Review: 'Share'

’Share’

★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 87 minutes. Next screenings: Saturday, Feb. 2, 4 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 2, Park City.

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The high-school drama “Share,” about a teen caught in a social-media nightmare, is a great idea hobbled by lackluster execution.

Mandy (played by Rhianne Barreto, a soul-stirring newcomer) is a high school sophomore who’s on her school’s girls’ basketball team, a tight-knit group who spends lots of time together, on the court and off. One night, after a drunken party, Mandy wakes up on her front lawn, not remembering how she got there, or why she has a large bruise on her lower back and a wound on her upper arm.

A day or two later, Mandy’s cellphone starts pinging madly. Somebody has texted video from that party, which shows Mandy on a bathroom floor, unconscious, her pants lowered to expose her buttocks, and several of her male classmates joking and laughing. Mandy tries to quietly ask around to her friends, to find out what happened, without letting any adults find out.

It doesn’t take long for adults, namely Mandy’s parents (J.C. MacKenzie and Poorna Jagannathan), to find out. Mom and Dad immediately take the case to the police, over Mandy’s objections. Soon the police are looking over several students’ cellphones, trying to figure out who recorded the incident, and whether there’s more footage that shows what happened before and after the events in the first video.

At school, friends try to be supportive, but aren’t sure how. Dylan (Charlie Plummer), who has been shy around Mandy before, tries to express his feelings for her, but something seems off in his demeanor. And Mom and Dad are more protective than before, with Dad showing more anger at anyone who gets near Mandy. (The fact that Dad is Caucasian and Mom is South Asian is never remarked upon during the film, which is a small step toward progress.)

Writer-director Pippa Bianco sets the stage for an affecting examination of the shifting gender roles of high schoolers, and how young women still must bear the consequences for the cruelty of young men. But the movie delivers every scene in such a flat, dismal tone that it’s difficult an audience to feel the strong emotions Mandy denies herself. 

(There was another problem that may have been unique to the cavernous Eccles Center Theatre setting. There are a couple of scenes where the camera focuses on the texts Mandy is sending and receiving. From my vantage point at the back of the Eccles, I couldn’t read those texts, which I later learned were vital to the movie’s final twist. Maybe a reshoot, or some onscreen graphics to make the texts more readable, would help.)

Whatever the problems of “Share,” keep an eye out for Bianco in the future. She’s got a powerful voice, and is determined to use it.

Review: 'Honey Boy'

‘Honey Boy’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 93 minutes. Next screening: Saturday, Feb. 2, 11:30 a.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City.

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

Stay with me here. 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 in 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 Lynne) 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.

Review: 'American Factory'

‘American Factory’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 115 minutes; in English and Chinese with subtitles. Next screenings: Friday, Feb. 1, 12:15 p.m., The Ray Theatre, Park City.

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The documentary “American Factory” — a fascinating as-it-happens look at a cross-cultural clash in the industrialized world — shows what happens when filmmakers are patient, mindful of details, and willing to let a story play out in directions one would never expect.

Directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert follow a story in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio, as the abandoned GM assembly line in Moraine (which Bognar and Reichert chronicled in their Oscar-nominated short doc “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant”) was reopened by a Chinese company, Fuyao, one of the world’s leading makers of auto glass.

At first, everyone is all smiles, because these plucky Ohioans are so desperate for jobs that they’ll happily sign up for this Chinese interloper. Fuyao’s founder and CEO, known to all as Chairman Cao, has invested $1 billion, and is determined to bridge the divide between American and Chinese business practices. And to show how committed he is, he hires Americans as his executives, and insists that U.S. workers run the different phases of operation, with Fuyao workers brought over from China to assist them.

Soon, though, the cracks in the happy facade start to open wider. Two main issues stick out: That the Chinese workers have no concept of the 40-hour work week, and the fear that the American Fuyao workers might unionize — after Cao threatened to close the factory if they did.

Bognar and Reichert stay as unobtrusive as possible, scoring deep insights not available when reporters follow the corporate message. In some of the footage, there are Fuyao staff meetings where only Chinese employees gather — and the naked discussions that belittle the Ohio workers and spread misinformation about the union organizers.

Elegantly shot and loaded with fascinating characters on both sides, “American Factory” smartly doesn’t take sides, allowing the story to introduce the workers, the company leadership, and union organizers to explain themselves, and let the viewers make up their minds who’s right.

Review: 'Mike Wallace Is Here'

‘Mike Wallace Is Here’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 94 minutes. Next screenings: Friday, Feb. 1, 8:30 a.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 12:15 p.m., Grand Theatre, Park City.

——

If there is a hell, for the investigative journalist Mike Wallace it must be having Fox News’s former bloviator Bill O’Reilly suggesting that he is his generation’s Mike Wallace — which is what happens in the first clip of the documentary “Mike Wallace Is Here,” which puts the late “60 Minutes” man under the microscope.

It was a wild career, one that started in radio and television as a jack of all trades: News reader, actor, game-show host and pitchman, hawking Old Dutch cleanser and Parliament cigarettes, among other things. He seemed to find his calling in 1957 with “The Mike Wallace Interview,” which was known for hard-hitting questions and a police-interrogation visual style — and a guest list that ranged from gangster Mickey Cohen to painter Salvador Dali.

The show was popular but risky, and ABC pulled the plug after the threat of a libel lawsuit. But it taught Wallace, and the industry, that news could be entertainment, if packaged the right way.

The right package turned out to be “60 Minutes,” launched by producer Don Hewitt in 1968. Wallace was one of the charter reporters on the show, the first “newsmagazine” on TV. The ratings were low at first, but Wallace hung in there and the show caught hold. Maybe it was the interviews of the major figures in the Watergate scandal, or the hidden-camera investigative stings that netted corrupt municipal officials or stores selling child porn, or the somewhat abrasive celebrity interviews with the likes of Barbra Streisand and Johnny Carson.

Director Avi Belkin covers a lot of Wallace’s life and career, including his work-before-family attitude, the 1982 libel suit filed by retired Gen. William Westmoreland, the corporate interference that delayed the story of tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Weigand (the one chronicled in “The Insider”), and his running battle against depression.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Belkin introduces those topics by finding an archived interview (and CBS opened its vaults to the filmmakers) where one of Wallace’s interview subjects raises the issue. Then Belkin deploys a quote from the archived interviews with Wallace, and the result is like a Mike Wallace interview in reverse.

Belkin argues that Mike Wallace created the template that decades of lesser talents employed, turning news into a circus and a spectacle. It’s true they copied Wallace’s in-your-face attitude, but they didn’t come close to matching his integrity.

Review: 'The Sound of Silence'

‘The Sound of Silence’

★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 87 minutes. Next screenings: Friday, Feb. 1, 5:45 p.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 3 p.m., Sundance Mountain Resort Screening Room, Provo Canyon.

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There is no more frustrating sight at a film festival than a movie that squanders a good idea with a lot of pretentious moodiness — which “The Sound of Silence” has in abundance.

The premise is fascinating: Peter Lucian (played by Peter Sarsgaard) is a professional “house tuner,” performing a sort of aural feng shui on New York apartments so that everything — the radiator, the fridge, and the ambient sound in the room itself — is striking a pleasant chord. This is the professional side of Peter’s other research, finding a universal constant in the sounds of New York itself.

One of Peter’s clients, Ellen (Rashida Jones), proves to be a tough case to crack. She complains of sleeplessness and irritability, and he thinks he’s tracked it to her old toaster, which plays a dissonant note. But when the toaster is replaced, Ellen’s problems remain. As he continues deeper into her issues, something resembling a romance starts — or it would, if this movie weren’t so wrapped up in its own obtuseness.

Director Michael Tyburski, co-writing with Ben Nabors, presents an intriguing notion of New York as a symphony, with each street and building a chord in the larger score. His lyrical depiction of that city is finely crafted, which makes it more of a shame when other things — like a subplot involving a high-tech company trying to steal Peter’s research — strike such sour notes.

Review: 'Them That Follow'

‘Them That Follow’

★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 98 minutes. Next screenings: Friday, Feb. 1, 11:30 a.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City.

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If only the plot of the Appalachia-based drama “Them That Follow” matched its atmosphere and its acting, as it depicts life in a tight-knit community bound by their religious faith — which involves snake handling.

Lemuel (Walton Goggins) is the pastor who brings out the rattlesnakes during services. Sometimes a member of the congregation will get bit, which is how Zeke (Jim Gaffigan) lost his thumb sometime back. But Zeke and his wife Rose (Olivia Colman) maintain their faith that God will cure anything, including snakebites.

Maura (Alice Englert), Lemuel’s daughter, has a bigger problem. While young buck Garret (Lewis Pullman) has asked Lemuel for Maura’s hand, Maura has deeper feelings for Augie (Thomas Mann), Rose and Zeke’s son, who has fallen away from the faith. Complicating this love triangle is the secret Maura is keeping: She’s carrying Augie’s baby.

The plot comes down to one question: Who’s going to find out Maura is pregnant, and in what order? Beyond that, there’s little suspense in what happens in the movie, even regarding the snakes, whose unpredictability is at the root of the faith. 

Even when things get nasty and violent, it’s telegraphed well ahead of time. (Before one gruesome moment, at least half a dozen Sundance patrons had enough time to exit the theater before it happened.)

Directors Britt Poulson and Dan Madison Savage capture the small-town atmosphere, and the reverence for God and freedom, with pinpoint detail. The cast is compelling, particularly Goggins, who has this wild-eyed southern act down to perfection, and Colman, who glides past the easy stereotypes to which a true-believer character like this might fall prey.

Review: 'Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played With Fire'

‘Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played With Fire’

★★1/2

Playing in the World Cinema Documentary competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 95 minutes; in Swedish with subtitles. Next screenings: Wednesday, Jan. 30, 8:30 a.m., Prospector Square Theatre, Park City; Friday, 10 p.m., Redstone Cinema 2, Park City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 11:30 a.m., Egyptian Theatre, Park City.

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The documentary “Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played With Fire” feels like a missed opportunity, a movie that focuses on one aspect of the late author’s work — his journalistic research into Sweden’s dangerous far-right groups — that doesn’t connect that work enough to his famous “Millennium” thrillers.

Before he created the anti-social hacker Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” Larsson worked as a journalist and graphic designer in his native Sweden. He founded an anti-racist magazine, Expo,  where he and a ragtag staff aimed to expose right-wing extremism, first in Sweden and later worldwide. It was a thankless task, and sometimes a dangerous one; death threats were common, and in one instance his writers were targeted by a car bomb.

Larsson became the resident expert on the far right, writing a book, “The Extreme Right,” before turning to fiction. He appeared frequently on Swedish TV to expose extremism (the appearances provide a fair amount of the documentary’s footage). Ironically, though, the more Larsson exposed them, the more mainstream they became. One party Larsson investigated, Sweden Democrats, last year won seats in the Swedish Parliament.

Director Henrik Georgsson interviews friends and colleagues of Larsson, who died in 2004 of a heart attack that friends attribute to the stress brought on by his work. (He also ate badly and smoked, friends point out.)

Georgsson’s focus is predominantly on his journalism, with too-fleeting mentions of the fiction books that sold millions of copies and made him internationally famous. That’s a shame, since his work reporting on the far right obviously fueled “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” series — it’s not for nothing that the other main character was a besieged magazine editor — and more analysis of those connections would made his crusade against neo-Nazis and other extremists more understandable.

Review: 'Luce'

‘Luce’

★★★

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 109 minutes. Next screenings: Thursday, Jan. 31, 6:30 p.m., Rose Wagner Center, Salt Lake City; Friday, Feb. 1, noon, Temple Theatre, Park City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 3 p.m., Redstone Cinema 7, Park City.

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If digging through ambiguity over hot-button issues — racism, the pressure put on role models, sexual assault and white liberal guilt — is your jam, the provocative and frustrating drama “Luce” is for you.

The star student at Nova High School in northern Virginia is Luce Edgar (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a standout track athlete and talented debater. His backstory is the stuff of horror stories: Born in Eritrea and trained as a child soldier, Luce was adopted at age 7 by a prosperous white couple, Amy (Naomi Watts) and Peter (Tim Roth).

Luce is a model student, beloved by all of his teachers except one: Miss Wilson (Octavia Spencer), his history teacher. Luce complains that Miss Wilson is too demanding of the students, not in their class work but in expectations that they be role models.

One day, Miss Wilson calls Amy in for a chat. Writing for a class assignment, she says, Luce wrote a disturbing political screed demanding violent revolution. What’s more, when Miss Wilson searched Luce’s locker, he found a bag of illegal fireworks. Miss Wilson doesn’t report Luce to the principal, Dan (Norbert Leo Butz), but lets Amy handle things, mother to son.

This revelation sets off a string of incidents, as Amy and Peter wrestle with being protective of Luce and fearful of him. Other incidents, like the suspension of another student (Astro) and a party where something happened to classmate Stephanie (Andrea Bang), complicate the image of Luke as a perfect son and student.

Meanwhile, Miss Wilson is dealing with issues at home. Her sister, Rosemary (Marsha Stephanie Blake), is living with her after having been released from a mental facility. When the sisters are shopping one day, and Rosemary encounters Luce, Miss Wilson starts to suspect her student is stalking her.

Director Julius Onah, co-writing with J.C. Lee (on whose play the script is based), throws a lot up on the screen, and gives enough information so that every character can be seen as the hero or the villain, depending on one’s point of view. At the same time, Onah and Lee withhold certain key details, which makes it a little maddening for a viewer to sort out right from wrong.

The performances are solid, with Harrison particularly striking as the model student able to alter his personality to fit what those around him — teachers, classmates, parents — need him to be.

“Luce” is the sort of movie you should watch at the beginning of a film festival, so by the end of the festival enough people will have seen it so you can all talk about it and figure out what the hell happened. If Onah and Lee meant to make a conversation starter, they succeeded.

Review: 'Clemency'

‘Clemency’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 113 minutes. Next screenings: Thursday, Jan. 31, noon, Temple Theatre, Park City; Friday, Feb. 1., 6:30 p.m., Rose Wagner Center, Salt Lake City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 8:30 a.m., Egyptian Theatre, Park City.

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Sensitive and hard-hitting, writer-director Chinonye Chukwu’s debut feature “Clemency” is a thoughtful examination of the death penalty in American prisons — seen from the viewpoint of the people who carry it out.

Alfre Woodard gives a gut-wrenching, fully lived-in performance as Bernadine Williams, the caring warden at an unnamed prison. (Chukwu deliberately avoids setting the movie in a particular state, so no one is off the hook.) 

In the opening sequence, Bernadine is overseeing an execution by lethal injection. She makes sure the procedure is run by the numbers, and tends to the inmate’s mother, the guards who carry the inmate into the chamber, the chaplain (Michael O’Neill), and the paramedics. Even with all those checks, the execution goes awry, and the inmate (Alex Castillo) dies in agony. (The sequence seems to be inspired by a botched execution in Oklahoma a few years back.)

While an investigation looms on that execution, Bernadine must move on the next one: Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodge), convicted of his role in the shooting death of a police officer 15 years ago. Woods is largely uncommunicative, declining to request a last meal, declare a place he wants to be buried, or invite family members (his mother dies, off-camera and just before the movie starts). His attorney, Marty Lumetta (Richard Schiff), exhausts every option at appeals and requests for clemency, and tells Woods he’s retiring after this case — a sign that even he has given up hope.

Meanwhile, Bernadine struggles to keep her life from falling apart. She tends to drink a bit, after hours with the deputy warden (Michael Gunn). And her marriage to Jonathan (Wendell Pierce), a high-school English teacher, is on the rocks, in part because he’s suggesting rather strongly that maybe both of them should retire.

Chukwu, who spent four years researching Death Row issues to inform her script, focuses on the toll an impending execution takes on everyone involved — not just the condemned man, but also the lawyers, the survivors, the prison personnel, and their families. The somber tone set by Chukwu and cinematographer Eric Branco matches the seriousness of the story and the actors.

Woodard’s performance is flawless, creating tiny gestures to convey the bone-weary demeanor of someone trying to provide dignity in a situation that denies that privilege to all who are caught in it, Woodard’s face will burn in the memory long after the movie’s shattering conclusion.

Review: 'Fighting With My Family'

‘Fighting With My Family’

★★★1/2

Playing in the Premieres section of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 103 minutes. Next screenings: Wednesday, Jan. 30, 8:30 p.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City.

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One might read the premise of “Fighting With My Family” and dismiss it as a warm, fuzzy family story wrapped up in the artificiality of professional wrestling and the spectacle of the WWE.

OK, it’s all that, but it’s also a lot more. Writer-director Stephen Merchant, the co-creator of “The Office,” has crafted a smart, funny, sharp and emotionally charged story about family ties, the business of sports entertainment, and an underdog tale of pushing through self-doubt. It’s a winner, in more ways than one.

The family in question is the Bevis family of Norwich, England, which runs a scruffy pro wrestling franchise that sets up in bars and other dives across England. Everyone wrestles in this family: Dad (Nick Frost), Mum (Lena Headey), big brother Zak (Jack Lowden) and little sister Saraya-Jade (Florence Pugh) — whose wrestling name is Britani Knight. When the family sends an audition tape to the WWE, they get a call from talent scout and coach Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn), who invites Zak and Saraya-Jade to try out when the WWE is in London.

Morgan tells the auditioning wrestlers that the WWE isn’t just looking for athleticism, but for that “spark.” Pro wrestling is “soap opera in spandex,” and the ability to please a crowd is as important as the strength to throw another wrestler to the ground. (Talking about the importance of pleasing the crowd in a crowd-pleaser movie is meta-storytelling at its finest.)

Saraya-Jade, who takes the name Paige (from Rose McGowan’s character in “Charmed”) because WWE already has a Britani, turns out to have that “spark,” in Morgan’s view. She’s the only one Morgan picks to go to Florida to train in WWE’s NXT development program — which is a blow to Zak’s ego, and his lifelong dream of joining the WWE.

The rest of the movie follows Saraya-Jade’s, er, Paige’s struggle to make it through the NXT, discover her identity as a wrestler, and follow the advice of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (who appears as himself because who else could play him) to be authentic: “Don’t be the next me, be the first you.” Pugh, who burst on the scene in the intense “Lady Macbeth,” proves herself a star here, handling the comic and serious moments beautifully.

Merchant paces “Fighting With My Family” incredibly well, shifting deftly from dreary Norwich to sunny Florida, and finding the humor and heart of the Bevis family’s unique form of tough love.