August 2024

SING SING (2024)

     Hollywood has been humanizing convicts for 100 years, but for most of film history even the most sympathetic criminal eventually paid the ultimate price.

    Today, it’s assumed that audiences can appreciate the positive in even the most violent offender. In this new indie film, a theater group in the upstate New York prison and the prisoners who participate in it are depicted as men who with better opportunities and encouragement early in life might have avoided incarceration.

       The script, based on an actual program at Sing Sing as chronicled in a magazine article by John H. Richardson and recalled by two of the participants (including co-star Clarence “Devine Eye” Maclin), creates strong characters and believable relationships, making it easy to overlook the Hallmark TV movie moments. Director Greg Kwedar’s and Clint Bentley’s screenplay makes you forget that most of the actors are amateurs.

       But the film does feature two Oscar nominated actors: Colman Domingo (“Rustin”) as John “Divine G” Whitfield, a founder and the most accomplished member of the program who is also a budding playwright; and Paul Raci (“Sound of Metal”) as the outside professional who keeps the group focused and, incredibly, writes a full-length play over the weekend.

       Divine G and his best friend Mike Mike (Sean San Jose, in real life Domingo’s writing and producing partner) ask one of the scariest inmates, known as Divine Eye (actual ex-con Maclin) to join the group. Despite a rough start, he bonds with the other actors, though it’s never clear if he continues to carry a knife and deal drugs.

      While the ex-con performers (rehearsing a bizarre production called “Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code”) are excellent in playing themselves, especially Maclin, I couldn’t help but wonder about the hypocrisy of an industry that has exiled accused sexual assault offenders (Kevin Spacey, James Franco, among others) who have never been convicted, yet cheers a film featuring convicted criminals. In the movie’s story and in the act of watching it, one can’t avoid the question: At what point does real life negate one’s art?

    We usually encounter the quandary among celebrities—writers (the recent Alice Munro scandal), painters, comedians, musicians, actors whose messy private lives are revealed, compromising their popularity and professional standing. But are these unknown actors who have committed crimes that earned them a stay in Sing Sing (we don’t know any details) to be judged differently?

     The filmmakers even mitigate Domingo’s character, who seems way too gentle to survive a place like Sing Sing, by suggesting there is a recording that proves he is innocent of the murder he’s incarcerate for. While it shows how unfair the by-the-books justice system can be, its inclusion also seems a ploy to ensure that audience have good feelings about the character.

      I doubt the makers of “Sing Sing” imagined the cast’s past would be construed as an issue—and for most filmgoers, myself included, it isn’t. In fact, it’s being used to sell the film. I just wish the separation of life and art were observed and adjudicated more consistently. 

 

KNOX GOES AWAY (2024)

     There is no shortage of hitmen filling screens in movies and streaming series as of late, but none that I’ve seen feature a professional killer with dementia. Michael Keaton plays the coolly efficient John Knox in this tautly directed (also Keaton) and well-written (by Gregory Poirier) crime picture that received a brief theatrical release this spring and now is streaming on MAX.

      Knox, who learns just before his last job that his accelerating disease leaves him just a few weeks before his mind goes, dedicates his final coherent days to clearing his long-estranged son (James Marsden) in a murder.

    As he rearranges the evidence, with help from an old pal played by Al Pacino, who resembles a retired heavy metal drummer, a tenacious police detective (Suzy Nakamura) is trying to get a handle on all these moving parts of these crimes.

      While the film comes together a bit too neatly, Keaton’s Knox remains compelling throughout, adding another fine performance to this veteran actor’s filmography.  

     While no one would argue that Keaton ranks with the best actors of his generation but the 72-year-old has had an impressive career, after bursting on the scene with back-to-back comedy hits, “Night Shift” (1982) and “Mr. Mom” (1983).

      This Pittsburgh native, who once worked on “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” found the perfect vehicle for his frenetic comedic persona in Tim Burton’s cartoonish “Beetlejuice” (1988). That same year Keaton showed off his dramatic skills, playing a drug addict seeking redemption in “Clean and Sober.”

       Ironically, the biggest role of his early film career, again for Burton, in “Batman” (1989) and “Batman Returns” (1992), the first of the modern Batmans, didn’t do much for his career. After leading an all-star cast in Ron Howard’s entertaining and perceptive newspaper tale, “The Paper” (1994), playing a stressed-out editor of a New York tabloid, few good roles came his way.

      For the next 18 years, Keaton worked mostly as a supporting player and on television along with doing a ton of voice work (“King of the Hill,” “The Simpsons,” “Cars” and “Toy Story 3” as a very funny Ken). His career as a major movie star as he reached his 60s seemed to be in the rearview mirror when he was cast as an aging movie star—famous for playing a superhero—making a comeback on Broadway. “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” directed in what seems to be one long take by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, won the 2014 best picture Oscar and Keaton picked up his first Academy Award nomination.

      His Riggan, caught up in a dream world as his play and personal life seem to be spinning out of control, reveals the insecurities of an actor desperate to be acknowledged while caught up in the backstage hurly-burly of a troubled production.

       The next year he headlined another best picture winner, back as a journalist again in “Spotlight” (2015), playing real-life Boston Globe reporter Robby Robinson, part of the investigative team that revealed the priest molestation scandal in the city’s Catholic Church. 

        Though he gave a valiant effort playing McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc in “The Founder” (2016) and was quite good as Ramsey Clark in “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (2020), “Knox Goes Away” features Keaton’s best work since his career-topping movies 10 years ago and, let’s hope, offers promise of more to come. Later this year, he’ll return in the sequel to “Beetlejuice.”

  

FLY ME TO THE MOON (2024)

     There was a time, as recently as the 1980s and ‘90s, when romantic comedies not unlike “Fly Me to the Moon,” filled big screens monthly. We foolishly believed that would always be the case.

     Even with a pair of engaging stars and a handful of amusing supporting players, “Moon” would have been lost in that earlier era but in 2024 it stands out from what currently passes as film comedy. (See “The Fall Guy” below)

     It also serves as a flimsy, but basic history lesson on the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetime—the landing of men on the Moon.

        Scarlett Johansson, who steps from intense drama to light comedy as well as anyone, plays Kelly Jones, a crafty, innovative marketing exec who is recruited by NASA to promote the program in hopes of receiving more government money for the Moon mission.

        Channing Tatum, who never seems completely comfortable in front of the camera yet has the necessary looks, plays Cole Davis, the no-nonsense (amid plenty of nonsense) coordinator for Apollo 11 project as the team prepares for the landing set for July 1969.

    They, of course, work through the classic rom-com relationship that starts with constant irritation and ends, well, you know where. Just when the picture, written by relative newcomers Keenan Flynn, Bill Kirstein and Rose Gilroy and directed by Greg Berlanti (TV’s “Eli Stone” among others), starts to lose energy, Kelly’s boss (an obnoxiously mysterious Woody Harrelson) decides that they need to film a fake landing just in case tragedy strikes the actual mission. We wouldn’t want the Russians to think we were failures, right?

       In addition to Harrelson, Ray Romano as Cole’s nervous assistant, Anna Garcia as Kelly’s efficient assistant, Gene Jones as a self-serving senator and Jim Rash (who won an Oscar as co-writer of “The Descendants”) as the overly artistic director hired to recreate the landing, all work to keep the ball moving toward both the historical event and to bring Kelly and Cole together.

      Amazingly, Johansson, whose been giving memorable performances since she was a teenager (“Ghost World,” “Lost in Translation”), will turn 40 in November. As required by today’s Hollywood, she balances her career between serious works (“Match Point,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “Marriage Story,” “Jojo Rabbit”) and entertaining foolishness (“Lucy” and the Black Widow in the Marvel world). I’m hoping the second half of her career has more of the former, but she’s convincing and a refreshing screen presence in everything.

     Like the space program it depicts, film romance involving believable adults seems to be headed toward extinction, but “Moon” was worth the trip to the theater.

   

DAY OF THE EVIL GUN (1968)

     Hollywood’s love affair with the Western, which began in earnest after World War II, sputtered to an end in the early 1970s as the stars either died or grew too old to ride a horse, leaving only Clint Eastwood to continue the tradition.

     While the genre was at its peak in the 1950s, some of the most interesting Western’s arrived in theaters in the late 60s, including “El Dorado” (1967), “Welcome to Hard Times” (1967), two by Sergio Leone, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1967) and “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1969) and the greatest of them all, “The Wild Bunch” (1969).

    I’d add to that short list this Glenn Ford-Arthur Kennedy vehicle, a tense, well-directed adventure that explores the thin line between good and evil.

    “Day of the Evil Gun” opens with Ford’s Warfield returning to his home to find his wife and daughters abducted by Apache and another man, Kennedy’s Forbes, proclaiming that he was planning to marry the woman once she freed herself from absent husband Warfield.  A notorious gunfighter who had been away from his family, Warfield eventually allows Forbes to tag along in the days-long desert search for the family.

     Along the way that get scammed (and eventually helped along) by a half-crazy trader (Dean Jagger), a Mexican warlord (Nico Minardos) who claims the land is all his, and a band of renegade soldiers, led by the scene-stealing John Anderson, looking to sell arms to the tribe. Also enlivening the journey are appearances by familiar character actors Paul Fix, Royal Dano and Harry Dean Stanton.

     But it’s the interaction between Ford and Kennedy—they need and hate each other in equal measure—as directed by Jerry Thorpe, who spent most of his career making TV movies, and screenwriters Charles Marquis Warren and Eric Bercovici that make the picture compelling from start to finish. Other than the great “3:10 to Yuma” (1957), it’s probably Ford’s finest Western; he’s a stoic man of action risking his life for a family he hasn’t seen in years.

     Gorgeously filmed by W. Wallace Kelley (who shot most of Jerry Lewis’ 1960s films) in Durango, Mexico, “Evil Gun” is reminiscent of the landmark Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher horse operas of the 1950s while repurposing the framework of John Ford’s “The Searchers.” As they say, if you’re going to borrow, take from the best.

 

A HATFUL OF RAIN (1957) and LOVING (1970)

     One of the few star actors from the 1950s still with us, Eva Marie Saint, who recently turned 100, shined brightest in the first decade of her movie career but remained a welcomed presence for another 50 years.

     Famously winning the Academy Award for her film debut, as Edie, Marlon Brando’s love interest in “On the Waterfront” (1954), she was no neophyte at that point. At 30, she had been acting on television and the stage since 1947, most famously as Thelma opposite Lillian Gish in Horton Foote’s “A Trip to Bountiful” (on Broadway and TV) and then earning Emmy nominations for her role in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Middle of the Night” and Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”

          Following her Oscar, Saint’s next important film role (there was a Bob Hope comedy in between) was as the unsuspecting wife of a drug addict in the film version of the stage hit “A Hatful of Rain.” Written by Michael V. Gazzo, who later played Frankie Pentangeli in “The Godfather Part II,” this powerful drama about a family built on lies remains one of the best screen portrayals of the effects of addiction. Unlike most problem plays, “A Hatful of Rain” has hardly aged, mostly because there’s little preaching in the script and the acting is first rate. Director Fred Zinnemann, best known for his big-canvas, best picture-winning star vehicles “From Here to Eternity” (1953) and “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), shows his ability to bring intimate, stagey material to the screen.

      In the role of Celia (originated on Broadway by Shelley Winters), Saint is very much a supporting player in the first half of the film as her husband Johnny (Don Murray) and his brother Polo (Anthony Franciosa) keep the extent of their addictions from an unforgiving father (Lloyd Nolan), in town for a surprise visit. Franciosa has the showiest part (he scored an Oscar nomination) as the flamboyant drunk who is secretly in love with his sister-in-law.

    Celia emerges in the last act, dealing with the neediness of both brothers and the self-righteous father. Saint brings uncluttered humanity to the talky, intense story.

    For the next 10 years, her career flourished, starring in “Raintree County” (1957), “North by Northwest” (1959), “Exodus” (1960), “All Fall Down” (1962) and the comedy hit “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” (1966).

      Saint took less-than-challenging roles in “36 Hours” (1964), “The Sandpiper (1965) and “The Stalking Moon” (1965), before her last major role, as the accommodating wife in “Loving” (1970).

      George Segal plays Brooks, a successful if unhappy advertising artist with a wondering eye whose affairs seems sadly desperate. Saint’s Selma seems oblivious to her husband’s failings until the night of a chaotic cocktail party (as a teen, I always imagined my adulthood filled with these gatherings—I was wrong) when everything breaks apart.

     This well-made time capsule from director Irvin Kershner (“The Flim-Flam Man,” “The Empire Strikes Back”) plays like a John Updike or John Cheever short story, energized by comic supporting work from Sterling Hayden and Keenan Wynn.

    Though occasionally working in television, Saint went from 1972 to 1986 without appearing in a feature film. She had nice turns as Tom Hanks’ mother and Jackie Gleason’s ex-wife in “Nothing in Common” (1986) and, at 80, as Sam Shepard’s mother in Wim Wenders’ “Don’t Come Knocking” (2005). She had a small role in the Colin Farrell-Russell Crowe film “Winter’s Tale” (2014), marking 60 years of memorable film work.

  

WORLD FOR RANSOM (1954)

     I watch two or three mid-century crime films each week, most made interesting only by the presence of a well-known actor or actress who stand out despite confused plots and cliché-riddled dialogue. Searching for a film to watch on YouTube, I clicked on this gem from director Robert Aldrich knowing only that it starred film noir legend Dan Duryea. Turns out, it is one of the best pictures I’ve seen this year.

      Duryea, looking older than his 47 years, plays Mike Callahan, an occasionally employed private eye, skulking the jam-packed, shadowy streets of Singapore for a tip, looking like he’s one encounter away from getting shot. In his white suit, his fedora sitting high on his forehead, incessantly drenched in sweat and a cigarette hanging from his mouth, Callahan seems an unlikely hero.

     But when he learns his greedy friend Julian (Patric Knowles) has been lured into a plot to kidnap a visiting H-bomb scientist, he promises the man’s wife (Marian Carr), who once was Callahan’s girl, to keep him safe. Soon, the police are after Callahan while he frantically works to find the missing scientist.

      Playing off his usual role as the doddering uncle, Gene Lockhart plays Pederas, the mastermind behind the kidnapping, a cool, ruthless mobster looking to make money out of fear. Also in supporting roles are Nigel Bruce (Dr. Watson in the 1940s Sherlock Holmes films) and Keye Luke as a photographer who snaps an incriminating picture.

       But, for once, this is Duryea’s film. As slimy gunsels or heartless connivers, the actor made his name in such noir classics as “Woman in the Window” (1944), “Scarlet Street” (1945), “Criss Cross” (1949) and “Too Late for Tears” (1949). As the good guy in “World for Ransom,” he earns sympathy while being hopelessly pathetic.

     Aldrich and legendary cinematographer Joseph Biroc (“It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Towering Inferno”) create a believable Singapore, filled with bar girls, fortune tellers and dark alleys where the sun never seems to shine. At one point, Biroc shoots a scene from behind a bed’s rod-iron headboard. This is film noir both in theme and style.

     The script by Lindsay Hardy and Hugo Butler (an Oscar nominee for “Edison, The Man”) offers a screen full of desperate characters who reflect the tenuous state of the world at the height of the Cold War. It’s a theme director Aldrich returned to the next year with “Kiss Me Deadly,” a more celebrated film noir with a famously mysterious ending.

      But for my money I think “World for Ransom” is the better film, featuring a fascinating, anti-Marlowe kind of detective.    

  

THE FALL GUY (2024)

     As Hollywood execs wring their hands over disappointing box office numbers, one wonders if they actually sat through this horrendous excuse for entertainment.

       With stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt headlining, this satire of blockbuster filmmaking had possibilities, but they were immediately deflated by Gosling’s opening narration. Colt Seavers, a famous stuntman, is so peevishly childish that I took an instant dislike to him. (He’s a shadow of Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth from “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”) It went downhill from there. 

     Early in the film, Colt badly injures himself doing a difficult jump for stunt coordinator Jody Moreno (Blunt), who is also his girlfriend. For no good reason—remember he’s about as mature as a 10-year-old---Colt drops Jody and is reduced to parking cars at an L.A. restaurant. (He’d probably make more money working at Target, but economics have never been a strong suit in Hollywood scripts.)

     Out of the blue, an unctuous producer (Hannah Waddingham, portraying the only interesting character in the film), brings Colt back, again doubling for self-obsessed superstar Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who is the lead in Jody’s first film as a director.

      I guess director David Leitch and screenwriters Glen A. Larson and Drew Pearce thought audiences would find it funny that behind the scenes of a bad action film would be a bad action film. Actually, it’s just double the pain. And the dialogue between Colt and Jody could have been composed in a high school writing class.

    No doubt, Gosling has quadrupled his salary following “La La Land” and “Barbie,” but to me “The Fall Guy” (along with the awful “The Nice Guys” and “The Gray Man”) have derailed what looked to be a first-rate career. “Half Nelson” (2006), “Lars and the Real Girl” (2007), “Blue Valentine” (2010), “Drive” (2011) and, more recently, “First Man” (2018), all showed an exceptional, charismatic young actor, but stardom has led him astray. But at 44, he could quickly get back on track.

 

PHOTOS:

Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin in "Sing Sing."  (A24)

Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in "Fly Me to the Moon." (Columbia Pictures)

Eva Marie Saint in her film debut, "On the Waterfront." (Columbia Pictures)

Marian Carr and Dan Duryea in "World for Ransom." (Allied Artists Pictures)

  

 

June 2024

 

KLUTE (1971) and DON’T LOOK NOW (1973)

      It’s somewhat alarming to realize that most of the young movie stars who served as my introduction to serious cinema—Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood—are all over 80 years old. This fact hit me as Donald Sutherland, maybe the most underrated of this group of performers who dominated the 1970s, was remembered following his death at age 88.

      After spending most of the 1960s working in television, the Canadian-born actor’s career took off after being cast as one of “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), among the last of the old-style war films. A very different type of war picture made him a star, Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” (1970).

    As Korean War field surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, equally comfortable with a martini or a scalpel, Sutherland and co-star Elliott Gould (as Trapper John) capture the iconoclastic attitudes of the Vietnam era despite the film’s 1950s timeframe. It’s disappointing that the crazy-quilt style of the movie has been eclipsed by the popularity of the memorable but mainstream television series.

     While making two or three films a year during his peak of 1970-1981, thrillers “Klute” and “Don’t Look Now” stand out as the most adventurous, both offering challenging roles that show the actor at his best even as he works in support of his female co-stars.

      John Klute is a taciturn, somewhat naïve small-town cop who ventures into the sex industry of New York City in search of his friend who has gone missing after being connected to call girl Bree Daniels (Oscar-winning Jane Fonda). He eventually convinces Bree to help him track down the person who connected her with his missing friend, but it’s really just an excuse to explore the city’s underbelly and the traps that led Bree into this world.

      Director Alan J. Pakula (“All the President’s Men”) and cinematographer Gordon Willis (“The Godfather”) create a dark, muted palate in which Klute and Daniels encircle one another, uncovering the truth and changing their lives. The sharp, uncompromising script by Andy and David E. Lewis, brothers who mostly wrote for television, is a coming-of-age story for Klute, who grows emotionally into a man strong enough to save Bree.

       “Klute,” despite the title, will always be remembered as Fonda’s film—maybe her greatest performance—but Sutherland holds his own, revealing a depth not seen in his previous work. (A romance developed between Sutherland and Fonda that lasted for a few years, as both were active in anti-war protests.)

      If the sex trade looked dangerous in “Klute,” it’s nothing compared to the creepy world director Nicholas Roeg creates along the narrow, unlit alleys and murky canals of Venice in “Don’t Look Now.” 

     The film, based on a Daphne du Maurier story, opens with a devastating scene of John Baxter (Sutherland) pulling his young daughter from a backyard pond. The death hangs heavy over him and wife Laura (Julie Christie) as the story takes them to Venice, where he is supervising the restoration of a 16^th Century church. The situation grows intense when a blind woman with “second sight” claims she sees their dead daughter and foresees danger for John.

    Sutherland gives a perfectly measured performance as a down-to-earth man, whose descent into confusion leads him headfirst into the unknown. “Don’t Look Now” is also infamous for its realistic sex scene; an intricately edited sequence that mirrors the changing norms of 1970s Hollywood.    

      The actor continued his string of superb performances as a sad-sack denizen of 1930s Hollywood who falls for a wannabe actress in “The Day of the Locust” (1975), a sadistic Fascist in Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic “1900” (1976), the too-cool Faber College professor in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978), an ordinary man facing extraordinary circumstances in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978), as the soft-spoken grieving father caught between his wife and son in “Ordinary People” (1980) and a German spy who falls for a Scottish woman in “Eye of the Needle” (1981). Sutherland even starred for Federico Fellini in the very theatrical “Casanova” (1976)

     While he found fewer choice roles for the rest of his career, a few memorable performances stand out: his riveting turn as Mr. X, explaining the deep state conspiracy in “JFK” (1991); a reunion with Christie in “The Railway Station Man” (1992); as the naïve, wealthy New Yorker in “Six Degrees of Separation” (1993); as Steve Prefontaine’s track coach in “Without Limits” (1998); and as the wise Mr. Bennet in “Pride & Prejudice” (2005).

     Most recently, Sutherland became a familiar face for another generation as the diabolical President Snow in “The Hunger Games” trilogy.

      Sutherland, with his large ears, droopy eyelids and razor-thin built, looked more like a fourth-billed supporting player than leading man material, but he maintained his marquee-name status for more than half a century, anchoring some of the best American films of his era.

  

KINDS OF KINDNESS (2024)

     Imagine if Bella Baxter, Emma Stone’s Oscar-winning role in “Poor Things,” directed a film. It would be filled with strange characters, saying and doing inappropriate things with little consideration to socially accepted manners or the consequences. That, in a nutshell, describes Yorgos Lanthimos latest picture, an absurdist look at people who long to be told how to live, divided into three short (well, not that short) stories with the same collection of actors taking different roles, like a theatrical troupe.  

      In the opening segment, up-and-coming star Jesse Plemons (“The Power of the Dog,” “Killers of the Flower Moon”) plays a weak-willed employee of the ultimate demanding boss (Willem Dafoe), who requires total obedience, determining, among other details, when he has sex with his wife (Hong Chau from “The Whale”) but blocking the couple’s plans for children. When Plemons’ character refuses to ram his car into another vehicle in an attempt to maim or kill, he’s cut off by Dafoe. His pitifully comical actions to get back into his boss’ good graces have no relation to sanity.

   In part two, Plemons is a cop whose wife (Stone), a marine biologist, is missing following an accident. When she’s rescued, he’s convinced that it’s not really her—though on her first day back she’s ready for the group sex with the couple’s best friends (Mamoudou Athie and Margaret Qualley). This segment’s only value is one of shock as Stone continues to acquiesce to her husband’s delusions. 

     The final episode probably should have been the entire film as it’s more grounded in reality. Stone plays a woman caught between a sex obsessed cult (run by Dafoe and Chau) and an abusive husband. She and Plemons, like a couple of low-rent detectives, are in search of a woman with a dead twin who can bring life to the recently deceased. Clearly, there’s a lot of David Lynch in Lantthimos’ movies.

    Plemons is an acquired taste, so low key that he often seems to be sleep walking but Stone, as usual, brings her high-strung energy to each of the segments, especially as the cult follower, But all the principals display an admirable willingness to give it all for Lanthimos. It’s hard to criticize that level of commitment, even if it seems to me to be wasted effort.

  

SADIE MCKEE (1934)

     No actress altered her looks so dramatically as Joan Crawford. I recently watched “Sally, Irene and Mary,” one of the nine films the 19-year-old appeared in during 1925, her first year in films. If I didn’t know she was one of the stars, I would never have identified this film legend I’ve seen in nearly 50 films.

      Not until the late 1920s, when she became a star, did she start looking like the Joan who became world famous, and even then she continuing to refine herself, with the help of MGM’s top-flight makeup department, in the 1930s.

      One of her best vehicles during this glamour period is “Sadie McKee,” playing the daughter of the cook for the wealthy Alderson family. Impulsively, after hearing the family berate a young man she likes, Sadie leaves with Tommy (Gene Raymond) for New York City, where he almost immediately dumps her to join a nightclub singer’s act.

        Later, working as a taxi dancer, Sadie runs into Michael Alderson (Franchot Tone), whose client Brennan (Edward Arnold), takes an instant shine to her. Sadie, still mad at the Aldersons and bitter over the actions of Tommy, ends up marrying the wealthy, but much older Brennan.

       This classic “women’s picture” is elevated by Crawford’s excellent performance and a very realistic script that offers a caustic look at the Depression era world. And it doesn’t hurt that behind the camera is Clarence Brown, who eventually would be nominated for six directing Oscars, including “Anna Christie,” “National Velvet” and “The Yearling.” Though his most memorable movies were about family dynamics (also “Wife vs. Secretary,” “The Human Comedy”) he didn’t shy away from controversial topics. That same year, Brown direct Crawford again in “Chained,” in which she keeps jumping between lovers Clark Gable and Otto Kruger.

     One of the most interesting aspects of “Sadie McKee” is how Brennan’s drinking and carousing starts as comedy and eventually becomes a central issue, a problem that Sadie faces head-on when no one else will. It’s a refreshing change from how excessive drinking is typically treated in film of the 1930s. It became almost a requirement that every film had to feature a comic drunk, in addition to showing the main characters imbibing every time they walk into the house.      

      An added attraction in “Sadie McKee” is the appearance of long-forgotten Gene Austin, one of the leading crooners of the 1920s and ‘30s, who is shown performing with his trio. His “My Blue Heaven” and “Ramona” were among the biggest hits of the era.

     Of course, Crawford wasn’t done changing her looks and image: Her Oscar-winning turn as “Mildred Pierce” introduced a harder, tougher woman (though she wasn’t yet 40), which led to an impressive run of crime pictures into the 1950s and, arguably, her best performances.

  

THELMA (2024)

     There’s really only one reason to see this outlandish, geriatric road film. June Squibb, the 94-year-old Oscar nominee (for “Nebraska” in 2013), plays Thelma, an alternately confused and feisty grandmother who refuses to sit still after she gets scammed.

    Thelma falls for the classic con—a call from her “grandson” in need of $10,000 for bail. She quickly gathers the money and mails it off to the address given to her by “the lawyer.”

    After the police brush off her and her family, Thelma begins to plot her mission (inspired by Tom Cruise), eventually with the help of old friend and assisted living tenant Ben (1970s legend Richard Roundtree).

     Despite about a dozen too many old-folks clichés, it’s impossible not to root for Thelma—what could be more heartless than ripping off easily duped seniors? Writer-director Josh Margolin (in his directing debut) mixes legitimate issues faced by seniors while soliciting laughs with the usual foibles. But he fails to prop up the creaky plot, instead foisting on viewers Thelma’s irritating family and their issues.

     Her daughter and son-in-law (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) and her slacker grandson (Fred Hechinger), who has a special bond with grandma, are stock sitcom characters who add nothing of interest to the film. I was ready to scream if I had to listen to yet another heart-to-heart between the clueless parents and their childish son Daniel.

      But as long as the focus is on Thelma and Ben and their clumsy attempts at justice, the film has a winning formula.

     Roundtree, who died last October at age 81, was best known for his hipster private eye John Shaft in “Shaft” (1971), but never stopped working in film and television.

      Squibb, who was a stage actor from an early age, didn’t make her film debut until she was 61, in Woody Allen’s “Alice” (1990), and has worked steadily since, most notably as Jack Nicholson’s wife in “About Schmidt” (2002) and then as Bruce Dern’s wife in “Nebraska,” both directed by Alexander Payne. Since her Oscar nod at age 84, she has mostly worked in television. This year, she had a key role in the remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.” 

  

HIT MAN (2024)

     The central idea of director Richard Linklater’s latest—a college philosophy professor and part-time tech guy for the police finds his niche ensnaring ordinary people seeking to hire a contract killer—had the potential to be turned into a caustically clever comedy.

     Yet for a variety of reasons, including its leisurely pacing, off-handed acting and soft-hearted script (all of which could be seen as positives in the right story), the film didn’t work for me. It plays more like a calling card for up-and-coming leading man Glen Powell as the movie veers from comedy to romance to thriller. The production needed the “touch” of the Coen Brothers.

     Powell plays Gary Johnson, a rather ordinary man whose life turns into a Bond-like adventure when he fills in for an undercover detective and poses as a hitman to entrap a man soliciting murder. Without losing a beat, he pulls it off, improvising as if he just spent five years acting at Second City. Not only does he continue this gig, creating a variety of personalities to suit the circumstances, but his real-life persona changes, gaining confidence and presence.

     After persuading an attractive young woman (Adria Arjona from the recent “Father of the Bride”’ remake) to not hire him to kill her husband, Gary—now the cool hitman--pursues a relationship.

    Powell, who played “Hangman” in “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) and John Glenn in “Hidden Figures” (2016) and possesses an audience-friendly screen persona in the Jon Hamm-Ryan Reynolds mold, makes the most of this colorful role.

     Linklater has failed as often as he’s succeeded in his 30-year, prodigious career; starting, of course, with the classic 1993 high school tale, “Dazed and Confused.” His bittersweet romantic French trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy---"Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” “Before Midnight” stands with the great New Wave films of Truffaut and Rohmer and his “School of Rock” (2003) gave Jack Black his best vehicle. The director’s animated “Apollo 10 ½” was among the better films of 2022, but he also made “Tape” (2001), “A Scanner Darkly” (2006), “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” (2019) and, inexplicitly, the remake of “Bad News Bears” (2005).

       I wasn’t a fan of his most acclaimed picture, “Boyhood” (2014), which earned Oscar nominations for picture and direction, more for his process (he filmed it over many years) than the resulting film.

     I do appreciate that you never know what to expect from a Linklater film—he remains little known despite numerous high-profile pictures—but “Hit Man” isn’t among his best.

  

EZRA (2024) and RED LIGHTS (2012)

        Another industry already has “first, do no harm” as its oath, but the movie business might consider incorporating the idea into whatever checklist it uses to greenlight pictures.

      The filmmakers of “Ezra,” in their enthusiasm to portray a parent’s support of his autistic son, seems to be siding with parents over health professionals about who knows best how to treat the effected child. In fact, whatever crazy thing Max (Bobby Cannavale) does in the course of the film is shown as pure love while doctors and law enforcement are the problem. Even young Ezra’s mother (Rose Byrne) is written as clinging, overly protective parent.

     The relationship between Max, a struggling standup comic (at 50something?), and son Ezra (an impressive debut by William A. Fitzgerald) feels sincere, very believable even as the plot veers into crazy territory. 

      The reason I went to the theater and sat through 10 trailers was because 80-year-old Robert De Niro plays Max’s father, Ezra’s grandfather. As always, the great actor enlivens every scene he’s in, mostly in confrontations with Cannavale.            

      Tony Goldwyn, another veteran actor who has a role in the film, also directs. Unbeknownst to me, he’s been directing, primarily on television, since 1999; his debut was “A Walk on the Moon.” Not sure when he has time, as he’s constantly working on episodical television, including taking over for Sam Waterston as the DA on “Law & Order.”

       Since De Niro became eligible for Medicare in 2008, he’s appeared in 36 movies—that’s an entire career for most actors. For every “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Killers of the Flower Moon” (earning Oscar nominations for both), “The Irishman,” “The Intern” and “The Comedian” (maybe his most underrated performance), there are three films like “Savage Salvation,” “Dirty Grandpa” and “The Bag Man.”

    I caught up one of those “other” films, “Red Lights,” featuring a cast that belies its forgotten status. Last year’s best actor Oscar winner Cillian Murphy plays Tom Buckley, the teaching assistant to psychologist professor Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and her partner in debunking claims of paranormal activity. One of their students, played by Elizabeth Olsen, eventually joins their team.

    Also in the cast is Toby Jones as a rival professor and Joely Richardson as the assistant to Simon Silver (De Niro), a world-famous blind psychic who has just emerged from a decades-long hiatus, becoming the focus of Matheson’s and Buckley’s sophisticated efforts to prove him a fraud.

     The film, well directed by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés, falls apart about halfway through, growing overly melodramatic and taking characters in rather incredulous directions. De Niro, who chews scenery with the best of them, doesn’t hold back as this conceited madman.

 

 

PHOTOS:

 Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda in “Klute.”  (Warner Bros.)

 Joan Crawford in “Sadie McKee.”  (MGM)

 June Squibb and Fred Hechinger in “Thelma.”  (Magnolia Pictures)

 Robert De Niro and Bobby Cannavale in “Ezra.” (Bleecker Street Media)