in the horse trade again.

Lyn, a Welshman whose work is mostly in TV (including many episodes of “Doctor Who” and “Torchwood,” productions filmed in Cardiff), ensures the flavor of Wales permeates the film. Several of the cast members — including Teale, Page and the great Siân Phillips, playing one of the investors — are Welsh. So is the opera singer Katherine Jenkins, who makes a cameo singing the Welsh national anthem at the Welsh National steeplechase, where the movie has its climax. (Apparently, the other Welsh national anthem is anything recorded by Welsh icon Tom Jones — and the movie’s closing credits feature a pub singalong of “Delilah.”)

Every beat of “Dream Horse,” from training montage through adversity to that big-race finale, is comfortably predictable — even more so if you’ve seen the 2015 documentary “Dark Horse,” which told Dream Alliance’s story first. What makes “Dream Horse” worth a view is how this sharp ensemble cast, led by Collette’s sweet and earthy performance at the center, brings this winning story across the finish line.

——

‘Dream Horse’

★★★

Opens Friday, May 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for language and thematic elements. Running time: 113 minutes.

Review: Mexican thriller 'New Order' is compelling, brutal, and probably not something you'd want to watch twice

The Mexican thriller “New Order” is an electrifying, unsettling cautionary tale about the dangers of flaunting obscene wealth, and the dangers of revolting against it.

It’s also one of those movies, like “Requiem for a Dream” or “Irreversible,” that is at once beautifully constructed and brutally disturbing — a movie you might praise for its artistry, but never want to sit through again.

Director Michel Franco depicts a violent rebellion happening in Mexico City. Initially, Franco doesn’t show us the action in the streets, but we hear it faintly in the distance from inside the home of the super-rich Novelo family. Their daughter, Marianne (Naian González Norvind), is getting married to Alan (Dario Yazbek Bernal) — and all the family’s rich friends and business acquaintances are there for the happy day. Soon, though, they are also targets.

When the revolution gets inside the gates, and people from the streets start robbing wedding guests and killing family members, Marianne has already left the scene. She went with Cristian (Fernando Cuautle), one of the family’s servants, to find Rolando (Eligio Meléndez), a former family employee who came seeking money to pay for his wife’s heart operation. Marianne gets caught up in the mayhem, but Cristian and his mother, Marta (Mónica Del Carmen), the Novelos’ longtime maid, shelter her in their house until the military quells the insurrection.

The Novelos know some big names in the Mexican military — but that doesn’t help Marianne when, in the aftermath of the failed revolution, soldiers start taking rich people hostage. As time passes, Marianne’s brother, Daniel (Diego Boneta), grows desperate to find Marianne, and grows suspicious of anyone relaying a ransom demand.

Franco, as write and director, starts strong as he shows the 1 percent inexorably realizing the cold horror that they can’t buy their way out of revolution. When the movie takes its turn in the second half, Franco’s cynical depiction of the restoration of order — and a military that’s corrupt at every level — is as painful as it is compelling.

Marianne’s ordeal, and González Norvind’s riveting performance, are powerful, though an endurance test for audiences. Those scenes, and the nihilistic aftermath, are fascinating to watch once, but it’s hard to imagine wanting to repeat the experience.

——

‘New Order’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 21, at the Megaplex Valley Fair (West Valley City), Century 16 (South Salt Lake), and Cinemark Jordan Landing (West Jordan). Rated R for disturbing and violent content, rape, graphic nudity, and language. Running time: 86 minutes; in Spanish, with subtitles.

Review: 'Spiral' gives fresh blood to the 'Saw' franchise, with a timely theme and a strong central performance by Chris Rock

The nerve-jangling horror movie “Spiral: From the Book of Saw” pumps new life into the old franchise, by sticking to its bloody, twisted roots and adding an eerie timeliness.

Chris Rock stars as Det. Zeke Banks, a lone-wolf cop in the Metropolitan Police, who’s called a rat in the squad room because, 12 years earlier, he turned in a dirty cop — against the advice of his father, Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson), who was then the chief of police. Screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger (who co-wrote the 2017 “Saw” offshoot “Jigsaw”) deliver Banks’ backstory in measured doses, flashbacks that pertain to the grisly murder case at hand.

Someone, Banks quickly discovers, is killing cops. And they’re doing it in elaborate and bloody methods, as if Rube Goldberg partnered up with Sweeney Todd to create machines that killed in the goriest ways possible. The killer seems to be a copycat of the infamous Jigsaw — but targeting corrupt cops, all of whom have a connection to Banks’ troubled career.

Banks has to beg his captain, Angie Garza (Marisol Nichols), to let him take the lead on the case. Capt. Garza agrees, on the condition that Banks take a rookie detective-in-training, William Schenk (Max Minghella), under his wing.

The script is as twisted as barbed wire, and just as sharp. It pulls out the classic cop-movie tropes, like Banks’ hard-won cynicism after a career watching his back, and neatly subverts them to propel the horror elements. It also delivers a stinging critique of police corruption that’s even more appropriate now than last year, when the movie was set to be released. (There are also at least two distinct “Pulp Fiction” references: Look for the words “Vincent & Jules” on a door in a key moment, and think about how Rock’s character is named Zeke — short for Ezekiel, the book of the Bible that Quentin Tarantino’s film quotes.)

Director Darren Lynn Bousman is a veteran of the franchise, having directed “Saw II,” “III” and “IV.” He knows the audience wants to see gore, delivered through greasy mechanical contraptions that ratchet up the torture by chilling degrees, and he delivers. The methods, though familiar, remain surprising and unsettling, as the killer remains many moves ahead of Banks and his fellow cops.

The strength of “Spiral,” though, is Rock, who sets aside his comedian’s cockiness to dig into Banks’ regret-filled soul. Rock respects the franchise — he has declared himself a fan, and is an executive producer here — and shows that respect with the best dramatic performance of his career, one that will make audiences think twice about him and the “Saw” universe. 

——

’Spiral: From the Book of Saw”

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 14, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, pervasive language, some sexual references and brief drug use. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: In 'Army of the Dead,' a zombie heist thriller, director Zack Snyder gives in to his worst impulses and creates a bloated, humorless bore

In his latest movie, “Army of the Dead,” director and law-unto-himself Zack Snyder gets back to his roots — a satirical and bloody zombie thriller, like his debut, 2004’s “Dawn of the Dead” — but falls prey to the same narrative bloat and mindless spectacle that hobbled his DC Comics adaptations.

In the near future, America has successfully repelled a zombie infestation, with the few surviving hordes of the undead trapped behind a wall that encircles Las Vegas. (In a lurid prologue, a military convoy leaves Area 51 with a secret cargo — which turns out to be the started zombie. That’s followed with topless zombie showgirls over the opening credits, which seem to go on forever.)

Eventually, the actual plot kicks in, which involves a Japanese billionaire, Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanaka), making an offer to fry cook Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) — who’s no ordinary fry cook, because he’s played by Dave Bautista. Ward is some kind of special ops guy or mercenary or something. What matters is he has a crap-ton of weapons, and knows a lot of people who are equally well-supplied with machine guns.

Tanaka’s offer involves having Ward and his crew — including ace mechanic Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), the saw-wielding Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) and gruff helicopter pilot Marianne Peters (Tig Notaro) — walk into Vegas, slip past the zombies, proceed to a basement vault, foil some nasty defensive measures, and crack the safe to retrieve $200 million in untraceable cash. Oh, and do it within 96 hours, before the president nukes Vegas to kill the zombies roaming the Strip.

Ward must add more people to his crew: Lilly (Nora Arnezeder), a coyote who knows the ways into Vegas; Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer), an effete safe-cracker; Mikey Guzman (Raúl Castillo), a zombie-killing YouTube sensation, and his pals; and Martin (Garret Dillahunt), who is Tanaka’s security guy and apparently is following a different agenda. And there’s one more: Ward’s estranged daughter, Kate (Ella Purnell), a volunteer at the nearby refugee camp who wants to rescue some women that Lilly took into the zombie-plagued city.

So far, so good, right? A bunch of tough-talking actors chewing up the scenery and shooting every zombie they encounter, making blood fly all over the place in a shower of CGI carnage. There’s even a zombie white tiger patrolling the streets, because Zack Snyder wanted one and producers are finding it increasingly difficult to say no to a director who can call down the wrath of thousands of Twitter-adjacent fanboys.

OK, so the zombie tiger is admittedly cool, as is the social commentary about the brain-dead excess of Las Vegas — a nod to the similar excess of the shopping mall in Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake. (It’s also weirdly fascinating to watch Notaro’s performance, which was digitally inserted into every scene during the COVID-19 quarantine when the actor who originally played Peters, Chris D’Elia, was accused of sexual misconduct and became too toxic to keep in the movie.)

So why isn’t “Army of the Dead,” in its mix of “Ocean’s Eleven” plotting and over-the-top zombie gore, more fun than it is? Maybe it’s because Snyder has overloaded the movie with too many characters to keep track of, too many soft-focus views of the crumbling Vegas skyline, and too much wasted effort to make a grandiose epic out of what should be a sleek, speedy action movie.

——

‘Army of the Dead’

★★

Opens Friday, May 14, in theaters where open; available Friday, May 21, on Netflix. Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout, some sexual content and brief nudity/graphic nudity. Running time: 148 minutes.

Review: 'The Killing of Two Lovers' is a bleak, beautiful look at a marriage on the rocks in a small town

Writer-director Robert Machoian’s “The Killing of Two Lovers” is as stark, intimate and beautiful as the small town, nestled along Utah’s mountains, where the movie takes place.

Describing the movie’s opening scene would be a spoiler, but suffice it to say that the main character, David (Clayne Crawford), is contemplating doing something unspeakable. The rest of the movie spools out from that decision, as Machoian considers whether David can atone sufficiently for those early moments.

David is going through a rough patch. He’s recently separated from his wife, Nikki (Sepideh Moafi), and has moved back in with his ailing dad (Bruce Graham). He’s trying to pick up odd jobs around town, while also navigating the weekends where he has custody of his and Nikki’s four kids — a moody teen daughter Jesse (Avery Pizzuto) and three rowdy small sons (played by Machoian’s real kids, Arri, Ezra and Jonah Graham).

David is working hard to win back Nikki, and gets frustrated when a planned date night is derailed when Jesse’s temper prompts Nikki to want to keep a close eye on her. David becomes even more agitated when he learns Nikki is dating a guy from her office (Chris Coy), which he takes as an assault on his manhood and a step backward on the path toward reconciling his marriage.

Machoian follows David in long, fluid takes that capture his place amid the foreboding mountains around his small town. (The movie was filmed in Kanosh, Utah.) Machoian’s penchant for letting scenes breathe leads to solid performances, especially from Crawford and Moafi, as they create deeply felt moments that are almost too perfectly real to bear. 

——

‘The Killing of Two Lovers’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 14, at select theaters, including the Cinemark 16 in Provo. Rated R for language. Running time: 85 minutes.

——

This review originally appeared on this site on January 27, 2020, when the movie screened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Us Kids' movingly shows the Parkland kids taking different paths, from activism to introspection, in the aftermath of a school shooting

Filmmaker Kim A. Snyder, our chronicler of the aftermaths of school shootings, asks an intriguing question in the fast-moving and thoughtful “Us Kids”: How does a revolution based on youth energy maintain itself when the youths get older and the cynical world moves on?

Snyder, whose “Newtown” (which played at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival) encapsulated the unfathomable grief of parents whose young children were killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, this time profiles the students who survived the 2018 mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. And while grief and depression are important emotions for these kids, the overriding one is the anger that many of the survivors channeled into action.

Snyder compiles footage of some of the teens who became famous — like X Gonzalez (who then when by Emma), David Hogg and Cameron Kasky — for speaking out, then organizing the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., and other cities across America less than six weeks after the shooting. 

Those kids went even further, going on a nationwide tour to encourage young people to register to vote, and to vote against politicians in the thrall of National Rifle Association donations. (Utah viewers will note that the tour stopped in Salt Lake City, targeting then-Rep. Mia Love — and that the youth vote in Utah went up 200 percent in 2018 compared to 2014.)

Snyder captures moments on the tour that might have gone unnoticed, like how Hogg and Gonzalez in some cities tried to engage with the pro-gun counter protesters who showed up at some stops. The film also talks to Kasky about the emotional strain that caused him to snap along the way.

Intercut with the tour, Snyder follows another Parkland survivor on a more solitary journey. Sam Fuentes was shot in both legs, and still has shrapnel scars on her face. She talks less about that than about watching a classmate, Nicholas Dworet, die in front of her.

Fuentes became instantly famous at the March for Our Lives (which happened on Dworet’s birthday, by the way), when she threw up in the middle of her speech. Snyder lets Fuentes explain why: She was terrified that she would be killed while standing on that stage.

“Us Kids” melds the personal with the political in the most moving ways possible. The juxtaposition of Fuentes’ story with that of the more famous Parkland kids, along with Kasky’s candid comments, are stirring reminder that there’s no rule book to trauma. Each survivor processes their grief their own way, whether it’s art or activism or smashing stuff. It’s up to us non-kids to listen. 

——

‘Us Kids’

★★★1/2

Available starting Friday, May 14, on the Salt Lake Film Society’s virtual cinema, SLFS@Home. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for brief strong language, and descriptions of gun violence and trauma. Running time: 98 minutes.

——

This review originally appeared on this site on January 31, 2020, when the movie screened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.