Screen Grabs: Truth, justice, and… something something

Though probably the irony will fly boldly over the heads of most multiplex patrons, it could hardly be a sadder moment for a new Superman movie…given that its hero has for close to a century been the champion of “truth, justice, and the American way.” Later iterations substituted “freedom,” “peace for all mankind” or “a better tomorrow” for “the American way”—placing them even further out of step with our current political realities. (Smithsonian Magazine just published an article charting that catchphrase’s evolution here.) In any case, that latest big-screen Man of Steel adventure, directed by Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn, with David Corenswet donning the cape, wasn’t advance-screened in time for this column. And we’re kinda not in the mood, anyhow.

But there are plenty of other new movies also opening this Fri/11, some likely more reflective of the times we’re living in. That’s certainly the case with writer-director Christian Swegal’s Sovereign, which is bypassing Bay Area theaters though it simultaneously releases to streaming platforms this weekend. Nick Offerman plays Jerry Kane, an Arkansas widower who frequently leaves his teenage son Joseph (Jacob Tremblay from Room) home alone while he’s out holding “seminars” that tap into the helplessness and rage of heartland residents sinking beneath financial quicksand. What he’s selling is the “Sovereign Citizen” belief system, a libertarian-ish view of life that claims no one is lawfully obligated to recognize the authority of courts, currency, taxation and other governmental arms.

That sounds good, but in reality it does nothing to solve problems. For instance, his own simply denying responsibility doesn’t mean the bank won’t repossess Jerry’s home due to missed mortgage payments. That prospect naturally panics Joseph, whose life is already unstable enough as he’s socially isolated in favor of alleged “home schooling.” When Jerry deems Joseph old enough to accompany him on his “lecture tours,” it’s initially a bonding experience. But dad’s rhetoric grows more violent as the consequences of his actions become harder to escape: A routine traffic stop escalates when it turns out dad of course doesn’t have a driver’s license, as does the punishment when he uses his day in court to yell a “defense” based on conspiracy-theory word salads. The boy’s life actually improves in state custody, amongst similarly disadvantaged peers. But things deteriorate seriously once Jerry gets out of jail. Father and son are soon homeless, then fugitives.

Sovereign was “inspired by true events,” purportedly a case dating to the 1970s (when that school of thought first gained underground traction)—though this fictionalization is set in the present, when it seems much less of an anomaly. The rabbit’s-hole-logic fanaticism Jerry bases his and his unfortunate offspring’s lives around is simply one variation on Deep State paranoia, feeding personal hostility while eroding the ability to exist in society. There’s an effective parallel narrative with Dennis Quaid as a hardass small-town police chief whose own kinder, gentler son (Thomas Mann) still lives under his roof. Needless to say, the dual pairs of discordant blood relations will eventually meet, fatefully.

Sovereign is not a knockout, but its relatively low-key progress (until all hell finally breaks loose) does provide potent insight into how ordinary people might drift into extremism, in the end victimizing themselves as well as others. It’s a small, astute film with considerable integrity and climactic punch.

Radicalism from the opposite side of the spectrum is on display in Underground Orange aka Bajo Naranja, which plays SF’s Marina Theatre on Chestnut this Thurs/10 only (more info here). In person for post-screening discussion will be writer/director Michael Taylor Jackson, who also stars as a young Spanish-fluent Californian traveling in Argentina, where after having his money and ID stolen he falls in with a small collective working on a play about the long-term impact of American imperialism on their nation. Soon he’s involved not just in that stage performance, but also in less legal anti-establishment acts like a bank robbery… while exploring various points on the Kinsey scale with his polyamorous new colleagues.

This colorfully designed and shot feature is stronger on ‘tude than substance, with some self-indulgent passages that feel like improv (yes, there is interpretive dancing), plus a narrative that just kind of peters out. But the message of resistance is welcome, no matter how unfocused it may be in the end. Orange imagines revolution as a floating party—and any recruitment tactic in that direction is fine by me.

Other new (and a few old) arrivals this week:

Kill the Jockey
Another offbeat missive from Argentina, this absurdist comedy from director Luis Ortega stars Nahuel Perez Biscayart as a substance-abusing, accident-prone jockey who races horses for a wealthy mobster. When his latest equine DUI proves catastrophic, Remo walks from his hospital bed in a daze and a dress, his identity now gender-morphed into the mysterious “Lola.”

An impressive leap from Ortega’s underwhelming prior true-crime feature El Angel, this crazy construct—which also embraces lesbian romance, gravity defiance, dance numbers and more—begins in baffling but brilliant fashion, presenting so much outrageous behavior in an utterly deadpan way. After a while it begins to meander, never quite regaining the delight of that initial stretch. Still, it’s an enigmatic whatsit that’s refreshingly oddball and assured, well worth a look for the adventurous. It opens Fri/11 at SF’s Roxie and Marin’s Rafael Film Center.

Push
One measure of skill—at least for the makers of suspense films—is how much mileage can be gotten from the most elemental premise. To a point, this new thriller from the directorial team of David Charbonier and Justin Powell is impressive in that regard. As in their previous features The Boy Behind the Door and The Djinn, they milk considerable tension from a bare-bones entrapment scenario, this time involving a pregnant realtor (Alicia Sanz) handling an open house day for a giant, gated rural manse with a spooky history. The sole alleged prospective buyer who shows up (Raul Castillo) turns out to have an entirely different, very threatening agenda that soon has her racing around trying to save her own and her unborn child’s life.

This almost dialogue-free cat-and-mouse action is pretty atmospheric and scary so long as it remains simple, and we don’t really know what the nature of the menace is: An evil spirit? A mortal maniac? But credibility deteriorates once there’s a significant change of location, and the film turns Castillo (who as presented here seems too much a cardboard “cartel hitman” stereotype) into an Unstoppable Killing Machine, without providing any grounding mythology for that. Push is entertaining, but ends up the classic instance of a skillful fright machine that piles on the crises until its story structure collapses. It begins streaming on genre platform Shudder this Fri/11.

“Smiles of a Summer Night: Swedish Auteurs”
A Swedish novel I just read (Annika Norlin’s The Colony) takes place largely in the rural summer, which it makes quite clear is defined to a major degree by swarms of mosquitoes. That element is mostly missing from this BAMPFA series of classics set during the season when Swedes get to shed their outer layers and perhaps some inhibitions. It begins this Fri/11 with Alf Sjoberg’s 1951 Miss Julie, still the best film version of the famous Strindberg play in which class conflict and desire combust during one balmy Midsummer’s Eve near the turn of the 19th century.

It’s followed by two glimpses of pre-Hollywood Ingrid Bergman: Her first significant screen role in 1935’s The Count of the Old Town, as a hotel chambermaid in a ensemble seriocomedy involving the hunt for a mysterious thief. The next year she was in Intermezzo, as a young pianist swept into romance with a married concert violinist. It was the role that caught David Selznick’s attention, such that she was introduced to English-speaking audiences in a hit 1939 remake opposite Leslie Howard. Neither of these movies are exactly a vehicle for her, but you can see how her naturalistic appeal already seemed destined for international stardom.

Later on there are four by Ingmar Bergman—1955 period romantic roundelay Smiles of a Summer Night (which was adapted into the Sondheim musical A Little Night Music), the fine 1953 first-love tale Summer with Monika, and two more phantasmagorical subsequent dramas, 1961’s Through a Glass Darkly and 1966’s Persona. A ginormous worldwide hit in 1967 was Bo Widerberg’s gauzy doomed-lovers saga Elvira Madigan.

Rounding out the series is one filmmaker’s debut, and another’s swan song. Roy Andersson’s 1970 A Swedish Love Story is an adolescent observation that is very different from his absurdist comedies of the last quarter-century (Songs from the Second Floor, You the Living etc.). Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky was an expat fighting cancer when he made the primarily Swedish-language The Sacrifice, starring Bergman favorite Erland Josephson as the director’s angsty alter ego. It came out in the summer of 1986; by year’s end, Tarkovsky had died. More info on the entire “Smiles” series, which runs July 11-August 29, is here.

More revivals: Passions from the deadly to the pre-adolescent
Several more obscure but interesting celluloid artifacts have been dug up for your perusal, via home formats or in a local rep house. Kino Film Collection has a couple notable French titles that begin streaming as of July 10. Claude Miller’s 1983 Deadly Circuit has Michel Serrault as an eccentric private eye obsessively on the trail of Isabelle Adjani as a woman of many hairstyles and identities who goes around Europe seducing, then killing wealthy men. What initially seems a fairly straightforward neo-noir grows more blackly comedic and over-the-top, with the bonus of a score by Carla Bley.

Also memorable in its way is Roger Vadim’s Vice and Virtue, released 20 years earlier. Like Pasolini’s notorious Salo, it resets a story by de Sade (here Justine, kinda-sorta) in the twilight of a WW2 fascist regime. Annie Girardot is the wanton sister who serves as voluntary mistress to Nazi officers in Vichy France; Catherine Deneuve (in her first significant role) is the sibling forced into a similar role. Upscale sexploitationist Vadim was in way over his head with this allegory, whose increasing hamfistedness is only underlined by his cutting in real vintage newsreel footage. He never attempt to make such a serious statement again—thank god.

Also indicting decadence and amorality amongst the privileged is Mauro Bolognini’s English-language 1991 Italian production Husbands and Lovers, a new release from Film Movement. The late Julian Sands plays a screenwriter who reluctantly accepts wife Joanna Pacula’s infidelity, but begins to lose it when she becomes equally attached to new beau Tcheky Karyo—only more so when the latter awakens in her a previously unexplored masochistic streak. This was based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, whose works were adapted into great films by Bertolucci (The Conformist), Godard (Contempt) and De Sica (Two Women)—but also a lot of turgid mediocrities, like this exercise. It has music by Ennio Morricone, clothes by Armani, and handsome locations, yet manages to seem aesthetically dull; and despite copious nudity, the desired eroticism is MIA.

A long way from those jaded adults are the 12-year-old protagonists in Robert M. Young’s Rich Kids, an unusually intelligent and nuanced movie about children for its era. Trini Alvarado and Jeremy Levy play the progeny of Upper West Side households splintered by parental strife, which they try to make sense of as they also prove their own first stirrings of attraction. Mostly comedic, but also insightfully touching at times, this sole produced screenplay by playwright Judith Ross didn’t make much of a splash upon release in 1979, but it retains an offbeat charm.

Someone other than me might say the same of The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, a live-action version of the gross-out kiddie trading cards then popular, with dwarf actors in pustule-covered animatronic costumes playing characters like Valerie Vomit and Foul Phil. It’s a tough watch, even for those with infinite tolerance for fart jokes. But if you loved Freddy Got Fingered…well, you might be among this film’s few, stubborn fans. The two features are playing together in 35mm prints the evening of Fri/11 at SF’s Balboa Theater, presented by Movies for Maniacs, more info here.