December 2023

 

MAESTRO (2023)

     Henceforth, any filmmaker considering making a movie about a famous person should be required to watch this magnificently conceived portrait of mid-century musical giant Leonard Bernstein. Directed, co-written and starring Bradley Cooper, this energetic, emotionally raw picture, filled with adulation and criticism of the composer-conductor tells the story of how his addiction to fame and his sexual dalliances with men slowly destroyed his heterosexual marriage.

     After a short scene of Bernstein as an old man, the narrative begins, in black and white, on Nov. 14, 1943, the day that Bernstein filled in as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, without any rehearsals, instantly turning him into a celebrity in the classical music world. He jumps out of the bed he’s sharing with lifelong friend and lover David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer) and rushes ahead to the opportunity of a lifetime. Cooper quickly summarizes the great man’s entire life in this short sequence.

     At first, Cooper, looking astonishingly like Lenny (as he’s known to all), seems to be overacting, exaggerating the man’s enthusiasm, but soon it is clear that this was Bernstein and his exuberance is central to the story. In many ways, the first part of the movie reminded me of “Citizen Kane” in the way Cooper has the characters speak in declarative sentences, his use of full-frame closeups and the rushing about of the star as if there aren’t enough hours in the day.

    He meets actress Felicia Montealegre (a glowing Carey Mulligan) at a show-biz party (songwriters Adolph Green and Betty Comden are performing) and is instantly attracted. As the film portrays their relationship, it wasn’t a gay man using her as a public cover, but a deep love that lasted 25 years and produced three children.

    Their marriage gives the film its gravity, as Lenny’s achievements and affairs encircle his life, both keeping from being the husband and father he should be.

    In the last quarter of the film, there’s a heartbreaking argument between Felicia and Lenny that feels so real it’s hard to watch. Cooper and his “A Star Is Born” cinematographer Matthew Libatique, now filming in muted color, hold the shot for the entire scene, while outside the windows of the apartment the floats of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade move by. The entire film is filled with powerful images but Cooper and Libatique outdo themselves here.

    I rarely mention a film’s makeup, but two-time Oscar-winner Kazu Hiro’s work aging Cooper as Bernstein is crucial to the story’s believability; it’s almost shocking how real the 48-year-old actor looks as an old man. And Cooper adds to that believability by nailing the man’s distinctive vocal mannerisms.

      It’s so difficult to make bios sound fresh and realistic, but “Maestro” does that from start to finish. Cooper’s co-writer is maybe the best screenwriter working in Hollywood today, Josh Singer. Among his credits are “Spotlight” (he won an Oscar), “The Post” and the Neil Armstrong story “First Man,” having started as a writer on TV’s “The West Wing.”

     Of course, the film offers glimpses of Bernstein’s famous works: his partnership with choreographer Jerome Robbins (Michael Urie), starting with the ballet “Fancy Free” that turned into the Broadway hit “On the Town” and what may be the quintessential American musical, “West Side Story” along with his collaborations with fellow composer and close friend Aaron Copland (Brian Klugman).

      Since his breakthrough as a serious actor (no, I don’t count “Wedding Crashers” or “The Hangover”) in “Silver Lining Playbook” (2012), Cooper has racked up nine Oscar nominations (producing, acting, writing) and, as a director, breathed new life into an old war horse of a musical, “A Star Is Born.” He’s done plenty of outstanding film work, but this is the film that will define him as an artist, as both a filmmaker and an actor. In any other year, he’d be the favorite for best director, but Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan will keep him from that prize.

        As much as Cooper dominates the film, Mulligan is right there with him, giving a more down-to-earth performance but always reflecting Felicia’s joy in Lenny’s successes. One of the most effortless performers in movies, Mulligan sinks into her characters as well as anyone working today (as in “She Said,” “The Dig,” “The Great Gatsby,” “Shame”), rarely giving the showy performances that win awards—though her Cassandra in “Promising Young Woman” was an exception. Most years, her work here would be a shoo-in for best actress Oscar, but I think Lily Gladstone from “Killers of the Flower Moon” has that wrapped up.

      A caveat to my enthusiasm for “Maestro” is the same as I had for recent films “The Post” and “Mank,” among others that look back at historic events: Is there anyone under 60 who knows or cares about the subjects of the pictures? Few. But maybe this superb movie will enlighten those unfamiliar with Bernstein to the importance of this giant of 20^th Century music. Or, at least, they will relate to the underlying theme of the artist struggling to balance work with a personal life. 

 

POOR THINGS (2023)

     Imagine “Frankenstein” as a coming-of-age story, with plenty of sex thrown in, and you’ll have an idea of what Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest venture into the twisted psyche of humanity is all about. And, by the way, it’s a comedy.

     If the film earns a best picture Oscar nomination, as is expected, it will be the most sexually explicit, and possibly most bizarre, film ever to be considered for the top Academy Award; it makes most David Lynch films look like an episode of “Mayberry R.F.D.” But it grows on you. While there were many scenes I couldn’t watch—Lanthimos’ leaves little to the imagination during the dissecting (and reassembling) of cadavers—the journey Bella Baxter (a daring Emma Stone) embarks on when she leaves her creator, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe, unforgettable as always), resonates as an extreme version of a road we’ve all travel in one way or another.

    Set in some vague period of 19^th Century London, the story begins with a young, pregnant woman tossing herself into the river and dying. Once Godwin takes possession of the body, he manages to re-animate her, implanting the fetus’ brain inside the woman’s head. Sounds like another twisted David Cronenberg picture or maybe a Vincent Price-Roger Corman drive-in movie from the 1960s, but screenwriter Tony McNamara (“The Favourite”), working from a novel by Alasdair Gray, has bigger plans for Bella than just being a weird scientific experiment.

     Barely able to speak and walking with difficulty, Bella seems to have no censor on her brain, saying and doing whatever she feels no matter the circumstances. And then, just as she discovers sexual pleasure, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), a rather goofy lawyer shows up, and whisks her away on a Dickens-like adventure with computer-generated, dreamy sets and lots of sex.

     Stone, who co-starred in Lanthimos’ “The Favourite,” clearly trusts her director—I can just imagine how twisted the film must have seemed while it was being filmed. Wearing enormous, puffy-sleeved gowns while saying the most outrageous things, Bella comes off as an alien to most who encounter her, at least at first. Soon enough, she has more insight than anyone in the room.

     Dafoe continues to deliver one off-beat, memorable performance after another; his Godwin is a classic in the long tradition of movie mad scientist. Ruffalo gives the picture’s most overt comic performance as Duncan as he attempts to keep up with Bella after thinking he was her savior.

    Also giving stand-out performances in this strange world the filmmakers have created are Kathryn Hunter as the heavily tattooed madame of a Paris brothel and 80-year-old Hanna Schygulla, a German acting legend, as a wealthy woman who takes a liking to Bella.

      While I could have done with less extravagance and gore, “Poor Things” manages to take a heavy-handed storyline and turn it into a very funny, thoughtful picture, one of the year’s best.

  

AMERICAN FICTION (2023)

     Not many films have the audacity to focus on a subject as obscure as authenticity and representation in the publishing industry. Director Cord Jefferson, making his feature debut, whose script is based on Percival Everett’s novel, delivers a smart comedy about what passes as cutting-edge novels while contrasting those stereotype-filled tales with the down-to-earth life of an extended Black family.

     Jeffrey Wright plays Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a perpetually agitated college literature professor fed up with overly sensitive students and politically correct faculty while frustrated with his stalled writing career. His books are admired but don’t sell.

     Inspired by a recent best seller by another Black author (Issa Rae) that is filled with stereotype characters and language, Monk one-ups her, writing a cliché-riddled, life-of-crime novel under the pseudonym Stagg R. Lee. Monk convinces his agent (a very funny John Ortiz) to send this purposely ridiculous manuscript to publishers and, much to their amazement, it becomes a hot property.

     At the same time, Monk is dealing with real life family problems, including a brother (Sterling K. Brown) with drug problems and a mother (1960s television star Leslie Uggams) with dementia. Tracee Ellis Ross, who played the wife in the TV series “Blackish,” has a too-small role as Monk’s sister.

    Like most satires, the film overplays its hand occasionally and the script trips over itself at some of the plot turns, but the sincerity and ethical compass of Monk carries the film. And, without comment, the film honors two legendary Black artists, jazz pianist Thelonious Monk and novelist Ralph Ellison.

     Wright has never failed to create a memorable character in over 25 years of mostly supporting work in film, his breakthrough coming when he was cast as the controversial New York artist in “Basquiat” (1996). His best performances include the drug lord in “Shaft” (2000), Bill Murray’s best friend in “Broken Flowers” (2005), Felix, James Bond’s ally since “Casino Royale” (2006), as Beetee in the “Hunger Games” pictures and as another writer, Roebuck Wright, in “The French Dispatch” (2021). “American Fiction” is Wright’s third noteworthy performance of 2023, having also portrayed the comically stoic Gen. Gibson in “Asteroid City” and outspoken Congressman Adam Clayton Powell in the Civil Rights era drama “Rustin.”

     Uggams, a showbiz fixture since she was a child actress in the 1950s, has worked on Broadway, in television (most famously in the 1977 miniseries “Roots”) and as a recording star. Unbeknownst to me, the 80-year-old has been working steadily in TV and films since 2011. As Monk’s mother, she, brings dignity and sympathy to the role of a woman struggling with end-of-life cognitive issues.

    By the end of the movie, the plot starts playing with the “third wall”—it becomes unclear if we are watching the movie or a movie made from Monk’s book. It works as a metaphor for a white publishing industry that desperately wants to sell stories of Black Americans they’ve only experience through television and movies.

      For those who still care about the state of American lit, this film will hit home.

  

YOU’LL FIND OUT (1940)

   Before popular musicians took on the pose of cool seriousness, somewhere around 1967, bands were often the centerpiece of musical-goofball movies that were mostly ridiculous but gave fans a chance to enjoy their Top 40 heroes on the big screen.

    Pre-dating the Beatles (“A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!”), Herman’s Hermits (“Hold On! and “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter”), the Dave Clark Five (“Having a Wild Weekend”) and even all those soda-jerk movies starring 1950s rockers, big band jazz ensembles took their acts to Hollywood in the 1930s and ‘40s, cashing in on stardom achieved on radio shows.

     One of the biggest stars of this genre was gimmicky band leader Kay Kyser and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge. Kyser dressed in graduation garb (including a mortarboard hat) as he prompted audience members to guess the names of songs while delivering incredibly corny jokes and puns. But he and his band also had many No. 1 hits during the Great Depression. (Harry Babbitt, Ginny Simms—both in this film—and future talk show host Mike Douglas were among Kyser’s vocalists.)

    In “You’ll Find Out,” he ventures into Bob Hope and Abbott and Costello territory as he and the band spend a weekend in an old mansion that seems to be haunted. The first clue that something may be wrong is when the other guests include Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre.

    Filled with seances, secret doorways and an elaborate underground special effects lab, the picture wouldn’t scare a preschooler but stands as a time-piece of the era. (One reason I watched the film was to see the legendary Ish Kabibble, the stage name of trumpeter and comic M.A. Bogue, who was a member of Kyser’s band. When I was a child, my father repeatedly joked about his name.)

     David Butler, the film’s director, had an astonishing Hollywood career that began as a silent film actor. His first credit was in 1910, followed by many roles, including uncredited walk-ons in both D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” and “Intolerance” (though it seems that everyone working in film at the time made the same claim).

       He started directing in 1927 (the same year he acted opposite Janet Gaynor in “7^th Heaven”) and soon was specializing in musical comedies and Shirley Temple vehicles. His best-known pictures are “Kentucky” (1938) starring Loretta Young, the Hope-Crosby romp “Road to Morocco” (1942) and a string of Doris Day films. His follow-up to “You’ll Find Out,” was the even more ludicrous Kyser vehicle, “Playmates” (1941), which co-stars the acting legend John Barrymore (one year before his death) as himself, forced to teach the bandleader how to recite Shakespeare.

       For 10 years, starting in the mid-1950s, Butler was a prolific TV director and then ended his career with the 1967 feature “C’mon, Let’s Live a Little” with pop stars Bobby Vee and Jackie DeShannon.

      In “You’ll Find Out,” Butler keeps the action chaotic and the jokes sophomoric while making sure Kyser does his best Hope imitation. Sure, it’s a dumb movie, but that’s what makes it fun.

    

FERRARI (2023) 

    I’m usually slow in picking up movie trends, but there is no denying that films about real people, biographical and otherwise, have been the flavor of the year. About half of the best films that I’ve seen this year, including this look at a critical juncture of automobile legend Enzo Ferrari’s life, fall into this expanding genre.

      Adam Driver, who just two years ago played a member of the Italian fashion family Guggi, offers a buttoned-down, stressed-out version of another famous, sunglass-wearing Italian entrepreneur, one-time race-car driver and founder of the luxury automaker. Set in the late 1950s, the movie focuses on Ferrari building his racing team for major races—Le Mans and Mille Miglia—while the company faces financial ruin and his marriage grows untenable in the wake of the death of their son.

    Like “Maestro,” about another flamboyant mid-century figure, this film unapologetically portrays a man who puts his professional passion ahead of family and has a longtime affair outside marriage. Penelope Cruz plays his wife Laura, giving a fiery performance of a woman who has devoted her life to her husband and his business while he maintains another household with his lover (oddly cast Shailene Woodley) and their son. The script, based on Brock Yates book, by Troy Kennedy Martin (who died in 2009), never feels superfluous to the action; Ferrari and his wife come across as real, emotionally damaged people.  

    Yet at the heart of the picture are the cars and Formula One racing, clearly the reason director 80-year-old Michael Mann took on the project (he was a producer on the 2019 film “Ford v Ferrari”). The POV camera-work by Erik Messerschmidt, an Oscar winner for the black-and-white “Mank,” is thrilling and frightening, a reminder of the intensity of sport.

     As one of the most acclaimed filmmakers since he made his feature debut with “Thief” (1981), Mann has regularly created tough-minded men (women are almost always secondary in his films) who soldier on even when everyone seems to be against them. Among his best are “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992), “Heat” (1995), “The Insider” (1999), “Ali” (2001) and “Collateral” (2004). In 2024, or the year after, Mann is expected to deliver a much-anticipated sequel to “Heat.”

     The 40-year-old Driver, who from all reports has no Italian heritage, is emerging as one of the finest actors of his generation, should score his third Oscar nomination for this film. He previously was named for “Marriage Story” and “BlacKkKlansman.” Maybe his best performance was as a New Jersey bus driver and poet in “Paterson,” while his best known is as Kylo Ren in the concluding “Star Wars” pictures. Driver is also the star of Francis Coppola’s long-delayed pet project “Megalopolis,” a sci-fi epic that may or may not ever see the light of day.     

 

MAY DECEMBER (2023)

     As creepy and unpleasant as a cheap slasher picture, director Todd Haynes latest snarky melodrama follows an actress (Natalie Portman) spending time with Gracie (Julianne Moore), a notorious woman she’s going to play in an upcoming film.

     Twenty years earlier, Gracie was convicted of rape after having an affair with a 13-year-old co-worker. She had their first child in prison and then later married the much younger man (played as if he’s still a child by Charles Melton). Though the plot somewhat resembles the 1990s case of school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, the circumstances have been altered.

     Not much happens of interested in the film, written by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik (their first feature), as Portman’s Elizabeth hangs around Gracie and Joe and talks to others in the town. What becomes clear very quickly is that neither woman are very nice people; Gracie is self-centered with little empathy for the pain she’s caused while the more self-aware Elizabeth treats the family as disposable sources of acting inspiration. Intentional or not, the continuing hurtful behavior of these two grows, at best, cringe worthy, at worst, misogynistic.

     Haynes has made some fine films, including “Far from Heaven” (2002), starring Moore, “Carol” (2015) and the superb cable miniseries version of “Mildred Pierce” (2011), but in “May December,” certainly a story with plenty of issues to address, he does little but throw two unpleasant women into the same room.

     There’s a chance that all three of the central players will score Oscar nominations but I wasn’t impressed with Moore and Melton, neither of whom made me believe they were a couple who could have remained married for all those years, withstanding the media glare. On the other hand, Portman knows exactly who this manipulative actress is and shines in the otherwise drab drama.

 

SALTBURN (2023)

     For almost two hours, I enjoyed this film’s unrelenting assault on the cluelessly decadent and recklessly cruel British upper class as experienced by a naïve college freshman who has been befriended by the family’s son at Oxford. But in the final act, in a series of reveals (not to give too much away), filmmaker Emerald Fennell lets the rich off the hook.

     Drowsy looking Barry Keoghan, nominated last year for “The Banshees of Inisherin,” plays Oliver Quick (a name and character clearly inspired by Dickens), a nerdish middle-class student drawn into the obit of the rich, snobbish kids by Felix Catton (“Priscilla’s” Elvis, Jacob Elordi). In fact, Oliver has fallen hard for the tall, dark young man, despite Felix’s nonstop womanizing.

       After Oliver reveals to Felix that his drug-using father has died, Oliver is invited to spend the summer at the Catton estate. The film settles into a version of a corrupted “Downton Abbey,” updated to the 21^st Century, with Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike deliciously playing the lord and lady of the manor. Also hanging around is daughter Venetia (Alison Oliver), cousin Pamela (an unrecognizable Carey Mulligan) and a classic stern, protective butler (Paul Rhys).

     Writer-director Fennell clearly enjoys pushing the envelope of good taste and expectations, as she did in “Promising Young Woman” (2020), but in “Saltburn” (the name of the Catton’s castle) she undercuts her own clever writing and characters for little more than shock value.          

PHOTOS:

Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper in “Maestro”  (Netflix)

Jeffrey Wright in “American Fiction.” (MGM)

Adam Driver in "Ferrari"  (Neon)

Barry Keoghan in “Saltburn”  (MGM)