April 2023

 

AIR  (2023)

     Every sport has a cadre of insiders who, though little known to the general public, play an integral role in the game’s development, promotion and recruitment of talent. Last year’s underappreciated “Hustle,” starring Adam Sandler, looked at the scouting world of basketball. Now, a real-life basketball insider, promoter and shoe executive Sonny Vaccaro, takes center stage in “Air,” which tells the well-known (at least to sports fans) story of Nike’s wooing of Michael Jordan and the creation of the most popular athletic shoe.

     Matt Damon plays Vaccaro, whose job is to save the struggling basketball division of Nike, which in the early 1980s, was still seen as only a running shoe company. While others in the firm are focusing on lesser lights among the 1984 NBA draft picks, Vaccaro, a gambler at heart, puts his job on the line to convince Jordan and his business-minded mother (a scene-stealing Viola Davis) to pass on the bigger companies, Adidas and Converse, and commit to a Nike shoe deal.

     The highly entertaining film, directed by Ben Affleck (who also plays Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight) never takes itself too seriously—it is after all just a shoe—lacing the drama with humorously profane, snappy dialogue filled with inside basketball references and the cut-throat world of athlete endorsements.

      The script, by first-timer Alex Convery, who worked on the ESPN documentary on Vaccaro, is essentially a series of conversations Sonny has with the zen-like Phil; his worn-down boss (Jason Bateman); Jordan’s despicable agent (Chris Messina); his supportive co-worker (the always hilarious Chris Tucker) and Davis’ steely Mrs. Jordan.

    The film momentarily soars when shoe engineer Peter Moore (a memorable Matthew Maher) explains his passion for creating shoes as he starts working on the Air Jordan model and again when Vaccaro offers an eloquent prediction of Jordan’s future. But Affleck and his buddy Damon aren’t reaching for great art here; instead, they’ve memorialized on film one of the most important business deals in recent history along with a heartfelt tribute to an amazing athlete.

  

STORM WARNING (1951)

    This isn’t the usual 1950s crime picture—especially when one considers the cast, headlined by Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan and Doris Day. Typically, with these three on screen, the “storm warning” would be romantic entanglements, but this movie deals with much stronger stuff.

     Rogers plays Marsha Mitchell, a feisty model who, while traveling on a bus to Los Angeles with her manager, ditches him during a stop at Rock Point (a stand-in for Corona, Calif., where it was shot), a small town where her sister (Day) lives.

     Instead of a touching reunion, Rogers witnesses the killing of an out-of-town reporter after he’s taken from the local jail by men wearing white robes and hoods.

    Based on the power the Ku Klux Klan had in Corona in the 1920s, the film, written by Daniel Fuchs (Oscar winner for “Love Me or Leave Me”) and Richard Brooks (just starting a directing career that would include “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Elmer Gantry”), pulls few punches in its evisceration of the Klan and how it drew in ordinary, seemingly respectable citizens. Though, pointedly, the film avoids mentioning the KKK’s role in the lynching of and discrimination against African Americans. In those days, Hollywood always hedged its bets.

    Reagan plays the town’s prosecutor, seemingly the only man in town bothered by the KKK’s dominance, who is determined to find someone to flip on these hate-mongers who have bullied everyone in town. The outsider Marsha is his best chance, but she’s conflicted by the fact that her sister’s new husband (Steve Cochran) has joined the Klan.

      All three stars bring an intense sincerity to the picture; at one point, when Reagan abruptly shows up at a rally, he casually tells a man holding a child, “she oughta be home in bed.” And Rogers gives one of her most down-to-earth performances even as she’s playing a fashion model.

    Hollywood veteran Stuart Heisler, who started with Mack Sennett in 1913, tells this frightening story without the hysteria and over-reach that anti-Communist pictures of the era reek of. Though he mostly worked in B-pictures, Heisler directed some fine films in the 1940s and 50s, including “The Glass Key” (1942), “Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman” (1947) with Susan Hayward and “The Star” (1952) with Bette Davis.

     The same year as “Storm Warning,” Heisler directed an equally unlikely picture, “Journey into Light,” in which a minister (Sterling Hayden) gives up his calling in a crisis of faith. Heisler seemed to have been Warners’ go-to filmmaker for controversial subjects.

     The studio had previously, though tentatively, taken on the KKK in a 1937 Humphrey Bogart film, “Black Legion,” but didn’t name the group. “Storm Warning” is the closest Hollywood came to repudiating the propaganda of D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” a cinematic masterpiece and an abomination.

     It’s unfortunate that “Storm Warning,” recently restored by the Film Foundation, has rarely been screened over the past half century.

  

SHOWING UP (2023)

    I’m not sure what to make of the fourth collaboration between writer-director Kelly Reichardt and actress Michelle Williams, which trails an insecure sculptor trying to make her mark in a community of artists.

    Like a short story in a literary magazine, “Showing Up” has little plot or exposition and the main character, Lizzy (Williams), despite her dedication to her art, possesses almost no control over her own life, while competing with dismissive and pretentious strivers. She’s such an empty vessel that an injured pigeon nearly takes over her life,

    In her day job, Lizzy works at an art school, serving as the secretary-assistant to her mother (Maryann Plunkett), who seems to be an administrator. (Nothing much in the film is explained.) While her mother treats her like just another employee, her father (Judd Hirsch) barely listens to what she says. And fellow artist Jo (Hong Chau, Oscar nominated for “The Whale”), who is Lizzy’s irresponsible landlord and off-and-on friend, only notices Lizzy when she needs something.

    Reichardt and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt (“Emma.”) give considerable screen time to the small clay figures of women in various poses that Lizzy is working on for an upcoming gallery show. These creations clearly have importance to the director, but I wanted more from Lizzy: a decision, a change, a reckoning. That isn’t this movie’s mission.

    I also couldn’t get over that Williams, though her hair is cut to make her seem younger, is 43 years old; I would have appreciated the character much more if it had been played by someone in their twenties, an age when most are struggling to find themselves. 

      Reichardt has been a critics’ darling since she and Williams teamed up to make the touching indie, “Wendy and Lucy” (2008), but, as glad as I am that she’s able to get her films released, I wish she’d stop offering appetizers and dig into the main course.

  

BEST SELLERS (2021)

    Traditionally, British actors never retire. Yet few have sustained a run like Michael Caine. The 90-year-old started as a film actor 67 years ago and has been a star for 57 of those years.

    After playing one of the leaders of a British troop fighting off local Africans in “Zulu” (1964) and an amorous spy in “The Ipcress File” (1965), Caine became an international star in the title role of “Alfie,” playing an unapologetic (and incredibly sexist) playboy who enjoys the “swingin’ 60s” life in London. The title song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David was huge hit and Caine’s performance earned the actor the first of six Oscar nominations.

    Highlighting his astonishingly resilient career are performances as a brutal vigilante in “Get Carter” (1971); a cynical journalist in “Pulp” (1972); opposite Laurence Olivier in the two-man play “Sleuth” (1972)—he took the Olivier role in the 2007 remake; as Peachy alongside Sean Connery in “The Man Who Would Be King” (1975); a rather kinky doctor in “Dressed to Kill” (1980); a drunken professor in “Educating Rita” (1984); a man who falls for his wife’s sister in “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986); an abortion doctor in “The Cider House Rules” (1999), a disillusioned journalist in Vietnam in “The Quiet American” (2002); Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s protective butler in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy and the rebellious Jasper in “Children of Men” (2006). That’s just the “best of” from this unassuming, understated performer. He won supporting acting Oscars for “Hannah” and “Cider House.”

     “Best Sellers” offers a perfect old man role: Caine plays Harris Shaw, a misanthropic writer who, after one best-selling novel, drops out of sight until the daughter of his original publisher drags him out of his house and publishes his most recent work of fiction. The film centers on the relationship between stressed-out Lucy (Aubrey Plaza), who needs a best-seller to save her publishing house, and the alcoholic Shaw, who is nothing short of a jerk. After they drop the usual college-community writers’ circuit for a tour of pubs, Shaw becomes a star on social media for simply shouting “It’s all Bullshite!” to cheering young people.

    The movie doesn’t move beyond its one-note plot but I was entertained by watching Caine’s Shaw act like a jackass and Plaza’s Lucy (an indie film star after “Ingrid Goes West” and “Emily the Criminal”) learn to loosen up. 

     In just the last few years, Caine has starred as the brains behind a collection of elderly bank robbers in “King of Thieves” (2018), a modern-day Fagin in “Twist” (2021) and, again for Nolan, in a small role in “Tenet” (2020).  

    These may be the great actor’s final roles as he had back surgery last year and now struggles to walk. But after nearly seven decades of screen performances, longer than almost every star in film history, I wouldn’t count Caine out yet.

  

THE LOST KING (2023)

      Among the most maligned figures in history, Richard III, according to many recent investigations, may have not been the ogre painted by William Shakespeare in his 1594 play. More than 100 years after he died in battle on Bosworth Field, possibly offering his “kingdom for a horse,” the 32-year-old king was portrayed by the great playwright as a murderous megalomaniac who brought dishonor to the crown.

     The most recent film by Stephen Frears, one of Britain most accomplished directors, follows the real-life journey of Philippa Langley as she becomes obsessed with finding the final resting spot of Richard and restore his reputation.

     Unhappy in her sales job, Philippa (played with quiet resolve by Sally Hawkins), after seeing a local production of the Bard’s play, starts reading up on Richard, joins a group of quirky true believers obsessed with the king and imagines seeing the “son of York” outside her home, eventually speaking with him (Harry Lloyd plays both the “vision” and the actor in the play).   

     While the film tends to meander and the device of her speaking with “Richard” grows tiresome, Frears and his screenwriters (Langley herself, Michael James and actor Steve Coogan, who also plays Philippa’s ex-husband) never lose sight that the film is about Philippa, not the 15^th Century monarch.

      One of the key themes of the film is how women continue to be marginalized by men in power.  Philippa is someone who has been underappreciated all her life, even in her great triumph. Hawkins, who was nominated for an Oscar for playing a similarly unassuming character in “The Shape of Water” (2017), has rarely failed to deliver a believable performance since her breakthrough in Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” (2008). She was also memorable in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” (2013), scoring a supporting actress Oscar nomination.

    The 81-year-old Frears was a British television director until the 1980s when “My Beautiful Laundrette” (1985), with a young Daniel Day-Lewis, and “Dangerous Liaisons” (1988) put him on the list of top filmmakers. Among his best works are “High Fidelity” (2000), “Dirty Pretty Things” (2002), “The Grifters” (1990) and “The Queen” (2006), the last two earning him best director Oscar nominations.

  

HOLLYWOOD STORY (1951)

     I recently started exploring the surprisingly rich treasure trove of movies to be found on YouTube. I never imagined how many full-length features (occasionally first-rate prints) could be found hidden amongst the music videos and sports highlights.

    Along with watching “Mickey,” a Mabel Normand vehicle from 1918 whose popularity was second only to “The Birth of a Nation” for many years; the directing debut of Josef von Sternberg, “The Salvation Hunters;” and a handful of Clara Bow silents directed by Victor Fleming and Frank Lloyd, I stumbled on a film I’d never heard of about the movie business.

       While it doesn’t stand with classic industry pictures such as “A Star Is Born” (1935), “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1949), “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) or modern takes “The Player” (1992) and “Mank” (2021), “Hollywood Story” is thoroughly entertaining even when its coincidences grow more ludicrous.

     Richard Conte, one of the eras most underrated actors, plays Larry O’Brien, a successful New York filmmaker who is looking for a Los Angeles movie studio to take over. His publicist friend (Jim Backus, who also provides the unnecessary narration) takes him to an abandoned studio lot where the long-time caretaker gives them a tour.

     O’Brien’s interest is peaked when he’s shown the long-deserted office of silent director Franklin Ferrara, who was murdered in that very room in 1929. He immediately decides to not only make a movie about Ferrara’s unsolved murder, but to solve the crime, a decision that makes everyone around him unhappy.

     First, O’Brien’s producing partner (Fred Clark) forcefully demands he drop the film project and then a young woman (Julie Adams) begs him to give it up. She’s the daughter of the woman who was both the star of Ferrara’s silents and his paramour. Also, the detective who originally worked the case (Richard Egan) warns O’Brien to back off.

   But the director laughs off the doubters—he displays an arrogant confidence not unlike when Conte plays tough-guy assassins. In fact, he pulls Ferrara’s one-time writing partner (a very quirky Henry Hull) out of his hermit-like existence and convinces him to write the script for the new picture.

    Like “Sunset Blvd.,” made the year before, a few silent stars play themselves, including Francis X. Bushman (“Ben-Hur”), Helen Gibson (star of many Westerns and Hoot Gibson’s wife) and Betty Blythe (a 1920s sex symbol who starred in “She” and “The Queen of Sheba”). Ramping up the verisimilitude are many scenes shot around L.A. and Hollywood, including a scene where the characters visit the set of a Joel McCrea film.

    Surprisingly, the director is William Castle, who later became famous for his horror thrillers, including “The Tingler,” “House on Haunted Hill” and “Mr. Sardonicus.” But before he became famous for his creepy horror, he made about 30 low-budget crime pictures and Westerns for Columbia, including the Robert Mitchum film “When Strangers Marry” (1944).

  

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (2023)

    Since the mid-1980s, Keanu Reeves has been part of the Hollywood landscape: He was in his early 20s when made his mark as part of the morally challenged teen gang in “River’s Edge” and then, three years later, became a full-fledged star with the slacker comedy “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

     In the 1990s, “Speed” and “The Matrix” raised Reeves’ profile, but he never seemed interested in becoming more than a stoic, deep-voiced action star (though “The Lake House” should have opened the door to more opportunities).

    In 2014, at age 50, he found another hit franchise, playing the taciturn hit man, John Wick, the invention of screenwriter Derek Kolstad, whose complicated relationship with his former employer leaves a boatload of dead bodies around the world.

    I skipped parts two and three, but the final chapter, confirms that I missed nothing. Surrounding by opulent settings and sarcastic enemies and facing impossible odds, Wick outkills every world-class assassin recruited by the bad guys.

    Among the ridiculous set pieces in this new film is a long shootout as Wick and his opponents drive around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. And through it all, not a single policeman shows up. Same goes for an extensive gunbattle in a hip, crowded dance club, where the partiers keep dancing despite a hail of bullets.

     Making sure there’s no connection to reality, Wick’s most accomplished rival is Caine (Donnie Yen), a blind assassin.

    Ian McShane and the late Lance Reddick repeat their roles as Wick allies from the previous chapters as does Laurence Fishburne, who also supported Reeves in the “Matrix” pictures. They bring some levity to the story, but, overall, this foolishness Is played with the seriousness of a Eugene O’Neill tragedy.

   

 

PHOTOS:

Matt Damon and Viola Davis in “Air.” (Amazon Studios)

Ginger Rogers under assault by the KKK in “Storm Warning.”  (Warner Bros.)

Michael Caine as a writer in “Best Sellers.”  (Screen Media Films)

Richard Conte plays a director in “Hollywood Story.”  (Universal International Pictures)

 

March 2023

2022 ACADEMY AWARDS

     Academy members have been rewarding safe, crowd-pleasing entertainments since this Oscar thing started in 1927. I’ve always wondered: what possessed voters to select “Around the World in 80 Days” as the best picture of 1956 or, in the 1960s, “The Sound of Music” and “Oliver!”? And how foolish does 1990 best picture “Dances with Wolves” look compared in loser “Goodfellas”?

    In the past 20 years, what had been the occasional unexplainable pick became the norm, starting with head-scratching best pictures “Crash” (2005), “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008) and “The Artist” (2011). With the expansion of the membership and the decline in the quality of American films, it has become rare that a first-rate picture is celebrated at the end of the Sunday night show. In the past six years, only “Parasite,” a South Korean movie, and “Nomadland,” an offbeat indie picture, were worthy best picture selections. While “Everything Everyone All at Once” is a better and more ambitious film than 2018’s “Green Book,” or 2021’s “CODA,” its strongest selling point is telling an Asian American story, even if that drama remains buried under a numbing flurry of CGI.

   

 More astonishing than winning best picture, “Everything” become the first film to have three actors take home Oscars since “Network” (1976). “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) was the only other film to win three acting trophies, even with Marlon Brando losing.

     While Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis gave good performances and each provided emotional high points for the television show, it would have been nice to see at least one of the actors from “The Banshees of Inisherin” recognized, not just the donkey. (See my list of the year’s best on the website.)

    And while I’m all in favor of diversity in movies and, by extension, movie awards, too often debates about selections focus on the gender, race and ethnicity of the nominees rather than the quality of the performance, writing or directing. Need it be said that not all actors in high-profile films are equally worthy of being honored?       

    Giving Brendan Fraser the Oscar over Colin Farrell was the biggest miscarriage of Oscar justice of the night, but the low point was the trailer for “The Little Mermaid” that Disney, ABC’s parent company, foisted on viewers. The cynic in me has already penciled in the remake on next year’s best picture nominees.

     Almost as bad were the clips marking Warner Bros. 100^th anniversary: half the movies in the montage weren’t Warner pictures but were from MGM, whose library was acquired by the studio a few years ago. Like the clips that aired last year of “The Godfather,” it was a piece of advertising not worthy of being part of the Academy show.

      Though I never expect the Oscars to mirror my opinions on films, I remain baffled as to why three mainstream but superbly entertaining films—“Nope,” “The Woman King” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”—were all but ignored by Academy voters. Each deserved a spot in the best picture competition.

     If I ran the show, I’d ink Jimmy Kimmel to a long-term contract, hire better writers to improve the presenters’ chit-chat, do a better job of selecting In Memoriam people (no Paul Sorvino or Melinda Dillon?) and bring back the live presentation of the honorary awards (instead, they hold a dinner in November). Can you image what a great moment it would have been had Michael J. Fox accepted this year’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award Sunday night?

        

TO LESLIE (2022)

    If it takes questionable campaigning to score Oscar recognition for low-budget, barely released pictures such as “To Leslie,” then I’m all for it. While I am not ready to install the film’s star into the acting pantheon as some have insisted, Andrea Riseborough gives a superb performance that should elevate this relatively unknown to starring roles.

     This downbeat character study opens with grainy video of an overly enthusiastic woman being interviewed on local TV after winning the lottery. Jumping ahead six years, she’s a homeless, alcoholic lost soul, looking like she should be hospitalized.

     Attempts to stay with her apprehensive 20-year-old son (Owen Teague) and then with her hateful, bitter sister (Allison Janney) end with her being thrown out because she just can’t keep away from the bottle.

     Riseborough captures as well as anyone has the hopeless bar fly who makes herself a figure of ridicule as she attempts to allure men. Leslie is the person you cross the street to avoid or look away from when you’re drinking at the bar. A sad, lonely life, but one that she seems to have brought on herself, alienating every relative.

     Leslie finds a bit of stability when a motel manager (a miscast Marc Maron) hires her as a cleaning lady, going out of his way to steer her toward the straight and narrow.

     As unforgettable as Riseborough and Janney (channeling her role as the mother in “I, Tonya”) the other characters come off as a collection of one-too-many cliches—I’m sure not everyone in West Texas is a loud-mouth loser.

     Sadly, without the surprise best actress nod for Riseborough (I still maintain that few of the voters saw the movie), “To Leslie” would have disappeared amid the onslaught of star vehicles and sci-fi/comic strip films.

       Director Michael Morris (a director and producer on “Better Call Saul”) and screenwriter Ryan Binaco have created the kind of gritty, down-and-out tale that flourished in the 1970s and early 80s. This film would fit nicely on a double bill with “Scarecrow” (1973), “Mean Streets” (1973), “Stranger Than Paradise” (1984), “Barfly” (1987) or pretty much any Cassavetes film.

  

HUSTLE (2022)

    Adam Sandler, after years of making a mint by playing the dumb guy in juvenile comedies, has delivered two nuanced dramatic performances in a row, both as basketball-obsessed characters.

     Proving that his work in “Uncut Gems” wasn’t a one-off, the 56-year-old memorably depicts an NBA scout with an eye for raw talent who’s desperate to finally get off the road. His shot at an assistant coaching job disappears when the longtime owner of the Philadelphia 76ers (Robert Duvall) dies and his son (Ben Foster), a rival of Sandler’s Stanley Sugerman, takes over the team. (Queen Latifah gives an upbeat, genuine performance as Stanley’s wife.)

     Back beating the bushes for future stars, Stanley discovers a poor, humble young man (played by NBA player Juancho Hernangomez) in a small town in Spain and quickly bonds with his family.

     While the plot outline is about as cliché as it gets, director Jeremiah Zagar and screenwriters Taylor Materne and Will Fetters turn the story into a fascinating look at the trials and tribulations of a foreign player getting a shot in the Association.

     Sandler’s sincerity and clear love of basketball (in “Uncut Gems” he was an obsessive NBA gambler) and the participation of dozens of NBA stars (including LeBron James, Seth Curry, Trae Young, Anthony Edward and legend Julius Erving) turn the film into one of 2022’s best.

      This month, Sandler will receive the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, but he also should have been among the Oscar’s best actor nominees.

  

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (2022)

     I will not go so far as to say this is the worst film ever nominated for a best picture, best director and screenplay Oscar considering that the last 20 years have been lousy with poor choices by the Academy, but the selections are pretty egregious.

    While I think most would agree that the world of fashion and influencers and the filthy rich are worthy of slash-and-burn satirizing, the effectiveness of any mockery comes down to its execution—compare a Will Ferrell comedy to a Cohen Bros. picture; Jerry Lewis to Stanley Kubrick.

        Indulgence defines this Danish (though primary in English) film primarily set on a luxury yacht with a collection of international travelers. It strains to show the well-to-do as inconsiderate, delusional and self-righteous. For reasons I never really grasped, much of the focus is on a pair of young, attractive but vacuous influencers played by Charlbi Dean (who tragically died in August at age 32) and Harris Dickinson.

      But the main drama of the first half of the film is the attempts by the boat’s staff to keep its captain (Woody Harrelson) sober long enough to attend dinner.

      When he does finally emerge from his cabin, the yacht runs into a violent storm, spurring disrupted stomachs among the passengers, depicted in repulsive         

literalness by director Ruben Östlund. If this wasn’t unpleasant enough, Östlund subjects the audience to a long, sophomoric debate over capitalism between the captain and a Russian passenger (an amusing Zlatko Buric).

        For reasons I won’t go into—I don’t want to spoil the “fun” for those who plan to see it—some of those aboard end up washed ashore on a deserted beach, where a yacht employee (Dolly de Leon) takes control of the group.

     That’s where the film turns into a 1970s Lina Wertmüller film, growing more didactic and idiotic by the minute. To be clear, the great Italian director did it well 50 years ago; “Triangle” plays like an amateurish remake.

     Östlund previous high-profile pictures, “Force Majeure” (2015) and “The Square” (2017) both share with “Triangle” a willingness to strip individuals and institutions of their veneer of respectability and an absence of subtlety.

    But clearly many disagree with my assessments: “Triangle” captured the Palme d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival along with all those Oscar nods; “The Square” scored a foreign film Oscar nomination; and “Force Majeure” managed a Golden Globe nomination.

  

THE LAST FULL MEASURE (2020)

      Though this based-on-a-true-story drama has all the markings of a TV movie, leading inevitably to an emotional, feel-good finale, a strong script and heartfelt performances from an all-star cast of Hollywood veterans playing Vietnam vets win the day.

       Set in 1999, a Defense department staffer, Scott Huffman, ready to move on to greener pastures, finds himself saddled with the task of investigating a long-ignored request for a Medal of Honor by those who witnessed the acts of an Air Force man during the Vietnam War in 1966. Posthumously, Airman William Pitsenbarger had received the Air Force Cross by was denied the higher honor.

    As Huffman (played generically by Sebastian Stan) interviews the men who are pushing for Pitsenbarger’s medal, the story of his heroism and the admiration from those who were there inspires the young lawyer. While the idea that all these vets have strong anti-social attitudes seems a bit reductive, but it gives a collection of fine actors, including William Hurt, Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, John Savage, Peter Fonda and, most memorably, Christopher Plummer as Pitsenbarger’s father, some touching moments. The impressive cast also includes Diane Ladd and Amy Madigan.

    Plummer, who seemed to improve with age—he was 90 when this was released—has one of his best moments in his long, illustrious career when, looking out a bedroom window, he remembers watching his son cut the grass as a boy.  It was his final big screen performance, as it was for Fonda.

    Also giving what may be his best film performance is Dale Dye, as a senator whose connection to the war is crucial to Pitsenbarger getting his due. The long-time military adviser on dozens of pictures (“Platoon,” “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Saving Private Ryan” and the television series “Band of Brothers”), Dye has acted in more than 80 films since 1986.

     Writer-director Todd Robinson, best known for “Lonely Hearts” (2006), his remake of the cult classic “The Honeymoon Killers,” provides this superb lineup of actors with poignant backstories and memorable dialogue, creating a fine addition to the Vietnam War film catalogue.

  

THE PALE BLUE EYE (2022)

    For some reason, writer-director Scott Cooper gets no respect. Since his debut as a director in 2009 with “Crazy Heart,” which earned Jeff Bridges a long-deserved best actor Oscar, Cooper has made five films; I’ve seen four of them and all are excellent.

    His latest, which quietly debuted on Netflix in January after a very limited theatrical release in December, stars Christian Bale (who also headlined Cooper’s “Out of the Furnace” and “Hostiles”) as Augustus Landor, a melancholy detective, circa 1830, who is recruited by the superintendent of West Point academy (the always superb Timothy Spall) to solve a hideous crime. After a cadet hanged himself, someone breaks into the medical facility and steals his heart.

    The situation becomes more dire when another student turns up dead. The mystery doesn’t add up to much but Landor encounters suspiciously odd characters at every plot turn. Most interestingly, he teams up with an outcast cadet who has a keen interest in sleuthing: Edgar Allan Poe. (The future literary giant entered West Point after spending a few years in the Army.)   

      Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley from the “Harry Potter” films) gives a quirky performance as Poe, counterbalancing the intensity of Bale. Together, they uncover some strange goings on at the Point.

     Toby Jones as the trusted academy’s doctor and Gillian Anderson as his eccentric wife liven up the story as does 92-year-old Robert Duvall, hidden under a bushy beard, who plays an expert in ancient symbols.

    While not as compelling as his 2017 Western, “Hostiles,” Cooper’s new film, adapted from a novel by Louis Bayard, is one of the more entertaining pictures of 2022, impressively recreating the era and providing another well-written role for Bale. 

      

A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (1991)

     Edward Yang, who directed just eight features before his death of cancer at age 59, is one of the preeminent filmmakers to emerge from the Taiwanese New Wave of the 1980s, along with Hsiao-Hsien Hou and Ang Lee.

    Yang first gained international fame on the festival circuit with “Taipei Story” (1985), a look at the struggle of a young Taiwanese family and the influence of Western values, starring his fellow filmmaker Hou.

     But it was “A Brighter Summer Day,” a four-hour, documentary-like film, which brought Yang into the conversation of great directors, earning 11 nominations at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, the one of Asia’s most important festivals. I finally saw it recently after it landed at No. 78 on Sight & Sound Top 100.

    The first thing any newcomer to Asian films needs to prepare for is the incredibly slow pacing. If most Western cinema fast-forwards through life, filmmakers on the other side of the globe prefer to let the action play out in what seems like slow-motion.

     The film follows the in-fighting between high school students (a milder version of Western youth gangs) in the 1970s, caught between the traditional ideas of their parents and the growing American influence. Chang Chen, who later starred in “Happy Together,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and, in 2021 “Dune,” plays the 14-year-old who has his feet in both worlds along with his off-and-on girlfriend, played by Lisa Yang.

      Though I probably have more interest in the film’s themes than most Western filmgoers as my wife grew up in Taipei in the same era, this film was a bit of a slog to get through. At two hours, it might have been a pretty good film; at four it grew tiring.

    To me, Yang’s “Yi Yi: A One and a Two…” (2000), for which he won best director at Cannes, is a much better picture. (It landed at No. 90, making Yang one of the few filmmakers to have two movies on the Sight & Sound list.) The story focuses on a multi-generational family, seen mostly through the eyes of 8-year-old Yang Yang (a wonderful Jonathan Chang). “Yi Yi” is equally slow-moving (and almost three hours long), but its vivid acting and insightful writing make it more digestible for Western audiences.

 

PHOTOS:

Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu in "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (A24)

Owen Teague and Andrea Riseborough in "To Leslie"  (Momentum Pictures)

Timothy Spall and Christian Bale in "The Pale Blue Eye"  (Netflix)