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.  

The Crown (Season Four on Netflix) * * * 1/2

 

Starring:  Olivia Colman, Tobias Menzies, Gillian Anderson, Josh O'Connor, Emma Corrin, Emerald Fennell, Charles Dance, Helena Bonham Carter

The Queen Elizabeth II reign reaches the turbulent 1980's in the fourth, and so far best, season of Netflix's The Crown.    Two women challenge the queen's patience, authority, and the belief that the monarch is the most powerful woman in the UK:  Margaret Thatcher (Anderson) and Princess Diana (Corrin).   Thatcher was the first female prime minister, while Princess Diana won the hearts of the world with her beauty and youthful exuberance.    Princess Diana's popularity came with a heavy price in the form of a loveless marriage with the envious Prince Charles (O'Connor), who can't win the hearts and minds of the public as long as Princess Diana is in the picture.   Charles is still in love with Camilla (Fennell), and the marriage to Diana was arranged as a way to try to stop Charles from pining after Camilla.   It didn't work.  

It is brutal what happens to the innocent Diana, who only wanted to live her fairy tale as a young woman in love with the Prince of Wales.   But, it was not to be.   Camilla is always lurking just outside the marriage, and Charles becomes more resentful of Diana's popularity with each public appearance and tour.   The bulimic Diana can barely cope with the pressure from the royal family to endure the pain and not divorce Charles.   What happens to her is cruel and tragic.   Her innocence is shattered, and the rest belongs to history.  

Margaret Thatcher is more experienced and stronger to deal with the pressures of her job.   She stays the course despite Britain plunging further into unemployment and financial hardship, and the brief war over the Falkland Islands near Argentina boosts national morale at least temporarily.   Because Thatcher is as stubborn and strong-willed as Elizabeth, the two butt heads often, but gain a grudging respect for each other as both endured and prospered in a male-dominated British culture. 

With very few missteps, The Crown's fourth season is the most gut-wrenching.   Diana is seen as a tragic figure, but Charles' own cruelty is based in his own misery.   He is not a villain, but he's surely not a hero either.  No one really is a villain per se, but this does not stop the royal family from acting coldly and calculatingly to ensure their best interests.    History, of course, plays itself out, and The Crown sweeps through the 80's decade with things looking plenty different at the end of the decade than the beginning.   Colman has settled into the role quite nicely as the experienced queen, and Anderson and Corrin are wonderful.   Corrin is so Diana-like we do a double take to make sure we aren't watching documentary footage.    The Crown maintains its superior writing, performances, and production with its most illuminating and emotional season to date.   

  

Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970, re-released 2020) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Denis Sanders

What struck me most about Elvis: That's the Way It Is was his playfulness while rehearsing or onstage.  He was having a good time, and it reflected in his performance.   Elvis: That's the Way It Is was filmed in August 1970 during a string of Las Vegas concerts.   Filmed over six nights, the concert footage is seamless.   Everything looked and sounded like it came from one show.   He captivated his audience, and women of all ages screamed like they were teenagers again when Elvis takes the stage.  In an extended version of Love Me Tender, Elvis makes his way through the audience kissing adoring female fans, and they are pretty well-behaved considering how apparent their adoration for him is.   If this were the Elvis of the 1950's, he would've needed more bodyguards.

I'm not a fan of concerts, and even less so of concert documentaries.   I can appreciate the performance while still longing for it to be over.   I haven't dissected why this is so.   Like the title of this movie: That's the way it is.   This Elvis documentary is better than most such documentaries because it captures the Elvis experience while he was still ELVIS, and before addictions and weight problems took hold.  He would die seven years after this movie was release, and it is mind-boggling to understand he was only 42 when he passed.   

That's the Way It Is begins with rehearsals one month before he was to storm Vegas.   He has an easygoing relationship with his longtime band.   They enjoy playing for him, and it shows.   Elvis was not above cracking jokes or joshing with his band.   They are not in awe of him, mostly because Elvis behaves like one of the guys when he's present.   When he moves his rehearsals to Vegas, he is in harmony with his backup singers and treats them like family, telling stories and jokes.   I would've liked to have seen some more footage like this, but the movie is eager to get to the main event.  

On the night of the opening concert of his Vegas engagement, Elvis sits with his friends wisecracking and talking about the need for many costume changes if he forgets the words to his songs.   Only one time in the movie is he actually seen referring to an index card to remember lyrics.   When on stage, Elvis goes from one song to another with boundless energy.   He performs his greatest hits and finds refreshing ways to sing an old, familiar song so he and we are not bored by it.   It's all cohesive and structured to maximize Elvis' strengths.   His performance takes on a timeless quality, even though it was filmed fifty years ago.  

Elvis' natural charisma allowed him to connect to his audiences.   It is abundantly evident here.   For a while, we forget about Elvis Presley's sad end and instead are treated to what made his legacy endure to this day and beyond.   At age thirty-five, he had already accomplished so much, and it's all right there onscreen.   It is tragic that the Elvis of this movie didn't last that much longer.  

The Pelican Brief (1993) * *

 

Directed by:  Alan J. Pakula

Starring:  Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sam Shepard, Stanley Tucci, John Heard, Tony Goldwyn, James B. Sikking, Robert Culp, Hume Cronyn, John Lithgow

Since it has been forever since I last saw The Pelican Brief, I approached it as if watching it for the first time.   I recalled little about the plot, and just as much about the movie, except that it starred Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington.   The stars have chemistry, and they make something out of underwritten roles, but the movie itself is an adequate thriller which never pushes into greatness, or even being very good.

Better movies have been made of John Grisham novels, such as The Firm or A Time to Kill, both with A-List casts starring in material which didn't require their participation.   We are still happy to see them nonetheless and they elevate the movies.    Roberts and Washington are genuine movie stars and top-notch actors.  They nearly make The Pelican Brief work.  

On to the plot:   Two Supreme Court justices are assassinated on the same night, causing somewhat of a stir on the national stage.    Their deaths are either extreme coincidence, or there is a conspiracy.   The President (Culp) and his shifty chief of staff Fletcher Cole (Goldwyn) task the FBI to find out what happened.   A Tulane law student named Darby Shaw (Roberts) thinks that not only is there a conspiracy, but she writes a brief outlining allegations which may implicate the White House following maybe a day's worth of research.   She presents it to a friend of her alcoholic law professor/lover (Shepard), who used to be a protege of one of the dead justices, and soon he's offed in a car bomb explosion.   If there is one thing The Pelican Brief gets right, it doesn't simply have Darby forget her grief when Denzel Washington walks through the door.   

Darby is rightfully scared and on the run from those who know the brief isn't a crazy conspiracy theory, but very close to the truth.   She confides in "Washington Herald" ace reporter Gray Grantham (Washington), and the two are soon involved in chases and attempts on their lives.   Neither knows who to trust, except each other.   Roberts and Washington make a solid team.   Their star power eclipses whatever else is going on, which as it turns out, is much ado about not much. 

Mank (2020) * * *

 

Directed by:  David Fincher

Starring:  Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, Tom Pelphrey, Arliss Howard, Lily Collins, Sam Troughton, Tom Burke

Mank has no grand statements to make about its subject except to say he made some poor decisions, especially while drunk, which was a lot of the time.   Herman Mankiewicz (Oldman) is a broken down alcoholic screenwriter stuffed away in a remote California desert home to write what would become Citizen Kane.   Because of a recent car accident, (in which he wasn't the driver), Mank is laid up with a broken leg and is teetering on the edge of a broken spirit because his caretakers are under orders not to serve him alcohol.   As Mank writes his pages, Orson Welles' friend John Houseman (Troughton), whisks them off to Welles for his approval.   What Mank writes is brilliant, yes, but also dangerous because it bases Kane on William Randolph Hearst (Dance), who even in advanced age wields a great deal of power in Hollywood.   Mank, Hearst, and Hearst's longtime companion Marion Davies (Seyfried) have a history, told in flashback beginning from the early 1930's when Mank was a screenwriter for MGM.

As Mank's brother Joseph (Pelphrey) and even Marion Davies try to talk Mank out of submitting the draft to Welles, Mank figures since he's already a mess, what more could Hearst do to him?   The rest is cinematic history.   Citizen Kane became an enduring, groundbreaking classic, even though it only won one Oscar for Welles' and Mank's screenplay.   The original deal was for Mank to ghostwrite the script and Welles would take the credit, but Mank has a change of heart and pushes for credit, which strains his relationship with Welles.   If there is one thing Mank excels at, other than screenwriting, it's straining personal relationships.

Filmed in black and white, Mank is technically marvelous throughout, while the story takes a little more time to gel.   Mank is not presented as a tragic figure.   He is witty, has a punch line for every straight line, gambles on just about anything (including a gubernatorial election) and loves his booze.  However, he continually feels the need to put his professional life in jeopardy by pissing off his benefactors, such as studio mogul Louis B. Mayer (Howard) and Hearst himself by backing "socialist" Upton Sinclair in the 1934 California governor's race.   Sinclair's ideas are deemed a threat to the wealthy, while Mank admires the writer-turned-politician.   It doesn't work out for Mank, either financially or professionally and leads him to a pathetic state where he is bloated and boozed up, trying to finish the elephantine task of writing Citizen Kane under a sixty-day deadline.

Gary Oldman is likely headed to another Oscar nomination, and like his Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017), he infuses Mank with likability, a certain charm, and eccentricity.   Fincher is correct not to turn Mank into a cautionary tale or tragedy, but a bemused look at ten years in the life of a Hollywood insider who became an outsider.    Amanda Seyfried is also worthy of an Oscar nod.  Her Davies plays the dumb blonde role everyone expects of her, but she knows the score and even has a fondness for Mank, even while Mank insults her longtime beau Hearst and eventually alienates himself from the fortress at San Simeon.   It is the best performance of her career.   

Mank is far from perfect, mostly because it doesn't truly get going until about the one-hour mark, but it gives us some insight into an imperfect man who for a while fit right in with the imperfect Hollywood studio system.    If only he'd learned to stay out of trouble.   

Deepwater Horizon (2016) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Peter Berg

Starring:  Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Kate Hudson, Ethan Suplee, Gina Rodriguez

Deepwater Horizon reminds me of movies like The Towering Inferno, which was made when disaster movies were in their heyday.   It's hard not to be impressed with Deepwater Horizon's technical achievements while lamenting that once the explosion happens, the movie becomes less interesting when it should be running at full throttle.   Titanic managed to remain hypnotic even after the ship struck the iceberg.   Deepwater Horizon's best scenes all occur before the explosion aboard an oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico which killed eleven people and caused one of the worst environmental crises in history.  

If you consider how the rig quickly morphed into a ball of fire, it is astounding only eleven people died.  Many more were injured, and in the epilogue we learn some of the workers never returned to the oil industry in any capacity.   I can't say I blame them.    Deepwater Horizon begins much like Berg's Patriots' Day which like many Berg films also starred Mark Wahlberg.   It's a seemingly Ordinary Day as Mike Williams (Wahlberg) is awakened by his alarm and after some hanky panky with his wife Felicia (Hudson), he heads off to a three-week stint aboard the Deepwater Horizon.   Joining him is the rig's senior manager Jimmy Harrell (Russell), who questions why BP executives are accompanying him on the helicopter out to the rig and why needed rig repairs aren't being done.

Jimmy and Mike soon encounter Donald Vidrine (Malkovich), an arrogant executive who expertly cuts corners and insists the rig will run just fine even after a shaky pressure test.   I think Malkovich is working a Southern accent here, but he comes off sounding like he's doing an impression of legendary wrestler "American Dream" Dusty Rhodes.   Donald's job is to ensure the bottom line, and that doesn't much matter once mud dredged up from the safety test backs up and explodes, followed by more fiery explosions which engulf the rig in a hellish inferno.

Berg nicely fills the early scenes with dread and suspense.   We know where all of this is leading, because Deepwater Horizon is based on a true story, but the second half of the movie has Wahlberg and Russell navigating their way through fiery hallways to lead injured co-workers to safety.    This does not have the impact it should, mainly because we only know these people superficially.   When they're all covered in mud and blood in the gloom of night, it's difficult to determine who's who.   Felicia is relegated to the sidelines, where she frantically calls the coast guard after her video chat connection with Mike zaps out and can do little more than pray for her husband's safety as the gravity of the situation unfolds.

Deepwater Horizon is well-paced and technically superior, which is standard in Peter Berg action films.   But it plays like a tale of two halves, with a far more engrossing buildup giving way to a lesser payoff after the rig explodes.   Usually, this works the other way around.    

The Last Vermeer (2020) * * *

 

Directed by:  Dan Friedkin

Starring:  Claes Bang, Guy Pearce, Vicky Krieps, Roland Moller, August Diehl

Based on a true story, and sometimes with unnecessary dramatic license taken, The Last Vermeer is a post-World War II story about failed artist and soon wealthy art dealer Han van Meegeren (Pearce) accused of collaborating with the Nazis by selling them rare Vermeer paintings at record prices.   Hermann Goring paid the most anyone ever has for a painting, which financed van Meegeren's lavish lifestyle of excess and parties.   Lt. Joseph Piller (Bang), a former Dutch resistance fighter working for the postwar Allied government, is in charge of investigating how famous Vermeer paintings wound up in a Nazi-owned Austrian salt mine where thousands of other works were stored.   Piller traces one Vermeer painting in particular to van Meegeren, who Piller suspects was running an espionage ring out of his art gallery.  

van Meegeren, for head-scratching reasons later explained, doesn't express his innocence, but doesn't admit to guilt either.   After haggling with sinister-looking Dutch government agents who want jurisdiction over van Meegeren, Piller finds himself hiding van Meegeren in an attic.   van Meegeren asks to paint, an odd request for a man on the run, but Piller abides and this allows for the truth to unfold.   There are two moments in The Last Vermeer in which van Meegeren could've saved himself a whole lot of trouble with simple explanations, but they do allow for entertaining discoveries.   

The Last Vermeer is part mystery and inevitably part courtroom drama, and both aspects work well.  Yes, van Meegeren is a con man hiding behind a facade of opulence and sophistication, but does that mean he profited off of others' suffering by selling national treasures to the Nazis?   van Meegeren no doubt sold a painting to Goring, but is all what it seems?   I won't give away what became apparent early on, but the truth has a way of casting a new light on the events.

The war forced many to operate in the gray areas of life, where van Meegeren is right at home, while Piller not so much.   Piller's estranged wife worked for the Resistance also, but had to ingratiate herself and perhaps sleep with Nazi hierarchy in order to access needed information.   This doesn't sit well with Piller, but will his alliance with van Meegeren allow him to see things differently?   Piller is a tall, sturdy lead, who thankfully isn't tasked with being a walking, breathing moral compass.   He wants to get to the truth, and finds a way to live with its consequences.   Pearce has become an expert in roles requiring situational ethics and shadowy existences.   Was his work with the Nazis patriotic or did he swindle some powerful men who were begging to be parted from their money?   A little of both, and van Meegeren found he could live with that.  

The Social Dilemma (2020) * *

 

Directed by:  Jeff Orlowski

So how am I supposed to feel while watching The Social Dilemma?  Outraged?  Angered?  Foolish?   I strangely didn't feel any of these things.   My overriding question was:  And?  There is very little information expressed here we didn't already know or at least suspect, and yet we don't care either.  The cat is long out of the bag and the horse is long out of the barn by now to do anything meaningful to curb people's obsessions with looking at their phones or computers.   The best one can hope to do is moderate it somehow, and it then becomes a matter of personal choice.  Let's face it:  Some of these things are pretty cool and technology isn't always a negative.   The folks at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, etc. won't make it easy.   Their livelihoods depend on users continually checking in, and they won't allow you to put the phones down without a fight. 

The interview subjects of The Social Dilemma are those in the know.   They are former executives and programmers at the various social media giants who tell us how and why social media companies do what they do.   Some are still CEO's of tech companies today, which depend on mass advertising and perhaps social media influence to stay profitable.   I'm reminded of Facebook posts where one laments the passing of the "good old days" when kids didn't play a lot of video games and drank from garden hoses.  For the record, I don't recall ever drinking from a hose.   But where are they ironically lamenting their yearning for the past?  On Facebook.   

The Social Dilemma then dramatizes what the interviewees are saying in ill-fitting scripted sequences in which a high school student is seduced by right-wing misinformation and Vincent Kartheiser (from Mad Men) works a control panel directly controlling what information should be sent to whom in order to either increase usage or keep it at its current level.   Kartheiser actually plays three different versions of the mad genius pulling the strings from an anonymous lab, but no matter.   It is all unnecessary.

The interview subjects are indeed experts in their field, and what they have to say is credible and occasionally eye-opening.   They do their best to discuss the social media company strategies in layman's terms, and while I admire their candor and their individual meas culpa, their information, like The Social Dilemma itself, feels too little and too late.   Here is a documentary we wish were made five years ago, and perhaps that would've increased the impact, or at least given us a chance to mitigate the downside.  

Hillbilly Elegy (2020) * *

 

Directed by:  Ron Howard

Starring:  Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Gabriel Basso, Owen Aszstalos, Freida Pinto, Bo Hopkins, Haley Bennett 

Hillbilly Elegy, based on a memoir by J.D. Vance, never takes off.   We have elements in place, including two showcase performances by Amy Adams and Glenn Close in Oscar-bait roles, but all of the flashbacks and flash forwards between 1997 and 2011 don't generate any cohesive drama.   As played by Gabriel Basso, J.D. Vance is a likable, but dull Yale law student forced to return home to Middletown, Ohio and confront the Demons of His Past after his mother Bev (Adams) overdoses on heroin yet again.   He lands an interview with a prestigious firm as he deals with his mother's condition, so J.D. must figure all of this out and make it back to Washington, DC in time for the interview.   J.D. is saddled with an equally dull, but supportive girlfriend Usha (Pinto), whose job is to call in and remind J.D. he must get on the road NOW if he is to make the interview.

Beginning in 1997, the Vance family move from Kentucky to Ohio in hopes of escaping their Past.  Mamaw (Close) is the chain-smoking matriarch whose own past is marred by abuse, but hopes to steer J.D. in the right direction.   When I say chain smoking, I mean it.   Other than when she is in the hospital hooked up to oxygen, I can't recall a single scene in which Mamaw doesn't have a cigarette in her hand.   The role is limited to Mamaw bellowing out threats to straighten out anyone who messes up, but Close is clearly enjoying herself.   Come Oscar time, will Close win the elusive statue at long last?  She's had many better roles than this one, but this could be the one which finally nabs Close a trophy.  

Adams' role also checks the Oscar-contending role boxes.   A normally attractive woman who uglies herself up to play a down-and-out addict who was once a nurse.   Adams gets to scream at people and emote, which she does very well, and I'd be surprised if her name wasn't mentioned on the morning of the Oscar nominations.   Will Adams win on what would be her seventh nomination?   We shall see.  

As J.D.'s past gradually reveals itself, including dealing with his mother's mess of a life and his own flirtation with heading down his mother's path, I can't say I was much moved.   Even though this is Vance's story, it is indistinguishable from other stories of this vein.   When J.D. learns to let go to allow his mother to work out her own issues, J.D. hits the road and stays on the phone with Usha for the entire drive.   Why?   Probably to give Pinto something to do.   Hillbilly Elegy, even after the inexorable epilogue and photos of the real-life Vances pop up on the screen, never feels like a story that had to be told.   We are left with good performances in a movie which can't figure out what to do with them.  

The Climb (2020) * *

 

Directed by:  Michael Angelo Covino

Starring:  Michael Angelo Covino, Kyle Marvin, Gayle Rankin, George Wendt, Talia Balsam, Judith Godreche

The Climb begins promisingly.   Longtime best friends Mike (Covino) and Kyle (Marvin) are bicycling up a long, winding mountain road in France.   Kyle is about to get married, but Mike has news for him:   He slept with Kyle's fiancee, both long ago and recently.   Kyle rightfully wants to kick Mike's ass, if he could catch up to him, but a driver of a car soon gets into an altercation with Mike and does the honors instead. Kyle and Ava don't marry, and we fast forward to Ava's funeral, where we learn Mike and Ava married and Kyle's friendship with Mike naturally ended.   But Kyle attends the funeral, and comforts Mike in his grief, although they don't reconcile.   That comes later.   The two fall into a familiar pattern, in which Kyle and Mike reconcile and Mike does something to screw it up.   Kyle soon is engaged to the dominating Marissa (Rankin), who I suppose loves Kyle, or just sees him as someone whose balls she can break for years to come.  You can guess what happens next.

The Climb starts off with a certain charm, but then makes some ill-advised style choices which distract from a fragile story of two friends who are better off finding other friends.   Like 1917, Covino's camera shoots on long tracking shots which take center stage over the characters.   It didn't work in 1917, and it doesn't work here.   We also have inexplicable musical interludes which serve as transitions between story arcs.  This is not a story or characters which deserve such stylistic overkill or can stand up under the weight of it.   

Covino and Marvin co-wrote the screenplay, with Covino directing in his feature debut.   The Climb takes chances, and its independent spirit is very much alive, but after a while we tire of these two characters and all of the hoopla surrounding them.  They are only marginally likable at best, but Covino and Kyle play off each other with easy familiarity which no doubt is a byproduct of a long friendship.  I can only hope that Covino wasn't such a dick to Kyle in real life.   Maybe we'll find out one day if this is so. 

Freaky (2020) * *

 

Directed by:  Christopher Landon

Starring:  Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Celeste O' Connor, Misha Osherovich, Uriah Shelton, Katie Finneran, Alan Ruck 

Freaky is a horror update of the 1977 body-swapping comedy Freaky Friday which explores the same tired ground, only this time we add a body count.    In this instance, the Blissfield Butcher (Vaughn), once dismissed as mere urban legend, is on the hunt for teenage victims.   After slaughtering a few, he sets his sights on Millie Kessler (Newton), a pretty, but awkward teen bullied by the popular kids and a overly demanding shop teacher.   Millie is what passes for unattractive in this high school.  One night following a football game, Millie is left alone on school grounds awaiting a ride from her passed out, recovering alcoholic mother (Finneran).   The Butcher stalks her and after stabbing Millie with an ancient, glowing dagger, the two switch bodies.   The Butcher wakes up with Millie inside him, and Millie wakes up with The Butcher inside her.  

The obligatory scenes of the body-switching genre are fully intact.   Millie looks in the mirror to see she is not herself these days, and then feels her chest to discover her breasts are gone.   Millie heads to her high school, as the wanted Butcher mind you, to convince her best friends (O'Connor and Osherovich) that she is indeed inside the Butcher's body.   Why the high school remains open mere hours after a student was attacked there is anyone's guess.    The Butcher, meanwhile, goes to the same school to find new victims, including the popular girl who bullies Millie and winds up frozen to death in a cryogenic freezer.   Why this school would have a cryogenic freezer is anyone's guess.

It turns out the dagger has a special set of rules governing its use, and Millie will have to stab the Butcher again before the stroke of midnight.   If not, they will remain in each other's bodies permanently.   Isn't it always amusing how supernatural artifacts come with their own arbitrary user instructions?   There is one twist which is at least different from other movies of the genre:  Even though Millie is The Butcher, she is at least equipped with the hulking Butcher's strength, and The Butcher as Millie is limited to whatever strength her petite body could muster.   Millie also secures the assistance of her crush Booker (Shelton), to whom she confesses her love while inside The Butcher's body.   This of course leads to a kiss.  

Freaky checks off the horror cliches while attempting to kid them.   But the slayings in Freaky are as gruesome as the real thing, and it dampers any comedic effects.   One killing has a man cut in half by a table saw, which you figure would come into play when the shop class was introduced.   Another gets a hook to the eye.   At least there is very little blood, if that is of comfort to anyone.    Vaughn and Newton pull off the body switching nicely, and Vaughn provides whatever humanity he can muster as a young woman trapped inside a hulk.   Millie's mother's struggles with recovery and her cop sister also provide a potentially absorbing dynamic, if allowed to be fleshed out more.  

As someone who has seen slasher movies, their sequels, retreads, and even parodies, I think I've tapped out on the genre, but Freaky will surely be well received by the teenage crowd which hasn't been around long enough to know any better. 

 

The Last Dance (2020) * * *

 

The Last Dance gets its title from Phil Jackson's declaration at the beginning of the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls season.   After winning back-to-back titles and aiming for a second three-peat of the decade, Bulls' general manager Jerry Krause tells Jackson he will be rebuilding after the season regardless of whether the Bulls win another NBA title.   Why would Krause and owner Jerry Reinsdorf not allow the Bulls to stay intact until the wheels fell off?   For Reinsdorf, it's economics: Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman alone would be too costly even on one-year contracts.  For Krause, it tilts towards ego.   Despite building a championship roster around Jordan, he believes he never received enough credit for the Bulls dynasty.   By tearing down, starting over, and hopefully regaining the franchise's former glory, Krause can then claim to be the reason for the Bulls' success.   After the 1998-99 championship season, Krause dismantled the Bulls and the team has yet to even approach the success of the Jordan Bulls.   The 1997-98 season was indeed a last dance for this squad.

It isn't a spoiler to say the Bulls prevailed in their quest for a second three-peat with a Finals win against the Utah Jazz.   The Last Dance documents the final year of the Bulls dynasty while flashing back to Michael Jordan's childhood, high school play, college dominance at North Carolina, and entering the NBA as the future best who ever played.   You, of course, may dispute that Jordan was the greatest basketball player ever, but what can't be denied is his work ethic and ability to take any slight (real or perceived) and weave it into personal motivation to win.    Jordan finds new ways to push himself, even when a former teammate scores 37 points against him one night in a playoff game, which the Bulls won by the way.

The Last Dance is ten episodes.   Did it need to be so many?  Perhaps not, but you can't say it isn't thorough.   The spotlight is on Jordan, but his teammates Pippen, Rodman, Steve Kerr, and coach Phil Jackson are also highlighted with their own stories.    Even former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are interviewed.   Jordan's contemporaries Larry Bird, Isaiah Thomas, Reggie Miller, and Magic Johnson are also included, and to this day Michael Jordan simply dislikes Isaiah Thomas, even though the feeling isn't mutual.   This dates back to the Detroit Pistons' snubbing of the Bulls after the latter finally got over the hump and ousted their longtime playoff nemesis in 1991.    The Pistons collectively walked off the court without shaking hands.   Thomas spins this as a passing of the torch.  Jordan feels it was poor sportsmanship.   When the 1992 Olympic Dream Team was assembled, Thomas was left off the team.   Did Jordan have something to do with that?   

In the time before social media, Jordan became the biggest star on the planet through a combination of marketing and his unparalleled ability.   During the 1992-93 season, rumors circulated of Jordan's alleged gambling miscues.   When Jordan abruptly retired after defeating the Phoenix Suns in the Finals, rumors turned to speculation.   Was Jordan secretly suspended by NBA Commissioner David Stern due to gambling?   Jordan and Stern scoff at the idea, but when Jordan joined the Chicago White Sox minor league Birmingham Barons in 1994, this only fueled the conspiracy theory.

The Last Dance encompasses so much material that it's a fool's errand to encapsulate it all.   Michael Jordan remains an imposing figure.   He still is slow to forgive past trespasses, and his father's 1993 murder still weighs heavily on him.   Former teammates state the only emotions Michael would usually show were anger and frustration.   His will to win compelled him to become the de facto head coach in practice, and occasional bully.   His sense of humor seemed only to extend to ribbing, but even that had a competitive edge to it.    When asked if his will to win forced him to abandon being perceived as a nice guy, Michael's answer is simple, but his facial expressions reveal this is something he has still not come to grips with.   It's as if his competitive drive overtakes him and he is powerless to switch it off.

Michael's children are briefly shown in interview clips and in footage, but there is little mention of them or his wives otherwise.   How did his family react to their husband and father suddenly being adored by millions?   How was it living in a pressure cooker world of fame and celebrity?   The Last Dance skims past that, which is surprising considering its otherwise near total examination of its subject.   Watching the playoff footage from years ago is still suspenseful even though we know the outcome.   The Last Dance presents us with a complete story of sport, fame, and internal pressures which could turn both into a negative experience.    The Last Dance presents the Bulls breakup as something akin to tragedy.  Yes, it would have been fun to see if the Bulls could go for four in a row, but the team had other plans and there are far worse things to spend time contemplating.  

Let Him Go (2020) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Thomas Bezucha

Starring:  Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Lesley Manville, Jeffrey Donovan, Kayli Carter, Ryan Bruce, Will Brittain, Booboo Stewart

The serenity of the Blackledge's life on their Montana farm circa 1961 is soon to be shattered by the death of their son James in a horse riding accident.   Their daughter-in-law Lorna (Carter), mother of Martha's (Lane) and George's (Costner) grandson Jimmy, soon marries the mysterious Donnie Weboy (Brittain).   The newlyweds move into an apartment in town and Martha and George's days are spent either doting on their grandson, or biding their time until the next time they can dote on their beloved Jimmy.   

One day, by happenstance, Martha witnesses Donnie smacking the three-year-old Jimmy for dropping some ice cream on the sidewalk and then doing the same to Lorna.   Martha is horrified and soon after goes to Lorna's apartment only to find they've all moved to lord knows where.   Martha, knowing the danger her grandson may be in, packs up to find him.   George, a retired sheriff, goes along because he knows Martha so well, and also knows she may find herself in more trouble than she expects.

The plot is the odyssey of Let Him Go, but the subtext is the horrors to which abuse can subject someone.   Jimmy has already tasted some from his stepfather, and when the Blackledges' journey leads them to the Weboy family in North Dakota, and a tense and soon terrifying meeting with the Weboy clan led by the ruthless matriarch Blanche (Manville).  The Blackledges witness the future awaiting Jimmy and also what systemic abuse has done to Blanche's own sons.    The Blackledges are in for an uphill battle.   George, in one line delivered while listening to a preacher on the car radio, suggests his own horrid, abused past.  

The aura of danger and tragedy permeates Let Him Go.  It is not a thriller, but depicts a journey which may not have a happy ending for all.   Martha and George are loyal to each other, and their steadiness may be the only weapon they have against the wildcard Weboys, who treat Jimmy not as a beloved family member, but as another soldier to mold into their small army of terror.    Lane and Costner are sympathetic, compassionate, and we care deeply for them.   They meet a wayward, frightened young Native American man (Stewart) who lives alone on the prairie and whose back story further illustrates the ill effects of abuse. 

Manville has the showiest role, a departure from her Oscar-nominated turn in Phantom Thread, where she quietly and coldly manipulated her brother's romantic and professional life.   She creates a more open ruthlessness here, and we see how she shaped her family into becoming scared, loyal servants.  Terrible events befall George and Martha, but I'll be damned if it isn't stirring to see George spring into action for one last run at rescuing Jimmy from an unacceptable fate.  It reminds you of a classic Western.  Let Him Go is ominous, eerie, punctuated by moments of nasty violence, beautifully photographed, and above all compelling.   The title suggests what a defeatist would say.   For Martha and George, such words are not possible, especially considering the future Jimmy faces. 

 

2 Hearts (2020) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Lance Hool

Starring:  Jacob Elordi, Radha Mitchell, Adan Canto, Tiera Skovbye, Kari Matchett, Steve Bacic

I feel churlish writing negative reviews about a movie that means well.   2 Hearts wants to be loved, like a lost puppy or kitten.   I take no delight in reporting my experience.  This is a movie which may be too saccharine even for Lifetime or Hallmark.   2 Hearts has the depth of an infomerical, and the movie ultimately plays like one.   We watch two stories of blissful love interrupted by a crisis we knew was coming, and it had to, because otherwise 2 Hearts would've just been the tale of these boring, inert romances.   

The actors play people who are nice enough, and are forced to recite stilted dialogue to each other while we tap our foot impatiently waiting for something to happen.   Something happens indeed, and instead of being emotionally involved, we are grateful the movie finally went somewhere.   Anywhere.   The opening scene shows Chris (Elordi) being rushed on a gurney to an operating room with his girlfriend Sam (Skovbye) right alongside him.   Chris, in voice-over narration, blathers on about "life happening for you" instead of "to you", and then he begins the story of Jorge (Canto).   Jorge as a teenager is stricken with a degenerative lung disease and doctors say he won't live past twenty.   His father (Bacic) adds: "They said he wouldn't live past twelve,"  

Jorge indeed lives to adulthood working for his family's lucrative rum business, and falls in love at first sight with Leslie (Mitchell), an attractive Pan Am flight attendant working a flight Jorge is on.   When Leslie asks if there is anything she can do for Jorge, he says "hold my hand until we take off,"  She obliges and the two fall in love, meeting up in different cities and eventually marrying despite his father's obligatory objections to marrying someone while knowing he will die sooner than later.   After this scene, the family objections are never raised again, mostly because they are so ludicrous on the surface.   Don't they want their son, who has managed to outlive doctor's expectations while dealing with a potentially fatal condition, to be happy?  

Chris' own love life shapes up in his freshman year at Loyola where he meets the comely Sam and wins her heart despite having an annoyingly hyper personality.   His family seems to like her, (there is no mention or any scenes of her family), but then one day Chris falls into a coma with bleeding on the brain.   In retrospect, it seems both Sam and Leslie have no families of their own.   Their onscreen interactions are with their mates' families, and briefly at that.   A calamity befalls Chris and we take up the story from his admission to the hospital.   

2 Hearts toys with us with a Big Reveal that plays fair before moving on to what the movie is Really About.   By the time Chris is languishing in a coma in the hospital, Jorge doesn't have long to live unless he can receive a lung transplant.   The connection between Jorge and Chris, two men who never met, is revealed as promised in the trailers.   Jorge ages in the thirty years since marrying Leslie, while Leslie doesn't appear to have aged a day.   

We have two banal romances followed by a downer plot development and a futile attempt to put a happy face on everything in the end with more Chris narration seemingly from the heavens.   I'm trying my best not to give away spoilers, but it is fairly obvious what must inexorably happen.   2 Hearts is innocuous and empty, without any meanness in its being, with a drawn-out setup which doesn't justify any emotional involvement later on.  

That Thing You Do! (1996) * * *

 

Directed by:  Tom Hanks

Starring:  Tom Everett Scott, Liv Tyler, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, Tom Hanks, Ethan Embry, Kevin Pollak, Peter Scolari, Charlize Theron, Rita Wilson

That Thing You Do! captures a time just as Beatlemania exploded across America and right before Vietnam became a household word.   It was 1964 and four young men from Erie, Pa. record a song called "That Thing You Do!" and it takes off.   When the song is first played on the radio, the sheer joy erupting from the band members is as catchy as the song itself.   Thank goodness the titular song is a likable one because we hear it a lot. 

The band is The One-ders, which is The Wonders spelled differently a la The Beatles.   Announcers mistakenly call them  the "o-need-ers", but that is soon changed by the no-nonsense record executive Mr. White (Hanks), who lifts them from a band playing country fairs to national television spots.   As the group's fame grows exponentially, so do the internal pressures and conflicts which threaten to break them up just as they're getting started.   Guy (Scott) is the drummer and the band's spiritual leader whose family owns the local appliance store.   He gets the gig after the original drummer breaks his arm.   Jimmy (Schaech) is the band's lead singer and songwriter, who wants to write more "meaningful songs" and soon neglects his faithful longtime girlfriend Faye (Tyler) as his ego inflates and the options for newer female admirers increase.  

Rounding out the band is the unnamed bassist (Embry) who has signed up to join the Marines and isn't long for the band, and guitarist Lenny (Zahn) who is more bewildered and thrilled at the group's overnight success than his fellow band members are.    By the time The Wonders reach California and a spot in a beach party movie and a national TV showcase, the group is about to come apart at the seams, so much so that a second recording session may not ever happen.   Will they indeed be one-hit wonders as their name suggests?   

The Wonders is the type of band you would hear "Where Are They Now?" segments about on Kasey Kasem's American Top 40 broadcasts a decade later.    They have the look of teen idols, but so do hundreds of others.   The song is the kind that you play over and over again, then put away, and don't listen to again for a long while.   The actors who play The Wonders are youthful and effervescent, even though Jimmy is the only jerk among them.   He doesn't deserve Faye's loyalty, which she finally realizes and says, "I've wasted thousands of kisses on you,"   There is also a nice payoff to Guy's secret crush on her. 

That Thing You Do! is colorful, bright, and engaging.   It isn't deep, it isn't meant to reflect on history, but instead it's a movie which shows us a brief moment when the sun shined on four lads from Erie, Pa. who didn't stick around long enough, nor were as substantial as four lads from Liverpool.   

The Empty Man (2020) *

 

Directed by:  David Prior

Starring:  James Badge Dale, Stephen Root, Joel Courtney, Marin Ireland, Aaron Poole, Samantha Logan, Sasha Frolova

Spoilers present, if you're interested.  

The Empty Man is another example of a movie which would go straight to VOD if it weren't for the dearth of movies being shown in theaters.   It is drudgery to sit through.   It is another tale of an ordinary man battling the supernatural.   Ever since Rosemary's Baby, the ordinary person loses 99 times out of 100 when taking on a supernatural being.   Maybe these folks should educate themselves by watching Rosemary's Baby, or even The Sixth Sense.   Surely, they've heard of those movies.

The Empty Man begins in 1995 Bhutan.   A group of hikers, two male and two female, climb the mountains and cross a rickety bridge.   One of the hikers falls into a hole in the ground, and his friend finds him sitting in a trance in front of a skeleton.    The friend is rescued and taken to a nearby vacant house, but he is catatonic.  Following a severe snowstorm, the hikers attempt to make their way back to civilization when one of the women suddenly stabs her friends to death and then jumps to her own death in a deep chasm.   Only the catatonic man survives, and he shows up years later hooked up to a machine in a Missouri hospital.   How he was rescued and brought there is not explained.

The story picks up again in 2018 Missouri.   We meet former St. Louis detective James Lasombra (Dale-from The Departed), who now owns a security shop selling mace and other like items.   He is haunted by the death of his wife and son in a car accident, and now his neighbor's daughter Amanda (Frolova) goes missing hours after talking to him about creepy stuff.   James decides to play detective again and find out Amanda's whereabouts.   This leads him to tales of the Empty Man, who can be summoned by blowing into a bottle and chanting his name, and a secret society which wants the Empty Man to appear again for reasons only they understand.  

The society itself isn't very secret, since James is able to Google it and retrieve all of the information he wants about it.   The farther down the supernatural rabbit hole James travels, the more demonic visions appear to him, and the more he lights up a cigarette to deal with the stress.   I suppose James doesn't need to run the store, since he abandons it the moment he starts his research into Amanda's disappearance.   However, he needs money to afford all of those smokes, so he has a conundrum perhaps worse than the one with Amanda. 

Movies dealing with the occult and demons who can be summoned at will are silly by nature, but it isn't against the law for them to be at least somewhat fun and suspenseful.    The Empty Man is dreary and hopeless.   Poor James Badge Dale provides more of a hero than the story deserves, and he is eventually swallowed up by the inane plot.   When it is told to James what his true nature is, all I could do is ask questions, which isn't what is desired from the viewer, but I asked if this was suddenly Weird Science disguised as a horror film.   The Empty Man is empty-headed.   

Interiors (1978) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Woody Allen

Starring:  Diane Keaton, Geraldine Page, Mary Beth Hurt, E.G. Marshall, Richard Jordan, Sam Waterston, Kristin Griffith

Interiors represented a departure for Woody Allen as his first drama, although some of his comedies until that point freely showed the wounds in Allen's soul.   Annie Hall is a comedy, yes, but it's about a painful breakup.   Interiors is also about a breakup, but this time it's a marriage of many years.  The patriarch, a successful lawyer named Arthur (Marshall), announces over breakfast his desire for a "trial separation".  His daughters Renata (Keaton), a published poet, and Joey (Hurt) who is forever in search of work which will fulfill her, are stunned to varying degrees.   Arthur's wife Eve, a cold perfectionist of an interior designer, is soon hospitalized from the trauma of her broken marriage.  A third daughter, Flyn, (Griffith) is off filming bad movies which her sisters snicker about behind her back.   This family was hanging on by a thread to begin with.   The divorce brings their conflicts and issues center stage.

Renata and Joey are the daughters with the most gaping wounds caused by their mother's coldness.   Their marriages suffer.   Renata's husband Frederick (Jordan) is an unsuccessful novelist who finds solace in the bottle and lashing out at Renata.   Frederick also has a crush on Flyn, and one night while drunk attempts to rape her in an unsettling scene which showcases just how pathetic Frederick is.  

Joey's husband Michael (Waterston) is a political activist and filmmaker who is forever put upon by Eve's insistence on polishing his wooden floors multiple times and redecorating his apartment.  Why does Eve want to redesign his place so much?  To get back at Joey for undisclosed reasons.   Clearly Joey is the most upset at her mother.   "I feel such rage against you," Joey painfully admits to Eve. 

Renata and Joey find a common enemy to direct their hostility when Arthur introduces his new fiancee Pearl (Stapleton), a down-to-earth woman whose warm and open personality is so foreign to the daughters that they refer to her as a "vulgarian".   They're used to Eve's distance.  Pearl is culture shock to them, and to her.  Stapleton's performance is the best in the movie, and she received a well-deserved Oscar nomination.  Watch the scene in which she instinctively answers when Joey says "Mom".  

Allen goes heavy on the symbolism, especially when we see the volatile waves crashing violently against the surf at the family's beach home.   After the inevitable conclusion, the seas are calm as the daughters reflect on what they've lost, or perhaps the calm they gained.   This would not be Allen's last foray into drama, and future films only reflect his renowned versatility as a writer and director.  There are no laughs to be had in Interiors, but the material isn't treated in heavy-handed fashion.  It is tempting to suggest we wish we had these people's problems.   They are affluent, yes, but all of the money in the world won't shake them free of their guilt, anger, and resentments.   We feel sorry for someone like Eve, who realizes only too late what caused Arthur to want to leave her.   This drives her to multiple suicide attempts, not necessarily because Arthur is gone, but because he isn't coming back. 

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) * * (streaming on Amazon Prime)

 

Directed by:  Jason Woliner

Starring:  Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova, Rudy Giuliani

One of Sacha Baron Cohen's signature characters returns after a fourteen-year hiatus in a sequel filmed in part during the COVID-19 pandemic.   With two weeks left before the 2020 presidential election finally arrives, Borat Subsequent Movie Film drops on Amazon Prime in hopes of showing America at its ugliest.   This is a case of too little, too late.   We have seen America at its worst for the past five years every day as part of the 24-hour news cycle which moves so swiftly we forget yesterday's news yesterday.  Borat uncovers the ignorance of Americans who believe the Clintons run a secret pedophile ring from the back of a pizza shop (and slaughter children and drink their blood) and the foolhardy belief that the coronavirus was created in a lab and spread across the world.   Borat has some fun with this notion in a plot twist, but these revelations are old hat.   These ignoramuses are covered by legitimate news organizations time and again.    Borat adds nothing new to the mix.   We've seen this enough.  

Borat, the Kazakhstan journalist whose beliefs in a woman's place in the world and antisemitism are as backward as the country depicted here.    I am sure the real Kazakhstan is nowhere near as third world as the movies suggest, but when he returns to America years after disgracing his home country with the documentary he made in the first film, he finds he's right at home with likeminded individuals.    His mission, as ordered by the nation's new premier, is to give his fifteen-year-old daughter Tutar (Bakalova) as a gift to Donald Trump in hopes it will elevate Kazakhstan on the world stage.  Trump is hard to get to, so Borat floats the idea of giving his daughter to Mike Pence.  When that fails, he settles for Rudy Guiliani, and the controversial payoff is sufficiently creepy.   Cohen insists Guiliani's behavior is not at all staged.   You'll have to see for yourself.   If it isn't staged, then Guiliani is a fool.   If it is staged, then Guiliani has found another way to further sully his now-damaged reputation.    I recall him in Fear City, the recent documentary about the successful federal prosecution of the mob.   He was intelligent and thoughtful there.   How did he become such a dumpster fire of a person now?

Borat is in the movie, but because of his fame (and infamy), he wears disguises for a lot of the movie, so those who like the traditional Borat will be disappointed.   He delivers the signature "high five" and "great success" lines, but they, like the rest of the movie, feels like old hat right about now.    When Borat is not "exposing" the buffoonery of people, or outright shocking them with his (and Tutar's) wildly inappropriate dance at a debutante ball while Tutar is having her period, he is slogging his way through a plot in which his daughter discovers she has rights and chooses not to behave the way her country (and father) has conditioned her to.    It is here where Borat Subsequent Movie Film goes all gooey and sentimental (much like Cohen's unsuccessful Bruno) and it all doesn't fit.   

An immense talent like Cohen is long past having to play his characters from Da Ali G Show again.   I suppose he felt the time was right for a Borat return and the quasi-documentary filmmaking style thrusting people's ignorance and unfounded prejudices onto a public which probably has already had its fill of such harebrained ideas.   It's difficult to swallow that some of these scenes were filmed without the subjects knowing it was a film, but still I can't blame Cohen for giving Borat another go.  After watching this incarnation of the character, however, it's mostly been there, done that.