News of the World: Deserves banner headlines

News of the World (2020) • View trailer

4.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, occasional profanity, disturbing images and dramatic intensity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.20

Paul Greengrass always makes thoughtful, emotionally engaging films, whether crowd-pleasing thrillers — three entries in the Jason Bourne series — or ripped-from-the-headlines dramas, such as Bloody Sunday, United 93 and 22 July.

 

Having been stopped on the road by a gang of questionable intent, Jefferson Kidd
(Tom Hanks) and his young companion (Helena Zengel) are "escorted" into the
nearby community of Durand, their fate most definitely uncertain.

His newest, based on poet/author Paulette Jiles’ 2016 novel of the same title, is a bit of both … due to current events that weren’t as obvious when she wrote her book.

 

News of the World — opening today in operational movie theaters — is set in early 1870, in the untamed and dangerous border between South Texas and Indian territory. Although the Civil War is five years gone, the nation remains bitterly divided; that’s particularly true in this state. Texas has yet to be readmitted to the Union, having refused thus far to ratify the 13th amendment banning slavery.

 

Patrols of Union soldiers maintain an uneasy peace in towns, and on the roads linking them; their presence is just as likely to inflame tension, as prevent it. Half of the population passionately fought for a vision of the country that was defeated; it’s unclear whether America — as a unified entity — can heal itself. Information itself is suspect, depending on its source.

 

Sound familiar?

 

Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a veteran of three wars, leads a peripatetic life within this environment. He travels from town to town, armed with newspapers and broadsheets, and draws crowds as a non-fiction storyteller who shares the news of presidents and queens, glorious feuds, devastating catastrophes and gripping incidents involving individual people.

 

He’s no Charles Dickens, with a thunderous and well-acted performance; he hunches over and squints through a magnifying glass while reading the tiny print aloud. But his delivery is no less captivating, thanks to Hanks’ warmth and sincerity; Kidd has a dignified bearing that grants him authority. People hang on his words, and he fills the house at 10 cents a head, thereby earning a meager but reliable living.

 

He’s wary and careful, when on the road with his humble wagon; roving bands of Union soldiers aren’t necessarily any safer than thieves and cutthroats.

 

One day he chances upon a frightened 10-year-old girl (Helena Zengel). Papers recovered from her demolished wagon — her adult companion having been lynched, due to his skin color — reveal that she’s Johanna Leonberger, whose family was killed six years earlier by the Kiowa tribe, who then raised her as one of their own. She’s now being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will, after her Kiowa home was burned by the soldiers who “rescued” her. In effect, she has been kidnapped twice.

 

Kidd hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with her. He tries first to enlist official Union aid; when that fails, he attempts to temporarily leave the girl in the care of friends in the nearest town. But she’s wild, speaks only Kiowa, and is hostile to this “civilized” world she never has experienced. Kidd ultimately decides to deliver her himself, to where the law insists she belongs.

 

Sylvie's Love: Out of tune

Sylvie's Love (2020) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, which is needlessly harsh, for mild sexual content

By Derrick Bang

At first blush, Sylvie’s Love — an Amazon Prime original — is a charming romantic drama, very much in the cinematic style of its late 1950s/early 1960s setting.

 

Having discovered their shared interest in quality jazz, Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) and
Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) can't help wondering if they have other things in common ...
such as a mutual attraction.

We rarely get a film so richly, thoroughly immersed in that period’s jazz scene. The incredibly busy soundtrack is laden with classics — “Waltz for Debby,” “Summertime,” “My Little Suede Shoes,” Sarah Vaughan’s “One Mint Julep” and many, many others — along with era-appropriate originals by score composer Fabrice Lecomte, drolly titled “B-Bop,” “B-Blue” and “B-Loved.”

 

Stars Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha are enchanting together, and we’re easily charmed as their characters meet and begin what becomes a challenging relationship. Nothing is particularly novel about writer/director Eugene Ashe’s narrative, but his film nonetheless delivers an affectionately retro, comfortably familiar vibe.

 

Until he hits us with a thoroughly ridiculous and wholly unwarranted left turn, as we near the story’s conclusion. Which, frankly, ruins everything.

 

I don’t often see a filmmaker sabotage his own work so catastrophically.

 

Following a fleeting (and rather pointless) flash-forward, the story opens during the hot Harlem summer of 1957. Sylvie (Thompson) fills her days helping at her father’s music store — Mr. Jay’s Records — although she actually spends more time glued to a TV set: not as a casual viewer, but as the careful observer of what goes into the production of a show, because she hopes one day to establish a career in television.

 

Robert (Asomugha) plays tenor sax in a bebop quartet led by the less talented — but much better known — Dickie Brewster (Tone Bell). Robert chafes at the artistic limitations, but, well, a gig is a gig.

 

Needing to supplement his income, Robert applies for a job at Mr. Jay’s Records, after seeing a “help wanted” sign in the window. He and Sylvie share a flirty meet-cute moment, but she’s unavailable; she’s waiting for her fiancé to return from war service.

 

“Unavailable” doesn’t meet “uninterested,” of course, and — as the days pass — nature takes its course. This romantic inevitability is given swooning intensity by pop tunes such as Doris Day’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” the Drifters’ “Fools Fall in Love” and Louis Armstrong’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”

 

The Prom: Gotta sing! Gotta dance!

The Prom (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for thematic elements and suggestive/sexual candor

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.22.21

It’s easy to see why director Ryan Murphy was attracted to this Tony-nominated stage musical; it’s basically a double-length episode of his hit TV series, Glee.

 

On steroids. With an A-list cast.

 

Having decided to save a small Indiana town from itself, our four Broadway stars — from
left, Trent (Andrew Rannells), Barry (James Corden), Dee Dee (Meryl Streep) and
Angie (Nicole Kidman) — salute themselves in song.

The Prom — a Netflix original — boldly blends serious social commentary with frivolous Broadway razzmatazz, and gets away with it because the Bob Martin/Chad Beuelin script cheekily acknowledges as much.

 

“This is how actors intervene,” proclaim the lyrics in one of the many patter tunes, “through fiery songs and dance breaks!”

 

Indeed, Beguilin’s lyrics — he co-created the stage musical, with Martin’s book and Matthew Sklar’s music — are wickedly clever, with snarky messaging, insider jokes and tongue-twistingly inventive rhymes that even Tom Lehrer would admire.

 

Assign this material to scene-stealing talents such as Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman and Andrew Rannells, and the result — while a bit bloated, at 130 minutes — is a lot of fun.

 

The story kicks off during the opening night production of Eleanor!: The Eleanor Roosevelt Story, a wildly expensive and thematically ill-advised musical featuring New York stage stars Dee Dee Allen (Streep) and Barry Glickman (Corden). The post-opening party turns into a disaster when reviews crucify the show, effectively flat-lining their careers.

 

While commiserating with career chorus girl Angie Dickinson (Kidman) — who has just quit her 20-year job in the musical Chicago, after once again losing the plum role of Roxie Hart, this time to Tina-Louise (very late of Gilligan’s Island, and still with us) — they decide that salvation lies is attaching their star status to some sort of noble cause, thereby reaping the benefit of flattering publicity.

 

Trouble is, Dee Dee and Barry are unapologetic narcissists — and even admit as much, in song — and therefore embrace this notion for all the wrong reasons.

Happiest Season: Romantic holiday angst

Happiest Season (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.24.20

Some people approach the holidays with far too much emphasis on expectation — everything must be just so, and God forbid any little detail goes awry — rather than simply basking in the comforting glow of seasonal spirit.

 

When Harper (Mackenzie Davis, left) and her family decide to hit the
local ice-skating rink, she doesn't think to ask if her lover, Abby
(Kristen Stewart) knows how to skate.

Add a supplementary “important” reason for gathering, and the pressure becomes enormous.

 

(And the stuff of countless Christmas movies.)

 

Abby Holland (Kristen Stewart) has suffered the Christmas blahs ever since losing her parents a few years back. Hoping to cure this, her lover Harper Caldwell (Mackenzie Davis) impulsively insists that Abby come along for a family celebration in her home town. Warming to this suggestion, Abby decides it’ll be the perfect time to meet Harper’s folks, and then propose to her on Christmas morning.

 

Ted Caldwell (Victor Garber), in turn, wants his entire family present during the few days leading up to Christmas, as a picture-perfect “showcase” to help fuel his run for town mayor.

 

Except …

 

Ted’s family is far from perfect. Harper’s younger sister Jane (Mary Holland) is an aggressively giddy nerd with no concept of social boundaries, who constantly babbles about the epic fantasy novel she has been writing for the past 10 years. Perfectionist mother Tipper (Mary Steenburgen), although polite to a fault, insists on recording everything for her new social media presence.

 

Snooty elder sister Sloane (Alison Brie) and her husband Eric (Burl Moseley) abandoned their law careers in order to craft custom-made gift baskets. (Correction: Sloane archly calls then “curated gift experiences inside of handmade reclaimed wood vessels.”)

 

On top of which … little problem … Harper confesses, during the drive from Pittsburgh to her family’s upstate Pennsylvania town, that she hasn’t yet come out to her parents.

 

Despite having told Abby that she did so, quite a few months back.

 

And, well, y’know, now probably isn’t the best time, given Dad’s mayoral run, and their community’s conservative values. So how ’bout you just pretend to be my straight roommate?

 

At which point, a gal with even an ounce of common sense and self-esteem would bolt from the car, and hitch a ride back to Pittsburgh. (But then we’d have no movie.)

Dear Santa: The year's best feel-good film

Dear Santa (2020) • View trailer

Five stars. Unrated, and suitable for all ages

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.11.20

Given how it was sabotaged by malevolent forces this past summer — over which its roughly 496,000 hard-working employees had no control — the U.S. Postal Service could use some nice publicity right about now.

 

Having decided upon the perfect gift for a needy child, the students in this grade school
classroom busily wrap it, in anticipation of delivery to an Operation Santa drop-off
center.

Documentarian Dana Nachman has delivered just the right package.

 

Dear Santa — available via Amazon Prime — isn’t merely a charming look at the USPS’ “Operation Santa Claus,” which dates back to 1912. It’s also a reminder — at a time when the opposite too frequently seems to be true — that the world is full of kind, thoughtful, selfless and generous people.

 

Children began writing letters to Santa right around the time cartoonist Thomas Nast drew an 1871 image of the Jolly Red Elf seated at a desk, reading his mail and sorting it into two labeled piles: “Letters from good children’s parents” and “Letters from naughty children’s parents.” (Nast, something of a curmudgeon, made the latter pile far taller.)

 

For the next few decades, such Santa mail was considered undeliverable and returned to their senders, or (much worse) consigned to the Dead Letter Office. This changed shortly after the turn of the century, when philanthropists and charities —embracing the notion of fulfilling Santa’s role for poor children who send him letters — pressured the USPS to adopt a kinder, gentler approach. Then-Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock responded by creating the program that now is more than a century old.

 

Before we go any further: Parents, rest assured that Nachman carefully maintains the all-important notion that the “USPS Elves” depicted here are merely Santa’s helpers, taking instruction from the super-secret enclave somewhere in the North Pole. Youngsters (and wise adults) who still believe in Santa Claus will not have that faith shaken by anything in this film.

 

Nachman opens with a too-cute-for-words montage of small children discussing all aspects of Santa: his history, what he looks like, how he delivers all those gifts in a single evening, and so forth. Nachman and editor Jennifer Steinman Sternin deftly cut in such a way that these kids finish each other’s thoughts and sentences; the effect is beyond adorable.

 

Some of the comments also have a classic “Kids Say the Darndest Things” vibe, such as this thought from a little girl named Cassidy: “My cousin met the real Santa, in real life, because he showed her his ID.”

 

This introductory sequence is merely the first of an increasingly powerful series of aw-shucks moments, during an 84-minute film that could touch even the heart of the crankiest Ebenezer Scrooge in your household.

Jingle Jangle — A Christmas Journey: Sparkling all the way

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.18.20

This is an impressive slice of holiday razzle-dazzle.

 

The tag line for writer/director David E. Talbert’s opulent fantasy promises that viewers will “discover a world of wishes and wonder,” and that’s an understatement. This often breathtaking blend of Alice in Wonderland, Babes in Toyland and Hugo also seems to be gunning for the seasonal crown long worn by The Wizard of Oz. 

 

Perky Journey (Madalen Mills), not one to be denied, insists that her grandfather
Jeronicus (Forest Whitaker) take another crack at perfecting his Buddy 3000 robot toy.

Because yes: Just as we’re getting accustomed to the production design and special-effects overload, John Debney’s orchestral underscore shifts into a Broadway-style prelude, and we realize, goodness, these folks are about to break into song.

 

Which they do. In addition to everything else, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey — a Netflix original — is an old-school musical, complete with a few extravagant dance numbers.

 

Actually, Talbert might hit us with too much of a good thing: a notion emphasized midway through this saga, when we’re introduced to an oh-so-cute little robot dubbed Buddy 3000 (and looking like he wandered in from WALL-E’s universe).

 

Events are related in storybook fashion, much the way Peter Falk narrated the action in The Princess Bride to grandson Fred Savage. The raconteur here is Grandmother Journey (Phylicia Rashad), who shares her childhood adventure with a pair of rapt young listeners.

 

First, a prologue, set in 1860 in the quaint Dickensian town of Cobbleton. Jeronicus Jangle (Justin Cornwell) is proprietor and designer of the delights found within Jangles and Things, the town’s famed toy shop. It’s chockablock with colorful, steampunk-inspired gadgets, gizmos, whachamacallits, thingamabobs and doomaflatchies, including a huge pendulum clock and a contraption called the Jangulator.

 

Production designer Gavin Bocquet went absolutely nuts with this eye-popping set, with its checkerboard floors, damask wallpaper and stairwell filigree; it’s impossible to take it all in.

 

Anyway…

 

Jeronicus uses the Jangulator to grant life to a doll-size, Spanish matador puppet dubbed Don Juan Diego (and played, via deliberately jerky motion-control, by Ricky Martin). Ah, but Don Juan is an evil little creature, and he persuades Jeronicus’ assistant, Gustafson (Miles Barrow), to set up a separate shingle and claim this miracle as his own.

 

Wild Mountain Thyme: A charming romantic fable

Wild Mountain Thyme (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and needlessly, for "suggestive content"

By Derrick Bang 

Lovers of British whimsy likely will embrace this leisurely romantic comedy — available via video-on-demand — which takes an Irish approach to the conventional formula.

 

Rosemary (Emily Blunt) has loved Anthony (Jamie Dornan) ever since they were 10 years
old. Now in their mid-30s, with so much time already behind them, she wonders if he'll
ever be brave enough to ask her hand in marriage.

Given the Irish setting and poetic spirit, writer/director John Patrick Shanley’s gentle little fable — which he adapted from his 2014 Broadway play, Outside Mullingar — naturally involves an element of loss, and is fueled by the beloved, melancholy Celtic folk song that gives his film its title.

 

The mood is established immediately by off-camera narrator Tony Reilly (Christopher Walken), who explains — as cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt’s camera swoops above the wild, amazingly green, stunningly gorgeous Irish countryside — “They say, if an Irishman dies while he’s telling a story, you can rest assured, he’ll be back.”

 

Seriously, how can you resist an opening like that?

 

Anthony Reilly (Jamie Dornan) and Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt) have lived on neighboring farms their entire lives, and she has loved him unreservedly since they were 10 years old. Everybody in their closely knit farming community knows they’re meant for each other … except Anthony.

 

He’s an eccentric, tongue-tied introvert who — fearing that he’s “tetched” — believes himself unlovable. He steadfastly works the family farm, having taken over all chores and responsibilities from his aging father Tony, who nonetheless irascibly grumbles that his son “doesn’t have what it takes.”

 

To a significant degree, Tony is nettled by Anthony’s unwillingness to get on with it, and marry Rosemary, fercryinoutloud. She, in turn — her feisty, independent nature notwithstanding — patiently waits for Anthony to come to his senses. (“Romeo’s not able to climb the balcony,” Shanley muses, in the press notes, “and Juliet won’t come down.”)

 

Tony also grouses about the fact that their farm is blocked by two gates that enclose a little strip of road owned by the Muldoons: which is to say, it’s necessary to open and close those gates every time one enters or leaves the Reilly farm. 

 

The death of Rosemary’s father Chris — who spent his entire life “at war with the crows” — proves a catalyst of sorts. Rosemary’s mother Aoife (Dearbhla Molloy) is bereft, and Tony senses that his own time on Earth is drawing to a close. Something needs to be done, and so he makes a decision that dismays everybody: He announces his intention to sell the family farm to his American nephew, Adam (Jon Hamm).

 

Half Brothers: Not even halfway entertaining

Half Brothers (2020) • View trailer

Three stars. Rated PG-13, for profanity and brief violence

By Derrick Bang

Director Luke Greenfield’s odd little film — in operational theaters starting today — has some heavy social commentary for what’s essentially a road-trip comedy.

 

The two halves don’t meld very well.

 

Renato (Luis Gerardo Méndez, left) has no idea why his newly discovered half-brother
Asher (Connor Del Rio) decides to rescue one of the "residents" of a goat farm ... and
he's not really inclined to ask.

The script — by Ali LeRoi, Eduardo Cisneros and Jason Shuman — makes pungent observations about the way some Americans shamefully stereotype (and treat) Mexicans, but such serious sentiments feel like an afterthought: an eleventh-hour attempt to make a plain-vanilla comedy more “relevant.”

 Mind you, the story definitely needed some sort of help, because it’s quite uneven: at best, a well-intentioned mess.

 

A brief prologue — set in the early 1990s — depicts the strong, loving relationship between young Renato Murguia (Ian Inago) and his father, Flavio (Juan Pablo Espinosa). They bond while flying radio-controlled airplane models from the grassy hills overlooking San Miguel de Allende, chortling with delight as they buzz patrons in the streets.

 

Then the 1994 Mexican currency crisis hits, so Flavio reluctantly leaves his wife and son in order to find work in the United States. And never returns.

 

Flash-forward to the present day: Renato (now played by Luis Gerardo Méndez) has become a successful entrepreneur and owner of a private-jet charter company. He’s days away from tying the knot with fiancée Pamela (Pia Watson), when he gets an unexpected phone call from his father’s American wife (Ashley Poole), in Chicago. Flavio is dying, and wishes to see his son one final time.

 

And right away, we have a disconnect that only gets worse as the film proceeds: an “impossible contrivance” that simply cannot be swallowed.

 

Given that Espinosa consistently portrays Flavio as an honorable and steadfastly caring father and husband  — during a series of flashbacks interspersed with the ongoing contemporary events — there is simply no way he’d wholly abandon Renato and his mother for several decades. No phone calls or letters, let alone occasional visits?

 

I simply don’t buy it.

 

Hillbilly Elegy: Survival of the fittest

Hillbilly Elegy (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, violence and drug use

By Derrick Bang 

Family ties, even when the dynamic is volatile, can be intractably strong.

 

It’s biological: We’re conditioned to love our parents, even when doing so is self-destructive.

 

Lindsay (Haley Bennett, left), J.D. (Owen Asztalos) and their grandmother (Glenn Close)
watch helplessly as events spiral out of control, thanks to an increasing police presence.

As a child, James David (“J.D.”) Vance was an unlikely candidate for escaping his working-class origins, while shuttling between small-town Ohio and the grimly struggling Appalachian environment of his grandparents; that challenge alone would have seemed insurmountable to most.

 

Toss a toxic mother into the mix, and the boy should have been doomed.

 

But he didn’t merely survive; he thrived, eventually graduating from Ohio State and obtaining a Yale Law School degree. He depicted this journey in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy; the book became a best-seller and a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, embraced as a revealing glimpse of the white working class.

 

Under the sensitive guidance of director Ron Howard and scripter Vanessa Taylor — Oscar-nominated for co-writing 2017’s The Shape of Water — Vance’s saga has become an absorbing and frequently gut-wrenching Netflix original film. The narrative glides smoothly between two time periods: J.D.’s realization, as a young teen (Owen Asztalos), that his mother has serious problems; and his reluctant decision, while at Yale (now played by Gabriel Basso), to return to the home he has tried to forget, in order to navigate a fresh family crisis.

 

The film is dominated by two powerhouse performances: Amy Adams, as J.D.’s unstable, unkempt and vicious-tempered mother Bev; and Glenn Close as her mother Mamaw, who becomes J.D.’s surrogate parent. Both actresses chew up the scenery in grand style, but never to a degree that feels exaggerated or baroque. 

 

The story’s power comes from the persuasive depictions of both women: Bev, most frequently unpleasant, but with unexpected bursts of motherly kindness; Mamaw, most often caring, in a tough-love manner, but quite capable of unleashing her own demons.

 

At first blush, though — as we meet young J.D., visiting his grandparents with his mother and older sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett)  — the overall dynamic seems protectively loyal. The occasion of an extended family photo gives Howard an opportunity to flash through a series of similar photographic portraits, stretching back generations: a clear message that this Appalachian clan has long been proud, defiant and caring of its own.

 

But this is the final day of a summer vacation under the watchful gaze of Mamaw and Papaw (Bo Hopkins). When Bev drives her two children back home to Middletown, Ohio, the dynamic shifts. Lindsay decamps to the company of her boyfriend — and soon to be husband — Kevin (Jono Mitchell), leaving J.D. in the sole company of his mother.

 

Along with her revolving door of male companions (apparently an ongoing thing, since the boy got his last name — Vance — from husband No. 3).

The Life Ahead: Brimming with heart

The Life Ahead (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity

By Derrick Bang

James Cagney came out of a 20-year retirement, for his final great role in 1981’s Ragtime.

 

Audrey Hepburn returned from semi-retirement after 1967’s Wait Until Dark, for 1976’s Robin and Marian and a few more choice roles.

 

Although knowing full well how he spends his daytime hours, Madame Rosa (Sophia
Loren) soon sees something worth saving in the tough young street kid (Ibrahima
Gueye) who has been thrust into her life.

Cary Grant stayed retired after 1966’s Walk, Don’t Run (more’s the pity).

 

And now Sophia Loren, 86 years young, has returned to cinema after a decade-long absence. The lure: The Life Ahead, debuting on Netflix. It’s a fresh adaptation of Romain Gary’s 1975 novel, The Life Before Us, which won the Foreign Language Academy Award when filmed in 1977 as Madame Rosa.

 

The additional lure: This new version is directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti.

 

They do each other proud.

 

The setting is seaside Naples, more or less in the present day. Even so, Ponti and cinematographer Angus Hudson maintain an atmosphere of vagueness; absent the presence of cell phones, this could be 10, 20 years ago. The nature of the story is similarly timeless; the script — by Ugo Chiti, Fabio Natale and Ponti — quietly emphasizes the universality of relationships, trust and kindness.

 

The elderly Madame Rosa (Loren) is a former prostitute who, with the assistance of a local doctor (Renato Carpentieri, as Dr. Coen), has made a second career of caring for the abandoned — or orphaned — children of sex workers. Such placements are intended to be temporary: only until each child can be sent to a safer, more permanent environment.

 

Her current charges are Iosif (Iosif Diego Pirvu), an adolescent she’s teaching to read and speak Hebrew; and the toddler daughter of Lola (Abril Zamora), a trans prostitute who’s a close friend. This little network of allies also includes Hamil (Babk Karimi), a shopkeeper who respects Madame Rosa for her selfless work.

 

She has performed this valuable service for years and years: long enough that some of her former “wards” have become the police officers who tacitly leave her alone, when rousting other “undesirables” from the neighborhood.

 

She’s mugged one day by Momo (Ibrahima Gueye), a brazen 12-year-old street kid who — in one of those coincidences favored by stories of this sort — happens to be Dr. Coen’s latest “project.” He coaxes truth from the boy, and thus is able to return Madame Rosa’s stolen property. And then — salt in the wound! — he asks her to take temporary charge of Momo: a proposal that dismays both of them.

 

Give it time, Dr. Coen pleads; there’s some good in the boy. She isn’t sure about that. (Neither are we.)

Uncle Frank: One of the year's best

Uncle Frank (2020) • View trailer

4.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and drug use

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.27.20 

I haven’t been this nervous since Anne Hathaway reached for the microphone, in 2008’s Rachel Getting Married.

 

Although she has adored him her entire life, Beth (Sophia Lillis) begins to realize that
there's a lot more to her Uncle Frank (Paul Bettany) than he reveals to most people.

Writer/director Alan Ball’s Uncle Frank — an Amazon Prime original — is a deeply personal and sensitively handled character study, brought to life by an excellent ensemble cast headed by Paul Bettany, Sophia Lillis and Peter Macdissi. Ball deftly walks the razor’s edge that often separates comedy from tragedy, delicately developing circumstances that set up a third-act revelation/confrontation that raises our anxiety to the screaming level.

 

We know an emotional train wreck is coming.

 

A lengthy prologue — set in 1969, in tiny Creekville, S.C. — introduces the Bledsoe clan during a rowdy birthday party for elderly patriarch Daddy Mac (Stephen Root). Three generations are present: Daddy Mac, his wife Mammaw (Margo Martindale) and Aunt Butch (Lois Smith); adult children Frank (Bettany), Neva (Jane McNeill) and Mike (Steve Zahn); the latter two’s respective spouses, Beau (Burgess Jenkins) and Kitty (Judy Greer); and a rambunctious passel of grandkids.

 

Fourteen-year-old Beth (Lillis) stands out as a quiet observer, keenly attuned to the moods of others. Alas, she isn’t quick enough to prevent an irate Daddy Mac from explosively chewing out the younger kids: an eyebrow-raising moment that reveals a truly nasty temper.

 

We also don’t notice Frank right away; like Beth, he seems somehow removed from the noisy celebration. The exchange of gifts reveals a guarded dynamic between Frank and his unpleasant father. We assume it’s the former’s outsider status; unlike everybody else in the room, Frank long ago left Creekville for the Big Apple, where he has become a revered literature professor at New York University (NYU).

 

Frank escaped the vicious cycle of high school pregnancies that trap Creekville 16-year-olds into a lifetime of drudge jobs: a fate he hopes Beth also can avoid. He’s her favorite adult: the only one who treats her like a person, and not a child, listening attentively to her every word. But she fears her limited options, given family circumstances.

 

Don’t settle for who people expect you to become, he advises; become who you want to be.

 

That sentiment caps an achingly sweet and poignant chat on the porch, an entire world removed from the noisy clan on the other side of the wall: staged by Ball with carefully nuanced sensitivity, and delivered with touching persuasiveness by Bettany and Lillis.

 

This film is bookended by an older Beth’s off-camera narration, much in the manner of the adult Scout, in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird. (A bit later, Ball cheekily has Beth admit that Harper Lee is one of her favorite authors.)