Warrior

The poster for Warrior tells you most of what you need to know about the movie.  Two guys who appear to know their way around a hypodermic needle are going to fight.  One of them’s probably the bad guy, and one of them’s probably the good guy.  There’s gonna be a training montage, and someone’s going to look to a woman in the audience for inspiration.

For the most part, you’d be right.  Nevertheless, Warrior steps enough outside that mold to keep itself interesting, and it delivers a fine montage, great fights, and enough of an emotional wallop to choke me up at the end.  See, the fighters are brothers.  With issues.  They bond.  I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

Yes, yes, yes.  We’ve seen a number of the story elements a million times.  And really, how do you do anything new with a shot of supporters back home cheering at their television sets?  But hey, I liked these people all the same.  I cared about them and I cared who won the big fight, and why, and how.  Warrior is a perfectly respectable entry in the “fight movie” catalogue.

Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom is a horrible slog.

The film, set in the lower-middle-class world of a family of Australian bank robbers, tells the story of a 17 year old boy.  The boy finds himself immersed in this world, and he must learn to negotiate it.  The character, played by James Frecheville as a large, awkward kid just a few protein shakes away from hulking, is as dour and confused and scared a protagonist as you’re likely to find in a major crime film.  Oh, and he hides all this dourness, confusion, and fright behind a mask of emotionless indifference.

Listen, if I want to spend an hour and a half with dour, confused, and emotionless adolescents, I’ll volunteer to help out at my local high school.  I’m watching a movie, here: entertain me.

So anyway, Animal Kingdom’s got this kid and he’s frightened and withdrawn and all that.  Not much fun, right?  Well, at least the movie makes up for with a grainy look, an ugly color scheme, and absolutely zero comic relief.  I mean, come on – this thing’s a homework assignment, not a night at the pictures. 

Is Animal Kingdom well played?  Sure.  Does it do all the things it tries to do?  Yes.  Is it a grind?  Absolutely.  Animal Kingdom is the longest, most painful grind at the movies that I’ve experienced in quite some time.  Pass this one by.

Kinky Boots

KINKY BOOTS takes Ejiofor from "actor of note" status to "can do no wrong" status, right there with Emma Thompson, Toni Collette, and Edward Everett Horton. He takes a pleasant and occasionally funny story of plucky entrepreneurship and infuses it with energy and warmth.

KINKY BOOTS tells the story of a Northampton shoe factory that's in big trouble. Joel Edgerton plays a young man who has just inherited the venerable institution, only to discover that it's on the verge of bankruptcy. When a drag queen called Lola (Ejiofor) inspires him to go into the 'women's boots for men' business, he bets the factory on the idea. Various plots and subplots get resolved, some people find happiness, etc., and the movie rocks along pleasantly for an hour and a half. Without Ejiofor, it'd be a perfectly nice movie, the kind of thing that'd appeal to the CALENDAR GIRLS crowd (and I mean that in a good way). With Ejiofor, however, it's fabulous.

Ejiofor's can make Lola simultaneously confident and fragile, happy and heartbroken, joyous and deeply pained. He's a lousy singer and not much of a dancer, but he carries his nightclub numbers with such gusto and joy that we can't help but delight in them. He so thoroughly embodies his character that the guest with whom we saw it couldn't imagine him in any other kind of role - she thought Ejiofor had been discovered in SoHo's club scene. The guy is just plain fun to watch, as he was in MELINDA AND MELINDA, SERENITY, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, and INSIDE MAN.

I can't wait to see what he does next.