January 2023

 

2022 OSCAR NOMINATIONS

     When Jordan Peele’s third, and best, film, “Nope” was released in July, the reviews proclaimed it as brilliant, stunning, frightening and hilarious. The acting, writing, directing, cinematography, production values were profusely lauded by virtually every publication. I found all the praise a bit over-the-top, but it is a very good film.

       I foolishly assumed that the movie, Peele, his go-to leading man Daniel Kaluuya and maybe Keke Palmer, playing his spunky, savvy sister would be nominated. Nope. The picture didn’t receive a single nomination. (I didn’t even see it mentioned in stories identifying so-called snubs.)

     Yet an actress, Andrea Riseborough, whose name and the 2022 film she starred in, “To Leslie,” I read of for the first time only a few days before the nominations were announced (though, it turns out, I have seen her in many films) was among the best actress nominees. From all reports, she scored the nomination after voters were influenced by high praise from Gwyneth Paltrow and Edward Norton, among others. Nothing wrong with that, but I wonder if many of those who voted for her had seen this little-known film.

     When it comes to the Oscars, nothing much makes sense.

    To say the nominations for “Triangle of Sadness” and its director Ruben Östlund are surprising is an understatement. This Danish film, though primarily in English, on the surface resembles a Luis Buňuel or Lina Wertmüller picture from the 1970s, far from 21^st Century Hollywood. It’s attempts at lampooning Western capitalism is about a subtle as a roomful of monkeys. (I’ll expand upon its failures in a later edition of the blog). It seems that the expanded Oscar voting contingent couldn’t resist a Palme d’Or winner.

    Yet, astonishing to me, Alejandro González Iňárritu’s “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” was passed over except for its cinematography. It was the best film in any language I saw in 2022.

     Also complete shut out was the superb “She Said,” about the investigation into movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s criminal treatment of women. Instead, a rather bland picture in the #MeToo category, “Women Talking” was among the best picture nominees. Also deserving more consideration (I assumed a best picture nomination, at least) was “The Woman King” and the film’s stars Viola Davis and Lashana Lynch.

     I was happy to see Colin Farrell, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon from “The Banshees of Inisherin” earn acting nods, but the number of nominations for the film says everything about how weak 2022 releases were.

     I acknowledge the technical accomplishments of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” but I have no interest in them as films. And I don’t know what to say about “Elvis,” other than it’s an embarrassing piece of fiction trying to pass as bio-pic.

      Amusingly, virtually every publication offered congratulations to the voters for including a handful of box office hits in the best picture selections as if that is the measure of what the Academy Awards should stand for. It should not be about helping ABC charge more for the Oscar ads, but celebrating the best in film, be it “Tár,” “To Leslie” or “Top Gun: Maverick.”

     Here’s my current Top 10 of English-language films, though I’m still trying to catch up with various movies that barely receive theatrical releases (who said streaming would make it easier to keep up?). A more detailed list will follow.

 

1.    Tár  (Todd Field)

2.    She Said  (Maria Schrader)

3.    Nope  (Jordan Peele)

4.    Top Gun: Maverick  (Joseph Kosinski)

5.    The Banshees of Inisherin  (Martin McDonagh)

6.    The Fabelmans  (Steven Spielberg)

7.    The Woman King  (Gina Prince-Bythewood)

8.    Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery  (Rian Johnson)

9.    The Pale Blue Eye  (Scott Cooper)

10.  Empire of Light  (Sam Mendes)

  

BARDO: FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS (2022)

    There isn’t a more inventive, more insightful filmmaker working today. In his new movie, Alejandro González Iňárritu, having already directed two of the best films of the century, “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” and “The Revenant,” continues his exploration into what keeps us going despite life’s numerous and unexpected obstacles.

    In “Bardo,” Iňárritu protagonist, Mexican-American journalist/documentarian Silverio (Daniel Giménez-Cacho), returns to his hometown of Mexico City to celebrate with old friends and relatives his upcoming award from the American Society of Journalists and the premiere of his new doc. In the grand tradition of magic realism, the director flits between reality, Silverio’s dreams and scenes from his documentary work, slipping from one to the other without warning, capturing Silverio’s frustration about the state of his homeland, his divided emotional loyalty between his U.S. career and his devotion to Mexico and fulfilling his roles of husband, father, son and public figure.

    The two-and-a-half-hour psychological study is made up of about a half dozen elaborately designed and staged set pieces beautifully shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji (“Midnight in Paris”) and over-stuffed with rich, thoughtful dialogue written by the director and Nicolás Giacobone.

      Early in the film, Silverio returns to the television studio where he started his career to be interviewed on a show hosted by old friend Luis (Francisco Rubio). With the camera swirling behind him, we witness the chaotic business of Mexican TV, where multiple shows are filming on various stages and then his so-called friend mercilessly grilling him…until it’s clear this is all in Silverio’s imagination.

     The centerpiece of the picture depicts the massive party thrown in Silverio’s honor, where he has it out with Luis, reunites with friends and relatives, celebrates with his wife and children and, finally, imagines meeting his late father, who is surprised how old his son looks. “Age comes without warning and then it’s a full-time job,” the deceased man tells his son. “Nobody ever warns you about it.”

     Giménez-Cacho creates such a lived-in, sincere Silverio that you’d swear you’ve known the man for years; he’s not so much humble but baffled to know what he’s responsible for, where his obligations should be.  

      The film hasn’t received the acclaim it deserves as many reviews (and apparently Oscar voters) found it pretentious and indulgent. It probably is—just look at the title. (Bardo is a state of existence between death and rebirth in Buddhism; the subtitle is the name of Silverio’s documentary)

     “Bardo” might come off as a preachy, smug tale of a self-consumed filmmaker (Silverio and Iňárritu) but it also offers more truth about the second half of life than any film I’ve seen in a while. 

  

BABYLON (2022)

     Dante’s nine circles of hell pales in comparison to Damien Chazelle’s chaotic, unrelentingly ostentatious depiction of the 1920s Hollywood sinful filmmaking community and the comeuppance that sound delivered.

     From its opening scene, the transporting of an elephant to what’s portrayed as a typical gathering of movie people (more orgy than party), to the sophomoric video collage ending that offers up the magic of the cinema as an excuse for the three hours of excess, the picture overflows with doomed characters doing bad things under the influence of art. As much as I disliked Chazelle’s more acclaimed films—“Whiplash” (2014) and “La La Land” (2016)—they didn’t prepare me for this madhouse mess, which ranks as one of the most unpleasant moviegoing experiences I’ve had in years. If it had been 90 minutes, I’d call it a disappointment; at 3 hours and 9 minutes, it’s an unmitigated disaster.      

     The story revolves around the careers of two actors, Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a matinee idol who seems to be modeled after John Gilbert, and Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a drug-addled, amoral party-crasher (maybe Clara Bow) who lucks into stardom. The connection between the two is Manny Torres (Mexican actor Diego Calva), a young Latino who advances from Conrad’s assistant to studio exec by spotting money-making trends.

     While the scenes of silent filmmaking are entertaining, even when ridiculous, and capture the seat-of-the-pants approach to the business in the early days, Chazelle is clearly more interested in the difficulties, for both individuals and the process, once “The Jazz Singer” becomes a hit. 

     With the unfocused energy of first grader on a sugar high, Robbie roars through this film, a force of nature that’s wasted in a film going nowhere.  Every time I wanted to sympathize with Nellie, she does something so unbelievably stupid that I was rooting for her downfall. Chazelle’s script isn’t satisfied with just parodying the arrogance of Hollywood—its racism, its sexism, its elitism—but exaggerates everything until it loses its bite.

     Near the end, when the audience is exhausted from the visual and auditory (this film is extraordinarily loud) assault it has endured, Tobey Maguire shows up as a L.A. mobster who takes Manny and his friend on a tour of the twisted decadence that has replaced the now-sanitized movie scene. Clearly, the director has seen too many David Cronenberg films.

    As unwatchable as that sequence is, when the film then fast-forwards to the 1950s, Chazelle offering a maudlin flashback of the story’s highlights (almost like a trailer placed at the end of the film) and a recap of the history of film. While it’s foolish for me to imagine I understand Chazelle’s thinking, the ending has the pretense of something made to conclude a grand statement on movie making. Whatever the motivation, it’s an embarrassing, if appropriate, ending to this bloated, misguided picture.

  

WANDA (1970)

     Not to beat a dead horse, but I’ve been watching some of the films on Sight & Sound’s Top 100 that had previously missed my attention, including this low-budget indie written, directed and starring Barbara Loden.    

    Like so many films of that era—“Brewster McCloud,” “Five Easy Pieces,” “I Never Sang for My Father,” “I Walk the Line,” “Loving,” “Rabbit, Run,” “WUSA” to name just a few from 1970—this picture feels as much like a documentary of the times as a fictional tale. Shot in the depressed area of Scranton, Pa., and other small towns in Eastern Pennsylvania, the story follows Wanda (Loden) as she escapes a marriage (and two children) she has no interest in and hooks up with a small-time criminal on the run.

    From the workers at a strip mine to proprietors of corner stores to a group of hobbyists flying a model plane, the people who populate the background of the movie seem to be locals living out their lives as Dennis (Michael Higgins) and Wanda, in the foreground, drift toward a reckoning.

     Unfortunately, to my mind, Wanda is not a feisty, independent, liberated woman to match the confused male rebels that filled early ‘70s Hollywood pictures, but a hopeless victim who puts up with abuse—verbal and physical—from this lowlife she barely knows and joins him in crime without much argument.

     Loden never made another feature (directing two short films in 1975) and only made two more acting appearances after “Wanda.” She was best known as the discovery of director Elia Kazan, winning the Tony Award for her performance in his “After the Fall” and scoring good reviews as the sister in Kazan’s film “Splendor in the Grass” (1961). Loden was married to Kazan from 1967 until her death of cancer in 1980 at the age of 48.  

     While the story goes nowhere, “Wanda” benefits from its doc-like realism and its off-the-cuff manner, and, in retrospect, would probably deserve a spot in that year’s Top 20. But the rarity of a female independent filmmaker has raised the film’s stakes, propelling it into a tie for the 48^th greatest film ever made.

    Ironically (or pointedly), Kazan’s two masterpieces, “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) and “On the Waterfront” (1954), elevating Marlon Brando to the pinnacle of screen acting, failed to make the esteemed Top 100 list.

 

 AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER (2022)

    James Cameron has directed—or more accurately constructed—three of the most popular motion pictures in history. His place in the annals of entertainment is secure, even if he has more in common with a designer of amusement park rides than a filmmaker.

    Not to make much of the plot, as few who witness this production care about the story, the sequel to the 2009 original follows Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their look-alike children who find themselves hunted by a small special military unit of earthlings looking to squash the rebellious Na’vi complicating the takeover of Pandora.

    Soon the family is forced to flee their community, taking refuge with another species on the planet who can breathe underwater. What happens with the Na’vi people is anyone’s guess.

   The main attraction is the underwater scenes as the azure people learn the ways of the greenish people. In fact, the most interesting character in the film is an old, injured whale.

   It should be in the running for the year’s best animated film along with “Pinocchio.”

 

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (2022)

     After years as the tough-as-nails legend James Bond, Daniel Craig, in his second outing as deceptively humble Southern detective Benoit Blanc, has proven his comedy chops playing this farcical sleuth who sees through every suspect, every alibi.

     In “Knives Out” (2019), Blanc faced a houseful of greedy relatives at each other’s throats in the wake of a patriarch’s apparent suicide. In the new concoction by writer-director Rian Johnson sends his brilliant detective to a Greek island getaway, a guest (or maybe intruder) at the gaudy home (the Glass Onion) of the genius businessman Miles Bron (Edward Norton at his best) along with Bron’s four (well, maybe five) oldest friends.

    Bron, an extreme egotist who represents everything repulsive about the excessively wealthy, has innocently brought this group together for a fun, relaxing made-up murder mystery in which he is the pseudo victim. When that plan—written, he tells Blanc, by “Gone Girl” novelist Gillian Flynn—quickly peters out, a real death intervenes.

 

   But it’s the presence of Andi (singer Janelle Monáe) that most upsets Bron and his old pals (played by Kate Hudson, Leslie Odom Jr., Dave Bautista and Kathryn Hahn) as she recently lost her half of the company in court when they all backed Bron’s version of events.

     What makes this tale interesting is what happens about an hour and fifteen minutes into the film: Johnson restarts it, allowing the audience to see events through Blanc’s eyes and discover what’s really going on. It’s a trick that the writer-director pulls off deftly.    

     Like “Knives Out,” the script is overflowing in cleverness, filled with verbal and physical gags, including finding laughs with allusions to Jeremy Renner, Jared Leto, “The Big Lebowski,” the harpsicord music of Agatha Christie movies, Tom Cruise, Hugh Grant (in an actual appearance) and a touching tribute to the musical theater. (It’s worth a second viewing, if you have Netflix, to catch all the glib dialogue.)

     Despite first-rate performances by Craig (channeling a combination of Clouseau and Columbo) and Norton (a bit of Elon Musk, a bit of Steve Jobs), Monáe nearly steals the picture as a woman who must play games to find a bit of justice. She was impressive as Mahershala Ali’s girlfriend in “Moonlight,” but this is a more complex, delicate performance that deserved Oscar consideration.

    “Glass Onion” is filled with too many moving parts yet Johnson somehow manages to bring them together, juggling these ridiculous characters and their comic interactions (at one point, Hudson’s character screams: “What is reality?”) and a serious murder mystery that finds a way to compare itself to the Mona Lisa.

  

WOMEN TALKING (2022)

      Good intensions don’t always equate to a good movie. Actress-turned-director Sarah Polley’s spare tale of a crisis in a religious community plays like an off-Broadway play that has little chance of moving uptown. It presents a slice of the story that cries for a wider viewpoint.

     A handful of the women gather in the upper floor of a barn after a vote of the females in the community failed to determine a response to the arrest of a man for rape. In fact, various men have been getting away with rape and sexual assault on the women for years, blaming the attacks on ghosts or the dreams and hysteria of the women.

     At this point, I had a problem: This isn’t the 16^th Century when men could take advantage of ignorance and the general acceptance of the supernatural. This contemporary story wants me to believe—even if it is based on actual events--that these women just figured out they (and their children!) were being regularly abused by the men of the community, yet they are intelligent enough to have long conversations on the moral consequences of their decision.

      Beyond the believability factor, the debate quickly grows repetitious and tiresome. And, fittingly, the conclusion makes little sense, even when taken as a metaphor for the suffering of women over the millenniums.

   I’m still stunned that it earned a best picture and best screenplay nominations. It addresses an important subject, but not very convincingly.

     If “Women Talking” was going to be honored by the Academy, I would have guessed it would be for the performances: Claire Foy, unforgettable as Queen Elizabeth in the first two seasons of “The Crown,” and Jessie Buckley, nominated in 2021 for “The Lost Daughter,” both do memorable work as leaders of the debate.

   It’s very impressive that Polley walked away (or put on pause) a very promising acting career to become a director; her “Away from Here,” starring Julie Christie as a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s, was one of the best films of 2006. I expect many more fine films from Polley, but I don’t think “Women Talking” is one of them.

  

PLEASE MURDER ME!  (1956)

    Just a year before he became the most iconic defense lawyer in television history, Raymond Burr played an attorney who finds himself being scammed by a diabolical client he loves.

     “Please Murder Me!” defines low budget noir, with minimal sets, choppy editing and stiff acting other than Burr and co-star Angela Lansbury, but the plot, if not for its bleak ending, would have made a clever Erle Stanley Gardner mystery.

    It opens, before credits, with a man walking a dark street and into a pawn shop, where he purchases a gun. He stops a taxi and while the camera focuses on the gun in his hand, the cheap looking, minimal credits pop onto the screen.

    It’s only when the man enters his office that it’s clear it’s Burr as Craig Carlson. The lawyer begins dictating the story on a reel-to-reel tape recorder for the district attorney: “I’m going to be murdered in 55 minutes….”

    Flashback to a few weeks earlier, when he reveals to his wartime buddy Joe (Dick Foran) that Craig has fallen in love with his wife and they want to be married.

     Next thing you know, Joe has been shot to death by wife Myra (Lansbury) and she’s claiming self-defense.

      The picture drags a bit once it becomes a courtroom drama, a battle between the soon-to-be Perry Mason and the district attorney (John Dehner, one of the most distinctive supporting players in film and TV through the 1980s). But after the trial, Craig receives a letter Joe wrote the day he died, which turns the story into a bitter, deadly battle of wills in its final 30 minutes.

      Director Peter Godfrey (“Christmas in Connecticut,” “The Two Mrs. Carrolls”) spent most of his career doing B films, but “Please Murder Me!”—his last feature before moving to TV work---might be his most stylish picture, with most of the scenes, outside the courtroom, brimming over with doom.

    Lansbury has her moments but isn’t the perfect choice for this femme fatale role that cries for the toughness that actresses Lizabeth Scott or Audrey Totter would have brought to the film.

    For Burr, this was one of at least six features he made in 1956 (including the American version of “Godzilla: King of the Monsters!”) before beginning the role that defined his career. He shows in “Please Murder Me!” that he’s more than capable in what’s a rare lead performance for this expert in playing menacing supporting characters in such film noirs as “Desperate,” “Raw Deal” and “Pitfall” and for Alfred Hitchcock in “Rear Window.”

   

THE WHALE  (2022)

     This claustrophobic, hard-to-watch one-set picture, based on a stage play by Samuel D. Hunter, offers a slice in the life of an obese English professor who remains in mourning for his deceased partner.

     The real drama is watching Charlie (Brendan Fraser, weighted down with prosthetic fat) struggle to get in and out of his chair while fending off two of the most irritating characters you’ll likely to encounter in a movie. While his daughter (Sadie Sink) uses her troubled father to improve her grades, offering little sympathy for him, a persistent, misguided missionary (Ty Simpkins) from a local Christian group keeps harassing the too-generous Charlie.

     The cast also includes a blunt-speaking nurse (Hong Chau, who was so memorable in “Downsizing”) and Charlie’s ex-wife (Samantha Morton), both more interesting than the main characters.

     Director Darren Aronofsky specializes in extremes and mentally and physically challenged characters, including “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “The Wrestler” (2008), “Black Swan” (2010) and “Mother!” (2017).

     Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler” and Natalie Portman in “Black Swan” earned well-deserved Oscar nominations (she won) under Aronofsky’s direction, but in his latest, Fraser, who hasn’t had a first-rate role since “The Quiet American” (2002), gives a good but unexceptional performance. But, of course, he scored an Oscar nod.        

 

PHOTOS:

Andrea Riseborough in "To Leslie" (Momentum Pictures)

Daniel Giménez-Cacho with "Bardo" director Alejandro G. Iňárritu (Netflix)

Barbara Loden in "Wanda" (Criterion Collection)

Daniel Craig and Janelle Monáe in "Glass Onion" (Netfliex)

Raymond Burr and Angela Lansbury in "Please Murder Me!" (DCA Films)

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

     

 

December 2022

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (1975)

     There’s a school of filmmaking—popular in Asia and Europe in the past 20 years—that is enamored with holding a static shot of an actor or even a shot of a setting without any actors for what seems an eternity, representing, I guess, the monotony of daily life.

     In this country, acclaimed directors Terrence Malick, David Lynch and Wes Anderson, among others, occasionally use this static style, but usually find their way back to plot and dialogue. This highly regarded Belgian film may be the ultimate example of a director dispensing with anything resembling traditional filmmaking and performances as it chronicles three long, boring days in the life of a stay-at-home mother of a teenage boy.

     My favorite scene in this 3 hours and 22 minutes picture shows Jeanne (French actress Delphine Seyrig of “Last Year at Marienbad”) sitting at the kitchen table peeling potatoes. It goes on for at least five minutes, the camera unmoving and the actress barely registering any emotion. In fact, there are enough scenes of her preparing meals that this film might make a nice addition to the Food Channel’s lineup.

      With little dialogue, delivered with a minimum of emotion, the film follows Jeanne’s daily routine (it’s virtually the same each day), that includes her having sex with a different man every afternoon. That seems to be her only source of income. While the sex isn’t shown, the film does show her bathing, making coffee in the morning, shopping for and preparing dinner, sitting in the living room with her son while they read and washing the dishes (shot from behind so we only see her back.)

     All these scenes run minutes without movement (and if you think that isn’t long, watch any movie with a clock in front of you and see how much goes on in 60 seconds).

    There is nothing to keep one interested in this film until the last 10 minutes and by then, for me, it was too late. While I understand that director Chantal Akerman was trying to show the drudgery of a housewife’s life (in this case a widow), but that idea can be demonstrated artfully by most directors, even with the repetition, in 10 minutes. I didn’t need three hours of day-to-day routine to understand the woman’s plight.  (Her nonchalant attitude toward being a prostitute said it very quickly).

     Akerman spent most of her career (she died in 2015) directing French-language TV movies but her feature “News from Home” (1976) is also a critical darling. In America, her best known work is “A Couch in New York” (1996), starring William Hurt and Juliette Binoche.

    I watched this dreary movie because earlier this year it was rumored that it was vying for a top spot in the once-a-decade list of greatest films as selected by film critics for the British magazine “Sight & Sound.” Two weeks ago, that was confirmed: it jumped from No. 35 in 2012 to dislodge “Vertigo,” that year's top film, and “Citizen Kane,” the top picture from 1962 to 2002, for the top spot. For me, the once esteemed ranking has lost any historical importance, having been turned into a forum for critics to show off their appreciation of diversity rather than great films.

     Here’s a partial list of films that dropped out of this year’s Top 100: “Lawrence of Arabia,” "Raging Bull,” “The Wild Bunch,” “Chinatown,” "Touch of Evil,” “The Godfather Part II,” “Pickpocket,” “The Seventh Seal” and “Grand Illusion.” The 2019 French film “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” about a lesbian relationship in the 1700s, ranked higher than such time-tested masterpieces as “8 ½,” “City Lights,” “M” and “Bicycle Thieves.”

   Another obvious trend is style over substance. How else does one explain the ranking of Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.” in the Top 10? Are they great films? Arguably, yes. Are they by any measure among the ten greatest of all time? Definitively, no. (Even Lynch must be scratching his head at the ranking of “Mulholland Dr.” as the best American film in the past 50 years.)

   Maybe the most baffling entry in the Top 100 is “Meshes of the Afternoon,” a 1943 experimental film directed and starring Maya Deren and Alexander Hackenschmid. That a 14-minute silent scored more votes than Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” or Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” tells me all I need to know about the voters. (Judge for yourself, "Meshes" is on YouTube.) I’m guessing it was influential to Lynch and Guy Maddin, but it has no business as the 16^th greatest motion picture.

    Clearly, critics pushed for the addition of movies directed by women, with Jane Campion’s “The Piano” (#50), Akerman’s “News from Home” (#52) and Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” (#60) moving ahead of “Casablanca,” “The Third Man” and “Sunset Blvd.” Yet where are Italian director Lina Wertmuller (“Seven Beauties”) or Australian Gillian Armstrong (“My Brilliant Career”) or American Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”), all equally deserving?

     It’s easy to dismiss these rankings as just another discussion-stirring magazine poll, but Sight & Sound’s list represents—or did—the accumulative opinion of the important film critics and historians of our time. In an era when critics have lost most of their power to influence, supplanted by social media promotion, the inclusion of films for what they represent (or the gender of the director) rather than their artistic achievement further distances the audiences, many of whom see CGI as the pinnacle of cinematic greatness, from critics who still champion movies with insightful content.

    It is hard enough to convince younger viewers that “Citizen Kane,” with a defined narrative, realistic characters and energetic camerawork, is a great film; I can’t imagine their reaction to the new “greatest film of all time.”

  

THE FABELMANS (2022)

      You can find bits and pieces of filmmakers’ lives scattered throughout their movies, from Charlie Chaplin to Orson Welles to Martin Scorsese, but this new film from Steven Spielberg may be the first celluloid version of an autobiography.

      The picture contains the same flaws as most bio-pics—overtly literal dialogue, the usual coming-of-age hurdles, artistic ambitious that are inevitably dismissed by parents and an influential wise man (why is it always a male?) from outside the immediate family to encourage them—while, occasionally, getting to the heart of subject: what makes this individual different from the thousands of others who went through similar pains of youth?

      “The Fabelmans” tells the story of young Steven’s (here called Sammy) early love affair with motion pictures and, most interesting, his first experiences making movies as a youngster. At the same time, it chronicles the slow-motion breakup of a seemingly happy family.

      While this is a fictionalized version of his early years—it’s the Fabelmans not the Spielbergs—it follows the general outline of the filmmaker’s actual biography. From seeing “The Greatest Show on Earth” at a young age, becoming obsessed with the train-crash scene, moving from Cincinnati to the suburbs of Phoenix and then California, his Boy Scout years, his amateur debut as a filmmaker (the war film “Escape to Nowhere”) and his attempts to land a studio gig while attending college, the touchstone events of this movie legend’s life are re-created.    

      But the most compelling story of the film belongs to the mother character, Mitzi Fabelman, played by the still underrated Michelle Williams, who has curtailed her dreams of becoming a concert pianist for motherhood. On the surface, she’s the perfect wife to brilliant electronic engineer Burt (a restrained Paul Dano) and entertaining mother to Sammy and his three sisters, but there is an underlining sadness that foreshadows cracks in this picture of 1950s domesticity.

     It’s clear that something is brewing when Mitzi insists that family friend Bennie (a gregariously unassuming Seth Rogen) accompany them when they move to Arizona.

     The problem with dramatizing real life is that what seemed so monumental to those affected often loses its emotional impact when put on film. The script by Spielberg and playwright Tony Kushner (“Angels in America” and screenplays for the director’s “West Side Story” and “Lincoln”) is a bit too pointed as it leaps from one important moment to the next. Too often, I felt like I was watching a theatrical production in which every piece of dialogue feels carefully composed and rehearsed, losing the illusion of spontaneity necessary for great cinema.

     If the film isn’t already front-loaded with life lessons for young Sammy, his long-lost uncle (87-year-old Judd Hirsch) shows up like a shadier version of Uncle Ben from “Death of a Salesman,” offering tales, true or not, of life outside the suburbs and the world of showbiz that enthralls the budding filmmaker.

    I’m sure there were influential teachers in Spielberg’s life and I kept waiting for one to appear in Sammy’s story; maybe that was seen as one cliché too many. 

     That said, there are sequences in the film, as there are in every Spielberg picture, beautifully realized and heartfelt that reflect the real impact of joy and tragedy.

     There’s a wordless scene mid-film in which the teenage Sammy edits film he shot during a family camping trip that reveals more about his mother than he wants to know. And then there’s the final scene when a chance meeting signals that this young man may be in line for some success (who would have guessed?).

     While newcomer Gabriel LaBelle, who plays Sammy as a teen doesn’t resemble Spielberg—the actor reminded me of a young Michael J. Fox—he  captures the obsessive youth perfectly and is believable as he navigates the anti-Semitism bullying in his California high school.

      But the performance of the film is given by Williams, who continues to deliver pitch-perfect portrayals of women struggling to find their place in the world. With her work in “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), “Wendy and Lucy” (2008), “Blue Valentine” (2010), “My Week with Marilyn” (2011), “Manchester by the Sea” (2016) and in the TV series “Fosse/Verdon” (2019), she’s putting together one of the most impressive acting filmographies of this century.

       This isn’t one of Spielberg’s best, but clearly an important one for the filmmaker as he reflects, at 75, on what formed him as an artist and offers a glimpse of it for those of us who have been enriched by his films for 45 years.

  

SHE SAID (2022)

    The methodical, often tedious process of investigative reporters, filled with dead ends, hostile sources and endless meeting with a series of editors seems an unlikely topic for a movie. The crime or corruption itself makes for a more action-filled, thrilling picture. Yet almost a half century after the godfather of all scandal reporting films—"All the President’s Men” (1976)—three pictures have taken up the heroic mantle: “Spotlight” “The Post” and now “She Said.”

    I never would have imagined that the work of Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor of the New York Times in 2017 to expose Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct could be fashioned into a compelling, entertain film that captures both the slow grind of reporting work and the jubilance and relief when the resulting story is finally printed (or posted).

 

   Smartly, director Maria Schrader, a German actress who won an Emmy for directing the 2020 Netflix miniseries “Unorthodox,” and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (“Ida”) first establish the life and character of the reporters, Twohey as played by Carey Mulligan and Kantor, portrayed by Zoe Kazan.

    Twohey seems to be the more seasoned journalist, but when they are paired up, she has just given birth and working through post-partum depression. Kazan, married with young children, is more low-keyed, less confrontational.

    In fact, they make a perfect team as they attempt to convince long-silent women to go on the record about Weinstein’s horrific, though not atypical in Hollywood, actions toward young women.

   Like all movies in this genre, it is about the process, celebrating the efforts and tenacity of the reporters and their editors even while the audience knows the ending.

    As a former newspaper editor, these details are probably more interesting to me than your average moviegoers, but I think anyone can be swept away by watching first-rate professionals take down a truly evil and powerful man who had been getting away with repulsive and criminal behavior for decades.

    Mulligan has the showier role but Kazan, granddaughter of the legendary director, equals her in showing the obsessiveness required by the job while balancing a homelife.

    Patricia Clarkson, as usual, is excellent as their immediate editor Rebecca Corbett and Andre Braugher, though hardly a physical match, captures New York Times editor Dean Baquet’s quiet yet commanding manner. (Weinstein isn’t portrayed—you hear his voice in phone calls and see the back of his head during a newsroom meeting.)

    Also memorable is Ashley Judd, one of the first women to go on the record about Weinstein’s misdeeds, as herself. I don’t think I’d seen a more memorial performance as someone playing themselves in a fiction film.

     Samantha Morton, as a former Miramax executive whose complaints years ago was ignored by the company’s board of directors, and Jennifer Ehle, as a former assistant in the company going through difficult times, give superb performances as women willing to go on the record about Weinstein.

     Best remembered for her Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 television miniseries of “Pride and Prejudice,” Ehle deserves an Oscar nomination for this emotionally charged performance.

     The story and the repercussions in the aftermath (when hundreds of women come forward about assault by bosses across the entertainment industry) spurred the #metoo movement and has, at least, put a dent in the age-old practice of the “casting couch.”

    The question that is asked often in the film (based on the reporters’ book) is why did it take so long. Always blamed are the women, who for various reasons, felt unable to speak publicly about Weinstein and others of his ilk.

    But some of the blame must be placed on the Hollywood press—the Los Angeles Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter—for not making concerted efforts to turn what everyone knew into a publishable story. Either for sexist reasons or simply supporting the status quo (the sexualization of actresses and other women in the industry is older than sound films), it is a black mark on any organization that covered Hollywood, especially in the past 40 years. Instead, the behavior was recalled as a remnant of the old days or tossed away as an awards show joke, while it was ruining careers and damaging lives.  

 

THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1936 (1935)

   There’s a sequence in this cornball joke fest that is a reminder of what could have been part of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

     The film begins with the Nicholas Brothers (then 21 and 14) tap dancing on a radio broadcast before the scene cuts to the legendary Bill Robinson in a barber’s chair in Harlem. Inspired by what he hears on the radio, he dances onto the street and the community joins him in a spontaneous celebration. These three amazing song-and-dance men were mostly on the sidelines during the era of studio musicals, relegated to short specialty numbers inserted into musicals starring white actors or short films made for Black audiences.

      For some reason (lets give credit to producer Benjamin Glazer and director Norman Taurog), unlike most Hollywood films, the brothers were allowed to interact with the white stars of the film, Jack Oakie and Henry Wadsworth. They run a radio station, WHY, but leave to try to sell a TV-like invention brought to them by George Burns and Gracie Allen. (Remember this is 1935!) and are ultimately kidnapped by a Russian countess (Lyda Roberti). Along the way, this promotional picture for Paramount stars turns the spotlight on Bing Crosby, Ethel Merman, the Dandridge sisters and Charles Ruggles, among many other names long forgotten.

     But back at the radio station, Harold and Fayard Nicholas (called Dot and Dash in the film) remain on the air, running the show without a hitch. Who would have imagined finding such radical portrayals in a movie-variety show?

     

ARMAGEDDON TIME (2022)

    It’s hard to dislike a film that wears its heart so prominently on its proverbial sleave. Writer-director James Gray continues to shine as one of the unsung filmmakers in America, regularly chronicling the hurdles faced by immigrants and their descendants.

     But too often this film and the family troubles it depicts seem uncharacteristically (for the film’s 1980s time frame) harsh and confrontational with the 6^th grade son as a very unlikely rebel, cluelessly seeking a cause.

    Paul (a convincingly real Banks Repeta) forms a friendship in his public school with Johnny (Jaylin Webb), an unhappy African American classmate, who acts out in ways those in charge of him expect. Soon, his parents transfer Paul to a private school filled with elitist administrators and racist students.

    To categorized his parents (Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway) as clueless is being kind—they don’t seem to understand the first thing about parenting and Paul’s teacher is even worse.

     Nothing happens that isn’t foreshadowed from the opening scenes when the stereotypical teacher isolates them from the rest of the class for minor distractions.

     Saving the film for me, is a poignant performance by Anthony Hopkins playing the boy’s grandfather. While trying to explain what it means to be Jewish, he tells Paul the reason his great-grandmother left Ukraine 50 years earlier: “People wanted to kill her.”

   I’m not sure what I should take away from the film---life is made up of a series of random luck or that racism is never far from the surface—but it didn’t resonate like many of Gray’s earlier works, including “Little Odessa” (1994), “Two Lovers” (2008) and “The Lost City of Z” (2016).

  

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (2022)

     Erich Maria Remarque 1928 book about the experiences of German soldiers on the front lines during the waning days of World War I stands as one of the most acclaimed war novels and, in a much-sanitized version, was turned into the first great Hollywood sound film in 1930.

    Not sure why it took so long for a German filmmaker to take on the horrific, anti-war epic, coming just three years after Sam Mendes’ brilliant “1917” about English soldiers on the same front. The best remembered picture on the war from Germany is G.W. Pabst’s brilliant “Westfront 1918” (1930).

    After a short preface showing the unthinkable slaughter taking place on the front lines, we meet the main character, Paul (Felix Kammerer) as he and his schoolmates enthusiastically prepare to serve in the Kaiser Wilhelm’s army.

     Though more episodical than “1917,” this film shows the hopelessness of the fight as it’s clear Germany will go down in defeat. While the generals keep pushing their men to fight on for national pride, the soldiers die in the mud and blood in large numbers for a lost cause.

    The direction of Edward Berger and sweeping camerawork of James Friend puts moviegoers in the middle of the chaos, a killing field that may have been the closest man has created an earthly hell.

    The film does a good job of keeping the focus on Paul and his buddy Kat (Albrecht Schuch) as a reminder that these are real young people whose lives are needlessly, gruesomely erased.

    While “All Quiet” doesn’t get into the rational for the costly war—unlike World War II, this conflict is harder to explain 100 years later—it does show the bitter negotiations (Daniel Brühl as the German representative) that led to harsh punishment for the Prussian Empire and spurred the rise of fascism 15 years later. 

     The war, and the peace that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson engineered, marked the end of the major empires that dominated Europe for hundreds of years, creating countries that were closer aligned to ethnicity, but at an unimaginable cost

  

EMPIRE OF LIGHT (2022)

    Landing in theaters somewhat under the radar, this is an intimate, heartfelt picture about the redemptive qualities of the movies written and directed by Sam Mendes (“1917,” “American Beauty”) and starring Oscar winner Olivia Colman.

      Most alluringly, it takes place in the early 1980s at an old-style theater on the waterfront of Margate on the southeast coast of England. As filmgoers line up for “All That Jazz,” “Stir Crazy” or “Raging Bull,” we are introduced to the staff, led by manager Hilary Small (Colman), owner Mr. Ellis (a slumming Colin Firth) and the new guy, Stephen (Micheal Ward), an African-Brit who faces a growing street movement of white supremacy under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

     Though the politics eventually push its way to the forefront, “Empire of Light” focuses on Hilary, who has struggled with her mental health, but seems to find happiness in an unlikely relationship with Steven.

     Master cinematographer Roger Deakins (Oscar winner for “1917”and “Blade Runner 2049”) creates a glow of warmth inside the theater that contrasts with the almost blinding light of the seaside exteriors.

     Mendes tries too hard to tie up all the loose ends, allowing the last act to go on too long, but another brilliant performance by Colman (who won the Oscar for “The Favourite” and an Emmy for the middle-aged Queen Elizabeth in “The Crown”) keeps the film afloat. Twenty-five-year-old Ward, who is best known for the British TV series “Top Boy,” holds his own with the veteran actress.

    My favorite scene in the film comes when Stephen is granted admission to the projection room and shown how to run the films by projectionist Norman (the quirky Toby Jones). Deakins’ camera captures the magic of the process while lingering over the hundreds of movie stills and magazine pictures Norman has papered the walls with. A touching remembrance of a world lost to the digital revolution. 

 

PHOTOS:

Delphine Seyrig in “Jeanne Dielman.” (The Criterion Collection)

Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan in “She Said.”  (Universal Pictures)

Felix Kammerer in “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Netflix)