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.
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.
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)
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