Friday, February 7, 2025

February 2025


2024 OSCAR NOMINATIONS

     There’s no point in reiterating what I’ve said about the movies that dominate this year’s Oscar race (see below for a few) other than to give the Academy voters a pass: there weren’t many good movies to choose from. Ridiculous nominations are the result of too many voters and too few movies.

     I was most surprised by the lack of support for two films, both about broadcasting, that were among the year’s best, “September 5” and “Saturday Night.”

      Director Tim Fehlbaum, along with co-writers Moritz Binder and Alex David scored a nomination for their screenplay for “September 5” but, to me, this film should be in the running for best picture and Ben Chaplin, playing one of the key players in the coverage by the ABC sports staff of the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage tragedy, deserved a spot among the supporting actor nominations. This behind-the-scenes look at one of the signature events in broadcast journalism was the most riveting movie of the year, from start to finish. Fehlbaum should be in the running for best director.

      Has there been a more influential television show in the last half-century than “Saturday Night Live”? No program is even close and “Saturday Night” blends a nearly real-time document with plenty of myth about the 90 minutes leading up to its debut at 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 11, 1975. Director Jason Reitman, utilizes handheld camera shots and long takes to capture the nonstop backstage chaos, bringing the show’s comic legends (John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner and guests Andy Kaufman, George Carlin, Jim Henson) to life. At the center is ringmaster-producer Lorne Michaels played by the frenetic Gabriel LaBelle. At a minimum, the show deserved nominations for best picture, best director and best screenplay. It was shut out.

    The voters for best actress seemed to go out of their way to ignore the year’s best work. Marianne Jean-Baptiste delivered what may be the most impressive performance of the year in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths” but was left out of the five nominations. Also deserving in this category, even though their films had problems, were Nicole Kidman in “Babygirl,” Danielle Deadwyler in “The Piano Lesson” and Tilda Swinton in “The Room Next Door.”

     In the supporting category, Natasha Lyonne was worthy of recognition as the rebellious, but loyal daughter in “His Three Daughters.” The film also should have earned a screenplay nomination for writer-director Azazel Jacobs.

     Whether “The Brutalist” or “Emilia Pérez” wins the top prizes, 2024 will not be remembered as a great year for movies or the Oscars.

     While I’m still not finished with my 2024 viewing—the short life of the theatrical release window makes it impossible to keep up—here’s my Top 10 right now:

1     September 5  (Tim Fehlbaum)

2   A Complete Unknown  (James Mangold)

3   Conclave  (Edward Berger)

4   The Brutalist  (Brady Corbet)

5   Saturday Night  (Jason Reitman)

6   Hard Truths  (Mike Leigh)

7   The Apprentice  (Ali Abbasi)

8   His Three Daughters  (Azazel Jacobs)

9   The Old Oak  (Ken Loach)

10  Knox Goes Away  (Michael Keaton)

 

THE BRUTALIST (2024) 

     This epic rendering of an immigrant’s journey, in all its complexities, announces itself, at 214 minutes, as a film demanding attention. While director Brady Corbet does not deliver the masterpiece he clearly set out to create, there’s enough heartbreaking insight, humanized by a superb performance by Adrien Brody, to make it one of the year’s best films.

      Brody’s László Tóth, a prominent Hungarian architect, arrives in America after being liberated from the death camps, separated from his wife and his artistic dreams buried by the horrors of the Holocaust. His cousin, who has remade himself as a gentile selling furniture in Philadelphia, gives László a job but never fully accepts this living reminder of what the Jews suffered during the war.

    But László modernistic design of a wealthy landowner’s library eventually leads to Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) contracting him to design a community center on his property, which will serve as a memorial to Van Buren’s recently deceased mother. 

    The unpredictable, often unreasonable relationship between László and Van Buren pushes the movie forward even after László’s wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones of “The Theory of Everything”), who now suffers from severe osteoporosis, and his niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) join him. His much-delayed work on Van Buren’s edifice takes a toll on László as does his foreignness, his Jewishness, his artistic obstinance, all spurring distrust and a lack of respect.

     The picture suffers from numerous abrupt edits, leaving scenes before they are fully resolved and forcing the viewer to make assumptions of how characters went from point A to point B. (No doubt the original cut was longer.) But more damaging is the disappointing final 30 minutes or so in which László disappears and others reveal the central symbolism of his work.

      Since Brody received the Academy Award for his performance in Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist” (2002), his best work has been in small roles (I loved his Dalí in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”), but he’s never emerged as a star. While his László doesn’t match his role as “The Pianist,” another artist who escaped from Nazi horrors, his architect in “The Brutalist” (the title refers to Brutalism, his style of architecture) keeps one interested in his fate over the lengthy picture. Though at points I felt like his character was more symbol than man.

      Pearce delivers the film’s most interesting speeches as he continuously reflects on his place in the world, giving his most memorable performance since “Memento” (2000). Jones’ character is refreshingly bright and independent and feels underused until the end of the picture.

     Corbet, who wrote the picture with his writing partner and wife Mona Fastvold, has been acting in TV and features since 2000 and took up directing in 2015. His debut, “The Childhood of a Leader,” earned him a best director award at the Venice Film Festival. His only other feature is the overwrought “Vox Lux” (2018), with Natalie Portman as an egotistical pop star. In “The Brutalist” he displays a good eye for individual scenes (greatly aided by British cinematographer Lol Crawley) but is less impressive connecting all the dots.   

     Even if it wins best picture, the film’s excessive running time will keep most moviegoers away, even those who stream six hours of a Netflix show about bickering rich people in an evening. To me, it didn’t feel overly long, though I could have done without the 15-minute intermission.

  

TWIN PEAKS (1990, TV)

     David Lynch, who died on January 16, directed just ten features, five of them between 1980 and 1992, yet he may be, this side of Martin Scorsese, the most influential filmmaker of the past half century

     Starting with his 1977 cult favorite “Eraserhead,” this low-keyed, surrealistic chronicler of small-town Americana created a succession of dream-like tall tales that begin in innocence and quickly descend into unspeakable, often unexplainable, horror. “Blue Velvet” (1986) and “Mulholland Dr.” (2001) are among the finest American films since the glory years of the 1970s.

     Yet, his most memorable creation was for the small screen. Starting with the basic formula of a morning soap opera (there were a half dozen of them still airing at the time) with a large cast of characters all with secrets and most involved in illicit affairs—selling or using drugs, business corruption, cheating on one’s spouse—Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost added a murder mystery, quirky comic themes (mostly centered on donuts, coffee, fruit pies and Deputy Andy) and the supernatural all set in a small lumber town in the Pacific Northwest.     

      I was surprised, in rewatching the first season (on the free streaming service Pluto) that the pilot and second episode offer a very perfunctory introduction to the story, following the discovery of the body of Laura Palmer, a popular high school student.

       It’s only at the end of episode three that Lynch flips the switch and we enter a surrealistic underbelly of this world: Special Agent Dale Cooper, sent to Twin Peaks by the FBI, has the first of his many dreams. There’s a one-armed man, a dancing midget who announces “Let’s Rock!” and the dead girl, who whispers to Cooper the name of her murderer. This all happens in the red room, a place the show will return to often as it spins off the rails, defying reason and the expectations of primetime ABC television viewers.

     Yes, Lynch is a master of the creepy, unexplainable as he showed in “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Dr.” but he’s also an expert at weaving this unwieldy ensemble and each of their stories into a coherent plot. Watching it all these years later, knowing where it’s going, it is even more impressive how he pulls it all together. He also created the perfect solidifying role in Cooper, played with a combination of winking, sarcastic humor, cornball innocence and superhuman instincts by Kyle MacLachlan. Cooper remains one of the most memorable characters in television history.

     As in most of Lynch’s works, music plays an integral part in creating the mood. His longtime collaborator Angelo Badalamenti composed the haunting, often industrial soundscape to “Twin Peaks,” but Lynch adds an eclectic collection of pop music—from the Big Band era onward—that helps define many of his characters.  

     His revival of “Twin Peaks” in 2017 for Showtime doubled down on the disturbing and bizarre aspects of the original and stands as the director’s last great creation. Whether on TV or the big screen (or on YouTube with his daily weather reports), Lynch was an artist whose vision of our world was sometimes hard to grasp—I have no idea what he was saying in “Lost Highway” or “Inland Empire”—but you always knew he would never back down from putting his camera straight into the eyes of the best and worst of civilization.

 

THE SUBSTANCE (2024)

     I see more than my fair share of dumb movies, but I usually manage to avoid the stomach-turning gross-out horror pics that the younger generation seems to thrive on. Then, the Academy voters included this film and its star, Demi Moore, in its nominations, so I took a deep breath and did my duty.

     What I endured was the most disgusting, unwatchable movie ever nominated in the once-prestigious best picture category. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat, who has made one previous feature, “Revenge,” seven years ago, attempting to satirize Hollywood’s obsession with youth (now that’s a new concept), ogles over the naked, or scantily dressed, stars, Moore and Margaret Qualley, as if she’s making a soft-porn picture. On top of that, she throws out all reason in her haphazardly stitched together script; Fargeat’s nomination for original screenplay is a real head-scratcher.

     Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) is a longtime Hollywood star who gets dumped from her morning television gig as an aerobics instructor. Dennis Quaid plays Harvey (wonder how they came up with that name?) who never stops making sexist, sleazy comments about actresses. In case you can’t figure out what a pig he is, the director puts the camera about one-inch from his face to make him look even more disgusting.

     Almost as easy as going to your local CVS and apparently cost free, Elisabeth obtains a magic potion called The Substance that promises to recapture her youth. It’s unclear (that’s the operative description of this film) if Elisabeth realizes that her younger self will be “birthed” out of her spine and that she’ll have no memory or control of what that creation will do. Qualley, naming herself Sue, makes the best use of her beauty by auditioning to replace Elisabeth on the aerobic show—didn’t those disappear after the 1980s?

     The extensive process, which clearly should require a medical professional’s assistance, dictates that the old version and the new version are “alive” during alternate weeks. And though Elisabeth fights off any desire to end the transformation once things go awry, I had no idea what she was getting out of this. She just as easily could have hired a young actress to live out her life—at least then she could have talked to the woman about her experiences.

    Moore has a few memorable scenes—repeatedly redoing her makeup before a date is the film’s only poignant moment—but for much of the movie she’s naked and unconscious on the bathroom floor.

   There are many other holes in this story, but most offensive is the film’s treatment of these women: They are brainless Barbie dolls who have no friends or hobbies or even the most Hollywood of necessities, a charity.

   If filmmakers are looking for real stories of misogynism in Hollywood they are endless, including many starring another character named Harvey.

  

HARD TRUTHS (2024) and THE OLD OAK (2024)

       Two of the finest British filmmakers of the past 40-plus years released movies this year that will probably mark the end of their careers.

      Not surprisingly, as longtime advocates of social justice, Mike Leigh (“Hard Truths”) and Ken Loach (“The Old Oak”) both deal with the plight of UK’s minority population in their films. Also not surprisingly, both films are among the best I saw in 2024.          

      Eighty-one-year-old Leigh, best known for “Naked” (1993) and “Secrets & Lies” (1996)—eight of his films have found a spot on my yearly Top 10s—examines the emotional complexities of the extended family of a deeply distressed woman, played ferociously by Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Pansy is both depressed and angry at the world, constantly berating her soft-spoken husband Curtly (David Webber) and their isolated, overweight adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett)

       Pansy’s constant rants and inability to interact with strangers on the most basic level starts out as amusing but soon becomes concerning. Only her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), who shares with Pansy the heartbreak over the sudden death of their mother, offers some sympathy for her.

     While I wouldn’t rank “Hard Truths” among Leigh’s best—that’s a high bar to hurdle—it showcases one of the most powerful performances he’s ever directed. Jean-Baptiste earned an Oscar nomination as the daughter of a white woman in “Secrets & Lies” and later was among the stars of the long-running CBS drama “Without a Trace.” In this new film, she shows an astonishing range of emotions as Pansy, giving one of the best portrayals of depression I’ve ever seen. That Jean-Baptiste was ignored by the Academy, along with Leigh’s script, makes no sense, especially considering the competition.

     The movie’s cinematographer, Dick Pope, who has been shooting Leigh’s film since “Life Is Sweet” (1991) and scored an Oscar nomination for the director’s “Mr. Turner” (2015), died in October.

      Loach’s picture studies the reaction in a small, one-time coal mining town when a group of Syrian refugees relocate there. TJ (Dave Turner), a middle-aged native who owns the town’s tavern, the Old Oak, becomes an advocate for the immigrant community despite his strong connections to longtime residents. The Syrians are led by Yara (Ebla Mari), a young woman who is determined to integrate the refugees into the community.

     The leisurely film sometimes plays more like a Frontline report than a more subtle drama as Loach and his longtime screenwriting collaborator Paul Laverty offer a balanced look at the positives and negatives of the immigration story at the community level. But TJ’s dilemma—the older citizens threaten to boycott his business over his friendship with the Syrians—keeps the film interesting.

     Turner, a career fireman and bartender, who had small roles in Loach’s two previous pictures, “I, Daniel Blake” and “Sorry We Missed You,” brings unpretentious sincerity to his performance as TJ, bringing authenticity to small-town views. It’s the kind of performance that have made Loach’s films so memorable over the decades.

      Mari is equally fine in her first film performance and the first time she’s acted in English; she grew up in a part of Syrian under Israeli control, working in local theater.

        The 87-year-old Loach, not as well-known as Leigh in this country, has never held back his socialist views and hostility to the positions of the British government. Until the 1980s, he mostly worked in television and then broke through internationally in the ‘90s with “Riff-Raff” (1991), “Raining Stones” (1993) and “Ladybird Ladybird” (1994).

  

WICKED (2024)

     Like a Marvel origin story, this fast-paced, overstuffed musical seeks to explain a movie character we thought we understood—in this case, incredulously, the Wicked Witch of the West from “The Wizard of Oz.” For younger readers, she was the one who harassed Dorothy and her friends (and Toto, too!) because the visitor from Kansas accidentally crushed her sister to death.

      This tale—based on the Tony-winning 2004 Broadway hit—begins with the Wicked Witch’s death being celebrated in the land of Oz (and a glimpse of Dorothy’s crew headed back to the Emerald City) before Glinda, the Good Witch (pop singer Ariana Grande), remembers their time together in college.

     Cynthia Erivo (Oscar nominated for “Harriet” in 2019) plays Elphaba, the future wicked witch, who was born with green skin (picking up from the 1939 original) and a chip on her shoulder. Glinda, the pretentious, haughty blonde who everyone loves, is forced to room with the abrasive Elphaba as the first half of the film mimics the foolishness of a Harry Potter sequel. Not until they get out of their version of Hogwarts, arriving in Oz for a meeting with the Wizard (a way too flip Jeff Goldblum) does the picture get interesting.

      Except for the high-spirited production number, “One Short Day,” when they arrive in Oz—featuring the play’s original Broadway stars Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel—the songs struck me as time killers. But then I doubt songwriter Stephen Schwartz (“Godspell” and countless animated musicals) was targeting senior citizens.

      It’s not a bad musical, but it suffers from way too many songs, some just 30 seconds long, and poor casting. Erivo looks like she’s a 45-year-old among teens, (the actress is 37) while Prince Fiyero, the romantic interest, is played by a 36-year-old (Jonathan Bailey).

    Most shocking was that after 2 hours and 30 minutes, it ends with “To Be Continued.” Director Jon M. Chu (“Crazy Rich Asians,” “In the Heights”) should have turned it into a streaming series.   

     Margaret Hamilton’s performance as the witch in the original classic, along with her flying monkeys, scared the bejeebers out of three generations of kids. The idea that someone would turn her into a sympathetic character is hard to grasp—what’s next, the troubled boyhood of Hannibal Lecter?—but how can you argue with 10 Oscar nominations.

  

NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979) and NOSFERATU (2024)

    If there were to be remakes of this 1922 vampire picture, I cannot think of two directors more qualified for the job than Werner Herzog and Robert Eggers.

    Right after the novel’s copyright expired, Herzog made his version with his best friend, wild-man Klaus Kinski, as Count Dracula (Herzog uses the names from Bram Stoker’s original story) along with Isabelle Adjani and Bruno Ganz as the victimized young couple.


    It’s nearly a scene-by-scene remake of F.W. Murnau’s silent reworking of Stoker’s story (penned by Henrik Galeen) with Kinski made up to resemble Max Schreck, the count in the original. Kinski’s Dracula looks like a living skeleton, with a white, bony head made even creepier with bright red lipstick and black eyeliner. By draping Kinski in black cloaks, at times he seems to be just a floating head. (Far from Bela Lugosi’s 1931 version, “Dracula,” in which the vampire shows up for afternoon cocktails looking like an overdressed, unthreatening uncle.)

    Ganz, who went on to a great career in Germany and America, highlighted by his stunning portrayal of Hitler in “Downfall” (2004), seems uncomfortable with English in “Nosferatu.” (The film was shot in German and English simultaneously.) While Adjani, among the leading French actresses of the era, who earned an Oscar nomination for “The Story of Adele H” (1975), isn’t given much to do as Dracula’s object of affection.

     While visually, Kinski dominates the film, the most memorable performance is given by Roland Topor, a French artist and writer involved in European avant-garde filmmaking. He plays Renfield, Dracula’s insane sycophant, who while being held in a mental institute laughs uncontrollably for no reason.  

    Now Eggers, director of the atmospheric “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” has made a version that also follows the plot of Murnau’s film while adding in all the graphic violence and sex that could only be hinted at 102 years ago (even Herzog’s version is very PG). But the explicit realism doesn’t equate to a scarier experience; in fact, at points this tale was so over the top it almost felt like a parody.

    The story, set in early 19th Century Germany, begins with teen Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp, Johnny’s daughter, who resembles Adjani) experiencing horrible dreams of being possessed by some evil spirit. Fast forward a few years and she’s a newlywed, brokenhearted when her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult of “Juror #2”) is tasked to travel out of the country to finalize a real-estate deal.

     After an arduous journey, Thomas arrives at the Gothic castle of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard, under a mountain of prosthetics), a tall, specter of a human with long arms and claw-like hands who speaks in an almost unworldly voice. (At points, I could have used subtitles to decipher his deep, vaguely Eastern-European accent.)  Murnau renamed the vampire because of disputes with Stoker’s heirs and Eggers follows that name change.

      One look at this creature and most would run for their lives, but Thomas, who comes off as foolishly innocent as Pip, hangs in there, to his regret.

     Back home in Wisberg, Ellen’s nightmares have returned, accompanied by seizures and screaming fits. Reluctantly, her doctor calls in an expert on possession and other occult matters, Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe, of course). The casting of Dafoe is another connection to the original—he played actor Schreck in “Shadow of the Vampire” (2000).

     Maybe the scariest segment of the original silent was Orlok’s voyage across the sea—taking the long way around, I guess—to his new residence in Wisberg. In Eggers’ film (compared to the silent version), it’s less clear what’s happening aboard the ship, but when it crash-lands at the port, Orlok is the only man still “alive.”

     Eggers usual cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, nominated for “The Lighthouse” and this film, shoots Orlok’s castle as if it’s an outpost of hell but he and the director keep the Count in such deep shadows and at a distance that, at times, I felt like he was an extra rather than the main character.

   There is much to appreciate in this film—Dafoe, as always is a joy to watch play another eccentric character—but too much talking and too much explaining takes away too much of the story’s horrific magic.

 

 PHOTOS:

 In the ABC-TV control room in “September 5” (Paramount Pictures)

David Lynch as Gordon Cole in "Twin Peaks" (ABC-TV)

Kyle MacLachlan and Sherilyn Fenn in “Twin Peaks” (ABC-TV)

Michelle Austin hugs Marianne Jean-Baptiste in “Hard Truths” (Bleecker Street Media)

Klaus Kinski is “Nosferatu the Vampyre” (Twentieth Century Fox)

 

 

 

Sunday, January 5, 2025

January 2025

 

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024)

      “Make some noise, BD,” says a loaded Johnny Cash to Bob Dylan, who is pondering a career-changing decision at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, in a scene near the end of James Mangold’s exceptional film about the singer-songwriter’s rise to fame.

     The scene is apocryphal, as no doubt are many scenes in this atmospheric chronicle of Dylan’s arrival and quick ascent in the Greenwich Village folk scene, but it cuts to the truth. Dylan’s performance at Newport remains one of the most important events in rock ‘n’ roll history and established his place beside Elvis and the Beatles at the top of the mountain. Mangold clearly knew his subject well before he started filming. 

      Timothée Chalamet, an actor I’ve dissed in the past, delivers a phenomenal portrait of this brilliant and elusive artist and, if that isn’t enough, does his own singing. His near-Bob singing and playing is at the heart of the film—as it should be—and he delivers; even for those who need convincing, the movie should make clear Dylan’s genius.

 

           Condensing time a bit, the movie begins with Dylan finding his way to the New Jersey hospital where folk legend Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) is being treated for Huntington’s disease and is unable to speak. Encouraged by another folk hero, Pete Seeger (a perfect measured Edward Norton), who is also visiting, Bob plays a song he’s written about Woody. Dylan’s path, it seems, is set.

        The script, written by Mangold and Jay Cocks (the 80-year-old screenwriter who has worked on numerous Martin Scorsese films) and based on Elijah Wald’s book, captures the singer’s unique patter and sarcastic wit, without making him a cliché. They also reconfigure Dylan’s love life to two women, Suze Rotolo, called Sylvie Russo here (Elle Fanning), and Joan Baez (an extraordinary Monica Barbaro). Oddly, Dylan’s future wife, Sara Lownds, who was in his life by 1965, doesn’t show up nor does Edie Sedgwick, the Andy Warhol protégé Dylan was famously involved with.          

      As a Dylan enthusiast, it was a joy to watch episodes I’ve heard and read about through the years re-enacted, from the famous club and concert appearances to recording sessions (I loved that they included the infamous accidental organ solo by Al Kooper on “Like a Rolling Stone,” a classic rock ‘n’ roll tale).

     Barbaro, who played one of the fliers in “Top Gun: Maverick,” may be the find of the film; without really looking like Baez, she brings to life her love-hate relationship with Dylan. And her singing is stunning.

     There’s a moment in the film when she watches Dylan on stage and then, as he’s coming off stage, they kiss for the first time. It’s a classic movie moment of romanticism, perfectly framed by Mangold, and a rare heartfelt touch in this portrait of a young man who leaves little space for others.        

      Mangold directed very different types of bio-pics with “Walk the Line” (2005) about Johnny Cash and “Ford v Ferrari” (2019) about race car partners Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles. With “A Complete Unknown,” he tops himself by maintaining a somewhat removed view of his subject, letting the audience embrace him (or not) rather than pushing him on us.

      Chalamet deserves much of the credit; his Dylan, off stage, stays in the background the best he can, a soft-spoken kid dealing with fame. It’s his lyrics that shake up the music world.      

  

SEPTEMBER 5 (2024)

    Seeing death and violence on television news was nothing unusual when I was growing up. The vile attacks by police on African-Americans, the assassinations of our bravest leaders, the daily reports from Vietnam and various terrorist attacks, domestic and foreign, were ubiquitous in the late 1960s and into the 70s.

    But no event was aired live at such length (Ruby killing Oswald lasted only a few seconds) as was the Palestinian terrorists’ attack on the Jewish athletes during the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

    While I’m surprised it took more than a half century for this compelling story to be filmed, “September 5” delivers a lean, fast-paced tick-tock recreation of what the ABC Olympic television crew went through in covering the 20-hour-long tragedy.

   In the driver’s seat is Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), the backup director who is on duty at 4 a.m. when the news breaks.

    While sports division chief Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard)—the man who virtually invented the way Olympics are covered on TV—fights with his bosses to keep the news department from taking over the coverage from sports, Mason and his team, prominently production chief Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), scramble with what now seems like antique technology to cover the on-going event.

     They are also wrestling with some basic journalistic ethics: whose story are they telling with their coverage, the terrorists or the victims; are the terrorists seeing and utilizing their broadcast as inept German law-enforcement tries to get a clean shot at the terrorists; and can they show a hostage being killed on live TV. This all happens while they struggle to just get usable video and reliable information (future ABC anchor Peter Jennings is the reporter on the scene).

    Smartly, Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum, who co-wrote the script with Moritz Binder and Alex David, uses the actual video of Jim McKay, ABC’s legendary sports anchor, rather than casting an actor in the role. McKay shows why he’s considered the epitome of broadcasting integrity.

     It’s easy to say that the film, 52 years later, can’t have the same impact of one that the ending is unknown. Yet in many ways, knowing the tragic end makes it more heartbreaking, especially when the broadcast team airs early reports from the final shootout at the airport that the hostages have survived.

    I can still remember tearing up when McKay announced that all the hostages were dead—it’s just as devastating when you see him say it on tape, and see the impact it has on the rest of the broadcast crew.

     For anyone who has an interest in the current Middle East conflict or in broadcast news, this picture is a must see. It’s one of the year’s best films.

    While Magaro (“First Cow,” “Past Lives”) and Sarsgaard (who played another famous media personality, writer-editor Chuck Lane, in “Shattered Glass”) are excellent, the surprise of the film is Chaplin. While he’s been a busy character actor since the early 1990s, he’s never left much of an impact on any of his pictures—until now. His Bader is the moral center of the picture, a rigorous journalist who forces the excitable broadcasters to think before they act. 

      Also memorably is Leonie Benesch (“The Teachers’ Lounge”), who plays a low-level assistant thrust into a key role because she’s the only one in the crew who can speak German.

     In these confusing times, Fehlbaum and his superb cinematographer Markus Förderer, have brought to life, in just 95 minutes, a seminal event that deserves to be remembered.

  

NICKEL BOYS (2024)

     Though I appreciate experimental movie storytelling—I consider Terrence Malick and David Lynch among the finest living filmmakers—not all styles fit every story.

    Documentary director RaMell Ross making his feature debut has turned Colson Whitehead’s specifically detailed novel of a boys’ reform school/detention center in the 1960s into an impressionistic, occasionally abstract picture that not only undercuts Whitehead’s disturbing story but becomes a hinderance to feeling empathy for the characters.

     The director’s insistence on mostly showing most of the action through the point of view of one of the two main characters---both confined at the Nickel—is distracting, to say the least. The odd style feels like a gimmick, keeping the viewers at arm’s length and lessening the impact of the horrors at this state-run facility.

     I understand that the filmmakers’ (Whitehead collaborated on the screenplay)

desire to “reimagine” the novel, according one of the producers, but rarely is POV effective in a movie for more than a few scenes. It quickly grows annoying.

      I also wonder how much of the story is lost to those viewers not familiar with the novel.

      Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) is an outstanding high school student who foolishly hitches a ride to a local college where he’s been enrolled in advance classes. Turns out, the car is stolen and, despite his innocence—this is Florida in the 1960s—he’s sent to the notorious Nickel Academy.

     There he, along with his buddy Turner (Brandon Wilson), witnesses and endures brutal punishment for minor offenses and works as a virtual slave for the administrators.

     The novel occasionally jumps ahead to contemporary times and his current life is described. Those scenes in the film use the double dolly shot used often (and apparently invented) by Spike Lee that make the character seem to glide through the set. Nothing about the technique lends any kind of realism to a film.

     And realism is exactly what this story cries out for. Few things are as disappointing as movie adaptation that fails a powerful, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

     The way “Nickel Boys” is shot also leaves little room for performance; these should have been great roles for Herisse and Wilson but they barely registered.

     It seems I am in the minority in my criticism of the filmmaker’s approach and the film will no doubt earn numerous Oscar nominations, but I’m not surprised that the picture has done little business at the box office.

 

THE STRANGE DOOR (1951)

      Though not really a horror film, this creepy picture falls into the cycle of Universal horror that began in the sound era with the 1931 classics “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” and concluded with such foolishness starring Abbott and Costello.

    Charles Laughton, who always gives a particularly odd performance, tops himself as Sire Alain de Maletroit, the easily amused lord of a spooky castle who kidnaps a local ruffian (Richard Stapley) with the intent of marrying him off to his young niece (Sally Forrest). For reasons that seems normal in this crazed, dank film, Maletroit has imprisoned his brother (the girl’s father) and is determined to ruin the young lady’s life. The script is based on a Robert Louis Stevenson short story.

    Boris Karloff lurks about—looking through peep holes at the goings-on—as Voltan, the dungeon keeper who, unknown to Maletroit, is loyal to the imprisoned brother.

     Director Joseph Pevney, whose “Undercover Girl” (1950) is the rare ‘50s picture starring a female cop, keeps the action moving, even when the plot seems to be flagging, while cinematographer Irving Glassberg (“Bend of the River”) makes the cheap sets (probably left over from a dozen films) look menacing. But the main job seems to be letting Laughton chew up the scenery—even his hairdo overacts—and that’s before the impossible-to-kill Karloff seeks his ultimate revenge. I’d never heard of the picture until I bought a five-film box set of Karloff’s lesser-known efforts. This film alone was worth the bargain price I paid.

    London-born William Pratt had an amazing career as Boris Karloff. A theater touring company took him to Los Angeles and he starting working in silents in 1919 (while also driving truck to pay the rent). More than 10 years later, in 1931, among the 15 films he appeared in that year, he played the Monster in James Whale’s “Frankenstein,” giving an unforgettable performance in the horror masterpiece. From that point, his career was set—for better or worse. He never stopped working, inevitably as a dangerous, often otherworldly character, until his death in 1969 at age 81. Karloff made a ton of bad films, but don’t miss his excellent performance as a grave robber in “The Body Snatcher” (1945), based on another Stevenson story.

    Laughton’s years as a star were behind him by the 1950s—the next year he did “Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd”—but he shined in “Hobson’s Choice” (1954), “Witness for the Prosecution” (1957) and, his final feature, “Advise & Consent” (1962). And, most memorably, he directed Robert Mitchum in “The Night of the Hunter” (1955).

   Pevney went on to direct dozens of TV episodes from the 1950s until the 1980s, including 14 episodes of the original “Star Trek” series.

  

THE APPRENTICE (2024)

   Because of the politician nature of this film, I’m reluctant to even write about it. It breaks my vow to ignore all things connected to our soon-to-be-president for at least the next four years. But I can’t ignore what is among the best films of 2024.

     While it exited theaters quickly—I streamed it for a mere $6—it deserved a bigger audience, if only for the exceptional performances by Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes in the “Captain America” series) as the up-and-coming real estate investor Donald Trump and an amazing Jeremy Strong (he played the eldest son in “Succession”) as the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, who takes a wide-eyed Trump under his evil wing.

    Trump’s first encounter with the intense, venomous Cohen, made famous at the McCarthy hearings 20 years earlier (the film is set in the mid-1970s), takes place at a private club where the lawyer is dining at a table filled with famous New York City mobsters.

    He persuades young Trump to let him handle his father’s ongoing case in which the government is suing him for housing discrimination. From that point on, he’s at Trump’s side as the future president ascends in the business world.       

          It’s comical watching a straitlaced Trump navigate one of Cohn’s sex and drug parties where the rich, rightwing elite of the city get down and dirty. It’s also where Cohn obtains material to be used later to “influence” city officials, judges and others to do his bidding.

    The last third of the film loses some steam as Trump distances himself from Cohn—like we see today, he doesn’t like sharing the spotlight. And then, when Cohn takes ill, Trump refuses to take calls from his one-time mentor.

     Cohn’s death from AIDS, after a lifetime of denying his homosexuality and degrading gays—along with anyone else who wasn’t rich and white—was a part of Tony Kushner’s theatrical masterpiece “Angels in America.” In this film, Strong perfectly captures Cohn’s unabashed corruption and willingness of manipulate the system for his own gain, a philosophy he passed along to Trump. Among his lessons: Always claim victory no matter what the outcome.

      The film also shows that Trump’s penchant for not paying his bills comes from Cohn, who was constantly under investigation by the IRS.

     Beyond the performances, the film dramatizes (who knows how much of this is true) the undeniable truth that the rich and elite win the game by getting away with ignoring the rules. Ironically, it took an Iranian director, Ali Abbasi, to bring this essential American story to the screen. It was scripted by Gabriel Sherman, who wrote the thoughtful television series about newspapers, “Alaska Daily.”

     Not surprisingly, it was a major struggle to find a distributor for the picture.

  

OH, CANADA (2024)

      Of Paul Schrader’s recent movies—focusing on men who have reinvented themselves yet are still struggling with ghosts of the past—his latest comes across as the least thought out. While not without its touching moments, this story of an acclaimed documentarian remembering his life during an interview too often spins its wheels on what seems like trivial matters. 

     Richard Gere delivers a solid performance as Leonard Fife, who reluctantly agrees to being the subject of a documentary by a former student of his (Michael Imperioli, Christopher from “The Sopranos”) as he nears death.

     It’s really a one-character show (Jacob Elordi, from “Saltburn,” plays the younger Leonard) that has the opinionated filmmaker recalling in great detail deserting his first wife and young son. A big emphasis is put on his going to Canada to avoid the American draft during the Vietnam War, but the circumstances and rational remain unclear.

     There’s also bickering, during the filmed interview, between him and his current wife (Uma Thurman) that felt unnecessary to the story.

      Though based on a novel by the award-winning Canadian writer Russell Banks (who also wrote “Affirmation,” one of Schrader’s best films), the director should have done one more rewrite of the script.   

     Filmgoers would be better off catching Schrader’s “First Reformed” (2017), “The Card Counter” (2021) or “Master Gardener” (2023), a fascinating (unofficial) trilogy from the legendary screenwriter of “Taxi Driver.”

     He also helped make Gere a star with “American Gigolo” (1980).

  

ASSASSIN’S CREED (2016)

    This special-effects extravaganza represents everything distressing about the future of the movies. An adaptation of a video game series, it stars three of the finest actors now working in the cinema: Marion Cotillard (2007 Oscar winner for “La Vie En Rose”), Michael Fassbender (“12 Years a Slave,” “Steve Jobs”)—reuniting the leads of the 2015 version of “Macbeth” with its director Justin Kurzel—and Jeremy Irons, who has been giving great performance since the early 1980s, including his Oscar-winning turn in “Reversal of Fortune” (1990).

     The trio elevate this cartoon of a sci-fi drama as best they can, but the fact that performers of this caliber feel it necessary to work in such films makes me sad. Imagine Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant starring in a 1938 version of “Star Trek” or “Dune” with James Stewart and Jack Nicholson? The mind reels.

     The crazy storyline of “Assassin’s Creed” sends the plot back to 1492 when the Knights Templar (the go-to group for long-ago skulduggery) hid a bejeweled ball called the Apple that, according to contemporary scientists, offers the key to unlocking humanity’s violent nature.

     Fassbender’s Lynch is saved from a death penalty sentence because his ancestors were Templar assassins, which enables Cotillard’s Sofia and her father (Irons) to send him into the past to track down the Apple.

     Of course, any third grader, told that the action was set in 1492, could have guessed the secret to finding the holy relic. A planned sequel died on the vine when this film didn’t make the money producers expected.

     Occasionally, Fassbender and Cotillard are given the chance to show their thespian skills, but most of the movie consists of long chases and sword play, during which I struggled to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys.      Though one thing was very clear: we should not be trusting scientists as they are up to no good. 

     The supporting cast includes Charlotte Rampling, Brendan Gleeson and Essie Davis, who starred as the sexy detective in the TV series “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.”

     I guess I will never accept the now common career trajectory that sends actors from serious drama to comic book adaptations to streaming series on Hulu and back again—one month you are reciting Shakespeare’s timeless verse and the next you are jumping around in front of a blue screen.

  

EMILIA PEREZ (2024)

    There’s a serious film somewhere beneath the forgettable songs, poor singing and overacting that dominate this Spanish-language film.

    At its heart, this is a story of a brutal Mexican drug lord (transgender actress Karla Sofía Gascón) who wants to reinvents himself as a woman, hiring a resourceful lawyer (Zoe Saldana) to arrange for the medical procedures and relocation. Unfortunately, the filmmakers ran out of plot at that point and turned the film into a public service announcement for the criminal horrors that law enforcement in that country have turned a blind eye to for decades.  

     There’s also a soap opera aspect to the story: his wife from his former life (a raving Selena Gomez) shows up in the new female’s life to share the upbringing of her children. Emilia pretends to be the “late” drug dealer’s sister to gain access to the children.

     It is certainly possible to make a musical about series subjects—Bob Fosse did it twice, in “Cabaret” and “All That Jazz”—but it takes an exceptional director and writers (see “West Side Story”) to pull it off. In “Emilia Pérez,” the singing undercuts the story, exacerbated by amateur crooning. Even pop star Gomez can’t elevate the music.

     Director Jacques Audiard has done some excellent work in the past, scoring an Oscar nomination for best foreign film for “A Prophet” (2009) and eliciting a superb performance from Marion Cotillard in “Rust and Bone” (2012).

    The film clearly impressed some critics, earning 10 nominations from the Golden Globe voters, but I suspect that the idea of a transgender lead performance outweighed the merits of the movie.

     

BABYGIRL (2024)

     I’m not sure what I should take away from this slickly shot story of an intense extramarital affair involving sexual dominance. The affair and the drama surrounding it supply the film with a plot, but, in truth, this is a portrait of a middle-aged woman’s sexuality.

    I kept expecting someone to get killed and police detectives to show up, but responsibility isn’t what this movie is about. Nicole Kidman, in one of her most complex roles, plays Romy, the no-nonsense CEO of a robotic company who is married to a theater director (Antonio Banderas) and has two children.

    When the new crop of interns arrives at the company, she notices a young man (soft-spoken Harris Dickinson, the model in “Triangle of Sadness”) who she saw calm a vicious dog earlier in the day. Somehow, Samuel sees in Romy a kindred spirit and after circling one another for a few weeks, they end up in a hotel room.

       Unsatisfied in her sexual relations with her husband, Romy finds ecstasy in taking commands from this much younger man.

       The movie is written and directed by Halina Reijn, a longtime Dutch actress who previously made two features, including “Bodies Bodies Bodies” (2022), about a group of hedonistic youngsters.

       While Kidman’s performance is mesmerizing, as is her total commitment to the role—considering the film’s topic, the nudity is kept to a minimum—it’s hard to get around the fact that this is a boss having an affair with an employee half her age. To state the obvious, this film could never be made in 2024 with a man in the Kidman role.

      The presentation of a female boss who does exactly what men have been doing forever and women have been fighting against for the last half century was disturbing. Was that the point? 

 

PHOTOS:

Edward Norton listens to Timothee Chalamet in “A Complete Unknown.”  (Searchlight Pictures)

Ethan Herisse in “Nickel Boys.”  (Amazon MGM Studios)

Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan in “The Apprentice.” (Briarcliff Entertainment)

Karla Sofía Gascón in “Emilia Pérez.”  (Netflix)