ROB
REINER (1947-2025)
More than just a successful actor and
director, Rob Reiner has been part of the fabric of Hollywood since he
graduated from Beverly Hills High (classmate of Albert Brooks and Richard
Dreyfuss) in 1964. Needless to say, he entered entertainment as a scion, the
son of comedy-writing legend Carl Reiner, who was part of Sid Caesar’s troupe
in the 1950s, created “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in 1961 and later guided Steve
Martin ascension to film stardom in the 1980s.
Rob became a household name in his own
right in 1971 when he was cast as “Meathead,” the liberal son-in-law of
rightwing crank Archie Bunker in “All in the Family,” nothing short of the most
important television show of the 1970s.
He never stopped acting but it was his
writing that earned him notice (most prominently for “The Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour”), leading to directing “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984), a hilarious
mockumentary about a British heavy metal band on tour. Reiner directed many hit
films but he never made a better movie than his debut. (The disappointing
sequel was released this year—you know it’s bad when Paul McCartney supplies
the biggest laughs.)
Reiner, who was stabbed to death along
with his wife earlier this month, wasn’t a great stylist or director of
important films but he knew how to tell a story that audiences were yearning
for. It’s hard not to be impressed with his run of pictures from 1986 to 1992:
“Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally...” “Misery” and “A
Few Good Men.” None of these films are favorites of mine, but the director knew
how to find quality stories: Stephen King (twice), William Goldman, Nora Ephron
and Aaron Sorkin are among the writers he worked with.
He found less success this century, but
he did make the amusing “The Bucket List” (2007), tapping into the chemistry
between two great actors, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson.
I recently watched two of his last
projects: “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life,” a fascination 2023 documentary
about his lifelong friend and “Shock and Awe” (2017), a chronicle of the
Knight-Ridder reporters who refused to buy the Bush Administration’s rational
for the invasion of Iraq in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Woody Harrelson and James Marsden play the
reporters who ignore all the PR being pushed by the defense department and
repeated by the mainstream media. While it doesn’t deliver the goods with the
dramatic power of “Spotlight” or “She Said”—it’s too didactic for its own
good—the story of a few journalists who got it right was worth telling.
And like he does in so many of his films,
Reiner delivers a scene stealing performance, here as John Walcott, the wire
services’ Washington bureau chief, who guides the coverage.
His best film work as an actor includes
playing the director within the film in “This Is Spinal Tap,” as Tom Hanks’ less-than-helpful
friend in “Sleepless in Seattle” and as Leonardo DiCaprio’s straight-talking
father in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
In
later years, he became one of Hollywood’s leading progressive voices, a go-to
interview for a thoughtful take on the chaos coming out of Washington.
The tragedy of his death shouldn’t overshadow
his status in Hollywood over the past half century, both as a television actor
and a director of some of the most loved films of our time.
HAMNET
(2025)
More than 400 years after his death,
historians still question whether William Shakespeare, a man of the theater,
was the author of the plays and poems that carry his byline. Even less is known
about his wife Anne (also known as Agnes) Hathaway, opening the door to Maggie
O’Farrell speculative fiction pinned to the actual death of the couple’s son
Hamnet at age 11.
Writer-director Chloé Zhao, working with
O’Farrell, has created a picturesque vision of early 17th Century
life and the lowly position of women in that world.
Agnes, portrayed with quiet resolve by
Jessie Buckley, is a woman of the woods; Will (a soft-spoken Paul Mescal) first
meets her when she is working with her falcon. She finds solace in nature—returning
to her favorite tree trunk to give birth—explaining why their home remains in
Stratford-upon-Avon while her husband’s work is in London.
The scenes in the forest are painterly
rendered, becoming a romantic refuge for the couple. Director Zhao’s signature
is her ability to show characters as a part of the landscape, connected to
nature—as she did in “The Rider” and “Nomadland”—here captured by Polish cinematographer
Lukasz Zal (“Ida,” “Cold War”).
Shakespeare’s interest in the marriage
becomes secondary to his career as he spends more and more time in London
producing his plays. But he dearly loves his daughters and son (a memorable Jacobi
Jupe) and is inspired to write his most important work to commemorate Hamnet
(apparently, in Early Modern English Hamnet and Hamlet were pronounced the
same.)
Trying to align the story with what is
known historically can be tricky—in the film, his wife seems unaware of
Shakespeare’s success as a playwright until “Hamlet,” despite it being preceded
by 15 to 20 produced plays. It’s hard to believe she had never previously
travelled from Stratford (a four-to-five-day trip) to see one of his plays. And
I wish there would have been a few more scenes of Shakespeare working in
London.
The film manages to be a study of a
writer who sacrifices so much for his art, even in the face of devastating
loss, while keeping the focus on the woman who is expected to carry the burden
of family.
A classically trained Irish actress, Buckley,
who has played Juliet in “Romeo & Juliet” and Miranda in “The Tempest,” has
emerged, in the last five years, as one of the most interesting film
performers. She was memorable in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” (2020), “The
Lost Daughter” (2021), “Women Talking” (2022) and “Wicked Little Letters”
(2023), but her Agnes moves her into the first rank of film actresses. At the
most important moments of “Hamnet,” Zhao fills the screen with Buckley’s face,
relying on the subtlety of her acting to tell the story.
Mescal, a best actor Oscar nominee for
“Aftersun” and the star of “Gladiator II” (2024), portrays the Bard as an
unassuming regular guy, which has brought some criticism of Zhao and O’Farrell.
Can this rather insensitive, humble man be the great genius of Western
literature? Maybe that is one of the tale’s points: transformative art can come
from flawed sources; for this poet, it seems, understanding the human
experience was easier than knowing how to be a responsible husband.
TRAIN
DREAMS (2025)
Few recent films have weaved together words
and images more sublimely than this adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella of
the same name.
Director Clint Bentley, one of the writers
of “Sing Sing” (2023), scripting with that film’s director Greg Kwedar, has
brought Johnson’s simple but moving tale of a itinerate logger in the early
part of the 20th Century to life. Deserving equal credit is Joel
Edgerton, who plays Robert Grainier with a solemn, almost ethereal, manner; a
man who finds a bit of happiness in a tough, unforgiving world only to see it
vanish.
Johnson, a little known but acclaimed
writer, who died in 2017, is best known for the excellent film version of his
story of addiction, “Jesus’ Son” (1999). Edgerton and narrator Will Patton
bring the writer’s spare, insightful prose to the screen with little dramatics
and a lived-in resolve.
After years of working on lumber crews across the Northwest, Grainier marries Gladys (Felicity Jones) and builds a house for his wife. Together, they live blissfully and soon have a young daughter—making it harder and harder for Robert to leave home to earn his living. Only the love for his family keeps him sane during the lonely months travelling with the crews.
Of course, the landscape of the Western
America plays a big part in the story, the stripping of the land of trees as
the country modernizes while Robert slips into a permanent sadness. The
cinematography by Adolpho Veloso captures the majestic visas of the west.
The beauty of the film is matched by
peerless acting across the board. Edgerton, excellent in “Loving” (2016) and
“Master Gardener” (2022), has never been better and should score an Oscar
nomination. Also deserving award consideration is William H. Macy as an
old-timer helping out the lumber crew and providing a semblance of wisdom in an
otherwise dreary existence.
Jones, nominated last year for “The
Brutalist” and in 2014 for playing Stephen Hawking’s wife in “The Theory of
Everything,” doesn’t have a huge role but perfectly encapsulates the healing
aspect of a loving family.
Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
and “F1: The Movie,” shows up in the last act as a forest ranger who gives
Robert a different view of the changing world.
NOUVELLE
VAGUE (2025)
Richard Linklater, best known for kinetic
comedies such as “Dazed and Confused” and “School of Rock,” has tapped into his
nostalgic side with two very different releases this year.
“Blue Moon” remembers mid-century legends
of musical theater while “Nouvelle Vague” (we called it “The New Wave”)
celebrates the French filmmakers who offered a new way to tell stories in the
late 1950s and early ‘60s.
Working with mostly French actors and shooting in black and white,
Linklater tells the story of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark romantic
crime picture “A bout de souffle” (“Breathless” in this country).
Godard was part of the collection of film
journalists (along with François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and
Jacques Rivette, among others) who traded their typewriters for directors’
chairs, creating most of the important French films of the 1960s and ‘70s.
“Breathless,” Godard’s 1960 debut,
follows a self-styled, rather ridiculous car thief and hustler Michel Poiccard
(Jean-Paul Belmondo, soon to be an international star) who shoots a policeman
and then seems to hide in plain sight as he romances an American woman Patricia
(Jean Seberg), who works for the New York Herald-Tribune. Shot in long takes,
much of it on the streets of Paris without permits, with a handheld camera and
marked by jagged editing, the picture is best watched as a gemstone that guided
the way for other, better, films and filmmakers.
I enjoyed Linklater’s “making of” movie
better than my sixth or seventh viewing of “Breathless,” with Guillaume
Marbeck’s spot-on performance as the arrogantly confident, unpredictable
Godard, who, while running out of money and ideas, often cancelled filming
after one scene. Seeing the American actress Seberg (Zoey Deutch) frustration
with the amateurish antics of Godard and his minions (Truffaut and Charbrol
helped write the script and lingered around the set) is more interesting than
watching Seberg’s Patricia fall for Michel’s faux charm in the original.
My only criticism of the film is
Linklater’s decision to identify with subtitles the famous people when the
actor playing them make their first appearance. Most filmgoers who see this
film hardly need to be clued in to who Truffaut or Jean-Pierre Melville are; for
those who don’t recognize them, the names mean nothing.
Anyone who is a fan of that glorious
period of French cinema known as the New Wave, this film is a must see. But its
chronicle of the beginning of guerrilla, independent filmmaking should be
fascinating to any movie fan.
THE
MASTERMIND (2025) and WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025)
Josh O’Connor, who first gained notice
on this side of the Atlantic with his portrayal of Prince Charles in “The
Crown” (opposite Oliva Colman’s reign as the Queen), has had a year. In
addition to starring in these two high-profile releases, he co-starred with
Paul Mescal in the well-reviewed “The History of Sound.”
While he captures the slacker attitude of
the 1970s, living laissez-faire, in Kelly Reichardt’s “Mastermind,” I just
couldn’t bring myself to care as the unemployed (unemployable?) James decides
to steal some paintings from a local museum and then, ineptly, goes on the run.
The director’s usual somnolent pacing and
inarticulate protagonist just adds to the movie’s thinness. I felt like I was
watching a student film. The picture’s saving grace is the appearance of Hope
Davis, as James’ enabling mother. Davis, whose career peaked in the early part
of this century, (seek out “The Secret Lives of Dentists”) never fails to leave
an impression—she was also a standout in Wes Anderson’s most recent pictures.
Much more entertaining and offering
O’Connor a more interesting role is Rian Johnson’s third “Knives Out” mystery
in which he plays a young priest, the prime suspect in the murder of the
church’s senior priest (a bombastic Josh Brolin). While there is plenty to
laugh at here, “Wake Up Dead Man” has a more serious tone that the previous
two.
Daniel Craig is back for a third go-around as Benoit Blanc, an endlessly amusing master detective, an amalgamation of all the classic private eyes, from Holmes to Poirot to Columbo.
O’Connor’s Father Duplenticy (you’ve got
to love the name) is exiled to Monseigneur Wicks parish, where he immediate
clashes with the gloom-and-doom messaging of Wicks. Soon, the senior priest is
found dead and the investigation is on.
Though a suspect, Blanc enlists
Duplenticy as an assistant and together they unravel the mystery. Jeremy
Renner, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Jeffrey Wright and Thomas Haden Church
are among the movie’s large ensemble.
But the film’s standout is Glenn Close as
the church’s jack-of-all-trades who is devoted to Wicks. Since her Oscar
nomination for “The World According to Garp” (1982), she’s been one of
Hollywood’s best actresses but in recent years (she’s in her late 70s) Close
has shined in creating distinctive older women, embracing roles too often
turned into clichés by Hollywood. This eight-time Oscar nominee deserves a win
this year.
SENTIMENTAL
VALUE (2025)
The stoic nature of Scandinavians provides
a perfect setting to study the deep-seated resentments and confused emotions in
the wake of a broken marriage.
While
Joachim Trier’s new film doesn’t plumb the depths of Ibsen or Bergman, it
brings a contemporary background—show business—to the age-old father-daughter
distrust.
Gustav (a superb Stellan Skarsgård)
re-enters the life of his two daughters after his surprise appearance at the
funeral of his long-divorced wife.
Nora (Renate Reinsve), an accomplished
but neurotic stage and television actress, and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas),
who as a child starred in her father’s first successful film, have different
reactions to the father.
Despite
his long absence from their lives, the self-centered Gustav can’t understand
why Nora won’t star in his upcoming film and ends up recruiting an American
star (Elle Fanning) to take a role based on his daughter. (Only the scenes with
Fanning and Skarsgård are in English, the rest in Norwegian.)
While the plot is rather predictable, the
acting of Skarsgård and Reinsve lift the story, creating very real,
artistic-minded people that are usually flattened (see “Jay Kelly”) in
Hollywood films. Both seem destined to score Oscar nominations, especially now
that the international membership of the Academy has increased.
Trier was nominated for a screenplay
Oscar for his film “The Worst Person in the World” (2021), which also was a
best international film nominee. He also directed an English-language film,
“Louder Than Bombs” (2015).
Reinsve, the star of “Worst Person,”
appeared opposite Sebastian Stan in “A Different Man” (2024) and is part of the
ensemble of Apple TV’s “Presumed Innocent.”
The 74-year-old Skarsgård, who has been a
go-to supporting player since he played the colorful Bootstrap Bill in the
“Pirates of the Caribbean” series, appears in four or five films a year but
this might be his most substantial role and most impressive performance.
JAY
KELLY (2025)
A critics’ darling for more than two
decades, Noah Baumbach may have finally lost his strongest support with this
shallow, poorly structured sitcom-like story of an obnoxious movie star
learning life lessons.
The usually reliable George Clooney looks
like a deer in the headlights for much of the film as the title character who
throws his entire entourage into a panic as he rashly decides to follow his
teenage daughter to Europe. After years of prioritizing his career, he suddenly
sees the light, or at least a bit of it—he continues to treat his staff
heartlessly.
His sycophant manager Ron (Adam Sandler,
who comes off best in the film) keeps trying to steer Kelly to make sensible
choices but the actor acts impulsively and expects the team to follow along.
The journey lands him on a train from
Paris to Tuscany, where he will receive a tribute to his movie career. Along
the way, he makes friends with his fellow train passengers, thwarts a robbery,
meets up with his flamboyant father (Stacy Keach) and pisses off most of his
assistants. Laura Dern, excellent in Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” (2019), is
underused in a small role as Kelly’s publicist.
This is Fellini’s “8 ½” filtered through
“Stardust Memories” with a sprinkle of Hallmark thrown in. In what seems like a
different film—one that might have been more interesting—we see key moments in
the young Jay Kelly’s rise to fame. His half-hearted re-examination of his life
is kicked off when he engages his one-time acting buddy (Billy Crudup) in a
fight, which, of course, is captured by a bystander and goes viral online.
Generally, I have not thought much of
Baumbach’s films, though “Margot at the Wedding” (2007) and “Marriage Story”
are among the best relationships-in-crisis movies in recent years and featuring
fine performances.
In “Jay Kelly,” the writing (he co-scripted
with actress Emily Mortimer) seems strained and the situations too pat to make
you feel as if you are watching real life.
THE
PROMISE (2017)
As a resident of Glendale, Calif., I am
very aware of the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turkey in 1915. As the U.S.
city with the largest Armenian diaspora, Glendale hosts numerous remembrances
of the tragedy every year and a multi-story museum is nearing completion
downtown.
As far as I know, “The Promise” is the only
American film focused on the genocide, mixing a war-torn romance with
reenactments of the tragic events during World War I. Though it has the “based
on a true story” feel of a TV movie, the picture stars two of Hollywood’s best
actors, Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac.
Isaac plays Michael, who travels to Constantinople from his rural hometown to study medicine. There he falls for a bohemian woman (Charlotte Le Bon), who is also involved in an on-again, off-again relationship with American photojournalist Chris (Bale). It’s through Chris’ eyes that the film shows the horrors of the Armenian population being purged from the Ottoman Empire.
At 37, Isaac is a bit long in the tooth to
play a young medical student but both he and Bale bring a seriousness to the
film that might have been lost with less, if more culturally appropriate
actors, in the roles.
The movie is written, with Robin Swicord,
and directed by Ireland’s Terry George, one of the most accomplished
screenwriters of the past 30 years, having penned “In the Name of the Father” (1993),
“The Boxer” (1997), which earned Bale the Oscar, and “Hotel Rwanda (2004),
which he also directed.
If you are unfamiliar with the atrocities
inflicted on the Armenians (which the U.S. government didn’t officially
recognizing until 2019!) the film provides a gateway into a little-known
tragedy.
PHOTOS:
Rob Reiner (The Associated Press)
Joel Edgerton in “Train Dreams.” (Netflix)
Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor in “Wake Up Dead Man.” (Netflix)
Oscar Isaac and Charlotte Le Bon in “The Promise” (Universal Pictures)
