Category Archives: Reviews

’Reptile’ Slithers Some Tension

Making a film is such a collaborative process we hesitate to say any individual, even the lead, carries a movie, but that’s exactly what Benicio Del Toro does as a world-weary detective in the seedy and lurid cop-noir “Reptile”: He carries this sometimes convoluted and derivative thriller into three-star territory with an absolutely mesmerizing and authentic performance that conjures up memories of past anti-hero greats such as Bogart and Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Sterling Hayden. It’s authentic, grounded, stunning work.

Even when the material is the stuff of B-movie guilty pleasure.

Director Grant Singer (who co-wrote the script with Del Toro and Benjamin Brewer) makes the move from helming music videos for stars such as Ariana Grande, Skrillex, Lorde and Sam Smith to a feature-length debut that could have benefitted from tighter editing (the running time is 2 hours and 14 minutes). But he has a keen eye for this lurid material, bathing the visuals in ominous and unsettling autumnal tones while making smart choices, e.g., having two of the most violent moments in the film occur offscreen, making them perhaps more impactful and jarring than if they had transpired on camera..

“Reptile” opens with in affluent suburb of Scarborough, Maine, with the mood-setting sounds of an Edie Sands cover of Chip Taylor’s melancholy one-night-stand classic “Angel in the Morning” on the soundtrack, as a young real estate agent named Summer (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) and her boyfriend Will (Justin Timberlake), the heir to a local real estate empire, prep a spacious suburban home for a showing. Not long after, Will discovers Summer’s body in the master bedroom of that same house, stabbed more than 30 times, the knife plunged into her body with such vicious force that it remains jammed in her pelvis.

Enter police detective Tom Nichols (Del Toro), who will lead the investigation into this sensational murder with the help of his eager but green partner Dan (Ato Essandoh). The shifty and smarmy Will is an obvious suspect — he acknowledges his relationship with Summer had its ups and downs — but we’ve got a couple of other contenders as well. There’s Summer’s estranged husband Sam (Karl Glusman), a hollow-eyed creep who makes art incorporating human hair (we see security cam video of this guy surreptitiously snipping someone’s locks on a bus), as well as the disturbed and volatile Eli (Michael Carmen Pitt), who has carried a vendetta against Will’s family ever since they bought up Eli’s family’s farm when the family was financially vulnerable, which led to Eli’s father committing suicide. (Frances Fisher is exquisitely icy as Will’s controlling mother, who runs the real estate empire with ruthless efficiency and treats her jelly-spined, 40-ish son as if he’s 12.)

Poor Summer is nearly forgotten in the morgue as “Reptile” dwells on Tom’s life with his longtime and beloved wife, Judy (a terrific Alicia Silverstone), who has stuck by her husband through some trying times in Philadelphia, when Tom was nearly taken down along with his corrupt partner. (It’s unclear whether Tom DESERVED to go down.) The dynamic between Tom and Judy is warm and passionate, with just the lightest undercurrent of tension fueled by Tom’s jealousy. (He doesn’t trust that hunky contractor who’s renovating the kitchen.)

We also take in the “Copland” type vibe among Tom’s colleagues, including the police chief (Mike Pniewski), a real straight shooter; the captain (Eric Bogosian), a highly respected leader who is also Judy’s uncle, and the veteran cop Wally (Dominick Lombardozzi), who recently started a private security firm and is one of those loud-mouthed, “life of the party” tough guys who is always on the brink of taking the razzing a bit too far. Tom and Judy spend a lot of time with the group and their partners, but we get the feeling Tom still feels like an outsider.

“Reptile” is the kind of movie where the phone is always buzzing in the middle of the night or there’s someone pounding on the door late into the evening, and every time you’re driving on a winding road, the headlights behind you get uncomfortably close. Danger lurks, jump scares abound, and you don’t know who can be trusted. There’s a moment late in the game when Tom wonders if this is Philadelphia all over again, and he says to Judy, “There’s only one thing I love almost as much as I love you, and that’s being a cop, [but] you know what? This thing does not love me.” It’s a killer line, delivered by a world-class actor at the top of his game.

Friday Night Lies: ‘B.S. High’

Are you ready for some football? Donald Trump style? HBO offers both in its new documentary B.S. High.

Bishop Sycamore High School from Columbus, Ohio, clearly wasn’t — but that didn’t stop its head coach and co-founder Roy Johnson from somehow finding a way to get his team on the field against the storied national powerhouse IMG Academy on Aug. 29, 2021, in a game that was televised nationwide as part of the ESPN High School Kickoff Series.

What happened next will go down in infamy as one of the most bizarre, disturbing and inexplicable debacles in recent high school sports history. IMG destroyed Bishop Sycamore 58-0, but that just begins to tell the story.

From the opening kickoff, it was clear there was a huge talent chasm between the blue-chip prospects at IMG and the disorganized bunch from Bishop Sycamore to the point where the ESPN announcers expressed concern for the health and safety of the Sycamore players who were getting laid out all over the field. When a Bishop Sycamore player went down with a torn ACL, the team’s trainer knelt next to him to assess the extent of the injury. Bishop Sycamore’s “trainer” was the mother of a team member. She literally had the word “MOM” emblazoned across her T-shirt.

The disastrous game drew enough attention to get the school and Johnson investigated and eventually shut down. But that’s about all they could do because there’s no law against starting a fake school in Ohio, itself a pit.

At the beginning of Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe’s documentary, Johnson wants us to believe he had the best of intentions. “Are you a con man?” he is asked. That’s the question the doc unpacks over an hour and a half. Johnson’s only concession? He’s a liar, but he’s an “honest liar.”

Let’s be clear: There’s nothing honest about Johnson.

A few years back, Johnson started a school called Christians of Faith Academy and later changed its name to Bishop Sycamore. The school was supposed to be for athletically gifted but troubled Black kids who wanted college football scholarships. Johnson, the guy who kicked off the whole scheme, promised better grades, better entrance exam scores, and a path to a Division I school.

He manages to get a number of high school athletes on board, but here’s the kicker: The school didn’t exist. Johnson did put together a football team, coached it himself (with zero prior coaching experience), and even set up games against other high schools, including a televised match against the elite IMG Academy, a team so good that no other high school would accept a bid to play them except a fake one.

Johnson gets exposed, and the students lose a shot at college they didn’t know they never had. The “school” didn’t even have teachers. No studying happened. It was just a lousy football team. One kid did manage to get into a college, but his offer got yanked after they found out Bishop Sycamore was fake.

Johnson basically stuffed the kids into unpaid hotel rooms, fed them by scamming grocery stores, and even forged checks. He raised “tuition” funds through PPP Covid loans taken out in the names of these poor, unsuspecting kids who thought they were on the fast track to college.

As for Johnson? The guy shows no remorse in hours of B.S. High interviews. He’s almost proud he pushed the lie as far as he did. He brags about his cons, justifies his lies, and only really loses his cool when he’s shown a video of a former student calling him “evil.”

The documentary is fascinating, not just for showing how easy it is to pull off an elaborate con like this, but also for Johnson’s utter lack of empathy. Given the chance, he’d do it all over again because, for him, there’s no line between fame and infamy.

BS High is currently streaming on Max.


Richard Harrow and The Art of Coming Home

Boardwalk Empire  can be too on the nose. A malevolent physician is named Dr.Cotton. The primary African-American is called Chalky White. Each episode includes an epilogue in which writers explain the poetry of the title. It pays homage to (or borrows from) The Godfather so often the series could  have called itself The Corleones.

But the series about 1920’s bootleggers and crooked cops created arguably the greatest side character in television history: Richard Harrow.

Harrow is a World War I sharpshooter horribly disfigured in battle. When he returns from the war, he has to wear half a mask to cover his left eye, cheekbone and jaw, all obliterated from his face. He twitches, spasms and must force words through the gravel that is his voice box. His dialogue through four seasons perhaps would fill two pages. 

But what poetry comes from the character, both in word and gesture. He pines for love, for family — for an invitation home from a war he never asked for. 

I connected with him immediately: My uncle Guy, for whom I am named, lost an eye in WWII. His face also spasmed and twitched. He never married, and used his law degree to become a traveling salesman.

I summered with the man in 1984, and he never said a word about the war or his injuries. I used to squint on his extra glass eye, which he kept in a dresser drawer, just to imagine what his worldview captured. But you can’t recreate personal horror.

But Empire comes close. And that proximity manages to make Harrow beautiful.

His courtship of a woman is a fragile Valentine. His fostering of a war buddy’s son is the definition of fatherhood. His love for his sister is what Big Brothers yearns to be.

And when he must return to the bullet, he makes John Wick look like he’s struggling with a learner’s permit.

Like Breaking Bad, Empire is one season too long. And Empire doesn’t have an actor as compelling as Bryan Cranston. Steve Buscemi does a fine job as anti-protagonist Nucky Thompson. But the baby-faced, gnarly-toothed actor is not suited for menace. He’s suited to play Donny in The Big Lebowski, which he does to perfection. 

Even the actor who plays Harrow, Jack Huston, seems out of place behind the mask. On the red carpet and in talk show interviews, Huston is dashing in a mane of black hair, dark features and British accent. I wish he would have insisted on staying in character when he was out of it. 

But that’s the beauty of Boardwalk Empire. Pay close enough attention to the series, you’ll see it’s a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, with Nucky as Oz, his wife as Dorothy, his brother as Scarecrow, his nemesis as Cowardly Lion. 

And Richard Harrow as the Tin Woodsman, beating heart and all.