October 2026

DIGGER (2026)

     One of the most audacious films I’ve seen in years, this cry for sanity as industry and governments drive the planet to destruction, told with unbridled bombast and starring Tom Cruise at his most outrageous, shows off in every frame the daring and wit of director Alejandro G. Iňárritu.

      While the film probably won’t make enough money at the box office to pay for even one of the larger-than-life set pieces that make up the picture, it’s a bold, adventurous movie that showcases what may be the performance of his life by this megastar, pigeonholed in recent years as an action star.

      Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a self-indulgent, impatient billionaire oilman who wakes up one morning to the news that his oil rig in Greenland has just exploded and a glacier the size of Washington, D.C. is headed for the North Sea. At first, he’s more concerned about his dying cat, but soon the U.S. president (John Goodman) and the joint chiefs have assembled at Rockwell’s mansion to determine a course of action.

     His chief engineer Dr. Ganesh (a jittery, hilarious Riz Ahmed) lays out the worst-case scenario (reminiscent of the war room scenes in “Dr. Strangelove”) and the leaders, being arrogant and clueless Americans, decide not to warn the Europeans.

     This chaotic opening 40 minutes, with Cruise’s strands of gray hair flying every which way, ends with a reveal that changes everything. It allows one to take a breath and laugh a bit longer at the fools attempting to manage this world crisis, at least until another jaw-dropping plot turn in the final act. But be prepared: Iňárritu and his team of co-writers don’t hide their politics, hammering (with a shovel) home their outrage about the decisions politicians have made as the planet derails.   

    Trust me, the less you know about this film the more memorable it’s viewing will be. The picture has elements that reminded me of Terry Gilliam’s outlandish “Brazil” and Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” but it’s also clearly connected to themes in Iňárritu’s own work in “Birdman” and “Bardo.” And, as always, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography, with the palette changing with every scene, perfectly aligns with Iňárritu’s vision. It might win him his fourth Oscar.   

     For Cruise, it’s a late-career return to the kind of bravado acting he did in “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Magnolia,” all under the direction of world-class filmmakers.

     As his sister, Sandra Hüller (“Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Zone of Interest”) matches Cruise’s scene chewing while the ubiquitous Jesse Plemons at first seems to have an inconsequential role, until he takes center stage in the last 30 minutes.

    Apparently “Digger” has been a disappointment at the box office (who cares?) but it is also the first “must see” movie of 2026, easily the most ambitious, and maybe the year’s best film.         

A LIFE OF HER OWN (1950)

      I wish I had a dime for every film that opens with a superbly directed, energetically acted set of scenes only to descend into mediocrity for the next 90 minutes.

     This typical “woman’s picture” starring Lana Turner is the perfect example. Lily James (Turner) steps off the bus in New York nervous but determined to make it big in the modeling industry. At an agency that has recruited her, she encounters a swirl of activity, with people barking out orders, answering the phone and shuffling from one small room to another. It seems as if director George Cukor (“The Philadelphia Story,” “A Star Is Born”) decided to squeeze as many extras into the set as possible.

      In charge is Tom Caraway (Tom Ewell, never better in this small role) who, with Lily sitting in his office, explains to another woman what she needs to do to become a model. It’s clear she never will.

    As Caraway discusses the next step with Lily, in walks Mary (a mesmerizing Ann Dvorak), a stylish but past her prime model looking for another chance. (It’s unclear why she was dismissed from a past gig). He causally promises her another chance but you know it’s insincere.

     Lily and Mary end up having drinks and then double-date that night at a nightclub. It ends badly with Mary drunk and upset that her date (a cynical Barry Sullivan) has eyes on the younger Lily.

     On the way home, Lily stops at her neighborhood drug store, which is closed but opens up for her and clearly provides her with some type of illegal drug (a daring implication in 1950) before a melancholy ending to the night in Mary’s apartment. At one point, Mary laments that she has “nothing to show for any of it.”

     The next morning at another modeling agency, Lily overhears people mention Mary’s name and then she asks: Mary jumped to her death earlier that morning.

     I’m not sure where you go from there, in a movie starring Lana Turner, but it just sputters along as she advances in the modeling world and has an on again- off again relationship with a married man (Ray Milland). The script by Isobel Lennart never re-captures the fraught intensity of the opening act.

    Nothing in the film comes close to touching the excitement and then poignancy, beautifully balanced by a great director, of the first 20 minutes.

 

INCENDIES (2010) and ENEMY (2013)

     If his name wasn’t in the credits, I would never have guessed that these two films, which I recently caught up with, were directed by the same man or that the filmmaker was Denis Villeneuve, a few years before he dove into the three-part “Dune” (the concluding chapter coming in December).

       “Incendies,” a French-Canadian picture that was nonmined for the best foreign film Oscar, might be the director’s best work, a heartbreaking story of a daughter retracing her mother’s journey in a Middle East warzone. As part of her will, Nawal (Lubna Azabal) instructs her adult twin children Jeanne and Simon (Mélissa Désormeax-Poulin and Maxim Guadette) to locate their father, who they had been told was dead, and a brother they’d never knew about.

 

     Most of the picture, based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad, sends the French-Canadian Jeanne into villages of an unnamed war-torn Arab country, where most people would rather forget the decades-old conflict between Christian and Muslims. Villeneuve deftly alternates between the flashbacks of the mother’s experiences and the daughter’s attempt to unearth the identity of her father as they both traverse the unchanging desert landscapes.

     The son, accompanied by the mother’s Canadian employer, joins his sister in the final leg of the trip into the past; one that ends with an almost unthinkable horror of warfare. Yet in spite of the bleakness of the mother’s experience, the picture ends with a hopeful message of forgiveness.

.     “Enemy,” released right before the director’s very realistic actioner, “Sicario,” is something completely different. Set in what seems like a dream-like world, a college professor (Jake Gyllenhaal) watches a film featuring an actor who could be his twin. Tracking him down, they connect but never really determine why they are clearly related---even the professor’s mother (Isabella Rossellini) is vague on the subject. They may even be the same person

       Like a David Lynch film (the reason for Rossellini’s presence?) you either go with the unexplainable, sexual psychotic narrative or just throw up your hands in bafflement. And just to add confusion, giant spiders occasionally make appearances.

  

THE UPRISING (2026)

     Ten years ago, Paul Greengrass was among the cinema’s most acclaimed Hollywood filmmakers. Having directed three “Bourne” pictures, “United 93,” and “Captain Phillips,” the Brit could do no wrong. But after “22 July,” about the 2011 terrorist attack in Norway, “News of the World,” the story of post-Civil War pioneers and “The Lost Bus,” a drama about a devastating 2018 fire in Paradise, Calif., his stock was no longer on the rise.

      His latest, about a bloody rebellion by peasants in 15^th Century England, continues his run of tragic tales that moved in and out of theaters before you could blink. Too bad. It’s a memorable piece of history, superbly directed as all Greengrass films are, with a quietly heartfelt performance by the instigator of the uprising, known only as Ploughman by Andrew Garfield.

      The tipping point for the country’s farmers comes when Richard II, the child king, is convinced by his greedy council to increase taxes, turning the workers into virtual slaves. Ploughman, who recently lost his wife and children to the plague, urges his confederates to plead their case to the king himself, who they still think of as a virtual god.

    Greengrass creates a very believable world (it’s based on an actual uprising) among both the peasants and the king’s court as these two forces close in on one another. The writer-director doesn’t spend much time developing the characters: his point is clearly that those seeking justice should never trust the powers that be.

     Garfield brings an unblinking resolve to his everyman role. Greengrass stops short of turning the Ploughman into a hero—in key scenes he just slips into the crowd—he just does what we all should do in the face of injustice.

  

COYOTE VS. ACME (2026)

       It’s time we recognize that Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoons are American’s Shakespeare. The stories of a dozen or so animated characters represent the essence of modern Western experience, much like the Bard chronicled, maybe invented, the soul of Britannia through his plays.

      Of course, Bugs Bunny is our smart-ass version of Hamlet, a rabbit caught between the safety of his underground home and the dangerous world above, dealing with the slings and arrows with sarcastic wit and clever deception.

     Daffy Duck recalls the unhinged ego and unquenchable desire for power of Macbeth. Not sure if Porky Pig is Falstaff or Horatio, but I believe I have stretched this metaphor beyond its breaking point.

     Nevertheless, anyone who cares about American storytelling should have more than a passing knowledge of these classic Warner Bros. shorts. (TCM has been showing them between films for about a year now.)

     Among the most popular cartoons in the later years of animation’s glory years featured Wile E. Coyote, who wordlessly assembles a variety of contraptions to capture (for his dining pleasure) the very speedy Road Runner, who only says “Beep! Beep!”

     In this combination of live action and animation (in the tradition of “Roger Rabbit”), the coyote finally gives up and seeks a lawyer to sue Acme, the company that has famously supplied him with faulty equipment for decades.

    There’s not much worth saying about the simplistic plot—poorly expanding on a very clever New Yorker essay by Ian Frazier from 1996—but there are numerous very funny moments mostly supplied by the animated characters. Bugs has a cameo as an insider source for the coyote as does Daffy, who is appropriately confined to an insane asylum.

      The cartoons, even the mute coyote, give much better performances than the actors, especially Will Forte as Wile E’s reluctant lawyer and John Cena as Acme’s chief council. The only human providing any laughs in the film is Martha Kelly as a member of Forte’s team; she offers the same droll line readings she did as the girlfriend in the memorable TV series “Baskets.”

     The real human star of the film is Eric Bauza, who, as the voice of most of the cartoon characters (including an animated version of the great character actor Peter Lorre) made this longtime fan wonder if original voice performer Mel Blanc had been duplicated through AI. 

     A better feature could be made from the 2011 cartoon series “The Looney Tunes Show,” which revives Bugs and Daffy as housemates in the suburbs with Porky as their best friend and Yosemite Sam as a bothersome neighbor. (Two seasons worth of this very witty show can be seen on the Cartoon Network or Tubi.)

  

THE WHISPER MAN (2026)

      Like so many streaming movies and series, this new Netflix thriller seems to have been stitched together from dozens of other films, with only its casting providing a reason to watch.

        Still going strong at 83, Robert De Niro plays Peter Willis, a retired police detective whose assistance is requested by the investigating officer Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan) in a copycat kidnapping. Years ago, Willis helped send the Whisper Man, a child murderer, to prison. But he’s reluctant to get involved until he learns that the latest victim is his grandson, a child he’s never met.

        Adam Scott (TV series “Parks and Recreation,” “Severance”) plays Willis’ estranged son who has just moved back to his hometown after the death of his wife. Not only is it a stretch to imagine Scott being De Niro’s son, but Scott is never convincing as a grieving father.

      De Niro and Monaghan (best known for “Gone Baby Gone” and three installments of “Mission: Impossible”) do their best to breathe some life into the clichéd plot. Also adding some zing to the story is a memorable appearance by Michael Keaton as the original Whisper Man.         

  

PHOTOS:

Tom Cruise tries to win over world leaders in “Digger.”  (Warner Bros.)

Lubna Azabal faces the horrors of war in “Incendies.” (Sony Pictures Classic)

Wile E. Coyote and his lawyer Will Forte in “Coyote vs. Acme.”  (Warner Bros.)

 

 

August 2026

 

THE ODYSSEY (2026)

     If you dismiss this epic adventure movie because it fails to faithfully reflect the plot points or themes of a 28-century-old manuscript, you need to stop watching Hollywood films. Fidelity to original texts hasn’t been a priority of the business since DeMille and Griffith moved west. 

     First of all, the production may be the most incredible filmmaking achievement since “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, with vast sea- and land-scapes and vivid, larger-than-life battle scenes—mostly created without CGI—that immerses viewers into this Grecian mythological world created under the name “Homer.” Few stories in the long history of Western literature have been more influential than that of Odysseus and his journey home from the Trojan War. Like all filmmakers, Christopher Nolan used the chosen source material to make the movie he envisioned. That it has inspired sales of Homer’s “Odyssey” should be a moment to celebrate in the wake of news that few Americans read a single book each year.

 

    Dominating this nearly three-hour picture is, of course, Odysseus (often called Ulysses in modern times), played with unbendable resolve by Matt Damon, a brave and clever soldier—he came up with that Trojan horse trick—who is led on a circuitous route home from Troy after he insults the gods. One of the film’s deficiencies is that, other than Athena (Zendaya), these powerful gods, whose existence is central to the characters’ lives, are never seen. In fact, the curse they face from Poseidon, god of the seas, is said as an aside by one of Odysseus’ soldiers and never reinforced. 

      The reality of Odysseus’ soldiers’ brutality, which leads to the hero questioning his role as a leader, is smoothed over by the fog of war, the crashing and slashing of swords that is devoid of moral certainty, and never emphasized until the end of the journey. I’m not sure how many viewers will come away from the movie realizing that Odysseus has broken society’s god-mandated rules of hospitality, introducing a world of victory at any cost.

      Damon does a solid job as Odysseus but has little opportunity for a performance; most of his dialogue serves as narration rather than character building. The script gives his devoted wife Penelope, played by Anne Hathaway, more dramatic moments and she delivers. I was less impressed with Tom Holland as Odysseus’ son Telemachus, and Robert Pattinson as the leading suitor for Penelope’s hand. Both say the same things over and over again with little believable emotion. For all of Nolan’s visual sense, the script is less than poetic.

      John Leguizamo gives the best performance in the film as the blind Eumaeus, who remains loyal to Odysseus despite his years of absence.

     I think Nolan missed an opportunity to show a more complex Odysseus by turning Circe (Samantha Morton) into a one-dimensional witch rather than a temptation. In the poem, Odysseus stays with Circe for years, despite the complaints of his crew. Equally underutilized is Charlize Theron as Calypso. Unlike the poem, the sexual exploits of Odysseus and his men are barely hinted at. As for the controversy over casting, it’s too silly to even address.

      I did not see the IMAX version of the film, purposely, as I have always felt the big format magnifies a movie into an event—something more suited for an amusement park attraction. But for those who see movies as sheer entertainment, no doubt IMAX will enhance the experience.

     Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is the return of the big-screen epics of the 1950s and early ‘60s, such as “Ben-Hur,” “Spartacus” and “Lawrence of Arabia.” Considering the state of Hollywood filmmaking that’s probably a good thing.

  

TONY (2026)

     You don’t have to have been a fan of Anthony Bourdain—restauranteur, writer and TV personality—to enjoy this depiction of his coming of age summer spent during his college years in Cape Cod.

      Set in 1974, it’s a perfectly rendered remembrance of the era; the attitudes, the parties, the casual dress, the romantic rituals and, most importantly, the need to be different while discovering one’s self are captured by writer-director Matt Johnson (“Nirvanna the Band the Show” in its various incarnations) and his team of scripters.

     Dominic Sessa (the gangly prep student in “The Holdovers”) plays the teenaged Tony who bolts his parents’ home to chase Nancy (a charming Emilia Jones), a girl he briefly met at Vasser, to Provincetown. Without a plan or a job, though he pretends he’s won a writing fellowship, Tony ends up washing dishes at a rundown restaurant. There he’s taken under the wing of Chef (a scene stealing Antonio Banderas) and, amid the drugs, fighting and bad decisions, finds his place in the world. 

     Long scenes in the restaurant’s claustrophobic kitchen with the nonstop bickering and insults from the Chef and his assistants Stavros (stand-up comic Stavros Halkias) and Sal (a charismatic Leo Woodall, star of “Tuner”) along with the sweet and clumsy flirting between Tony and Nancy (later his wife) turn this slice of life bio-pic into an unpretentious entertaining movie. That it’s about one of the most interesting television celebrities of this century just adds to the film’s fascination.

      Bourdain, after a career as a chef, wrote a tell-all book about the restaurant world, “Kitchen Confidential,” which led to him becoming the refreshingly irreverent host of TV shows “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown.” He took his own life in 2018.

     But in “Tony,” we see the wide-eyed, idealistic, ambitious, and somewhat arrogant young man who was destined to leave an impressive mark on the world.

THE GREAT GATSBY (1949)

      Much like “The Odyssey,” no movie adaptation of this beloved work of literature will ever satisfy the novel’s devoted coterie. This is the second of four film versions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 tale of vacuous Jazz Age elite and the elusiveness of the lauded American Dream. The 1926 silent is a lost film; the two recent “Gatsbys” were stars vehicles for Robert Redford (1974) and Leonardo DiCaprio (2013).

      Starring steely-eyed tough guy Alan Ladd as Jay Gatsby, this 1949 version emphasizes the crime aspect of the story even more so than Fitzgerald’s original. Unlike the 1974 and 2013 adaptations, this film was released before the novel was required reading in high schools, less remembered at the time for its themes than its colorful 1920s setting.

       In fact, the picture opens—after a moment at Gatsby’s grave—with a short montage of our “hero” in action as a bootlegger, shooting at rivals on the street. In the novel, Gatsby’s criminality is vaguely implied, but he clearly purchased his Long Island mansion through illegal activity.

       He befriends his next-door neighbor, Nick Carraway (a miscast Macdonald Carey) so that he can arrange a meeting with Nick’s married cousin, Daisy (Betty Field), who lives across the bay.         

      Flashbacks show Gatsby’s coming-of-age adventures with wealthy boatman Dan Cody and, as a young soldier, meeting and romancing Daisy.

      While Ladd isn’t the most glamourous leading man (I can see Gregory Peck in the role), he pulls off the duality of charismatic gangster and soft-spoken suitor. Less successful are Carey (future soap opera star) as Nick, who never captures the character’s naivety and Field (“Kings Row,” “The Southerner”), who is unconvincing as the privileged, self-obsessed Daisy. Gene Tierney, one of the great beauties of the era, was considered for the role.

      No doubt, restrictions of the era pushed director Elliott Nugent (best known for his Bob Hope comedies) and screenwriters Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum to soften Fitzgerald’s cynicism. Daisy’s husband Tom (Barry Sullivan), an egotistical bigot in the novel, doesn’t seem like a bad guy here.

        But overall, it’s a pretty good picture when one doesn’t put it side-by-side the novel. (Though it’s hard to forgive the writers for cutting Fitzgerald’s poignant, culminating line from Nick.) It’s better than the Redford version but the 1949 movie can’t match Baz Luhrmann’s over-the-top, DiCaprio-dominated picture.

      This version was essentially buried by Paramount when they decided to produce the 1974 movie; it was out of circulation until the Film Noir Foundation refurbished it in 2012.

  

LATE FAME (2026)

       In the second feature by film critic and documentarian Kent Jones, Willem Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, a postal worker who published a long-forgotten book of poetry in the 1970s seduced into thinking he can recapture his halcyon days through a rag-tag group of twentysomething literary wannabes.

      The erstwhile leader (Jake Lacy) of this high-minded clique tracks Saxberger down and convinces him to hang out. While we never learn exactly what this mopey collection—ironically named the “Enthusiasm Society”—does during the day, it seems most are living life on daddy’s money.

     While Saxberger recognizes the pretentiousness of this group, he falls for the attention, especially from the lone female member of the group, actress-singer Gloria (Greta Lee, superb in “Past Lives”). 

     While the film champions those struggling to make it in the literary world it also questions our memories of the past; Saxberger has to wonder if those he mingled with in the 70s, seen from afar, were just as shallow.

     Dafoe seems to give at least one memorable performance almost every year—“At Eternity’s Gate” (2018), “The Lighthouse” (2019), “Nightmare Alley” (2021), “The Card Counter” (2021), “Poor Things (2023), “Nosferatu” (2024), “The Phoenician Scheme” (2025); an amazing run. Here, he captures the now blue-collar old guy, playing pool with his buddies at the local bar, who also desires to return to his small slice of literary fame.

     But the performance of the movie is given by Lee, who is nearly unrecognizable as drama-queen Gloria, wearing too much makeup and dressing as if she’s living in 1920s Paris. She never stops performing, thriving on the attention offered by Saxberger. Turns out her regular gig is as a cabaret singer (she does a salacious version of the Kurt Weill classic “Surabaya Johnny”) at a small gay club.

      Jones’ first fiction film, “Diane,” was among the best of 2019, propelled by underrated actress Mary Kay Place in the title role. While “Late Fame” is written by Samy Burch, a 2023 Oscar nominee for “May December,” adapting a novel by Arthur Schnitzler (the early 20^th Century Viennese writer who wrote “Eyes Wide Shut”) it isn’t as sharp or insightful as “Diane.” I waited in vain for an interesting discussion of writers or hear Saxberger’s thoughts on contemporary poetry.

     But the interplay between Dafoe and Lee make the film well worth the price of admission.     

   

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP (2014)

     No current film star reflects the work ethic of studio era performers—who as studio employees didn’t have a choice—as much as Nicole Kidman. The Australian actress has appeared in over 40 films and television series since she made this thriller, based on the acclaimed novel by S.J. Watson.

     A throwback to film noir of the 1940s, the story presents the ridiculous central plot that Kidman’s Christine awakes each morning not remembering anything about her life, starting anew. Amnesia was central to numerous post-war crime pictures, including “Two O’Clock Courage,” “Somewhere in the Night,” “High Wall” and “Dark Passage.” More recently, “Memento” (2000), follows the adventures of a lead character with memory loss.

      But a strong cast, including Colin Firth as Christine’s husband who has to break the news to her each morning, and Mark Strong, as her secretive psychologist, contribute to a compelling drama. Both seem suspicious after Christine starts to put together the pieces of her life and the alleged attack that left her damaged. If you start looking too closely at the plot, it all falls apart (for one, why does this middle-aged woman only have one friend?)

     Director Rowan Joffe (son of “The Killing Fields” director Roland Joffé), who also adapted the novel, uses the repetitive nature of the story to build sympathy for Christine as she peels away the lies. Joffe previously directed an intense remake of the British classic crime picture, “Brighton Rock,” 

     “Before I Go to Sleep” did not do well at the box office and was quickly forgotten amid all the Kidman-starring product out there, but it’s worth seeking out (I discovered it on Pluto TV).

HEAT LIGHTNING (1934)

     Labeling is everything. If you call a low-budget crime picture from the 1940s a film noir, everyone wants to see it. Same with every movie made before 1935 suddenly stamped as a “Pre-Code picture,” a selling point that implies the script was uncensored and presents characters in a more realistic manner than movies made during the Golden Age.  

     But in truth, the institution of Hollywood was self-censoring from its inception, tailoring stories and characters to what it imagined middle-class Americans wanted to see on the big screen. Occasionally, a racy story slipped through the process, mostly allowing the lead actress to be portrayed as having sexual feelings without being condemned.

    “Heat Lightning,” starring two of the era’s most underrated actresses, Aline MacMahon and Ann Dvorak, as sisters Olga and Myra running an auto garage in California’s Joshua Tree desert, actually qualifies as “Pre-Code.” Based on a failed stage play written by George Abbott and Leon Abrams, the film bears resemblance to the more famous one-set melodrama “The Petrified Forest,” (which debuted on Broadway the next year), but Warner Bros. stalwart director Mervyn LeRoy never lets this tale of making tough life choices become claustrophobic.

     The story begins to take shape when a pair of bank robbers on the run, George (Preston Foster) and Jeff (Lyle Talbot) stop at Olga’s diner-garage and are joined by a pair of recent divorceés (Glenda Farrell and Ruth Donnelly) and their chauffeur (Frank McHugh) just in from Reno. While Olga is trying to keep her younger sister from going to a dance with a local pool-hall bum, her own desires are rekindled by George, who, coincidentally, she knew years ago in Oklahoma. But George is a sleazy ball, who only sticks around in hopes of snatching the jewels one of divorceés is carrying. A key element of the plot revolves around a sexual liaison.

     Among all the well-known players, MacMahon is the star here; hiding her sexuality with overalls and a bandana and her expertise in repairing cars (a prized skill in those early days of motor vehicles) while her sorrowful eyes show her regret of leaving her past life. A theatrical actress since 1921, she started her screen career in 1931, mostly cast as a smart-mouthed sidekick or unmarried aunties. She inevitable stood out in most of her films no matter how minor her role, in part because she brought an early version of the Method to her acting, having taken a class in acting from the originator of this novel style of acting, Konstantin Stanislavski.

        She was at her best in her debut “Five Star Final,” as a newspaper reporter with a conscious, and in “Ah Wilderness!” (1935), as Mickey Rooney’s    

aunt in Eugene O’Neill’s examination of small-town America. She scored an Oscar nomination in the now-unwatchable “Dragon Seed” (1944), featuring white performers playing Chinese characters in the adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s famous novel.

      MacMahon should have also been nominated for playing Burt Lancaster’s aunt in the swashbuckler “The Flame and the Arrow” (1950), for the Anthony Mann-James Stewart Western “The Man from Laramie” (1955) and as another aunt, reprising her stage performance, in the 1963 movie adaption of James Agee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “All the Way Home.”

  

STOCKHOLM (2019)

     The most famous example of the “Stockholm Syndrome,” in which a hostage begins to sympathize with captors, took place when heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a terrorist group in 1974. But the term originated the year before when an egotistical ex-con walked into a bank in Stockholm, Sweden, took two female employees hostage and demanded the release of an old friend from prison.

     At least that’s how it plays out in this entertaining comedy-drama starring Ethan Hawke, a movie that received little support when released seven years ago despite coming off the actor’s career best performance in “First Reformed.” I found it on the free streaming service Tubi.

     As Lars Nystrom (“just call me the Outlaw”), Hawke plays a machine-gun wielding, unpredictable wannabe cowboy immediately clashing with the stern, unbending Stockholm police chief (Christopher Heyerdahl), who grows increasingly frustrated by Lars’ outrageous requests. After officials release bank robber Gunnar Sorensson (another convincing performance by Mark Strong), the film takes on a sitcom setup, focused on the relationship of hostage Bianca (Swedish actress Noomi Rapace) and Lars.

      After a slow start, the film jumps from unexpected crisis to the next, even after they pile into the getaway car—the same Mustang model that Steve McQueen drove in “Bullitt.” The tale was adapted by writer-director Robert Budreau (who directed Hawke in “Born to Be Blue”) from a New Yorker story.

      Hawke, who scored an Oscar nod last year as the talkative songwriter Lorenz Hart in “Blue Moon,” is perfectly cast; a macho version of Al Pacino’s “Sonny” in “Dog Day Afternoon.”

 

PHOTOS:

Matt Damon, as Odysseus, leads his troops in “The Odyssey.”  (Universal Pictures)

Macdonald Carey as Nick and Alan Ladd as Jay in “The Great Gatsby.” (Paramount Pictures)

Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe in “Late Fame.” (Magnolia Pictures)

Preston Foster and Aline MacMahon in “Heat Lightning.” (Warner Bros.)