January-February 2021

 

THE MIDNIGHT SKY (2020)

      This exceptional sci-fi film set in the near future starts about 50 pages past where most scripts would have launched this story. The evacuation of a research center near the Arctic Circle is underway because of some type of cataclysmic event occurring across the globe. This apocalypse remains unexplained, except that it was inevitable and leaves little hope for mankind.

      George Clooney, aged by a decade or so, plays Augustine Lofthouse, a senior scientist at the center, whose health is already precarious, stays behind, alone to await the end until he discovers a little girl left behind. Though she doesn’t speak, she becomes his shadow, even when he ventures out into the freezing tundra, stunningly photographed by Martin Ruhe, to adjust a remote antenna, which he hopes to use to communicate with an international space probe.

      We first see the ship’s crew, led by Sully (Felicity Jones) and Adewole (David Oyelowo), as they explore a moon of Jupiter, appraising it for possible human habitat in anticipation of Earth’s environmental breakdown. As they start the return trip, little do they know, because they can’t connect to Earth, that they are headed for a dying planet. In his Arctic station, Augustine realizes that if he doesn’t intercede, they are doomed.

     There’s plenty in co-writer Mark L. Smith’s script (he co-wrote “The Revenant”), based on Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel, that most movie fans has seen many times—dangerous space walks, struggles with inter-space communication, self-sacrifice of a space crew, the heart-tugging connection between space explorers and those left behind—but Clooney, who also directs, keeps the melodrama to a minimum. Like so many recent sci-fi adventures (“Gravity,” “Interstellar,” “Arrival,” “The Martian”), the actors rarely slip out of their “we’re here to do a job” mode.

     Sporting a full, white beard, a sort of Walt Whitman of scientists, Clooney gives one of his best performances as this laconic researcher who—shown in flashbacks—has passed on personal happiness for his career. Making the connection with the space crew means more to him than even he realizes.

     Including the little girl (intently played 7-year-old Caoilinn Springall in her film debut), makes Augustine that much more interesting, allowing him to reflect on his family connections as he roams the deserted station.

    “The Midnight Sky” is Clooney sixth film as a director and nearly equal to his best, the very different, “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2005), about Edward R. Murrow’s TV confrontation with Joe McCarthy. What director Clooney does best is elicit first rate ensemble performances; “Good Night” boast one of the best casts in the past 20 years while the underrated “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” (2002) shows Sam Rockwell at his best along with a half-dozen priceless supporting roles. He assembles an equally impression group for his new film.

       While “The Midnight Sky” often plays like a sci-fi greatest hits collection, the matter-of-fact presentation of “the end” and the film’s final act reveals make for compelling cinema.

  

TENET (2020)

    As usual, Christopher Nolan wants audiences to think very, very hard while they are being entertained by his movie. An admirable trait, but this time, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

    With this big-budget actioner, the director of “Inception” and “Interstellar,” aims to add a James Bond-”Mission: Impossible” type picture to his resume, but, of course, with the added element of the supernational, complete with detailed scientific explanations that make it sound as real as gravity.

     In “Tenet,” it is the discovery of the ability for objects and humans to move in reverse. I never determined why this was something of any value, or any danger, but I admit I didn’t try very hard. But, apparently, it spells the end of civilization.

     The reason to watch “Tenet” isn’t for Nolan’s complicated plotting, but for John David Washington’s performance as a nameless American intelligence agent tasked with finding the source of this backwards threat.

    The movie opens with a somewhat pointless (not unlike many Bond openings) but superbly orchestrated scene of a military attack on a crowded concert hall in Kiev. Washington is part of a counter-military force, his heroic actions earning him a step up in the international intelligence world.

     He soon is looking dapper, arriving at a posh restaurant to meet a highly placed British agent, played by Nolan’s go-to old guy, Michael Caine. The most engaging scene in the film as Caine plays the arrogant Brit to perfection, suggesting that the American might want to replace his Brooks Brothers suit that “won’t cut it” in the high-stakes society he’s bound for.

      Our hero is paired up with another agent, Neil (not sure why he has a name), played by Robert Pattinson as if he’s part of an “Ocean’s 11” cast. 

    Once established that he needs to meet Andrei Sator, a maniacal Russian played with seething gusto by Kenneth Branagh (the star of Nolan’s “Dunkirk”), Washington’s spy finds a way to cozy up to Sator’s tall, aloof blonde wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) who’s an art dealer.

    Nolan’s dialogue is snappy and shallow and virtually pointless.

      While not as good as most editions of “Mission: Impossible” and only slightly smarter than most Bonds, “Tenet” provides a fun ride around the world, from set piece to set piece (strikingly shot by Hoyte van Hoytema). But its central idea seems more suited to a Marvel superhero film rather than a serious Christopher Nolan picture.

  

A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK (2020)

    As of late, any discussion of Woody Allen focuses not on his films but on claims by his 35-year-old daughter and her mother Mia Farrow that the filmmaker molested the girl when she was seven. Since they were dismissed by the courts in the 1990s, Allen has continued to deny the charges as he has raised his own family with his wife of 23 years, Soon-Yi Previn.

    Since the #MeToo movement began, Farrow and journalist son Ronan have revived the charges in an attempt to have Allen blackballed from the film world. (Now in the form of an HBO documentary.) In many ways, they have succeeded, as Amazon dropped a distribution deal with Allen, essential blocking “Rainy Day” from an American release for nearly two years.

     Ironically, I was able to see the film by purchasing it on, you guessed it, Amazon.com.  While it’s not among Allen’s best, it’s an entertaining light comedy with a good script that should have played better than it does.

     Any story contained in a single day has an automatic appeal—no matter how mundane (and this is far from that); sharing a full day of experiences of someone inevitably holds viewers’ interest. On top of that, “Rainy Day” offers a tour of some of the city’s most entrancing locales.

     Gatsby (Timothée Chalamet) and Ashleigh (Elle Fanning) are a college couple spending a weekend in Manhattan that goes array when they become separated during their first day there. Ashleigh, a journalism student, has arranged an interview with her favorite director, the brooding Roland Pollard (Liv Schreiber), who confides in her that he’s ready to quit the business.

     When the film stays on Ashleigh’s “Alice in Wonderland” wild ride—Pollard invites her to a screening of his new movie (which he hates); she accompanies screenwriter Ted (Jude Law) when he spots his wife (Rebecca Hall) cheating on him and then ends up at dinner with movie star Francisco Vega (Diego Luna)—it’s a joy.  Fanning is perfect as the hyperventilating college student who can’t imagine why these famous men all find her alluring while never forgetting her role as a journalist trying to get a good story.

     Unfortunately, too much of the film follows New York native Gatsby (his pretentious name is never questioned by anyone in the film) and his dreary day, as he sees high school friends and reconnects with an old girlfriend’s younger sister (Selena Gomez). Chalamet and Gomez, both disastrously miscast, provide so little energy that the movie virtually comes to a halt whenever they’re on screen.

       This isn’t the first recent Allen film that has been marred by bad casting and clunky acting: “Anything Else,” “Whatever Works,” “Curse of the Jade Scorpion,” “Café Society” and “Wonder Wheel” all had similar problems.

      Chalamet, the critically acclaimed 25-year-old who scored an Oscar nomination for “Call Me by Your Name” (2017), rarely escapes the character’s self-possessed pose. Most of the time Chalamet acts more like a middle schooler than a college kid, even though the character is written as a street-smart young man who loves to gamble and play the piano. He seems to be giving no effort in his line readings.

          Even worse is Gomez, who comes off as a nervous newcomer trying to be cool even though she’s been acting since she’s been a kid. (She held her own in last year’s “The Dead Don’t Die”).

      Schreiber and Luna are especially good, working hard to represent self-centered Hollywood types, but it’s Cherry Jones, playing Gatsby’s elitist mother, who delivers the film’s best monologue, a devastating admission played with calm precision by this superb actress.

    For the umpteenth time, Allen offers a wonderful tour of some of the city’s coolest locations, including Carlyle Hotel (and its famous piano bar), the Plaza Athénée, Minetta Tavern in Greenwich Village, the Met, Central Park and the Kaufman-Astoria Studios, where New York movies have been shot for 50 years. Maybe the best line in the film is when Gatsby laments his girlfriend’s absence: “…the city has its own agenda.”

     Despite the unrelenting campaign against him, the 85-year-old writer-director refuses to go quietly into retirement. He’s completed another film, “Rifkin’s Festival,” starring his old friend Wallace Shawn, which has opened in Europe. Here’s hoping that I don’t have to book an overseas flight to see it.  

 

HOLLYWOOD PARTY (1934)

      Before television, movie studios often released pictures that were essentially variety shows, primarily for the purpose of publicizing it stars.

    MGM was the king of these promotional motion pictures and this odd-ball collection of comedy bits, celebrity walk-ons and impressive set design is one of the more entertaining from the studio.

    Jimmy Durante, a comedian-singer with a distinguishing large nose (he was known as “The Schnoz”) stars as a fictional version of himself whose movie franchise, the Tarzan-spoofing “Schnaran the Conqueror” needs a box-office boost.

     The trailer for the next installment runs in a packed theater after a Garbo picture and the reaction is, shall we say, less than positive. (Though the clump of fake hair pasted on Durante’s bare chest should have earned a few chuckles.),

       To solve the problem, his producers suggest attempting to purchase a real-life lion (rather than have Durante wrestling with the fake one they’ve been using in his jungle battles). Coincidentally, a “lion baron” (who knew?) was planning to attend the big party Durante is throwing that night.

      But enough about the idiotic “plot” that is taking aim at MGM’s own Tarzan films with Johnny Weissmuller. The stars that parade through the picture include Charles Butterworth, Eddie Quillan, June Clyde, Lupe Velez (not exactly household names today) and Laurel and Hardy. Though it is meant to be the comic centerpiece of the picture, an egg-cracking sequence between the comic duo and Velez hasn’t aged well. (But I’ve never found much in the Laurel and Hardy playbook very funny.)

     Legendary MGM set designer Edwin B. Willis turns Durante “house” into a mansion worthy of Gatsby, all beautifully photographed by James Wong Howe. Astonishingly, the orchestra is situated on the side of what must be a 40-foot wall, each musician sitting on an individual shelf attached to the wall. 

     But the real highlights of the film come from unlikely guests: Mickey Mouse and the Three Stooges.

     The color cartoon, jumping out of this black and white film, is an innovative Disney musical short, “Hot Choc-late Soldiers” in which a troop of gingerbread men go to war. Mickey introduces the cartoon in an exchange with Durante.

     Moe, Larry and Curley show up as autograph hounds who mistake one of a group of scientists for Clark Gable. The scientists take the time to study Curley’s head (who hasn’t?), quickly identifying the trio as Neanderthals, bopping each of them on the head to listen to the sound. The look on the Stooges’ faces as they become experiments in the middle of a party is priceless—who ever dared dismissed them as actors?

     Maybe the biggest stars connected to the film are the gallery of filmmakers who took part: Richard Boleslawski, Allan Dwan, Edmund Goulding, George Stevens and Sam Wood, all among the top directors of the day.  And how about this lineup of composers: Arthur Freed, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers and Nacio Herb Brown.

     The party closes when a lion is released—I think Laurel is the culprit—sending the over-dressed guesting running chaotically. All this in 68 minutes.

  

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM (2020)

    This adaptation of August Wilson’s 1984 stage drama plays like the preface of a bigger, more involving story or maybe a sketch that he planned to insert into another work.

     I’m not sure if this film adaptation, scripted by veteran writer Ruben Santiago-Hudson and directed by George C. Wolfe, is trimmed from the original, but all that’s really left is a superb acting workout as group of musicians offer their view of surviving in a racist society.

     The story takes place during a Chicago recording session for blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (known as the “Mother of the Blues”), who along with Bessie Smith, remains the best remembered blues shouter of the 1920s and early 1930s. This legendary tough performer makes endless, often arbitrary and petty, demands of her white record producers, using her popularity to exert herself as a black woman with power.

     The primary dispute involves her demand to have an old-fashioned intro spoken by her nephew, who stutters. The young, outspoken trumpeter in her backup band Levee (Chadwick Boseman in his final performance) finds it especially foolish as he images the band moving away from classic blues and into jazz (he’s clearly under the influence of the genre-altering playing of Louis Armstrong).

     Central to the film is the intense debate between the musicians as they rehearse in the backroom. It is a fine ensemble, led by Glynn Turman as Toledo, the pianist, and featuring Colman Domingo as trombonist Cutler, Michael Potts as bassist Slow Drag and Boseman. Everyone has their moments, but it’s Boseman who burns up the screen in the most charismatic role of his short career.

     Working in television since 2006, the actor had his movie breakthrough playing baseball legend Jackie Robinson in “42” (2013) and then hit his stride with his incendiary performance as R&B singer James Brown in “Get on Up” (2014). Best known as the fearless Black Panther in the Marvel film of the same name, he also gave solid performances as a cop in “21 Bridges” and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in “Marshall” (2017). He was 43 when he died last August of colon cancer.

    It seems inevitable, and deserved, that the late actor will be awarded the Oscar for this performance.

    I was less impressed with Viola Davis’ over-the-top impersonation of Rainey. While Ma had a reputation of being a mean, domineering woman, the play presents her a completely unlikeable, close to unbearable and Davis’ performance brings little nuance to this gifted singer.

     What “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (the title comes from the song they are recording) does best is show the central place music held in the African American community, serving as a safe refuge from the harsh realities of Jim Crow America. 

  

PIECES OF A WOMAN (2020)

    Sometimes, all you need is a great performance. That would be my argument for this film starring Vanessa Kirby as a woman coping with the loss of her baby during childbirth.

    As Martha, she sustains her grief over the course of the movie, for stretches virtually unspoken sadness, compelling one to watch even when the script seems more concerned with the responses by her partner (Shia LaBeouf) and mother (the magnificent Ellen Burstyn). This kind of emotionally intense role doesn’t show up in Hollywood films very often, thus it’s not surprising it was made by Hungarian filmmakers, director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber.

    The first act of the picture offers Martha’s excruciating home delivery aided by Eva (Molly Parker), who is filling in because the couple’s chosen midwife is unavailable when Martha’s time arrives. At times hard to watch, the sequence has the vivid immediacy of a documentary, which makes the heartbreaking results that much more impactful.

    In the aftermath, the Boston prosecutor brings charges against Eva, encouraged by the infant’s father, who can’t accept Martha’s outwardly passive reaction to the tragedy. Even more determined to see the midwife punished is Eva’s controlling mother, who never stops flaunting her wealth and moral superiority as she treats her grown daughter like a child.

     The movie loses its steam when it enters the courtroom and we’re expected to take the melodrama of this story as seriously as we have Martha’s emotional journey. The script never offers enough substance to make the court case believable—it’s nothing more than an excuse to fix blame for a terrible tragedy.

     This character deserved a better film, but Kirby, who played Princess Margaret in the TV series “The Crown” and the White Widow, a reluctant ally of Nathan Hunt in the most recent “Mission: Impossible,” shows herself to be an actress of impressive depth and subtlety. In many ways, her work her reminded me of the great performances her movie mother Burstyn gave in the 1970s. Both women deserve Oscar nominations for their performances.  

 

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS (2020)

     There have been dozens of films about the travails of teenage pregnancy over the years, most determined to preach and vilify the girl.

     This new indie picture avoids that pitfall, presenting a moody, depressed teenager forced to travel to New York City from the rural central Pennsylvania town to have an abortion.

      Angst-ridden Autumn, perfectly captured by Sidney Flanigan in her debut, accompanied by her more upbeat cousin Skylar (an equally impressive Talia Ryder) slip out of town barely noticed by her self-indulgent parents and hop a bus to NYC. There they face the complex hurdles of arranging to end Autumn’s pregnancy, not to mention the severe limits of their finances.

   Unable to afford a hotel, they roam the streets and all-night joints of the city during their three-day adventure. The journey—always more important than the destination—takes on the many compromised and challenges that face a modern teenage girl. Any viewer, especially an adult, will watch this documentary-like picture with constant fear that the worse is about to happen to these young girls alone in the city.

    Yet what they experience is no worse than the world of a suburban high school as the girls approach their situation with an assumption that they will somehow get through it. It’s Skylar, the prettier and more social of the two, who has already learned how to use the male gaze to her advantage, even as Autumn disapproves.

    The film takes its title from a memorable scene in which a health worker asks Autumn a series of questions about her relationships that require an answer of “never, rarely, sometimes or always.” It’s then that the unemotional Autumn finally faces her reality.

    Written and directed by Eliza Hittman, who directed a pair of episodes of the teen-problem themed Netflix series “13 Reasons Why,” brings a keen ear for how teens talk and insight into how they interact with the world—a rarity in Hollywood.