TOP
GUN: MAVERICK (2022)
Almost 40 years ago, Tom Cruise became a
movie star by dancing in his underwear in “Risky Business.” That he’s still a
star as he nears his 60th birthday (July 3) stands as a minor miracle
in an entertainment era dominated by youth and computer-generated spectacle.
In this sequel to his 36-year-old megahit,
Cruise refuses to act his ago even as his renegade pilot Pete “Maverick”
Mitchell is forced to take on the role of teacher; the adult in the room, no
less. The original, a testosterone-driven frat house collection of egotistical
Navy pilots competing for glory, represents what made the 1980s such a
forgettable movie decade. The new film, though anchored in the same clichés and
stereotypes, manages to be soaring entertainment, with its “Star Wars”-like POV
aviation photography and the charisma of Cruise.
Admittedly, I winched through the set-up:
The Navy brass (the venerable Ed Harris and Jon Hamm) wishes Maverick would retire,
but his friendship with his old colleague Iceman (Val Kilmer), now an admiral,
scores him a post back at the Top Gun training school. But once the training
begins, it’s a compelling story, as the young flyboys (and a girl) train to
take out a nuclear facility in some unnamed enemy country.
Arriving back in San Diego, Maverick
reconnects with Penny (Jennifer Connelly)—a character apparently mentioned but
never portrayed in the first film—who runs a bar near the base, where
20something pilots listen to 80s music (in a galaxy far, far away….). Like the
original, the pilots compete to be the best and earn the chance to go on the
upcoming bombing run.
Maverick’s emotional return intensifies when
he finds the son of his late friend Goose among the pilots. Rooster (Miles
Teller) holds Maverick responsible for his father’s death. Emotions also run
high when Maverick is summoned to Iceman’s home where they have a
heart-to-heart talk even though the Admiral (like Kilmer himself) can barely
speak because of throat cancer. The scene is more about Cruise paying tribute
to his old friend than any “Top Gun” plot point.
Director Joe Kosinski (“Oblivion,” also with
Cruise) smartly keeps the film airborne most of the time in death-defying
maneuvers that reportedly were flown by the actors themselves. Maybe, but
what’s on-screen owes much to brilliant editing by Eddie Hamilton (who did the
last two “Mission: Impossible” films and the upcoming two-parter). I’m sure
there’s plenty of CGI here, but what’s important is that the danger feels real.
Though the ending plays out like the
opening of a Bond picture, “Top Gun: Maverick” won me over in its second half,
in large part because Cruise, though never a great actor, remains so committed
to the character and the story that he makes even the ridiculous seem
plausible. It’s easy to forget, but that’s what we should expect from movie
stars.
SPIDER-MAN:
INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (2018) and
SPIDER-MAN:
NO WAY HOME (2021)
Though I’ve never considered Spider-Man a
very appealing superhero—he’s too whinny and needy for my taste—I binged the
two recent versions of his seemingly every-changing backstory.
While the animated “Into the Spider-Verse”
finds a way to liven up the shy teen turned savoir of the world formula, the
Tom Holland-starring live action “No Way Home” wastes its brainstorm of bringing
all three Spider-Men together.
The winner of the Oscar for best
animation, “Into the Spider-Verse” features a mild-mannered African American
teen Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), whose graphic art skills turn him
into a Spider-Man, eventually joining forces with a gaggle of Spider-People,
include a mischievous pig, Spider-Ham, an amusing homage to Warner Bros.’
classic toon Porky Pig.
The
film, directed by veteran animators Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey and
one-time “Letterman” writer Rodney Rothman, is loaded with impressive visuals
but the story was yet another version of “megalomaniac wants to destroy the
world.” “Into the Spider-Verse” also suffers from what I can only describe as
distinctive visionary planes, in which the characters are dropped onto a CGI
background, never seeming to be part of it.
I’ll admit to not having seen a “Spider-Man”
since Tobey Maguire’s second outing as the web-master, having skipped Andrew
Garfield’s two films and the first two Holland pictures (though I did catch
Holland’s character in the final “Avengers” episode.
My previous opinion of Holland was confirmed
in “No Way Home”; he plays the role as if he’s the best friend in a high school
romance. At least Maguire and Garfield, as they have shown in other film roles,
are actors who can pivot from youthful innocent to mature gravitas.
I never believed Holland’s Spider-Man was
capable of his many feats, as he battles, among others, Dr. Osborn (Willem
Dafoe) returning from the dead from the first 2002 adventure.
The script makes a weak attempt to explain
the existence of different universes co-existing, which opens up the portal for
Garfield and Maguire to meet Holland and plan an “Avenger”-like team battle. The banter between the three superheroes,
which should have been the highlight of the film, never goes beyond high school
reunion cleverness.
At 2 hours and 28 minutes, the film is 30
minutes too long, padded out with redundant heartfelt bonding moments between
Peter Parker, his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and his best buddy (Benedict Wong).
The high-profile supporting cast provides some
diversion from the garish CGI, including Jamie Foxx, Benedict Cumberbatch (as
Dr. Strange), Alfred Molina and Marisa Tomei, returning as Spiderman’s feisty
aunt.
DOWNTON
ABBEY: A NEW ERA (2022)
Don’t let the title fool you: this is the
same era “Downton Abbey” fans have been obsessing over since the show debuted
in this country in 2010. So jam packed with plot developments that you almost
need a score card, the film temporarily splits the family by sending a large
gaggle of the Crawley clan to the south of France to visit a villa that Violet
(Maggie Smith) has inherited from a man she knew more than half a century
earlier.
Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), now running
the house as her father Robert (Hugh Bonneville) has “retired” from being a
wealthy landowner, holds forth back at Downton as a film company arrives to
shoot a silent drama. That storyline turns out to be the most interesting of
this second movie sequel to the television series. Hugh Dancy (“Law and Order”)
as the film’s director and Laura Haddock and Dominic West as the stars bring
new blood to the too-familiar collection of upstairs-downstairs characters.
Stealing generously from “Singin’ in the
Rain,” the script explores the sudden changes in the movie business with the
arrival of sound, which forces the director to insert spoken dialogue to save
the film from being shuttered. That Mary is the one who suggests they dub in
vocals is either writer-creator Julian Fellowes’ jab at the industry’s lack of
ingenuity or just another opportunity to promote the “specialness” of the upper
class.
As usual, the Dowager is given the best
lines, including wondering why they would add sound to movies as she thought
the best thing about the cinema was that you couldn’t hear it. Both the
family’s current butler Barrow (Robert James-Collier) and the retired butler
Carson (Jim Carter) are given substantial roles in “A New Era” while Mary’s
husband (Matthew Goode) couldn’t get away from “The Offer” (the miniseries
about “The Godfather” in which he plays Robert Evans) to make an appearance.
Like its predecessor, this film doesn’t try
to be anything more than a few more episodes crammed together made specifically
for fans who can never get enough of these characters.
THE
UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT (2022)
You have to give him props: After years of
plowing through January-February acting duds, Nicolas Cage pokes fun of his
reputation in this ridiculously titled picture, playing a puffed-up version of
himself.
Egotistical yet lacking any sense of self-esteem
and fearful that his lucrative career has reached its inglorious end, Cage as
Cage accepts a gig to hang out with a rich Spaniard (Pedro Pascal) who’s an
obsessive fan. (His Nick Cage museum is a sucker punch to all those memorabilia
collectors.)
Satirizing the depth that celebrities
will go to hold onto a sliver of fame—we’ve seen the reality shows—the movie,
written by Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten and directed by Gormican, has much to
enjoy.
But, inevitably and understandably, it morphs
into another bad “Nick Cage” popcorn flick, even if we are meant to chuckle at
it. The supporting cast---Sharon Horgan as his put-upon ex-wife, Lily Sheen as
his daughter and Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz as FBI agents who recruit
the actor, seem to have been selected for their generic, B-movie screen presence.
Unfortunately, Cage plays himself like a
cartoon character, an overly rehearsed “SNL” skit version; you never feel like
he’s looking very closely at the mirror.
In the 1980s and ‘90s, Cage was a
risk-taking, sometimes outrageous actor, doing memorable work in “Birdy”
(1984), “Raising Arizona” (1987), “Moonstruck” (1987), “Wild at Heart” (1990),
in the cable movie “Red Rock West” (1993) and then culminating in his
Oscar-winning role in “Leaving Las Vegas” (1996). Then popular, stupid films—”The Rock” (1996), “Con
Air” (1997) and “Face/Off” (1997)—sent his career in a different direction. He
became the Cage satirized in “Unbearable Weight.”
Between the action junk, the actor has managed
to squeeze in some quality work, in “Adaptation.” (2002), to me his best
performance; “The Weather Man” (2005); “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New
Orleans” (2009); and last year’s “Pig,” which he should have been nominated
for. Though the 58-year-old has made more bad movies than good ones, he’s still
has had a pretty good career. And one can hope that this film signals his
desire to work on more serious fare as his senior years approach.
Then again, he’s playing Dracula in
“Renfield,” a film scheduled for next year.
THE
OUTFIT (2022)
This confusing tale of mid-1950s Chicago
mobsters comes close to being a one-man show, as the only reason to watch is
Mark Rylance.
I first became aware of this acclaimed
British stage actor in the imported miniseries “Wolf Hall,” in which Rylance
plays Cromwell to Damien Lewis’ Henry VIII. He was mesmerizing and has been
ever since in his big screen performances. His deliberate, low-key menacing
line readings and sad eyes combine to steal every scene he’s in. As a
supporting player, he dominates in “Bridge of Spies,” “The Trail of the Chicago
7,” “Dunkirk” and “Don’t Look Up,” to name a few.
In this new film, he plays Leonard, an
old-school British tailor—or “cutter” as he insists—trained on London’s Savile
Row and now designing suits for wealthy Chicagoans. For reasons never
explained, his shop also serves as a dead drop for mob communication, thus
spurring a late-night situation in which a dispute between two young hoods
plays out in very deadly ways.
Though “The Outfit” was written for the
screen, by director Graham Moore (who won an Oscar for “The Imitation Game”)
and Johnathan McClain, it plays like an off-Broadway production, set entirely
in Leonard’s business and offering fewer and fewer plausible reasons for
characters to pop in and out of the shop.
The script creates multilayered,
hard-to-fathom explanations for why characters know what they know and do what
they do. It’s not worth following that closely.
Rylance, who also narrates parts of the
story, giving another under-cooked, detail-oriented performance as this
stereotype of a mid-Century professional. There’s much more to Leonard, but
it’s revealed in such a last-minute rush that the impact, like the film,
doesn’t land.
NOSFERATU
(1922) and PAYDAY (1922)
Among the arts, motion pictures are a
relative newcomer, which makes watching films that were made 100 years ago a
recent treat. For no good reason, I re-watched these two very different movies
released in 1922.
The German silent “Nosferatu” introduced
the Dracula legend, from the 1897 novel by Bram Stoker, to the screen. Like
most vampire pictures, there isn’t much to the story except for the chilling
presence of the title character. This version shines as an early work of
director F.W. Murnau, one of the masters of silent cinema. In many ways,
“Nosferatu” invented the horror movie genre.
The director’s “The Last Laugh” (1924),
“Faust” (1925) and “Sunrise” (1927) are among the greatest movies of the 1920s,
with “Sunrise,” the first of his Hollywood films, regularly listed as among the
finest movies ever made. Murnau was 42 when he died in a car crash in Santa
Barbara in 1931.
“Nosferatu” gained legendary status
because it was out of circulation for many years as the Stoker estate sued to
halt distribution. In addition, the otherworldly performance of Max Schreck as
the vampire Orlok was rumored to have been so effective because Schreck was
actually a vampire. In truth, it’s all about the makeup and Murnau’s superb
direction. With a skeletal-like head, Vulcanish ears and fingers that look
about a foot long, Schreck, at 6 foot 4, creates a ghoul not easily forgotten.
(In fact, Willem Defoe earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as
Schreck in the 2000 film “Shadow of the Vampire”—John Malkovich plays Murnau.)
The most dramatic scenes of the film come after Orlok smuggles himself onto a ship headed for Wisboug, Germany (not sure where exactly Transylvania is supposedly located) where he has bought a house near our hero Jonathan and his wife. You know trouble is brewing when Orlok comments on seeing a picture of young Ellen, “Your wife has a beautiful neck.”
While
ensconced in his casket in the hull of the ship, Orlok unleashes the plague and
kills the entire crew, with only Jonathan escaping. Once on the ship, the vampire goes from just
a creepy character to a horrific, specter of evil.
While Schreck is memorable, the best
performance in the film is given by Alexander Granach as Knock, the real estate
agent who has some psychic connection to Orlok, eventually going mad and
imprisoned. The wild search for Knock when he escapes plays like an outtake
from another movie—maybe a Keaton or Chaplin comedy.
“Pay Day,” one of Charlie Chaplin’s final
short films, fulfilled his First National contract before he ventured into
starring and directing feature-length movies full-time. Over its 20 minutes, “Pay Days” follows a
construction worker (a foppish Chaplin), who arrives at the site in his usual
Little Tramp outfit, offering the foreman (silent comic legend Mack Swain) an
orchid to apologize for his lateness. Later, the Tramp swoons over the
foreman’s daughter (Chapin’s longtime leading lady Edna Purviance).
The picture’s highlight involves a camera
trick, in which the film is run backward to make it look like his co-workers
are tossing bricks up to Chaplin as he stands on a scaffolding.
Later, after failing to hide his pay from his
wife, he gets drunk with his buddies and then sneaks home at 5 a.m. In a
classic bit that was repeated many times in the last 100 years, the alarm goes
off just as he’s trying to slip into bed, waking his wife and forcing him to
pretend to be dressing for work.
“Pay Day” is far from Chaplin’s best,
especially coming right after one of his masterpieces, “The Kid” (1921). But
all of his work, from 1914 to the early ‘20s, forms the foundation for all
movie comedy going forward.
Among the best films of 1922 were Erich
von Stroheim’s epic “Foolish Wives,” Frank Lloyd’s “Oliver Twist” with Jackie
Coogan and Lon Chaney and Allan Dwan’s “Robin Hood,” starring the first great
action star Douglas Fairbanks.
ONE
NIGHT IN MIAMI (2020)
Remember the 1985 film “Insignificance”
that brought Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Joe McCarthy and Albert Einstein
(without using their real names) all into a hotel room for a night of drinking
and philosophizing? The idea—not to mention the execution—ranks just a tick
above fan-fiction.
This well-received entry into this off-beat
genre at least is based on a sliver of truth and uses real names. On February
25, 1964, Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight boxing
champion of the world and then joined pop star Sam Cooke and football great Jim
Brown in the hotel room of Malcolm X.
These men were among the era’s
high-profile African-Americans, whose independence and willingness to speak
their mind would alter the standing of Blacks in American society.
Brown, then 28, arguably the finest player
in NFL history, was about to exit football for a movie career; Cooke, at 33, already
the first black performer to own the rights to his music, was among the top
recording artists in America; 22-year-old Clay, under the guidance of Malcolm,
was about to announce his conversion to Islam, embrace the ideals of the Nation
of Islam and become Muhammad Ali.
The film, based on Kemp Powers’ play,
focuses on Malcolm X’s insistence that his friends aren’t sacrificing enough
for the Civil Rights movement and, by extension, their people. Too much of the
movie amounts to Malcolm lecturing the others.
Of course, there is no record of what was
actually discussed at this summit, and the only living witness (Brown)
apparently isn’t talking---thus the dialogue is pure fiction.
While Clay/Ali’s boxing career brings
these men together, the boxer (played by Eli Goree) receives little attention,
painted as a rather naïve young man who will be molded by the Nation. And
Malcolm (Kingsley Ben-Adir) seems instinctively to know not to mess too much
with the low-key Brown (Aldis Hodge). So the story, in large part, comes down
the Chicago preacher debating Cooke. (Ironically, both men would be shot to
death within the year.)
One of the key moments of the film comes
when Malcolm pulls out the record “Blowin’ in the Wind” and plays the Bob Dylan
song on the motel turntable. Why would Malcolm haul a record to Miami and, even
odder, what motel includes a record player? This is hardly a suite.
The implication is that what Malcolm tells
Cooke inspires him to write his Civil Right anthem “A Change Is Going Come,”
but in fact he had already recorded the song and had performed it a few weeks before
the Miami gathering on the “Tonight Show.”
Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”) gives the
standout performance as Cooke, earning him a supporting actor Oscar nomination.
His Cooke is the only one of the four who made me see a real person behind the
famous name.
But facts aren’t what “One Night in
Miami” is about. Astonishingly, the script did earn Powers an Oscar nomination
and good notices for first-time director Regina King, who won the 2018
supporting actress Oscar for “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
This
kind of didactic drama is easy pickings for filmmakers wanting to offer a
pointed history lesson to a new generation. And maybe this film does that, but
for someone very familiar with the accomplishments and importance of these men,
it is more reductive than enlightening.
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