News of the World (2020) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Paul Greengrass

Starring:  Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Thomas Francis Murphy, Michael Angelo Covino, Bill Camp, Elizabeth Marvel

My star rating fluctuates between two and a half and three stars with News of the World.   It contains moments of raw power and truth, anchored by a subtle, perceptive Tom Hanks performance.   If Hanks weren't starring, the movie likely would not have had even a chance to work.   On the other hand, News of the World moves slowly and the better moments don't come as frequently as we would like.   News of the World looks hauntingly beautiful with a genuine feel for the post-Civil War West and the movie ends with a smile that was a long time coming.   However, some of what's in-between is a mixed bag.

Hanks is reunited with his Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass as former Confederate Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd in 1870 Reconstruction-era Texas.   Captain Kidd makes a living traveling from town to town reading news stories from all over the nation to local farmers and denizens who either can't read or are too busy to keep up with the news.   He makes a good living, or at least good enough to pay for his long journey home to his native San Antonio.   Why Kidd wants to travel home I will leave for you to discover.   Captain Kidd is not an anti-Union, racist Confederate, but one who was once a printer and was pressed into military service at the start of the Civil War.   He fought because he loved his home state, not necessarily because he believed in the cause.  The memories of the war are not pleasant. 

Kidd stumbles across an overturned stagecoach in his travels to the next town and finds a Native American man hanging from a tree and a scared young girl named Johanna (Zengel) who was to be transported to her nearest relative.   We learn Johanna's parents were killed and she was raised by Native Americans.  She speaks a little of her native German, but mostly Kiowa.   Kidd and Johanna slowly learn to trust each other and communicate as they encounter problems on their odyssey to their destinations.  

The people Kidd and Johanna come across are either monsters like Almay (Covino) who wants to sell Johanna into prostitution, or Mr. Farley (Murphy) a land baron with an iron grip on his county residents who toil to line his pockets.   Both Kidd and Johanna are wounded by their past, and find the only way to move forward is to confront their demons.   Hanks plays a character similar to his Capt. Miller in Saving Private Ryan (1998), although News of the World takes place roughly seventy-five years before the events of Ryan.   Kidd, like Miller, is a quiet man transformed by war who fought because it was his duty.   He reads the news because he feels it does some good for others, and he protects Johanna because, like war, it is now his duty.   I've said many times that Tom Hanks is one of the few actors we would follow into hell if he led us there.   He has in many films, and in News of the World it's like taking a journey with an old friend we trust.   It is why Hanks is such a remarkable actor.   His presence can elevate sometimes mediocre material.

Even after going over News of the World in my head, I'm teetering between the 2 1/2 and three stars to put on top of the review.   There are impressive parts of News of the World coupled with a languid pace and the trope of a man and child having difficulty communicating because the child is mute (like in The Midnight Sky) or in this film where the child can't speak English.   I suppose I have to ask myself whether I would see News of the World again.  Despite its positives, I honestly would have to say no.  So there's the reason for the 2 1/2 stars atop this review.  

Promising Young Woman (2020) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Emerald Fennell

Starring:  Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Clancy Brown, Molly Shannon, Jennifer Coolidge, Alison Brie, Adam Brody, Connie Britton, Chris Lowell, Alfred Molina

Promising Young Woman deserves credit for allowing itself to explore dark, murky waters of themes brought to light by #MeToo and following it to its unbending conclusion.   This is not a story meant for a happy ending, just one where justice is served at an extreme price.   The protagonist, former med student Cassie (Mulligan) is far too damaged by the events of the past to ever be made whole again.  We know there was trauma in the past and we find out what happened and why.  For Cassie there is no catharsis as she attempts to avenge not just the rape of her lifelong best friend in medical school, but to punish the enablers and the system which let the perpetrators off the hook.   

Cassie first appears as an intoxicated woman in a bar who can barely sit up.   This makes her easy prey for guys to pick her up and take her to their homes under the guise of being helpful and friendly.   The guys make their move and lo and behold Cassie is no longer drunk, but alert and ready to call out the creeps on their desire to take advantage of a stoned woman.   She does this for kicks.   Now working at a coffee shop and living with her parents, while having no desire to change either situation, she runs into Ryan (Burnham) a former med school classmate who asks her out.   She spits in his coffee, but he returns the next day to ask her out again.   They awkwardly begin to date. 

Meanwhile, Cassie plots to confront those who turned a blind eye to the rape of her friend Nina by a med student who went on to become a well-to-do doctor.   This includes the medical school dean (Britton) who doesn't recall the incident or that Cassie reported to her eight years ago.   When the dean recalls what happened, she claims she "didn't want to ruin the young man's life over he said/she said reports,"   Even if you don't buy exactly how Cassie is able to pull off the prank involving the dean's daughter, it still is satisfying to see the dean squirm.

Cassie's plots escalate dangerously the closer she gets to the culprit (Lowell).   For a moment, after a heartfelt conversation with Nina's mother (Shannon), Cassie abandons her plans and goes forward with her relationship with Ryan.   Does she live happily ever after?   You kind of, sort of know she won't.  It just isn't in the cards for Cassie, who has made it her life's mission to make those who made her and Nina suffer as unhappy as she is.   

Carey Mulligan has turned in some exceptional performances throughout her career.   Along with her Oscar-nominated work in An Education (2009), Promising Young Woman is the best work of her career.   Cassie is not an easy character to pin down, and Mulligan daringly allows us to see her wounds and how they've shaped her.   Promising Young Woman is not simply a Mulligan tour-de-force.   It is a film as angry as its lead at the "boys will be boys" attitude which still exists in some circles when it comes to sexual assault and rape.   The men throw every tired, hackneyed excuse in the book at Cassie to justify their actions.   We roll our eyes.   I suppose they keep using these trite phrases because others keep believing them.  

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) * *

 

Directed by:  George C. Wolfe

Starring:  Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Jonny Coyne, Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman, Michael Potts, Jeremy Shamos, Taylour Paige, Dusan Brown

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is based wholly around a Chicago recording session with the famed "Mother of the Blues."   Ma Rainey (Davis) by now has enough clout to run things her way (or so she thinks) and tell her manager and the album producer where to go if they don't listen to her.   Ma is forever threatening to walk and her weasel manager (Coyne) is forever trying to talk Ma back into the studio.    Ma is suspicious, truculent, and can belt out the blues, but although Viola Davis plays the role with gusto, it is a one-note performance mostly because Ma isn't seen as much else.   There are moments which suggest Ma's sexual relationship with the younger Dussie Mae (Paige), who is also hit on by the trumpet player Levee (Boseman) and her love for her stuttering nephew (Brown), but those are rare glimpses.    

Most of the focus on Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is on Chadwick Boseman in his final film role before his unexpected death from cancer in August.   A posthumous Oscar nomination is almost a lock, and possibly an outright win.   Boseman's Levee is by far the most complex character in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, as Ma's rage-filled trumpet player.   At first, Levee seems like a jovial, smart-ass young man showing off his new yellow shoes to his band mates, but as we listen to him more, we know he is a man boiling over with anger.   He tells a story of how his family was attacked by racist white men when he was a child, and he was left with physical and everlasting emotional scars as a result.  He hits on Dussie Mae more so as a hostile salvo towards Ma than any genuine romantic or sexual interest.   Boseman, even in declining health, is able to navigate Levee through some choppy dramatic waters and turns in his career-best performance; a career sadly cut short.  

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is based on the play by August Wilson, but like Denzel Washington's Fences (2016) there are too many instances in which we think we're watching a filmed version of a stage play.  The early banter between Levee and his other band members feels like we are watching a scene and not real life.   Because of this, we are not immersed fully in what is being said or suggested.    The final act of violence perpetrated by Levee is not unexpected, but the dramatic impact is lacking.   

The movie's final scene indicates a not uncommon phenomenon of white performers hijacking Ma's songs and pathetically trying to pass them off as their own.    It turns out there is little wonder why Ma looked at her manager and producer with an accusing eye.   She sensed that no matter how well she sang these songs which came from deep within her soul, they would be appropriated by someone else who didn't have the first clue about why Ma sang the blues in the first place.   Instead, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom gets to this point far too tangentially.   

The Midnight Sky (2020) * *

 

Directed by: George Clooney

Starring:  George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Demian Bichir, Kyle Chandler, Tiffany Boone, Caoilinn Springall

The Midnight Sky looks beautiful, but at the service of a dull and occasionally ridiculous story.   The movie begins in 2049, "a few weeks after the event" referring to an environmental disaster which has left Earth practically uninhabitable.   Dying scientist Dr. Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney) decides to stay in his Arctic base while the rest of the crew evacuates.   "If I were interested in dying, I'd go with you," he tells an evacuee, which tells you how dire the situation is.   Dr. Lofthouse is the only inhabitant of this distant base, until a young mute girl shows up after being seemingly left behind by the others.

Dr. Lofthouse many years ago discovered planet K 23, which has an atmosphere similar to Earth's and could be colonized if Earth continues on its downward spiral.    A space vessel captained by Adewole (Oyelowo) is on its way back to Earth from K 23 and has no clue what they're in for when they arrive.  Dr. Lofthouse realizes the radio signal from his base is too weak to reach the ship, so he and the young girl named Iris (Springall) journey through harsh conditions to a nearby base to use its stronger satellite dish.  He wants to tell the ship to turn around because there is nothing left on Earth for them.  This man whose health is so fragile he needs daily blood transfusions to survive manages to endure bitter cold, blizzards, a fall through ice into freezing water, and other tribulations without perishing.   

The Midnight Sky cuts back and forth between the Arctic and the ship, where the crew processes the idea of not being able to return home.   Both stories are unable to sustain much interest.   Flashbacks to Augustine's failed marriage are peppered in, and in the end we understand how these are all linked.  The Midnight Sky takes its sweet time moving like molasses at the North Pole to reach its Big Reveal conclusion.  Clooney has directed and starred in better films.    The movie is top-loaded with A-list stars who likely jumped at the opportunity to work with George Clooney, but maybe they should've waited for a different project.   

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Patty Jenkins

Starring:  Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal

Wonder Woman 1984 is full of chaotic action, things being blown up real good, and yet has no impact.  It wants to be Deep, but in doing so its villains seem almost reluctant to engage in real villainy.   I wanted the baddies to be defeated.    Not because I wanted to see them get their comeuppance, but so the movie could be over.    Superhero movies are by nature preposterous, and there is a certain level I can accept, but Wonder Woman 1984 strains credulity to its limits.  

It is 1984 and Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gadot) now lives in Washington, DC working as a cultural anthropologist at the Smithsonian.   She wants to keep a low profile, but makes occasional appearances as Wonder Woman fighting crime and wears dresses to parties which would shame a Kardashian.  Diana's apartment is full of photos of herself through the years.   It's unlikely she has guests, because they would wonder aloud why Diana is featured in various period photographs and hasn't aged a day.  

Diana is still missing Steve Trevor (Pine), the World War I pilot who supposedly perished at the end of the first movie.  After a mysterious stone is transported to the Smithsonian and Diana unintentionally unlocks its powers to grant wishes, Steve Trevor shows up again in 1984 and reunites with his love.    It is Steve Trevor, yes, but he is inhabiting someone else's body.   But Diana only sees Steve, and so do we, so why bother bringing him back as another person?   Since the stone grants wishes, let's go all the way and just bring Steve back in full.   

Two other major characters are also transformed by the stone:  Diana's mousy, unconfident, worshipful co-worker Barbara (Wiig) and wannabe tycoon/con artist Maxwell Lord (Pascal), who appears on television infomercials promising the world to unsuspecting suckers and is a fraud in almost every way.   Once he is transformed by the stone, he wishes for money and power and gets both.   But there is a price.   In return for the granting of your wish, the stone takes something from you which you cherish.   For Diana, she loses some of her powers.   (Some, not all).   Maxwell undergoes frequent nosebleeds and stress which threatens to crush him, and Barbara goes from mouse to cat, or Cheetah, who dresses like a member of the cast of Cats and is now a predator who wants to destroy Wonder Woman.    

Wonder Woman 1984 drags on for 150 minutes, far longer than it needs to, and the story is thin soup for how long the movie takes to tell it.   If you want to see Gadot in the Wonder Woman getup wielding her truth lasso, you have to endure long stretches in between Wonder Woman sightings.   Her rekindled romance with Steve Trevor fizzles and Maxwell and Barbara/Cheetah turn up as less than worthy adversaries.   One of the better visual tricks in Wonder Woman 1984 is pretending Wonder Woman versus Cheetah is somehow a fair fight.

It is discovered, far too late I'm afraid, that one way to negate the effects of the stone is to verbally renounce your wish.   Wonder Woman 1984 wants to be a commentary on human greed and its negative effects, but it's handled in such an ungainly, ludicrous manner that it feels like just another movie taking potshots at the decade of excess and questionable fashion.    This Wonder Woman didn't have to occur in the 1980's, since all we do is witness more references to Miami Vice or breakdancing.   I wished to see Wonder Woman 1984 because I enjoyed the first movie, but about halfway through, I found myself renouncing my wish.   Unlike the instantaneous reversals which occur in the movie, it would still take another seventy-five minutes for the wish to be granted

The Money Pit (1986) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Richard Benjamin

Starring:  Tom Hanks, Shelley Long, Alexander Gudonov, Philip Bosco, Jake Steinfeld, Maureen Stapleton, Joe Mantegna

Walter and Anna are a couple in love as The Money Pit begins.  Life is pretty good, until they are thrown out of Anna's ex-husband's posh apartment and have no place to go.   They find a large country home the seller wants to close on in a week and is almost giving away, and Walter and Anna expect to live comfortably in their quiet home.    They're wrong.   Walter (Hanks) and Anna (Long) expected to make minor repairs to the house, but soon the stairs collapse, the front door falls off, the water stops running, the electricity fizzles out, and the bathtub falls through the floor.    They soon spend an untold fortune on renovating the home, depending on sleazy contractors whose workers look like denizens of the circus that just came to town.   

Most of the gags in The Money Pit are repetitive.   Something breaks, crumbles, falls, cracks, or is demolished while Walter and Anna look on in bewilderment.    It turns out they were the suckers and the rest of the movie has the mostly likable couple sink further into despair and debt trying to make a go of this lemon.   I have some affection for it, mostly because I just plain felt sorry for these poor schnooks who only wanted to find a home and build their lives together.   

Hanks and Long have likability to spare, and there are supporting performances which worked despite the characters being underwritten.   Philip Bosco is a kindly contractor, the only one who seems to have any scruples at all, and Joe Mantegna infuses his corrupt contractor with some oily charm that makes us wish we saw more of him.    Alexander Gudonov shines as Anna's snotty orchestra conductor ex who doesn't make it a secret that he wants Anna back...at least for one night.  

Some of the sight gags are amusing, but nothing in The Money Pit rises to the level of gut-busting laughter.   It moves along, the house falls apart, is fixed again, and everyone lives happily ever after.  The Money Pit doesn't aspire to be more than what it is, and in some ways that's just fine. 

The Queen's Gambit (2020) * * * (limited series showing on Netflix)

 

Starring:  Anya Taylor-Joy, Marielle Heller, Bill Camp, Harry Melling, Isla Johnson, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Moses Ingram

Chess is not very cinematic except possibly to those who play it regularly.   The rest of us have to take it on faith that movies like The Queen's Gambit know what they're talking about when it comes to the cerebral sport.   One thing we learn in The Queen's Gambit is chess isn't always simply cerebral.   There are emotions involved.   Players can make a wrong move and go on tilt just the same as a poker player who loses a bad beat.   The subject of The Queen's Gambit, orphan Beth Harmon (played as a child by Isla Johnson and as a teen and adult by Anya Taylor-Joy) is one of those who wears her emotions on her sleeve while playing, if not any other time. 

There is plenty of chess discussed and played in The Queen's Gambit, but the stories of the matches are told on the players' faces and postures.   We know when someone is defeated, or whether a player made the one move which will clinch a resignation by the opponent.   The strengths of the Netflix limited series aren't the chess scenes, but what happens with Beth when she isn't playing chess.   Chess is what she excels at, however alcohol and pills not only rob her of some tournament victories but from facing the pain of her past.    At times, drinking and pills nearly cost her everything.

Beth is a nine-year old whose father left the scene and whose mother lived with her in a trailer.  Following a deadly car accident which takes her mother's life, Beth is sent to a dank, gray orphanage in early 1960's Kentucky.   The orphans are given tranquilizers (apparently a common practice back then) and Beth discovers chess through the orphanage's kind, but stern janitor (Camp).   The janitor teaches her not only chess, but game etiquette including how to win and lose gracefully.   Before long, the preteen Beth is beating the pants off of players at the local high school chess club playing up to twelve matches simultaneously.   Because she keeps her emotions bottled up, Beth sometimes loses control and makes moves which cost her.   This soon applies to her personal life also.

Beth is adopted by the Wheatley family, but only the mother Alma (Heller) sticks around.   The adoptive father moves to Colorado and out of Beth's life.   Alma copes with this loss by drinking excessively, which Beth also adopts as a coping mechanism when not playing chess.   Along the way in this seven-part series, Beth makes friendships with chess rivals Harry Beltik (Melling) and the cocky Benny Watts (Brodie-Sangster), the United States chess champion.   Both take Beth under their wing and teach her the finer points of the game, but each may also be in love with her.   Is Beth able to love with so much emotional baggage weighing her down?   There are points in The Queen's Gambit in which Beth seems cut off from ordinary cheer, even while doing what she loves.    Because she feels responsible for both sets of parents leaving her, she can never truly embrace anything.   The game and people she loves are just out of reach.

Because a bulk of The Queen's Gambit takes place in the late 1960's chess world, it is inevitable Beth will have to battle the Soviets for supremacy.   Refreshingly, the Soviets are not seen as villains, but quiet, introspective players who couldn't care less about politics or ideology.   They just want to win and be the best at what they do.   They respect Beth as well, regardless of her gender and her age.  Although the ending of the series where Beth matches wits with the unbeatable Soviet Grand Master Borgov begins to take on a Rocky IV kind of feel, the bottom line is two masters playing a game they've played since they were children.

The Queen's Gambit, like most limited series, didn't have to be seven episodes long.   It tends to sag in parts, but it doesn't distract fatally from the whole series.   There are lot of positives.   Anya Taylor-Joy, with her classic facial features reminiscent of the time period's most glamorous actresses, excels in making Beth sympathetic if not altogether warm and fuzzy.   We understand her reasons for cutting herself off from the ability to feel joy, and in the series' final scenes when she allows herself to smile, it is something that was a long time coming.    The supporting performances are equally complex and masterfully handled.   The Queen's Gambit captures the era it inhabits with a superior production, and the chess matches are deftly edited, so we can kind of, sort of understand what's happening.   You don't need to be Garry Kasparov to appreciate the chess, but it wouldn't hurt.