By Susan Granger
In “Mr. Holmes,” Ian McKellan plays craggy, cranky Sherlock Holmes, as the 93-year-old British detective attempts not only to “solve” his last case but also to separate fact from fiction about his life.
Retired to Dover on the southeast coast of England, Holmes lives in a cottage with a housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her curious, precocious son, Roger (Milo Parker), who helps him tend his beloved beehives.
Holmes realizes that his memory is failing, along with his powers of deduction. To remedy that, he’s experimenting with royal jelly and prickly ash, a rare Japanese herb with rejuvenating qualities.
What he’s struggling to recall are the details of a case involving his relationship with a married woman (Hattie Morahan) that’s revealed in flashbacks to postwar London and bombed-out Hiroshima.
Burdened by celebrity, Holmes is also irked by the way Dr. John Watson exaggerated, even fabricated details in the stories that made him famous, maintaining he prefers a cigar to a pipe and never wore a deerstalker cap.
Adapted from Mitch Cullin’s “A Slight Trick of the Mind” (2005), this character study is deftly directed by Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls,” ”Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn”) with Ian McKellan (“Lord of the Rings,” “X-Men”) delivering a magnificently complex performance as Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictitious sleuth.
If you’re as dazzled by Ian McKellan’s acting as I am, see “Gods and Monsters” (1998) in which he plays “Frankenstein” director James Whale; it’s another meditation on life and aging—for which then-debuting director Bill Condon won an Adapted Screenplay Oscar.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Mr. Holmes” is an enigmatic, elegant 8, unraveling the exquisite mystery of memory.
Comic-book movies have become a generic part of our popcorn-fare culture – and Paul Rudd’s wise-cracking Scott Lang as “Ant-Man” adds some surreal, light-hearted amusement.
Electrical engineer-turned-cat burglar Scott Lang is determined to go straight after being released from San Quentin—if only for his adored daughter Abby Ryder Fortson). But, as an ex-con, he’s unable to get a job. Frustrated, Scott agrees to another heist.
That’s where he steals a “suit” that enables him to shrink to microscopic size. It’s the invention of tech genius Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who wants him to break into his old company to stop his protégé, Darren Cross/Yellowjacket (Corey Stoll), from selling innovative technology to the military.
Pym’s skeptical daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), is eager to don the suit but her protective father forbids it, insisting she’s more valuable working covertly as Cross’s colleague.
After rigorous martial arts training, Scott learns not only to shrink but also to command an army of CGI ants, riding atop a winged carpenter ant named Antony, in preparation for a final showdown atop a Thomas the Train Engine set.
Cobbled together as two father/daughter stories, it’s fragmented and exposition-heavy, often reminiscent of “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957).
And when British screenwriter Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”) was abruptly fired as director because of “creative differences,” helming was taken over by Peyton Reed (“The Break-Up”).
FYI: when he made his comic strip debut in 1962, scientist Hank Pym was the Ant-Man, who created a protective helmet to communicate with ants. Later, Pym assembled the superhero team of Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and Pym’s beloved Wasp.
So how does Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man measure up?
On the Granger Gauge, “Ant-Man” is a splashy, simulated 7, utilizing macro-photography and motion-capture technology. There are two end-credits scenes. The first acknowledges the advent of a new, female superhero; the second teases Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War.”
Inspired by “Border Madness,” an investigative article in “Rolling Stone,” “Cartel Land” revolves around the recent battles between drug cartels and two vigilante groups along the Arizona/Mexico border, where idealism has been destroyed by economic reality.
Stark and scary, it opens on the front line—in the desert, south of the Rio Grande—in the middle of the night, when Mexican drug dealers are cooking methamphetamine. Meth is their ticket to money and power.
In the Mexican state of Michoacan, Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles leads the Autodefensas, a citizen’s militia against the ruthless Knights Templar cartel that has threatened the region for years.
At the same time, in Arizona’s 52-mile-long Altar Valley, a corridor known as Cocaine Alley, Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran, heads Arizona Border Recon, a small paramilitary group whose goal is to stop Mexico’s drug wars from seeping into the United States.
“They’re terrorizing their own country,” Foley says, “and now they’re starting to do it over here.”
Apparently, in this area south of Tucson, corruption abounds, and the U.S. Border Patrol has basically abandoned enforcement.
Intrepid documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman, has captured on-camera dozens of real shootouts, disturbing episodes of brutal torture, agonizing interrogations at gunpoint, and severed heads, resulting in violent, dramatic footage that’s not fully explored or explained.
FYI: In the Wild West, the term “vigilante” had a positive spin, designating watchful guardians, often organized without legal authorization, to keep order and punish crimes when lawful prosecution failed. But, in recent years, “vigilante” has been applied by the media to extremist, anarchistic assassins.
Matthew Heineman lets the audience decide which description applies, explaining, “Over the year I was embedded with both Nailer and El Doctor and their vigilante groups, the more complex the story became: It was partly an ascent of people seeking to fight evil and partly a descent into hell as they took the law into their own hands.”
In English and Spanish with English subtitles, on the Granger Gauge, “Cartel Land” is a chilling, compelling 7, ripped from today’s headlines.
( Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
