Resistance: They Fought Back – Movie Review

Directed by:  Paula Apsell and Kirk Wolfinger

Starring:  Richard A. Freund, Avinoam Patt, Patrick Henry, Michael Kovner, Steven Meed, Yoel Yaari, and Lisa Loeb

Runtime:  92 minutes

‘Resistance: They Fought Back’ proudly combats long-held Holocaust perceptions

“There is never (a) more poignant question a student (can) ask me about The Holocaust than, ‘Why didn’t the Jews resist the Nazis?’  And there’s a moment where you just want to leave it alone, and there’s a moment where you can’t let it go.” – Professor Richard A. Freund

Directors Paula Apsell and Kirk Wolfinger did not let it go and released an enlightening documentary, “Resistance: They Fought Back”, chronicling Jewish resistance during WWII.  

So often, movies, television, and textbooks present European Jewish communities during the war as passive targets of the German armed forces, suffering in the Warsaw Ghetto or trudging to their deaths in concentration camps without challenge.  Apsell and Wolfinger disprove these hopeless, deflating images (traditionally accepted as universal truths) by uncovering individual stories – long-buried to the general public - of heroism and defiance. 

The 92-minute documentary – bursting with interviews of historians, professors, survivors’ relatives, and survivors themselves, as well as an incalculable number of black and white photos and video clips – doesn’t challenge other conventional facts of The Holocaust, but it presents another side where Jewish opposition against the Nazis occurred from 1939 to 1945.  

Granted, Jewish WWII resistance isn’t absent from cinema, as two semi-recent, 21st-century narrative films – director Edward Zwick’s “Defiance” (2008), starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as the real-life Bielski brothers, Tuvia and Zus, and Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds (2009) – demonstrate.  Tarantino’s film, where a band of Jewish U.S. soldiers attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, is a fictionalized war picture, but according to a Sept. 24, 2023 “Screen Rant” article, Prime Minister Winston Churchill organized a unit called X-Troop, where “a group of Jewish men from Germany and Eastern Europe reportedly focused on collecting information about the Nazis.”  

“Resistance: They Fought Back”, however, takes traditional documentary steps to walk the audience towards actual people and their valiant actions.  

Structured by three chapters (or books, as presented on-screen), the doc identifies three distinct types of resistance, ranging from peaceful, spiritual means to all-out destructive sabotage.  The doc will frequently surprise when explaining both extremes and varying degrees of fight in between.  

Enormous patience, perseverance, and faith are with the former, defined as Amidah (defined as “standing up”) when individuals and small groups actively maintain their integrity and preserve cultural norms while also meticulously documenting Nazi atrocities for historians to find.  The latter explores jaw-dropping wartime achievements by Jewish combatants, including covert operations and tangible demolition of the German war and extermination machines.  One particular act will change your perception of an infamous Nazi entity.  

While the film’s three books act as distinct, tangible pillars for the audience to lean upon, Apsell and Wolfinger carry us through extensive intricacies of the subject matter through historical context and several European locales.  Experts - like Professors Avinoam Patt, Patrick Henry, the late Richard Freund, and others - offer startling and devastating facts.  For instance, the doc reveals that about 1,200 European ghettos – similar to Warsaw - horrifyingly existed, or only 11 percent of European Jewish children in 1939 survived to see 1945.  

Other numbers - like 925,000 killed in Treblinka, or 100,000 men, women, and children buried in a massive pit that currently looks like a harmless, inviting grassy park – can numb us into submission. 

Even though the primary, positive message of “Resistance” is that Jewish communities fought back during the war, this doc largely remains a sobering and grim watch.  The filmmakers don’t shy away from the brutal facts of The Holocaust while offering history lessons and the aforementioned revelations wrapped in gruesome numbers.  

However, Apsell and Wolfinger devote ample screentime to courageous acts, as they and the film’s team find present-day voices – like Julie Benko, Andrew Kishino, Lisa Loeb (yes, that Lisa Loeb, the singer), and many more - to narrate genuine Jewish resistance fighters’ writings from the past.

We learn Abba Kovner’s, Vitka Kempner’s, Vladka Meed’s, and Bela Hazan’s courageous stories.  

For instance, Abba led an Avengers’ team, and 19-year-old Bela posed as a Catholic and traveled in and out of dangerous spaces as a courier.  Meanwhile, their children, like Michael Kovner, Steven Meed, and Yoel Yaari generously give their perspectives on their parents’ heroics through individual on-camera interviews.  Lastly, elderly Holocaust survivors – like Samuel Bak – offer their personal accounts on the screen.  

Holocaust documentaries are difficult to watch, and “Resistance” is no different, but this film also proudly combats long-held perceptions, ones lasting 80-plus years.  

Jeff’s ranking

3/4 stars

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For Love & Life: No Ordinary Campaign – Movie Review

Directed by:  Christopher Burke

Starring:  Brian Wallach, Sandra Abrevaya, Juan Reyes, Gwen Petersen, Dan Tate Jr., Nicole Cimbura, and President Barack Obama, 

Runtime:  82 minutes

‘For Love & Life: No Ordinary Campaign’:  This personal documentary urgently searches for ALS answers 

Director Christopher Burke’s documentary – about Brian Wallach’s ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s disease) story - offers several numbers:  37, 100 million, 96 to 1, 1 out of 300, 0, and more. 

Brian is diagnosed with ALS at 37 years old in 2017. 

This Washington, D.C. lawyer and former New Hampshire political director for President Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, along with his wife, Sandra Abrevaya (the New Hampshire communications director for the same campaign), seek to secure 100 million dollars in annual ALS funding.  

This review will not reveal the 96 to 1 figure. 

One out of every 300 Americans will be diagnosed with ALS – or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - in their lifetime.  

For many – including this critic – this statistic is exceedingly shocking, mainly because the commonly-held perception is that ALS is a rare disease.  

It is not, and a cure and a measurable survival rate do not exist.

The survival rate is 0. 

“For Love & Life: No Ordinary Campaign” includes many facts and figures, but this personal, intimate documentary largely places ALS’s human costs on the screen.  Burke’s camera faces Brian and Sandra’s journey in heartbreaking and inspiring fashions.  

The film only runs 82 minutes, but it finds enough time – through several interviews, confessionals, and B-roll – to capture ALS’s sinister grip on Brian’s physical condition.  His mobility and speech are severely compromised, and his slight, athletic build – comparable to a marathon runner - methodically withers into a fragile state.  It’s awfully difficult to see Brian’s decline.  Still, the troubling outcomes aren’t surprising to those familiar with ALS or who watched “Gleason” (2016), an emotionally absorbing doc that chronicles New Orleans Saints defensive back Steve Gleason’s regression due to the disease.   

Still, the aforementioned previous knowledge doesn’t lessen our sympathy for Brian and Sandra, an attractive, successful all-American couple.  As Brian’s facilities change and his frame becomes thinner, so does Sandra’s patience in getting medical help for her husband.   

The film presents several messages about the disease, but the one it communicates most effectively is that time is Brian and Sandra’s enemy.   

With just six months to five years of projected life left for those diagnosed with ALS, there is not a moment to waste to receive disability benefits, medical assistance, and the chance to participate in rare clinical trials.  Not only does the audience watch ALS heartlessly squeeze Brian, but Burke includes others with Lou Gehrig’s, including Juan Reyes, Gwen Petersen, Dan Tate Jr., and Nicole Cimbura.  Nicole doesn’t have the disease, but she recounts her late husband, Mike, and his horrible experience.  Nicole’s children also offer their memories of their father, and the stark contrast – through many photos - between the man’s pre and post-ALS diagnosis is an utter horror show.  

What stops “No Ordinary Campaign” from becoming a nightmarish cinematic encounter is Brian and Sandra’s perseverance in hoping to drive legislative change in Washington, D.C.  Ordinarily, this task would feel impossible, especially during these partisan times.  However, the devoted couple are persuasive and work in powerful governmental orbits, and Burke films during Brian’s planning sessions and Capitol Hill hearings as well as other individual interviews and appearances, including one with a former U.S. president and a couple of surprises. 

Even though Brian, Sandra, Juan, Gwen, and Dan stare into the abyss, the documentary offers some hope, including medical treatment that can make a difference, which until very recently was not a possibility.  

Admittedly, when following Brian and Sandra on their financial crusade during the first 45 to 60 minutes, “No Ordinary Campaign” sometimes feels like a public relations event, but the personal human toil on the couple recedes these potential PR thoughts during the last 30 minutes or so. 

What doesn’t retreat are thoughts of Brian, Sandra, and so many others after the end credits roll. 

Jeff’s ranking

2.5/4 stars

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Babes - Movie Review

Directed by: Pamela Adlon.

Written by: Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz.

Starring: Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau, and Hasan Minhaj.

Runtime: 104 minutes.

Ilana Glazer pushes the limits of best-friendship in raunchy pregnancy comedy ‘Babes’

“Adults don’t plan their lives around their best friends.”

Those words cut like in a knife in “Babes,” because anyone who’s had a best friend long enough knows there’s no relationship on earth more intimate. Forget spouses and lovers, parents and children, or the closest of siblings (even twins). You have not known true intimacy until you’ve had your best girlfriend look up your dress to check the liquid running down your leg, taken your Facetime in the shower, or helped you set a breast pump on fire to Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” without batting a lash. 

Best friends have seen you at your messiest and least dignified, and every day they choose to love you because they want to, not because they feel they have to. 

On paper, few millennial women seemed as equipped to write and star in a film about modern adult female friendship like Ilana Glazer, co-creator of the acclaimed Comedy Central series “Broad City.” The friendship in “Babes” was almost certainly informed by Glazer’s own life; she and her “Broad City” creative partner Abbi Jacobson ended the series in 2019 and went their separate ways, Jacobson rebooting “A League of Their Own” as an Amazon series while Glazer had her first child.

In this unabashedly foul-mouthed, R-rated, effluvia-filled raunch-com, Glazer plays Eden opposite Michelle Buteau’s Dawn. They’ve been besties their whole adult lives and then some, so long that Dawn’s widening cervix and impending birth isn’t enough to break their 27-year tradition of seeing a movie together on Thanksgiving morning, Dawn’s husband and young children (and her rupturing amniotic sac) be damned. 

But that bond, so long unbreakable, gets put to the stress test when driftless, untethered Eden – the unpartnered uber millennial with a soda machine in her apartment instead of a 401K – finds herself pregnant after an unintentional one-night stand and decides to embrace unexpected motherhood. 

Glazer and Buteau are well-matched for comedic energy, physical and absolutely unembarrassed as they explore all the ugly, achy, gushing realities of womanhood onscreen. But the friendship that forms the heart of “Babes” feels adrift in a sea of bodily fluids and caterwauling. High on shrooms, Dawn has a conversation with her breasts while milk geysers out of her nipples and Eden urinates on the rug aiming for a pregnancy test. They women belch and barf. Old New York City sewage pipes burst and leave abstract paintings on the wall. Eden is sexually aroused by a pair of raw chicken cutlets. The list of indignities is long.

It’s intentional, of course, and can be as funny as it is sickening, if you go for that sort of thing. Glazer and co-writer Josh Rabinowitz (also a “Broad City” writer and producer), along with director Pamela Adlon (“Louie,” “Better Things”) in her feature film directorial debut, are making a point about the reality of women’s lives in all their often-filthy glory. Motherhood is a dirty business, and “Babes” doesn’t flinch from the details mommy influencers often elide. 

But it makes for a fair bit of tonal whiplash, all those scatological gags and absurd swings distracting from heartfelt meditations on adult friendship. Eden’s one-night stand, a charming, tuxedoed gent on the subway who doesn’t balk at sex with Eden while she’s got her period, chokes to death the day after their dalliance on… an almond?

Maybe it’s all part of the messy journey of maturation, Eden’s and Glazer’s, this jamming together of mismatched puzzle pieces until they fit to make something like a life – or film.

Barbara’s ranking

2/4 stars

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Interview with “Carol Doda Topless at the Condor” directors Jonathan Parker and Marlo McKenzie

Directors Jonathan Parker and Marlo McKenzie’s documentary, “Carol Doda Topless at the Condor”, begins streaming on May 17.  The film chronicles Carol’s life as dancer, starting in San Francisco in 1964, when she “became a tourist attraction second only to the Golden Gate Bridge.”  

Jonathan and Marlo arrived in Phoenix for a Harkins Theatres Shea 14 (in Scottsdale, Ariz.) “Carol Doda Topless at the Condor” screening, and the Phoenix Film Festival sat down with them for an interview.  They discussed their project’s origin, Carol’s mark as an authentic San Franciscan, technical and scope choices, and much more.  

PFF:  Jonathan, you knew Carol, so how does it feel to get this project on the big screen?  Marlo, can you add your thoughts?

JP:  It’s a pretty amazing feeling.  I knew Carol when she retired from dancing.  (She) opened her lingerie store on Union St. in San Francisco.  My office at that time, (and) this was in the late ‘90s, overlooked her courtyard where her store was (located).  She’s famous in San Francisco, so I met her and started hanging out with her.  I was an aspiring filmmaker at the time, (and) I started talking with her about (making) a movie (about) her life story.  I had written a bunch of material.  It wasn’t going to be a documentary.  It was going to be a narrative, but ultimately, the project didn’t come together.  I had a lot of material that I put into a drawer in the office.  Twenty years later, Marlo and I were working together on a different project, and she found the file in my office and was intrigued.  

MM:  I found the file, and it happened around the time of Me Too, but a little bit after that. That was in my brain when I saw the file.  At first, I didn’t know who (Carol) was, but when I looked her up, it was amazing to learn that she was the first topless dancer in the U.S., and (I) really (wanted) to know about her.  How does someone become Carol Doda?  Did she feel empowered?  Was she exploited?  How did she decide to get (silicone) injections?  How did that happen?  There are these (ideas) that explode in your mind.  I was already arguing inside of myself.  When that happens, I know (that I have) an interesting story.  So, we reopened (Carol’s story).  

PFF:  As you mentioned, Carol used silicone to enhance her figure.  The movie reveals the origins of silicone implants dating back to WWII.  Were you surprised by the origins?

MM:  I was surprised (to learn) about the whole history.  It goes back even further than that (when) women (tried) to inject strange things, like paraffin, into their breasts.  I didn’t realize it had been a thing; the idea that silicone was stored in vats, and then doctors thought it was safe.  (Looking back,) how is that possible?  I kept thinking that your gut would know (that it’s not safe).  (However,) it was important for (Carol and other dancers) to have the body they wanted.  So, I understand why they would choose to (have silicone injections). 

PFF:  Was Carol empowered but also a victim? 

JP:  There are elements of both.  Carol was very proud of her career.  She absolutely did not consider herself a victim in any way.  Although, if you look at the situation objectively, you could draw that conclusion because (silicon injections were) a risky thing, and she did suffer negative consequences from it.  But she was very proud of her career.  One of the things that I really liked about (Carol) is she was very entrepreneurial.  She was always on her own.  Nobody (helped) her out.  She didn’t have a partner until much later in life.  

PFF:  I read that San Francisco is known for championing artists who push boundaries and stay true to themselves.  Does Carol fit that mold?

MM:  Yeah, she definitely fits that mold.  There’s a book by Betty Friedan, “The Feminine Mystique”, and the thesis is that women would like to have agency over their lives and not just be relegated to the home.  This was the big conversation at the time.  You have to keep that in mind when you think of Carol; for her, at that time and in that context, to decide to do what she did.  “I’m going to perform on the stage nude.”   That’s a huge, massive, courageous thing to do at that time, so she was pushing boundaries.  It’s amazing that she defined herself this way and said, “I’m going to do this no matter what people think of me.” 

JP:  She really wanted to be a nightclub entertainer.  Her idol was Frank Sinatra.  She was not part of the hippie scene at all.  She was before that (era), coming out of the Rat Pack culture.  San Francisco at that time was the Off-Season Vegas.  Carol’s career came about in a very organic way.  If you opened the newspaper for the want ads (at that time), there was “Help Wanted – Female” listed.  That’s the way (these ads) were written.  The opportunities for women were (as a secretary), receptionist, shop clerk, (and) these kinds of things.  She starts as a cocktail waitress, but she’s entertaining the crowd.  She’s dancing all over the club, and she says in the movie, “I was entertaining them, but I was serving them drinks.”  Once she starts dancing on the piano, (her) drink-serving days (were) over.  (She was) now (the) featured entertainment attraction. 

So, she was just a very natural performer, following her dream.  (To answer your question,) she absolutely is the poster girl for San Francisco’s contribution in that way.

MM:  She took the idea of fantasy and sexuality and added comedy to it.  That was part of her performance.  That was something that made her stand out from all the dancers.  She had (a) personality that was very special.  

JP: (Carol’s act) was very different from a burlesque scene where burlesque was all about the tease.  Removing a garment (and) removing a garment, but there is no audience interaction with burlesque, typically.  With Carol, she was more like, “I’m going to stand here.  I’m going to be topless and say, ‘Hey, where are you guys from?’”  She was very candid, and she had a great sense of humor.  That is a very unusual situation: the (candid) quality of her performance and the audience engagement.  

PFF:  I was amazed by all the footage, photos, and B-roll you found for the film.  Can you talk about the process of collecting this data?

MM:  It was a team.  Jen Petrucelli was our archival producer, and she’s amazing.  Jonathan and I helped.  Jennifer (Mayer), our editor, helped.  We had two other archival researchers (who worked with us for) five years.  The movie (took) six years, and five were when we started looking for things.  So, all of that together was an amazing effort.  

PFF:  The movie also has journalists and scholars who look at Carol’s career through a sociological lens.  Can you talk about their inclusion in the film? 

JP:  We both felt that Carol’s story needed to be contextualized.  She wasn’t just this stripper.  She was in a place and a time and the advent of the topless bathing suit.  The Republican Convention was coming to San Francisco.  There was a lot of stuff in the air.  The free-speech movement started at Berkeley.  We felt strongly that it was important to (ask), “What do contemporary cultural critics and sociologists interpret what Carol had done?”  It is very different looking at (her career) from today’s perspective compared to looking at it from 1964.  You can tell how much things have changed.  In 1964, the Republican Party selected San Francisco to host their convention.  That’s how much things have changed.   

PFF:  How should Carol be remembered?

MM:  She did achieve her dream.  I think of it in terms of creative expression.  She was very brave to express herself creatively in a way that (many) women want to express themselves.  She did open the doors that way.  

JP:  She was a shining example of what it meant – as one of our experts says – “to be a subversive San Franciscan in the 1960s.”  For better or worse, San Francisco was blazing a trail at that point.  She’s just a great San Franciscan.  That’s a good way to remember her.  

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Carol Doda Topless at the Condor – Movie Review

Directed by:  Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker

Runtime:  98 minutes

‘Carol Doda Topless at the Condor’ is a revealing, insightful documentary  

“No matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you like to do, something exciting and wonderful and different happens in San Francisco.” 

A television reporter uttered the aforementioned statement, via archival footage, in directors Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker’s documentary, “Carol Doda Topless at the Condor”, about Carol’s odyssey as a topless dancer and risky trendsetter.  

In 1964, Carol, a cocktail waitress at The Condor - located in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco - soon began dancing on stage while wearing fashion designer Rudi Gernreich’s new swimsuit, the Monokini, which left little to the imagination from the waist up.  The blonde-haired beauty, topless-dancer pioneer, or “Barbie doll on steroids” displayed no fear and carried charismatic “showwomanship”, which led to immense crowds, publicity, and notoriety at The Condor.  

She became a one-of-a-kind sensation, and for many tourists and locals, Carol became an “exciting and wonderful and different” attraction.   

McKenzie and Parker’s documentary explores Carol’s life, linearly, from her time at The Condor and post-Condor, through interviews with friends and colleagues, like fellow dancer Judy Mamou, former Condor owner Pete Mattioli, musicians Jerry Martini (of Sly and the Family Stone) and Jimi Mamou, and many more.   

The film also presents a voluminous number of archival interviews with Carol herself, whether she appeared on talk shows, one-on-one with reporters in the club, or in and out of court.  Through all these appearances over the movie’s 98-minute runtime, the audience sees Carol’s internal portrait in a few crucial ways.  She enjoyed her job and wished to continue her profession without interruption, as legal fights threatened to stop Carol’s and, eventually, other dancers’ acts.  Even though Carol bravely forged her way into an innovative style of entertainment, she is a sympathetic figure through an artificial physical transformation and her own serious doubts about finding a lasting, monogamous relationship.  The doc unfolds with unexpected moments, including a couple of surprises surrounding Carol’s personal life, ones that will throw you back in your seat in disbelief, at least it did for this critic.

Rather than only focusing on Carol’s story, the film – along the way – expands into cultural issues of that time.  It was the 1960s, so racism against Black dancers and interracial marriage reared its ugly head, which one may not suspect in progressive San Francisco.

Women’s rights and fights against or general acceptance of the “male gaze” are explored with academic rigor – with insight from author Florence Williams and others - so Ms. Doda’s experiences are studied and explained in retrospect here through – both - broad and precise sociological perspectives.

That said, Carol’s profession is on display, so this documentary certainly presents an abundance of still photos and clips of topless dancers, including Carol and others.  As a warning, reserved audiences could turn bashfully red and be offended by the subject matter, discussions, and visuals.  However, “Carol Doda Topless at the Condor” is a legitimate rated R and doesn’t venture into NC-17 or rated X terrain, but this film is not a first-date flick nor a weekend trip to the theatre with your reserved Uncle Harold or old-fashioned Aunt Gertrude. 

For documentary buffs, “Carol Doda Topless at the Condor” is a revealing, insightful watch.    

Jeff’s ranking

3/4 stars

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Nowhere Special – Movie Review

Directed and written by:  Uberto Pasolini

Starring:  James Norton, Daniel Lamont, Carol Moore, Eileen O’Higgins, and Siobhan McSweeney

Runtime:  96 minutes

‘Nowhere Special’ is a beautiful, encouraging story about the devoted bond between father and son but one wrapped in ever-present heartbreak and vulnerabilities.

On the surface, John (James Norton) lives an ordinary life.  

John, 34, cleans windows for a living and careens from job to job around Belfast in his modest car, which sports a trusty ladder on its rack.  He generally doesn’t secure gigs at soaring skyscrapers, but he’ll turn to washes at local pubs, retail storefronts, and expensive suburban homes.  

John is diligent and deliberate with his work and polite with his individual employers.  He’s tall and attractive with professional model-like looks, but our lead carries a glum disposition, and combined with his neck and arm tattoos, he unintentionally telegraphs that he fashioned regrettable choices over the last couple of decades.  

That or something ominous lurks in his future…or both.  

He’s a single dad to four-year-old Michael (Daniel Lamont), a wide-eyed, sweet little lad.  Our forlorn window washer doesn’t regret being a father in the least.  John is a diligent and deliberately considerate caretaker for his young child.  

“He’s a happy wee boy,” John proudly states, and the two assemble as an inseparable pair, one full of love, care, and gentle discourse and gestures.  

However, life can bulldoze over tender feelings and good intentions in an instant, and in director/writer Uberto Pasolini’s “Nowhere Special”, he explores the repercussions of this unfortunate phenomenon and the near-impossible journey when facing the abyss.

Stricken with a fatal illness and with no other relatives in sight, John is forced to give up Michael for adoption.  He regrettably functions with a local government organization in the hopes of finding a new home for his son.  

Stricken with occasional pain that stops him in his tracks, John is infinitely more burdened with giving up Michael, wondering and worrying about the unknown future.  Thankfully, Shona (Eileen O’Higgins, in a terrific supporting performance), a 20-something counselor, regularly accompanies John during his quest, and she’s a frequent confident about his uncertainty along the way. 

Together, John, Michael, and Shona visit several homes – perhaps five or six throughout the film’s 96-minute runtime - where the three meet the potential adoptive parents, and each household feels different.  You know what Forrest Gump says about chocolates; this is their (and the audience’s) experience.  

Structurally, “Nowhere Special” feels like Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers” (2005), in which Bill Murray’s character visits several past partners – colorfully played by Frances Conroy, Tilda Swinton, Sharon Stone, and more – in search of solving a mystery. 

In Jarmusch’s dark comedy and Pasolini’s heartbreaking drama, the filmmakers and the leads – Don (Murray) and John – successfully construct steep storytelling anticipation of who we will meet next.  

Who will be the right choice?  

In between home visits, Pasolini spends precious minutes with John, in isolation, performing his routine tasks in various locales around town.  Norton gives an exceedingly sympathetic performance over the entire movie but in these quiet moments at work, John washes and wipes various panes of glass, seemingly as a metaphor, like looking for clarity through the windows.  

When John isn’t on the job, he spends every spare minute he can with Michael.  

Norton and Lamont live in this authentic on-screen bond where the exceedingly young actor seems to effortlessly operate in concert with his elder thespian.  

Pasolini regularly fills the two’s time with simple, tranquil scenes, such as a trip to the grocery store, ice cream in a park, simple breakfast table talk, restful minutes on the living room couch, and reading.  Granted, not every second of John and Michael’s time is undiluted bliss, but the film avoids the cliches of introducing forced arguments.  Explosive conflict between the two doesn’t materialize.

What does appear – at its core – is a beautiful, encouraging story about the devoted bond between father and son but one wrapped in ever-present heartbreak and vulnerabilities.  It’s a film filled with colossal purposes in everyday, unprotected spaces. 

Jeff’s ranking

3.5/4 stars

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The Idea of You - Movie Review

Directed by: Michael Showalter.

Written by: Michael Showalter and Jennifer Westfeldt.

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine and Ella Rubin.

Runtime: 115 minutes.

‘The Idea of You’

At what cost comes a woman’s happiness? 

Because there’s always a price to be paid when a woman seizes pleasure and dares to put her needs first: the sideways looks and judgments of strangers, the disappointment of family and friends, relentless public scrutiny. At what point does the pain of the cost outweigh the satisfaction of the pleasure, and why does everyone care so much anyway? 

They are questions asked with welcome care in Michael Showalter’s “The Idea of You,” a mature rom-com with emotional heft co-written with Jennifer Westfeldt (“Kissing Jessica Stein”) in which a 40-something woman’s consenting, joyous dalliance with a 20-something popstar becomes everybody’s business.

Anne Hathaway brings her earnest, endearingly gawky charm to Solène Marchand, a divorced art gallery owner still licking the wounds of her ex-husband’s betrayal. The last thing on her mind is romance, never mind with smoldering but sensitive Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the tattooed heartthrob of the world’s biggest boy band, August Moon.

Their meet-cute is an accident, when a full bladder at Coachella sends Solène careening for the nearest bathroom – which happens to be in the trailer of her daughter’s teenage crush. She’s merely playing chaperone to a group of teenagers and is embarrassed, but not starstruck, to have intruded on the 24-year-old singer’s inner sanctum. 

Hayes, so often beset by twitterpated teens and shallow groupies, finds himself intrigued by a fully formed, self-possessed older woman who doesn’t seem interested in so much as a selfie with him – so intrigued that he takes the initiative to track down Solène at her art gallery, paparazzi be damned. Solène is flattered but bemused. Why on earth would a young, attractive, global pop star with his pick of the world’s hottest supermodels want to have anything to do with a 40-year-old divorced mom?

While the answer may be obvious to viewers in the thrall of Hathaway’s megawatt charm and Hollywood glamour, it isn’t apparent to insecure Solène, who’s been beat down in life and love by lesser men than Hayes. She needs to give herself permission to give into the fantasy as she’s tirelessly pursued and wooed by Hayes. But when the relentless societal pressure and press exposure start to play hell on not just her life but her daughter’s, Solène is forced to weigh her happiness against its cost.

Intentional or not, one can’t help but see a resemblance to the much publicized and ultimately ill-fated relationship between One Direction heartbreaker Harry Styles and older mom of two Olivia Wilde in this adaptation of the 2017 novel of the same name by Robinne Lee. Hathaway brings emotional vulnerability and Galitzine genuine tenderness to two characters ripped from the headlines, and it makes for an unexpectedly moving arc in what easily could have been titillating fan fiction. (Steamy sex scenes rooted in a 40-year-old woman’s pleasure don’t hurt). 

Director Showalter (“The Big Sick,” “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) and co-writer Westfeldt delivered instead a thoughtful rom-com for adults that should have all of us re-assessing our knee-jerk reactions to a woman enjoying life on her terms with enthusiastic consent. 

Barbara’s ranking

3/4 stars

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The Fall Guy – Movie Review

Directed by:   David Leitch

Written by:  Drew Pearce

Starring:  Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Winston Duke, Hannah Waddingham, and Stephanie Hsu

Runtime:  126 minutes

‘The Fall Guy’ floats.  It’s an easy, breezy ride.

“I might fall from a tall building.  I might roll a brand-new car.  ‘Cause I’m the unknown stuntman that made Redford such a star.” – “Unknown Stuntman” performed by Lee Majors in “The Fall Guy” (1981 – 1986)

“The Fall Guy”, a popular action-adventure ABC television show, fell into the laps of families across the U.S. from 1981 through 1986 as Majors – from “The Six Million Dollar Man” (1974 – 1978) fame – starred as Colt Seavers, a Hollywood stuntman who doubles as a bounty hunter in his spare time.  Majors’ longest-running project – co-starring Heather Thomas, Douglas Barr, and Markie Post – was an enjoyable excursion that didn’t take itself too seriously even though Colt, Howie (Barr), and Jody (Thomas) regularly found themselves in precarious spaces every week.

Director David Leitch’s 130-million-dollar film with the same title and lead character, Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), doesn’t feel like ABC’s weekly production at all, however, this 126-minute enjoyable excursion also doesn’t take itself too seriously, even though our hero, Colt, regularly finds himself in precarious spaces.  

“The Fall Guy” is an action-comedy where Colt, a Hollywood stuntman, frequently labors for an all-around jerk and film actor, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), when hazardous moments call for Mr. Seavers to step in and drop 30 stories or be lit on fire, all for the glory of the shot! 

Still, Colt opines that this is his dream job, and he works with his dream girl, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), so he’s “living the dream.” 

Dreams, however, don’t last forever, and his reality changes.  Eighteen months later, Colt “needs” to win back Jody’s affections while she’s promoted to a director – and shipped out to Sydney, Australia – to helm a cheesy sci-fi love story called “Metal Storm”.  

Writer Drew Pearce forges about one-third of the screentime on the fictional set where Colt will do anything – save juggling a chainsaw, a bowling ball, and an iPhone – while Jody slowly ponders sawing away her resistance towards a rekindling a romance when she’s not feeling the pressure of her first film.  The palatable tension runs high between Jody’s angst and Colt’s sheepish advances, but during the first 30 or 40 minutes, “The Fall Guy” feels like it can descent into pure rom-com territory, which becomes – admittedly – a bit disconcerting when car crashes and belly laughs were hopefully in order.  

Thankfully, thoughts of “Pretty Woman” (1990) and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” (2003) begin to fade when Colt ventures on his own.  You see, an abrasive plastic producer, Gail (Hannah Waddingham), sends him on an errand in Sydney to find Tom, who has gone missing.  

Gosling’s comedic gifts kick in while he searches the city for clues about Tom’s whereabouts.   He battles through a drug-induced haze and teams up with his stunt coordinator, Dan (Winston Duke), for some fisticuffs.  

Duke and Gosling make a dynamic duo, and with more scenes together, “The Fall Guys” would be an appropriate alternative title.   

Thoughts for a sequel, perhaps?  

Even though Colt - and sometimes Dan - face gunfire and other perilous threats from a litany of faceless henchmen, there’s rarely a moment when we think that their lives are in danger.  Still, credit Leitch and Gosling for conveying that Colt is actually taking these furious bumps on the Sydney streets and the set.  Colt repeatedly pulls himself up from the ground with the sluggish umph of an 80-year-old, and one will swear that he’ll echo Roger Murtaugh’s (Danny Glover) famous line from the “Lethal Weapon” series, “I’m too old for this sh*t.”

Even though “The Fall Guy” feels like a throwback to an 80s adventure, with the whodunnit mystery and classic tracks from AC/DC and KISS, (again,) it doesn’t resemble Lee’s TV vehicle.  Also, with a two-hour runtime, the editing department could have clipped Stephanie Hsu’s brief appearances entirely, run over Blunt’s silly, shoehorned karaoke scene, and raced over a couple of unneeded twists featuring a barrel full of baddies.  Hence, the film has some clutter and pacing issues. 

However, Gosling’s charm, Duke’s support, a couple of surprises, and some dandy smash-‘em-up sequences – like “(falling) from a tall building and (rolling) a brand-new car” - deliver just enough big-screen good feelings.  

“The Fall Guy” floats.  It’s an easy, breezy ride.  

Jeff’s ranking

2.5/4 stars

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We Grown Now – Movie Review

Directed and written by:   Minhal Baig

Starring:  Blake Cameron James, Gian Knight Ramirez, Jurnee Smollett, S. Epatha Merkerson, and Lil Rel Howery

Runtime:  93 minutes

‘We Grown Now’ is a poetic story about childhood friendship

As director/writer Minhal Baig’s film opens, two elementary-age schoolboys, Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez), drag a twin-size mattress through the hallway of an apartment building.  With a broken elevator temporally halting the dynamic duo’s expedition, they shuffle to the stairs and, eventually, outside as they lug the 8-foot sleeping apparatus down various streets for an unknown goal.  

Well, Malik and Eric attain their ultimate purpose – which will not be revealed in this review – but to give a hint, their found aspiration is a joyous one, a whimsical occasion where childhood know-how provides a glorious, momentary reward that will echo with memories for years, similar to soaring on a 3-speed Huffy bike over a makeshift wooden ramp or completing a flip off a diving board for the first time at a local pool.  

Bragging rights and mutual support. 

The location is Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing center, built during WWII, but the year for “We Grown Now” is 1992.  Michael Jordan is the King of the Basketball World, and people of all ages pay respects to His Highness.  However, The Windy City residents offer exceptional homage, including 10-year-old boys who regularly debate Scottie Pippin’s value to the Chicago Bulls on the way to school. 

“We Grown Now” centers around Malik and Eric’s friendship and home lives, but the movie doesn’t sprint over a 93-minute runtime.  On the contrary, it strolls, rests, observes, and wonders.  

Baig captures the poetic beauty of the freewheeling innocence and imagination of childhood while also constructing boundaries, healthy and unhealthy ones.  Some figurative walls – like classrooms and parental directives – are universal, but others, like a nearby senseless murder and police overreach, are certainly not.  

Still, Baig doesn’t stir up constant, exploitive dramatics that paint Cabrini-Green in heavy coats of woe and misery.  Yes, slim household budgets and the chance of witnessing violence exist.  These issues loom, but by and large, the screenplay nestles into Malik and Eric’s encouraging, two-person bond and sustains accommodating influences at home.  

Malik’s mom, Dolores (Jurnee Smollett), fashions homecooked meals and serves them at the dinner table every evening.  She’s a payroll clerk who recently learned about her co-workers’ elevated salaries, so Dolores yearns for something better for herself, Malik, Malik’s sister, and her mother (S. Epatha Merkerson).  Moving out of Chicago was a previously unexplored option, but Dolores is presented with a plum choice that would require a change of neighborhood scenery.  

Eric’s father, Jason (Lil Rel Howery), a widower, owns a pizza joint.  He asks his son to help count the money for the impending monthly bills to illustrate the financial struggles that 10-year-old children don’t ordinarily realize.  

Jason, Dolores, and Anita extend lofty pillars of support for their children, even if their internal fortitude feels wobbly over lifetimes of marching up steep societal gradients to make ends meet.  Contentious race relations visually emerge in one brutal scene.  The word – racism – isn’t spoken, but Anita’s explanation of her Mississippi backstory includes a vicious act against her family that – decades earlier - led her to Illinois.  Dramatically less egregious but still frustrating, an ever-present exasperating drip from a faucet (that the landlord hasn’t fixed in months) implies a broader inequitable system or a simple case of neglect. 

James and Ramirez give impressive performances as the BFFs.  Their authentic alter egos regularly volley from playful humor, actively listen to the respective single parents, ponder the future, and have the wherewithal to exclaim, “I exist!  We exist!” in a sometimes-heartless world.  

Baig and cinematographer Pat Scola ensure to find splendor in plain sight, like occasional treetops, cracks in the ceiling that reveal sparkling stars, and streetlights’ glow shining through curtains while trains interrupt the artificial illumination like a visual Morse Code, pleading to these two young minds that a big world exists outside of Cabrini-Green.

One of the adult characters quietly pronounces, “Seems like we’re always running from something.”

Malik and Eric occasionally dash through their neighborhood with youthful exuberance, and hopefully, their futures will be filled with running to something.  

All the while, the film’s music department lead, Jonas Tarm, accompanies Malik and Eric on their journey with a delicate and moving cavalcade of strings and ivory keys that offer hope to the young pair and induce tears from the movie audience.  Yes, Malik and Eric are kids, but in some ways, they are also grown now.  

Jeff’s ranking

3.5/4 stars

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Challengers - Movie Review

Directed by: Luca Guadagnino.

Written by: Justin Kuritzkes.

Starring: Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor.

Runtime: 131 minutes.

All’s fair in love and tennis in Luca Guadagnino’s sexy ‘Challengers’

Love? It means nothing in tennis. Zero points scored. But on the tennis court in Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” love is everything. Or if not love, at least the game of it. 

And Tashi Donaldson (Zendaya) treats love and sex like any other competition, ruining men’s lives for sport and having them thank her for the pleasure. You’ll thank her, too, if you meet “Challengers” on its sexy, silly terms as three extraordinarily beautiful people play an intricate game of power and pleasure behind the tennis match that unfolds onscreen. 

We meet Tashi and her husband Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) on a downswing. The First Couple of tennis, self-proclaimed “game changers” swanning around in designer duds and slinging ads for Aston Martin, are on a decline. Art is the championship-winning tennis star and Tashi, whose own tennis career was sidelined by a catastrophic knee injury, is his merciless coach, both on and off the court. But their tennis supremacy is on the line as Art suffers a crisis of confidence, unable to get out of his own head and secure his spot at the next Open. 

What he needs is a confidence boost, an easy victory to change his momentum, which is how the champ finds himself slumming it at the New Rochelle Phil’s Tire Town challenger, a piddling qualifier for has-beens and never-weres, far beneath the typical notice of a player with an Aston Martin sponsorship. 

His opponent, the louche and lanky Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), should be easy pickings, a washed-up poster child of squandered potential sleeping in his car and playing in ratty shorts that look like they were dug out of a dumpster by a possum. But Patrick is hardly a no-name easy mark; it turns out the two have a history. Art has everything to lose – and Patrick, nothing. 

“Challengers” doles out its character backstories in a tennis match punctuated by flashbacks showing Tashi as a Stanford-bound phenom on the court, a maneater who reduces then-best friends Art and Patrick to love-struck putty in her callused hands as they vie for her attention – a “homewrecker,” Tashi calls herself as she treats the besotted boys like a pair of Ken dolls she’s playing with on her bedroom floor. And just like Ken dolls, she can even make them kiss, if the fancy strikes. 

The thing to understand about “Challengers” going in is that it is a deeply unserious movie, like if you combined the sexual adventurous and homoerotic undertones of “Y tu mamá también” with the sado-masochistic codependency of “Phantom Thread,” but made it goofy. Guadagnino’s penchant for ravishment – romantic in films like “Call Me by Your Name” and “I Am Love,” horrifying in “Suspiria” and “Bones and All” – is rendered ridiculous on the tennis court.

The question is whether or not “Challengers” has the self-awareness to know its own ridiculousness. You’ll be tempted to take it all deadly seriously; the characters certainly do. Especially convincing is Faist, whose screen-commanding turn as Riff in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” was no one-off. But given the film’s thumping, synth-heavy score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the Looney Tunes tennis ball POV shots, and lingering close-ups of Art and Patrick suggestively eating bananas and churros in each other’s faces, it’s hard to conclude “Challengers” isn’t in on the winking joke of itself.

Just sit back and enjoy the match.

Barbara’s ranking

3/4 stars

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Hard Miles – Movie Review

Directed by:  R.J. Daniel Hanna

Written by:  R.J. Daniel Hanna and Christian Sander

Starring:  Matthew Modine, Cynthia Kaye McWilliams, Damien Diaz, Zachary T. Robbins, Jackson Kelly, Jahking Guillory, Leslie David Baker, and Sean Astin

Runtime:  108 minutes

‘Hard Miles’:  This inspirational cycling story is worth an easy trip to the movie theatre

Rice, Atencio, Smink, and Woolbright. 

These four teens have walked hard miles.  Their long journeys of bad decisions and misfortune led them to reside at Colorado’s Ridge View Academy, a school for troubled teenagers.  It’s where arguments and fist fights break out more frequently than acne, as the young men posture for position to get through their days.  Still, Ridge View isn’t heartless.  Counselors like Greg (Matthew Modine) and Haddie (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) march to the beat of a well-intentioned drum, but verbal altercations with the kids wear on their rhythms.  

To help reach Rice (Zachary T. Robbins), Atencio (Damien Diaz), Smink (Jackson Kelly), and Woolbright (Jahking Guillory), Greg Townsend, an avid long-distance cyclist, convinces Haddie and their boss, Skip (Leslie David Baker), to let him lead the quartet on a “Tour de Grand,” a 762-mile bike ride from Ridge View to the Grand Canyon.  

Skip is skeptical and calls the idea “hoods in the woods” and “redeeming the irredeemable.”  Haddie has her doubts, but she rides along with Greg and the boys by driving an accompanying van packed with tents, supplies, and food.  

Director/co-writer R.J. Daniel Hanna prepares “Hard Miles” for the big screen, an inspiring tale based on a true story.  

It’s a movie about grit, teamwork, perseverance, and empathy.  

Hanna and Christian Sander’s screenplay spends a large majority of the 108-minute runtime on the road (and a noticeably abbreviated number of minutes to prep for the said trip), where the guys joust with one another and fight against the system, which (during this trip) consists of Greg and Hanna.  As one might expect, they learn life lessons and emotionally grow over who-knows-how-many days.  

“Hard Miles” has a similar vibe as “McFarland, USA” (2015), a satisfying sports movie in which Jim White (Kevin Costner) leads a high school cross-country team in a working-class California farming community.     

The silver-haired, 6’ 3” Modine, 65 years young, is perfectly cast as he demonstrates Greg’s athletic gifts and command of the sport but also exudes physical and emotional vulnerabilities.  Greg carries a couple of serious ailments that impede his 24/7 freewheeling cycling lifestyle.  He also cares about these kids but constantly balances his altruism versus the flush realities of reaching them through discipline.  Thankfully, Haddie provides a figurative scale and doubles as his conscience when he tips too far in one direction.  McWilliams’ warm and frank performance delivers a comforting blanket of female energy and another voice for Greg and the young team. 

Deep down, just about every adolescent needs defined boundaries whether adults want to forge them or not, and “Hard Times” confirms the benefits of doing so.  

While also contending with injuries and teenage attitudes, the film delves into Greg’s lifelong struggle with his father that comes to a head – through horrible timing – with the Tour de Grand.  Hanna communicates Greg’s relationship with his dad through flashbacks and childhood trauma, a theme explored more often on the big and small screens in recent years.  Frankly, these flashbacks and Greg’s ever-present strife with his dad don’t seem necessary through the first two acts, but Hanna and Modine deliver an affecting sequence in the third.  

Make sure you have tissues nearby.  

“Hard Times” is a positive, role-model film for teenage boys and girls, but for boys in particular, especially when they have recently fallen behind in education versus their female counterparts and are having trouble defining masculinity in the modern world.  Robbins, Diaz, Kelly, and Guillory all give commendable performances as teenagers living on the edge without a net, and all four of the characters’ arcs feel authentic.  The story flushes out more of Smink’s and Woolbright’s emotional excursions, but these four young men form a faithful peloton as the actors seamlessly absorb themselves into their troubled teen roles.  

Visually, Hanna and cinematographer Mack Fisher capture – seemingly – 1,000,000 glorious frames of the rugged and harrowing landscapes throughout the 762-mile trek, as audiences will hope for an extended look-see at one of the planet’s seven wonders.   This critic won’t reveal the end, but either way, “Hard Miles” is worth an easy trip to the movie theatre.

   Jeff’s ranking

3/4 stars

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JEFF MITCHELL

A member of the Phoenix Critics Circle, Jeff Mitchell has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic. Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

Celebrate Brendan Gleeson’s birthday with this terrific triple feature

Brendan Gleeson turns 69 years young on March 29, and this Dublin native has entertained movie and television audiences since 1989.  With 110 credits (in IMDb) to his name, the Academy finally recognized this charismatic thespian with a 2023 Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his memorable role as a former best friend hell-bent on self-harm in Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin”.  His fans have supported his work for decades, and in celebration of the man’s birthday, here are three memorable Gleeson performances you should see right now. 

Happy Birthday, Brendan and Sláinte!

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Bunny Kelly, “I Went Down” (1997) – “He’s a good man,” Mr. French (Tony Doyle) says.  He’s referring to Bunny Kelly (Gleeson), a 40-something ex-con who sports demonstrable red mutton chops and a curt, no-nonsense persona.  Bunny works for Mr. French, a small-time, small-town mobster, so look, his testimonial is in the eye of the beholder.  Well, director Paddy Breathnach’s vision of a cool buddy-movie crime caper is realized, thanks to Conor McPherson’s snappy script, tone-setting frames of rural, working-class spots in County Kildare and County Offaly, and a cast of characters led by Bunny and his new and unwilling 20-something “business partner” Git Hynes (Peter McDonald).  Git gets himself in a wee bit of trouble with Mr. French, so Bunny and he must stumble across the Irish countryside on a hazardous errand for him.  Gleeson and McDonald’s odd-couple energy bursts with tension and “guy humor” as Bunny regularly hands tricky tasks to Git - like entering an unfriendly pub to gather information and crossing a rugged bog - while our red-headed middle-aged fella catches up on his reading.  Even though their working relationship falls into predictable spaces, their engaging chemistry and witty banter will glue audiences to the screen while they stick together in several stolen automobiles.   

(3 out of 4 stars) 

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Police Sergeant Gerry Boyle, “The Guard” (2011) – Director/writer John Michael McDonagh’s detective story opens with a group of young adults - in a red sports car – buzzing by Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Gleeson), who sits idly in his parked, modest police vehicle.  Before you can say “recklessly speeding,” they fatally crash in a one-car accident.  Well, Gerry strolls to the wreck, finds drugs, and nonchalantly ingests a tab of the kids’ LSD.  That’s just one of countless unexpected and hilarious hits in “The Guard”.  Most on-screen players cannot get a read on this seemingly unassuming sergeant, including FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), who visits County Galway to stop a 500-million-dollar drug deal.  Everett needs Boyle’s help to accomplish any police work, as McDonagh tilts into unusual (to Everett) Western Ireland culture, and our American agent cannot decipher Gerry’s code either.  “I can’t tell if you’re really mother f***ing dumb or really mother f***ing smart,” Everett says.  Well, Gleeson playfully gives the audience clues – throughout the 96-minute runtime - in an ingenious, comedic effort.  

(3.5 out of 4 stars) 

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Father James, “Calvary” (2014) – John Michael McDonagh and Gleeson team up again in a dark, unsettling mystery set in a drop-dead gorgeous coastal community in County Sligo.  Drop-dead is apropos because an unknown man enters Father James’ (Gleeson) confessional and declares that he will kill the man of the cloth in one week.  This unidentified individual reveals that another priest molested him for five years, but he will take his vengeance on Father James, who is a decent man.  This exceptionally well-crafted whodunit pits the father – while making his rounds - against a litany of nefarious characters in town.  For the audience, the specific threatening menace could be anyone.  Well, almost anyone, as an American writer Gerald Ryan (M. Emmet Walsh), a fellow priest and bishop, a recent widow, and James’ daughter Fiona (Kelly Reilly) are friendly faces, but just about everyone else addresses him with contempt, dismissiveness, or resentment, or they are just plain suspicious.  Gleeson delivers a layered, beautifully nuanced performance, as James’ patience wears thin with the thick-headed disdain and the constant messages of death, violence, and firearms that surround him.  “Calvary” went criminally unnoticed during award season.  McDonagh’s thought-provoking masterpiece is one of 2014’s best.  It deserved Oscar nominations for Picture, Director, Screenplay, Score, and Actor.  This critic prays that moviegoers catch this film on DVD or a streaming service.  

(4 out of 4 stars) 

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The Peasants – Movie Review

Directed by:  DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman

Written by:  DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman, based on Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont’s novel

Starring:  Kamila Urzedowska, Robert Gulaczyk, Miroslaw Baka, Ewa Kasprzyk, Sonia Mietielica, Mateusz Rusin, and Andrzej Konopka

Runtime:  108 minutes

‘The Peasants’ doesn’t brim with riches, but it works as an eccentric curiosity

“Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends.” – “Against the Wind” (1980) by Bob Seger

For Jagna Paczesiowna (Kamila Urzedowska), she is surrounded by enemies.  

Kamila, 29, who could be Margot Robbie’s long-lost cousin, plays Jagna, a beautiful 20-something farmhand living in Lipce, a modest Polish village, in the late 19th century.  She’s a peasant, and like so many Lipce residents, Jagna toils on the land but doesn’t own it.  Prospects for wealth, or even simple comfort, are out of reach. 

Conversely, a widower, Maciej Boryna (Miroslaw Baka) – with his six-acre estate - is “the richest farmer in town.”

The modern-day saying, “Cash is king,” doesn’t apply in Lipce. 

Instead, land is king, and Jagna’s mother, Dominikowa (Ewa Kasprzyk), and Mayor Piotr (Andrzej Konopka) work out a marital arrangement between Maciej and Jagna that extends a reach into his treasured six acres.  

This is the story of “The Peasants”, a 108-minute film adaptation of Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont’s Nobel Prize-winning novel.  The current paperback runs 976 pages, so directors DK and Hugh Welchman had much to unpack and carefully choose which aspects to plant into their film.  

One plainly obvious wrinkle is that the Welchmans filmed a live-action production, but after the shoot, 127 artists – through “oil-painting animation” – essentially painted the film, frame by frame.  According to Rich Johnson’s Nov. 24, 2023 “Animation Magazine” article, the animators painted “40,000 frames of oil paintings.  If one person were to paint the entire film, it would take almost 100 years.”  

With so many folks on the Welchmans’ team, “’The Peasants’ took three years to paint and animate.” 

It’s a mind-blowing effort, and the results offer a living, breathing artwork that beautifully sways and waves on-screen.  Brush strokes appear while cast members speak Polish and move about.  Visually, the best moments are when movements fill the frame, like large swathes of grass rolling with the wind, a flock of birds gliding in the sky, and a couple of vibrant dance scenes where dresses are swinging and spinning while a few local musicians are bursting with string instruments and an accordion.  

Although, the effect is also a bit surreal.  The animation may be distracting.  For this critic, it took 15 to 25 minutes to settle into a sense of comfort with the Welchmans’ creation.

Circling back to Reymont’s invention, the film follows the four seasons, beginning with autumn and ending with summer, and that’s by design. 

The youthful Jagna marries the elderly Maciej (referred to by his last name, Boryna, throughout the movie) in the fall, the season when deciduous trees begin their slumber, and their leaves dry up and die.  

The marriage feels like Jagna’s death sentence, and one of the townsfolk snidely comments that the new bride looks as though she’s attending a funeral.  Meanwhile, Jagna and Boryna’s son, Antek (Robert Gulaczyk), have been engaging in an ongoing adulterous affair.  

Fans of the novel will be intimately familiar with the themes, and the movie version explores ugly topics, such as the aforementioned infidelity, jealousy, resentment, greed, smalltown gossip, an institutionalized class system steeped in sharp elbows and cruel words, and the double standards placed on women. 

The movie also features several acts of violence (with fists and blunt objects), a couple of scenes with nudity, an attempted rape, and an actual rape. 

No, “The Peasants” is not “Kung Fu Panda” (2008) or “Shaun the Sheep Movie” (2015), not in the slightest, and the Welchmans’ adapted screenplay does not contain one moment of humor.  This rated-R film is unsuitable for kids, nor will they find these grown-up-themed troubles particularly fascinating.  After the movie ends, one might also wonder about the reasoning for turning this tale into an animated feature rather than simply representing it as a live-action movie. 

Reymont’s work is world-famous and significantly meaningful to Poland, so the movie’s presentation could present an everlasting and unique ode to the material.  The Welchmans and the team took extraordinary efforts to bring their innovation to fruition while also revealing the troubling nature of humanity in this cautionary and challenging saga, one that clearly communicates its grievances.  

For “The Peasants” experts, those close to Polish culture, or animation fans, this movie – and its dark themes – could brightly land with enthusiasm.  

For others, it could work as an eccentric curiosity, and that’s how “The Peasants” strangely surrounded me. 

Jeff’s ranking

2.5/4 stars

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Problemista – Movie Review

Directed and written by:  Julio Torres

Starring:  Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, RZA, and Isabella Rossellini

Runtime:  104 minutes

‘Problemista’ is an inventive, eccentric comedy, but a couple of problems trip it up

Alejandro (Julio Torres) has a problem.  

The 20-something, wide-eyed New York City upstart – with a slight frame and a mop-top haircut with a sometimes-noticeable cow lick – just lost his job at FreezeCorp, a cryogenic stasis outfit that dresses its clients in a tube to sleep for – perhaps – hundreds of years.  

Alejandro didn’t calculate differential equations to pinpoint the math behind these science-fiction devices in the here and now.  He handled the Sleeping Beauties’ personal belongings, or for one client, an artist named Bobby (RZA).  

However, Alejandro was awakened with his walking papers after a critical faux pas. 

The more significant issue for our young hero is that he no longer has an employer to sponsor his work visa, and this El Salvador resident will be forced to leave the U.S. if he doesn’t find another stat! 

As “luck” would have it, he finds a new position with Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton) as her assistant, but she may be the most neurotic boss in recent movie history.  

Elizabeth’s disheveled appearance of vintage, layered textiles, gnarled locks of pink with blondish roots peaking from the top of her head, and Raggedy Ann rouge on her cheeks indicate that emotional stability isn’t her strong suit.  The woman probably has an undiagnosed case of borderline personality disorder, while she barks confusing orders, bathes in inefficiency, and regularly responds with “Don’t scream at me,” while Alejandro offers polite, soft-spoken suggestions to course correct.  

If there’s a silver lining, our pink-headed friend ultimately means well, but her methods march in madness.  The infamous “Office Space” (1999) boss, Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole), may have his staff work on the weekends, but at least they’ll be filling out the TPS reports in peace.  

Still, Alejandro needs this job while he waits for Elizabeth to officially sign the paperwork to sponsor him and satisfy the whole work visa thing.  

This is the premise for “Problemista”; the comedy is Torres’ first feature-film directorial effort.  The 37-year-old also wrote the film as well. 

Although the premise is straightforward, stylistically, the film is wildly eccentric, like a cross between “Being John Malkovich” (1999) and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (2022). 

Frequently, the audience must jump between two twisted worlds: modern-day New York City and the maze inside Alejandro’s head.  Torres pleads his case that The Big Apple (or the United States, in general) in 2023 is a miserable place and time for the immigrant experience or for anyone simply trying to establish secure roots in society.  

Indeed, Millennials have suffered through 9/11, the housing crash, insane tuition hikes, crowded job markets, and the housing boom that makes mortgages out of reach.  

Alejandro is simply attempting to find a job and stay in the country while multitasking to realize his dream position as a toy maker at Hasbro.  Still, the everything-seems-out-of-reach Millennial feeling rings true here.

Anyway, what is present in the real world?  

Clutter, individual pieces of trash, or piles of Hefty garbage bags seem ever-present in nearly every shot of the city, like a dystopian society where littering is an Olympic sport, and garbage men have been on strike for months.  

Alejandro’s reality isn’t pleasant.  Living with seemingly five roommates in a cramped apartment, desperately trying to keep his bank account above $0, and following Elizabeth’s twisty directions – where taking one step forward and three steps back is a productive day – can be exhausting.  

It’s also exhausting for the audience.  

Swinton’s Elizabeth is a tremendous force of confusion and dismay, like accidentally sending a fork down a garbage disposal while Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” blasts on 11, and the dog barks at the mailman.  

Which immediate clatter do you address first?  

Calgon, take me away! 

Well, cheers to Tilda because she delivers a searing, purposely over-the-top performance.  Elizabeth’s machine-gun banter, which tends to shoot down everybody within eyeshot throughout the movie, is impressive.  However, her nails-on-a-chalkboard/fork-swirling-in-a-garbage-disposal act is a chore to digest after the first act.  Since Elizabeth and Alejandro are the two principal players onscreen, there are few chances for refuge.   

(Think of “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006).  Even though Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) is an incredibly difficult boss to Andy (Anne Hathaway), audiences – including this critic - relish their moments of tense chemistry, but I often winced when Elizabeth and Alejandro were present in the same room.)

When the two aren’t combatting over FileMaker Pro or scouting out an art gallery to showcase 13 paintings of eggs, Alejandro struggles to find a job by talking to an oddball, unfunny genie encased in wires on the Internet.  He also anxiously crawls through an endless dollhouse designed by Steven Hawking on LSD or argues with a Bank of America employee while trapped in a constricting rock formation.  

No question, Torres has a wonderous imagination.  He seems to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the screen, including a slinky that doesn’t slink down a flight of stairs and Elizabeth dressing up in a dragon-like costume from the old Sid and Marty Krofft days.  

“Problemista” doesn’t have a creative idea problem in the slightest, and Swinton and Torres (with his Justin Long-like look and tone from “Dodgeball: True Underdog Story” (2004)) offer several amusing moments over 104 minutes.  Rooting for Alejandro is extremely easy, and his situation appears impossible.  These aspects are immensely desirable when building a screenplay, but Alejandro and Elizabeth’s working relationship dominates the film, and this critic needed more breaks from their caustic dynamic.  Still, his flaky roommates and her new smug intern weren’t enough.  Neither are the frequent jumps into kooky weirdness, and there just isn’t enough comedy or normalcy to balance out the rough edges. 

Still, “Problemista” follows through – with its eccentric, imaginative nature - to the end, and Isabella Rossellini wonderfully narrates the story for our lead.  How about that?  Hey, Torres has a bright future as a director.  He has a lot to say.  Just maybe, in this case, less innovation is more. 

That’s a relatively easy problem to fix.   

Jeff’s ranking

2/4 stars

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Frida – Movie Review

Directed by:  Carla Gutierrez

Runtime:  84 minutes

‘Frida’:  Gutierrez’s documentary thoughtfully paints an intimate look at this influential icon

Director Carla Gutierrez’s documentary about one of the most memorable 20th-century artists - Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon (a.k.a. Frida Kahlo), universally known for her self-portraits - should enlighten broad audiences, those who deeply know her work and Frida novices who may have seen “Self-Portrait with Monkey” once on a 2” by 2” magnet at a flea market. 

The film chronologically markets Ms. Kahlo’s life (1907 – 1954) from her days as a toddler in 1910 to her passing in 1954.  Gutierrez and her team’s conventional use of a (mostly) straightforward timeline offers a sturdy foundation to help support two imaginative facets – the narration and animation style - of this 84-minute presentation.    

Rather than include a slew of current historians who express Frida’s impact on her home country (Mexico) and the worldwide art-world community, Fernanda Echevarria narrates from Ms. Kahlo’s own words – from past writings and interviews - as an effective storytelling device to convey personal confessionals.  

Gutierrez and Echevarria intimately reveal the artist’s thoughts about her marriage, mental and physical struggles with near-crippling ailments (from a catastrophic accident), reasoning for painting portraits, underlying emotions about wealthy art clients, admiration for her father, and feelings over past lovers.    

“The handrail went through me like a sword through a bull.”

“I now inhabit a world of pain.”

“I paint because I need to.”

“Make love, take a bath, and make love again.”

Words from beyond the grave lead the movie.  Visually, Gutierrez finds and presents an incalculable number of photographs and videos, including clips from the 1920s, to support the distinctive, individual words uttered.  Some of the black-and-white still and moving photos –sometimes splashed with bits of color - are of Frida and her family, but there are heaps of records from her time with Diego.  We witness their everyday existence and travels to the United States and France, providing context for her personal and professional “faces.”  

Diego was a vast influence on Frida’s art, and at times, the movie could almost be called “Frida and Diego”, because he’s featured so prominently.  The film provides several examples of Mr. Rivera’s artwork, including massive murals, ones sought by the industry’s admirers and Corporate America, like the Ford family.  Diego was a heavy man at 6’ 1”, and Frida was thin with a height of 5’ 3”, so they were referred to as an “elephant and a dove,” but rather than belabor their physical differences, the doc dives into his grand successes (that sparked their travel) and his divisive infidelities which harmed their relationship. 

In addition to the emotional harm, the movie dedicates difficult but necessary screentime to the aforementioned accident, as the emotional and physical trauma had enormous impacts on Frida’s headspace and paintings, and Gutierrez and Echevarria undoubtedly illuminate the dark connections.  In addition to the verbal reflections and historical images, the film’s animation team splashes dozens of wonderous eccentric delights with stop-motion animation - like a less exaggerated “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” style - that showcases the woman’s most famous and lesser-known works.  

Glorious, moving examples of “The Two Fridas”, “Diego and I”, “The Wounded Deer”, “Henry Ford Hospital”, and many others thoughtfully parade on-screen, reflecting Frida’s marriage and the ongoing physical pain that plagued her for decades. 

The movie features a telling quote from our heroine: “In my life, I’ve only painted the honest expression of myself to say what I couldn’t in any other way.”  

However, in less than 90 minutes, Gutierrez remarkably paints Frida’s emotional expressions in multiple thoughtful ways. 

Jeff’s ranking

3.5/4 stars

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Love Lies Bleeding - Movie Review

Directed by: Rose Glass

Written by: Rose Glass and Weronika Tofilska

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Katy O'Brian, and Ed Harris

Runtime:  104 minutes

Kristen Stewart becomes the queer icon of the internet’s dreams in ‘Love Lies Bleeding’

One shouldn’t need much prompting to buy a ticket to see a mulleted Kristen Stewart in a muscle shirt lay waste to bad men with her hot bodybuilder girlfriend in a dirtbag lesbian noir. If that alone doesn’t sell you on the potential of cinema as an artform, I don’t know that a review is going to move the needle in your soul. 

But just in case: “Love Lies Bleeding” rules and gives Stewart a worthy platform to be the queer icon of the internet’s dreams

The sophomore effort from British director Rose Glass (who helmed the God-haunted if undercooked 2019 horror film “Saint Maud”) is a geyser of female strength and rage. It’s a grime-slick riot, a confluence of pain and pleasure in which violence pulses under the neon-light surface like a bulging vein surging with steroids. 

Stewart is instantly winning as Lou, a louche, glassy-eyed muscle-gym manager in a dead-end desert town we first meet unclogging a toilet while sweaty, aggro men do reps underneath motivation signs like “Pain is weakness leaving the body” and “The body achieves what the mind believes.”

There’s not much for a girl like Lou in a place like this, and so it doesn’t take much prompting for her to fall hard for new arrival Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a mesmerizingly buff hitchhiker stopping for a spell on her way to a body-building competition in Las Vegas. Jackie’s only there to pump iron and stash tips from her new job waitressing at a gun range. But a hookup with Lou turns into a 24-hour-sleepover and – improbably, beautifully in Ronald Reagan’s America, when this is set – something that with the help of a few ravenous sex scenes starts to look like a serious relationship.

But there’s rot underneath the spangly unitards and jeweled glow of neon gym signs. Jackie’s hitched her way into a domestic drama that’s about to explode, leaving bodies in its wake. 

“Love Lies Bleeding” recalls nothing so much as Kathryn Bigelow’s neo-Western vampire classic “Near Dark.” There are no fangs here, but instead a She-Hulk waiting to be unleashed. Like Bigelow before her, Glass has filled her dusty dead-end Southwestern town with memorable characters and their violent delights. A gaunt, nefarious Ed Harris (whose skinny face, balding pate and long, pale tendrils of hair make him look like the Crypt Keeper) runs guns and keeps tabs on his estranged daughter, Lou. A porn-stached Dave Franco serves as his henchman, playing the abusive husband of Lou’s battered sister, Beth (Jena Malone). 

It's a powder keg waiting to go off, and Jackie is the match. 

Not all the film’s big swings clear the fence, but Glass’ ambition, matched by powerhouse performances from Stewart and O'Brian, marks a striking leap forward in the young director’s artistic vision. “Love Lies Bleeding” is a tonal tightrope-walk, a pas de deux of seriousness and silliness, tenderness and profanity, pleasure and pain, with a dash of the supernatural. It’s slicked in effluvia, packed with sweaty closeups of pained bodies. Sucking turns into biting, caresses into grips as Lou and Jackie fight – sometimes with each other – for liberation and self-determination that will take more than physical strength. 

“The body achieves what the mind believes” isn’t some cliché platitude after all. In “Love Lies Bleeding,” it’s a promise. 

Barbara’s ranking

3.5/4 stars

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Dune: Part Two – Movie Review

Directed by:  Denis Villeneuve

Written by:  Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, based on Frank Herbert’s noveL

Starring:  Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgard, Austin Butler, Dave Bautista, Florence Pugh, and Christopher Walken

Runtime:  156 minutes

‘Dune’ is a spectacular, procedural exercise, but ‘Dune: Part Two’ burns more calories

“It’s been a while since you’ve had one of those nightmares,” Chani (Zendaya) says and asks, “Tell me, what was it about?”

“It’s only fragments.  Nothing’s clear,” Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) replies.

This exchange opens Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Dune: Part Two, Official Trailer 3”, and director/co-writer Denis Villeneuve’s dream project - his science fiction cinematic vision adapted from Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel – continues in theatres on Feb. 29, 2024, more than a while since his first film’s release on Oct. 22, 2021.  

Well, it’s only been two years, four months, and seven days, but it’s been an eternity for diehard fans.  

“Dune: Part Two” – listed with a 166-minute runtime but ended after 156, according to this critic’s watch – offers a deliberately leisure pace for “Dune” fanatics, “Dune” novices, and everyone in between to absorb the grandeur and pageantry of a story between good and evil, oppressors and underdogs, and choice versus fate, all on a faraway desert planet called Arrakis in the year 10191.  

Villeneuve’s follow-up follows right after the events of his 2021 predecessor.  He leans into the regal formalities of Paul’s journey toward (possibly) transforming into a messiah for the Fremen, desert dwellers who spend their lives fighting the Harkonnen, a chalky-white race, hell-bent on military might and controlling spice production on the planet. 

Hence, the quote that opens the film: “Power over spice is power over all.” 

Paul copes with the fallout of slaying Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun) - at the end of the first film – and the Fremen are divided, between North and South, about spiritual beliefs and whether Mr. Atreides is the “chosen one,” a title that he doesn’t readily accept.  

He wishes to fight for his fallen house and late father, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), alongside the Fremen, honor and respect his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and discover a hopeful romance with Chani.  

Meanwhile, the grotesque Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) and the distant Emperor (Christopher Walken) push back against the Fremen (also referred to as “rats”) with force through the Harkonnen and Imperial troops, assemblies of war machines called ornithopters that look like a steampunk collaboration of helicopters and dragonflies, and the Baron’s sicko nephew, a creep with an utterly punchable face, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler).  

For those who loved “Dune” (2021), this film – in the words of Jerry Maguire - will most likely “complete (you),” as Denis bathes in the visual majesty of Arrakis, a place chock-full of dunes and moons.  According to IMDb, photography in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates help provide the former.  

If you didn’t care for the first film, the second falls into similar patterns of pacing and procedures.  “Dune” is a spectacular, procedural exercise, but “Dune: Part Two” burns more calories, just enough for me to recommend it.

Granted, it’s been over two years since this critic has watched the first picture, but “Part Two” seems to devote more screentime to action set pieces, including the curious floating abilities of Harkonnen soldiers’ suits.  The ornithopter assault looks straight out of the Vietnam War, and the film includes moments of sabotage of the massive spice drilling apparatuses, a few sandworm surfing escapades, and a third-act collision between imperial and Harkonnen forces versus Fremen battalions.  

However, the final battle feels truncated and ends too abruptly.

From a purely cinematic perspective, Villeneuve and cinematographer Greig Fraser transport us – with Oscar-caliber sweat - outside our comfortable theatre seats and into a foreign, remote, and mesmerizing abyss.  Machines and sporadic traces of life bid for survival in an excessively arid climate while a perpetual power struggle of wills, 400-meter sandworms, cannons, swords, and laser guns clash under a brutal sun.  

However, “Dune: Part Two” is not filled with physical matches throughout the two-and-a-half-hour-plus runtime.  These aggressive on-screen collisions appear as small mini-events of militaristic majesty between long spells of dry discourse.  

For the pomp and circumstance surrounding the immense scale and scope that both films stride about with pride, Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts dedicate countless moments of sequestered individual exchanges.    

“Dune: Part Two” is not excessively conversational, but this movie is not the thrill-a-minute “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015) either, and the main players seem to repeat the same basic ideas while standing or sitting around and pondering what it all means on piles of sand and rocky buttes or inside antiseptic, metallic conference rooms.  

For instance, The Baron frequently complains about his spice production problems, and Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista) repeatedly takes the verbal brunt of the operation’s shortcomings.  Jessica has a raging battle with drinking worm urine, and Paul’s future is her favorite go-to topic, ad nauseam.  The narrative often cuts to Feyd-Rautha so that he can randomly act like a psychopath for a few minutes at a time.

Still, the leads and the seemingly limitless extras don elaborate, eye-catching textiles of opulent royal intricacies, menacing military armor, and purposely unflattering ragged wrapped rags.  

(For the record, “Dune: Part Two” seems destined for Oscar nominations in visual effects, costume design, and sound.)   

Regarding the actors who wear these decorative costumes, Javier Bardem (who plays Paul’s biggest supporter, Stilgar), Ferguson, and Butler stand out the most.  

Chalamet and Zendaya work fine together, but their initial chemistry during the first hour wanes during the last 90-plus minutes, primarily because the script deviates from Paul and Chani’s loving focus and into mechanical questions about their pragmatic fit with Mr. Atreides’ destiny and additional time in propping up Feyd-Rautha’s bullying tactics.  

Unfortunately, the film wastes Florence Pugh and Walken by barely offering them anything to do as Princess Irulan and the Emperor.  They deliver their lines on a nondescript sound stage for the most part, and audiences might desperately wish for some mass quantities of spicy cowbell that never clang true. 

As far as Chalamet playing a messiah, is his performance convincing?  Well, he seems fine enough, and Timothee isn’t accidentally dropping his sword during the most critical moments, so there’s that.  

Speaking of which, if the Emperor, the Harkonnen, and the Fremen have access to guns, why use swords in the first place?  

A few other questions come to mind.

Why didn’t the Baron immediately murder Beast Rabban when spice production initially fell on his watch, especially when the gluttonous leader is incredibly ruthless with everyone else?  Perhaps the Baron is a WWE fan.  Hey, it’s possible. 

When did Chani secure an ornithopter?  It must have occurred off-screen.

How does anyone find their way around Arrakis without a compass?

These are fair questions, but here’s one more:  How often do you see someone ride a 400-meter invertebrate like a surfboard?   

What?  Exactly. 

Bravo, Mr. Villeneuve.  Bravo. 

Jeff’s ranking

2.5/4 stars

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Golden Years – Movie Review

Directed by:  Barbara Kulcsar

Written by:  Petra Biondina Volpe

Starring:  Esther Gemsch, Stefan Kurt, Ueli Jaggi, Martin Vischer, Isabelle Barth, and Gundi Ellert

Runtime:  88 minutes

‘Golden Years’ offers valuable insights, but during a recycled cinematic journey

“I’ll stick with you, Baby, for a thousand years.  Nothing’s gonna touch you in these golden years.” – “Golden Years” (1975) by David Bowie

“Growing old isn’t for the weak.” – Michi (Gundi Ellert)

Today is a milestone for Peter (Stefan Kurt).  He’s retiring from a suburban corporate job after 37 years of service, and our tall, youthful senior citizen and his equally spry wife, Alice (Esther Gemsch), will embark on their new journey: easing into their golden years.  For Peter, sleeping in rests on his agenda, but soon into his day-jobless existence, he awakens with a case of health kick-itis, complete with a vegan diet and obsessive bike riding, much to Alice’s chagrin.  She hoped Peter’s free schedule would bring them closer, as rekindling romance snuggles at the top of her wish list.  

Well, these two ships passing within the same household embark on a lavish cruise – courtesy of their grown kids, Susanne (Isabelle Barth) and Julian (Martin Vischer) - but will their marriage of 42 years be left in a wake of opposing expectations?

In director Barbara Kulcsar’s “Golden Years”, she answers this Peter-Alice question during an 88-minute runtime, and long-time couples everywhere might relate to our hero and heroine’s on-screen circumstances.  For certain, “Golden Years” offers a valuable trek of commiseration for movie audiences.  Unfortunately, the film relies too heavily on the leads to carry the picture’s emotional weight, as the joyless, unimaginative script treads water and eventually sinks into bland domestic quarrels over vacuuming, weekday overdrinking, and a lifeless road trip, despite cinematographer Tobias Dengler’s gorgeous captures of the Mediterranean Sea, Marseille, and Switzerland’s countryside.  

Traveling to IMDb, one will discover that “Golden Years” is labeled as a comedy.  Now, humor is in the funny bone of the beholder, but this critic didn’t laugh once during this nearly 90-minute feature.  Although Peter’s lazy attempt at a household chore and a campy intro scene did induce a couple of smiles from yours truly.  

Peter and Alice are coping with a late-life crisis, and they spend most of their screen time complaining to one another or contemplating their uncertain future in silence.  Kulcsar and screenwriter Petra Biondina Volpe could have balanced the gloomy tone with some well-placed comedic circumstances to deepen our engagement with these characters, but the film never does.  

For instance, Peter’s cycling hobby is a perfect way to explore his vulnerability through sight gags, like, say, a random 8-year-old passing him on a straightaway or our retiree chasing down a just-out-of-reach ice cream truck.  Instead, we witness Peter struggle on the bike, and at one point, he plops on a roadside bench while pondering his questionable fitness. Meanwhile, Alice is frustrated with the lack of intimacy in their relationship, and rather than parade a brawny group of local firemen to her immediate sightline via a conga line, she gloomily confides with a new friend, Michi (Gundi Ellert), about her troubles. 

Sometimes, the film explores this couple’s issues with nuance and care, including Gemsch and Kurt addressing a clumsy sexual encounter with grace.  However, the one-note story is built with a low ceiling, where we bump our heads on recycled melodrama and cliches despite open-doorway-distractions of an eccentric pair in an RV, a feminist commune, and a lovely stroll through warm, beautiful Marseille.  

We’re also treated to snappy, happy tunes like “Sara perche ti amo” and “Oye Como Va”, so some joy appears in the cinematic itinerary.  Still, the smooth ditties are muted by a sudden death, a grieving widower, Susanne whining about her miserable life, and a delightful cruise ship – the Costa Smeralda – but with absolutely no eccentric, oddball characters or experiences floating about. 

Well, at least Julian is happy, but we also discover the promiscuous 20 or 30-something has slept with about 200 women.  Are Kulcsar and Volpe stating that Julian’s dating lifestyle is the golden ticket to happiness?  No, but – in a way - Peter and Alice can learn from their son about living in the moment.  Happily ever after may still happen if they “stick with (each other) for a thousand years.”  Will it?  You’ll have to watch “Golden Years” to find out, or maybe stay home and dust off a David Bowie record instead.  

Jeff’s ranking

2/4 stars

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Drive-Away Dolls - Movie Review

Directed by: Ethan Coen

Written by: Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke

Starring: Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Beanie Feldstein

Runtime:  84 minutes

Ethan Coen’s queer crime caper ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ can’t find even road

A locked briefcase is a kind of cinematic Chekhov's gun. When a tough guy comes looking for it, heads are going to roll, sometimes literally. 

In the hallowed tradition of “Pulp Fiction” and “Kiss Me Deadly,” director Ethan Coen – of the Coen brothers, flying solo – hides one such sinister plot device in the trunk of a car driven by a pair of oblivious young lesbians too concerned by sex and heartbreak to know they’re being hunted as they cruise down the East Coast, Florida-bound 

But instead of containing nuclear annihilation, a criminal’s soul, or even a million dollars, Coen’s briefcase contains something much, much dumber. Call to mind the dumbest thing you can conjure. However dumb you’re thinking, it’s even dumber. 

That’s both the charm and bafflement of “Drive-Away Dolls,” a raucous sex comedy neo-noir that’s as fun and unbalanced as that genre mashup sounds. 

Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) make for a road trip odd couple, the former a fast-talking, philandering louche kicked out by her girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), the latter a buttoned-up, corporate, type-A worrywart still nursing the wounds of a long-ago breakup. Pure plot contrivance pairs the platonic buddies in a Dodge Aries mistakenly loaned for a one-way trip south. 

Their destination – Tallahassee, to visit Marian’s aunt – is the same as the briefcase’s drop-off point, where an interested party awaits its imminent arrival, then panics when the girls don’t make the delivery they don’t know they’re meant to make as they squabble over whether and how Marian needs to get laid. 

Hijinks naturally ensue. 

Coen wrote the script with his wife and longtime editing partner Tricia Cooke for his first solo feature film without brother Joel Coen after four decades, 18 films together and an armful of Oscars together. While Joel’s first solo film, 2021’s gorgeously bleak “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” was moody and formalistic, Ethan bends zany with Sam Raimi-esque camerawork, all zooms and tilted angles and goofball transitions between scenes (not to mention psychedelic interludes with a flower-child Miley Cyrus speaking from what looks like the inside of a lava lamp – the Dude wants a hit of whatever she’s smoking).

Little surprise, then, that in the riot of gags and camera angles, “Drive-Away Dolls” can’t find even keel in tone or structure, careening from one joke to the next, its main characters hanging on for dear life. 

A charismatic Qualley gets the closest to figuring it out, relishing her character’s classic Coen cadence, a loquacious bumpkin waxing philosophical about female anatomy in lilting Texas twang and a heavy-lidded swagger that recalls nothing so much as Nicolas Cage in the Coens’ screwball masterpiece “Raising Arizona.” The film’s rife, too, with classic Coen highbrow nods sprinkled in amongst the lowbrow buffoonery. Marian’s girlfriend is desperate to hand off an irascible little dog named Alice B. Toklas, while the literature of Henry James enjoys a shockingly large footprint in a film so full of sex toys. 

There are pleasures to be had, certainly. But like Jamie’s many one-night stands, the pleasures are fleeting. 

Barbara’s ranking

2.5/4 stars

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Io Capitano - Movie Review

Directed by: Matteo Garrone

Written by: Matteo Garrone, Massimo Ceccherini, and Massimo Gaudioso

Starring:  Seydou Sarr, Moustapha Fall, and Issaka Sawadogo

Runtime:  121 minutes

‘Io Capitano’ humanizes refugee crisis and finds a star in first-time actor Seydou Sarr

Headlines inform, but often dehumanize. They’re all numbers, not names, statistics instead of faces.

“Migrant boat capsizes off Libya, 400 feared dead.”

“Massive loss of life reported in latest Mediterranean tragedy.”

“40 migrants 'killed by fumes' in hold of boat off Libya.”

Who were these people, so desperate they risked desks in the desert and on the high seas? What were their names? What were their dreams? If not us, who weeps for them now that they’re gone? Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone puts heart behind the headlines in “Io Capitano,” a humanizing dramatization of the refugee crisis that’s resulted in thousands of unnamed deaths of Africans seeking refuge in Europe. 

Two such desperate people are Senegalese teenage cousins Seydou and Moussa, played with seeming ease by newcomers Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall. The enterprising, sweet and streetwise boys have a gift for song and a shared dream of something more than dilapidated shacks with caving roofs for their families. Together, the boys make music, fantasize about one day signing autographs for white people once they’re famous musicians, and squirrel away cash from odd jobs until they think they have enough to fund the perilous trek from Dakar to Sicily.

“Io Capitano” hints at the disillusionment that awaits Seydou and Moussa on the other side of the Mediterranean. “You think Europe is better than Africa. Europe is nothing like you imagine. What you see on TV is not real,” the boys are warned. They’re shocked to learn there are people in Europe, a land of plenty, who sleep on the streets. 

But the European-produced film, nominated for a Best International Feature Film Oscar for Italy and winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion award, does not meaningfully grapple with Europe’s role in the refugee crisis – the boats turned back, the drowned and suffocated bodies, the closed borders that consign the desperate to death. In “Io Capitano,” both the perpetrators of suffering and the suffering themselves are all African. 

And there’s no limit to the suffering experienced on the trek between Senegal and the Libyan coast at the hands of smugglers, soldiers, and profiteers. The two boys, so full of song at home, bear mute witness to unspeakable horrors: dead bodies prostrate in the sand, rigid as fallen statues, men flung from rocking truck beds and tortured in secret prisons. Seydou’s face burns, scars, twists, and ages as it takes in humanity’s worst atrocities. But it also reveals a kind of enlightenment. 

Though “Io Capitano” lacks political mettle, it’s overflowing in humanity, especially in the grace of Sarr’s beatific face filling the screen with awe and terror. Garrone’s past work has fluctuated between the brutally grim (“Gomorrah,” “Dogman”) and the opulently fantastical (“Pinocchio,” “Tale of Tales”); here, Garrone marries the sensibilities. Like all heroes’ journeys, Seydou and Moussa’s is touched by the divine, a spiritual dimension glimpsed at the edges of terror as visions of angels and ancestors aid Seydou.

It’s possible they’re just the hallucinations of a boy near death. But when the beaten-but-not-broken boy proclaims, “God is with us!” one can’t help but believe. 

Ranking: 3 out of 4 stars

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