July 2023

OPPENHEIMER (2023)

       Christopher Nolan, even with “Memento,” the “Batman” trilogy, “Inception” and “Interstellar” on his resume, scales new heights as a filmmaker with this fast-paced, succinctly written and brilliantly edited psychological profile of the man most responsible for creating the atomic bomb.

       While the three-hour picture touches on the important events of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life and, plot-wise, spends most of its time on his work during the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the bombs that ended World War II when dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the film is most interested in the volatile relationship between science and politics and the way hysteria over communism altered lives.

     Irish actor Cillian Murphy, best known as Scarecrow in the “Dark Knight” series, seems an unlikely choice to anchor a very expensive, high-profile picture, but he nails this conflicted, prickly man, making good use of his hypnotic eyes and quiet manner.

      Adeptly chronicling Oppenheimer’s rise from a precocious college student to a famed astronomy and nuclear physics professor at Berkeley, the movie manages to capture the clubby, gossipy community of pre-war scientists with dialogue that is both telling and realistic. And it moves at a lightning pace, jumping from the classroom to cocktail parties to the bedroom. To me, it works beautifully (based on a biography by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin), but I can’t imagine a viewer getting much out of the film without at least a passing knowledge of the dynamics of World War II and America’s uneasy alliance with the Soviet Union.

     Like most of the director’s pictures, “Oppenheimer” is a technical marvel, with world-class work by editor Jennifer Lame (“Tenet,” “Manchester by the Sea”) and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (“Dunkirk,” “Interstellar”).

      The centerpiece of the film—and Oppenheimer’s life—begins when Gen. Groves (a no-nonsense Matt Damon) convinces him to take charge of the bomb-making aspect of the Manhattan Project. Using the tension created by the time-sensitive nature of an existential world war and the gradual process of science, Nolan creates what seems like a believable tale of how the atomic bomb came to be, culminating in the first test in Los Alamos, New Mexico on July 16, 1945, just weeks before the bombs were used to expedite Japan’s surrender.

      Beyond Murphy’s superb portrayal of this low-key, but egoistical man of science, the film overflows with small, memorable performances, including Damon; Emily Blunt, as Oppenheimer’s long-suffering but loyal wife; Tom Conti as Albert Einstein; Josh Harnett as fellow Cal prof, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ernest Lawrence; Benny Safdie as hydrogen bomb inventor Edward Teller and Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer’s longtime mistress.

      In the second half of this epic, Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a key member of the Atomic Energy Commission, dominates as he maneuvers to cancel Oppenheimer’s influence over post-war nuclear policy. Behind the scenes, he uses the era’s suspicions of even the slightest connection to communism and, underlying everything, Oppenheimer’s Jewishness to tarnish his reputation. It’s one of Downey’s finest performances.

    In addition to the questions of loyalty to the U.S., the film examines the moral questions faced by scientists working on the bomb (it’s terrible, but better us than the Germans, right?) and the even more destructive hydrogen bomb that was developed after the war. Oppenheimer’s idea that an international board should control weapons is seen as more proof that he was being swayed by Soviet influence.

      I’m sure the film doesn’t perfectly align with all the facts of these mid-Century events, but it’s not meant to be a documentary. “Oppenheimer” is an exceptionally crafted feature that manages to be both a grand work of entertainment and an insightful look at a crucial event in American history. Not only is this Nolan’s greatest achievement, but it ranks as one of the best films of this century.  

  

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE---DEAD RECKONING, PART ONE (2023)

     Is there no end to the existential threats to mankind Hollywood screenwriters can invent that require heroes to save us?

       In the latest chapter of the Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) story, he and his IMF unit (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg are back along with Rebecca Ferguson) are tasked with obtaining a key that manages the all-powerful, but poorly explained “Entity.”

     Though all the nations in the world are after it, the rogue players, as always, seem to beat them at every turn, requiring Hunt and team to once again, this is film No. 7, stand as the only hope to avert the apocalypse.

      Two women are the picture’s most interesting characters. From 2018’s “Fallout,” Vanessa Kirby’s White Widow returns, bringing an amoral Eurotrash duplicitousness, playing off Hunt’s unimpeachable righteousness. Meanwhile, Grace (Hayley Atwell), a slick pickpocket, injects some street-level crookedness into this battle of genius operatives, becoming both foil and friend to Hunt’s efforts.

      Atwell, Peggy in various Marvel adventures, finally has a role worthy of her skills as she matches Ethan’s spy-craft despite her character being an amateur. Previously, she gave impressive performances in British TV miniseries, as Julia in “Brideshead Revisited” (2008) and as Margaret in “Howards End” (2017).

     Returning to the series is the memorable Henry Czerny as Kittridge, Hunt’s distrusting controller from the first, and best film of the franchise. He’s the perfect government go-between, playing both sides but never completely committing to either. You never knew what he was thinking in the 1996 actioner, which hewed closer to the TV original than any of the sequels. But images of Hunt pulling off a mask, dangling in the middle of a Langley computer room and dodging a helicopter chasing a train in a tunnel are essential in development of the modern action picture.

      Of course, the new film features some incredible chases, including a dizzying and very funny race through the narrow streets of Rome with Hunt and Grace handcuffed to each other, squeezed into a mini-Fiat and, of course, the epic motorcycle jump off a cliff that’s thrilling even though I’d seen part of it in the trailer about 20 times.

    This film, coming just a year after “Top Gun Maverick,” cements Cruise’s status as the most important movie star in Hollywood, a seemingly ageless icon (he’s 61) who is equally believable doing an impossible stunt and mourning a colleague’s death. His continuingly evolving Hunt grows more human, more fragile and more introspective about his place in the world with every film (I’m hoping for a final film showing him enjoying retirement, coaching Little League and battling with irritating neighbors.) He’s 100 times a better actor than he was when the series began 27 years ago.  

      Though the film is “Part One,” I didn’t feel cheated at the end; writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, working on his third “Mission: Impossible” (he’s also written four other Cruise pictures), gives viewers a real ending while keeping the mystery of The Entity unfinished business that will require more impossibilities from Hunt next year.

  

711 OCEAN DRIVE (1950)

     This B-movie, released amidst the wave of mid-century film noirs, has more connection with the rise-and-fall gangster tales from the early 1930s. If Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart starred instead of Edmond O’Brien, this would be a highly admired picture airing regularly on TCM. (Instead, I found it on YouTube.)

    O’Brien, who followed his years as a solid supporting player with a series of hard-nose cops and criminals in postwar crime movies, plays Mal Granger, a discontent telephone company tech. After being introduced to the illegal off-track-betting operation run by tough guy Vince Walter (Barry Kelley), Mal quits his legit gig and begins updating the technology used by the gambling house. (At the time, it was illegal to place horse racing bets outside the track.)

     Mal quickly falls for the lifestyle, seeing the boss’ girl (Dorothy Patrick) and pining for more power. Then, right on cue, Walter is killed and Mal takes over the business. But trouble is brewing behind the scenes as a special police crime unit starts probing Los Angeles gambling and a powerful mobster from the Midwest (the deceptively grandfather-like Otto Kruger) wants a piece of Mal’s action.

     What makes this film stand out from a hundred others from the era is a smartly written, multilayered plot along with the care director Joseph M. Newman takes with even the briefest of scenes. A sequence in which Mal talks to a restaurant owner who knows a tailor (the underrate character actor Robert Osterloh) who could do a job involving a killing could have fit nicely into “The Godfather.”

       Joanne Dru, coming off three great films, “Red River” (1948), “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” (1949) and “All the King’s Men” (1949), plays a key role as Gail, the wife of Kruger’s righthand man (played by Don Porter), whose striking looks and roving eye are used to control Mal.

    Adding to its believability, the picture places the characters in numerous classic Southern California locations, including Hollywood Park racetrack; Gilmore Field, the old minor league baseball field; the Sunset Strip; one-time LA nightclub the Doll House and Palm Springs. (Oddly, the title address is Mal’s Malibu house but it doesn’t play much of a role in the film.)

    Like too many crime films, the ending falls short of the first 90 minutes. Here, it’s a complicated chase through the insides of Nevada’s Hoover Dam. Then, to make matters worse, the picture concludes with a short propaganda lecture on the evils of gambling.

    Director Newman, who spent many years as an assistant director (earning two nominations when that was an Oscar category) and part of MGM’s short film division, spent the 1950s and early ‘60s working in every genre, but mostly crime pictures. His best-known films are “The Gunfight at Dodge City” (1959) with Joel McCrea, the sci-fi adventure “This Island Earth” (1955), “The Big Circus” (1959) with Victor Mature and the Hollywood tale, “The George Raft Story” (1961). But “711 Ocean Drive” stands out, a low-budget gem worth seeking out.

  

BARBIE (2023)

     In a shrewd piece of marketing, filmmaker Greta Gerwig has combined the enduring popularity of Mattel’s young adult doll with a heavy-handed message of female empowerment in a world run by dunderheaded males. After two Oscar-nominated films both grounded in the very real lives of young women—“Lady Bird” (2017) and “Little Women” (2019)—her new film seems an odd turn toward the fantasy, computerized constructs of 21^st Century blockbusters. Then again, maybe that’s the point. 

      Without much explanation, the film introduces Barbieland, a cartoonish, mostly pink community—imagine Palm Springs meets Newport Beach—run by the full gamut of Barbies (apparently, the dolls come in all shapes and sizes and career aspirations) with the Kens standing around trying to look good for the gals. How and why this world exists, with talking and walking, human-sized Barbies and Kens (yet without the need for food or drink and lacking genitalia) is never addressed. Like a Marvel film, you either accept the ridiculousness of the premise or move on.

     But even if you buy into it, the inane dialogue is hard to endure. Each day in Barbieland begins with stereotypical (original?) Barbie (the shiny, exuberance Margot Robbie) repeating “Hi, Barbie” to dozens of her friends before more childish conversations take place. While I understand the cleverness of the dialogue, as Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are writing for inanimate objects, it doesn’t make it any easier on the ears.

      It turns out that all these dolls are still somehow connected to a real human whose thoughts influence the dolls. Strangely, no other Barbie has experienced this except the one played by Robbie. Anyway, she’s off to find an answer to various mental and physical changes by taking a long journey, with Ken (Ryan Gosling) onboard, to the real world.

      The film’s big dramatic irony, of course, comes when Barbie discovers our world that hasn’t been forever changed by the feminist power of the Barbie doll. In fact, it’s Ken who is empowered when he witnesses a society primarily run by men. (How that translates back in Barbieland is the film’s most problematic plot turn.)

      While the film makes legitimate points about identity and sexual politics, the script alternates between mini-lectures and sophomoric sarcasm, making the message difficult to take seriously. There is just about enough material here to sustain an episode of “Stranger Things.” 

      This film offers too many obstacles for someone who sees Barbie as an outdated, borderline harmful (like the overly realistic guns boys play with) influence on children; a far cry from the heroine of a feminist-themed movie.

  

FREEBIE AND THE BEAN (1974)

     Alan Arkin, who died in June at age 89, was both the most underrated and underused actor of the 1970s and ‘80s, following his hilarious and heartbreaking performance in “Catch-22.”

     In Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Joseph Heller’s acclaimed World War II satire (scripted by Buck Henry), Arkin plays Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Force pilot based in the Mediterranean who serves as the calm amid a comically dysfunctional military unit. His dream of being grounded because he’s crazy is thwarted by the so-called “Catch-22,” which stipulates (at least according to the brass) that anyone who asks to be grounded can’t be crazy and thus should keep flying.

     Up to that point, it looked like Arkin was destined for major stardom, having earned two best actor Oscar nominations in the 1960s, with his comic turn as a Soviet sub commander in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” (1966) and a thoughtful turn as an empathic deaf-mute in “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (1968).  He was also memorable as a drug dealer terrorizing a blind Audrey Hepburn in “Wait Until Dark” (1967).

      After “Catch-22,” he continued his quirky characterizations: As a trucker experiencing America in “Deadhead Miles” (1972), a lonely restaurateur in Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” (1972) and as another loner on the road in “Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins” (1975). Those films all failed at the box office.

      His two successes in the 1970s were “The In-Laws” (1979), a cult comedy in which he plays the innocent in-law of a mobster on the run and “Freebie and the Bean” (1974), a very dated police buddy movie co-starring James Caan.

    The nonstop comic dialogue between Caan’s Freebie and Arkin’s Bean (he plays a Latino, which gives you an idea of the script’s racism) as they keep tabs on a mobster is the only aspect of the film that saves it from being a complete disaster. Much of the film, set on Super Bowl weekend in San Francisco, is unwatchable, especially a long, pointless rant by Bean when he thinks his wife (Valerie Harper) has cheated on him. Director Richard Rush (“Psych Out,” “The Stunt Man”), seems to thrive on chaos and improvisation, giving the frenetic Arkin plenty of room to rift.

    In the 1980s, Arkin worked in television and on low budget pictures seen by few before he found his niche as a supporting player, starting with “Edward Scissorhands” (1990), “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992) and “Grosse Point Blank” (1997), eventually earning that long-deserved comeback Oscar playing the blunt speaking grandfather of a very wacky family in “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006). He was even better as the B-movie producer enthusiastically aiding the scheme to free the American hostages in Iran in “Argo” (2012), earning another Oscar nomination.

     He capped off his career with a sarcastic yet touching performance as a successful Hollywood agent, Norman Newlander, best friend to actor turned acting teacher, Sandy Kominsky (Michael Douglas) in the Netflix series “The Kominsky Method.” Their leisurely lunches at Musso and Frank, Hollywood’s most legendary restaurant, where they ruminated on life’s tragedies and the importance of carrying on, were a virtually Acting 101 class.

    Arkin, who reportedly could be prickly on the set, was, as an actor, probably a bit too human—a mumbler with a few too many nervous tics—to become a movie star.  Yet he inevitably brought something original to any film he was cast, even in recent dogs like “Stand Up Guys” and “Going in Style,” mirroring those who fight doubts and inadequacies to get along in an unforgiving world.

 

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023)

     Hollywood’s ultimate power duo—Steven Spielberg and George Lucas—have created some of the most memorable motion pictures of the past 40 years, but they seemingly can never leave well-enough alone.

     “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones” and “Jurassic Park,” landmark films of varying degrees have all been tainted by the pursuit of more money through lesser and lesser sequels.

      “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” released 15 years ago, pretty much left the beloved character in the dust, without a modicum of relevance. In fact, all indications were that Shia LeBeouf, who plays Indy’s son in the 2008 film, would take over the franchise. For various reasons, that wasn’t to be.

    So here we are again: Harrison Ford, made to appear sprightly at age 81, flies all over the world (travelling looks so painless in movies) in pursuit of an invention of Greek mathematician Archimedes.

    The picture opens with a flashback to Indy’s younger days—the digital de-aging works well here---in the midst of the retreat of the Nazis and his encounter with Jurgen Voller (the great Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen), who wants the ancient device for the Fuhrer.

     A fantastic pursuit inside and on-top-of a train filled with stolen artifacts offers the promise of a thrilling movie. But it’s all downhill from there as the chase for the mysterious dial moves ahead to 1969 and eventually sinks to Marvel-like fantasy.

     Jones has given up his archeological adventures as he looks like he can barely climb out of bed—until Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), the daughter of an old colleague, comes looking for the Greek antique.  

     Their love-hate relationship is about all the film offers in the way of character development. Instead, we are left to be amazed by one ridiculous vehicle chase after another, during which no one seems to get injured despite how many walls they end up being hurled against.

     The bad guys, Dr. Voller (now a NASA scientist!) and his henchmen, always are right behind Indy and Helena as they race around the world, defying logic in an era before tracking devices and GPS.

     Ford grimaces with his usual aplomb, while Waller-Bridge comes off as an amateur, lacking much in the way of screen presence. (Though, much to my surprise, she’s an accomplished TV actress and writer in the series “Fleabag” and “Killing Eve”) But here, essentially, her character is an inconsistent moveable piece used to create tension when there is none. To connect with veteran fans—the original movie is 42-years old—Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davies make appearances.

       For those looking for mindless action, director James Mangold doesn’t disappoint but the set-pieces grow less believable as they pile up on one another. Unfortunately, there is nothing here that matches the combination of intense action and intelligence the director brough to previous films, “3:10 to Yuma” (2007) and “Ford v Ferrari” (2019). 

    “Indiana Jones” Part V isn’t a complete waste of time, but I would have thought that a more inventive script could have been cobbled together if the Spielberg-Lucas entertainment cabal were going to bring this famous character back for this encore.

  

CHESS STORY (2023)

       Despite the title, this story of Nazi cruelty has less to do with rooks and pawns than the psychological games the mind plays on prisoners.

      As a sport, or even as a metaphor, chess isn’t the most cinematic contest; even for viewers who understand the strategy, until someone calls checkmate, it’s hard to tell who’s winning. The best-known American movie about chess is the surprise 1993 box-office hit “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” about a young chess prodigy.

      Chess is at the center of the popular Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit,” an adaption of Walter Tevis’ novel. At least two pictures have used chess matches to explore the intensity of the Cold War, “Dangerous Moves,” the 1984 foreign film Oscar winner, and the more recent “The Coldest Game” (2019) with Bill Pullman.

      “Chess Story,” a German film based on a 1941 novel by Stefan Zweig, finds yet another study of Third Reich oppression. Josef Bartok (Oliver Masucci) ignores the warnings about a Nazi crackdown and remains in Vienna one day too long. Before he knows it, he’s been arrested, becoming a focus of the Gestapo because he serves as an investor for rich Austrians and knows the bank numbers of foreign accounts.

     He’s held in a hotel room for months, given bread and water and little else in the way of human comfort. He does sneak a book into the room—a collection of chess matches and from that his imagination runs wild.

      The centerpiece of the picture is an impromptu chess match between Bartok and a European champ (Albrecht Schuch, who also plays a Nazi interrogator, and was one of the stars of “All Quite on the Western Front”), while both are aboard an ocean liner headed to American and freedom, at least in Bartok’s mind.

      Director Philipp Stölzl might have done a better job of delineating fantasy from reality, but he guides Masucci to an emotionally draining performance as his character fights day by day to remain sane.

PHOTOS:

Cillian Murphy in "Oppenheimer"  (Universal Pictures)

Edmond O'Brien and Barry Kelley in "711 Ocean Drive" (Frank Seltzer Productions)

Alan Arkin with James Caan in "Freebie and the Bean"   (Warner Bros.)