‘PATTI CAKE$’
R 1:48 ★★★ ★
“Patti Cake$” advances the increasingly endangered idea that in the cross-cultural ferment of America, you can be anything you want.
Even if you’re not American. That’s implicit in the casting of its lead role — Australian Danielle Macdonald plays Patti, a zaftig, bluecollar North Jersey teen named Patricia Dombrowski who wants to be a rapper. She calls herself White Trish, then Patti Cake$ (so named by her grandmother, played by Cathy Moriarity).
I like White Trish better, but the point is, she’s played with impressive authenticity by Macdonald, whose Noit Joisey accent is usually spot-on. This is astonishing at a time when there is an epidemic of European and Australian actors butchering regional American accents — I’m looking at you, Daniel Craig, in “Logan Lucky.”
Surely, it helps that director Geremy Jasper (making the jump from music videos) is a native of Hillsdale, the Bergen County town where he grew up writing rap lyrics — he penned all of the songs in the movie — for songs he was too embarrassed to perform publicly. In “Patti Cake$,” he offloads the task on Macdonald, whose character has none of his shyness.
Patti’s nerve is her best feature, but not her only attribute. She’s a resilient young lady who lives in a messy home with a single mother (Bridget Everett) whose own dreams of being a rock star died about the same time as Big Hair and who now spends her time belittling her daughter’s ambitions and her music.
Patti perseveres — she tends bar at a dive, works for a catering outfit, writes lyrics, battles other would-be hip-hop artists on the street corner, shows up at openmic nights. At one of these, she spots a young African American man (Mamoudou Athie) performing metal-ish punk to an unappreciative audience — Patti senses an independent-minded soul mate, one with a mixing board. (Athie’s otherworldly presence made me think of Joe Morton in “Brother From Another Planet,” and “Cake$” has some of that North Jersey, John Sayles vibe.)
She and her “manager” (Siddharth Dhananjay) now have all the ingredients of their own hip-hip act, with input from Grandma, and perhaps another secret ingredient.
For that, director Jasper makes us wait until the climactic scene — Patti’s taking the stage in a rap contest, facing other performers and a hostile crowd. Here, the movie’s themes of inclusiveness bump against the racial and gender norms of hip-hop in ways that both challenge and recognize the cultural reach of the music.
“Patti Cake$,” in the end, is a little pat, but it doesn’t take its underdog, band-of-misfits formula too far, and Macdonald’s infectious grit carries the day.
Starring: Danielle Macdonald, Mamoudou Athie, Bridget Everett, Siddharth Dhananjay and Cathy Moriarity. (Language)
— Gary Thompson,
Associated Press
‘HARE KRISHNA!’
NR 1:31 ★★ ★ ★
In 1965, a 70-year-old retired pharmacist from Kolkata arrived in New York with no contacts or support and very little money. What he did bring was, depending on your point of view, either (a) spiritual enlightenment or (b) a mind-control cult that ripped susceptible middleclass teens away from their families.
The documentary “Hare Krishna! The Mantra, the Movement and the Swami Who Started It All” mentions both possibilities, but clearly favors the first. Filmmaker John Griesser and his codirector, Lauren Ross, fill the film with footage of Srila Prabhupada, the man who, in 1966, founded a religious organization called the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and his intelligent and articulate disciples. Coverage of controversies involving ISKCON after the guru’s 1977 death (including an alleged murder conspiracy) is relegated to a montage of unfavorable TV news and a Hare Krishna gag from “Airplane II.”
For viewers who aren’t hostile to mysticism, vegetarianism and endless chanting, it’s a stirring story. Prabhupada arrived at a pivotal moment in American culture, setting up shop in a Lower East Side storefront behind a sign promising “Matchless Gifts.” He soon was communing with George Harrison, members of the Grateful Dead and Allen Ginsburg, who is shown singing “Hare Krishna” to a smirking William F. Buckley Jr. The swami’s goal was simple, he explained: “To see everyone happy.” But how tricky a goal that can be. (Contains drug references) — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post
‘THE TRIP TO SPAIN’
NR 1:48 ★★★ ★
The comic duel of egos, unabated and envenomed, that has formed the Steve Coogan/Rob Brydon Trip movies has changed over the years.
It began in 2010 with “The Trip,” in which the duo traveled to the finest restaurants in the British countryside. In 2014, they did the same in “The Trip to Italy.”
Now, there is not so much venom, and although they still cross swords, affection carries the day as they play slightly fictionalized versions of themselves traveling Europe, dining, sightseeing, and comparing the size of their careers.
As they pile into to Coogan’s Range Rover for their “Trip to Spain,” the camera shows us that Brydon has a bald spot, and we know that Coogan is certain to mention it.
Coogan teases Brydon about his hair; Brydon teases Coogan about his vanity. Coogan teases Brydon about feet; Brydon teases Coogan about his vanity, and so forth.
Coogan’s self-regard is under assault as never before — things in his life are “not ideal,” as he acknowledges, with British understatement. His latest girlfriend is cool to him, so is his agent, and Hollywood wants a younger screenwriter to “polish” his latest script. More horrors await.
Coogan is even getting diminished pleasure from telling everyone in Spain, especially the young women, that he earned an Oscar nomination for his script for “Philomena.” The country is full of religious relics, and its history is deeply intertwined with that of the Catholic Church, so opportunities for him to mention it are many.
As usual, the two men dine fabulously, and director Michael Winterbottom plops them down in beautiful places, in beautiful light (often photographing them at dawn or at dusk, which must have taken some doing).
Some have found this third go-round tiresome — and apparently there are more to come. Not me. The movies may be frivolous (and stitched together from British TV shows), but they are unique — they have an astute understanding of mature male friendship that is rare, even in a male-dominated industry (the last good, comparable example I can think of was “Sideways”).
And even the series’ most famous element — the way Coogan and Brydon one-up each other by mimicking actors and celebrities — has taken on new dimension here. Impersonations of David Bowie and Roger Moore also serve as eulogies, amid other signs that the men are ever more keenly aware of their mortality.
This adds poignancy to their relentless commitment to the next put-down or joke. A bit that has Brydon refusing to abandon his Moore shtick during a discussion of the Spanish Moors goes from funny to excruciating and back to funny.
All of this comes together at the movie’s much-talkedabout ending that strikes some as out of the blue. In fact, the groundwork has been carefully laid, and the butt of the joke, as usual, is Coogan, whose boast of being a fearless idealist and latter-day George Orwell looks as if it will be put to the test.
Starring: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. (Strong language and adult situations) — Gary Thompson, Associated Press
‘TULIP FEVER’
R 1:47 Not screened for critics
In 17th Century Amsterdam, an orphaned girl (Alicia Vikander) is forcibly married to a rich and powerful merchant (Christoph Waltz) — an unhappy “arrangement” that saves her from poverty. After her husband commissions a portrait, she begins a passionate affair with the painter (Dane DeHaan), a struggling young artist. Seeking to escape the merchant’s ever-reaching grasp, the lovers risk everything and enter the frenzied tulip bulb market, with the hope that the right bulb will make a fortune and buy their freedom.
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, Dane DeHaan and Holliday Grainger. (Sexual content and nudity)
— Rottentomatoes.com