MOVIE REVIEWS
‘AMERICAN MADE’
R 1:57 ★★★★
There are basically two kinds of Tom Cruise performances, and both can look pretty similar on the surface. Each likes sunglasses, going fast and smiling big.
He never exactly loosens up or slows down — the most unfathomable thing of all in Cruise’s world. But most of Cruise’s best and most interesting performances (“Magnolia,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Collateral,” “Eyes Wide Shut”) have allowed some chink in the well-tanned armor, some hint of darkness underneath the rakish boyscout, some hollowness in the soul of America’s ageless action-movie avatar.
Cruise’s latest is the smart, zippy “American Made,” a movie that plays very much like your type-A Tom Cruise movie before it yanks the rug out from beneath you and reveals the B-movie Cruise we’ve been missing. It’s a fiendishly perfect vehicle for Cruise that returns him to the cockpit, 31 years after “Top Gun,” and it simultaneously reminds us of his preternaturally winning movie-star charisma while subtly deconstructing it.
In “American Made,” a loosely true tale set in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Cruise plays Barry Seal, a TWA pilot whose on-theside smuggling of Cuban cigars brings him into the orbit of the CIA. An officer named Shafer (Domhnall Gleeson) turns up, and offers him a job taking surveillance photos and making government payoffs to the likes of Panama’s Manuel Noriega in Central America. “We’re building nations down there,” says Shafer, giddy.
Blithely, even charmingly ignorant of the dangerous and ethically questionable terrain he’s entering, Seal is soon cheerfully smuggling enormous amounts of cocaine back to Arkansas for Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel. On both sides of the law, things escalate quickly. Seal and his family (Sarah Wright Olsen plays his wife), can’t spend their money fast enough. They run out of closet space and backyard holes for all the cash coming in.
It’s an increasingly absurd circle of drugs, guns and money, all ostensibly for the fight against “enemies of democracy.” The ironies mount, topping out with Nancy Reagan’s war-on-drugs plea to “say no” while her husband’s secret efforts to arm militants is fueling one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world.
“American Made,” written by Gary Spinelli, has glossed up the story, of course. Seal’s life wasn’t nearly so shiny as it is as played by Cruise. But then again, whose is?
Starring: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Jayma Mays and Sarah Wright. (Language throughout and some sexuality/nudity)
— Jake Coyle, Associated Press
‘BATTLE OF THE SEXES’
PG-13 2:01 ★★½★ There’s two sides to a tennis court and “Battle of the Sexes” aims to dramatize every emotional inch of the famed match between 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a former World No. 1, and Billie Jean King, perhaps the world’s most patient female tennis player of all time.
If you lived through it, you’ll get to see the overblown exhibition game get turned into a borderline WWE cage fight all over again. But in this fictionalized sports dramedy, the tennis veterans swing for something greater than themselves.
Riggs (Steve Carell) is bored. To him, tennis has
become another way to gamble and entertain his billionaire boy’s club. As the namesake match revs up, we see his cracks. But it’s the faces of his family that illustrate the pain and frustration of being close to a liar and serial gambler. But remember, he’s the villain and he’s honestly not played sinister enough. His gooier moments often fall flat because we all know better than to trust him. They feel forced and the Riggs role might’ve worked better if he relished more of the attention when he wasn’t in front of the TV camera. There’s no shortage of ugliness for him to feed off.
King (Emma Stone) is looking for respect on and off the court. She certainly gets the more interesting story as she juggles a love square between her human Ken Doll husband, a sizzling affair with a hairdresser (Andrea Riseborough, doing a lot with very little) and the game of tennis.
As twistedly amusing as it was to watch Carell deliver misogynistic oneliners, Stone’s steadfast performance owns the movie.
It’s not the Oscar-buzzed performance I heard about before walking into the theater, but it’s admirable and very human.
But too often, she’s left with little time to explore her new love. She gets lost in the bewilderment of the affair and much of the conversation is told with painful stares. At times, it felt like a soap opera and
the first two acts didn’t build enough momentum for me.
Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris know how to make a scene sting, just re-watch their 2006 effort “Little Miss Sunshine.” There’s still sly humor, a handful of tender moments but “Battle of the Sexes” lacks the oomph of a game-winning match point.
Starring: Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Andrea Riseborough, Sarah Silverman, Alan Cumming and Bill Pullman. (Some sexual content and partial nudity) — Nathan Poppe,
The Oklahoman
‘DIFFERENT FLOWERS’
PG-13 1:39 Not screened for critics
On the day of her big Midwestern wedding, Millie, a persnickety bride, jilts her fiance at the altar with the help of her spunky younger sister, Emma, and embarks on a life-changing adventure. Starring and produced by Shelley Long, and first feature from writer and director Morgan Dameron, “Different Flowers” is a love letter to the heartland. Filmed entirely on location in Dameron’s hometown of Kansas City.
Starring: Steve Agee, Cecelia Antoinette and Emma Bell. (Some suggestive content) — IMDB.com
‘FLATLINERS’
PG-13 1:48 Not screened for critics
Five medical students, obsessed by what lies beyond the confines of life, embark on a daring experiment: by stopping their hearts for short periods, each triggers a near-death experience — giving them a firsthand account of the afterlife.
Starring: Ellen Page, Diego Luna and Nina Dobrev. (Violence and terror, sexual content, language, thematic material and some drug references)
— IMDB.com
‘A QUESTION OF FAITH’
PG 1:44 Not screened for critics
When tragedy strikes three families, their destiny forces them on a converging path to discover God’s love, grace and mercy as the challenges of their fate could also resurrect their beliefs.
Starring: Richard T. Jones, Kim Fields and C. Thomas Howell. (Thematic elements) — IMDB.com
‘TE ATA’
PG 1:45 ★★★★
An official Oklahoma Treasure gets a lovingly polished gem of a feature film with “Te Ata.”
Produced by the Chickasaw Nation, the family-friendly biopic recounts the childhood, early career and rise to international prominence of the legendary Chickasaw storyteller who took her people’s stories from her small community in Indian Territory all the way to Franklin Roosevelt’s White House.
Directed by Nathan Frankowski (“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”), from a script by Esther Luttrell (Chickasaw author and historian Jeannie Barbour co-wrote the story), “Te Ata” follows familiar conventions of cinematic biographies a bit too closely. But the period film doesn’t just chronicle her achievements, it also puts them in context of the racism American Indians faced in the early 20th century.
Q’orianka Kilcher (“The New World”) brings warmth and vitality to her portrayal of Te Ata, who was born Mary Frances Thompson to a prominent Chickasaw family: Her uncle Douglas H. Johnston (Oscar nominee Graham Greene, “Dances with Wolves”), served as the last governor of the pre-statehood Chickasaw Nation, and her father T.B. Thompson (Gil Birmingham, the “Twilight Saga” movies), as its last treasurer. Mary Frances’ father enchants her with the traditional stories of their people even as the federal Code of Indian Offenses prohibits American Indians from practicing their culture.
Over her protective father’s objections, Mary Frances goes off to Chickasha’s Oklahoma College for Women, where she is the only Native and an outsider. But she finds a mentor in drama teacher Miss Davis (Sand Springs native Cindy Pickett, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”), who urges her to incorporate her American Indian heritage into her performances.
Adopting the stage name Te Ata, meaning “bearer of the morning,” her talent for telling Native stories takes her on a national Chautauqua tour, to the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and to the New York City theater and social scenes, where she meets future first lady Eleanor Roosevelt (Gail Cronauer, “The Newton Boys”) and her future husband, scholar and astronomer Clyde Fisher (Mackenzie Astin, “The Facts of Life,” who shares a lovely chemistry with Kilcher). Even as the U.S. government seeks to snuff out American Indian ways, she embraces her destiny as a speaker for Native peoples, entrusted to tell the stories of the Chickasaws and other tribes to anyone who is willing to listen and learn.
Filmed entirely in Oklahoma, the inspirational movie boasts a goldenhued beauty, showcasing not only one of Oklahoma’s most prominent historical figures but also the state itself.
Even if the biopic’s creators play it a bit too safe with their storytelling approach, “Te Ata” serves as a fitting tribute to a trailblazing woman who embodied the power of sharing stories.
“Te Ata” opens in theaters across Oklahoma on Friday. To find a theater showing it, go to www. teatamovie.com.
Starring: Q’orianka Kilcher, Gil Birmingham, Graham Greene, Mackenzie Astin and Cindy Pickett. (some thematic elements including a brief violent image)