September 2024

 

MEGALOPOLIS (2024)

   Imagine you are suffering from a very high fever after just spending a weekend in Las Vegas wrestling with the meaning of life. After struggling for hours to fall asleep you finally slip off and begin to dream. You are in the future, you don’t know why and nothing anyone says makes sense, but every corner of this fever dream-nightmare looks incredible.

    That’s how I would describe this much-anticipated, self-financed Francis Ford Coppola sci-fi extravaganza; a visual cacophony that spends little time lingering over plot details or character motivations, instead reeling in the excesses of self-obsessed powerbrokers in a near-future New York City. The 85-year-old Coppola, a filmmaker responsible for four of the greatest American movies ever made along with being one of the finest screenwriters of the last half-century, finally put his dream project on film, seemingly sparing no detail and he deserves applause for that. But, like some of Terrence Malick’s recent works, I regret that few filmgoers will get much out of it.

       The story—labeled a fable by Coppola---centers on an enigmatic architect Cesar Catilina (a robotic, self-consciously intense Adam Driver) who has a vision on how to remake the city (part New York, part Rome) but is opposed by corrupt Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito, creating the only believable character in the film). It was never clear to me where the vitriolic hatred Cicero has for Cesar comes from or why, when his daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) becomes involved with Cesar, the mayor objects so vehemently.

     Also messing with Cesar’s grand plans is his former lover Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), who connives to marry Cesar’s elderly uncle (Jon Voight) and works with Cesar’s rival Clodio (Shia LeBeouf). But as I write this I realize that explaining the tale makes much more sense than it does on the screen. The film lacks any sense of story continuity and most of the dialogue might as well have been in Latin for the insight they offered.

     While the film seems to be about the crumbling American Empire, chipped away by the corruption and excesses of the wealthy, it also might be about an admired artist whose vision no longer has an impact on the masses.

      The interior cinematography by Mihai Malaimare Jr. (“The Master”)---clearly much of the exteriors are CGI---is stunning, creating a modern-day, absurdly opulant Roman Empire that signals (like the names of the characters) that the end is near.

     Driver and most of the other actors never seem completely sure of what they are doing, lunging from spot to spot when not stepping to a choreographed sequence. I’m not sure what Cesar’s constantly flailing arms were all about. Not only does much of the dialogue seem improvised and stiffly delivered but so does the blocking.

    While I found most of the characters simply annoying, it was nice to see Laurence Fishburne as Cesar’s chauffer, who also narrates the film; as a teenager he was Clean in Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.” And the writer-director’s sister, Talia Shire has a small role as Cesar’s long-ignored mother.

    Coppola hasn’t made a mainstream film since “The Rainmaker” (1997), but his three independent works made this century, “Youth Without Youth” (2007), “Tetro” (2009), “Twixt” (2011) are all interesting pictures worth seeking out. “Megalopolis” is cut from a different cloth, audacious on a large canvas with plenty of crazy thrown in. There’s more than a few high weeds to cut through to find the story’s path and while I went in ready to do the hard work, I’m not sure it was worth the effort.

      Imagine Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy” merged with “Babylon” (2022) along with bits and pieces from a few Roger Corman psychedelic flicks and you’ll have the starting point for this one-of-a-kind cinematic journey.

  

SATURDAY NIGHT (2024)

     You had to be somewhere between 18 and 30 years old in October 1975 to appreciate the impact the debut of “Saturday Night Live” (then just called “Saturday Night”) had on youth culture. With the first few shows, “SNL” established a new cool, a new attitude, a new humor, a new way to look at the world.

    My generation’s cellphone was television and this show forever altered the tube, breaking it free from the post-WW II conservatism that had ruled the networks for 30 years with cynical commentary on politics and unfettered discussions of sex.

     As the comedy skit show celebrates its 50^th season, its chaotic, unlikely and nearly disastrous opening night—at least in the early years it was more like an off-Broadway production than a TV show---has been stitched into a feature film. Writer-director Jason Reitman (“Juno,” “Up in the Air”), with co-writer Gil Kenan, chronicles the backstage hysteria of the 90 minutes prior to airing at 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 11, 1975 in a movie that is both a nostalgic time capsule of the era and a hilarious re-enactment of the arrogance and ambition of the cast and crew, focusing on 30-year-old creator and producer Lorne Michaels.   

    The camera follows Michaels, whose been the man in charge for all but five years of the show’s run, still the producer at age 79, through the halls and dressing rooms of 30 Rockefeller Plaza as he tries to keep tabs on the unruly cast, cut the number of skits down to 90 minutes, calm the guest performers (host George Carlin and puppeteer Jim Henson) and convince NBC execs who are ready to spool up a repeat of “The Tonight Show.”

      Gabriel LaBelle, who played the young Steve Spielberg character in “The Fabelmans” (2022), gives a superb performance as Michaels, doing his best to keep the train on schedule as everything that can go wrong does—lighting, sound, disruptive crew, a brooding John Belushi (a spot-on Matt Wood) and a network VP (Willem Dafoe) who hopes the show fails. Of course, we known who wins this battle and that the show goes on to become one of the most important in the industry’s history, but experiencing the trip is wildly entertaining.

     With all these types of films, the open question is how much of it is true. Reitman has told reporters that he spoke with surviving cast and crew members, but there was obviously some condensing and hyperbole—it is a comedy.

     The entire cast, mostly unknowns, are uniformly excellent starting with Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, head writer who was married to Michaels; Cory Michael Smith as the acerbic, egoistical Chevy Chase; Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, who here seems more a collection of his “SNL” characters than a real person; Ella Hunt as Earth-mother Gilda Radner; and Lamorne Morris (no relation) as Garrett Morris, the only Black member of the original cast.

     A special nod must be given to Nicholas Braun, who plays both the unorthodox comedian Andy Kaufman (whose mime of the “Might Mouse” theme was the highlight of the first show) and the overly orthodox Jim Henson; and J.K. Simmons, who adds another gem to his character collection playing Milton Berle, the giant of early TV who shows up backstage thinking these young performers admire him.

    There are literally dozens of performances, some lasting but a minute or so, that add to both the authenticity of the film’s setting and the magic of staging a live performance.

     After seeing the film, I rewatched that first episode of “Saturday Night.” It’s pretty much a mess, with four short sets by Carlin that fail to mesh with the freshness of the skit work, two sets each by musical performers Billy Preston and Janis Ian and an overlong skit with the Muppets. The Not Ready for Prime Time Players barely register; even Chase’s Weekend Update only lasts a few minutes.

       The show improved quickly as Michaels’ reduced the host’s role and soon Chase, Belushi, Aykroyd, Radner, Morris, Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin were setting the stage for a new generation of comedians and helping to shape a generation of American viewers. Yet even these early, off-stage moments captured in this film signal that important changes lie ahead.

 

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969) and

THE MILLIONAIRESS (1972)

      Acting is a tricky business: Even the best of the best gives unconvincing or dull performances because of a poor screenplay or the lack of strong direction. Seemingly immune from this truth, Maggie Smith, who died last month at the age of 89, had the ability to turn even the most mundane dialogue into a memorable line, inevitably biting, insightful and tinged in humor.

     Give her a first-rate role, of which she had many on film, television and the stage, and she ranks as one of the finest performers of the past 70 years. Especially impressive was her ability to maintain her fame and skills in the final years of her life, turning her character as the Dowager of an esteemed family in the British TV series “Downton Abbey” into a national treasure—on both sides of the Atlantic.

     I rewatched a pair of performances by a much-younger, redheaded Maggie Smith in which she plays headstrong women who are so self-involved that they barely recognize the rest of the world.

     Smith won the Oscar for playing Jean Brodie, an iconoclastic history teacher at an Edinburgh girls’ school in the 1930s determined to turn “her girls” into liberated women. Defying the administration, Brodie’s classroom lectures are more like personal essays on the glories of living life to its fullest than history lessons. But her downfall results from her inexplicable admiration for Mussolini and Franco, which she preaches during class. Her passion for these fascists makes little sense, plot wise or character wise.

     Only Smith’s brilliantly delivered strident monologues, some dreamily romantic, others assailing the conservative headmaster, hold this episodical movie together. Based on Jay Presson Allen’s play from Muriel Spark’s novel, feels disjointed and contains a few morally dated plot turns, including depicting another teacher, who never faces any consequences, involved in an affair with a student.

     “The Millionairess,” a BBC-produced George Bernard Shaw satire about the self-indulgent rich, offers the perfect role for Smith. Epifania Fitzfassenden (the names in the play say it all) is an outrageously wealthy woman who, in the first, and most hilarious, act, visits a lawyer seeking to adjust her will before she kills herself. It’s all comically dramatic as she recites her complaints about her marriage and her husband’s dalliances. Halfway through the act, she’s joined in the solicitor’s office by her husband (James Villiers), his girlfriend (Priscilla Morgan) and Epifania’s admirer Adrian Blenderbland (Charles Gray).

    Shaw’s flamboyant dexterity with the English language has never been put to better use or handled with such subtlety and wit as Smith delivers. She’s mesmerizing.

     The rest of the play grows a bit heavy handed as Epifania, on a bet, turns a struggling mom-and-pop business into a money maker and then refurbishes a decaying old inn, where the final act takes place. As usual, Shaw is intent on showing the foolishness of both the poorest of poor and the richest of the rich.   

      Smith’s late career renaissance as a snarky observant elder began when she was just 50, with “A Room with a View” (1985), as the chaperone to a young woman (Helena Bonham Carter) on an Italian vacation. But 2001 was the watershed year for the actress as she appeared in Robert Altman’s “Gosford Park,” written by Julian Fellows, who went on to create “Downton Abbey,” and in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the first of seven “Harry Potters” she appeared in.

    In “Downton,” as Violet Crawley, the long-widowed mother of the proprietor of her family’s estate, she observes and comments on the changes in her family and the pre- and post-World War I world. Her wry asides and understated wisdom served as the heart of the long-running series, elevating her status as maybe the most beloved British actress of our time.

    For those seeking out lesser-known performances by Smith, here’s three of my favorites: In “The Pumpkin Eater” (1964), one of the finest acted films of the ‘60s, she plays a classic Harold Pinter character, a talkative houseguest who never leaves; as a spinster falling for a younger man in a boarding house in “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” (1987); and, more recently, in “The Lady in the Van” (2015), as an irritating homeless woman who camps out in front of a man’s house (based on writer Alan Bennett’s actual experience).

   

BOLERO (1934) and RUMBA (1935)

     It’s hard to ignore the irony of the film career of George Raft: He came to prominence as a dazzling nightclub dancer yet was the most wooden actor among stars of the 1930s and ‘40s.

     If Raft is remembered at all today, it’s for his rumored connection to gamblers and mobsters (he was childhood friends with Bugsy Siegel), a belief that caused him to both lose and gain movie roles. It certainly wasn’t his acting skills. But in the early years of sound, he was a popular romantic figure, a more modern Valentino, a more street-wise Grant. The key film in his career was Howard Hawks’ mob classic “Scarface” (1932), in which he played Rinaldo, the righthand man to Paul Muni’s mob boss. But before that, in the mid-1920s he was a well-known dancer, famous for his tango and often cited as the fastest Charleston dancer on the New York nightclub circuit.

    I recently watched a handful of Raft films and most interesting are these two pictures in which he’s cast as an up-and-coming dancer, both co-starring Carole Lombard.

    In “Bolero,” Raft plays egotistical hoofer Raoul De Baere, who even when he’s nothing more than a club taxi dancer, earning tips from middle-aged women, he’s convinced he’s going to be famous. Even his brother, also his manager, played by William Frawley (later Fred in “I Love Lucy”) grows tired of his arrogance. Eventually, he partners with no-nonsense dancer Helen Hathaway (Lombard), who is willing to deal with Raoul.

      Even 90 years ago, the plot was tired and obvious, but it’s the dancing that wins the day, especially an elaborate dance number done to Ravel’s famous composition. Director Wesley Ruggles (1930-31 best picture winner “Cimarron”) doesn’t waste too much time away from the stage, giving Raft plenty of room to show off his fancy footwork.

    An added attraction is real-life nightclub performer Sally Rand, who does her infamous fan dance as an opening act for Raoul and Helen.

    “Rumba” focuses on another famous dance, this one from Cuba, that Raft’s character Joe Martin introduces to New York audiences. His partner is another performer known for her dancing, Mexican actress Margo. Lombard plays a wealthy woman who goes in and out of Joe’s life.

     Raft continued as a leading man, almost always dressed to the nines, for Paramount through the 1930s but was constantly fighting with the studio bosses and getting suspended. Even his friends took the heat for his reputation: well-known baseball player (and later manager) Leo Durocher, who roomed with him in the offseason and copied the actor’s flashy attire, was finally ordered by the game’s commissioner to end his association with the actor.

     Eventually Raft moved to Warner Bros. where he damned his own career by turning down “High Sierra” and “The Maltese Falcon,” roles that catapulted Humphrey Bogart to stardom. It was long rumored that he also passed on the lead in “Casablanca,” but that’s been disclaimed over the years. Though he apparently did turn down “Double Indemnity.”

     He found fewer and fewer good roles after WW II and later in his career mostly played parodies of his tough-guy image. But for two decades, Raft was one of the most notoriously famous entertainers in America.     

  

ANOTHER WOMAN (1988) and THE BETTY FORD STORY (1987)

     It was a sad sign of the times that the tributes that appeared following Gena Rowlands’ death in August, no one mentioned her brilliant performance in “Another Woman.”

     Best known for her emotional work with husband-director John Cassavetes, the actress had relatively few outstanding appearances for other film directors, yet critics were loath to write about this one she made for persona non grata Woody Allen. This study of a crumbling marriage not only stars Rowlands as a philosophy professor but her character’s thoughts serve as the picture’s narration.

     Rowlands’ Marion, comfortably married to Ken (Ian Holm) takes an office in New York to work on her latest book, but gets little work done when she overhears a therapist’s session through the connecting air vent. She later puts a face to the voice—a very pregnant Hope (Mia Farrow), who, despite her ironic name, expresses her deep depression and thoughts of suicide to the psychologist.

    The words of Hope resonate, prompting Marion to reexamine her relationships after she runs into a blunt-speaking old friend and then dreams she’s part of a stage play re-enacting her darkest feelings about her marriage. This is screenwriter Allen at his most Chekhovian, reflecting the regret that life hasn’t lived up to romantic notions of youth.

    By the late 1980s, Rowlands, then nearing 60, was almost exclusively working in television movies, many produced to be uplifting rather than reality-based. At her best, like in this intense, heartbreaking film, Rowlands’ characters were unquestionably real people. What makes this performance stand out is her ability to make you see what she thinks as she listens to other actors, to understand the anguish on her face—it’s the kind of subtle but emotionally complex performance that would have earned the actress critical acclaim if it was a Broadway production.

     Of course, Rowlands’ greatest performance came 15 years earlier in Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under the Influence,” in which she plays a construction contractor’s (Peter Falk) distressed wife. A quirky, free spirit whose mental state grows shakier by the day, her Mabel is one of the most poignant female roles of the 20^th Century.

    After some conventional work in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, Rowlands earned critical praise with her memorable role as a prostitute bouncing from one drunk to another in her husband’s “Faces” (1968). The picture, lauded at the time for redefining film acting, is hard to watch today with its long scenes of misogynistic shouting and reliance on extreme closeups.

    She soon settled into a career as a TV Movie of the Week star, earning eight Emmy nominations and three wins, most memorably as First Lady Betty Ford, who very publicly battled drug and alcohol addiction.  

    Just named vice president by Richard Nixon, while entangled in the Watergate scandal, Gerald Ford tells his wife he will retire when his term ends in 1977. Then history intervenes; not only does Ford become president but he runs for reelection.

    But for Betty, especially after surviving breast cancer, the stress and the pain sends her into a downward spiral of overuse of prescription drugs and nonstop cocktails. Though the movie was approved by the Ford family (the real Betty Ford speaks before the credits), it doesn’t pull any punches in chronicling her addictions and reluctance to seek help.

       Rowlands makes you understand how one can slip into addiction and the embarrassment when confronted about it. Like in all her roles, Rowlands face says more than a page of dialogue can. She won both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her performance. 

       I’m not sure why Rowlands, certainly among the most talented actresses of her generation, didn’t appear in more feature film roles; in addition to “A Woman Under the Influence,” she was nominated for “Gloria” (1980), as a mobster’s moll on the run. She should have been competing every year with Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway and Julie Christie for Oscar gold.

  

JOKER: FOLIE á DEUX  (2024)

    For all the excesses of the 2019 original, one of the best films of that year, director Todd Phillips took Arthur Fleck’s story seriously. The sequel, which picks up with “Joker” in a brutal prison for the mentally disturbed awaiting trial, spends much of its running time indulging in the musical daydreams of Fleck, all featuring classic songs performed by Joaquin Phoenix, back as Joker/Fleck, and Lady Gaga, playing his love interest Lee Quinzel.  

    The first half of the movie takes place in the prison, where guard Jackie (Brendan Gleeson) has a soft spot for Fleck and offers him occasional perks (between beatings) that include him meeting Lee. She encourages Fleck to open up and embrace his Joker persona.

    While she’s creating a ground swell of support for the Joker, his lawyer (Catherine Keener in a thankless role) tries to prepare him for his murder trial where she’s claiming he has a split personality.

     The second half of the story, in the courtroom, moves at a glacier’s place, revealing nothing new about Fleck or his murders. By that point, one realizes that the musical interludes—in one Fleck and Lee have a “Sonny and Cher”-style TV show---were the only way the filmmakers could pad out this story into a feature. Though I kept waiting for a Bruce Wayne reference that never came.

     I’m not sure what Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver were hoping to accomplish by adding the music: imagine a film about Charles Manson in which his character sings “That’s Life” (reprised from the first film), “When You’re Smiling” and “That’s Entertainment,” among others from the Great American Songbook.

     But even without the intrusive songs, was there anything more that needed to be said about Fleck and the state of violence in American than the scene near the end of the first film with him dancing on top of a crashed police car for a crowd of rioting Joker imitators? All “Folie á Deux” does is tarnish the memory of the really good first film about a classic comic-book villain.

 

ASSIGNED TO DANGER (1948)

     Before he became one of the leading directors of Westerns in the mid-1950s, Budd Boetticher made a couple dozen B-movies, mostly crime thrillers, starting in 1944.

     After spending time in Mexico as a matador, he moved to Los Angeles, working in small industry jobs before becoming an advisor on “Blood and Sand” (1941), a big-budget bullfighting picture starring Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth.

     His first credit as director (using his actual first name Oscar) was “One Mysterious Night” (1944), a fast-paced Boston Blackie movie, starring Chester Morris as the one-time thief who helps police solve high-profile crimes. In this one, he’s in search of a legendary diamond with the exotic nickname of the Blue Star of the Nile. It’s as corny as it sounds.

 

     Six years later, he made what may be the best of his Bs, “Assigned to Danger.” Mixing an unlikely romance with tough-talking low-rent criminals, the script by Robert E. Kent and Eugene Ling raises the movie above its production values and lack of stars.

       After a payroll holdup leaves the gang’s leader (Robert Bice) badly hurt, they hide out at a rural hotel run by his wife Bonnie (Noreen Nash). But the insurance company is one step ahead, having already sent to the hotel its chief investigator Dan Sullivan, played by Gene Raymond, a top supporting player in the 1930s who downgraded to low-budget pictures by the 1940s.

      In just 66 minutes, he falls for the bad guy’s wife and, mistaken for a doctor, is forced to remove a bullet from Frankie’s arm and then care for him. One of the strangest and most interesting aspects of the film is the hotel’s handyman, a scary looking man who is deaf and unable to speak but devoted to Bonnie. As played by future familiar face Gene Evans, in just his second credited role, he serves as a more sympathetic Frankenstein’s monster.  

     Boetticher elicits the most out of Raymond, Nash and Bice and keeps the action moving even though it’s mostly set within the hotel.

     The director’s career should have taken a huge leap with his 1951 psychological study of an American matador, “Bullfighter and the Lady,” well played by Robert Stack and Gilbert Roland as his mentor. Based on Boetticher’s experiences in Mexico, this picture would have been one of the best films of the year if it hadn’t been chopped down by John Wayne’s production company from 124 minutes to 87 (reportedly edited by John Ford).

     Not until 1987 was Boetticher’s cut restored and it was universally acclaimed as a great film, at least allowing him to bask in some glory before his death in 2001. But back in the 1950s the director continued his path helming low-budget pictures until “Seven Men from Now” (1956), the first of his series of spare, literate horse operas starring Randolph Scott and mostly written by Burt Kennedy. Even those films—including “The Tall T” (1958) and “Ride Lonesome” (1959)—were not appreciated until years later.

    His last feature of note was “The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond,” the 1960 bio of the legendary high-living 1920s mobster, played by bland TV star Ray Danton.

 

PHOTOS:

Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel in “Megalopolis.” (Lionsgate)     

Pamela Franklin and Maggie Smith in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” (20^th Century Fox)

George Raft

Gena Rowlands and Gene Hackman in “Another Woman.”  (Orion Pictures)

Noreen Nash and Gene Raymond in “Assigned to Danger.”  (Eagle-Lion Films)

 

August 2024

SING SING (2024)

     Hollywood has been humanizing convicts for 100 years, but for most of film history even the most sympathetic criminal eventually paid the ultimate price.

    Today, it’s assumed that audiences can appreciate the positive in even the most violent offender. In this new indie film, a theater group in the upstate New York prison and the prisoners who participate in it are depicted as men who with better opportunities and encouragement early in life might have avoided incarceration.

       The script, based on an actual program at Sing Sing as chronicled in a magazine article by John H. Richardson and recalled by two of the participants (including co-star Clarence “Devine Eye” Maclin), creates strong characters and believable relationships, making it easy to overlook the Hallmark TV movie moments. Director Greg Kwedar’s and Clint Bentley’s screenplay makes you forget that most of the actors are amateurs.

       But the film does feature two Oscar nominated actors: Colman Domingo (“Rustin”) as John “Divine G” Whitfield, a founder and the most accomplished member of the program who is also a budding playwright; and Paul Raci (“Sound of Metal”) as the outside professional who keeps the group focused and, incredibly, writes a full-length play over the weekend.

       Divine G and his best friend Mike Mike (Sean San Jose, in real life Domingo’s writing and producing partner) ask one of the scariest inmates, known as Divine Eye (actual ex-con Maclin) to join the group. Despite a rough start, he bonds with the other actors, though it’s never clear if he continues to carry a knife and deal drugs.

      While the ex-con performers (rehearsing a bizarre production called “Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code”) are excellent in playing themselves, especially Maclin, I couldn’t help but wonder about the hypocrisy of an industry that has exiled accused sexual assault offenders (Kevin Spacey, James Franco, among others) who have never been convicted, yet cheers a film featuring convicted criminals. In the movie’s story and in the act of watching it, one can’t avoid the question: At what point does real life negate one’s art?

    We usually encounter the quandary among celebrities—writers (the recent Alice Munro scandal), painters, comedians, musicians, actors whose messy private lives are revealed, compromising their popularity and professional standing. But are these unknown actors who have committed crimes that earned them a stay in Sing Sing (we don’t know any details) to be judged differently?

     The filmmakers even mitigate Domingo’s character, who seems way too gentle to survive a place like Sing Sing, by suggesting there is a recording that proves he is innocent of the murder he’s incarcerate for. While it shows how unfair the by-the-books justice system can be, its inclusion also seems a ploy to ensure that audience have good feelings about the character.

      I doubt the makers of “Sing Sing” imagined the cast’s past would be construed as an issue—and for most filmgoers, myself included, it isn’t. In fact, it’s being used to sell the film. I just wish the separation of life and art were observed and adjudicated more consistently. 

 

KNOX GOES AWAY (2024)

     There is no shortage of hitmen filling screens in movies and streaming series as of late, but none that I’ve seen feature a professional killer with dementia. Michael Keaton plays the coolly efficient John Knox in this tautly directed (also Keaton) and well-written (by Gregory Poirier) crime picture that received a brief theatrical release this spring and now is streaming on MAX.

      Knox, who learns just before his last job that his accelerating disease leaves him just a few weeks before his mind goes, dedicates his final coherent days to clearing his long-estranged son (James Marsden) in a murder.

    As he rearranges the evidence, with help from an old pal played by Al Pacino, who resembles a retired heavy metal drummer, a tenacious police detective (Suzy Nakamura) is trying to get a handle on all these moving parts of these crimes.

      While the film comes together a bit too neatly, Keaton’s Knox remains compelling throughout, adding another fine performance to this veteran actor’s filmography.  

     While no one would argue that Keaton ranks with the best actors of his generation but the 72-year-old has had an impressive career, after bursting on the scene with back-to-back comedy hits, “Night Shift” (1982) and “Mr. Mom” (1983).

      This Pittsburgh native, who once worked on “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” found the perfect vehicle for his frenetic comedic persona in Tim Burton’s cartoonish “Beetlejuice” (1988). That same year Keaton showed off his dramatic skills, playing a drug addict seeking redemption in “Clean and Sober.”

       Ironically, the biggest role of his early film career, again for Burton, in “Batman” (1989) and “Batman Returns” (1992), the first of the modern Batmans, didn’t do much for his career. After leading an all-star cast in Ron Howard’s entertaining and perceptive newspaper tale, “The Paper” (1994), playing a stressed-out editor of a New York tabloid, few good roles came his way.

      For the next 18 years, Keaton worked mostly as a supporting player and on television along with doing a ton of voice work (“King of the Hill,” “The Simpsons,” “Cars” and “Toy Story 3” as a very funny Ken). His career as a major movie star as he reached his 60s seemed to be in the rearview mirror when he was cast as an aging movie star—famous for playing a superhero—making a comeback on Broadway. “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” directed in what seems to be one long take by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, won the 2014 best picture Oscar and Keaton picked up his first Academy Award nomination.

      His Riggan, caught up in a dream world as his play and personal life seem to be spinning out of control, reveals the insecurities of an actor desperate to be acknowledged while caught up in the backstage hurly-burly of a troubled production.

       The next year he headlined another best picture winner, back as a journalist again in “Spotlight” (2015), playing real-life Boston Globe reporter Robby Robinson, part of the investigative team that revealed the priest molestation scandal in the city’s Catholic Church. 

        Though he gave a valiant effort playing McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc in “The Founder” (2016) and was quite good as Ramsey Clark in “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (2020), “Knox Goes Away” features Keaton’s best work since his career-topping movies 10 years ago and, let’s hope, offers promise of more to come. Later this year, he’ll return in the sequel to “Beetlejuice.”

  

FLY ME TO THE MOON (2024)

     There was a time, as recently as the 1980s and ‘90s, when romantic comedies not unlike “Fly Me to the Moon,” filled big screens monthly. We foolishly believed that would always be the case.

     Even with a pair of engaging stars and a handful of amusing supporting players, “Moon” would have been lost in that earlier era but in 2024 it stands out from what currently passes as film comedy. (See “The Fall Guy” below)

     It also serves as a flimsy, but basic history lesson on the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetime—the landing of men on the Moon.

        Scarlett Johansson, who steps from intense drama to light comedy as well as anyone, plays Kelly Jones, a crafty, innovative marketing exec who is recruited by NASA to promote the program in hopes of receiving more government money for the Moon mission.

        Channing Tatum, who never seems completely comfortable in front of the camera yet has the necessary looks, plays Cole Davis, the no-nonsense (amid plenty of nonsense) coordinator for Apollo 11 project as the team prepares for the landing set for July 1969.

    They, of course, work through the classic rom-com relationship that starts with constant irritation and ends, well, you know where. Just when the picture, written by relative newcomers Keenan Flynn, Bill Kirstein and Rose Gilroy and directed by Greg Berlanti (TV’s “Eli Stone” among others), starts to lose energy, Kelly’s boss (an obnoxiously mysterious Woody Harrelson) decides that they need to film a fake landing just in case tragedy strikes the actual mission. We wouldn’t want the Russians to think we were failures, right?

       In addition to Harrelson, Ray Romano as Cole’s nervous assistant, Anna Garcia as Kelly’s efficient assistant, Gene Jones as a self-serving senator and Jim Rash (who won an Oscar as co-writer of “The Descendants”) as the overly artistic director hired to recreate the landing, all work to keep the ball moving toward both the historical event and to bring Kelly and Cole together.

      Amazingly, Johansson, whose been giving memorable performances since she was a teenager (“Ghost World,” “Lost in Translation”), will turn 40 in November. As required by today’s Hollywood, she balances her career between serious works (“Match Point,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “Marriage Story,” “Jojo Rabbit”) and entertaining foolishness (“Lucy” and the Black Widow in the Marvel world). I’m hoping the second half of her career has more of the former, but she’s convincing and a refreshing screen presence in everything.

     Like the space program it depicts, film romance involving believable adults seems to be headed toward extinction, but “Moon” was worth the trip to the theater.

   

DAY OF THE EVIL GUN (1968)

     Hollywood’s love affair with the Western, which began in earnest after World War II, sputtered to an end in the early 1970s as the stars either died or grew too old to ride a horse, leaving only Clint Eastwood to continue the tradition.

     While the genre was at its peak in the 1950s, some of the most interesting Western’s arrived in theaters in the late 60s, including “El Dorado” (1967), “Welcome to Hard Times” (1967), two by Sergio Leone, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1967) and “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1969) and the greatest of them all, “The Wild Bunch” (1969).

    I’d add to that short list this Glenn Ford-Arthur Kennedy vehicle, a tense, well-directed adventure that explores the thin line between good and evil.

    “Day of the Evil Gun” opens with Ford’s Warfield returning to his home to find his wife and daughters abducted by Apache and another man, Kennedy’s Forbes, proclaiming that he was planning to marry the woman once she freed herself from absent husband Warfield.  A notorious gunfighter who had been away from his family, Warfield eventually allows Forbes to tag along in the days-long desert search for the family.

     Along the way that get scammed (and eventually helped along) by a half-crazy trader (Dean Jagger), a Mexican warlord (Nico Minardos) who claims the land is all his, and a band of renegade soldiers, led by the scene-stealing John Anderson, looking to sell arms to the tribe. Also enlivening the journey are appearances by familiar character actors Paul Fix, Royal Dano and Harry Dean Stanton.

     But it’s the interaction between Ford and Kennedy—they need and hate each other in equal measure—as directed by Jerry Thorpe, who spent most of his career making TV movies, and screenwriters Charles Marquis Warren and Eric Bercovici that make the picture compelling from start to finish. Other than the great “3:10 to Yuma” (1957), it’s probably Ford’s finest Western; he’s a stoic man of action risking his life for a family he hasn’t seen in years.

     Gorgeously filmed by W. Wallace Kelley (who shot most of Jerry Lewis’ 1960s films) in Durango, Mexico, “Evil Gun” is reminiscent of the landmark Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher horse operas of the 1950s while repurposing the framework of John Ford’s “The Searchers.” As they say, if you’re going to borrow, take from the best.

 

A HATFUL OF RAIN (1957) and LOVING (1970)

     One of the few star actors from the 1950s still with us, Eva Marie Saint, who recently turned 100, shined brightest in the first decade of her movie career but remained a welcomed presence for another 50 years.

     Famously winning the Academy Award for her film debut, as Edie, Marlon Brando’s love interest in “On the Waterfront” (1954), she was no neophyte at that point. At 30, she had been acting on television and the stage since 1947, most famously as Thelma opposite Lillian Gish in Horton Foote’s “A Trip to Bountiful” (on Broadway and TV) and then earning Emmy nominations for her role in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Middle of the Night” and Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”

          Following her Oscar, Saint’s next important film role (there was a Bob Hope comedy in between) was as the unsuspecting wife of a drug addict in the film version of the stage hit “A Hatful of Rain.” Written by Michael V. Gazzo, who later played Frankie Pentangeli in “The Godfather Part II,” this powerful drama about a family built on lies remains one of the best screen portrayals of the effects of addiction. Unlike most problem plays, “A Hatful of Rain” has hardly aged, mostly because there’s little preaching in the script and the acting is first rate. Director Fred Zinnemann, best known for his big-canvas, best picture-winning star vehicles “From Here to Eternity” (1953) and “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), shows his ability to bring intimate, stagey material to the screen.

      In the role of Celia (originated on Broadway by Shelley Winters), Saint is very much a supporting player in the first half of the film as her husband Johnny (Don Murray) and his brother Polo (Anthony Franciosa) keep the extent of their addictions from an unforgiving father (Lloyd Nolan), in town for a surprise visit. Franciosa has the showiest part (he scored an Oscar nomination) as the flamboyant drunk who is secretly in love with his sister-in-law.

    Celia emerges in the last act, dealing with the neediness of both brothers and the self-righteous father. Saint brings uncluttered humanity to the talky, intense story.

    For the next 10 years, her career flourished, starring in “Raintree County” (1957), “North by Northwest” (1959), “Exodus” (1960), “All Fall Down” (1962) and the comedy hit “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” (1966).

      Saint took less-than-challenging roles in “36 Hours” (1964), “The Sandpiper (1965) and “The Stalking Moon” (1965), before her last major role, as the accommodating wife in “Loving” (1970).

      George Segal plays Brooks, a successful if unhappy advertising artist with a wondering eye whose affairs seems sadly desperate. Saint’s Selma seems oblivious to her husband’s failings until the night of a chaotic cocktail party (as a teen, I always imagined my adulthood filled with these gatherings—I was wrong) when everything breaks apart.

     This well-made time capsule from director Irvin Kershner (“The Flim-Flam Man,” “The Empire Strikes Back”) plays like a John Updike or John Cheever short story, energized by comic supporting work from Sterling Hayden and Keenan Wynn.

    Though occasionally working in television, Saint went from 1972 to 1986 without appearing in a feature film. She had nice turns as Tom Hanks’ mother and Jackie Gleason’s ex-wife in “Nothing in Common” (1986) and, at 80, as Sam Shepard’s mother in Wim Wenders’ “Don’t Come Knocking” (2005). She had a small role in the Colin Farrell-Russell Crowe film “Winter’s Tale” (2014), marking 60 years of memorable film work.

  

WORLD FOR RANSOM (1954)

     I watch two or three mid-century crime films each week, most made interesting only by the presence of a well-known actor or actress who stand out despite confused plots and cliché-riddled dialogue. Searching for a film to watch on YouTube, I clicked on this gem from director Robert Aldrich knowing only that it starred film noir legend Dan Duryea. Turns out, it is one of the best pictures I’ve seen this year.

      Duryea, looking older than his 47 years, plays Mike Callahan, an occasionally employed private eye, skulking the jam-packed, shadowy streets of Singapore for a tip, looking like he’s one encounter away from getting shot. In his white suit, his fedora sitting high on his forehead, incessantly drenched in sweat and a cigarette hanging from his mouth, Callahan seems an unlikely hero.

     But when he learns his greedy friend Julian (Patric Knowles) has been lured into a plot to kidnap a visiting H-bomb scientist, he promises the man’s wife (Marian Carr), who once was Callahan’s girl, to keep him safe. Soon, the police are after Callahan while he frantically works to find the missing scientist.

      Playing off his usual role as the doddering uncle, Gene Lockhart plays Pederas, the mastermind behind the kidnapping, a cool, ruthless mobster looking to make money out of fear. Also in supporting roles are Nigel Bruce (Dr. Watson in the 1940s Sherlock Holmes films) and Keye Luke as a photographer who snaps an incriminating picture.

       But, for once, this is Duryea’s film. As slimy gunsels or heartless connivers, the actor made his name in such noir classics as “Woman in the Window” (1944), “Scarlet Street” (1945), “Criss Cross” (1949) and “Too Late for Tears” (1949). As the good guy in “World for Ransom,” he earns sympathy while being hopelessly pathetic.

     Aldrich and legendary cinematographer Joseph Biroc (“It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Towering Inferno”) create a believable Singapore, filled with bar girls, fortune tellers and dark alleys where the sun never seems to shine. At one point, Biroc shoots a scene from behind a bed’s rod-iron headboard. This is film noir both in theme and style.

     The script by Lindsay Hardy and Hugo Butler (an Oscar nominee for “Edison, The Man”) offers a screen full of desperate characters who reflect the tenuous state of the world at the height of the Cold War. It’s a theme director Aldrich returned to the next year with “Kiss Me Deadly,” a more celebrated film noir with a famously mysterious ending.

      But for my money I think “World for Ransom” is the better film, featuring a fascinating, anti-Marlowe kind of detective.    

  

THE FALL GUY (2024)

     As Hollywood execs wring their hands over disappointing box office numbers, one wonders if they actually sat through this horrendous excuse for entertainment.

       With stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt headlining, this satire of blockbuster filmmaking had possibilities, but they were immediately deflated by Gosling’s opening narration. Colt Seavers, a famous stuntman, is so peevishly childish that I took an instant dislike to him. (He’s a shadow of Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth from “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”) It went downhill from there. 

     Early in the film, Colt badly injures himself doing a difficult jump for stunt coordinator Jody Moreno (Blunt), who is also his girlfriend. For no good reason—remember he’s about as mature as a 10-year-old---Colt drops Jody and is reduced to parking cars at an L.A. restaurant. (He’d probably make more money working at Target, but economics have never been a strong suit in Hollywood scripts.)

     Out of the blue, an unctuous producer (Hannah Waddingham, portraying the only interesting character in the film), brings Colt back, again doubling for self-obsessed superstar Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who is the lead in Jody’s first film as a director.

      I guess director David Leitch and screenwriters Glen A. Larson and Drew Pearce thought audiences would find it funny that behind the scenes of a bad action film would be a bad action film. Actually, it’s just double the pain. And the dialogue between Colt and Jody could have been composed in a high school writing class.

    No doubt, Gosling has quadrupled his salary following “La La Land” and “Barbie,” but to me “The Fall Guy” (along with the awful “The Nice Guys” and “The Gray Man”) have derailed what looked to be a first-rate career. “Half Nelson” (2006), “Lars and the Real Girl” (2007), “Blue Valentine” (2010), “Drive” (2011) and, more recently, “First Man” (2018), all showed an exceptional, charismatic young actor, but stardom has led him astray. But at 44, he could quickly get back on track.

 

PHOTOS:

Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin in "Sing Sing."  (A24)

Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in "Fly Me to the Moon." (Columbia Pictures)

Eva Marie Saint in her film debut, "On the Waterfront." (Columbia Pictures)

Marian Carr and Dan Duryea in "World for Ransom." (Allied Artists Pictures)

  

 

June 2024

 

KLUTE (1971) and DON’T LOOK NOW (1973)

      It’s somewhat alarming to realize that most of the young movie stars who served as my introduction to serious cinema—Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood—are all over 80 years old. This fact hit me as Donald Sutherland, maybe the most underrated of this group of performers who dominated the 1970s, was remembered following his death at age 88.

      After spending most of the 1960s working in television, the Canadian-born actor’s career took off after being cast as one of “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), among the last of the old-style war films. A very different type of war picture made him a star, Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” (1970).

    As Korean War field surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, equally comfortable with a martini or a scalpel, Sutherland and co-star Elliott Gould (as Trapper John) capture the iconoclastic attitudes of the Vietnam era despite the film’s 1950s timeframe. It’s disappointing that the crazy-quilt style of the movie has been eclipsed by the popularity of the memorable but mainstream television series.

     While making two or three films a year during his peak of 1970-1981, thrillers “Klute” and “Don’t Look Now” stand out as the most adventurous, both offering challenging roles that show the actor at his best even as he works in support of his female co-stars.

      John Klute is a taciturn, somewhat naïve small-town cop who ventures into the sex industry of New York City in search of his friend who has gone missing after being connected to call girl Bree Daniels (Oscar-winning Jane Fonda). He eventually convinces Bree to help him track down the person who connected her with his missing friend, but it’s really just an excuse to explore the city’s underbelly and the traps that led Bree into this world.

      Director Alan J. Pakula (“All the President’s Men”) and cinematographer Gordon Willis (“The Godfather”) create a dark, muted palate in which Klute and Daniels encircle one another, uncovering the truth and changing their lives. The sharp, uncompromising script by Andy and David E. Lewis, brothers who mostly wrote for television, is a coming-of-age story for Klute, who grows emotionally into a man strong enough to save Bree.

       “Klute,” despite the title, will always be remembered as Fonda’s film—maybe her greatest performance—but Sutherland holds his own, revealing a depth not seen in his previous work. (A romance developed between Sutherland and Fonda that lasted for a few years, as both were active in anti-war protests.)

      If the sex trade looked dangerous in “Klute,” it’s nothing compared to the creepy world director Nicholas Roeg creates along the narrow, unlit alleys and murky canals of Venice in “Don’t Look Now.” 

     The film, based on a Daphne du Maurier story, opens with a devastating scene of John Baxter (Sutherland) pulling his young daughter from a backyard pond. The death hangs heavy over him and wife Laura (Julie Christie) as the story takes them to Venice, where he is supervising the restoration of a 16^th Century church. The situation grows intense when a blind woman with “second sight” claims she sees their dead daughter and foresees danger for John.

    Sutherland gives a perfectly measured performance as a down-to-earth man, whose descent into confusion leads him headfirst into the unknown. “Don’t Look Now” is also infamous for its realistic sex scene; an intricately edited sequence that mirrors the changing norms of 1970s Hollywood.    

      The actor continued his string of superb performances as a sad-sack denizen of 1930s Hollywood who falls for a wannabe actress in “The Day of the Locust” (1975), a sadistic Fascist in Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic “1900” (1976), the too-cool Faber College professor in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978), an ordinary man facing extraordinary circumstances in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978), as the soft-spoken grieving father caught between his wife and son in “Ordinary People” (1980) and a German spy who falls for a Scottish woman in “Eye of the Needle” (1981). Sutherland even starred for Federico Fellini in the very theatrical “Casanova” (1976)

     While he found fewer choice roles for the rest of his career, a few memorable performances stand out: his riveting turn as Mr. X, explaining the deep state conspiracy in “JFK” (1991); a reunion with Christie in “The Railway Station Man” (1992); as the naïve, wealthy New Yorker in “Six Degrees of Separation” (1993); as Steve Prefontaine’s track coach in “Without Limits” (1998); and as the wise Mr. Bennet in “Pride & Prejudice” (2005).

     Most recently, Sutherland became a familiar face for another generation as the diabolical President Snow in “The Hunger Games” trilogy.

      Sutherland, with his large ears, droopy eyelids and razor-thin built, looked more like a fourth-billed supporting player than leading man material, but he maintained his marquee-name status for more than half a century, anchoring some of the best American films of his era.

  

KINDS OF KINDNESS (2024)

     Imagine if Bella Baxter, Emma Stone’s Oscar-winning role in “Poor Things,” directed a film. It would be filled with strange characters, saying and doing inappropriate things with little consideration to socially accepted manners or the consequences. That, in a nutshell, describes Yorgos Lanthimos latest picture, an absurdist look at people who long to be told how to live, divided into three short (well, not that short) stories with the same collection of actors taking different roles, like a theatrical troupe.  

      In the opening segment, up-and-coming star Jesse Plemons (“The Power of the Dog,” “Killers of the Flower Moon”) plays a weak-willed employee of the ultimate demanding boss (Willem Dafoe), who requires total obedience, determining, among other details, when he has sex with his wife (Hong Chau from “The Whale”) but blocking the couple’s plans for children. When Plemons’ character refuses to ram his car into another vehicle in an attempt to maim or kill, he’s cut off by Dafoe. His pitifully comical actions to get back into his boss’ good graces have no relation to sanity.

   In part two, Plemons is a cop whose wife (Stone), a marine biologist, is missing following an accident. When she’s rescued, he’s convinced that it’s not really her—though on her first day back she’s ready for the group sex with the couple’s best friends (Mamoudou Athie and Margaret Qualley). This segment’s only value is one of shock as Stone continues to acquiesce to her husband’s delusions. 

     The final episode probably should have been the entire film as it’s more grounded in reality. Stone plays a woman caught between a sex obsessed cult (run by Dafoe and Chau) and an abusive husband. She and Plemons, like a couple of low-rent detectives, are in search of a woman with a dead twin who can bring life to the recently deceased. Clearly, there’s a lot of David Lynch in Lantthimos’ movies.

    Plemons is an acquired taste, so low key that he often seems to be sleep walking but Stone, as usual, brings her high-strung energy to each of the segments, especially as the cult follower, But all the principals display an admirable willingness to give it all for Lanthimos. It’s hard to criticize that level of commitment, even if it seems to me to be wasted effort.

  

SADIE MCKEE (1934)

     No actress altered her looks so dramatically as Joan Crawford. I recently watched “Sally, Irene and Mary,” one of the nine films the 19-year-old appeared in during 1925, her first year in films. If I didn’t know she was one of the stars, I would never have identified this film legend I’ve seen in nearly 50 films.

      Not until the late 1920s, when she became a star, did she start looking like the Joan who became world famous, and even then she continuing to refine herself, with the help of MGM’s top-flight makeup department, in the 1930s.

      One of her best vehicles during this glamour period is “Sadie McKee,” playing the daughter of the cook for the wealthy Alderson family. Impulsively, after hearing the family berate a young man she likes, Sadie leaves with Tommy (Gene Raymond) for New York City, where he almost immediately dumps her to join a nightclub singer’s act.

        Later, working as a taxi dancer, Sadie runs into Michael Alderson (Franchot Tone), whose client Brennan (Edward Arnold), takes an instant shine to her. Sadie, still mad at the Aldersons and bitter over the actions of Tommy, ends up marrying the wealthy, but much older Brennan.

       This classic “women’s picture” is elevated by Crawford’s excellent performance and a very realistic script that offers a caustic look at the Depression era world. And it doesn’t hurt that behind the camera is Clarence Brown, who eventually would be nominated for six directing Oscars, including “Anna Christie,” “National Velvet” and “The Yearling.” Though his most memorable movies were about family dynamics (also “Wife vs. Secretary,” “The Human Comedy”) he didn’t shy away from controversial topics. That same year, Brown direct Crawford again in “Chained,” in which she keeps jumping between lovers Clark Gable and Otto Kruger.

     One of the most interesting aspects of “Sadie McKee” is how Brennan’s drinking and carousing starts as comedy and eventually becomes a central issue, a problem that Sadie faces head-on when no one else will. It’s a refreshing change from how excessive drinking is typically treated in film of the 1930s. It became almost a requirement that every film had to feature a comic drunk, in addition to showing the main characters imbibing every time they walk into the house.      

      An added attraction in “Sadie McKee” is the appearance of long-forgotten Gene Austin, one of the leading crooners of the 1920s and ‘30s, who is shown performing with his trio. His “My Blue Heaven” and “Ramona” were among the biggest hits of the era.

     Of course, Crawford wasn’t done changing her looks and image: Her Oscar-winning turn as “Mildred Pierce” introduced a harder, tougher woman (though she wasn’t yet 40), which led to an impressive run of crime pictures into the 1950s and, arguably, her best performances.

  

THELMA (2024)

     There’s really only one reason to see this outlandish, geriatric road film. June Squibb, the 94-year-old Oscar nominee (for “Nebraska” in 2013), plays Thelma, an alternately confused and feisty grandmother who refuses to sit still after she gets scammed.

    Thelma falls for the classic con—a call from her “grandson” in need of $10,000 for bail. She quickly gathers the money and mails it off to the address given to her by “the lawyer.”

    After the police brush off her and her family, Thelma begins to plot her mission (inspired by Tom Cruise), eventually with the help of old friend and assisted living tenant Ben (1970s legend Richard Roundtree).

     Despite about a dozen too many old-folks clichés, it’s impossible not to root for Thelma—what could be more heartless than ripping off easily duped seniors? Writer-director Josh Margolin (in his directing debut) mixes legitimate issues faced by seniors while soliciting laughs with the usual foibles. But he fails to prop up the creaky plot, instead foisting on viewers Thelma’s irritating family and their issues.

     Her daughter and son-in-law (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) and her slacker grandson (Fred Hechinger), who has a special bond with grandma, are stock sitcom characters who add nothing of interest to the film. I was ready to scream if I had to listen to yet another heart-to-heart between the clueless parents and their childish son Daniel.

      But as long as the focus is on Thelma and Ben and their clumsy attempts at justice, the film has a winning formula.

     Roundtree, who died last October at age 81, was best known for his hipster private eye John Shaft in “Shaft” (1971), but never stopped working in film and television.

      Squibb, who was a stage actor from an early age, didn’t make her film debut until she was 61, in Woody Allen’s “Alice” (1990), and has worked steadily since, most notably as Jack Nicholson’s wife in “About Schmidt” (2002) and then as Bruce Dern’s wife in “Nebraska,” both directed by Alexander Payne. Since her Oscar nod at age 84, she has mostly worked in television. This year, she had a key role in the remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.” 

  

HIT MAN (2024)

     The central idea of director Richard Linklater’s latest—a college philosophy professor and part-time tech guy for the police finds his niche ensnaring ordinary people seeking to hire a contract killer—had the potential to be turned into a caustically clever comedy.

     Yet for a variety of reasons, including its leisurely pacing, off-handed acting and soft-hearted script (all of which could be seen as positives in the right story), the film didn’t work for me. It plays more like a calling card for up-and-coming leading man Glen Powell as the movie veers from comedy to romance to thriller. The production needed the “touch” of the Coen Brothers.

     Powell plays Gary Johnson, a rather ordinary man whose life turns into a Bond-like adventure when he fills in for an undercover detective and poses as a hitman to entrap a man soliciting murder. Without losing a beat, he pulls it off, improvising as if he just spent five years acting at Second City. Not only does he continue this gig, creating a variety of personalities to suit the circumstances, but his real-life persona changes, gaining confidence and presence.

     After persuading an attractive young woman (Adria Arjona from the recent “Father of the Bride”’ remake) to not hire him to kill her husband, Gary—now the cool hitman--pursues a relationship.

    Powell, who played “Hangman” in “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) and John Glenn in “Hidden Figures” (2016) and possesses an audience-friendly screen persona in the Jon Hamm-Ryan Reynolds mold, makes the most of this colorful role.

     Linklater has failed as often as he’s succeeded in his 30-year, prodigious career; starting, of course, with the classic 1993 high school tale, “Dazed and Confused.” His bittersweet romantic French trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy---"Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” “Before Midnight” stands with the great New Wave films of Truffaut and Rohmer and his “School of Rock” (2003) gave Jack Black his best vehicle. The director’s animated “Apollo 10 ½” was among the better films of 2022, but he also made “Tape” (2001), “A Scanner Darkly” (2006), “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” (2019) and, inexplicitly, the remake of “Bad News Bears” (2005).

       I wasn’t a fan of his most acclaimed picture, “Boyhood” (2014), which earned Oscar nominations for picture and direction, more for his process (he filmed it over many years) than the resulting film.

     I do appreciate that you never know what to expect from a Linklater film—he remains little known despite numerous high-profile pictures—but “Hit Man” isn’t among his best.

  

EZRA (2024) and RED LIGHTS (2012)

        Another industry already has “first, do no harm” as its oath, but the movie business might consider incorporating the idea into whatever checklist it uses to greenlight pictures.

      The filmmakers of “Ezra,” in their enthusiasm to portray a parent’s support of his autistic son, seems to be siding with parents over health professionals about who knows best how to treat the effected child. In fact, whatever crazy thing Max (Bobby Cannavale) does in the course of the film is shown as pure love while doctors and law enforcement are the problem. Even young Ezra’s mother (Rose Byrne) is written as clinging, overly protective parent.

     The relationship between Max, a struggling standup comic (at 50something?), and son Ezra (an impressive debut by William A. Fitzgerald) feels sincere, very believable even as the plot veers into crazy territory. 

      The reason I went to the theater and sat through 10 trailers was because 80-year-old Robert De Niro plays Max’s father, Ezra’s grandfather. As always, the great actor enlivens every scene he’s in, mostly in confrontations with Cannavale.            

      Tony Goldwyn, another veteran actor who has a role in the film, also directs. Unbeknownst to me, he’s been directing, primarily on television, since 1999; his debut was “A Walk on the Moon.” Not sure when he has time, as he’s constantly working on episodical television, including taking over for Sam Waterston as the DA on “Law & Order.”

       Since De Niro became eligible for Medicare in 2008, he’s appeared in 36 movies—that’s an entire career for most actors. For every “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Killers of the Flower Moon” (earning Oscar nominations for both), “The Irishman,” “The Intern” and “The Comedian” (maybe his most underrated performance), there are three films like “Savage Salvation,” “Dirty Grandpa” and “The Bag Man.”

    I caught up one of those “other” films, “Red Lights,” featuring a cast that belies its forgotten status. Last year’s best actor Oscar winner Cillian Murphy plays Tom Buckley, the teaching assistant to psychologist professor Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and her partner in debunking claims of paranormal activity. One of their students, played by Elizabeth Olsen, eventually joins their team.

    Also in the cast is Toby Jones as a rival professor and Joely Richardson as the assistant to Simon Silver (De Niro), a world-famous blind psychic who has just emerged from a decades-long hiatus, becoming the focus of Matheson’s and Buckley’s sophisticated efforts to prove him a fraud.

     The film, well directed by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés, falls apart about halfway through, growing overly melodramatic and taking characters in rather incredulous directions. De Niro, who chews scenery with the best of them, doesn’t hold back as this conceited madman.

 

 

PHOTOS:

 Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda in “Klute.”  (Warner Bros.)

 Joan Crawford in “Sadie McKee.”  (MGM)

 June Squibb and Fred Hechinger in “Thelma.”  (Magnolia Pictures)

 Robert De Niro and Bobby Cannavale in “Ezra.” (Bleecker Street Media)