December 2025

 

ROB REINER (1947-2025)   

      More than just a successful actor and director, Rob Reiner has been part of the fabric of Hollywood since he graduated from Beverly Hills High (classmate of Albert Brooks and Richard Dreyfuss) in 1964. Needless to say, he entered entertainment as a scion, the son of comedy-writing legend Carl Reiner, who was part of Sid Caesar’s troupe in the 1950s, created “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in 1961 and later guided Steve Martin ascension to film stardom in the 1980s.

     Rob became a household name in his own right in 1971 when he was cast as “Meathead,” the liberal son-in-law of rightwing crank Archie Bunker in “All in the Family,” nothing short of the most important television show of the 1970s.

     He never stopped acting but it was his writing that earned him notice (most prominently for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”), leading to directing “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984), a hilarious mockumentary about a British heavy metal band on tour. Reiner directed many hit films but he never made a better movie than his debut. (The disappointing sequel was released this year—you know it’s bad when Paul McCartney supplies the biggest laughs.)

     Reiner, who was stabbed to death along with his wife earlier this month, wasn’t a great stylist or director of important films but he knew how to tell a story that audiences were yearning for. It’s hard not to be impressed with his run of pictures from 1986 to 1992: “Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally...” “Misery” and “A Few Good Men.” None of these films are favorites of mine, but the director knew how to find quality stories: Stephen King (twice), William Goldman, Nora Ephron and Aaron Sorkin are among the writers he worked with.

      He found less success this century, but he did make the amusing “The Bucket List” (2007), tapping into the chemistry between two great actors, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson.

      I recently watched two of his last projects: “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life,” a fascination 2023 documentary about his lifelong friend and “Shock and Awe” (2017), a chronicle of the Knight-Ridder reporters who refused to buy the Bush Administration’s rational for the invasion of Iraq in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

     Woody Harrelson and James Marsden play the reporters who ignore all the PR being pushed by the defense department and repeated by the mainstream media. While it doesn’t deliver the goods with the dramatic power of “Spotlight” or “She Said”—it’s too didactic for its own good—the story of a few journalists who got it right was worth telling.

    And like he does in so many of his films, Reiner delivers a scene stealing performance, here as John Walcott, the wire services’ Washington bureau chief, who guides the coverage.

    His best film work as an actor includes playing the director within the film in “This Is Spinal Tap,” as Tom Hanks’ less-than-helpful friend in “Sleepless in Seattle” and as Leonardo DiCaprio’s straight-talking father in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

      In later years, he became one of Hollywood’s leading progressive voices, a go-to interview for a thoughtful take on the chaos coming out of Washington.

      The tragedy of his death shouldn’t overshadow his status in Hollywood over the past half century, both as a television actor and a director of some of the most loved films of our time.

 

HAMNET (2025)

      More than 400 years after his death, historians still question whether William Shakespeare, a man of the theater, was the author of the plays and poems that carry his byline. Even less is known about his wife Anne (also known as Agnes) Hathaway, opening the door to Maggie O’Farrell speculative fiction pinned to the actual death of the couple’s son Hamnet at age 11.

   Writer-director Chloé Zhao, working with O’Farrell, has created a picturesque vision of early 17^th Century life and the lowly position of women in that world.

     Agnes, portrayed with quiet resolve by Jessie Buckley, is a woman of the woods; Will (a soft-spoken Paul Mescal) first meets her when she is working with her falcon. She finds solace in nature—returning to her favorite tree trunk to give birth—explaining why their home remains in Stratford-upon-Avon while her husband’s work is in London.

     The scenes in the forest are painterly rendered, becoming a romantic refuge for the couple. Director Zhao’s signature is her ability to show characters as a part of the landscape, connected to nature—as she did in “The Rider” and “Nomadland”—here captured by Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zal (“Ida,” “Cold War”).

    Shakespeare’s interest in the marriage becomes secondary to his career as he spends more and more time in London producing his plays. But he dearly loves his daughters and son (a memorable Jacobi Jupe) and is inspired to write his most important work to commemorate Hamnet (apparently, in Early Modern English Hamnet and Hamlet were pronounced the same.)

     Trying to align the story with what is known historically can be tricky—in the film, his wife seems unaware of Shakespeare’s success as a playwright until “Hamlet,” despite it being preceded by 15 to 20 produced plays. It’s hard to believe she had never previously travelled from Stratford (a four-to-five-day trip) to see one of his plays. And I wish there would have been a few more scenes of Shakespeare working in London.

      The film manages to be a study of a writer who sacrifices so much for his art, even in the face of devastating loss, while keeping the focus on the woman who is expected to carry the burden of family.

    A classically trained Irish actress, Buckley, who has played Juliet in “Romeo & Juliet” and Miranda in “The Tempest,” has emerged, in the last five years, as one of the most interesting film performers. She was memorable in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” (2020), “The Lost Daughter” (2021), “Women Talking” (2022) and “Wicked Little Letters” (2023), but her Agnes moves her into the first rank of film actresses. At the most important moments of “Hamnet,” Zhao fills the screen with Buckley’s face, relying on the subtlety of her acting to tell the story.

     Mescal, a best actor Oscar nominee for “Aftersun” and the star of “Gladiator II” (2024), portrays the Bard as an unassuming regular guy, which has brought some criticism of Zhao and O’Farrell. Can this rather insensitive, humble man be the great genius of Western literature? Maybe that is one of the tale’s points: transformative art can come from flawed sources; for this poet, it seems, understanding the human experience was easier than knowing how to be a responsible husband.

  

TRAIN DREAMS (2025)

   Few recent films have weaved together words and images more sublimely than this adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella of the same name.

     Director Clint Bentley, one of the writers of “Sing Sing” (2023), scripting with that film’s director Greg Kwedar, has brought Johnson’s simple but moving tale of a itinerate logger in the early part of the 20^th Century to life. Deserving equal credit is Joel Edgerton, who plays Robert Grainier with a solemn, almost ethereal, manner; a man who finds a bit of happiness in a tough, unforgiving world only to see it vanish.

     Johnson, a little known but acclaimed writer, who died in 2017, is best known for the excellent film version of his story of addiction, “Jesus’ Son” (1999). Edgerton and narrator Will Patton bring the writer’s spare, insightful prose to the screen with little dramatics and a lived-in resolve.

 

    After years of working on lumber crews across the Northwest, Grainier marries Gladys (Felicity Jones) and builds a house for his wife. Together, they live blissfully and soon have a young daughter—making it harder and harder for Robert to leave home to earn his living. Only the love for his family keeps him sane during the lonely months travelling with the crews.

    Of course, the landscape of the Western America plays a big part in the story, the stripping of the land of trees as the country modernizes while Robert slips into a permanent sadness. The cinematography by Adolpho Veloso captures the majestic visas of the west.

       The beauty of the film is matched by peerless acting across the board. Edgerton, excellent in “Loving” (2016) and “Master Gardener” (2022), has never been better and should score an Oscar nomination. Also deserving award consideration is William H. Macy as an old-timer helping out the lumber crew and providing a semblance of wisdom in an otherwise dreary existence.

      Jones, nominated last year for “The Brutalist” and in 2014 for playing Stephen Hawking’s wife in “The Theory of Everything,” doesn’t have a huge role but perfectly encapsulates the healing aspect of a loving family.

     Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “F1: The Movie,” shows up in the last act as a forest ranger who gives Robert a different view of the changing world.

  

NOUVELLE VAGUE (2025)  

     Richard Linklater, best known for kinetic comedies such as “Dazed and Confused” and “School of Rock,” has tapped into his nostalgic side with two very different releases this year.

     “Blue Moon” remembers mid-century legends of musical theater while “Nouvelle Vague” (we called it “The New Wave”) celebrates the French filmmakers who offered a new way to tell stories in the late 1950s and early ‘60s.

       Working with mostly French actors and shooting in black and white, Linklater tells the story of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark romantic crime picture “A bout de souffle” (“Breathless” in this country).

     Godard was part of the collection of film journalists (along with François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, among others) who traded their typewriters for directors’ chairs, creating most of the important French films of the 1960s and ‘70s.

      “Breathless,” Godard’s 1960 debut, follows a self-styled, rather ridiculous car thief and hustler Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo, soon to be an international star) who shoots a policeman and then seems to hide in plain sight as he romances an American woman Patricia (Jean Seberg), who works for the New York Herald-Tribune. Shot in long takes, much of it on the streets of Paris without permits, with a handheld camera and marked by jagged editing, the picture is best watched as a gemstone that guided the way for other, better, films and filmmakers.

     I enjoyed Linklater’s “making of” movie better than my sixth or seventh viewing of “Breathless,” with Guillaume Marbeck’s spot-on performance as the arrogantly confident, unpredictable Godard, who, while running out of money and ideas, often cancelled filming after one scene. Seeing the American actress Seberg (Zoey Deutch) frustration with the amateurish antics of Godard and his minions (Truffaut and Charbrol helped write the script and lingered around the set) is more interesting than watching Seberg’s Patricia fall for Michel’s faux charm in the original.

      My only criticism of the film is Linklater’s decision to identify with subtitles the famous people when the actor playing them make their first appearance. Most filmgoers who see this film hardly need to be clued in to who Truffaut or Jean-Pierre Melville are; for those who don’t recognize them, the names mean nothing.

     Anyone who is a fan of that glorious period of French cinema known as the New Wave, this film is a must see. But its chronicle of the beginning of guerrilla, independent filmmaking should be fascinating to any movie fan.

  

THE MASTERMIND (2025) and WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025)

        Josh O’Connor, who first gained notice on this side of the Atlantic with his portrayal of Prince Charles in “The Crown” (opposite Oliva Colman’s reign as the Queen), has had a year. In addition to starring in these two high-profile releases, he co-starred with Paul Mescal in the well-reviewed “The History of Sound.”

      While he captures the slacker attitude of the 1970s, living laissez-faire, in Kelly Reichardt’s “Mastermind,” I just couldn’t bring myself to care as the unemployed (unemployable?) James decides to steal some paintings from a local museum and then, ineptly, goes on the run.

     The director’s usual somnolent pacing and inarticulate protagonist just adds to the movie’s thinness. I felt like I was watching a student film. The picture’s saving grace is the appearance of Hope Davis, as James’ enabling mother. Davis, whose career peaked in the early part of this century, (seek out “The Secret Lives of Dentists”) never fails to leave an impression—she was also a standout in Wes Anderson’s most recent pictures.

       Much more entertaining and offering O’Connor a more interesting role is Rian Johnson’s third “Knives Out” mystery in which he plays a young priest, the prime suspect in the murder of the church’s senior priest (a bombastic Josh Brolin). While there is plenty to laugh at here, “Wake Up Dead Man” has a more serious tone that the previous two.

     Daniel Craig is back for a third go-around as Benoit Blanc, an endlessly amusing master detective, an amalgamation of all the classic private eyes, from Holmes to Poirot to Columbo.

     O’Connor’s Father Duplenticy (you’ve got to love the name) is exiled to Monseigneur Wicks parish, where he immediate clashes with the gloom-and-doom messaging of Wicks. Soon, the senior priest is found dead and the investigation is on.

      Though a suspect, Blanc enlists Duplenticy as an assistant and together they unravel the mystery. Jeremy Renner, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Jeffrey Wright and Thomas Haden Church are among the movie’s large ensemble.

      But the film’s standout is Glenn Close as the church’s jack-of-all-trades who is devoted to Wicks. Since her Oscar nomination for “The World According to Garp” (1982), she’s been one of Hollywood’s best actresses but in recent years (she’s in her late 70s) Close has shined in creating distinctive older women, embracing roles too often turned into clichés by Hollywood. This eight-time Oscar nominee deserves a win this year.

  

SENTIMENTAL VALUE (2025)

    The stoic nature of Scandinavians provides a perfect setting to study the deep-seated resentments and confused emotions in the wake of a broken marriage.

    While Joachim Trier’s new film doesn’t plumb the depths of Ibsen or Bergman, it brings a contemporary background—show business—to the age-old father-daughter distrust.

       Gustav (a superb Stellan Skarsgård) re-enters the life of his two daughters after his surprise appearance at the funeral of his long-divorced wife.

      Nora (Renate Reinsve), an accomplished but neurotic stage and television actress, and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), who as a child starred in her father’s first successful film, have different reactions to the father.

      Despite his long absence from their lives, the self-centered Gustav can’t understand why Nora won’t star in his upcoming film and ends up recruiting an American star (Elle Fanning) to take a role based on his daughter. (Only the scenes with Fanning and Skarsgård are in English, the rest in Norwegian.)

      While the plot is rather predictable, the acting of Skarsgård and Reinsve lift the story, creating very real, artistic-minded people that are usually flattened (see “Jay Kelly”) in Hollywood films. Both seem destined to score Oscar nominations, especially now that the international membership of the Academy has increased.

       Trier was nominated for a screenplay Oscar for his film “The Worst Person in the World” (2021), which also was a best international film nominee. He also directed an English-language film, “Louder Than Bombs” (2015).

      Reinsve, the star of “Worst Person,” appeared opposite Sebastian Stan in “A Different Man” (2024) and is part of the ensemble of Apple TV’s “Presumed Innocent.”

     The 74-year-old Skarsgård, who has been a go-to supporting player since he played the colorful Bootstrap Bill in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, appears in four or five films a year but this might be his most substantial role and most impressive performance.

  

JAY KELLY (2025)

    A critics’ darling for more than two decades, Noah Baumbach may have finally lost his strongest support with this shallow, poorly structured sitcom-like story of an obnoxious movie star learning life lessons.

    The usually reliable George Clooney looks like a deer in the headlights for much of the film as the title character who throws his entire entourage into a panic as he rashly decides to follow his teenage daughter to Europe. After years of prioritizing his career, he suddenly sees the light, or at least a bit of it—he continues to treat his staff heartlessly.

       His sycophant manager Ron (Adam Sandler, who comes off best in the film) keeps trying to steer Kelly to make sensible choices but the actor acts impulsively and expects the team to follow along.

     The journey lands him on a train from Paris to Tuscany, where he will receive a tribute to his movie career. Along the way, he makes friends with his fellow train passengers, thwarts a robbery, meets up with his flamboyant father (Stacy Keach) and pisses off most of his assistants. Laura Dern, excellent in Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” (2019), is underused in a small role as Kelly’s publicist.

      This is Fellini’s “8 ½” filtered through “Stardust Memories” with a sprinkle of Hallmark thrown in. In what seems like a different film—one that might have been more interesting—we see key moments in the young Jay Kelly’s rise to fame. His half-hearted re-examination of his life is kicked off when he engages his one-time acting buddy (Billy Crudup) in a fight, which, of course, is captured by a bystander and goes viral online.   

     Generally, I have not thought much of Baumbach’s films, though “Margot at the Wedding” (2007) and “Marriage Story” are among the best relationships-in-crisis movies in recent years and featuring fine performances.

      In “Jay Kelly,” the writing (he co-scripted with actress Emily Mortimer) seems strained and the situations too pat to make you feel as if you are watching real life.  

  

THE PROMISE (2017)

     As a resident of Glendale, Calif., I am very aware of the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turkey in 1915. As the U.S. city with the largest Armenian diaspora, Glendale hosts numerous remembrances of the tragedy every year and a multi-story museum is nearing completion downtown.

    As far as I know, “The Promise” is the only American film focused on the genocide, mixing a war-torn romance with reenactments of the tragic events during World War I. Though it has the “based on a true story” feel of a TV movie, the picture stars two of Hollywood’s best actors, Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac.

      Isaac plays Michael, who travels to Constantinople from his rural hometown to study medicine. There he falls for a bohemian woman (Charlotte Le Bon), who is also involved in an on-again, off-again relationship with American photojournalist Chris (Bale). It’s through Chris’ eyes that the film shows the horrors of the Armenian population being purged from the Ottoman Empire.

     At 37, Isaac is a bit long in the tooth to play a young medical student but both he and Bale bring a seriousness to the film that might have been lost with less, if more culturally appropriate actors, in the roles.

      The movie is written, with Robin Swicord, and directed by Ireland’s Terry George, one of the most accomplished screenwriters of the past 30 years, having penned “In the Name of the Father” (1993), “The Boxer” (1997), which earned Bale the Oscar, and “Hotel Rwanda (2004), which he also directed.

     If you are unfamiliar with the atrocities inflicted on the Armenians (which the U.S. government didn’t officially recognizing until 2019!) the film provides a gateway into a little-known tragedy.

 

 

PHOTOS:

Rob Reiner  (The Associated Press)

Joel Edgerton in “Train Dreams.”  (Netflix)

Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor in “Wake Up Dead Man.” (Netflix)

Oscar Isaac and Charlotte Le Bon in “The Promise” (Universal Pictures)

 

October-November 2025

DIANE KEATON (1946-2025)

      Although I’d seen Diane Keaton in many films previous to “Annie Hall”—“The Godfather” films, of course, and numerous Woody Allen comedies, most memorably “Love and Death”—her performance in Allen’s comic take on New York City romanticism, knocked me out.

     She, Keaton or Hall, I’m not sure which (it’s one of the most autobiographical fictional roles in film history), exemplified the girlfriend of my dreams, even though it eventually ends in a breakup. When Annie takes the microphone at a New York nightclub, the kind of place I’d dreamt of being a regular at, and poignantly croons “Seems Like Old Times,” she completely captured my heart, earning a fan for life.

      Her death last month felt like the passing of an era when movies had something to say to me and had a real impact on my life. I never imagined she wouldn’t long outlive her lovers and co-stars Allen, Al Pacino, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. While there were more accomplished actresses in the late 20^th Century, Keaton remains the quintessential woman of that era: iconoclastic, unmistakable, a bit off-kilter and with a style she totally owned.

      So associated with Allen’s pictures, it’s easy to forget her early success as Kay Adams, the occasionally defiant wife of Michael Corleone, highlighted in “Part II” when she tells her husband she aborted a second son. “An abortion Michael, just like our marriage is an abortion, something that’s unholy and evil.” Kay’s monologue was among the most powerful moments in Francis Coppola’s film that’s overflowing with acting brilliance. (Being in “The Godfather” wasn’t Keaton’s first role in a cultural landmark; her first Broadway performance was in “Hair.”)

     The same year she established her screen persona with “Annie Hall,” winning the best actress Oscar, she also starred in “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” a dark, controversial film about one-night stands and the New York bar scene.

     She continued as Allen’s muse (though they had long since ended their romantic relationship) in “Interiors” (1978), as one of three daughters dealing with the breakup of their parents, and “Manhattan” (1979), considered by many as the director’s masterpiece, as the pseudo-sophisticated journalist Mary who has an affair with Allen’s Isaac. She deserved, but didn’t receive, Oscar nomination for both films.

     In 1981, Keaton was the female lead in another masterpiece, Beatty’s “Reds,” playing poet-revolutionary Louise Bryant, partner of fellow true believer Jack Reed (Beatty), activist for the Communist revolution in Russia, and later mistress to Reed’s friend, dramatist Eugene O’Neill (Nicholson). Bryant is the linchpin in this historic epic.

     She concluded a spectacular, 11-year run of first-rate performances in one of the most underrated films of the 1980s, “Shoot the Moon” (1982) playing a wife and mother, tellingly named Faith, fighting to keep her family together after her husband (Albert Finney) leaves her for a younger woman.

    I’m not going to list them all here, but take a look at her films from 1972 (“Play It Again, Sam” and “The Godfather”) through 1982. Rarely in movie history has an actress had a more impressive run of film roles. She’s the only actress to be nominated for a leading performance Oscar in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s.

       In the late 1980s and ‘90s she cashed in on her popularity with box office hits “Baby Boom” (1987), “Father of the Bride” (1991) and “The First Wives Club” (1996), but occasional scored challenging roles, including “Crimes of the Heart” (1986) and the neglected “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993).

      In later years, she played the jittery, confused woman-girl a bit too often, especially once she was in her 60s, but with the right script, she could still deliver nuanced performances, as seen in three senior romances, “Something’s Gotta Give” (2003) with Nicholson, “And So It Goes” (2014) with Michael Douglas and “Hampstead” with Brendan Gleeson.

     While she never reached the dramatic pinnacles given, at their best, by Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda, Kate Winslet or Nicole Kidman, but she had a career for the ages, as a comedian ranking with Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur, Claudette Colbert and Katharine Hepubrn.

     But for Keaton, it was more than her memorable film performances—she was her own greatest character; in later years, she had redefined Annie Hall with her shoulder-length gray hair, black glasses, usually dressed in a black and white outfit topped off with a cool-looking hat. Iconic may be the most overused word in entertainment, but Diane Keaton, on and off screen, represented what it means, or used to mean, to be a movie star.

 

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025)

      I hate to critique the critics, but it’s hard to ignore the cult-like raves that have welcomed Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth movie.

    Like in all of his films, there are moments in his new picture of exhilarating cinema and comically bigger-than-life characters. But, as in “Magnolia,” “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master,” the virtuoso set-pieces don’t connect into a cohesive story, if that is even his goal.

     I write that a lot these days; story and themes and insight have taken a step back as filmgoers revel in high-impact moments that have come to define “great” filmmaking. Sometimes it seems as if the goal is to make the most thrilling trailer.

        In “One Battle After Another,” Anderson’s attempt to make light of the foolhardy and insincere commitments of both the left and right (a cynical view that I can’t align with), he presents a tyrannical military leader (Sean Penn), acting under whose authority it’s never made clear, sexually obsessed with Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), the young black female leader of a group of anarchists. At one point, he sits in his car ogling her body through his binoculars as they blow something up.

      In case you find Penn’s Col. Lockjaw offensive, Anderson has Perfidia give in to his lusts. She arranges for a sexual rendezvous and eventually uses him to escape federal authorities. In the second half of the picture, set about 20 years later, Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), the one-time committed partner-in-revolution to Perfidia—she’s split the scene and, unfortunately, the movie—is a drugged out middle-aged slacker living with his daughter in semi-hiding. Then Lockjaw, who doesn’t seem to have aged, still jacked up with a painted-on tan and a haircut that went out of style when the Third Reich retreated to Argentina, comes charging back into their lives.

     The plot seems to be sputtering when Anderson’s script introduces a secret society of racists who learn that new member Lockjaw (every time I write his name it seems more juvenile) may have sired an African-American child. The only solution, of course, is for him to kill her.

      Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” I have no idea how much of this lunacy is from the novel, but if you’ve read much Pynchon, you won’t be surprised by the cartoonish style of the film. Anderson loves extremes, in both his best “Boogie Nights” (1997) and in lesser works like “Magnolia” (1999) and “There Will Be Blood” (2007). This film is no different, with moments of brilliance undercut by disarrayed storytelling.

      It’s telling that the secret white supremacy society seems to be only group that has a clear vision of purpose, amoral as it is. The terrorists certainly don’t and Lockjaw is more than willing to toss his duty aside for personal revenge.

     For my money, Benicio del Toro provides the picture’s only sympathetic character, as a border-city martial arts instructor who knows what to do when “the man” shows up. Without him, Bob’s flailing attempts to protect his daughter or escape Lockjaw would have been easily crushed.

   To state the obvious, one viewer’s insightful sarcasm is another’s heavy-handed cliché: In this movie, I think you recognized which camp I fall into. “One Battle After Another” will undoubtedly win a bushel full of Oscar nominations, but to me it’s less a film than a collection of riveting clips.   

 

SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE (2025)

      At some point, a writer must accept the paradox that a story can be both painfully truthful and a tired cliché. Writer-director Scott Cooper falls into that trap and then fills his script about Bruce Springsteen’s trouble childhood and fear of success with needless conversations between Bruce and his producer, between Bruce and his composite girlfriend, even between his producer and his wife. Every character keeps telling us about Bruce’s problems instead of just letting the audience experience it.

     (I was surprised the film doesn’t depict Bruce consulting with Little Steven, his bandmate and friend since they were teens. That would have been more logical.)

         The story picks up Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) as he’s coming off his hugely successful 1980-81 “The River” tour, questioning his identity and struggling with issues with his father lingering from childhood. Holed up in a rental near his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, he meets Faye (Odessa Young), the sister of a high school classmate, after sitting in with the house band at the Asbury Park club where he cut his rock ‘n’ roll teeth, the Stone Pony.

        At the same time, in response to the record company’s push for more hit records---“Hungry Heart” from “The River” was Bruce’s first Top 10 single—he turns inward, writing and recording a dark remembrance of his youth that became the acoustic album “Nebraska.” (Inspired when he watches Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” on television.) The movie spends an inordinate amount of screen time showing Springsteen fighting with his musical righthand man Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) and his engineers to achieve the proper echo on the songs, the sound he captured on primitive (even for 1981) cassette technology. While many critics hailed the album, I never warmed up to its monotonous tone and tales of mid-century losers.   

       Putting aside that the film portrays the low point of one of the biggest stars in the entertainment industry (imagine Frank Sinatra cooperating with filmmakers telling the story of his depression after his marriage to Ava Gardner?), the script is a worthy attempt to show the realities of clinical depression and how one’s level of success isn’t a cure.

     But the script never lets the viewer think for themselves. Essentially, it presents a series of conversations (no doubt, a new record for the most movie scenes inside diners) that explain the character and his journey, reiterating what we’ve already seen play out.

     White, star of the acclaimed streaming series “The Bear,” has Springsteen’s facial expressions down pat, even the way he tilts his head, and does a fine job of imitation his throaty singing voice. I have no doubt the performance will earn him an Oscar nomination.

      Cooper, who guided Jeff Bridges to an Oscar in “Crazy Heart” (2009), has done his best work partnered with Christian Bale, making three smart but little-seen pictures, “Out of the Furnace” (2013), “Hostiles” (2017) and “The Pale Blue Eye” (2022). “Deliver Me from Nowhere” is his highest profile picture but unlike those earlier films, he doesn’t seem to trust the audience to get it.

      Strong, so memorable as Roy Cohn in last year’s “The Apprentice,” doesn’t get much to work with playing Landau---he’s the one who wrote in 1974 “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” As portrayed by Strong, he wears the same sour face throughout the picture.

      More convincing are veteran British actor Stephen Graham as Bruce’s abusive, inarticulate father and Paul Walter Hauser (“Richard Jewell”) as Mike Batlan, an engineer who helps the singer create the introspective mood of the “Nebraska” songs.

       Bruce’s fight with depression isn’t breaking news; he wrote about it in his 2016 autobiography and was the subject of a book by Del Fuegos guitarist-turned-writer Warren Zanes, which is the source for the movie. But for non-fans, it will probably come as a revelation that this energetic performer who has been a worldwide superstar for 40 years ever doubted himself.

      As a fan of Springsteen, I wanted to love this film. The most spiritual moments I’ve ever experienced have been at his concerts. And, at times, I was moved by seeing his story re-created---the sequence depicting the E-Street band finding it’s groove on “Born in the USA” may be the best recording studio scene ever.

     But this isn’t about Springsteen the performer; it’s about a fragile man facing an identity crisis and the script doesn’t do that man justice.

 

PETER PAN (1924)

      One of the most impressive silent productions not directed by D.W. Griffith, this adaption of the famed stage play was personally overseen by Scottish author J.M. Barrie. The play debuted in London in 1904, but later Barrie revised it, eliminating the dialogue, turning the story of Wendy, Peter and the Lost Boys into a pantomime. When Paramount Pictures bought the rights, Barrie insisted it remain wordless (it was a silent film, right?) and that he be given final say on the actress playing Peter. (Even in its original form, a female was always cast as Peter—interpret that as you may.)

      Despite interest by stars Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford, the writer chose Betty Bronson, a 17-year-old unknown. She’s properly spirited as the boy who lives in a fairy tale world on Neverland; where he and a group of youngsters battle wild animals, American Indians (including Anna May Wong) and dastardly pirates.

     Why Peter flies into the world of Wendy Darling and her brothers John and Michael is never clear, but he leads them back to Neverland and riotous, tongue-in-cheek adventures.

    Stealing all of his scenes is Ernest Torrence, one of the great silent film villains, as Captain Hook, comically harassing this group of children while a crocodile stalks him.

      Director Herbert Brenon, who had been making films since 1912, is best known for the first film version (sadly, now lost) of “The Great Gatsby” (1926) and one of Lon Chaney’s best pictures “Laugh, Clown, Laugh” (1928). In the stagey “Pan,” he keeps the action moving while emphasizing the relationship between Wendy (Mary Brian) and Peter.

    As in the stage play, the animals, including the Darling’s nanny-dog, are played by actors in furry costumes. George Ali, a stage actor in his only film appearance, is quite animated as the bossy but loyal canine.

     The more famous versions of “Peter Pan” arrived in the 1950s when Disney made the 1953 animated picture and then, in a musical version, Mary Martin recreated her Tony Award-winning stage performance as Peter for television.         

      I still remember watching the musical on TV as a child—I believe it was a Christmas annual—and, of course, tearing up when Tinker Bell almost disappears until the audience claps her back to life.

     Psychologically, it’s a story ahead of its time: Wendy wants a boyfriend, Peter wants a mother, and, at the end, the Darlings adopt all the Lost Boys into their brood, even though they barely paid attention to the three of their own.

     For those who complain that silents are laborious (and they certainly can be), here is an example of how creative and energetic that lost art could be.

 

BUGONIA (2025)

    This may be the most down-to-earth, traditional film Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Lobster,” “Poor Things,” “Kinds of Kindness”) has ever made: it’s about a young man who believes aliens have arrived on Earth to destroy humanity.

     Emma Stone, in her third movie with the director in three years, plays Michelle, a stereotypically intense female CEO of a pharma company. Jesse Plemons, another Lanthimos regular, is Teddy, who works in the drug firm’s factory, has imagined that Michelle is from another planet and, to save civilization, he must persuade her to take him to her emperor. He has the entire conspiracy all worked out, which he rants on and on about after he and his cognitively challenged cousin (Aidan Delbis) kidnap Michelle.

   Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy, remaking the 2003 South Korean film “Save the Green Planet,” capture the unmitigated arrogance that conspiracy nuts bring to their argument: steeped in the minutia from obsessive study and deep-seated paranoia. And then the script turns the premise on its head—as Lanthimos is want to do.

    Stone delivers another superb performance—she’s clearly bought into Lanthimos’ vision and that’s not easy. The actress is thoroughly convincing as the whip-smart, manipulative CEO who tries every psychological theory to confuse her kidnappers.

     Plemons, who I still think of as the evil bastard from “Breaking Bad,” gives his best film performance as his supremely confident character is slowly beaten down by Michelle’s game playing. Watching these two fine actors in a battle of wits is highly entertaining.

      The film doesn’t match the outrageous anarchy of “Poor Things”—it could have used a Willem Dafoe-type character—but “Bugonia” confirms Lanthimos’ place among the most interesting filmmakers working today.

 

FRANKENSTEIN (2025)

    I’m not sure we needed another version of Mary Shelley’s 203-year-old morality tale of a man creating life and forever regretting his actions. But writer- director Guillermo del Toro seemed destined to take on this classic, as he’s been making films about misunderstood monsters (“Hellboy,” “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Shape of Water”) for years. Naturally, he’s fashioned a very sympathetic creature.

      The filmmaker relocates the story to Victorian England and has scientist Victor Frankenstein (an over-the-top Oscar Isaac) utilize electricity—a plot device from the 1931 film not Shelley—to spark his pieced-together man to life. Like the novel, the story is told by Victor to a ship captain (Lars Mikkelsen), bound for the North Pole, after Victor, in pursuit of his creation, is rescued from the icy terrain. The scenes on the ice-locked ship and in Dr. Frankenstein’s dark, elaborate castle/laboratory—financed by the uncle (Christoph Waltz) of his brother’s fiancée—make up the first half of del Toro’s film and are most striking. While it’s hard to tell how much is CGI (though the filmmaker has said that he had a ship built for the scenes), both sets are painterly in their opulence, in many ways diminishing the characters.

 

    Once Dr. Frankenstein sets fire to his castle, and, he imagines, killing the monster, the film grows so leisurely it almost felt like a streaming series. The long sequence of the monster befriending the blind man (a touching performance by David Bradley)—told again to the ship captain, this time by the monster—and then pursuing his creator, arriving in time for Victor’s brother’s wedding, are designed to appreciate the heartfelt search for identity by the nameless monster, his desperate desire to find his place in the world. Shelley’s creature was much more ruthless.

      The contrast between the wild-eyed, frenetic performance of Isaac as Dr. Frankenstein and a low-keyed, thoughtful portrayal of the monster by Jacob Elordi (the object of desire in “Saltburn”) is central to del Toro’s vision of the story, discarding any idea of a merciful God/creator.

      Less defined are Victor’s brother (Felix Kammerer) and his fiancée Elizabeth (Mia Goth). Their roles are remade in del Toro’s script and frankly could have been discarded. Waltz, as he always does, steals his scenes, playing the uncle.

     James Whale’s 1931 picture, which threw out almost all of Shelley’s story except the title, is one of the great films of the 1930s and turned the monster into a cultural icon. This new version isn’t as impactful but is a worthy entry into the “Frankenstein” legacy.   

 

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025)

      Whatever level of confidence you still retain in the government’s ability to protect its citizens from foreign attacks, the new Kathryn Bigelow picture won’t help to assuage those fears.

       Before they can finish their morning coffee, the men and women in charge of guarding our skies are confronted with a nuclear-armed missile from somewhere in Asia headed toward Chicago.

       Rebecca Ferguson (recent “Mission: Impossible” films), who runs the White House Situation Room, which monitors the goings-on in the world for the government, starts the ball rolling after the projectile is first spotted by the defense station in Alaska.

      Without knowing who is responsible—both the Chinese and Russia deny launching—the very unprepared president (Idris Elba) must decide how to respond after our defense system fails to destroy the missile.

     Showing the crisis from the different perspectives of those involved—there are many parallels between this film and Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”—lets the viewer peak into the very human reactions to the situation. It’s easy to forget that no matter how competent someone may be at their job, when faced with such dire circumstances, calm decisiveness often goes out the window. Some are clear-eyed: Gen. Brady (Tracy Letts) is ready for a full-blown world war but also wants to talk about last night’s Met game while the team’s Asian expert (Greta Lee) gives a detailed analysis of the political ramifications while attending a Civil War re-enactment. On the other hand, the secretary of Defense (Jared Harris) breaks under the pressure.

        The 74-year-old Bigelow is among the most accomplished filmmakers of this century, directing “The Hurt Locker” (2008), which earned her and the film Oscars, “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012) and the underrated “Detroit” (2017).

      While “A House of Dynamite”—a reference to the tinderbox nuclear world—doesn’t reach the level of intense verisimilitude of those earlier three films, it’s a provocative and smart examination (and sharply written by Noah Oppenheim, who wrote the superb “Jackie”) of a very scary possibility. 

       My one reservation about the movie—I watched it on Netflix—is that it isn’t shot on film but recorded digitally, giving it a cleaner, flatter, almost videotape look. Maybe it’s just me, but the style renders the dialogue and acting less real than old-fashioned film stock.

 

BLUE MOON (2025)

    I can’t imagine why, but director Richard Linklater has portrayed legendary Broadway songwriter Lorenz Hart as a bitter, egotistical, freakish-looking drunk—with the worst comb-over in history—in this odd trip into nostalgia.

     Set almost entirely at Sardi’s, the classic Broadway bar, where the cast and crew will be celebrating the opening of “Oklahoma!” Hart (Ethan Hawke) arrives early and begins his nonstop monologue of self-pity with the bartender (Bobby Cannavale) and then E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy), the famed New Yorker writer who is minding his own business. This nearly one-man show is filled with witty sarcasm but it’s tainted with Hart’s self-loathing and the irony that “Oklahoma!” became one of the most celebrated musicals in Broadway history.

     Hawke is made up to look like a Muppet, wearing an oversized suit to emphasize the songwriters 5-foot height and looking like a cartoon character when shown walking—for what purpose? The number of people who remember what Hart looked like (he died in 1943 of alcoholism) couldn’t be more than .001 percent of the moviegoing audience.

    In addition to his endless railing about the musical, written by his composing partner of 20 years Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and his new partner Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney), who previously worked with Jerome Kern on such musicals as “Show Boat,” Hart rhapsodizes about a college girl (Margaret Qualley) who has won his heart.

     When we meet Elizabeth, based on a real person in Hart’s life, it is clear she’s showing interest in the Broadway legend to further her career. There’s a very creepy scene in which he takes her into the bar’s coat closet and, with too much enthusiasm, has her describe a recent sexual encounter with a fellow student. I half expected Hart to jump her.

     Of course, Hart was primarily interested in men—there are hints that he sees Rodgers as more than a writing partner—but he claims to find beauty in both genders.

    Despite Hawke’s best efforts—he’s working very hard to elicit our sympathy for this character—he comes off as an obnoxious, pitiful figure, overshadowing his standing as the songwriter of “Blue Moon,” “My Funny Valentine,” “The Lady Is a Tramp” and many others.

     On the other side of the coin, Jean-Luc Godard receives much more reverence in Linklater’s other fall release, “Nouvelle Vague,” about the making of the French New Wave classic “Breathless” (see next month’s posting).

    I assume that Linkletter saw “Blue Moon” as a touching remembrance of a great, if flawed, artist. Instead, Hawke’s Hart comes off as just another drunk who won’t shut up.

    

 

PHOTOS:

Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in “Annie Hall” (United Artists)

Jeremy Allen White in “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere”  (20th Century Studios)

Mary Brian as Wendy and Betty Bronson as Peter in “Peter Pan.”  (Paramount Pictures)

Oscar Isaac works on the monster in “Frankenstein.” (Netflix)

Andrew Scott and Ethan Hawke in “Blue Moon.” (Sony Pictures Classics)