"Little Women"

 ☆☆☆☆☆ 

Here, finally, is the balm for our times, whose generous, warm, deeply caring soul looks straight at humanity and pronounces it good and worthy; a film that follows so many decades of slavish, imagination-starved page-to-screen transliterations that it makes film adaptation seem like a new art form.

Little Women is an exquisite piece of work. It is breathtakingly beautiful, made with exquisite care by writer-director Greta Gerwig, and to call it the best movie of the year seems something of a disservice: As it unfolds, you're aware that this is a film that is going to be watched and loved for many generations to come. It's extravagant, lush, splendidly envisioned, but also tender, aching and infused with a spirit of love and kindness that is all too rare.

You might, as I did, dimly remember the classic book from childhood, or one of its many adaptations, but Gerwig has found a magnificent new way to approach Louisa May Alcott's semi-autobiographical novel. Though it's set during the Civil War, the emotions at play are timeless: yearning, jealousy, joy, anger, disappointment, grief, hope. Saoirse Ronan is mighty as Jo, who here is quite forthrightly assumed to be Alcott, but every member of the cast is magnificent: Emma Watson, Florence Pugh and Eliza Scanlon as sisters Meg, Amy and Beth; Timothée Chalamet and Chris Cooper as handsome neighbor Laurie and his father; Laura Dern as Marmee; Meryl Streep as Aunt March. Does it sound like fawning? It is. Little Women is just glorious.



Viewed Dec. 31, 2019 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

1900

"Harriet"

 ☆☆☆ 

It's practically impossible to dislike Harriet, an earnest and entirely adequate biography of Harriet Tubman, the former slave whose heroic accomplishments in freeing 70 black Americans from chains and guiding them to freedom along the Underground Railroad is the stuff of legend (and, it needs to be mentioned, sorely neglected history).

With such a sweeping, death-defying story, why, then does Harriet feel leaden? It's not entirely inert, especially not with Cynthia Erivo in the title role, plus the always-riveting and vibrant Janelle Monáe in a key supporting part. It's beautifully shot in Virginia and meticulously crafted, with exquisite period sets and costumes. But it also has a screenplay (by Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard) that, with a couple of tiny excisions, would have been right at home as a TV network movie of the week in the 1980s. It hits all the important points of Tubman's rise from slavery to leadership – including slave owners who do all but twirl their mustaches in villainy – and ends just as things are really getting good; here's a rare movie that could have benefitted from another half-hour.

The film's music score is an odd one; it mixes traditional and modern in ways that the movie itself doesn't match, and is a distraction. Similarly distancing is the movie's too-clean cinematography, which has the flat sharpness of television; the film's lush production is not served well by this visual decision. The resulting film is one you feel you should watch, not that you want to watch.




Viewed Dec. 29, 2019 -- DVD

"I Lost My Body"

 ☆☆☆½ 

What a strange work of wonder this film is -- another reminder in the age of big-studio dominance that animation is not always (or even ideally) about singing princesses or wisecracking playthings. But if a bug, a rat or a car can captivate, why not a hand?

It's a forlorn hand, severed from its former owner in an accident that opens the movie, one we don't see, though we learn who the hand belongs to and see the bloody aftermath. (Though it's all drawn, this movie might not be for the squeamish.) The hand is desperate to get back to its body. It is determined to find the place it belongs.

So, too, is the young man who used to call the hand his own. I Lost My Body is the story of that man, Naoufel, who has lost much more than his hand in his life. Through a dual series of flashbacks, he remembers his own life before one terrible afternoon, as the hand (apparently) recalls how the formerly fully limbed Naoufel came to fall rather awkwardly in something like love.

This French animated feature is bizarre, to be sure, and often emotionally uncomfortable. There's also tender wisdom in this story of the ways the past follows us wherever we go, how it insists on catching up with us, and the impossibility of ever really fitting who we were with who we are. It's surprisingly beautiful to watch, to listen to, and to ponder, through all its strangeness.



Viewed Dec. 27, 2019 -- Netflix

"Marriage Story"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

There is trouble here, that is clear. There are the resentments and petty frustrations grown enormous that lead to seething disgust. And yet, when Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story begins, they seem surmountable.

Charlie (Adam Driver) is a successful theater director in New York. Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) is his wife and lead actress. It is clear they dislike each other, but it is also clear, right away, that they love, respect and admire each other. Aren't these the foundations for marriage?'

No. They are not enough. Maybe they were, or, as the film progresses, we learn that maybe they weren't. Who's to know? But they tried, and they failed, and Marriage Story is an absorbing, often harrowing, frequently funny and sometimes Woody Allen-esque examination not, as the title implies, of the marriage, but of the divorce.

You will think you know which side you're on right away. But difficult personalities reveal themselves as tempestuous, mercurial, ugly and unfair. Both of these people are all of these things, and also charming, clever, devoted, caring. This is not a movie that takes sides, but presents the impossibility of the situation, and the messiness of life. The point is not the resolution but for the predicament itself, and fierce performances, careful direction and an understated score by Randy Newman combine in this potent, sympathetic film that cares not about sides, only about the imperfection and pain of the end of a marriage between two people who still know exactly why they fell in love.



Viewed Dec. 22, 2019 -- Netflix

"Cats"

 ☆☆½ 

Well, what did you expect? Director Tom Hooper has made a movie version of the stage hit Cats and, guess what?  It is, in every possible way, Cats.

It is as plotless as the original, just as weird, silly and frenetic-- maybe more so, because the movie is incapable slowing down and letting us ogle it. Is it bizarre to see famous faces as cats, singing and dancing with mice and cockroaches? Very weird. The movie does the actors no favors, but also no injustices. Does the movie make any sense? No, but then the show doesn't, either.

Every single performer in this movie seems entirely comfortable with the idea of playing singing, dancing cats. They acquit themselves surprisingly well, especially (not surprisingly) Judi Dench and Ian McKellen, who give it everything they've got and then some. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. The only people discomfited by it all are pop-culture analysts who have determined this movie is worth scorn and derision. Did someone tell them they were going to see a movie about singing, dancing cats? Did they fail to notice the tails and ears and whiskers in the trailer?  The derision, the scorn and the anxiety seem to say more about the critics than about the movie.

Cats has always been weird, unsatisfying, entertaining only in fits and starts, spectacular but emotionless, filled with antiquated words and synthesized '80s music. Nothing's changed.

It's Cats. Seriously ... what did you think it was going to be?




Viewed December 22, 2019 -- AMC Burbank 16

1210

"Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"

 ☆☆½ 

Here it is, then: the end of the "Skywalker saga." As if the first two endings weren't enough. The story of Star Wars ended with 1983's Return of the Jedi, but then came the prequel trilogy to tell us the history behind that first ending, and now comes a new trilogy to create a new story that has been carefully, painstakingly retrofitted to connect with the originals. It does connect, but only because it has to, not because it should.

It's been almost 10 years since J.J. Abrams' TV series "Lost" ended with a convoluted, non-sensical finale that answered the questions it wanted to answer and ignored the rest. Now, a decade hence, Abrams proves he has learned something as the director of The Rise of Skywalker: He tries to answer everything. He also uses one of the tricks he learned on that series, which is that if you don't like what came before, just ignore it and move on.  The Rise of Skywalker shows a certain disdain for Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi while trying to be a fan-obsessive's dream. Every major question posed by Abrams' last film, The Force Awakens, is addressed, and every character under the Star Wars sun makes at least a minor appearance, no matter how nonsensically.

The Rise of Skywalker doesn't have time for sense, even in its opening crawl, which makes the rather weird and unexpected claim that SPOILER ALERT, EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT A SPOILER TO ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN PAYING THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF ATTENTION Emperor Palpatine is alive. No, it makes absolutely no sense. Yes, it comes completely out of the blue. But mostly this development comes because The Rise of Skywalker turns out to be, without much apology, largely a remake of Return of the Jedi.

Is that a surprise? The Force Awakens took its rhythms, cues and story structure from the original Star Wars, and now for the third film in this trilogy, Abrams returns to the originals and revises them even while keeping the structures largely the same. The sin in the director's mind seems to be that Rian Johnson and Lucasfilm's own producers were eager to take the story -- and the mythologies -- in new directions with The Last Jedi, which made both fans and Abrams uncomfortable.

So here is a return to fan-driven form, with many of the stylistic cues from George Lucas's films (bold screen wipes to transition scenes; longer, carefully composed shots) gone even while returning to those films' story beats: It seems Abrams' vision was to essentially remake the Star Wars trilogy for a new generation, and that may well be what many fans wanted, but everything about this new set of films lacks a sense of originality, a vital sense of purpose.

Nothing about The Rise of Skywalker remedies that. While it obliges in a fan-driven desire to trot out old characters (POSSIBLE VERY MINOR SPOILERS HERE!) – Look, there's Lando Calrissian! Oh, it's Wicket the Ewok! Hey, wow, it's ... wait? How is he back? – it also introduces new ones astonishingly late in the game: Plot-wise, they can serve absolutely no purpose, except to provide another level of pop-culture meta-knowingness to the proceedings: Wow, that's Richard E. Grant! Which famous actress is that under that mask? Let's stay for the credits to find out!

Meanwhile, because the Death Star or something like it has now appeared in fully one-third of Star Wars films, there's a new sinister weapon here, also capable of destroying planets, also capable of taking over the entire galaxy, so it's something that our gang of rebels must find a way to destroy MINOR SPOILER ALERT and, guess what? It's got a weakness! While they go about doing that, the nominal main character of these last three movies, Rey (Daisy Ridley, as committed as ever) is off to a showdown with the two main villains, the Emperor (Ian McDiarmid) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). The latter continues to communicate with Rey through a very confusing sort of ESP that apparently none of these latest screenwriters seems to understand makes the on-screen action all but unintelligible.

There's one thing to be said for The Rise of Skywalker, which is that it moves at (force) lightning speed. It never slows down, never worries that maybe it should take some time to help the audience establish where and why we are, just keeps moving, moving, moving like a magician whose distractions and redirections are both the entertainment and the lie -- if The Rise of Skywalker slowed down for even a moment, audiences might start questioning its own answers.

This is especially true for the movie's biggest revelation, which I won't even hint at here, except to say that it's best not to dwell on it, because it is the shaky foundation upon which the entire trilogy is based, and it's both a letdown and a cheat. When this all-important plot point is explained, it is not a shock, nor is it particularly enlightening or informative. Like all of this "final" trilogy, it simply is, and the ramifications of it are given little consequence.

Meanwhile, The Rise of Skywalker gives top billing not to Ridley but to Carrie Fisher who, of course, died in 2016, so is treated with saintly reverence here. All of her scenes are made up of shots filmed for, but not used in, previous films, so her interactions with other cast members make The Rise of Skywalker feel a little like Steve Martin's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, where he generates laughs by interacting with old movies. The shots of Fisher in The Rise of Skywalker have no humor, but feel just as strange and ill-fitting.  All but one or two of Fisher's lines are throwaways, so the film's attempt to make her a leading character seem – sorry for the pun – forced.

To its real credit, The Rise of Skywalker doesn't feel as clumsy or stilted as the first two prequels, but those films had a clear advantage that this film doesn't: They told a cohesive story, one with a clear protagonist and a thematic purpose as Lucas tried, perhaps ineffectively, to chart the rise of evil and the beginnings of a great war.

None of the films of this trilogy had that clear spirit, though in retrospect The Last Jedi tried hard to find that center. But it did not hold. The Rise of Skywalker finishes a story that never really needed to be told, that never figured out its central purpose. As a way to finish a rather meaningless set of films, it does its job. It is never dull, never entirely uninteresting. It is well-produced, mostly well-acted, and will satisfy those fans who have wanted to know the answers to the minor questions these movies have posed.

So, it's the end of this story, at long last. The end of a cycle of films that endlessly coils in on itself, a cinematic Möbius strip that keeps repeating and coming back around to the same place, the same planets of sand and ice and water, the same space battles, the same friendly droids, the same showdowns, the same mystical reverence of the Force, the same John Williams music, the same tunic-clad heroes and hooded villains, the same sense that Star Wars will never, ever end.

And if you're a certain kind of fan, or a certain kind of executive at The Walt Disney Company, that's exactly how you like it.




Viewed December 19, 2019 -- ArcLight Hollywood

2000

"1917"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

As a piece of filmmaking, a technical exercise in visual storytelling, 1917 is a spellbinding, praiseworthy achievement. Director Sam Mendes sets aside the artistic devotion to story and character of his films like American Beauty and Revolutionary Road in favor of full-on Bond-level intensity.

Though its World War I setting and the images of its elegiac poster might make you think this is going to be a melancholy reminiscence of the Great War, 1917 is, in fact, a flat-out action movie, a straightforward beat-the-clock nail biter that literally can't slow down.

The plot is simple: Two British soldiers are given a mission to deliver an urgent message to a regiment that is miles away. Communication lines are down, and there's no other way of letting them know they're heading straight into a German ambush that will spell certain death for 1,600 troops.

Off they go. The soldiers are played by George Mackay and Dean-Charles Chapman, and both are very good in the roles, though they are little more than stock characters. The performers are hardly the point here: 1917 is essentially one long over-the-shoulder video game, with as much depth and as much action as a shoot-em-up. The story pauses occasionally just long enough to offer a little exposition and throw up more hurdles to prevent the men from reaching their goal, all seemingly shot in one very long take and separated into two hourlong segments.  It's intense and suspenseful, if unexpectedly lacking in depth and significance. 

"Jojo Rabbit"

 ☆☆☆½ 

For a movie about a 10-year-old boy who goes to a Nazi youth camp and looks to his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler for advice, the biggest shock from Jojo Rabbit isn't that it's outrageous but that it's so sweet and charming. Instead of satire to stir controversy and inflame passions, writer-director Taika Watiti has made a sweet-natured comedy with some sharp (though carefully padded) edges.

Touching, compelling and often genuinely funny, Jojo Rabbit struggles when its plot turns to the harrowing last days of World War II and the altogether too real ramifications of Jojo's plight: His mother is hiding a Jewish girl, with whom Jojo finds himself falling in pre-pubescent love.

Roman Griffin Davis and Scarlett Johansson play Jojo and his mother, Rosie; their scenes are beautiful, warm and not at all as uncomfortable as the might (or maybe should) be as Rosie's resistance instincts are matched by her need to play the Good German and allow her son to become a Hitler Youth.  The film is filled with talented actors in broadly comic roles, and they all seem to relish Watiti's whimsical, comic approach.

The strangest thing about Jojo Rabbit is how on-kilter it all is, rarely feeling really bold or dangerous, though it's a credit to young Davis, Johansson and Thomasin McKenzie as Elsa, the Jewish girl, that they find a real emotional core amid the zaniness.  Jojo Rabbit might never soar quite as high as it hopes, but it hops along pretty admirably.



Viewed December 15, 2019 -- AMC Sunset 5

1800

"Bombshell"

 ☆☆☆ 

Unfocused and unclear about whether it's a scathing indictment of sexual harassment or a swift satire of Fox News, Bombshell seems rushed to capitalize on a social movement. Despite phenomenal work from its three central performers, particularly Charlize Theron, it can't overcome fits-and-starts pace or casting more akin to an Irwin Allen disaster show from the 1970s.

Everyone who's anyone shows up at least for a moment, so much you'll find yourself whispering, "Wait, is that ... ?" Amid this sea of guest stars, the four most prominent characters are Theron as former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, Margo Robbie as a fictionalized young up-and-comer, and John Lithgow as sleazeball chairman Roger Ailes.

Carlson is the first to accuse Ailes of shockingly vile sexual behavior, while Kelly faces relentless attacks (including from a certain presidential candidate) that stir conflict in her. The truth is absorbing and disturbing, but for whatever reason it's not enough for director Jay Roach and screenwriter Charles Randolph (did anyone think this story might be better told with female voices?), so they add in Robbie's character, who is unbothered by the revelations until she faces Ailes on her own.

Dramatically, it's both too much and not enough, and just when Bombshell gets good, it lobs in a "cameo" by a Fox News personality to force a laugh. It's off-kilter; both too righteous and not angry enough. Though occasionally terrific, Bombshell turns out to be a bit of a dud.



Viewed Dec. 13, 2019 -- AMC Century City

1815

"Apollo 11"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

As much as the extraordinary, never-before-seen images from the first mission to the moon, Apollo 11 stuns for the way it conveys a the commitment and dedication it took to get there and back. And it's not just the astronauts, technicians and space-flight managers who were committed.

There, on the IMAX screen, is Johnny Carson, watching Apollo 11 lift off on July 16, 1969.  But there, too, are thousands of men, women and children, transfixed. They are dripping in sweat in the hot Florida sun. They are sitting on top of their cars, trying to catch a quick nap on flimsy blankets, but they wouldn't miss this for anything.

The documentary Apollo 11 was made for CNN Films but is best seen and experienced on the giant IMAX screen, and is back in that format for a week during the height of Oscar season. If you missed it the first time around, don't miss it now, because it is a temporary sort of balm to these angry, distrustful times. Here is a way to travel back into time when everyone had one thing they could get behind. And what a thing it was. Seen in IMAX, Apollo 11 manages to convey the enormity and sheer physicality of it all -- how that 300-foot-tall rocket shot into space and how, four days later, a tiny capsule splashed back down and for one moment everyone was proud.

That's a feeling in short supply these days. For 90 minutes Apollo 11 brings it back.




Viewed Dec. 7, 2019 -- AMC Universal CityWalk

1700

"The Lighthouse"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" is from Dante's Inferno, but it might as well be a line from The Lighthouse, perhaps spoken by Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe), the bushy-bearded, squinty-eyed salty sailor who's the "wickie" in charge of a remote lighthouse on a tiny rock in the middle of a desolate, angry sea of nothingness.

Wake and young Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) begin a four-week stint at the lighthouse as the movie begins, and almost immediately we sense we are in weird sort of horror territory, a throwback to the expressionist masters of the silent era, shot in an extreme square aspect ratio of 1.19:1, which heightens the claustrophobia and discomfort.

Even though there's something really weird going on, it takes The Lighthouse a little while to get there as it settles into the rhythms of its hyper-masculine characters and hints at a deep and bizarre fantasy world within. Director Robert Eggers (who wrote the film with Max Eggers) is setting up  bizarre fever dream filled with striking, shocking, horrifying imagery and hints of something ethereal and mythic. After a while, nothing in The Lighthouse can be trusted, even these two people.

This weird, unsettling horror-fantasy is more akin to a Poe short story (allegedly it was loosely inspired by Poe's final writing), and is certainly something to be seen, as are Pattinson and especially Dafoe, who create indelible characters in a film you won't easily forget -- no matter how hard you try. And you will try.



Viewed Dec. 6, 2019 -- DVD

"Dark Waters"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

It's been 25 years since Todd Haynes made the off-kilter Safe, in which a suburban housewife believes she is being poisoned by the environment and goes mad. And now, a quarter of a century later, Haynes is back with a response to his earlier film: She was right. And he's got proof.

Dark Waters is based on the story of Rob Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), a high-priced corporate attorney in Cincinnati who switches sides when a West Virginia farmer (Bob Camp) comes to see him about his cows. They've been dying; actually, everything has been dying, and he thinks mega-conglomerate DuPont is behind it all.

Dark Waters wades tantalizingly into the stream of '70s conspiracy thrillers as Bilott convinces his boss (Tim Robbins) and his wife (Anne Hathaway, underwritten but strong) that the case is worth taking. It's tense, convincing and absorbing. Then, for a while, the film seems to meander. So does the case, as 69,000 are tested for contamination. That takes years. And years. And years. As everyone loses faith, Bilott does, too.

If it were only about the environmental misdeeds of a company, it would be Erin Brockovich, but Haynes is playing at something else in this disturbing, stirring movie. He wants us to see what happens to a man who clings to Martin Luther King's conviction that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." There's truth in that, but the waiting -- ah, the waiting; that'll get you every time. Almost.



Viewed Nov. 29, 2019 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

1930

"Honey Boy"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

Is Honey Boy the work of an attention-seeking egotist in desperate need of attention to solve his own personal conflicts? Yes. Isn't every work of art?

The film is written by and stars Shia LaBeouf -- an actor who, prior to 2019, held absolutely no appeal for me. It's about a young actor traumatized by his self-destructive father. The actor is named Otis (Noah Jupe, mesmerizing) but is, in fact, LaBeouf himself.

It sounds like a deeply pretentious vanity project. Directed Alma Har'el turns it into anything but. Its specific, precise story is about one person and his pain, yet LaBeouf and Har'el have created a film that is as cathartic for the writer as the audience. Honey Boy contains scenes that hurt to watch, that are delivered with the force of a gut-punch, that shine with an honesty shocking in its clarity, and that are suffused with visual beauty.

LaBeouf plays his own father -- or, more exactly, Otis's father, though I did wonder why the movie is so coy about names as the end-credit sequence is filled with LaBeouf's family photos. Otis's father has absolutely no redeeming values, and his abuse of his son is at least in part what drives an older Otis (Lucas Hedges, ubiquitous yet ever remarkable) to therapy. And it's in therapy that Honey Boy reveals its truths about pain, grief, hurt, memory and the difficulty all of us have in being truthful. Honey Boy feels true, and that is its great, gracious gift.




Viewed Nov. 24, 2019  -- AMC Burbank 16

1500

"Knives Out"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

If Knives Out is ignored by the awards, just know it made me laugh harder, louder and more frequently than any other 2019 film that comes to mind. It wasn't just me. I can't recall a more boisterous, appreciative audience.

Knives Out is written and directed by Rian Johnson, whose wild talent is on display in ways that his last directing job may have hidden. It begins with a grand tradition: the "whodunnit." There's a dead body in a gothic countryside mansion, no end to the suspects; swirling motives; and, in the midst of it all, a suspicious detective.

Johnson "upgrades" that old trope with a delicious style, and a fabulous cast led by Daniel Craig as Det. Benoit Blanc; Christopher Plummer as the corpse; Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon and Chris Evans as the greedy family; and, briefly, Frank Oz as a beleaguered attorney. The family gathers to hear the will of the corpse, who while living had built a $60 million empire writing mystery novels. The family wants that money.

Joined by two hilariously strait-laced police officers (Lakeith Stanfield, Noah Segan), the detective is given to drawling cliches like, "The game is afoot" -- and it most certainly is.

Superficially similar to the rich-family-in-a-house thriller Ready or Not, Knives Out is far more fun, far less sadistic, and more prodigiously satisfying. Knives Out may not be awarded as the "best" movie, but it's bound to be the best time you'll have at the movies. That's a much more wonderful accomplishment.



Viewed November 23, 2019 --  ArcLight Sherman Oaks

1900

"The Irishman"

 ☆☆☆½ 

Martin Scorsese's The Irishman is a movie that demands attention and patience, and some people sitting in the movie theater when I saw it could not quite muster either: I heard both snoring and whispers of questions like, "Who is that?"

It's not a film that will pair well with the distractions that invariably accompany watching anything on Netflix, where it will mostly be seen; its three-and-a-half hour running time will not be forgiving of stops, starts and interruptions. Paying half-attention to The Irishman may lead people to conclude that it's either  boring or brilliant, though it's actually neither, although Scorsese consistently reminds us of his filmmaking brilliance.

At times The Irishman is grandly entertaining, but also times when it drags in its flashback-driven story of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a small-time criminal who becomes part of a crime family led by Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci) and goes to work for Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). More than an hour of setup drags, but the film really gets going as it tells the Hoffa story. In its final, strongest third, it's a melancholy exploration of aging and guilt, but it takes a long while to get there.

Throughout, the movie offers often convincing, often distracting computer-enhanced "de-aging," and an exquisite production design that is one of its highlights. Less florid than Scorsese's earlier crime dramas, The Irishman (introduced on screen as I Heard You Paint Houses) requires, and rewards, patience even if its length proves to be a not-insignificant detriment.



Viewed November 17, 2019 -- Laemmle NoHo

1350

"The Good Liar"

 ☆☆☆ 

The Good Liar is a good movie, not a great one, but taut, twisty and enjoyable. You may see those twists coming, you may even (if you're particularly clever) figure out some of them in advance, but the present of Ian McKellen and, especially, Helen Mirren raise it all a cut above where it needs to be.

Working from a novel by Nicholas Searle, director Bill Condon has crafted an affably relaxed mystery-thriller that relies on its magnetic central performances to keep interest in the film from waning during some of its more melodramatic revelations.

The two legendary actors both play widowed and, ahem, mature Londoners who meet on an online dating service and click. Though there's no noticeable romantic spark between them (nor, particularly,  electric chemistry between the actors), which becomes an important part of the film's plot. For most of the movie, we follow McKellen's Ray, a moderately suave con man who is clearly not at all what he appears. He's a swindler, and his partner in crime Vincent (Jim Carter) soon have their eyes on Mirren's modest yet wealthy Betty.

Her suspicious grandson (Russell Tovey) almost immediately doubts Ray, leading to a series of flashbacks (lazy plot devices, perhaps, but still fun) that reveal a web of deception. The revelations may not be as "shocking" as they hope to be, but still and all The Good Liar is entertainingly modest, a good story well told, and the kind of simple, straightforward thriller that is increasingly, distressingly rare.

Viewed ArcLight Sherman Oaks -- Nov. 16, 2019

2045

"Doctor Sleep"

 ☆☆ 

Stanley Kubrick made an aggressively, obsessively weird movie in The Shining, a film that utilized his love of cinema, puzzles and design to come up with something that was under-appreciated in its time and has grown to be a classic. It is entirely fair to compare Doctor Sleep with The Shining, since the movie invites and welcomes comparisons. On every level, Doctor Sleep is woefully inferior.

If Kubrick freely adapted The Shining into a capital-F Film, director Mike Flanagan makes Doctor Sleep into a lower-case movie that might be perfectly at home on, say, FX. It's as literal as Kubrick's movie was obtuse, and if you haven't seen the 1980 original, Doctor Sleep will make absolutely no sense; if you have, Doctor Sleep feels extraneous.

Instead of the hyper-focused fixation on family dynamics in the first film, Doctor Sleep bounces around between three stories, including one in which we get to see a little boy brutally tortured and murdered on camera while he screams for help. Throughout, there are weird, distracting re-creations of actors from the first movie, but the plot remains strictly in Stephen King good-versus-evil territory.

There are occasional hints that it's all really about now-grown Danny Torrance (Ewan MacGregor) exorcising his demons, but it's so jumbled and intentionally reverential to Kubrick's film that nothing makes much sense. King famously hates Kubrick's movie, but this one makes the fatal flaw that one never did: It's dull. This Doctor may indeed put you to sleep.



Viewed Nov. 9, 2019 -- AMC Century City

1930

"Joker"

 ☆½ 

Joker is a phony, a cheat, a fraud. It mimics – no, mocks –– legitimate films and tries to pass off their style and techniques as its own.

There is not a single scene, not one moment, in Joker that feels like life, not a single shot that carries even a whisper of humanity, rendering its committed central performance by Joaquin Phoenix meaningless. His Arthur Fleck begins the film as a crazy psychopath and ends the film as a crazy psychopath. No amount of forced, uncomfortable laughter makes this anything more than a shameless bid at an Oscar, one meant to legitimize comic-book films -- a form that needs no legitimization. Some comic-book movies have been wonderful, stunning, transcendent. Joker is none of those things.

In place of plot, Joker substitutes a grotesque, unforgivable exploitation of mental illness; a shockingly tone-deaf depiction (not an "exploration": Joker explores nothing) of mob violence; a cynical, depressing assumption that we understand its violent, depraved and grotesque world because we live in one. It's distressingly forgiving of misogyny and racism, and through all of it Joker thinks it is being "important."

Some will try to claim that Joker updates the despairing tone of '70s Scorsese into our world, but that's bull: Those movies boldly explored humanity that had been wounded by war, corruption, neglect and poverty. Joker is just a comic-book "origin" movie, one not even brave enough to look at its own fascination with violence and anger and come up with anything other than self-satisfaction.

"A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"

 ☆☆☆½ 

Into the messy, unhappy life of a harried middle-aged man struggling with wife and child comes a preternaturally insightful, wise person, appearing at just the right time to say just the right thing. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood presents American TV giant Mr. Rogers as a modern-day Mary Poppins, which is both the film's strength and great flaw.

Director Marielle Heller and screenwriters Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster are fully aware of last year's captivating documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? A traditional biopic route would doom this film to failure. So, it tries something different.

Mr. Rogers, played with exacting attention to detail in tone, rhythm and cadence by Tom Hanks, is a plot device here, the way Walt Disney was a plot device in Saving Mr. Banks. The movie isn't about him. Beautiful Day is about a fictional journalist named Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a stereotypically frumpy, cynical journalist angry at being assigned to write about Mr. Rogers.

That's how the movie contrives the two of them to meet, and for the rest of the film, Mr. Rogers is the wise counsel who flits in and out of an unhappy and unconvincing story of Lloyd's family discord.  Beautiful Day needs more Mr. Rogers, even if kept him at arm's length. The movie ends on a lovely, dark chord (literally), a final reminder of how much more satisfying this sweet, often delightful, film could be if it were actually about Mr. Rogers instead of, you know, someone else.




Viewed Oct. 12, 2019 -- AMC Century City

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"Parasite"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

What an overused word "thriller" has become; you see it everywhere for films that neither thrill nor excite, and just as the word may feel, in this streaming age, to have lost much of its meaning comes Bong Joon Ho's Parasite, a thriller in every sense of the word.

It is thrilling to watch this film so masterfully and carefully move its story from one scene to the next, making such perfect sense even when the result seems impossible. It is thrilling to watch its characters learn the myriad truths buried in its story. And there's the thrill of realizing just how fully it has explored some hard societal truths -- while never once seeming preachy.

Most thrilling of all is the way that Parasite keeps its audience in a vice-grip of emotions, and it has taken me a while to understand just how thoroughly this movie worked on me, in large part because of its cool, visually detached style. But midway through Parasite, I found myself sitting tall in my chair, leaning forward, at one point even moving forward until I was, indeed, on the edge of my seat in every possible way.

If I haven't mentioned anything at all about the story of Parasite, it's because the less you know about its surprises before you go in, the better. It is a film every viewer should be allowed to discover in the moment, to appreciate the sly and devious ways it gets under your skin and stays there.

Viewed Oct. 13, 2019 -- ArcLight Hollywood

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"Ad Astra"

 ☆☆ 

Ponderous and pretentious, Ad Astra throws in murderous space monkeys and moon pirates yet still moves at a glacial pace with a a journey to the stars that is really a journey deep into the heart of one man.

Yes, like Interstellar and First Man before it, two equally overblown movies that seek philosophy in outer space, Ad Astra subordinates its most compelling story for its least compelling one, then, as if it realizes how dull and lugubrious its is, throws in those space monkeys and moon pirates. Yet it's still utterly lifeless.

I couldn't tell you why the space monkeys are there, except to inject a note of suspense where there otherwise is none. The moon pirates are part of this plodding film's attempt at social observation, I guess. It's set in "the near future," when Virgin operates daily trips to the moon, whose spaceport has been taken over by Subway and Applebee's. Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is an astronaut whose father (Tommy Lee Jones) was a pioneer in interstellar exploration. When a series of catastrophic bursts of cosmic energy hit Earth, Roy is recruited to investigate because they might have come from a long-missing spaceship on which his father could still be alive.

Writing that summary, it seems Ad Astra couldn't go wrong, but it does, badly. Its dismal and pessimistic vision of the future is anchored by the non-revelation is that sometimes we have go to outside to look within. Or some such psychobabble nonsense. Ad nauseum.



Viewed Sept. 28, 2019 -- AMC Universal (IMAX)

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"Judy"

 ☆☆☆½ 

A full 40 minutes elapses before Renée Zellweger gets to sing as Judy Garland in Judy, and why the filmmakers wait that long is a little puzzling. Until then, Judy has been unexpectedly straightforward, like an old "movie of the week" that promised to pull back the curtain and show us "the love, the loss, the life of a legend," or something like that.

Its opening flashbacks to The Wizard of Oz and Judy's early humiliations, are predictable, though Judy really begins in her middle age;  addicted to booze and pills, she's unemployable yet a doting (if irresponsible) mother. Zellweger is immediately convincing as Garland, the movie less so -- it's paint-by-numbers until a persnickety, flighty Judy barely makes it on stage for a series of shows in London.

Anxious, frightened Judy has to be pushed on stage by her handler (Jessie Buckley); then, the magic happens. Zellweger begins to sing By Myself, and it's stunning. She may lack Garland's vocal majesty, but she captures the star's essence with astonishing clarity. Zelweger is exquisite when singing, and just as good when acting -- it's a shame the movie isn't up to her.

Much of it is predictable, even a whitewashing. A drug-addicted, washed-up superstar should be painful to witness, but this Judy is a gentle soul, mistreated and unappreciated. Judy is reverential and polite, lacking the emotional fragility of the performer herself. Yet Zellweger finds exactly that, somehow, and singlehandedly makes Judy more than worthwhile despite itself.



Viewed Sept. 27, 2019 -- AMC Burbank 16

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"The Peanut Butter Falcon"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

The desire of lonely, troubled people to be a little less of each propels The Peanut Butter Falcon, whose awkward title recalls a 1970s Afterschool Special, though it turns out to be a quiet, soulful rewarding adventure.

Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Down Syndrome, has been forced to live in a retirement home because no one else will care for him. For his repeated efforts to escape, Zak has been deemed a "flight risk" by social worker Eleanor (Dakota Johnson). When Zak finally does break free, he hides in a shrimp boat owned by troubled, turbulent Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), whose feud with other shrimpers gets out of hand. When Tyler tries to flee, he discovers Zak, and instead of trying to dump him they form a fast friendship as they both head south toward Zak's dream of finding and meeting a pro wrestler he's long idolized.

There's a lot of Mark Twain and a little Wizard of Oz at work here as Zak and Tyler assemble a raft and set sail along a wide and relaxed river, pursued both by Tyler's enemies and by Eleanor, who's searching for Zak. It unfolds with the leisurely charm of a summer afternoon in the Deep South, but there's a strain of melancholy throughout. It's a movie that understands the hard-to-die dream of running away and starting anew. They're floating on calm waters that belie an undercurrent of grief in this lyrical, affecting drama that's immensely better than its clumsy title.



Viewed Sept. 15, 2019 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

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"Hustlers"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

The thing about Hustlers is how it presents itself as one thing when it's something so totally different. It's smart, cunning, slightly devious and spectacularly confident, just like the women at its core, with a final scene that pulls all of its threads together for a nifty, brilliant coda.

Based on a true story, Hustlers begins in late 2007 with strippers at a "gentleman's club" frequented by Wall Street investment bankers and hedge fund CEOs — the very ones who got away with it. Destiny (Constance Wu) is the new girl, befriended by the club's star, Ramona (Jennifer Lopez). Booze, drugs, sex and cash flow with ferocity until one day in September 2008 when it all comes crashing to an end. That's when Hustlers switches from risqué backstage drama into a daring criminal heist.

Dependent on the economic largesse of the men they strip for, the ladies of the club fall onto hard times until Ramona comes up with a plan. She is, Destiny relates to a journalist (Julia Stiles) investigating the story years later, the mastermind. And what a plan: The less you know about it before seeing Hustlers the better, but it's by turns funny, moving, achingly real, bracingly blunt, and frequently downright thrilling. Director Lorraine Scafaria (whose Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is criminally underrated) has a surefire hand at balancing the highs and lows of a story that is as wild, surprising and consistently engaging as the masterminds who came up with it in the first place.

Viewed Sept. 14, 2019 -- AMC Sunset 5

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"Brittany Runs a Marathon"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

Brittany Runs a Marathon is about a woman named Brittany who decides, because a doctor tells her she's going nowhere fast, to start running, and eventually decides to run a marathon. It is, on one level, as straightforward as it seems.

Yet there is something much more going on in this movie by writer-director Paul Downs Colaizzo.  It watches Brittany (a gloriously committed Jillian Bell) trying to do the hardest thing of all: change. It's a movie about how our identities are often tied not to the best vision of ourselves but to the wrong-headed, unhappy ideas we have about ourselves in our moments of doubt. The joy and inspiration of Brittany Runs a Marathon comes from the kind and gentle ways it gets us to realize that we are all prisoners of those ideas, and if you think you aren't, you just aren't thinking hard enough. 

As she learns about herself, Brittany finds friendship (played by Michaela Watkins and Micah Stock, who are both excellent) and  an unexpected romance with a man seemingly as shiftless as she (Utkarsh Ambudkar), even while she rather viciously sabotages her own success by insisting she couldn't possible deserve any of it. 

Brittany Runs a Marathon is about Brittany's marathon, yes. But this simple and sweet film is really about the marathon we're all running, every single day, and how we've gotten so obsessed with thinking we need to win that we forget the real victory is just making it to the finish line.

Viewed Sept. 7, 2019 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

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"Good Boys"

 ☆☆☆½ 

The R rating is the come-on, the gimmick to make you think Good Boys will be raunchier and much more shocking than it is. So, it's a little surprise that Good Boys is better than it needs to be, a foul-mouthed cross between "The Little Rascals" and Risky Business.

The boys in the movie call themselves "The Bean-Bag Boys," but someone wisely figured that would be a lousy name for a movie. They're a trio of hyper-hormonal 12-year-olds led by Max (Jacob Tremblay), who's the ringleader, with doting Lucas (Keith L. Williams) and dutiful Thor (Brady Noon) his hangers on. The coolest kid in school invites them to a "kissing party," and the movie follows their misadventures as they try to figure out just what that means.

The action is non-stop, and is often genuinely funny, frequently uncomfortable, and occasionally derivative -- like a crossing-the-freeway scene lifted straight from Bowfinger, but with a kicker that made me laugh harder than anything else in the movie.

Largely, your enjoyment of Good Boys will depend on whether you think it's funny for boys whose hormones are ranging to use the F-word and talk about sex and drugs. If you're instantly turned off, the movie is uninterested in bringing you around. Its filmmakers and its audience are probably unaware and unconcerned about how often this has all been done before, but fortunately Good Boys does most of it well enough. It'll make you laugh. Sometimes, that's all a comedy needs to do.

Viewed August 25, 2019 -- ArcLight Hollywood

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"Ready or Not"

 ☆☆☆ 

The opening half-hour of Ready or Not is so deliciously pitch-perfect that it seems impossible to sustain such a balance of black comedy, anxiety and satire. It tries, and for a very long time, it almost wins at its own game.

The idea is decidedly weird: Grace (Samara Weaving) marries the heir to the fortune of a worldwide board-game dynasty, most of whom live in a grand old gothic manor filled with secret passages and hidden doors. There's just one catch -- on their wedding night, new members of the family have to play a game with the others. Most options are benign ("Old Maid," anyone?) but one, hide and seek, is deadly. Guess which one she chooses?

She's got to stay hidden and alive between midnight and dawn, or else the lethal consequences of a long-dreaded curse will befall the family. It's a daffy setup, and when it takes the story purely at face value, it's bloody (literally) fun. Its satirical sendup of wealth, family relations, marital strife, and (yes) politics is giddy and effective -- while it stays in the background.

But as the screenplay by Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy begins running out of steam, a complex "mythology" comes to the fore and becomes distracting. Grace and the audience should never fully understand why the game is happening, for this to be a dastardly little chiller. As more and more is explained, Ready or Not becomes slightly less fun and its ultra-violence moves from devious to disturbing.



Viewed AMC Burbank 16 -- Aug. 24, 2019

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