Entertainment Weekly - February 24 - March 3, 2017

Movies

82 EW.COM FEBRUARY 24/MARCH 3, 2017

DANE DEHAAN HAS ALWAYS

resembled a younger, more wea-

selly Leonardo DiCaprio, but even

with those sleepy eyes and that sharpie’s

smirk, he’s never been given the opportunity

to show whether he possesses anything

close to DiCaprio’s talent.A Cure for Wellness

won’t change that. Narratively preposterous

and probably an hour too long, it’s the year’s

first big howler. It could have been DeHaan’s

Shutter Island, but instead it’s just Gore

Verbinski’s latest self-indulgent mess follow-

ingThe Lone Ranger.

DeHaan plays an ambitious financial whiz

kid who’s sent to a mysterious sanatorium

high in the Swiss Alps to fetch his firm’s

mentally unstable CEO and bring him back

to New York on the eve of a big merger. But

as soon as he arrives, he notices that there’s

something off about the place and its

wealthy patients. No one seems to want to

leave, including the man he’s there to

retrieve. Then there’s the hospital’s sunny-

yet-sinister head physician (Jason Isaacs,

channeling Udo Kier), a weirdo teenage girl

(Mia Goth) who sings and tra-la-las like she

was up all night watchingRosemary’s Baby,

and a host of strange medieval treatments

that include curative waters, sensory-

deprivation tanks, and eels—lots and lots of

eels. The only good thing to be said about

this bonkers psychological chiller is that it

has a cool, Corman-does-Poe gothic look.

No question about it, Verbinski has a great

eye. He’s just lost all of his other senses.C–

A Cure for Wellness

STARRING Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs

DIRECTED BY Gore Verbinski | RATING R

LENGTH 2 hrs., 26 mins.

REVIEW BY Chris Nashawaty@ChrisNashawaty



Dane

DeHaan



James Franco

AT THE RATE JAMES FRANCO

is bringing literary master-

works to the screen, lazy high

school sophomores may not even need

to open a book to ace their reading lists

by 2019.Dubious, his fourth Great Ameri-

can Novel adaptation in less than

four years (after squeezing a Cormac

McCarthy feature between two William

Faulkners), offers a faithfully earnest ren-

dering of John Steinbeck’s classic Great

Depression tale. Perhaps too faithful: It’s

almost unsettling to watch Franco—the

mercurial movie star who placed guest-

ing onGeneral Hospital and hosting the

Oscars on the same inscrutable arc of

performance art—play it so straight, as a

fiery agitator rousing California fruit

pickers to strike against poor wages and

working conditions. As a director, at

least, he has the advantage of maxing out

his iPhone contacts list, stacking the sup-

porting cast with the likes of Ed Harris,

Vincent D’Onofrio, Robert Duvall, Sam

Shepard, Selena Gomez, Nat Wolff, and

Josh Hutcherson. (Blink fast and you’ll

miss Zach Braff.) For all its noble inten-

tions, though, the movie struggles to

transcend broad outlines: Its characters

are strictly symbols, timeworn arche-

types of good and evil as threadbare and

familiar as the artfully faded calicos and

denim on their backs.B–

In Dubious Battle

STARRING James Franco, Nat Wolff

DIRECTED BY James Franco | RATING R

LENGTH 1 hr., 50 mins.

REVIEW BY Leah Greenblatt@Leahbats

James Franco has

eight movies completed

and more developing.

Here’s what’s next in

the Franco-verse.

BY DEVAN COGGAN

FUTURE

FRANCO FILMS

1 |

2 |

4 |

5 |

6 |

7 |

8 |

9 |

THE INSTITUTE 2017

A creepy 19th-century

thriller starring Franco

as an unorthodox

doctor.

THE DISASTER ARTIST

2017

The behind-the-scenes

story of beloved bad

movieThe Room, with

Franco as writer-director-

star Tommy Wiseau.

PRETENDERS 2018

A decade-spanning

drama about two friends

falling for the same girl,

from screenwriter Josh

Boone (The Fault in Our

Stars).

FUTURE WORLDTBA

An otherworldly, post-

apocalyptic adventure,

starring Milla Jovovich,

Lucy Liu, and Snoop

Dogg.

THE LONG HOMETBA

A 1940s drama about a

young Tennessee con-

struction worker, based

on William Gay’s novel.

ZEROVILLETBA

The tale of a bald,

tattooed cinephile

who moves to

Hollywood in 1969.

TENNTBA

A biopic about a young

Tennessee Williams

growing up in 1930s

St. Louis.

ZOLATBA

The adaptation of a viral

tweet story about a

stripper’s eventful trip

to Florida.

A CURE FOR WELLNESS

: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX;

IN DUBIOUS BATTLE

: VENICE FILM FESTIVAL; FRANCO (SIDEBAR): COUSART/JFXIMAGES/WENN.COM, VENTURELLI/WIREIMAGE