FILM: Black Mass
CAST: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch
DIRECTION: Scott Cooper

Turns out the thing Johnny Depp’s career needed was simple. He needed to play a type of role relatively new to him, even if it’s relatively familiar to the rest of us.
Some scenes in the solid, vividly acted gangster picture Black Mass come from real life, or something like it. These trade-off with scenes yanked straight out of the movies. In a major GoodFellas moment, Depp, as South Boston underworld kingpin James “Whitey” Bulger, has been invited over for steaks on the grill at the home of his old neighbourhood pal and current Federal Bureau of Investigation liaison and protector John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), along with Connolly’s colleague, John Morris (David Harbour). Connolly’s wife is upstairs, both angry and fearful about the social engagement.
Bulger raves about the marinade. What’s the recipe, he asks. Morris says, can’t tell you, it’s a family secret. Then Morris capitulates with a smile and says, well, I’ll tell you, it’s soy sauce, a little garlic.
He fixes Morris with an icy blue stare; Depp probably took the role simply to be able to wear the scariest contact lenses in movie history. In a low Southie growl Bulger responds: How can I trust with you with anything if you spill an alleged family secret so easily? The room gets very chilly, and the spectre of Joe Pesci’s “I amuse you? How?” routine in Martin Scorsese’s gangland chronicle floats above the proceedings.
The true-crime film, directed with calm authority by Scott Cooper, draws direct and indirect parallels to other films, GoodFellas and The Departed among them. (Scorsese is the inevitable elephant in this mobbed-up room.) Beyond the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, which Scorsese and screenwriter William Monaghan adapted for a Boston setting and took all the way to the Oscars, The Departed drew some pulpy inspiration from the criminal exploits of the real-life criminal, convicted killer and eventual fugitive Bulger.
Here’s the rich part. Bulger’s brother, Billy, was the most powerful politician in Massachusetts, the president of the state senate. Black Mass revels in multidirectional corruption. The script by Jez Butterworth and Mark Mallouk uses Connolly as a symbol of the good man brought low by temptations and by neighbourhood loyalty.
After a prologue, in which one of Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang associates (Jesse Plemons) recounts his story to the feds, the movie zips back to the mid-1970s. It traces Bulger’s rise; his relationship with a sometime-mistress played by Dakota Johnson, with whom he has a son with his own tragic destiny; and an empire founded on slots, vending machines, drugs and extortion, plus murder.
Then comes the sweetheart deal, just as some FBI higher-ups are getting suspicious about the leeway the local boys are giving Bulger. Connolly makes a proposition: If Bulger helps the FBI rat out and clean up the Irish underworld’s nemesis, the Italian-American mafia, Bulger can do as he pleases. Just lay off the killing, Connolly says. Bulger does not.
The movie goes light on the drug-dealing, and the seriously grubby business of being one of these people. If anything, director Cooper is so intent on portraying Bulger as a man, not a monster, the man comes off a little softer than he was, probably.
With false and rotted teeth, slicked-back hair and a masklike countenance right next door to Kabuki, the makeup and costume particulars of the role no doubt appealed to Depp, who loves to play dress-up on screen. (Most actors do.) He resembles Orson Welles as the older, hollowed-out Charles Foster Kane, only he’s tricked out in black leather and massive sunglasses.
Behind those glasses, Depp’s sidelong glances are enough to curdle milk. — Chicago Tribune/TNS

A little hero


By Michael Phillips


FILM: Ant-Man
CAST: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll
DIRECTION: Peyton Reed

Ant-Man has been skittering around the development corridors of Hollywood so long, the earliest unproduced screenplays about the tiny superhero actually preceded the Disney film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. That was another age (1989), decades before our present Age of Ultron — an epoch of expensive cheap thrills dictated by the steady, crushing rollout of so many Marvel movies that even the good ones start to seem like ants at an endless picnic.
But wait. The Ant-Man we have now before us, half-an-inch tall and played by genial, skilful Paul Rudd, turns out to be better company than you’d think possible in a multi-strand franchise lousy with corporate directives.
The plot’s the same old thing. Mad, mad, mad, mad science; imminent apocalypse; parent/child issues; blah blah blaggidy blah. The tone of Ant-Man, however, is relatively light and predominantly comic. Those who feel they need a break from the numbing destruction of the Avengers/Captain America movies will likely enjoy it.
Ant-Man is a frisky hybrid — part Land of the Giants, part heist film a la 11 Harrowhouse, but with Rudd leading an army of ants against the villain, Yellowjacket, played by the excellent character actor Corey Stoll. The set-up finds burglar Scott Lang (Rudd) getting released from three years in San Quentin. His ex-wife, Maggie (Judy Greer, never in a role big enough for her talent), has custody of their daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson).
The stepfather figure in the girl’s life (Bobby Cannavale) is a sympathetic cop who doesn’t like Lang’s rap sheet and wonders if he’ll continue his life of crime.
Lang and his old pals (Michael Pena chief among them) learn of a safe inside a mansion belonging to some old rich crank, just begging to be robbed. The crank is one Hank Pym (Michael Douglas, solid if a little dull), whose big secret involves something called the Pym Particle. This enables humans to shrink down to ant size and then back up to human size, in a flash. Pym targets Lang for the next phase of the experiment, conducted with the surly but charismatic help of Pym’s daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly). — Chicago Tribune/TNS


A colourful, high-spirited tale


FILM: Blinky Bill The Movie
VOICES: Ryan Kwanten, Rufus Sewell, Robin McLeavy, Toni Collette, David Wenham, Deborah Mailman
DIRECTION: Deane Taylor

Never give up is the theme of Blinky Bill The Movie, a colourful, high-spirited tale with endearing characters and non-stop action.
The story begins in the peaceful haven of Green Patch, where we learn how Blinky’s adventurer father Mr Bill (Richard Roxburgh) does not return after leaving one year earlier in search of the mythical Sea of White Dragons. With a swag slung over his shoulder, the naive, well-meaning Blinky (Ryan Kwanten) sets off in a bid to find his missing father.
By the time Blinky finds himself at Koala Joe’s Roadhouse, pursued by Sir Claude (Robin McLeavy), a vicious British shorthair cat with a green and purple eye, we know the adventure has well and truly begun. Nutsy (Robin McLeavy), the pretty koala accustomed to zoo life with its heated spa baths, manicures and movie treats, and Jacko (David Wenham), the T-shirt wearing frill-necked lizard with a manic disposition, become Blinky’s trusted companions and the sequence in which the trio are transported across the Outback by the two helpful, chatty emus is delightful.
Directed by Deane Taylor, the film plays out predictably but with good humour as it leads into the climactic finish alongside of hungry crocodiles, a sleepy parrot and a flying contraption with emus and a hyperactive lizard. —  LK

DVDs courtesy:  Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha