Barron’s Cove is marketed as a crime drama thriller mystery. It gets at least 2 of those wrong. Caleb is basically a hired thug for a construction company, who puts pressure on clients who try to back out of their deals with owner Benji, a gangster moonlighting as a businessman. At the beginning of the film, Caleb’s son Barron is killed by a train as he lay on the tracks. The police quickly call it a suicide, but Caleb isn’t buying it, and wants to ask the other two boys, who were there, what they saw. One of the boys is Ethan, son of an up-and-coming politician in the area, and Ethan is a little shit. An obvious bully, Ethan is hiding something, and Caleb kidnaps him and takes him to a secluded cabin, threatening violence to get Ethan talking. Up to this point, the movie was pretty good (in the solid 3 1/2 star range), because you are wondering if Caleb, despite his rough-and-tumble past, is really going to torture a child. But from here, the film starts to go off the rails, and it only got worse as it goes along. People attack the cabin trying to kill Ethan instead of Caleb, dirty cops get involved, Benji is unmasked as being in league with the politician (who has plenty of dirty secrets too)… it all starts cascading pretty quickly. 3 1/2 stars became 2 1/2 and, finally, by the end, I couldn’t wait for it to end. Started out with so much promise too. ★½
Meeting With Pol Pot is a fictionalized story about a real-life event, when Cambodian dictator and despot Pol Pot invited 3 French journalists to come to his country in 1978 in an attempt to dispel rumors of genocide and government collapse. In France and the rest of the western world, there are whispers that Pol Pot’s regime has emptied the country’s largest city, Phnom Penh, and killed thousands of dissidents (later, we would learn the number was over a million, nearly a quarter of the country’s population). One of the journalists, Alain, went to school with Pol Pot when he attended college in Paris (and where he received his idealistic communism views) and is keen to justify his old college pal’s actions. The other two, Lise and Paul, get bad vibes from the very beginning. They instantly recognize that they aren’t being shown the whole story. People they interview are obviously being fed what to say, and they have no access to actual communities, and instead are shown only Potemkin villages. When Paul escapes his escorts one day and gets out into the countryside, he witnesses first hand the rampant famine, disease, and death that is tearing the country apart. When he is found, Paul is only with his friends for a couple days until he “runs away again” (as the official word says), but Lise suspects he has come to a deadly end for his previous actions. The whole time, as the journalists continually ask if they will ever actually meet Pol Pot, we start to wonder too if the whole thing is just a set up. Great film, about a dark time in that country’s history, and a stark reminder of what a totalitarian government is capable of, as we watch the teachers rewrite history, deny things that are happening right in front of their eyes, and explain away evils as “being caused by the enemy.” ★★★★
Friendship is a dark comedy starring Tim Robinson as Craig Waterman, a boring man with a boring life, where even his wife and son don’t show him much respect. He doesn’t go out, doesn’t have any friends, and even the stuff/hobbies he is interested in are lame. His life takes a turn when new neighbor Austin (Paul Rudd) moves in, and invites Craig out for some guy time. Austin’s a normal dude but he is not prepared for the insanity that follows Craig around like flies after a dead animal. His behavior is absurd from the beginning, but Austin gives him a few shots until Craig finally does something that crosses the line, and then Austin gives him the “maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore” spiel. Then Craig goes all fatal attraction on Austin, and his behavior around his family spirals out of control too. For once Paul Rudd isn’t providing the comedy, all of it comes from Craig’s cringe-worthy dialogue and actions. I imagine some (many?) people will laugh often and hard at Craig, but honestly I didn’t even crack a chuckle once. Not once. Just too cringy for me. ★★
Another banger starring Guy Pearce. I’ve said it before, but man does this guy have a knack for finding good roles. Inside is the story of 3 convicted murderers doing time in an Australian prison, and how each deals with their sentence in their own way. The film follows Mel (newcomer Vincent Miller), who, as a 12-year-old, killed a classmate, and he’s been serving time in juvenile hall ever since. Now 18, he’s being transferred to an adult prison to serve out the final year of his sentence before parole. He doesn’t know how to handle that, and he still has flashbacks to his crime, and we see glimpses of the shitty life he was having that led up to it. If he thought juvie was rough, he’s unprepared for adult gen pop. His first roommate will open his eyes, because he is housed with the country’s most notorious inmate, Mark Shepard (Cosmo Jarvis, the main guy in the wildly popular show Shogun). We don’t immediately know Mark’s crime, only that he is whispered about everywhere he walks, which is incongruous with the man Mark is now: he’s found God, preaches salvation at a weekly church service he runs (he asks Mel to provide music), and takes Mel under his wing to protect and guide him. Only later in the film does a news story airing on TV in the background update the public on Mark’s crime, and we see a picture of a little girl, so you know it was bad. After Mel’s initial complaint about housing with Mark, the jail takes their time, but eventually moves Mel to Warren’s (Guy Pearce) room. Warren has been serving a long time but the end is near, with a parole hearing a couple months away. If the public thinks that Mark is evil incarnate, we the viewer can see that Warren, while maybe not as notorious, is certainly capable of anything. The first time we see Mark and Warren cross paths, he is Mark who becomes wary, so immediately we know that this is a man to watch. Utterly captivating, with excellent tension, top-notch acting, and an ending that will stick with you. ★★★★★
Karate Kid Legends continues the franchise that we all thought was dead, until it was revived by the surprise hit show Cobra Kai, though it only loosely references the show. More so, it combines the earlier Ralph Macchio movies with the 2010 Jackie Chan reboot (though, thankfully, Jaden Smith is nowhere to be seen). In Beijing, young student Li Fong has been studying kung fu from Mr Han (Chan) but his mother is now moving him to New York. There, we get the same old Karate Kid story: boy meets girl, girl falls for boy, boy must deal with girl’s ex-boyfriend, who happens to be a karate expert. Once again, there’s a big tournament coming up where Li will have to prove his worth and take out the competition. Mr Han comes to NY to help Li train, and when he realizes his kung fu won’t be enough, he brings Daniel LaRusso and his karate training in for help. It all goes just as you’d expect. Like the TV show, the plot and acting are as hokey as it gets, with some truly cringy moments. The “family fun” is a bit over the top for sure. But if you can look past some of its shortcomings, and if you are a child of the 80s and practiced the Daniel LaRusso kick to the head like all little boys back then, then there’s enough nostalgia to at least provide a modicum of entertainment. ★★½
Jons Movie Takes 