THE DUKE: he finally gets his audience

by
Photo caption: Jim Broadbent in THE DUKE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

The Duke is a showcase for character actor Jim Broadbent, who plays, fittingly, an overlooked man who finally gets the audience that he has yearned for. This true life story is an audience-pleaser.

Broadbent plays Kempton Bunton,the a working class guy in grimy 1961 Newcastle. Bunton is one of those people who needs to litigate every grievance, particularly slight, ordinary ones that the rest of us choose to bypass on the way to living our lives. The current outrage that has derailed Bunton’s life is the tiny fee charged to every Briton with a television; Bunton believes that the poorest widows and disabled vets should be excused from paying. He has elevated this to such a matter of principle that he has actually gone to prison for it. Yet no one takes notice of his campaign. His longsuffering wife (Helen Mirren) would prefer that he shut up and get a job.

Kempton Bunton is also a witty autodidact, with more mastery of literature and history than most college grads. And what he lacks in common sense, he makes up with a genius for the instantaneous barbed bon mot.

Bunton is incensed when the British government spends 140,000 pounds on a Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington. Bunton objects to the government’s priorities (and is needled by Wellington’s post-military career as a reactionary politician).

It turns out that the painting is housed in a museum with some very significant security lapses, and soon it is hidden in Bunton’s Newcastle flat, with Bunton sending demands to the government, seeking to ransom the Duke’s portrait for relief in the television fee. A nationwide manhunt ensues.

Again, Kempton Bunton was a real person and these events really happened. Jim Broadbent is very fun to watch as they transpire.

Despite his eccentric passions, Bunton has never gotten the attention of any authority higher than the lowest government functionary or any audience bigger than passersby on his street corner. Events take a turn, and Bunton suddenly has a national stage. When Bunton gets to match wits with the poshest of his antagonists, Broadbent’s performance soars.

Movie goers have appreciated Broadbent’s gifts since he played Col the sympathetic bartender in The Crying Game. Since then, he’s been seen widely in the Harry Potter franchise and plenty of big movies. But I like him best in the most observational and character-driven films: Widow’s Peak, Little Voice, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Iris, Another Year, The Sense of an Ending:

Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren in THE DUKE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Mirren, of course, is brilliant and hilarious in a part that is severely glammed-down from her usual roles.

Matthew Goode sparkles with playful charm as Bunton’s realistic defense lawyer. I first noticed Goode as the scary thug in The Lookout (2007), but he is best known for playing Lady Mary’s sleek beau Henry Talbot in Downton Abbey.

Make sure you watch until the very end to see a cameo by James Bond and Dr. No.

The Duke is an amiable entertainment that finishes very strong. The Duke is in theaters.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Courtesy of A24.

This week on The Movie Gourmet:, new reviews of The Tale of King Crab and Mau.

CURRENT FILMS

  • Compartment No. 6 is the best new film in theaters now, but hard to find. It’s an insightful and unpredictable dual character study set on a train ride to Murmansk. In theaters.
  • Everything Everywhere All at Once: often indecipherable and mostly dazzling. In theaters.
  • The Automat: nickels in, memories out. In theaters.
  • Mau: fact-based optimism and thinking big. In theaters.

ON VIDEO

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

Gay Walley in EROTIC FIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE. Courtesy of Vital Productions.

MAU: fact-based optimism and thinking big

by
Photo caption: Bruce Mau in MAU. Courtesy of BABKA.

The term visionary is overused, but it surely fits Canadian designer Bruce Mau, the subject of the documentary Mau.

I generally think of design as the means to make objects more pleasing and useful and attractive to consumers. But Mau observes that almost everything we experience is not natural – and therefore DESIGNED. And if designed, it can be RE-DESIGNED to be more beautiful, more sustainable, more intelligent and more humane.

Bruce Mau thinks big. He has been retained to redesign Coca-Cola. And to redesign the millennium-old pilgrimage experience of Mecca. And to redesign the nation of Guatemala.

Mau’s upbringing and his work is somewhat interesting, as is his aspirational exhibition project Massive Action. But the most compelling aspect of Mau is the exposure to how Bruce Mau THINKS. Mau essentially becomes the world’s best TED Talk.

Mau will be released in theaters this weekend.

THE TALE OF KING CRAB: storytelling at its best

by
TALE OF KING CRAB. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Films.

The Tale of King Crab, a story-telling masterpiece from Italy, begins with old Italian guys rehashing a local legend, and correcting each other on the details. That story concerns Luciano (Gabriele Silli), the town’s smartest and most interesting man – and also the local drunk. Luciano fixates on a grievance – the closing of a shortcut for shepherds. In spite of his own anti-social bent (and matted beard), Luciano falls into a romance. The grievance, the romance and his alcoholism combine to precipitate an accidental tragedy. We next see a sober and guilt-ridden Luciano searching for buried treasure at the barren tip of South America, an apparent priest among pirates.

TALE OF KING CRAB. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Films.

The Tale of King Crab is the first narrative feature for writer-directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis and for cinematographer Simone D’Arcangelo. D’Arcangelo’s work, in vibrant Lazio and desolate Tierra del Fuego, is stunning. The Italian segments were filmed in northern Lazio near Lago di vico.

Dotted with mystical elements and filled with stories within stories, this is an operatic fable, exquisitely told. I screened The Tale of the King Crab for the Nashville Film Festival. It has opened theatrically, including this week only at Laemmle’s Monica Film Center and NoHo 7.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Seidi Haarla and Yuri Borisov in COMPARTMENT No. 6. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of the bittersweet A Love Song with Dale Dickey and Wes Studi and the wildly exuberant Everything Everywhere All at Once with Michele Yeoh. Here’s my personal remembrance of Norm Mineta, the most distinguished of my own mentors, and a note on the documentary An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy .

CURRENT FILMS

Here’s a final reminder from me that Oscar winners CODA, Drive My Car and Belfast are all now available to stream.

ON VIDEO

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

BUY ME A GUN. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

A LOVE SONG: bittersweet, heartfelt and funny

by
Photo caption: Dale Dickey in A LOVE SONG. Courtesy of San Luis Obispo Film Fest.

A Love Song is a welcome starring vehicle for the longtime character actress Dale Dickey, whose every good night and every bad night is etched into the lines on her face. Dickey plays Faye, whom we meet camping alone in her travel trailer in the remote high desert of Western Colorado.

After a decades-long marriage, Faye has been widowed for seven years, paralyzed by grief in the first two. Now she moves confidently around her solo campsite, displaying her serious outdoor skills and an impressive touch for fishing for crawdads.

It is revealed that Faye is waiting for someone. She has invited a high school friend, whom she hasn’t seen for over three decades, to re-connect. That friend is Lito (Wes Studi), who has also been widowed after a long marriage.

A Love Song wistfully explores loneliness and how grief can impact the ability to love again.

Dickey is on screen almost every moment, and she’s great. Dickey has a way of making even her supporting performances unforgettable. She broke through as the scary meth matriarch in Winter’s Bone, and played the flinty bank teller in Hell and High Water.

Studi recently received a deserved lifetime Oscar. His performances as very scary Native American warriors in Dances with Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans sparked a very impressive body of film work.

Dickey and Studi have said that each had their very first on-screen kiss in A Love Song.

A Love Song is the first feature for writer-director Max Waterman-Silver, who uses his debut to show off his native Western Colorado. I found his direction inconsistent, but he delivered two perfect single-shot scenes, both of very long duration, one when Lito and Faye are sitting with guitars, the other when the two are standing outside Faye’s trailer.

Faye is occasionally visited by four Native American brothers with their little sister as their spokeswoman. Waterman-Silver’s sense of comic timing in these scenes is flawless.

Both The Wife and I were periodically distracted by holes or inconsistencies in the screenplay. At one point, the dog inexplicably vanishes (fortunately temporarily). And there’s no way that someone with Faye’s seasoning would hike up a mountain without water, especially when she can’t make it back down by nightfall.

I admire filmmakers who make their films short enough (82 minutes) so they can pace them slowly. The Wife, less patient with slow burns, still thought that it ran long.

The performances by Dickey and Studi are reason enough to watch this bittersweet, gentle, heartfelt and funny film. I saw A Love Song at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival. It has been picked up for distribution by Bleecker Street, which plans a July 29 theatrical release.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE: often indecipherable and mostly dazzling

by
Photo caption: Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh and James Hong in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Courtesy of A24.

The mind-bender Everything Everywhere All At Once is often indecipherable and mostly dazzling. It’s as if a martial arts version of It’s a Wonderful Life were written by Terry Gilliam on LSD and Red Bull

Michelle Yeoh shines as Evelyn, the burned-out owner of the coin laundromat that she lives above. Evelyn is simultaneously tying to run the business, survive a crippling IRS audit, organize a birthday party for her cranky father and avoid facing her daughter Joy’s (Stephanie Hsu) having a girlfriend. Stressed out to the max, Evelyn is so emotionally neglectful of her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) that she doesn’t grok that he’s trying to divorce her (for emotional neglect).

Suddenly, Evelyn is plunged into a multiverse where a master villain named Jobu Topaki is wreaking carnage and sometimes inhabiting Joy’s body. And, just as suddenly, we are plunged into a mile-a-minute adventure like being inside a pinball machine. Every so often, Waymond is possessed by a multiverse good guy and blurts out a stream of exposition, but it’s best not to try to follow it.

An “everything bagel” appears – both literally and metaphorically. There’s a heartfelt message embedded that is much simpler than all the sci fi hoopla.

It takes a movie star like Yeoh (the martial arts star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Bond Girl in Tomorrow Never Dies, and the steely mom in Crazy Rich Asians).tio hold the center of this wacky extravaganza.

Jamie Lee Curtis in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Courtesy of A24.

The rest of the cast is excellent, too. Ke Huy Quan, who, as a child, played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom captures Waymond’s gentle cluelessness and domestic frustration. I especially loved 93-year-old James Hong (recognizable from his 450 screen credits) as Evelyn’s dad. The funniest performance is by a hilariously glammed-down Jamie Lee Curtis as the IRS agent.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is co-written and co-directed by the Daniels – Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The pair is best known for getting $3 million to make the utterly transgressive Swiss Army Man, starring Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) as a flatulent corpse.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a succession of zany action and eye candy with an avalanche of googly eyes at the climax. The best bits are:

  • a brilliant martial arts set piece with a fannypack as a weapon.
  • a fantasy of what Evelyn’s life would be if she hadn’t married Waymond, which turns out to be the real movie star life of Michelle Yeoh.
  • the moment in evolutionary history when hot dog fingers overcame real human fingers in natural selection.
  • a live action homage to the movie Ratatouille with a CGI racoon.
Stephanie Hsu in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Courtesy of A24.

One more note: the costume design (Shirley Kurata) and makeup (Michelle Chung) for Joy when she’s possessed by the villain is inspired.

I’ve rarely seen so much imagination thrown up on the screen, mostly for the better. Everything Everywhere All At Once is kinda draining to watch and often frustrating, but its best moments are very, very good.

Farewell to a statesman: Norm Mineta

by
Photo caption: AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

Norman Y. Mineta, a remarkable American statesman and the most distinguished of my mentors, has died at age 90. An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy traces his life and times, in which he amassed a startling number of “firsts” and other distinctions in America history:

  • The first Asian-American mayor of a major U.S. city.
  • The first Japanese-American member of Congress elected from the 48 Continental states.
  • A Cabinet Secretary in both Democratic and Republican Administrations.
  • The nation’s longest-serving Transportation Secretary.

The achievements were even more remarkable given that, as a child, Mineta was imprisoned by his own US government in a WW II internment camp. And given that his political base had, during his career, an Asian-American population of far less than ten percent.

This didn’t happen by accident.  Norm Mineta was a driven man. At the same time, his ambition and will was tempered by his buoyancy and ebullience.

Documentarians Dianne Fukumi (director and co-producer) and Debra Nakatomi (co-producer) embed the story of Japanese-Americans, from immigration through internment, and on to reparations.

AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

The defining event for Mineta’s Nissei generation was the WW II internment of 120,000 Americans by their own government. The central thread in the Mineta story is that the injustice of Mineta’s internment informed George W. Bush’s resistance to treating American Muslims that same way in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Mineta being sworn into the US House of Representatives by House Speaker Carl Albert in AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

The film’s most delightful moment may be the octogenarian Mineta sunnily taking his luggage through security at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport.

I have known Norm since I served in his 1974 primary campaign and interned for him on Capitol Hill in the mid 70s. One of my proudest moments was when my wife noted Norm’s delight in encountering me again in 2018. I last talked with him on the phone when he was sheltering at home in August 2020, barber-free, bragging about his “COVID ponytail”.

I saw An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy at an October 2018 friends and family screening with Norm Mineta, Fukumi and Nakatomi in San Jose. It has since played on PBS. You can stream it at An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Seidi Haarla and Yuri Borisov in COMPARTMENT No. 6. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

This week, the Movie Gourmet is emerging from a run of film festivals –

  • The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), now underway; here’s my my Preview and Top Picks.
  • The recently concluded Cinequest.
  • The San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, which I attended for the first time last night. Stay tuned on this one.

I’ve also highlighted two overlooked films to stream: Strawberry Mansion and Oscar Micheaux: Superhero of Black Filmmaking.

CURRENT FILMS

This year’s crop of Oscar films is fading into Old News, but note that Oscar winners CODA, Drive My Car and Belfast are all now available to stream.

The best new film in theaters is hard to find: the insightful and unpredictable dual character study Compartment No. 6.

ON TV

Roger Livesey in THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP

Tomorrow morning (April 30, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1943 masterpiece The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a remarkably textured portrait of a man over four decades and his struggles to evolve into new eras. Written and directed by the great British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, this is a movie with a sharp message to 1940s audiences about modernity, as well as a subtle exploration of privilege that will resonate today.

COMPARTMENT NO. 6: a surprising journey to connection

by
Photo caption: Seidi Haarla and Yuri Borisov in COMPARTMENT No. 6. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

In Compartment No. 6, an odd couple must share the same claustrophobic compartment in a dreadful train ride to Murmansk. She aims to see ancient petroglyphs, and he is heading to a job in a massive mining operation, but they’re really on a journey to human connection.

Compartment No. 6 won the Grand Prix, essentially the second place award, at Cannes; (in 2022, as in recent years, the Grand Prix winner is a much better movie than the winner of the more prestigious Palm d’Or).

Laura (Seidi Haarla) is a mousy Finnish college student in Russia, studying Russian language or archaeology – it’s not exactly clear. She is having a fling with a 40ish Russian professor, and Laura is more deeply invested in the relationship than is her new girlfriend. Laura is out of her depth with the girlfriend’s academic friends. The girlfriend cancels their planned trip at the last moment, and Laura, disappointed, still heads off to Murmansk on her own.

Given the discomfort of Russian train travel, this multi day trip is not for the faint-hearted anyway, but Laura is alarmed to find herself sharing a second-class compartment with a nightmare of a roommate. Ljoha (Yuri Borisov) is an obnoxious drunk, a slob leaving a trail of cigarette ashes and partially eaten sausage. This is a guy devoid of intellectual curiosity, who has never had an original thought. What he possesses in mass quantities is macho boorishness – his icebreaker is “are you traveling alone to sell your cunt?”

More restrained when he is sober, Ljoha is socially inept. As emotionally vulnerable as is Laura, so is Ljoha – he’s just trying very hard to hide it with bravado.

What is important to Laura – and to Ljoha? Fundamentally, each needs to find human connection. Compartment No. 6 takes us on their unpredictable journey. This is not a conventional hate-each-other-and-then-fall-for-each-other movie romance.

Compartment No. 6 is hardly an advert for Russian passenger trains. The train attendant is surly and officious, the running water doesn’t work, and the dining car menu is ever diminishing. The passengers are constantly smoking, and they have no ability to wash themselves. As the train winds northward, you can’t help but imagine the rancid odors.

Compartment No. 6 is the second feature for Finnish director and co-writer Juro Kuosmanen. Boy, I liked this movie.