Image © Warner Bros. Entertainment
Red One
Red One
Albany Road
(Opening in Theaters on Nov 15)
Written and directed by Christine Swanson, who began writing the screenplay 15 years before shopping it around, the story envisions two women attempting to come to terms with their shared past. They become reluctant road companions when they share the only remaining rental car for a road trip. Celeste (Reneé Elise Goldsberry) needs to get from New York City to Washington D.C. during a snowstorm that closes the airport. The last rental car has been booked by Paula (Lynn Whitfield), the mother of Celeste’s ex. The pair are at odds because Celeste suspects that Paula was behind her painful breakup with Paula’s son Kyle (J. Alphonse Nicholson). As the women jockey for position, Celeste attempts to stay focused on making the most important business meeting of her career. Eventually, circumstances cause both women to reexamine their assumptions about one another. Billed as a romantic dramedy, Swanson claims that the romantic tension is largely between the two women, each driven by their love for Kyle. (Lisa Miller)
Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger
(Cohen Media Blu-ray)
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were among the eminent British filmmakers of their generation. Their A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and The Red Shoes (1948) continue to tug at the imagination of cineastes. David Hinton directed this documentary of Powell and Pressburger, Made in England, with Martin Scorsese serving as the “presenter” whose narration puts their films in perspective.
It's personal for Scorsese. He recalls discovering Powell and Pressburger on a fuzzy black-and-white TV screen in postwar New York. Hollywood hesitated to rent its catalog for small screens in those years while cash-starved UK studios were eager to enter the American market. Powell and Pressburger were especially influential on future filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Scorsese. A quintessential Englishman, Powell worked well with Pressburger, a Hungarian Jewish refugee from Hitler’s Europe. They produced thoughtful small films as well as intelligent spectacles with images of wonder and imagination. The Red Shoes shaped Scorsese with its design of actors within the frame, dramatic use of color and lighting and the essential interview of image and music. (David Luhrssen)
Red One
(In Theaters Nov. 15)
Director Jake Kasdan delivers this year’s first Christmas movie pairing Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans as an unlikely Santa-rescuing duo. Johnson appears as Cal, Santa’s (J.K. Simmons) bodyguard, while Evans plays Jack, a degenerate sports gambler and super-hacker. Having inadvertently led the ancient witch Grýla (Kiernan Shipka) to Santa’s hidden whereabouts, Jack is pressed into service by Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu) to find the kidnaped St. Nick and save Christmas. Zoe heads the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority, ironic since her HQ and weaponry emphasize futuristic technology. Toy store back rooms serve as portals, while Cal wears a nifty wristband that transforms objects, such as hot wheels, into real cars. Eventually, the rescue team finds its way to Santa’s estranged half-brother, the giant goat-man Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), whose strength and use of it, are fearsome. Stuffed with too many ideas and characters to list, the film’s trailer reveals a massive CGI budget. Many critics find the story overstuffed and short on value, but kids will be wowed by Cal’s talking polar bear sidekick and the evil snowmen soldiers found in this action-comedy, Holiday extravaganza. (Lisa Miller)
Sacred Alaska
When Eastern Orthodox missionaries appeared in Alaska alongside Russian colonizers in the 1700s, they didn’t copy from the forced conversion playbook. Instead, they set an example and listened to the natives, letting Aleuts and other Indigenous Alaskans understand the similarity of their faiths. The natives believed that nature was divine, and the Eastern Orthodox added that the Creator is within all creation. With Sacred Alaska, director Simon Scionka, best-known for his award-winning documentary Poverty, Inc., turned his camera on Alaska’s native peoples, recording their thoughts, and the state’s vast landscape dotted with tiny churches topped with onion domes.
7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 17 at Marquette University’s Varsity Theater, 1326 W. Wisconsin Ave.
