"Call Me By Your Name"

 ☆☆☆☆☆ 

Eroticism and sensuality are qualities that elude filmmakers with embarrassing frequency, but whether you're gay or straight, Call Me By Your Name is bound to make you feel the heat of the passion it portrays and the frank and unabashed way it approaches sex.

Strikingly sultry but never lurid, Call Me By Your Name is also an emotional stunner. Its story is about first love between two men, but it hits such rare notes of longing, discovery and joy that it seems unfair to categorize Call Me By Your Name as a "gay" movie, though it most certainly is a movie about the singular challenges that two men have when they find love with each other.

Some of the challenges, the earliest ones presented in the movie, are the same for everyone: When they meet, neither 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) nor Oliver (Armie Hammer) knows what to do, or whether the other feels the same. Their flirtation is at once overt and subtle; they kid each other, they dismiss each other, they compliment each other, waiting for a response.

Elio lives with his father (Michael Stuhlbarg), an American professor of archaeology, and his French mother in a ravishingly gorgeous Italian countryside villa, and each summer the family is visited by a student for six weeks.  Oliver is this year's student, and he's both impossibly gorgeous and intensely confident.  Elio tries Oliver as a vulgar American, but it's clear there's a fascination there, one that turns out to be mutual.

Elio moves effortlessly between speaking Italian, American English and French, and his sexuality seems equally fluid -- or, at least, uncommitted. Sex is on his mind in a big way, and what he can't try with Oliver he'll try with one of the local girls, Marzia (Esther Garrel), who's more than a little sweet on him.

If Elio is just discovering his sexuality in all its complexity, Oliver seems more adept at knowing -- and hiding -- his.  He's comfortable openly flirting with one of Marzia's friends, but it's impossible not to sense that he might have feelings for Elio, whose dazzling intelligence and classical beauty attract him.

Director Luca Guadagnino lets the story amble along, quiet and calm as one of the perfect summer days it depicts, until a bicycle ride through the countryside leads Elio and Oliver to a bucolic spot in which they are able to drop their guarded, tentative airs.  They fall in love, and Call Me By Your Name is a genuine rarity in the way it takes their romance seriously and brings to it an air of melancholy familiarity; their relationship is intense, sweet, fraught and sincere.

And sensual. While Call Me By Your Name does blush a little at portraying gay sex with the same forthrightness as its straight sex scenes, it's impossible to deny the intense magnetism on display between Hammer and Chalamet.  (They're both straight in real life, a fact that hardly seems relevant except for the convincingness with which they play their scenes.)  One scene in particular, in which Chalamet vents his sexual frustration on a peach, is going to have audiences buzzing, but the movie finds steaming sensuality in langorous shots of ultra-masculine Hammer and the more graceful Chalamet doing little but lying in the sun.

For all of its quivering, provocative physicality, though, Call Me By Your Name achieves its most breathtaking potency with the emotional intensity of the affair.  The inevitable scene of their departure is heartbreaking, but that pales in comparison to an astonishingly touching scene in which Elio's father opens up to his son about the transience of youth and the importance of love.  It all leads up to a final couple of minutes that opens the waterworks with as much ruthless efficiency as the last scene of The Way We Were.

And Call Me By Your Name earns and deserves comparison to great "straight" cinematic romances.  Sexual identity aside, no one who sees the movie is going to be unaffected by its portrayal of young romance, which is almost by definition doomed and impossible.  And few movies have as emotionally wrenching a final shot as this one.

But sexual identity can't be put aside.  Call Me By Your Name by its very nature is rueful about the way gay love was so long spoken about in hushed tones (and, let's be honest, often still is), the way that repression means young people aren't allowed to explore themselves openly and fully.  But it's also one of the most joyous movies about love you'll ever see, especially in one moonlit scene in which Elio and Oliver reflect back on how many days they wasted before letting themselves be in love.  That one moment is about as close to romantic perfection as you're likely to get in a movie; it's a scene, and a film, to be cherished.




Viewed November 24, 2017 -- ArcLight Hollywood

1930

Catching Up: "Colossal"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

With her bushy hair, long bangs, enormous eyes and too-wide smile, Anne Hathaway seems perpetually to be apologizing and in a mild state of distress, which has always served her harried comic characters well, and does so again in Colossal.

Gloria is a screw-up of, well, colossal proportions, far too old for the drunken shenanigans she pulls, far too self-absorbed to be aware of them, and so far past the point of help that she can't see that the handsome man (Dan Stevens) she lives with is a controlling bully. When it comes to her drinking and her lying, though, we sense his anger may have a point, but he's another in a long line of mistakes Gloria has made. When he finally kicks her out of the New York City apartment they share, she retreats to her now-empty childhood home.

She hasn't been back in town a day when she runs into her childhood sweetheart, the sweet-talking, aw-shucks opposite of the man who dumped her.  Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) also happens to own the town's only bar, and decides that alcoholic, desperate Gloria would make a perfect waitress, and his best friends Joel (Austin Stowell) and Garth (Tim Blake Nelson) agree.

But there's a monster lurking in this charming rom-com setup -- Gloria is a full-scale alcoholic who can't accept responsibility for her behavior. And, oddly, the sweet and handsome Oscar thinks that hiring a known drunk is a good idea. He seems like a nice guy, but a nice guy wouldn't do that.  It's not long before the monster finally rears its ugly head, and in a most unexpected way.

Waking up from a drunken stupor, Gloria is shocked to hear that clear on the other side of the world, a giant, Godzilla-like monster is rampaging its way through Seoul, South Korea.  The monster is an oddity, but the damage it inflicts is real: people have died and parts of the city have been leveled.  Think back to 9/11.  A lot of people felt a strange sense of responsibility and personal investment into a disaster that was happening somewhere else. It's the same way for Gloria. She hears the news and the level of anxiety she feels seems out of proportion, but maybe it's just a human response.

Or, maybe not.

Gloria begins to suspect that maybe she is somehow responsible for this inexplicable turn of world history.  And, in fact, she is.

Gloria controls the monster.  And if that sounds like a metaphor, guess what?  Are you saying Frankenstein and the Wolfman aren't metaphors, too?  That the aliens Ripley faced weren't symbolic?  Gloria's monster may not be of her own making, but what's happening in Seoul is certainly her doing.  Her discovery of her rampaging superpower takes place during Colossal's relatively lighthearted first half -- as lighthearted as you can get with a borderline sociopathic alcoholic and the deaths of hundreds of people.

But Colossal manages a jaunty tone, and before long Gloria is sharing her revelation with Joel, Garth and Oscar -- who, it turns out, is a considerably accomplished alcoholic himself.

Gloria learns the secrets of when the monster appears and how, standing on playground in her little New England town, whatever she does the monster does, too.  Now Gloria, while deeply troubled and emotionally scarred, is not a bad person, so she learns to control her monster, and pretty soon the people of Seoul are enjoying the monster's funny hand gestures and silly little dances, along with a poetic apology -- the kind of apology the drunk leaves her husband on the dining table after she's done something awful.

But it's still a monster.  And the people Gloria has shared her secret with aren't really the most trustworthy and empathetic sort, and one of them even has a monster of his own.  This is where Colossal gets really interesting.

The script by director Nacho Vigalondo revels in the obviousness of its metaphors -- and in using them to explore a story that otherwise might be too painful to watch.  As Gloria realizes just what she and her fifty-story-tall giant monster avatar can do (most of the time, she watches it on TV), she grasps the complexity of the problem and, in a pretty terrific female-centric plot, realizes the men aren't going to be any help -- she's got to figure this out on her own.

Gloria's monster bestows upon her a power that is both frighteningly overwhelming and intensely self-empowering, and it's the latter realization that sees the film through to its unusually satisfying climax.

Colossus happens to come along at a time when women are finding their own inner giant robots and finally taking a stand against the unrelievedly lousy way they've been silenced, and though Colossus was made long before the latest revelations of sexual harassment and molestation came to light, it couldn't be better timed.  But it's not purely a story of feminine self-awareness -- Colossus works so well for the way Gloria's increasing awareness of her own power could relate to anyone who's trying to become someone other than who they are.

Yet, Colossus doesn't shy away from some pretty pointed, angry observations about men in general.  The one who seems best suited to her is meek and demure, he boyfriend is angry and controlling, while the nicest of all possible guys, Sudeikis's Oscar, turns out to be quite a monster himself. Sudeikis plays against his nice-guy image to uncover some grotesque anger, and doesn't shy away from Oscar's increasingly unsavory side, while Hathaway brings a giddiness to her character's growing determination to change.

Yet, this is above all a screen fantasy, and genre fans won't leave disappointed: there is a monster-on-monster smackdown that overcomes its lower-budget effects to be every bit as worthwhile as something in a Marvel film -- maybe even more, because the giant creatures mean something more than their digital bits.

Overlooked on its initial release, Colossal is available now on streaming services including Hulu, and to miss it this time around would be a Colossal mistake.



Viewed 11/22/27 -- Hulu

"The Killing of a Sacred Deer"

 ☆☆☆½ 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer confidently dares you to hate it, and frequently succeeds.  It's not a movie I would necessarily recommend, but it's one I'm not going to be able to forget.  If you thought Yorgos Lanthimos created a weird and unsettling film in The Lobster, you don't know the half of it until you've seen The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

In the hands of another director, The Killing of a Sacred Deer might have turned into the kind of low-budget supernatural horror-thriller that you might find released by Blumhouse Productions.  Give it just a twist, and it would be a different film indeed.  Lanthimos does give it a twist, a big one, in exactly the opposite direction, and turns it into a Kubrick-inspired nightmare of controlled madness.  It's shot with such a careful, detached, artistic style that it must mean something -- but maybe not; maybe it's just its own perverse, unsettling thing.

Colin Farrell leads a tight ensemble as a quiet, vaguely depressed cardiology surgeon named Steven living in anonymous, antiseptic Midwest comfort with his opthalmologist wife Anna, played by Nicole Kidman, and handsome children Kim and Bob (Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic, both uncommonly good).  But Dad has something of a secret.  Well, a lot of them, actually, with the most obvious being that he's become uncomfortably close with a teenage boy named Martin (Barry Keoghan).  There's something going on here, but in its long, languid opening scenes it's not at all clear what it might be.

Martin insinuates himself into the doctor's family with the same sort of arch and stilted politeness that everyone in the film possesses.  In The Killing of a Sacred Deer, everyone seems to be walking around in a mannered daze, like the pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  They talk with awkwardness, even the children.  Even sex becomes a detached ritual that is as disturbing as it is fascinating.

Barry's father, it is eventually revealed, died while our good doctor was operating on him, and both Martin and his intensely unhinged mother (Alicia Silverstone in a crazed cameo) put the blame squarely on Steven.

Things are already weird, but get a whole lot weirder when Steven's son Bob wakes up one morning unable to walk.  That's when Martin tells Steven that the horrors are just beginning.  His whole family is going to suffer until Steven sets life in balance -- just as Steven killed Martin's father, Martin is going to require Steven to kill a member of his own family as just payment.  If not, some really, really screwed up stuff is going to happen to them.

Sounds like the stuff of blood-soaked Greek tragedy?  It's that and more, a theatrical, well-rehearsed drama that takes its time to unfold but becomes so off-the-wall bonkers that you're helpless to do anything other than keep watching.   Lanthimos, his co-screenwriter Efthymis Filippou, and the exemplary cast are so damned committed to the concept here that it's downright impressive.

Kidman, in particular, impresses with the sort of fearlessness she brought to her small-screen role in "Big Little Lies," and Keoghan is an off-balance presence both physically and emotionally that it's impossible to have any idea of where The Killing of a Sacred Deer is going even though it is so sure of its own way.  The final 15 minutes genuinely border on ridiculousness, but somehow the entire film avoids the hysterical theatrics that turned mother! into such a bore.

Calm and steady, The Killing of a Sacred Deer commits itself to the expression of its particular ideas with an almost awesome force.  It's a movie that requires a tremendous amount of effort from the audience, with a climax that is staggeringly disturbing.  (The film contains relatively little overt violence, but it still requires a force of effort to watch some of its key scenes.)

It wouldn't have taken too much for The Killing of a Sacred Deer to be a more run-of-the-mill sort of thriller, but then it wouldn't have been the film it is, for better and for worse.




Viewed November 17, 2017 -- Pacific Sherman Oaks 5

1650

"Roman J. Israel, Esq."

 ☆☆ 

Roman J. Israel, Esq. is the second movie this month with a comma in its title, a fact that is only slightly less interesting than the film itself, which is a disappointment coming from Dan Gilroy, the writer-director of Nightcrawler, and Denzel Washington, a modern screen icon and a movie star if ever there was one.

But it turns out Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a character in search of a movie, a bunch of idiosyncratic tics placed on screen in what appears to be primarily an attempt to nab some Oscar nominations.  What Roman J. Israel, Esq. has going for it: an undeniably appealing central performance, some magnificent cinematography, and some nice supporting work by Colin Farrell and Carmen Ejogo.  What it's missing is a crucial reason for being, a cinematic personality to match its title character, and a cohesive story.

A mild-mannered attorney in a small Los Angeles two-man firm led by a beloved civil-rights lawyer (who never appears on screen), Roman J. Israel, Esq., spends his days researching cases and writing legal briefs.  He can recite the entire California civil code by memory, and he wears cheap suits and clip-on ties from the second-hand store.  He carries around thousands of pages of notes for an epic class-action lawsuit against the federal government that he dreams of filing. He makes $500 a week and lives in a tiny apartment in a bad part of town.  (For as much as it revels in its setting Roman J. Israel, Esq. doesn't go out of its way to make L.A. look particularly nice; it's the anti-La La Land.)

When his mentor collapses into unconsciousness after an all-but-fatal heart attack, Roman J. Israel winds up working for a slick, high-priced attorney (Farrell), whose philosophy is geared more toward billable hours than upholding civil rights.  But Roman J. Israel, Esq., is passionate about civil rights, and believes in the power of the law to do good, which wins the attention of a beautiful, intelligent volunteer lawyer for a liberal activist group.

Somewhere in here a story happens, eventually.  There's a ripped-from-the-headlines shooting case involving two black men, and because of that case Roman J. Israel, Esq., finds himself in a morally compromising position, and for once in his life he decides to follow the lead of Farrell and go for the money after a series of highly unlikely scenarios that finds Roman J. Israel, Esq., suddenly rich.

It all plays out like an uncomfortable blend of Being There, Rain Man and a generic John Grisham legal thriller, the kind that throws out a lot of legal jibber-jabber that laymen can't keep up with and that I suspect probably has lawyers in the audience giggling.

Roman J. Israel, Esq., isn't about the character's autistic traits and how he needs to adapt to the world, though there are traces of that.  And it isn't about how this simple character gets into complex situations and struggles to make sense of them, though there are traces of that.  And it isn't a paranoid thriller, though there are quite uncomfortable traces of that.  And it isn't a romance, though there are some even more uncomfortable traces of that.  And it's not about civil rights or the role the law plays in upholding inherent rights, though there are tiny traces of that.  What it is, in the end, is a something of a mess.

The movie has a hard time laying out its story and making sense of it, and a really awful framing device is more awkward than endearing, though it's meant to be the latter, and we're meant to cheer the way Roman J. Israel, Esq., gets a chance to grab the easy money and then realizes how it's never as easy as all that.  But none of it rings true.  Fortunately, it's at least always a joy to look at thanks to the cinematography by Robert Elswit, who also shot Paul Thomas Anderson's magnificent ode to Los Angeles, Magnolia, which is a far superior movie about people who live in L.A. and come to realize that life is way more complex than it appears, and that life is really hard for people with strong moral principles.

It's interesting how movies set in Los Angeles often explore issues of justice and social inequality, how they play with the disparity between the way the city looks and the kinds of people who live here.  A lot of great movies have been made about Los Angeles and the way it hides the good in bad people and the bad in good people and is a place that is both deeper and more interesting than it appears.  A lot of really terrific films have been made about ideas like that.  Unfortunately, Roman J. Israel, Esq. isn't one of them.




Viewed Nov. 15, 2017 -- TCL Chinese Theater

1915

"Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

 ☆☆☆☆☆ 

Anger begets greater anger, one of the characters says in Martin McDonaugh's shockingly funny and starkly sad film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.  Well, she doesn't say it so much as it's related that she said it, and she can't take credit for the wisdom because she read it in a book -- well, on a bookmark in a book.

Still, she's proud of the words, and still what they say about anger is true.  Just ask Mildred Hayes, whose daughter Angela went out to meet some friends nine months ago when she was raped and set on fire just under a trio of billboards within eyesight of the Hayes residence.

What does that kind of unthinkable violence do to a mother? That's part of what Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, wants to explore, but the bigger question is: What does it do to everyone?  What does that sort of scream in the night, that slap in the face of decency and humanity do to the world?  Whether or not McDonaugh and everyone involved with Three Billboards knew it when they were making the movie, Three Billboards proves to have powerful resonance in today's violent, profane, angry, divided, ridiculous world.

The pain inflicted by whomever killed Angela Hayes has left almost everyone in Ebbing, Missouri, feeling violent, profane, angry and divided themselves -- the ridiculous is just along for the ride, as it always is in life.  No one is hurt more than Mildred, who is played by Frances McDormand in one of the great performances of the year, certainly, and maybe the decade.  She can't get past the idea that Angela's killer walked off into the night and was never caught or heard from again.  Unsure what to do with her rage, she rents the billboard above the place of Angela's murder, and two more nearby, and erects a harsh message to the local police chief.

Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson, who's also spectacularly good) is enraged, of course. But he gets it. How could he be angry at Mildred when the stunt gets exactly the results it wants: It turns the attention of the chief and the town back to the murder that they hoped they had moved beyond.  Mildred's son (Lucas Hedges) is a little less forgiving, and police officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) is demonstrably more so.

Though her intent was to rip open her own raw wound, in fact what Mildred does is tear the sutures from the whole damned town, and it pretty soon it looks like the whole place is infected with anger, resentment and recrimination.

Against this dramatic setup, Three Billboards does something extraordinary: It finds reasons to laugh. It's one of the most consistently and frequently inappropriately funny movies of the year, filled with a cast of characters who are less quirky stereotypes than almost uncomfortably rich and full-blooded humans.  There are racists and homophobes (this being small-town America), people who have unrequited crushes on each other, people who have their own theories about what happened, people who keep secrets about the way they are, the way they think, the things they feel.

As the town lines up both for and against Mildred, her challenge to the police is a defining moment for everyone involved, when they have to accept what they've done, defend their actions, or make some serious changes in their lives.  The police chief is the most obvious target, but it turns out there are a lot of lesser targets, too, ones Mildred didn't even know she was aiming for.

Yet it's Chief Willoughby who looms largest in all of it.  The crime happened on his watch, and so did the failure to find the murderer.  Harrelson strikes a wryly nonplussed sort of tone early on, but then McDonaugh's screenplay throws a curveball, which it follows up with an even more unexpected twist, and pretty soon we're as confused as anyone in the movie.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, begins with a setup that seems straightforward and pulls back the layers of normalcy (even weird, ridiculous normalcy) one by one, until we realize there's nothing at all straightforward about any of it, and whatever answer we thought might be forthcoming is not going to be easy at all.

There's an absurdist streak running through Three Billboards that is similar in tone to McDonaugh's supremely underrated In Bruges, which is also startlingly violent and profane.  That film played off of the sweet, peaceful image of a European storybook to great effect, but there's something even more disarming about Three Billboards and its depiction of American small-town views.  It's no surprise that underneath the tranquility of an American town lingers unpleasant truths, and Three Billboards hits on the expected elements of racism and violence.  Then it goes deeper, into individual hearts and minds, exploring the anger that seethes under a calm exterior.

Yet it never once loses its sense of humor, both about the story at hand and about humanity in general.  It is, as one character muses, as if there is no God and it doesn't matter what we do to each other, in which case we're all really screwed.

Or maybe not.

And that is the glimmer in this wonderful movie's eye.





Viewed November 12, 2017 -- ArcLight Hollywood

1145

"God's Own Country"

 ☆☆½ 

Out there on the wind-whipped, lonely moors of Yorkshire, life is rugged and tough.  It's no place for humor, judging by God's Own Country, which is a dour and serious romance that would not be a particularly noteworthy film if it were about an opposite-sex couple. But since it's about two gay men in a rough-and-tumble world of masculinity, the movie assumes its every move takes on extra weight and meaning.

Johnny (Josh O'Connor) is a farmer who lives way out there in Brontë country.  He's a little slow, a little aimless.  At night he goes into town and gets drunk, because based on this movie that is all there is to do when you're a farmer in Yorkshire.  Sometimes he has sex with a local boy, but since Johnny doesn't kiss he's not gay.  It's just that a Yorkshire farmer has needs, you see.

Johnny's glum, widowed father has been disabled by a stroke, and Johnny's sour-faced grandmother tends to the house all day, which means Johnny needs some help on the farm.  That's where the migrant Romanian farmer Gheorghe (sultry Alec Secareanu) comes in.  He's initially brought to the farm for a week of labor.

They head out onto the farm to tend to the livestock.  The film shows their animal husbandry work in rather alarming detail. They work hard. They heat up instant noodles over a campfire.  They go long, long hours without saying a word.

Then they have sex. There's no indication that they have particular feelings for each other, that Gheorghe might be gay, or that they have any real interest in sex, except that the film's leisurely screenplay, written by its director, Francis Lee, says that's what needs to happen.

The movie seems vastly more fascinated by the work the men do than their personal lives, and there's one difficult but fascinating scene in which Gheorghe peels the skin away from a dead lamb to help a little runt lamb be accepted by a sheep.  God's Own Country seems to understand much more about farm life than it does about romance, and that's not an insurmountable problem except for the fact that the movie wants to be a romance.

During that first night of dirty, hasty sex, Johnny refuses to kiss Gheorghe, but it isn't long before they're making goo-goo eyes at each other, while Johnny's father and grandmother slowly catch on to what's happening.  But the movie doesn't play up that drama, or really much of any drama.  God's Own Country is filled with long, pauses and wordless moments, but they aren't as much quietly dramatic as they are listless.  For a movie about passion, God's Own Country is missing exactly that.

Perhaps the film wants to be Britain's answer to Brokeback Mountain, and there are indications it does, but Johnny and Gheorghe lack the intensity of Jack and Ennis.  It's not the fault of the actors, both are good and try very hard to dig into these men.  But God's Own Country is so dramatically slack that it needs to invent a far-fetched conflict to move the story into its climax rather than let the chasm between its two main characters open up.  Is Gheorghe gay, and did his sexuality factor in to his decision to leave his home country?  Has Johnny struggled with his sexual identity for a long while?  It's hard to know and a little bit hard to care, especially when the film tries to use a vulgur epithet in an ironic way to show how difficult it is for them to express love.

And yet ... there's something sweet about a movie that believes the biggest romantic problem between two people of the same sex is still, in the 21st century, merely gender.  It's such a simple and straightforward gay drama that its backwardness is mildly endearing.  Plus, there's the scenery, which is hard to ignore; the moors look brutal and harsh, but terrifically romantic and isolated.

For a movie filled with dead animals and gay sex, God's Own Country is strangely about as straightforward and old-fashioned as you can get.




Viewed November 11, 2017 -- AMC Sunset 5

1400

"Murder on the Orient Express"

 ☆☆☆ 

Like an old bathrobe or a favorite chair, Murder on the Orient Express has an easy familiarity to it, a they-don't-make-them-like-this-anymore vibe that makes movie fans of a certain age smile.

Of course, they used to make them like this, nearly a half-century ago. That was when Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman and David Niven didn't really have careers anymore and could be wooed by high-paying producers to travel to exotic locations and get the full-on movie-star treatment in extravagant productions based on Agatha Christie novels.

There were a spate of these films, which succeeded the mega-budgeted, star-studded disaster films that had lost their appeal, and which prevented the stars themselves from fading completely.  Ultimately, of course, those epic Christie mysteries lost their appeal, as well, and Hollywood movied past that and into the age of superstars like Julia Roberts, Mel Gibson, Eddie Murphy and, ironically enough, Johnny Depp, who could commend $20 million a picture.  In those days, it seemed that maybe the star-in-every-role movies would never be seen again; there was no way a producer could spend $200 million on salaries alone.

But, of course, stars fade and popularity wanes and now here's Depp himself playing a supporting role amid a passel of stars both young and, ahem, old.  Murder on the Orient Express almost delights in bringing back this old-timey conceit of shoving together a bunch of arguably fading actors and seeing what happens.  Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Kenneth Branagh, Willem Dafoe -- for a moment, sometimes longer, they were all huge, and Murder on the Orient Express, which Branagh himself directed, luxuriates in the idea that they still are. (Derek Jacobi and Judi Dench are also on board for an extra-classy touch.)

They are but mere co-stars, however, alongside younger actors like Daisy Ridley, Josh Gad and Leslie Odom Jr., who are to this film what, say, Jacqueline Bisset, Mia Farrow and Simon MacCorkindale (remember him, "Manimal" fans?) were to the earlier generation of these murder-mystery sagas.  Whether Pfeiffer, Cruz, Dafoe and their contemporaries have quite the marquee appeal that the previous generation had is questionable at best, but Murder on the Orient Express suspects that it will be a delight to see them, and it guesses correctly.

It is almost irrelevant whether the film itself is any good, and it is a bit of a relief to report that it's almost every bit as entertaining as those earlier movies.  It is richly appointed, beautifully shot, lovingly crafted.  It looks phenomenal, with costumes and sets that recall more lavish days.

As a director, Branagh loves his actors, none more than himself, though not in a particularly egotistical sort of way.  It's just that Branagh knows that if there is a star in these star-studded mysteries, it has to be the detective himself, and he wants Hercules Poirot played in a specific way -- so specific, it makes sense that only the director could play the part.

The story has the same basic setup as Christie's novel and the 1974 film by Sidney Lumet: Poirot, the world's greatest detective, boards the Orient Express after a particularly exhausting case, but instead of the expected R&R he gets, naturally, another murder to solve.  This one is a particularly befuddling one since it takes place in an enclosed location with a limited number of witnesses ... or suspects.  How did the slimeball "businessman" Samuel Ratchett wind up dead in his locked-from-the-inside cabin?

Poirot investigates, giving each of the movie's actors, whether big name or small, about four minutes of quality screen time to tell her or his story before moving on.  Poirot listens.  He observes.  He deduces.  And, ultimately, solves the case.

Whether the solution is the same as it's always been or different this time around is not something anyone should give away, but does it matter?  Those who might not know the outcome of the previous film or original novel will look for all the clues; those who remember the original well will delight in all of the visual aspects of the movie -- and the non-visual ones, too, for it boasts a wonderfully full-blooded score by Patrick Doyle and dazzling cinematography by Hans Zambarloukos, along with luxurious costumes by Alexandra Byrne.

And like that bathrobe or chair, it's easy to enjoy and not care about its middling qualities, of which there are plenty.  The script is both infinitely talky and sometimes maddeningly confusing: some characters still don't make a ton of sense even after you know the outcome.  The acting, particularly by Cruz and Odom, is at times flat and uncompelling, while Branagh is frequently overzealous with the visuals -- there's too much obvious computer-generated imagery.

Then there's the structure, which relies almost entirely on Poirot moving from character to character and giving each suspect a few minutes to tell their story before moving on to the next.  (The black-and-white flashbacks are, for my way of thinking, a touch that's slightly too old-fashioned and cheesy.) It becomes wearying, even though most of the actors are terrific and seem to love (as I did) the way Branagh films in long, uninterrupted takes.  The scenery has got to taste a little better when they chew it that way.  And chew they do, seeming to love every minute of it, and few of the minutes are quite as good as the initial meeting between Mrs. Hubbard (Pfeiffer) and Monsieur Poirot, which also shows off the train to full effect.

As the film ends, there's a heavy hint that if this one succeeds Poirot will be back in a remake of Death on the Nile, which would hardly be the worst thing in the world to see.  Which former superstars will star in it?  A resurgence of films like this could be a lot of fun -- and whodunit will be far less intriguing than who'lldoit.




Viewed November 10, 2017 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

1915

"Thor: Ragnarok"

 ☆☆☆ 

The audience I saw Thor: Ragnarok with laughed at all the appropriate places, cheered for their favorite characters, and applauded at the end of the movie while I sat mostly bewildered, though slightly less so than I've been at most recent Marvel movies.

Impressively, Thor: Ragnarok tries to step out of its own way for Marvel neophytes (and it's odd to consider myself that, since I've seen the bulk of the Marvel-branded films), and it comes closer than any Marvel film since the original Iron Man to being an enjoyable experience for those who don't obsessively keep up with the previous films.

That's not to say Thor: Ragnarok is a film I'd recommend to people who have never seen a super-hero movie, but those people are clearly in the minority of the moviegoing audience, so they probably don't matter.  Still, Thor: Ragnarok is substantially better and more entertaining than Thor: The Dark World, which apparently I saw back in 2013 even though I have almost no memory of the experience.  And it's also a lot better than the original Thor, which I could have sworn was the one with Natalie Portman, though that turns out to have been the last one.

And yet ... there were times, more than a few of them, when I was utterly confounded by what was happening on screen.  Thor: Ragnarok assumes more than a passing familiarity with the previous films, but not just with the Thor movies but all of the Marvel films.  Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) makes a significant appearance, and because I hadn't seen his movie I didn't really understand the references he was making.  Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) shows up, and the Hulk/David Banner (Mark Ruffalo) has a major role.  The audience cracked up when he saw Black Widow and made some comments about Tony Stark, and they totally got it when he talked about what happened in the other non-Thor Marvel movies, and the point that the film seems to be making is that if you don't get what they're talking about then you're just not worth worrying about.

That's mostly fine in Thor: Ragnarok since the movie is enjoyable on its own and has just enough of its own self-contained story that it's like sitting down and watching an episode of a long-running TV mystery series -- you can enjoy the murder of the week even if you don't get the sideways glances its characters give each other.  Same thing here.

The story of Thor: Ragnarok is more comprehensible than the story of, say Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and involves Thor (Chris Hemsworth, his eyes twinkling even more than usual) and his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) saving their home city-planet of Asgard from their resurgent, long-forgotten sister Hela (Cate Blanchett), who happens to be no less than the goddess of death.

You'd think that maybe sometime their father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) might have told them that they were related to the most powerful, angry villain in the galaxy, but, hey, that's family for you.  Blanchett seems to be having a great time as Hela, though she's pretty one-note as a villain and mostly makes a lot of large flourishes with her arms while she swears the good guys will never win.

There's a very, very, very long detour to a trash planet that feels a lot like something out of Star Wars. I've always found it interesting that in much populist science-fiction entire planets are only one thing -- desert or ice or water or trash.  This trash world is lorded over by a wacky, crazy guy named Grandmaster, who is played by Jeff Goldblum.  It would be hard to imagine an actor who is clearly having a better time in a movie than Goldblum is in Thor: Ragnarok.  One of his chief deputies is a Valkyrie played by Tessa Thompson, who I thought was one of the oddest characters in the movie if only because she turns out to be almost entirely unnecessary to the plot but has a ton of screen time, probably because she's going to factor in to the next Thor movie.

And there will be another Thor movie, because this one is making boatloads of money and audiences are eating it up.  Which is fine, I guess.  Complaining about the Marvel movies being narratively slack and the cinematic equivalent of junk food is not going to change the fact that moviegoers really have an appetite for it, whether they're hungry or not.




Viewed Nov. 5, 2017 -- AMC Burbank 16

1300

"Lady Bird"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

That we were all 17 once is a truth no 17-year-old understands, but the bitter irony is that no middle-aged person does, either.

Back then, we all told ourselves, "When I'm old, I won't be that way." Then, somehow, the experimentation and the exasperation, the hope and the excitement, the loneliness and the friendships all give way to adulthood, and then, for those who have children, the cycle repeats itself.  It has been that way for all time, I guess, and probably before the famous murder Cain and Abel rolled their eyes and clucked their tongues because Adam and Eve just didn't get it.

So, the conflicts of parents and children are nothing new for movies to explore, and in that regard Lady Bird doesn't feel particularly new or profoundly insightful, but this directorial debut from actress Greta Gerwig, who also wrote it, is engaging, witty and wise nonetheless.

Played by Saoirse Ronan, Christine McPherson is cursed with the fate of being above-average -- that is, too smart to be ordinary yet not brilliant enough to be something special.  She's so convinced she's bored with her life that she even gives herself her own nickname, "Lady Bird," which she writes in quotation marks between her first and last name. She's "Lady Bird" because it's a name she gave herself, not one forced upon her by her mother, the way every meaningful decision has been.

Lady Bird lives in Sacramento, and Lady Bird begins with an epigraph by Joan Didion that both mocks and respects Sacramento for being, well, Sacramento, which Lady Bird calls "the midwest of California." It doesn't seem like it's enough for Lady Bird, who envisions herself doing something big and bold but seems fated to live the kind of life where the best she can do is be cast as "swing" in the school play.

Lady Bird's mother is played by Laurie Metcalf, and she doesn't understand her daughter, not at all. She might have more time to consider her daughter if only she weren't working overtime at the hospital, worrying about her soft-in-the-heart husband (Tracy Letts) losing his job, and fretting about how she's going to keep the family afloat.  The last thing she needs is teenage angst and rebellion, but that's what she's got with Lady Bird.

Lady Bird is primarily a series of vignettes that illuminate the sort of life that normally happens in the shadows of bigger things.  Nothing of great import happens in Lady Bird, but one of the great achievements of the movie is the way it doesn't seem to mind.  The movie follows Lady Bird for about a year as she deals with school, college applications, budding romance, friendship and a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction.  She wants to be anywhere but here -- but she also has a sense that when she gets there, she might not like it very much, either.

Lady Bird is thin on plot but loaded with warm, amiable characters who are confused about the lives they're growing into.  And it's not just the teenagers in the movie that are discovering this -- Metcalfe anchors the movie with her portrayal of a mother who wishes she had more time to love her daughter the way her daughter deserves to be loved.

Lady Bird is as messy and endearing as Lady Bird's so-called life, and it's at its best when it deals with her first serious attempt at a relationship, a flirty, crushy sort of high-school love with awkward, handsome Danny (Lucas Hedges). Something big, something important happens between Lady Bird and Danny, and the movie handles it with anxious humor and true grace -- a scene between Ronan and Hedges is one of the sweetest and most touching moments you'll see in a movie this year.

Lady Bird also has a terrific relationship with her best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein) that feels exactly the way high-school friendships felt: intense, genuine and painfully ephemeral.

The best parts of Lady Bird are about Lady Bird's complex relationships with her mother, Danny and Julie.  The movie is less appealing when Lady Bird veers off track and strikes up some friendships with the school's rich kids, and if the movie has one big flaw it's that it spends too much time observing Lady Bird with some self-absorbed brats.  Part of what Lady Bird is getting at, of course, is that Lady Bird herself will come to regret the time she wasted with the wrong kind of people.  But in many ways, Lady Bird plays like Pretty In Pink with an indie vibe, and let's face it, no one has ever really wished Andie spent more time with Blane and less with Duckie, did they?

Yet, the Pretty in Pink-John Hughes comparison, though apt, really only goes so far, because Lady Bird flirts with, if never quite addresses, some interesting observations about faith (Lady Bird attends a Catholic high school), class and integrity.  There are a lot of moments it's tempting to wish this small (93 minute), sweet movie would have spent more time exploring, and Gerwig's script meanders for a few critical moments.  Yet, it finds its way back, and the final scene pulls it all together in a sweet and melancholy way.

Lady Bird will make anyone who used to be a teenager wish that they could go back to do things just a little bit differently.  We're only 17 once, and Lady Bird knows what a blessing and a curse that is.



Viewed November 4, 2017 -- ArcLight Hollywood

2015