Tag: 220113

The 355 (PG-13)

A group of bad-ass international spy-type ladies kick some international bad-guy butt in the big bucket of movie theater popcorn that is The 355 — or, at least, that’s the movie I wanted to see.

In actuality, while that description basically holds, The 355 is something less than that. These are all awesome actresses, all in their 40s no less, who all get a chance to kick and punch and throw elbows, taking down countless henchmen. They get to be tough, walk tough, dress tough — and dress fancy during one part of their mission. And yet the movie never revs up. Every time the movie is about to get going, it feels like the energy just dissipates.

CIA agent Mace (Jessica Chastain) and fellow agent (and longtime friend) Nick (Sebastian Stan) are tasked with going to Paris to meet with a rogue Colombian intelligence agent, Luis (Edgar Ramirez), who is looking to sell a tech gizmo that allows anyone (or any government or any terrorist organization) that possesses it unfettered access to any closed system in the world. The drive can down planes, black out cities, unleash nukes, yada yada — you’ve seen variations of this McGuffin before.

Naturally, the CIA isn’t the only interested party. While Mace and Nick pose as a honeymooning couple at a cafe, German intelligence officer Marie (Diane Kruger) is making espressos and waiting for her chance to grab the bag that has the drive. When she does, chaos ensues. Mace chases Marie but doesn’t get her before she’s able to get away — not, Marie is disappointed to learn, with the drive. Nick meets up with a group of baddies seeking the drive and soon Mace finds herself alone and under suspicion. Needing help to track down Luis, she turns to MI6 agent Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o). When they catch up with Luis, they find that not only is Marie still on his trail, but he’s been joined by Graciela (Penelope Cruz), a psychiatrist who works with Colombian intelligence who has been sent to bring Luis back in.

Eventually Graciela, Khadijah, Marie and Mace decide to work together to fight off the bad guys and get the potentially civilization-toppling drive into safe hands. That goal, they learn, is shared by Chinese intelligence agent Lin Mi Sheng (Fan Bingbing).

As I said, all of these actresses are in their 40s (which I mention because it’s just cool to see) and all are credible as strong women with special evil-defeating skills. This should work; I should have run home from the theater having had so much fun that I immediately attempted to pre-order the movie for regular comfort food watching. But this movie lacks the kind of energy, the crackle of fun, that you expect from something with this much potential. Its runtime is just over two hours which feels like too long for what it’s doing, made even draggier by some pokey pacing and some real “who cares” backstories. (There is also something odd about many of Fan Bingbing’s scenes; I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether she had been green-screened in after the fact. If nothing else, it probably goes to how pasted together the story felt when it comes to putting all the lady spies together.)

That you could guess every single twist and turn is not fatal — I was expecting The 355 to be kinda dumb. Heck, I was looking forward to enjoying a kinda dumb action movie with ladies Jason-Bourne-ing it up. But this movie doesn’t let its formidable cast loose and doesn’t have the internal cleverness to be as smart or as goofy as it needed to be. C+

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, brief strong language and suggestive material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Simon Kinberg with a screenplay by Theresa Rebeck and Simon Kinberg, The 355 is two hours and two minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios in theaters.

Licorice Pizza (R)

A 15-year-old living in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1970s has big dreams — one of which is marrying the 25-year-old photographer’s assistant he meets on school picture day — in Licorice Pizza, which is written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of frequent Anderson actor the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) has some movie and TV credits on his resume and, despite not yet driving, runs a PR firm with his mother (Mary Elizabeth Ellis). I’m not telling you this to brag, he says to Alana (Alana Haim, of the band Haim), when he first meets her as she’s offering combs and a mirror to high schoolers lining up to get their photos taken. He explains he’s just telling her how he can afford dinner at Tail o’ the Cock, the steakhouse that is his usual Thursday night hangout spot (he does PR for the owner). He invites her to stop by — and Alana both laughs at his chutzpah and is intrigued.

She does stop by, they hang out and she gives him her number — but reminds him that they aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, that such a relationship would be illegal, that he’s just a kid. And yet, she continues to hang out with him. When Gary’s chance encounter with a discount waterbed has him suddenly enter the waterbed business, Alana joins him as his business partner, helping him sell them over the phone and even driving the truck to install one. Later, as she tries to break free of his strange teenage friend group by volunteering for a political campaign, she nevertheless calls on Gary to shoot an ad for the candidate. And that shoot is where he gets the idea to start a pinball parlor — Gary is always on the make, always looking for his next thing. And, he seems perfectly content to look for new girlfriends, even while never letting go of the idea that Alana is the girl he’s going to marry.

Presumably, when he graduates from high school.

Throughout this strange, rambling hang in Encino, we meet real and fictionalized versions of L.A. personalities and showbiz people, from fellow younger actors (played by Skyler Gisondo) and to older stars (played by Christine Ebersole, Sean Penn) to more general Hollywood types (played by Bradley Cooper, Maya Rudolph).

In a movie full of great, fun performances, Cooper Hoffman (18 in real life) and Alana Haim stand out for turning in the loose, natural performances you come to an artier movie hoping for. Even before I realized who Hoffman’s father was, I found myself thinking “this kid has some real Michael Gandolfini energy” — something about him makes you think both of the discipline of the father as well as the rawness of a young actor’s performance.

Haim is equally precisely cast. It feels like a cop-out to just describe her as natural — her sisters here are played by her real-life sisters, her parents are played by her actual parents. But she gives such a round and real performance. Perhaps the highest compliment I could pay is that she feels like a girl in a Sofia Coppola movie, one who feels like a whole complete person, still figuring herself out but living a whole life from the first frame.

I could never completely forget that this movie was asking me to be all “aw, youth” about a (thankfully, fairly chaste) relationship between a 25 (at least) -year-old and a 15-year-old, no matter how precocious he is. You don’t have to think about it (or the gender politics of the situation) too hard for it to all feel icky.

So there’s that.

But then there was the other part of this movie, the one about rotary phones and newspapers the size of tablecloths and Pontiacs and those steakhouse-as-Tudor-pub restaurants (that vaguely call to mind the old style of Pizza Hut) and 1970s-era radio and aging Golden Age of Hollywood stars and a land where everybody is sort of an actor and the look of the warm sun of inland Los Angeles. My feelings about that aspect of the movie aren’t nostalgia, exactly; this all predates me. But Licorice Pizza puts you in a very specific space, and weaves its groovy-man fairy tale in such a way that I felt not just pulled in but charmed by the spirit of it. It made me think about all the times I’ve seen 1950s suburbia or 1950s Brooklyn presented with that same comforting glow of consequence-free misadventures and coming-of-age bravado. Fairy tale feels like the right way to describe all of this, a fairy tale of 1970s southern California.

With a really great soundtrack. A-

Rated R for language, sexual material and some drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza is two hours and 13 minutes long and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures in theaters.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Dr., Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Dr., Manchester, anselm.edu

Fathom Events
Fathomevents.com

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• Licorice Pizza (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Thursday, Jan. 13, at 3:30 & 7 p.m.; Friday, Jan. 14, through Sunday, Jan. 16, at 12:30, 3:45 & 7 p.m.; Thursday, Jan. 20, at 3:45 & 7 p.m.

• The Tragedy of Macbeth (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Thursday, Jan. 13, at 4 & 7:30 p.m.; Friday, Jan. 14, through Sunday, Jan. 16, at noon & 5 p.m.; Thursday, Jan. 20, at 5 p.m.

• C’mon C’mon (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Jan. 14, through Sunday, Jan. 16, at 2:30 & 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, Jan. 20, at 7:30 p.m.

• Nanook of the North (1922), a silent documentary with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, Jan. 23, at 2 p.m. at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre. Suggested donation of $10.

• For Heaven’s Sake (1926), a silent film starring Harold Lloyd with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Wednesday, Jan. 26, at 6 p.m. at the Flying Monkey. Suggested donation of $10.

• Dark Mountain (2021) on Wednesday, Feb. 2, at 7 p.m. at the Flying Monkey. Tickets cost $12.

• Blood and Sand (1922), on Sunday, Feb. 13, at 2 p.m. at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre. Suggested donation of $10.

Featured photo: The 355..