Photo caption: Robert De Niro, Adam Scott and Michelle Monagan in THE WHISPER MAN. Courtesy of Netflix.
The Whisper Man is even more disturbing than your average serial killer thriller because of three creepy villains with even creepier habits. Amanda (Michelle Monagan) is a police detective in a race against time to solve child abductions before they become child murders. Her suburban community in northern New Jersey experienced a spree of child killings a generation ago; these new crimes have exactly the same modus operandi, even though the original serial killer has been locked away for 25 years. She seeks the advice of Peter (Robert De Niro), the long-retired cop who caught the original killer, but he resists re-engaging. But then, Jake (Acston Luke Porto), the young son of Peter’s estranged son Tom (Adam Scott), is kidnapped, and Peter joins the manhunt.
The investigation takes Michelle and Peter behind bars to interview the original murderer Frank (Michael Keaton), who eagerly relishes the attention and who is just dripping with unhinged evil. Next, Michelle tracks down the wealthy weirdo Norman (Hamish Linklater), a fetishist proud of his transgressive collection. As they get closer to a solution, The Whisper Man becomes almost unbearably harrowing.
Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer adapted the screenplay from the Alex North novel. The writers have added some intriguing twists to a serial killer story – one about fingernails, another about collecting, and a third, horrific one involving cassette tapes.
As the good guys, often in conflict with each other, De Niro, Monagan and Scott all give strong performances. But it is the intense creepiness of villains played by Michael Keaton, Hamish Linklater and Owen Teague that makes The Whisper Man so unsettling.
Owen Teague in THE WHISPER MAN. Courtesy of Netflix.
I first noticed Owen Teague in the little indie family drama Montana Story, which I admired as one of the best movies of 2022. I wrote that Teague’s “quiet performance is exquisite. This is a melodrama, and the performance as Cal could easily have been overwrought. Instead, he perfectly captures this dutiful and seemingly passive man, with a hidden, festering guilt.” In The Whisper Man, Teague gets to go full-out maniac, and it makes the end of the movie even more gripping.
Photo caption: Antonio Banderas and Dominic Sesso in TONY: Courtesy of A24.
“I was a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”
So begins Tony, the origin story of celebrity chef/traveler/raconteur Anthony Bourdain – with Bourdain’s self-description of himself at age 19. Tonyis more of a coming of age film than a biopic, focusing on this pivotal, transformative year in Bourdain’s life.
The young Anthony Bourdain (Dominic Sesso), lazy, entitled and supremely confident, is betting everything on being awarded a college writing fellowship that he can use to bankroll a fun year in NYC. Having no Plan B, he is devastated when he doesn’t win the fellowship. Even worse, he has already told everyone he knows that he had already won the prize, and, unable to face the embarrassment, covers it up by running away. Impulsively, he heads to the tip of Cape Cod in pursuit of a a girl who is summering there. Arriving at the onset of Provincetown’s tourist season, he soon finds himself with no girl, no money, no place to stay and no ticket for the return ferry.
The taciturn chef-owner (Antonio Banderas) of a modest restaurant allows him to sleep in a hammock on his back porch and to eat at the restaurant in return for working as the dishwasher. Bourdain becomes the lowest-ranking member of the kitchen team, a colorful assembly of experienced cooks. He thinks that he is too good for this setting, but his colleagues are uniformly unimpressed with him.
Young Bourdain, holding on to the writing fellowship as a false cover story, still tells everyone that he is a writer. Of course, he hasn’t written anything – not even a draft or an outline – or even concocted an original idea. He is, however, an earnest and often successful bullshitter – and he’s about to learn how far that will take him. He’s not a sociopathic liar, on the road to being a con man; he lies out of desperation, terrified that somebody will learn that at age 19, he hasn’t magically already become who he aspires to be. What he needs is a harsh reality check – and that’s what he gets from the restaurant kitchen – where pampering is not tolerated.
Of course, there is humor in watching a young punk getting his comeuppances, and much of Tony is very funny. Dominic Sesso (The Holdovers) is able to keep the audience rooting for the young Anthony Bourdain even while he is behaving badly. Banderas is solid as his boss and purveyor of tough love. Leo Woodall (Tuner, Nuremburg, The White Lotus) is excellent as kitchen crewmate Sal, a blue collar hedonist who has much more game than the teen Tony.
Note: Bourdain’s real life best friend, fellow celebrity chef Eric Ripert, appears in a cameo as the chair of the admissions committee for the Culinary Institute of America.
I remembered reading about Bourdain’s Provincetown experience in his own colorful memoir Kitchen Confidential, which launched his post-restaurateur career as a travel and food writer and television personality. The Bourdain biodoc Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was one of the best films of 2021, and also covers this period as it traces his entire life.
The director Matt Johnson and co-writers Todd Bartel and Lou Howe made wonderful choices in adapting the source material; instead of making a movie about Bourdain discovering a love of cooking, they focus on the character-building payoff of his Provincetown experience. Johnson also gets the tone just right, with just the right amount of humor, as he did in the corporate docudramedy BlackBerry in 2023.
Tony’s trailer (below) depicts a talented, immature narcissist who keeps self-sabotaging until he falls under the guidance of a crusty mentor. Because that’s the plot of 1969’s fictional Downhill Racer, with Robert Redford and Gene Hackman, I was going to skip Tony. But then I read Jeannette Catsoulis’ glowing review in the NYT, and I’m glad that The Wife and I got to see it. It’s a good watch.
Photo caption: Anastasia Veronica Lee and Emajean Bullock in OVER/UNDER. Courtesy of Bulldog Film Distribution.
In the sweet and uncommonly authentic coming of age film Over/Under, a deep friendship between two girls evolves over four years.
Their Southern California families vacation each year in a New England beach community, and nine-year-old Violet (Emajean Bullock) and Stella (Anastasia Veronica Lee) have become the fastest of friends. Over/Under reminds us of the innocent intensity of childhood friendship when kids feel compelled to spend every minute fully engaged with a best friend.
As the years pass, the beach setting remains idyllic, but their bodies and interests evolve. Disappointments, jealousies, betrayals and the appeal of boys threaten the friendships. Can their profound bond survive?
In her debut, director and co-writer Sophia Silver has made a film without a single false moment. Female viewers will recognize every moment of heartfelt exuberance or anguish.
Over/Under was nominated for a Grand Special Prize at the Deauville Film Festival (a French film fest devoted to American film).
This is a film that will resonate strongly with women and girls. Over/Under is now available to stream.
Photo caption: Gillian Anderson in TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA: Courtesy of MUBI,
In Jane Schoenbrun’s witty and pleasingly bizarre Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the promising young filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder) has been tapped to make yet another sequel to a slasher movie franchise. The once popular Camp Miasma movie franchise has slipped into oblivion, and the movie studio that owns the intellectual property wants to re-monetize it. The origin story of the slasher character was transphobic, so the studio intends to use Kris, who is polyamorous, to queer-wash the newest Camp Miasma movie.
The Camp Miasma movies are devoid of any cinematic aspiration, but the cynical studio execs just want to cash in with more schlock. What the suits don’t know is that Kris herself is a huge fan of the franchise, and that Kris, who over-intellectualizes everything, has envisioned elevating the next chapter into something artsy and meaningful. And she’s obsessed with casting Billy, the actress who played the Final Girl in the original 1980s Camp Miasma.
Billy (Gillian Anderson) retired early from acting and now lives a reclusive life in the abandoned summer camp that was fictionalized as Camp Miasma in the movies. Billy is more than a little weird, and she both fascinates and unsettles Kris. I strongly recommend Schoenbrun’s own video narration of a scene in the NYT; there’s absolutely no gore in this clip.
As the two rewatch the original movie, Schoenbrun spins Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma into a loving homage to and parody of the slasher movie genre. They send up all the slasher movie tropes – a bunch of teens doing things their parents wouldn’t like, impending virgin deflowering, the nocturnal emergence of a slasher villain and the plot importance of the Final Girl. Here, the slasher villain is Little Death, who wears an HVAC vent on their head and wields a bayonet-like spear.The body horror is intentionally so unrealistic (Old Faithful-scale geysers of blood instead of mere spurts) that it’s not as cringe-worthy as are most teen splatter movies.
Kris proudly proclaims herself to be polyamorous as if she’s earning some woke-ism points. But polyamorous threesomes may be equitably more reciprocal in theory than in practice. Kris’ girlfriend and the girlfriend’s boyfriend seem to be getting more of their needs met than does Kris. Basically, Kris is masking that she is a puddle of sexual unfulfillment. Will her stirrings be awakened?
In another comic thread, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma sharply mocks the cynical business side of Hollywood, including perhaps the most disastrous movie pitch ever,
Hannah Einbinder in TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA: Courtesy of MUBI,
Hannah Einbinder carries the movie, reaping all the humor in Kris’ pretensions and her sexual unease, along with her Final Girl vulnerability. Einbinder, a standup comic and daughter of SNL original cast member Laraine Newman, won an Emmy for the TV series Hacks.
Gillian Anderson goes full creepster and nails Billy’s teetering between assured self-control and psychosis.
Amanda Fix plays the young Billy acting in the first Camp Miasma film, and her performance is unexpectedly haunting. Dylan Baker strikes the perfect tone as a studio exec. Prolific character actors Patrick Fischler and Kevin MacDonald are very fun as slasher movie tropes – the ominous townsman and the local sheriff; wait through the final credits for their final gag.
In 2024, I wrote that Schoenbrun’s evocative psychodrama I Saw the TV Glow was the “emergence of a great filmmaker”, and that was a good call by me. In Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, they have successfully braided together a romantic comedy, a sexual awakening film, a horror movie and a slasher parody. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is very smart and riotously funny.
Photo caption: Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe in LATE FAME. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
In the character-driven gem Late Fame, Willem Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, a Greenwich Village poet of the late 1970s, whose work is rediscovered by a band of twenty-something would-be literati. His moment of modest fame long-vanished, Ed has been working as a postal clerk for 37 years, and his fellow dive bar patrons don’t even know about his published work.
Ed is tracked down and accosted by the determined young man Wilson Myers (Edmund Donovan), who has learned that Ed, whose work Myers worships, is still extant. Myers invites Ed to meet his circle of friends, who see themselves as a new wave of artists – and, crucially – one that will be written about in the future like the Algonquin Roundtable or the Beat Poets. They even brand themselves as the Enthusiasm Society. In fact, although they insist that they are poets, playwrights, essayists and the like, they are posers, sheltered from the real world by their rich parents.
Ed, baffled and initially made uncomfortable by the adulation, finds that being exalted isn’t so bad. It’s been long time since he’s been around people who like poetry, and he enjoys encouraging the youngsters. Of course, Ed comes from a time and place before it was even imaginable that loft living would become fashionable, so he is a fish out of water with the youngsters.
It doesn’t take long for Ed to be introduced to the Enthusiasm Society’s muse and sexy den mother, the fortyish actress Gloria (Greta Lee). Gloria has a need to control her environment, so she has utterly enchanted “her boys”, who are under her spell as was Odysseus with Calypso’s. It’s inevitable that she will turn her charms on Ed.
The Enthusiasm Society rails against influencers and clickbait, but, of course, they are also all about bringing attention to themselves. What Ed doesn’t figure out initially is the source of their ambition. When Ed was their age, he was driven to create art; in contrast, they are driven to be recognized as artistes (whether or not they create any art). They even introduce Ed to an agent who can make him money – but not for his poetry.
Late Fame is a portrait of a man who is comfortable in his own skin. If Ed was ever disappointed that he didn’t become rich and famous, he has long left any bitterness behind him. But Ed may never have been ambitious. He once created art, and he’s proud of it, but he’s content to be who he is. He has his integrity. Will Gloria and his new admirers tempt him away from his equanimity and fulfillment?
Willem Dafoe in LATE FAME. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Willem Dafoe, one of our greatest screen actors, delivers another tour de force. Dafoe takes Ed through his suspicion, confusion, amusement, re-awakened ego, yearning and basic decency.
Greta Lee gets to play a complex character who masks her own insecurity with flamboyance. Gloria is one of those many very talented actors who is not likely to ever star, or even earn a living from her acting. Unlike Ed, who doesn’t need acclaim or approval, Gloria fills an emotional need with her own pose and with her domination of the “boys”. Lee, who can sing, also pulls off a cabaret performance.
Donovan is very good as the intensely earnest Myers, a seemingly ridiculous fanboy with a much darker side.
Writer Samy Burch, Oscar-nominated for her May December original screenplay. based this script on on the century-old novel by Arthur Schnitzel. Both Late Fame and May December reveal Burch to be a master of vivid character portraits.
Director Kent Jones (Hitchcock/Truffaut) delivers verisimilitude with the various Manhattan settings – the bohemian, the gritty and the opulent.
Late Fame opens August 21 in Bay Area theaters, including the Smith Rafael Film Center.
Photo caption: Lucia Garcia (center) in ROMERIA. Courtesy of Janus Films.
In the captivating drama Romeria, Marina (Llucia Garcia) has turned eighteen and travels from her home across Spain to Vigo on Galicia’s Atlantic coast. Marina’s biological parents died when she was very young, and she has been raised by an adoptive family in Catalonia. She doesn’t even remember her biological father, but she needs his death certificate to qualify for a college scholarship. So she heads to his hometown, both to pick up that document and to meet her father’s family for the first time.
She is welcomed by her father’s brothers and sisters, heartily by some and warily by others. Marina is carrying her mother’s diary, so she believes she understands the outline of her parents’ life together in Vigo, and she.’s eager to fill in the blanks. But the details that are related by – and slip out from – her uncles, aunts and cousins are surprising and sometimes unsettling. Not all of the dots are connecting.
In her third feature, director and co-writer Carla Simon has spun a helluva story. Marina and the audience work out the mystery of her heritage one step (or misstep) at a time, all the way to the satisfying, but poignant. resolution.
As Marina pieces together her parent’s reality, Romeria uses magical realism to veer into a flashback vignette. I’m generally not a fan of magical realism in movies, but I couldn’t think of a better way for Simon to portray the contrast between her mother’s actual experience and what her mother “recorded” in her diary.
Llucia Garcia, in her screen debut, perfectly captures Marina trying to keep her balance while being rocked by revelations of family secrets. Marina is reserved and ever correct, and maintains outward stoicism, but Garcia’s eyes let the audience inside as she processes surprise after surprise. The moment she quickly sizes up her grandfather is a tour de force.
Romeria is Spanish for pilgrimage, a fitting title for Marina’s journey in search of truth and love, especially since it ends near Santiago de Campostela, the terminus of the Camino de Santiago.
Spanish speakers will note that Marina speaks Catalan on the phone to her adoptive family and the readings from the mother’s diary are in Catalan. Marina speaks Spanish, of course, with everyone in Vigo.
The more I think about Romeria, the more I like it, and I’m looking forward to seeing more from both Simon and Garcia.
Photo caption: Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas in THE LAST VIKING. Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.
In The Last Viking, this year’s dark comedy from Anders Thomas Jensen (Riders of Justice), Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is a bank robber who has served his time and now wants to spend his looted treasure. Just before his capture Anker had handed his loot to his severely mentally ill brother Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen). to hide. Unfortunately, while Anker has been in prison, Manfred has decompensated, now resides in a psychiatric hospital and may not even remember where he stashed it.
Manfred lives in his own alternative reality, sometimes believing himself to be a Viking and sometimes John Lennon. After getting briefed on Manfred’s disassociative disorder from the oddball psychiatrist Lothar (Lar Brygmann), Anker breaks Manfred out of the hospital and heads off to their childhood home, now occupied by the new owners, who operate a vacation rental.
Mads Mikkelsen in THE LAST VIKING. Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.
The house is familiar, but the setting is weird because the host couple (Sofie Grabol,and Soren Malling), bitter from career disappointments, each have their own delusions. Things get weirder when Lothar shows up with two other mental patients who also think they are Beatles. A particularly vicious former crime partner of Anker’s wants to steal the loot, so there’s an element of crime thriller amongst all the silliness.
Anders Thomas Jensen’s movies, as funny as they are, are populated by characters whose personalities have been shaped by traumas. That’s the case here, and Anker and Manfred share a fearsome secret from their childhood.
Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas are excellent in their roles. Lars Brygmann and Sofie Grabol stand out among the supporting cast.
A dark comedy about mental illness? You bet, and The Last Viking works because everybody has their delusions, even if they’re not diagnosed. The Last Viking is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube. Tomorrow, I’ll write about five more Jensen dark comedies, including his masterpiece.
Photo caption: A subject in TICKLED. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
New Zealand journalist David Farrier specializes in filming oddball human pursuits and peculiar obsessions. Looking for an amusing subject for a playful documentary, he happened upon an online video of “competitive tickling”. where an athletic young man is securely manacled and other athletic young men tickle him. But when Farrier and his partner Dylan Reeve made their very first inquiry, they unleashed a torrent of vile abuse and intimidation.
The documentary Tickled is the story of Farrier and Reeve stumbling upon something apparently silly and harmless, and uncovering a sinister web of sadistic personal destruction. What’s going on here? Whoever is behind the weird but seemingly innocuous tickling videos is acting as if there is something massive worth hiding. There is no escalation in the attacks – because they start out at the maximum. Threats of lawsuits, cyberattacks and invasion of privacy ensue. A three-man team is sent from the US to New Zealand just to intimidate Farrier and Reeve in person. Persisting, Farrier and Reeve uncover a vast underworld operation that has ruined scores of lives.
Farrier and Reeve go to America to track down and face the twisted and sadistic mind behind it all – what they find is unexpected and bizarre. I love jaw-dropping documentaries that reveal human behavior that we could never imagine – and this is one.
Tickled was originally an HBO documentary, but I can’t find it on HBO Max tight now. It is streaming on Amazon. AppleTV and YouTube.
Photo caption: Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I WANT YOUR SEX. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
In Gregg Araki’s raucous sex comedy I Want Your Sex, Eliot (Cooper Hoffman) is a schlub of a recent college grad, who seems to be surprised to find even entry level employment. His first real job is as a gofer for the trendy celebrity artist Erika (Olivia Wilde), who wastes no time in putting Eliot ill-at-ease. Erika is forceful and dominant, and she enjoys the power of making others uncomfortable . Although Erika is way out of Eliot’s league, she shockingly invites him to have sex with her, and the two begin a nominally consensual fling.
Erika is his boss, rich and beautiful enough to attract any sex partner. Eliot is broke and frustrated by a co-called girlfriend who finds sex distasteful and doesn’t really like him. Despite the inappropriate power dynamic, Eliot becomes an enthusiastic participant, even when the sex is humiliating and degrading. There’s no reciprocity, but it works for him. Eliot finds and embraces his submissive side.
Rarely has a movie character surrendered more agency than Elliot. Whatever Eliot has gleaned from his college experience, it is not confidence. In every way, Eliot is the wildebeest to Erika’s rapacious lioness.
But Erika’s egotism is toxic, and her cruelty is boundless. Erika’s demands become more and more extreme, Eliot’s addiction to her becomes more unhealthy and Erika finally blows up all his relationships, leaving Eliot in a puddle of vulnerability – all the way to one hilarious epilogue, and then another.
Gregg Araki is a playful filmmaker, and I Want Your Sex is a very funny movie. Most of the humor comes from Erika’s behavior being so outrageous, Elliot’s submission being so clearly unwise, and the sex so continuously in-your-face. I loved Araki’s digs at the Gen Z proclivity to overthink and angst their way OUT of having sex. There’s even a witty homage to Sunset Boulevard.
Araki is best-known for his brilliant and searing masterpiece, the pioneering queer coming of age film Mysterious Skin. In his Mysterious Skin, White Bird in a Blizzard, and I Want Your Sex, Araki explores the ambiguity of sex; he makes his audiences cringe at the inappropriateness of sexual awakenings that his protagonists embrace. And, as in I Want Your Sex and his trippy sex romp Kaboom, Araki enjoys filling ninety minutes with non-stop sex – all in good, naughty fun.
Yehuda Duenyas is credited as the intimacy coordinator, and they must have been the busiest member of the crew.
I Want Your Sex wouldn’t work without Olivia Wilde’s fully committed performance as a sexually insatiable, narcissistic sociopath.. Cooper Hoffman is perfect as a character who matter-of-factually describes himself as a “weak man”. As in Licorice Pizza, he’s good as a guy who bobs along on the currents of others.
The supporting cast is very good, especially Chase Sui Wonders as Eliot’s best friend Apple and Mason Gooding as Elliot’s workplace pal Zap, who is infinitely more suave and commonsensical than Elliot. Daveed Diggs is fun as Erika’s supercilious assistant and craven co-conspirator Viktor. Charli XCX is funny as Eliot’s supposed girlfriend Minerva. Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville make cameos as police detectives,
Gen Z can watch I Want Your Sex instead of having actual sex. The rest of us can just enjoy the ribald laughs. I Want Your Sex releases into theaters this weekend.
Photo caption: Matt Damon in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
It’s not surprising that The Odyssey is a superb film. After all, this is the work of a great filmmaker, Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Inception, The Dark Knight, Memento), making full use of his considerable skill and imagination. The source material has been unsurpassed as a melding of adventure, romance and trials of human character for 2700 years.
Odysseus (Matt Damon) is the smartest and most devious of Greece’s warrior kings, the strategist who devised the famous ruse of the Trojan Horse, and facilitated the Greek victory at Troy after ten years of stalemate. Now Odysseus, with his fleet of ships, can sail back to his home island of Ithaca. Unfortunately, gods and monsters await.
For all of his courage and resourcefulness, Odysseus has the ability to annoy, and even enrage, enough of the gods to turn his return voyage into a ten-year ordeal. He will need to get by a 60-foot tall Cyclops, an island of man-eating giants, supernatural songstresses who lure mariners into shipwrecks, a giant whirlpool, a six-headed monster who snacks on sailors, and a witch who casts horrible spells. And then there’s the seven years as the sex slave to another witch. Fortunately, has the goddess Athena (Zendaya) on his side; she admires his intelligence, and helps him out of the worst jams.
Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Back home in Ithaca, there’s another story thread. Odysseus’ queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) has been running Ithaca in his absence, but he’s been gone for twenty years, and a hundred opportunists are sponging off Odysseus’ wealth while they pressure Penelope to marry one of them. Odysseus also left a baby son, but Telemachus (Tom Holland) is now only twenty, and he’s too callow to take on so many ruthless, grown-ass men. Will Odysseus return in time? Will anyone, especially Penelope, recognize him after 20 years? Can Odysseus battle the suitors to reclaim what is his and Penelope’s? Will Penelope take him back?
In The Odyssey, Nolan shows what a great Hollywood epic can look and feel like – in the best sense. Filmed in IMAX, The Odyssey looks and sounds great. Amazingly, Nolan did not use CGI or green screens – instead, he employed old-fashioned practical effects, forced perspective, animatronic puppetry and plenty of hoists, rigging, and stunt performers. The set pieces are wondrous, even for the monsters – Polyphemus, Scylla and the Laestrygonians. The sack of Troy was exactly like what I imagine the razing of a Bronze Age city would look and feel like. And it all looks better and more convincing than it would have with CGI.
Because of the genius of Nolan and his editor Jennifer Lame, who won an Oscar for editing Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the audience does not have the sensation of sitting through a three hour movie.
Matt Damon and Zendaya in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Nolan is pretty faithful to the source material, and, although he compresses some the parts of the tale , he captures Homer’s key elements. Nolan’s re-imagining of the ending is actually less of a slaughter than Homer’s, and Nolan plays down the sexual aspect of Odysseus’ sojourn with Calypso (Charlize Theron). Nolan does add some New Agey hokum about the “Code of Zeus”, but it’s harmless.
Nolan’s version is more nuanced than the 1954 Ulysses with Kirk Douglas, which emphasized the adventure aspect. Last year’s The Return, which covered the return to Ithaca, is a fine movie, but doesn’t have the epic scale of The Odyssey (not to mention the monsters). Similarly, the scale of Nolan’s The Odyssey overwhelms the star-studded, Emmy-winning 1998 mini-series.
Nolan, Damon and Zendaya show us the relationship between Odysseus and Athena particularly well.
John Leguizamo in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Hathaway is excellent as the resolute yet vulnerable Penelope, a woman whose wits could match up with even those of Odysseus. I like Tom Holland’s performance as a well-meaning kid who just isn’t ready for prime time. Everyone in the cast is good, including Robert Pattinson and Corey Hawkins as two of the scariest and most odious suitors. An unrecognizable John Leguizamo is outstanding as Odysseus’ one remaining ally, a blind swineherd.
Samantha Morton in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
If there’s a best performance in this movie, it may be Samantha Morton as the witch Circe, filled with grievance, creepiness and craftiness.
The Odyssey is both a great barn-burner,and a great love story, and Nolan has made it into this summer’s Must See .
