Review: 'The Woman King' is a potent historical epic, carried on the mighty shoulders of Viola Davis

In some ways, director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s war epic “The Woman King” is the sort of movie they used to make in abundance: Strong, hero-driven melodramas set against the backdrop of historic battles. Think “El Cid” or “Braveheart” or even “Henry V,” if you want to get Shakespearean about it.

But in two crucial ways, “The Woman King” is the sort of movie they almost never made, because that strong hero driving the story is a woman and an African — and, as played by the always compelling Viola Davis, fully deserving of the honorific of the title.

Set in the 1820s in the west African kingdom of Dahomey (now known as Benin), the film depicts a prosperous people living a fruitful existence away from European colonization. The young king, Ghezo (John Boyega), maintains peaceful relations with the nearby Oyo warlord, Oda Ade (Jimmy Odukoya), though the Oyo are becoming more belligerent. Fortunately for Ghezo, Dahomey has the protection of the fiercest warriors in the area, the all-woman fighting force called the Agojie.

Much of “The Woman King” focuses on the lives of the Agojie, living away from menfolk under King Ghezo’s protection. The king has also forbidden his subjects from casting their eyes on the Agojie when they return from battle — so the people of Dahomey know little about what goes on within the walls of the king’s compound.

Prince-Bythewood and screenwriter Dana Stevens (who shares story credit with the actress Maria Bello) introduce us to the Agojie by following a young recruit, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), a headstrong teen who is abandoned by her adopted father because she refuses to marry the rich men he selects for her. 

Nawi is rebellious even to the Agojie’s battle-scarred leader, General Nanisca (that’s Viola Davis), who drills into her the message that the Agojie are disciplined, and must work as a unit — not go off alone, as Nawi sometimes does. Through boot-camp sequences, Nawi learns the skills of a fighter, as one of Nanisca’s top lieutenants, Izogie (Lashana Lynch), takes on the teen as a protege.

Meanwhile, Nanisca tries to sidestep the palace intrigue of Ghezo and his many wives — while trying to warn the king that appeasing the nearby European slave traders will not end well. Nanisca also gets a warning from her top aide, Amenza (Sheila Atim), that the signs and omens tell her that something out of Nanisca’s past will return and threaten everything she holds dear.

Prince-Bythewood (“Love and Basketball,” “The Old Guard”) stages some ferocious battle scenes, with the Agojie deploying spears and swords in effectively lethal fashion against Oyo soldiers and European slavers. Even more impressive are the training sequences, which flow with the grace and finesse of good song-and-dance numbers; one scene, where the trainees graduate and take oaths to their sister warriors, is particularly moving.

Lynch, Atim and Mbedu (who appeared in the series “The Underground Railroad”) lead a strong ensemble cast. Of course, the standout is Davis, as the two-time Oscar winner shows why she’s one of the finest actors working today — displaying the iron will that makes Nanisca a fearsome general, and the deep well of pain underneath that propels her to push herself and her troops to the limit. She makes “The Woman King” the powerful, soaring drama that it is.

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‘The Woman King’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 18, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing material, thematic content, brief language and partial nudity. Running time: 126 minutes.

Review: 'Pearl' has its moments of gore, but it's more about the drama that sets up the exploitation of 'X'

Calling director Ti West’s “Pearl” a horror movie is a bit of a misnomer, because though it may have ample bloodshed and gore, they are secondary factors in this prequel to West’s “X.”

If you remember “X” (it was released only six months ago), it depicted a group of young people in 1979, renting space on a remote farm to make a porno film — and, after an hour of set-up, getting killed one by one for running afoul of the old couple who lived on the farm, Howard and Pearl. In “Pearl,” which was shot in secret during the filming of “X,” we get her origin story.

It’s 1918, and teen-age Pearl — played by Mia Goth, who played the wannabe porn star Maxine in “X,” and co-wrote this script with West — dreams of a better life than feeding the farm animals, cleaning up her immobile father (Matthew Sunderland), and enduring the harsh criticisms of her German-speaking mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright). She hasn’t heard from Howard, her husband, who’s away in Europe, fighting in the Great War, but sometimes gets visits from Howard’s perky sister, Misty (Emma Jenkins-Purro). 

Pearl’s dream, paralleling Maxine’s in “X,” is to be a famous star of the screen. When she can slip away from her mother’s gaze, she likes to go into town and watch the pictures and imagine herself as one of the dancing girls. She makes time with the handsome projectionist (David Corenswet), who shows her something they don’t usually play in the theaters: Stag films, where young men and women get naked and have sex with each other.

In the opening of the movie, West shows Pearl being kind to the farm animals — until a goose wanders into the barn, which she skewers with a pitchfork and then feeds to the alligator in the nearby pond. (She later finds alligator eggs, which likely explains why there’s still a hungry alligator in the same pond in “X,” 61 years later.) The goose’s demise hints at Pearl’s dark side, and the gore that West takes his sweet time delivering.

In contrast to “X,” which leaned hard into its exploitation roots, “Pearl” is more about the drama. What is most memorable when it’s all over is Goth’s gonzo yet earnest performance, throwing herself into the role whether Pearl is dry-humping a scarecrow or confessing her wicked ways to a horrified Misty.

Goth isn’t done with this franchise — a teaser after the end credits promises “MaXXXine,” set in Los Angeles in 1985. After giving it her all in “Pearl,” one can only imagine where Goth and West will take the story next, though one presumes it will be bloody.

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‘Pearl’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 18, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some strong violence, gore, strong sexual content and graphic nudity. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: 'See How They Run' is a mystery farce where only Saoirse Ronan is running at the right speed

On paper, the murder-mystery comedy “See How They Run” should work: Clever premise, strong cast, and the juicy target of the grande dame of mysteries, Agatha Christie.

In execution, though, director Tom George — helming his first feature — never sets the proper rhythm for what should be a fast and funny send-up of the mystery genre and Christie’s seemingly indestructible play, “The Mousetrap.”

It’s 1953, and the cast of “The Mousetrap” — led by a young Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson) as Christie’s detective, Sgt. Trotter — is celebrating its 100th performance on London’s West End. But not everyone is celebrating. The movie producer, John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith), would rather see the show’s run end soon, so he can start making the movie, directed by a boorish American filmmaker, Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody).

It’s Kopernick’s voice we hear in the opening narration, as he ticks off everything he hates about mystery stories — from the predictable patter to the fact that the least likable character is the one who gets offed. Sure enough, at the cast party, Leo is particularly obnoxious, and pretty soon he’s found dead on the stage.

Enter Scotland Yard, in the form of the lazy and semi-alcoholic Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and his overly excitable young constable, Officer Stalker (Saoirse Ronan). Stoppard has to temper Stalker’s impulsive desire to declare the last person they’ve interviewed to be the murderer. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Stoppard tells Stalker, who dutifully writes that — along with everything else — in her notebook.

Soon Stoppard and Stalker are confronted with an array of suspects: Woolf, for one, as well as the theater’s profit-minded producer, Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson); Melvyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo), a prim playwright who’s been hired to write the screenplay for “The Mousetrap” and was arguing with Leo about how to do it; or maybe Mervyn’s hot-tempered Italian “roommate,” Rio (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd). 

Throw in Woolf’s jittery wife, Edana (Sian Clifford), and Woolf’s assistant — and hidden lover — Ann Seville (Pippa Bennett-Warner), and you should have the makings of a strong whodunnit.

Screenwriter Mark Chappell, a British TV writer also on his first feature, injects some wry commentary about the mystery genre — and how formulaic Christie’s work sometimes was — in with the densely plotted story.  There’s also a jab at violent and dumbed-down American filmmaking, one that pays off well in the final reel.

The problem is that George’s pacing pokes along when it should gallop. Farces like this need to speed past, so we don’t have time to examine the flaws.

The one performer who understood the assignment is Ronan. Her take on Constable Stalker, as a tightly wound and eager-to-please junior officer who understands the law and can break out a dead-solid Katharine Hepburn impersonation, delivers the screwball energy “See How They Run” could use a lot more of.

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‘See How They Run’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 18, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some violence/bloody images and a sexual reference. Running time: 98 minutes.

Review: 'Barbarian' is an effectively creepy and terrifying addition to the horror canon

With horror movies, we don’t always need genius-level disturbances to our psyche, like in a Jordan Peele movie. Sometimes, a good old-fashioned story that creeps you out and jumps out from behind a bush and yells “boo!” Is enough — and, by that measure, writer-director Zach Cregger’s debut “Barbarian” more than fills the bill.

It all starts on a rainy night in a sketchy neighborhood in Detroit, where a woman, Tess (Georgina Campbell), can’t get into her housing rental for the night. Turns out someone is already there: Keith (Bill Skarsgård) — and after a few minutes of confusion and suspicion (would you want to be alone with the guy who played Pennywise in the “It” movies?), Tess and Keith figure out they’ve been double-booked, and agree to share the house for the night.

Then Tess hears some noises, and … nope, not going to give away anything more.

After a few more reveals, the movie abruptly cuts to the California coast, where self-absorbed actor A.J. (Justin Long) learns in a phone call that his life is about to implode. And just as you’re wondering why we’ve taken this side trip, we soon get our answer: To raise some quick cash, he has to liquidate some  unused assets — including a house in Detroit. After following that thread for a while longer, Cregger diverts us again, to fill in some more pieces of the puzzle.

Cregger, like Jordan Peele, got his start in comedy. He co-directed, co-wrote and co-starred in the 2009 sex comedy “Miss March,” and he’s one of the co-creators of the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U Know. And many of the same rhythms of set-up and pay-off used in comedy also work well in horror.

“Barbarian” delivers some first-rate shocks, and enough bat-crap craziness — mostly delivered by a character played by Matthew Patrick Davis — to keep audiences guessing, cringing and screaming. If you’re looking for an effectively chilling horror movie, you don’t need much more.

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‘Barbarian’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some strong violence and gore, disturbing material, language throughout and nudity. Running time: 102 minutes

Review: Disney's live-action 'Pinocchio' gets tied down by corporate and technological limitations

The wooden almost-boy Pinocchio sings “I got no strings to hold me down” in the 1940 Disney animated classic movie “Pinocchio” — and here, too, in a live-action/computer-animated hybrid that’s tied down, unfortunately, by Disney’s vault-raiding corporate strategy and director Robert Zemeckis’ addiction to technological whiz-bang spectacle over everything else.

The story, based on Carlo Collodi’s classic novel, is familiar to everyone by now, particularly the Disney variation. The kindly woodcarver Geppetto, lonely for companionship, carves a wooden boy that he names Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy hears the wish of Geppetto’s lonely heart, and brings Pinocchio to life — with the advice that if he’s brave, honest and unselfish, he will turn from wood into a real boy. Since Pinocchio doesn’t have a conscience to tell him right from wrong, the fairy assigns him one: Jiminy Cricket, a vagabond insect who becomes Pinocchio’s traveling companion and voice of wisdom.

What do Zemeckis and co-screenwriter Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) add to this mix? A lot of surface details, and some familiar casting. Tom Hanks — Zemeckis’ stalwart collaborator in “Forrest Gump,” “Cast Away” and “The Polar Express” — is cast at Geppetto, apparently continuing the weird-accent run he started in  “Elvis.” Jiminy Cricket is voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who starred in Zemeckis’ “The Walk.” The Blue Fairy is portrayed by Cynthia Erivo, who brings some elegance and hits the high notes on “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

Other than that, the only new wrinkle so far is the winking references to the Disney catalog in Geppetto’s collection of cuckoo clocks — which re-enact such classics as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and Zemeckis’ own “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” among others.

The story continues down the familiar path, as Pinocchio (voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) enters the big world and discovers its dangers. On his way to school, Pinocchio is distracted by Honest John, a fox (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key), and his silent cat companion, Gideon, with promises of fame and fortune — if Pinocchio joins the traveling puppet show put on by the nasty promoter Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston). Pinocchio becomes star of Stromboli’s show, but also Stromboli’s prisoner. From that mess, Pinocchio lands in another, thanks to the Coachman (Luke Evans), on his way to Pleasure Island with a new caravan of wayward boys and girls (yup, Pleasure Island is now an equal-opportunity trap). 

The computer animation that Zemeckis loves to play with (see “The Polar Express,” “Welcome to Marwen” and other motion-capture monstrosities on his filmography) becomes a trap in itself. It produces lifelike visuals that approximate the animated wonders we remember from the 1940 version. But relying on them denies the audience the experience of seeing the happy ending we wait for, to see Pinocchio finally become a real boy — because it’s impossible to hire a young actor who’s going to look enough like the Disney-copyrighted puppet we’ve been watching for the previous 90-plus minutes. 

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‘Pinocchio’

★1/2

Starts streaming Thursday, September 8, on Disney+. Rated PG for peril/scary moments, rude material and some language. Running time: 105 minutes.

Review: 'Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.' takes on evangelical hypocrisy, with strong performances by Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown

The mock-documentary satire “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” — a punctuation-heavy title — takes some hard swings at hypocrisy and selfishness in a Southern Baptist megachurch, and get in a few good licks thanks to their talented stars, Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown.

Brown and Hall portray Lee-Curtis Childs and his wife, Trinitie, the pastor and “first lady” of a prominent Baptist church in a Georgia city. A documentary crew has been hired to chronicle the preparations for the church’s reopening on Easter Sunday, to return to Lee-Curtis’ suave, charismatic sermons extolling the virtues of following Jesus and warning against temptation — mostly against the “sin,” in Lee-Curtis’ view, of homosexuality.

Lee-Curtis and Trinitie don’t want to discuss with the documentarian about the circumstances that prompted their church to close and their flock to abandon them for other preachers, notably the up-and-coming Shakura and Keon Sumpter (played by Nicole Beharie and the one-named actor Conphidance). But a few clues emerge, slowly at first, that Lee-Curtis was involved in a sex scandal involving young men.

As the opening approaches, both pastor and first lady start to unravel, shifting from passive-aggressive — like when Trinitie re-baptizes Lee-Curtis in the church’s baptismal pool and holds him under a few seconds longer than necessary — into just plain aggressive. The documentarian’s camera (as well as some moments that seem like a documentary crew wouldn’t have been privy to) show how Lee-Childs is out to prove all the doubters wrong, while Trinitie is determined to regain the status that her husband’s misbehavior has cost her.

Writer-director Adamma Ebo (her sister, Adenne, is first among the many producers) captures the telling details of the megachurch life — all the conspicuous spending justified in the name of shipping souls to Jesus, the thinly veiled contempt for other pastors, and the quietly accepted misogyny and hypocrisy that undergirds it all. The observations generate laughs, though with a sting to them that occasionally feels a little too much like shooting fish in a barrel.

The actors playing the not-so-holy Childses make the movie work. Brown’s slick portrayal captures the confidence, bordering on arrogance, that Lee-Curtis can reclaim his spot in the pulpit without ever truly facing up to his sins. And Hall goes even further, showing the lengths to which Trinitie will go — the indignities she will endure — for a chance to get back on top. It’s Brown’s and Hall’s perfectly paired instincts to find the humor and heart in this absurd situation that gives “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” Its power.

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‘Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 2, in theaters, and streaming on Peacock. Rated R for language and some sexual content. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: 'The Good Boss' is a dark comedy with a bite, and a showpiece for Javier Bardem's acting skills

Is it possible that Javier Bardem — like his talented wife, Penelope Cruz — does his best work in their native language? That’s one takeaway from the dark comedy “The Good Boss,” in which Bardem plays a CEO slowly unraveling.

Bardem plays Blanco, the CEO of Blanco Scales, and running a well-oiled factory that produces equipment to weigh and balance anything from people to cattle. Blanco tells his employees they’re all his family, and that the loyalty and camaraderie of his employees is one reason the company is a finalist for a major award. But with the inspection committee coming to visit the factory in the next few days, problems emerge to tarnish Blanca’s sterling reputation.

There’s José (Óscar de la Fuente), an accountant recently fired by the company, who sets up a one-man protest outside the front gate. There’s Miralles (Manolo Soto), the factory’s floor manager, whose marriage is falling apart — because his wife, Aurora (Mara Guil), is sleeping with the company’s head of logistics, Khaled (Tarik Rmili). And there’s a new intern, Liliana (Almudena Amor), whose beauty becomes a distraction for Blanco.

Blanco is the sort of boss who thinks he can solve any problem. When one of his machinists, Fortuna (Celso Bugalio), comes to him because his son, Salva (Martin Páez), gets arrested, Blanco arranges to have the lad work for Blanca’s wife, Adela (Sonia Almarcha), in her dress shop. But as the awards committee’s visit looms nearer, Blanco gets the hard lesson that he can’t fix everything.

Writer-director Fernando León de Aranoa — who worked with Bardem previously on the unemployment drama “Mondays in the Sun” and the Pablo Escobar biopic “Loving Pablo” — builds up the tension, and the wry humor, gradually, which just heightens the discomfort at Blanca’s expense. 

The key to that tension is Bardem’s slow-burn of a performance. His Blanco starts off as avuncular and easygoing, but when the going gets tough, his teeth ultimately come out. It’s a strong, nuanced performance, and gives “The Good Boss” its ferocity.

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‘The Good Boss’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 2, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for strong sexuality, some violence and language. Running time: 116 minutes; in Spanish, with subtitles.

Review: 'Breathless' is back, a fascinating landmark of the French New Wave that feels as fresh as ever

How can a movie be more than 60 years old and look so fresh, cool and timely? See "Breathless," Jean-Luc Godard's landmark 1960 debut now refreshed in a new print, and you'll be asking the same thing.

"Breathless" -- along with François Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" and Alain Resnais' "Hiroshima Mon Amour" -- heralded the start of the French New Wave, which shook up stodgy European filmmaking (and later the U.S. movie world) with bold visuals, taboo-shattering subject matter and rule-breaking camera movement and editing.

Godard centers "Breathless" (the French title, "Á bout de souffle," means literally "at breath's end") around Michel Poiccard (played by the hunky Jean-Paul Belmondo), a none-too-bright petty criminal who's obsessed with Humphrey Bogart and other American gangster icons. He graduates to the top of the most-wanted list when he steals a car in Marseilles and kills a motorcycle cop.

Michel drives to Paris with two goals: Retrieve money owed him by a gangster, and hook up again with Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg), an American journalism student he romanced a few weeks earlier in Nice. He finds her in the street as she's selling newspapers and tries to persuade her to run away with him to Italy — not knowing that he's on the run from the law.

In "Breathless," Godard revealed the obsession with Hollywood iconography — the cigarette dangling from Bogie's lips, the fast cars and cool guns — that fueled the French New Wave. In transferring those icons, Godard made some of his own, from Belmondo's smoldering stare to the alluring sight of the pixie-haired Seberg in her New York Herald Tribune T-shirt.

And while emulating Hollywood cool, Godard also invented a much-copied form of filmmaking. Relying on hand-held camerawork, shooting guerrilla style on the Paris streets, and moving the action with impatient jump-cuts, Godard rewrote the rules of cinema -- rules that sparked the visions of generations of maverick filmmakers.

Minus the French subtitles and the credits (what little there are, besides the title, a distribution visa number and a dedication to Monogram Pictures), you could thread "Breathless" through a projector during any given day of the Sundance Film Festival and half the audience would think it was the work of some new 20-something filmmaker — rather than a film made by a guy who's now in his 90s. Even now, with its rough-and-tumble feel, "Breathless" can still take your breath away.

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‘Breathless (Á bout de souffle)’

★★★★

Opens Friday, September 2, for a one-week run at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for sensuality, violence and language. Running time: 90 minutes; in French, with subtitles.

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This review originally appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune on November 11, 2010, to mark the film’s 50th anniversary.