Photo caption: Florence Pugh in THE WONDER. Courtesy of Netflix.
In the intense, somber and profoundly dull drama, The Wonder, Florence Pugh plays an English nurse in 1862 Ireland with an unusual assignment. A local 11-year-old girl has survived for months while purportedly refusing all food. Village leaders commission the nurse as part of a team to watch the girl 24 hours per day and ascertain whether this is a miracle or a hoax.
The nurse takes this task seriously, and proceeds with integrity, diligence and compassion, and Florence Pugh takes it seriously, too, widening her eyes and furrowing her brow. There are many solitary shots of the nurse plodding across the landscape or eating her own meals. However, there are holes in the story which keep the audience from suspending disbelief about the extreme behavior of some of the characters.
The result is that watching The Wonder is drudgery. It’s a misfire by Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, who performed so well with A Fantastic Woman and Gloria.
This isn’t the fault of Pugh, although I’m not ready to anoint her as the next Kate Winslet. I still don’t see what the big deal is about Pugh.
The Wonder does reflect the genius of cinematographer Wegner, who has recently shot The Power of the Dog and Zola. The Wonder is a beautiful film to watch. One shot of the nurse in her sapphire dress, the girl in a gold dress and the girl’s mom in a green dress, all in a candlelit room, reminded me of a Vermeer. Stunning work by Wegner.
Ben Platt, Allison Janney and Kristen Bell in THE PEOPLE WE HATE AT THE WEDDING. Courtesy of Amazon.
The purported comedy The People We Hate at the Wedding feels like an agency deal that attached the talent and was sold to Amazon before there was any story to justify the film. The story, if you chose to call it that, is a compendium of rom com tropes – the anxious bride, the Bridezilla, the bride keeping a Big Secret from the groom, the brides’ estranged parents, the mom not comfortable with her out gay son and his partner, and some more. The tropes are there, but there just isn’t a single moment of authenticity. Nor any reason to care about the characters. Nor laughs.
I’ll watch just about anything with Allison Janney and/or Kristin Bell, but they’re hopelessly wasted in this stinker. The usuallycompelling French actor Isaach De Bankole is surprisingly wooden (perhaps because his lines are in English?).
If you must, The People We Hate at the Wedding is streaming on Amazon (included with Prime).
Photo caption: Brian Tyree Henry and Jennifer Lawrence in CAUSEWAY. Courtesy of AppleTV.
The affecting and uplifting drama Causeway centers on two damaged people and the unlikely friendship that can help them both heal. Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) is a civilian engineer attached to a combat unit, who suffers traumatic brain injury from an IED explosion in Afghanistan. James (Brian Tyree Henry) is an auto mechanic who has suffered a family tragedy and is adrift in a morass of grief and guilt.
After regaining most of her motor skills in a challenging rehab, Lynsey returns to her hometown of New Orleans to complete her recovery. Once we learn that her broken family is an ever-partying mom and a junkie brother that she speaks of as dead, it becomes clear why Lynsey escaped by immersing herself in achievement and structure.
When Lynsey’s truck breaks down, she meets James, and an unlikely friendship blossoms. Although they are both working class New Orleans natives, they make an unusual pair of buddies, with different races and different levels of fitness, one approaching life with determined focus, the other aimless.
The relationship between Lynsey and James builds organically with complete authenticity, with just one exception that keeps Causeway off my best of the year list. Dramatically, there needed to be one event that threatened the friendship at the end of the second act; indeed, one character comforts the other one with exactly the wrong action – and it briefly took me and The Wife out of the film. But, it doesn’t ruin the the rest of the film, which is uncommonly genuine.
Jennifer Lawrence is excellent as a character who is dazed much of the time, before she gets to exude the Jennifer Lawrence brightness. After Lawrence has earned massive paychecks from four Hunger Games and four X-Men franchise blockbusters, Causeway represents her return to more adult, thoughtful films. [Amazing note: Jennifer Lawrence is the first person born in the 1990s to have won an acting Oscar.]
Brian Tyree Henry in CAUSEWAY. Courtesy of AppleTV.
The revelation for me was the even better performance by Brian Tyree Henry (Emmy-nominated for Atlanta and This Is Us). Wow – this guy can act. There isn’t a single false note as Henry portrays James’ despondence, self-loathing, compassion, gentleness, worldliness and disappointment.
The distinguished stage actor (three Tony nominations and an Obie) Linda Emond is perfect in the small role of Lynsey’s mom.
Causeway is the first feature for director Lila Neugebauer, and it’s impressive work. I love New Orleans, and I was impressed at how Neugebauer delivered the vibe of the city without any shots of the city’s many tourist-friendly, easily recognizable locations. (I did spot the Maple Leaf Bar and neighboring Jacque Imo’s in one background.)
Photo caption: Sam Rockwell and Saiorse Ronan in SEE HOW THEY RUN. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
“Is this supposed to be funny?”, asked The Wife about 20 minutes into the purported comedy See How They Run, which is a send up of the drawing room mystery and its tropes. There’s a murder at a theater running an Agatha Christie play, and everyone involved with the play is a suspect for detectives played by Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan.
But what’s the point of parodying a form that doesn’t take itself seriously? Can one even parody the drawing room murder mystery? Agatha Christie was a smart cookie who never thought that the Miss Marple books were great literature; she knew that she wrote popular entertainment and that she was exceptionally good at it.
There’s also supposed to be some humor from the Odd Couple pairing of the jaded veteran cop (Rockwell) and the eager rookie (Ronan). However, the script doesn’t provide any freshness to this time-honored comedy situation, and the normally excellent actors don’t develop any chemistry. Other fine actors are similarly wasted: David Oyewolo, Ruth Wilson, Harris Dickinson. Only Adrien Brody gets the benefit of a flamboyant role and makes the most of it.
See How They Run was written by Tom Chappell and directed by Tom George, and this misfire is their fault.
The trailer promises a funny film, but it’s misleading. See How They Run is streaming on HBO. Skip it.
Photo caption: Ralph Fiennes and Ana Taylor-Joy in THE MENU. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
The darkly funny horror film The Menu is a battle of wits set in absurd foodieism. This isn’t the kind of horror film with a lot of jump scares, although one sudden event shocks and disgusts the diners (though some think that it’s all part of the show). The Menu builds a sense of dread, a situation where it looks like survival is impossible.
Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) presides over a restaurant on its own island in the Pacific Northwest, with its own carefully curated gardens and aquaculture and a staff as cultish as The People’s Temple. The restaurant has 12 seats and each evening’s prix fixe goes for $1250.
Slowik seems like a self-important and officious kitchen tyrant, but unsettlingly high strung. That signals, and this is really not a significant spoiler, that he’s a balls out psycho intending to slaughter all his guests.
Creepily, it is revealed that tonight’s customers have been carefully selected by Slowik. The one exception is Margot (Ana Taylor-Joy), the last minute substitute date of Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) an obsequious celebrity chef groupie.
I’m a foodie myself; after all, I named my blog The Movie Gourmet. But, as much as I enjoy fine dining experiences and my own amateur cooking, I look askance on a $60 small plate of foam. The Menu is a wicked, The-Emperor-Has-No-Clothes sendup of that kind of culinary silliness. Each of the courses of Chef Slowik’s meal (and each wine pairing) is its own very funny comment on food fads. The best is the “breadless bread”, which I guess is not a “deconstructed” dish, but an “unconstructed” one. The Tyler character gets funnier as he ignores the escalating horrors to laser in on the avant-garde flavor combinations.
The key to the story is that Margot is immune to pretension. Margot never buys into the extreme food scene, and she has street smarts, which equip her for an epic psychological showdown with Slowik.
Ana Taylor-Joy is one of my very favorite actors, endlessly watchable with as she projects her unique blend of intelligence and danger, I first discovered her in Thoroughbreds, and have enjoyed her in The Queen’s Gambit, Last Night in Soho and even the blah Amsterdam.
Ralph Fiennes is really cast perfectly as an ego monster with a telling insecurity or two. Hoult is a hoot, and Hong Chau, is a master of deadpan as Slowik’s henchwoman.
The Menu is only the fourth feature for veteran television director Mark Mylod (Game of Thrones, Succession). The screenplay – and it;s a damn good one – is by Seth Weiss and Will Tracy, who come out of The Onion. These guys, with Ana Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes, have made a pointedly acid and entertaining movie.
Photo caption: Park Hae-il and Tang Wei in DECISION TO LEAVE. Courtesy of MUBI.
In the roller coaster neo-noir Decision to Leave, detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) is already an obsessive personality, whose agonizing over unclosed cases has given him chronic insomnia, He and his wife have an apartment near her job, but he works in a different city, and the walls of his pied–à–terre are covered with crime scene photos from the unsolved cases, just so he can stew about them even more. For his wellbeing, this is the very last guy who should be exposed to a mysterious femme fatale.
He investigates a death in the mountains, which could be a mountain climbing accident or suicide – or perhaps a brilliantly configured murder. He suspects the victim’s much younger Chinese wife, Seo-rae (Tang Wei) a woman with a past, but she has an airtight alibi. He interrogates her and surveils her, which she seems to enjoy, and he becomes more and more fascinated with her. He is utterly beguiled, and Decision to Leave becomes ever more the page turner as the sexual tension escalates. This evolves into a perverse battle of wits that Hae-joon may not be destined to win.
Decision to Leave is the work of writer-director Park-chan Wook, who made the brilliantly erotic The Handmaiden. Like The Handmaiden, Decision to Leave doesn’t end when the audience expects it to. And, like in The Handmaiden, not everything is as it seems.
Tang Wei is exceptional as she unpeels the onion that is Seo-rae. When we first meet Seo-rae, the effect is nothing like the stunning introductions of Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Diedrichson, Jane Greer’s Kathie or Rita Hayworth’s Gilda; we underestimate her. We watch as she cleverly and somewhat conventionally captivates Hae-joon. But nothing prepares us for her revealing just how twisted a mastermind she turns out to be. She’s a femme fatale for the ages.
Photo caption: Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
The Banshees of Inisherin is set in 1923 on a fictional Irish island literally detached from the mainland and its Irish Civil War. Pádraic (Colin Farrell), who raises some livestock, and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), a fiddler, are lifelong buddies. There’s not much to do on the island, other than look forward to meeting up at the local pub. So, Pádraic is shocked when Colm announces that he no longer wishes to chat with Pádraic at the pub. Colm is facing his own mortality and reckons that shooting the breeze with Pádraic is taking away valuable focus from composing Irish music, Colm’s only chance at an immortal legacy. Unlike Colm, Pádraic is not a man of ideas, and Pádraic is hurt and baffled.
Colm is polite but very firm and clear about his request to be left alone. But Pádraic desperately needs human connection, and he cannot leave Colm alone. Colm throws down an ultimatum, and Pádraic, to the dismay of the other islanders, blunders right through the stop sign. Actions escalate, and the two men become mired in a contest of absurd stubbornness.
One thing is for sure, I will always remember this movie when I hear a thunk on my window or door (not a knock, but a THUNK).
As serious as are the consequences of the men’s squabble, Irish wit abounds, and The Banshees of Inisherin is a funny movie. It may contain the funniest confession booth scene in the history of cinema.
The Banshees of Inisherin is written and directed by Martin McDonagh, whose Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Minnesota won two Oscars. Banshees reunites McDonagh, Gleeson and Farrell fourteen years after their In Bruges, a masterpiece of comic neo-noir that I just rewatched last week (to my renewed delight).
This is an acting showcase for the considerable acting talents of Gleeson and Farrell. Gleeson, whose Colm is ever polite but even more resolute, has an amazing body of work: Into the West, Braveheart, The General, Gangs of New York, The Guard, Albert Nobbs, The Grand Seduction, Calvary, The Tragedy of Macbeth and a few Harry Potter movies.
Farrell has demonstrated that seeks out auteur directors; he’s worked with Steven Spielberg (Minority Report), Joel Schumacher (Phone Booth, Valerie Guerin), Yorgos Lanthimos (Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer), Terrence Malick (The New World), Sofia Coppola (The Beguiled) and Kogonada (After Yang). Farrell’s Pádraic takes dim affability to an unmatched level of self-destructive obnoxiousness.
Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan in THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
But the best two performances in this exceptionally well-acted film are those by Kerry Condon as Pádraic’s sister Siobhan and by Barry Keoghan as the intellectually challenged young islander Dominic. Condon’s longsuffering Siobhan is bright and spirited – and the only islander with a lick of common sense. The longer the two men’s struggle progresses, the more the movie becomes Siobhan’s as she tries to mitigate their madness and at least protect herself from it. Condon is the youngest actor to play Ophelia for the Royal Shakespeare Company and has amassed a considerable body of work in episodic television: Rome, Ray Donovan, Better Call Saul.
Keoghan is always a splashy actor and he has a lot of fun with the unpredictable and irritating Dominic. His lakeside scene with Condon is heartbreaking.
There’s been plenty of Oscar buzz for Gleeson, Farrell and Keoghan – and there should be for should be for Condon.
Now how good a movie is this? The humor and gripping story kept me wanting to see the pages turned, the acting is magnificent and the cinematography is beautiful. But what is McDonagh trying to say, if anything? Is this some kind of a parable, or just a portrait of two individuals’ stubbornness? I’m really not sure, but it’s a good thing that The Banshees of Inisherin made me care about the answer.
Photo caption: Banks Repeta and Anthony Hopkins in ARMAGEDDON TIME. Courtesy of Focus Features.
The thought-provoking Armageddon Time, centers on Paul (Banks Repeta), a 6th grade boy in 1980, who, besides grappling with all the regular coming of age issues, must face issues of conscience. Paul and his new school friend, Johnny (Jaylin Webb), have their interests, but the adults at school miss the opportunity to harness the boys’ passions, instead trying to force square pegs into round holes; of course, these smart and spirited lads act out and get into trouble. That’s less of a problem for Paul, who has been sheltered by his affluent family, but Johnny is African-American and poor and already has a more clear-eyed view of the world.
On a day-to day basis, Paul is raised by his tightly wound mom (Anne Hathaway), but she defers to the family’s men when something really big must be confronted. Paul’s male role models are his venerable grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) and his grouchy, stressed-out dad (Jeremy Strong). The grandfather’s point of view has been shaped by his own mother’s having escaped a Ukrainian pogrom and having experienced anti-Semitic college quotas himself. He has survived to build a family and business success.
The grandfather is the anchor of the family, and his moral stance is absolute – a person must act with justice and decency in every situation, no mater how difficult. The dad, who views life as a continuous struggle to keep one’s head above water, is more pragmatic – one must do what is necessary to get along. The grandfather despises privilege; the dad wants to leverage any privilege that might fall his way.
The kid actors, Banks Repeta and Jaylin Webb, are excellent. (For some reason, Repeta’s facial features kept reminding me of Molly Parker).
Anthony Hopkins is a treasure, and we should appreciate every performance he continues to bring us, even an unchallenging one like this.
Jeremy Strong is such a strong actor, and he’s such a chameleon that I never seem to recognize him until the closing credits, as he shows up as Jerry Rubin, Lee Harvey Oswald, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary John Nicolay and the like. Here, he seems like a one-dimensional brute for most of this film, until the story reveals his fears and hopes.
Reportedly, writer-director James Gray, who just re-invented the adventure epic with The Lost City of Z, peppered this story with his own childhood experiences. Maybe that’s why Fred Trump and Maryanne Trump appear as characters. Maryanne Trump (Donald’s much more sympathetic sister) shows up in a Jessica Chastain cameo, and lays out the narrative that the privileged are actually meritorious.
I wasn’t wowed upon leaving the theater, but, the more I noodle about this film, the more I admire it.
Photo caption: Felix Kammerer in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Courtesy of Netflix.
The anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front unforgettably makes two points: war, in general, is a traumatizing experience and WW I, in particular, was disgustingly senseless.
The screenplay was adapted from the famous Erich Maria Remarque novel, as was the 1930 Lewis Milestone cinematic masterpiece. Since the story is told from the point of view of a German infantry recruit, Netflix commissioned a German director and cast for this version. That director is German filmmaker Edward Berger, who has been working in US television over the past decade. The actors may be German and Austrian, but they speak English in this movie.
Paul (Felix Kammerer) is a callow youth who, with his friends, is swept away by patriotic fervor and enlists in the German Army just in time to participate in the last few months of WW I. Both sets of belligerents have been grappling for years in the mire of trench warfare, suffering mass casualties for the sake of a few hundred yards here and there. The conditions between battles are horrific, and the battles are more so. Paul endures the terror of bombardment, gas attacks, invulnerable enemy tanks and charges across no-man’s land in the face of machine gunfire. The hand-to-hand combat is especially savage.
Kammerer, in his first screen role, is exceptional as an Everyman who experiences physical and mental exhaustion, dread, panic, shock, guilt and hopelessness.
The battle scenes are superbly photographed by cinematographer James Friend, who has 71 screen credits, not a one suggesting that he was capable of anything this masterful.
War may be traumatizing, but this eminently watchable film is not. All Quiet on the Western Front is streaming on Netflix.
THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER.: FEATURING BRANDI CARLILE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile is a portrait of a music legend with sapped confidence, whose career is jumpstarted by admiring younger musicians. The audience gets a glimpse into the creative process of writing of a song, an Emmy winner at that.
Tanya Tucker, in showbiz from age 9, exploded onto the country music scene with the monster hit Delta Dawn at 13. After stardom in her teen years and a Wild Child period in her twenties, her career dipped, setting up a comeback in her thirties. Now sixty, by 2019 she hadn’t released any recording for 17 years.
In 2019, Shooter Jennings began a project to showcase Tucker’s talent with new material (a la Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash) and invited Brandi Carlile to help. Carlile, a huge Tanya Tucker fan, became central to the project, coaxing Tucker along, pumping up her confidence and riding the roller coaster of Tucker’s reliability issues. The Return of Tanya Tucker is essentially a “making of” documentary about the project.
Now 60 and looking older, Tucker has a lot of mileage on her (and has launched her own brand of tequila, named with the Spanish translation of Wild Thing). Carlile finds out that Tucker is a handful.
Tucker is still a formidable song stylist, though, with a distinctive cry-in-her-beer break in her voice. The project goes better than anyone could have expected, and there’s a Feel Good ending. The Wife particularly enjoyed this film.
I screened The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile for the Nashville Film Festival. It is now in theaters.
