The French Dispatch: Impenetrable language barrier

The French Dispatch (2021) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for graphic nudity, profanity and sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.29.21

Although one can only marvel, gape-jawed, at the feverish, coordinated complexity of set and backdrop movement, carefully composed and choreographed actor placement, traveling camerawork and integrated miniatures — relentlessly, as this aggressively bizarre film proceeds — all this visual razzmatazz rapidly wears out its welcome.

 

Magazine editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray, left) listens while star journalist
Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright, right) defends his turn of phrase; both are ignored
by another staffer who serves more as background decoration, given that he never
has written a word.

A classic case of the tail wagging the dog.

There’s never been any doubt that Wes Anderson, as a filmmaker, is obsessed with eccentricity and kitsch; his cinematic visions generally occupy a universe several steps beyond traditionally heightened reality. When he succeeds, the result can be a bravura work of genius, as with The Grand Budapest Hotel.

 

When he slides off the rails, as with this one, we’re left with nothing but contrived and relentlessly mannered weirdness for its own sake. Which doesn’t work.

 

Worse yet, despite all the marvelous eye candy, this film is boring. Crushingly boring.

 

It looks like half of Hollywood wanders through this self-indulgent vanity project, sometimes for no more than a minute or so. You could spend the entire film just trying to identify everybody (and, at times, that’s more interesting than trying to follow the outré storytelling).

 

In fairness, the premise and narrative gimmick are delectable. In a setting that seems 1950s-ish, The French Dispatch is a widely circulated American magazine based in the French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé, lovingly overseen by quietly cranky, Kansas-born editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray).

 

If Anderson’s vision begins to feel like a love letter to the venerable New Yorker magazine, during its 1950s and ’60s heyday, well … that’s undoubtedly intentional.

 

As the film begins, Howitzer has just died. The staff journalists — hand-picked over the years, sometimes less for their writing chops, and more for the way they lend atmosphere to the voluminous offices — assemble to draft his obituary, and prepare the magazine’s final issue. We then watch the three primary feature stories crafted, over time, by writers who embedded themselves, and became part of their assignments.

 

The generous application of flashbacks allows Murray plenty of screen time, as he fine-tunes each piece. His traditional advice, to each scribe: “Try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose.” (You’ve gotta love that line.)

 

We open with a brief travelogue, as Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), the “Cycling Reporter,” takes us on a guided tour of Ennui-sur-Blasé: along the way relating the city’s history, while proudly highlighting many of the seedier neighborhoods, and their often wacky inhabitants.

 

This entertaining sequence showcases the astonishing work by production designer Adam Stockhausen, supervising art director Stéphane Cressend and cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman, who (I hope) was paid by the mile, because he must’ve been run off his feet.

Dune: Epic sci-fi storytelling

Dune (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and somewhat generously, for considerable violence, disturbing images and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters and (until November 21) HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

This film’s final line of dialogue, spoken with a soft smile and the hint of promise by a key character: “This is only the beginning.”

 

Deliberate irony, I’m sure, on the part of director Denis Villeneuve.

 

With seconds to spare before a massive sandworm erupts to the desert surface, Gurney
Halleck (Josh Brolin, left) drags Paul (Timothée Chalamet) onto their ornithopter, just
as the aircraft takes off.

Folks wondering how Frank Herbert’s complex 1965 novel could be condensed into a 155-minute movie need wonder no longer. Misleading publicity notwithstanding, this actually is Dune: Part One … with the second half likely several years away.

From what I recall — the read was decades ago — Villeneuve and co-scripters Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth get slightly more than halfway into Herbert’s chunky book. In fairness, the breakpoint is logical — more or less where Herbert divided the two portions of his novel — and the film’s conclusion is reasonably satisfying.

 

But let’s just say that about 17 chads are left hanging. Resolution ain’t in the cards. Not yet.

 

That aside, Villeneuve’s always engaging film is a breathtaking display of sci-fi world-building: absolutely an honorable adaptation of Herbert’s blend of future-dreaming, socio-political commentary and (for its time) ground-breaking eco-fiction.

 

Dune has, practically since publication, been the great white whale of filmmakers. Surrealistic Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky spent three years, in the mid-1970s, trying to mount an adaptation that would have starred David Carradine and Salvador Dali(!), with music by Pink Floyd (!!); the project finally collapsed when backers bolted over the rising budget. 

 

David Lynch’s misbegotten effort, deservedly loathed by fans and critics, did make it to the screen in 1984 (and more’s the pity).

 

The 2000 TV miniseries isn’t bad; it also isn’t very good.

 

Neither holds a candle to the bravura work by Villeneuve and the massive, massive crew that brought this vision to the screen. This is true sense-of-wonder moviemaking.

 

For all its merits, Herbert’s novel is a slog at times, burdened by didactic passages and tediously descriptive prose. This film’s greatest achievement — scripters, take a bow — is the distillation of such stuff: retaining just enough to highlight the essential plot points and narrative beats, while simultaneously juicing up dramatic tension.

 

That makes this film frequently exciting: something that’s rarely true of Herbert’s novel. Villeneuve and editor Joe Walker move things along at a suspenseful clip, and matters almost never flag. (This can’t be said of Villeneuve’s previous film, Blade Runner 2049, which — despite its many merits — is hampered by far too many dull stretches of Nothing Much Happens).

 

With Dune finally realized so marvelously on the big screen, one can readily see — as just the most obviously example — how much this story influenced George Lucas.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain: Heartbreaking study of a tormented artist

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and (beginning November 5) Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

One rarely encounters such a Dickensian life, outside of a Charles Dickens novel.

 

Artist Louis Wain’s personal and professional life was just as tragic, as the majority of his vast output was playfully joyous. He remains, to this day, one of the most beloved commercial illustrators in English history; during the Edwardian era, it was the rare home that lacked one of his posters, or many of his children’s books.

 

Louis (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Emily (Claire Foy) are
surprised to find a scruffy, rain-soaked kitten in their
garden. They'll soon be even more surprised by the
degree to which this little feline affects the arc of
Louis' artistic career.

He also deserves credit for helping elevate the humble pussycat into a companion worthy of being a pet, rather than a pesky creature best relegated to the streets.

Author H.G. Wells famously noted — during a radio broadcast reproduced in this biographical drama — that “He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.”

 

Wain also was quite popular on this side of the pond, at the beginning of the 20th century, and then much later, in the 1970s, when his more outré cat paintings were ubiquitous among the, ah, college-age psychedelic set.

 

Director Will Sharpe’s poignant, deeply sensitive film is highlighted by sublime performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy. The script, by Sharpe and Simon Stephenson, is remarkably faithful to Wain’s life and career … the all-too-brief highs and numerous shattering lows of which, are almost too much to bear.

 

Indeed, this saga’s midpoint, highlighted by an intensely intimate scene between Cumberbatch and Foy, surely ranks as one of the saddest, most heartbreaking moments ever captured on film.

 

The story begins in the early 1880s, when — following their father’s unexpected death — 20-year-old Louis (Cumberbatch), as the family’s lone male, is forced to support his mother and five younger sisters. 

 

Fortunately, he has a remarkable — and rapid — facility for drawing and painting, which he’s able to do with both hands simultaneously (which Cumberbatch depicts persuasively). Louis specializes in animals and country scenes, and within a few years is selling work to journals such as the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and, a bit later, the Illustrated London News.

 

Unfortunately, Louis also suffers from a mental illness — possibly schizophrenia — which would remain undiagnosed throughout his lifetime. Symptoms include an irrational fear of drowning, which strikes unexpectedly. For the most part, he keeps such demons at bay via the manic intensity with which he fills every minute of every hour: sketching, tinkering with useless inventions, “composing” unmelodic musical works, and even sparring uselessly in an amateur boxing ring.

 

Along with a frenzied fascination with the wonders of electricity, which he comes to believe is a defining force in life and the universe.

 

So, yes: Cumberbatch once again is portraying an eccentric and deeply unstable genius, who’s all tics and twitches. But it must be acknowledged that his Louis Wain is completely distinct from his Sherlock Holmes, or his Alan Turing, or his Hamlet.

The Forgotten Battle: A bleak, riveting war epic

The Forgotten Battle (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated TV-MA, with R-levels of relentless violence and gore, and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

The World War II experience, as depicted by Hollywood since the 1940s, logically has focused on the involvement of U.S. troops; during subsequent decades, our expanding impression of the Allied struggle against Nazi forces — on the large and small screen — has been augmented by equally absorbing and informative films from our British cousins.

 

Marinus (Gijs Blom), who betrayed his Dutch comrades by joining the German invaders,
finds his beliefs shaken after a telling conversation with a disillusioned Nazi officer.

But very few English-language productions have acknowledged the greater scope of Allied resistance. Rare exceptions include 1977’s A Bridge Too Far, which takes place in September 1944 and gives equal weight to American, British, Canadian, Polish and Dutch participation in Operation Market Garden; and portions of the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, with similar attention paid to Canadian involvement.

No surprise, then, that it has fallen to Dutch filmmakers to properly depict how the Allied/Nazi clash impacted a considerable portion of the Netherlands.

 

Director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s impressively ambitious De slag om de Schelde — re-titled The Forgotten Battle, for its Stateside release — is the second most expensive Dutch film ever made, and the money certainly is visible on the screen. This is riveting, old-style, war-era filmmaking, with hundreds of extras populating production designer Hubert Pouille’s jaw-droppingly expansive sets and locations.

 

The overall tone? Quite grim.

 

The story is set primarily in German-occupied Zeeland, the westernmost province of the Netherlands, following the June 1944 Normandy landings and subsequent incremental advance against Nazi forces. As cleverly illustrated by the interactive map that prologues this film, the Allies’ goal is to open a shipping route to Antwerp, in Belgium, to act as an essential supply channel.

 

As summer passes into autumn, the extremely complex script — credited to van Heijningen, Paula van der Oest, Jesse Maiman, Pauline van Mantgem and Reinier Smit — follows subsequent events through the eyes of three disparate (fictitious) characters.

 

Marinus van Staveren (Gijs Blom), a turncoat Dutch volunteer who joined the Wehrmacht in the naïve belief that Germany would improve conditions in his country, is introduced during a furious battle against Russian forces on the Eastern front. Marinus later wakens in a hospital, more or less intact, and comes to the attention of a disillusioned SS lieutenant, who — after having lost both his legs — has learned just how unscrupulous the Nazi concept of “fair” actually is.

 

“If you tell a lie big enough, and repeat it often enough,” the lieutenant laments, quoting Joseph Goebbels, “eventually people will come to believe it.”

 

(Boy, doesn’t that sound familiar?)

 

The lieutenant still has some juice with his superiors, and — in an unexpected act of benevolence — manages to get Marinus transferred away from the front.

The Last Duel: Grimly absorbing medieval drama

The Last Duel (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, sexual assault, graphic nudity and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.15.21

Does actual truth exist?

 

Or is “truth” inevitably shaded by the perception and biases of the person claiming to present it?

 

Honoring a degree of chivalry neither man feels at this point, Jacques Le Gris (Adam
Driver, left) and Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) clasp hands prior to the duel that
will leave one of them dead.

Director Akira Kurosawa famously explored this notion with 1950’s Rashomon, in which numerous characters deliver subjective, alternative and contradictory versions of having witnessed the murder of a samurai. Actual “truth” proves to be elusive.

Scripters Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon — adapting Eric Jager’s 2004 historical study of the same title — have taken a cue from Kurosawa, with their intriguing approach to director Ridley Scott’s lavish new film. The “last duel” refers to the last official judicial duel permitted by the French King (Charles VI, at the time) and the Parliament of Paris, which took place on Dec. 29, 1386.

 

(Let me pause, to acknowledge mild surprise; I’d have expected such duels to continue for many centuries beyond that date.)

 

The death match resulted from Norman knight Jean de Carrouges’s accusation that his wife, Marguerite, had been raped by squire Jacques Le Gris, who denied the charge. When existing legal options for redress were thwarted by Count Pierre d’Alençon — under whom both men served, but who favored Le Gris — Carrouges cleverly (rashly?) demanded a “trial by combat,” wherein the survivor’s version of events would be “sanctified by God’s judgment.”

 

Interesting times, the 14th century…

 

This era has been persuasively established by Scott, production designer Arthur Max, and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski. Everything looks and feels authentic: the harsh, unforgiving landscape; the massive, fortified castles and estates; costume designer Janty Yates’ myriad creations for nobles, commoners and serfs; and the boisterous, bedraggled, grime-encrusted cast of many, many hundreds (if not the iconic thousands).

 

Damon’s scruffy, hulking Jean de Carrouges is bold, rash and a formidable warrior. He’s also emotionally adrift, having lost his wife and only son to the plague. Uneducated and unable to properly manage his estate, he’s forever behind in the “rent” owed Pierre d’Alençon (Affleck, initially unrecognized beneath curly blond hair and beard), which annoys the count.

 

Carrouges and Le Gris (Adam Driver) began as neighbors and friends; the latter became godfather to Carrouges’ ill-fated son. They serve in bloody battle together, an example of which opens this film: a brutal, gory scrum of iron-clad men bashing each other to death. With horses, swords, daggers and battle axes. 

 

Several such melees take place as the story progresses, staged for maximum impact by editor Claire Simpson, fight choreographer Troy Milenov and stunt coordinator Rob Inch. They’re not for the faint of heart.

 

As to where the relationship between Carrouges and Le Gris goes from there…

Halloween Kills: Send it to an early grave

Halloween Kills (2021) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated R, for strong gory violence, grisly images, profanity and drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

What. A. Stinker.

 

Unless I’m missing one, this is the 12th entry in the undead franchise that began with 1978’s Halloween, a modest little shocker that still out-performs all of its descendants.

 

Having barely survived what they felt was their final encounter with the murderous
Michael Myers (hah!), Karen (Judy Greer, left) and Allyson (Andi Matichak, right)
rush a badly wounded Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) to the hospital.

The series has been wholly re-invented at least twice, and Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode has been killed the same number of times … only to be resurrected by subsequent filmmakers anxious for her dwindling fan cred, who explained this away by insisting, “Oh, that one (or those several) didn’t count.”

Even by such increasingly contrived standards, in a textbook case of rapidly diminishing returns, director David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills is an insufferable waste of time.

 

For starters, Curtis’ top-billed credit is a bait-and-switch; her Laurie Strode is present for only five, perhaps 10 minutes … and she spends the majority of that time moaning in a hospital bed.

 

Instead, our nominal “heroes” are Laurie’s daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), returning from 2018’s Halloween, the most recent re-boot, which kicked off a trilogy that’ll conclude (yeah, right) with next year’s Halloween Ends.

 

And while it’s nice that Green — along with co-writers Scott Teems and Danny McBride — have name-checked characters and events from John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, it would have been even better if they’d written a coherent script. Seriously, nothing that happens in this misbegotten flick makes any sense — except as a means to set up another welter of gory deaths — and every character’s dialogue is random, hysterical gibberish.

 

So okay: It’s fun to see the now-adult Kyle Richards, reprising her role as Lindsey Wallace, one of the kids Laurie babysat back in 1978; and Nancy Stephens, as Marion Chambers, the nurse accompanying Donald Pleasance’s Samuel Loomis (also glimpsed in fleeting flashbacks); and Charles Cyphers, as Haddonfield’s former Sheriff Leigh Brackett, who lost his daughter during the masked Michael Myers’ initial rampage.

 

But it would have been even more fun, if this new film gave them something intelligent to do.

 

Sigh.

 

By way of quick recap, the 2018 film concluded as Laurie, Karen and Allyson cleverly trapped Michael in a long-planned basement dungeon, and then set the entire house on fire. At long last, the demise of Michael Myers, right?

 

Of course not.

Best Sellers: A whimsical read

Best Sellers (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Unrated, with R-level profanity and vulgarity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

This seems to be “veteran Hollywood royalty” season, with both Michael Caine and Clint Eastwood starring in new films, at the respective ages of 88 and 91 years young.

 

Lucy (Aubrey Plaza) suspiciously regards her client, Harris Shaw (Michael Caine),
when — totally out of character — he offers her some early-morning coffee as she
awakens after a horrific evening of binge-drinking.

Caine’s entry is the lighter, frothier option, and director Lina Roessler’s arch handling of Best Sellers is right in his wheelhouse. Caine’s Harris Shaw could be Educating Rita’s Frank Bryant gone even further to crankier seed … much, much further.

Anthony Grieco’s original script is a cheeky dissection of the tumultuous — and highly uncertain — role of traditional publishing houses in this era of paper-less social media millennials. Book people will love it, as they’re given plenty of opportunities to snicker at the vacuousness of tweets and “likes” … but Grieco is sly enough to suggest that (as always) collaboration may offer advantages to both sides. 

 

Aubrey Plaza co-stars as the bright and personable Lucy Stanbridge, who has assumed control of the boutique Manhattan publishing house founded by her father. Alas, issuing far too many mediocre young adult titles has pushed the firm to near-insolvency, which makes a buyout bid from the smirking Jack Sinclair (Scott Speedman, appropriately smarmy) increasingly tempting.

 

The fact that he’s also a former lover is salt in the wound.

 

Lucy becomes desperate. She and her sole loyal assistant, Rachel (Ellen Wong), comb the files of past glories, hoping for a miracle … and they find one. Half a century earlier, Shaw’s debut novel, Atomic Autumn, helped put Stanbridge Books on the map. Subsequent to that auspicious splash, he accepted a $25,000 advance for a second book … which he never delivered.

 

Trouble is, Shaw hasn’t been heard of since then; he pulled a Harper Lee and withdrew into total seclusion. “Is he even alive?” Rachel quite reasonably wonders.

 

He is, and — in fact — has just completed a massive magnum opus dubbed The Future Is X-Rated: a coffee- and scotch-stained manuscript that could serve as a doorstop. Unfortunately, the crotchety Shaw — whose only companion is an adorably attentive cat — has a tendency to greet visitors with a rifle. As Lucy and Rachel soon discover.

 

No Time to Die: A gilt-edged Bond

No Time to Die (2021) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence, disturbing images and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters (where it belongs!)

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.08.21

It’s bloody well about time.

 

Back in 1969, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was jeered by critics and the public because a) George Lazenby wasn’t Sean Connery; and b) the script had the audacity to present a James Bond with genuine feelings for the woman with whom he’d fallen in love.

 

While James Bond (Daniel Craig, left) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) nervously
wait, Q (Ben Whishaw) struggles to crack the security on a computer network that may
reveal crucial information about the mysterious "Heracles" project.

History has validated what some of us knew all along: Lazenby held his own just fine, and those very story elements — the injection of authentic emotion — cemented its status as one of the all-time best Bonds.

Over the course of Daniel Craig’s five-film arc, his Bond has been defined by loss: the loss of Vesper, in Casino Royale, and M, in Skyfall; and the dismissal of his profession, in Spectre. He has endured along the way, battered and bruised, becoming as recognizably human as one could hope for, in such an action franchise.

 

It’s certainly no accident, mere minutes into this new epic, when Hans Zimmer’s score injects an echo of “We Have All the Time in the World,” the poignant anthem from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. One has to smile.

 

Indeed, No Time to Die is laden with similar echoes of the past: from a title credits sequence that opens with the colored polka dots employed in the credits of Dr. No, to Vic Flick’s unmistakable heavy guitar twang — elsewhere in this film’s score — in John Barry’s classic arrangement of “The James Bond Theme.”

 

The impressively ambitious script — by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and director Cary Joji Fukunaga — even works in a hitherto-untapped bit of Ian Fleming: Dr. Guntram Shatterhand’s “Garden of Death,” from the novel You Only Live Twice.

 

But that comes later. No Time to Die — a much harsher affair than most Bonds — opens on a flashback involving a terrified adolescent girl and a kabuki-masked assassin. The encounter proceeds in several surprising directions, concluding as a shuddery memory for Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), emerging from the sea as an astute Bond notices her uneasy mood.

 

They’re enjoying the carefree life chosen when they walked away from Bond’s career, at the previous film’s conclusion. But despite their mutual devotion, these are two people with secrets; we know Bond’s, from previous adventures, and we’re about to discover Madeleine’s.

 

It proves … complicated.

 

But that, too, comes later. We’re first blown away by the longest pre-credits sequence in the entire series, which climaxes with an audacious car chase through the tight corners and narrow, labyrinthine streets of Matera, in Southern Italy. Although plenty more action is yet to come, this opener is the film’s most audacious, edge-of-the-seat sequence.

The Many Saints of Newark: Far from celestial

The Many Saints of Newark (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, pervasive profanity, sexual content and nudity

Available via: HBO Max and movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

I’ve never before seen a bait-and-switch movie.

 

Fans approaching this film anticipating the origin and molding of Tony Soprano — a quite reasonable expectation, given the way The Many Saints of Newark has been marketed — are certain to be disappointed.

 

When his father returns home after a four-year prison stretch, teenage Tony
(Michael Gandolfini, left) — uncertain what to say or do — must be encouraged by
his "uncle" Dickie (Alessandro Nivola) to go with his heart.

This is, instead, a years-long study of a slowly building turf war between New Jersey’s Italian Mafiosi — which, yes, includes numerous individuals who will, in time, become the running characters on the six-season HBO series — and competitors spawned by the rising Black power movement. The young Tony Soprano is, at best, a very minor character in these events … and, more crucially, the David Chase/Lawrence Konner script gives absolutely no indication of what will trigger the kid’s eventual rise to power.

I’ll take that a step further: As clumsily played by Michael Gandolfini — the late James Gandolfini’s son, in a bit of stunt casting that bespeaks sentimentality rather than common sense — there’s no way this pasty, sullen, self-centered mope ever could become the adult Tony Soprano that we loved and loathed. Fuhgeddaboudit.

 

What we’re left with, instead, is a mildly absorbing, Godfather-esque crime saga centered on the complex private and professional relationships between the Soprano and Moltisanti families. Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) is the Al Pacino-esque central character who, during his more rational moments, attempts to maintain unity while tending to his end of the “family business.”

 

Sadly, Dickie — very well played by Nivola — is prone to explosive bursts of temper, with dire results.

 

This saga is occasionally narrated — in a cheeky bit of storytelling — by Michael Imperioli’s Christopher Moltisanti, speaking from beyond the grave. (We recall, from the series, that Tony Soprano ultimately killed him.) Christopher therefore establishes the groundwork for a chronicle that begins before he was born.

 

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes obvious that writers Chase and Konner have laid out far more than this single two-hour film can resolve, with any degree of satisfaction. Too many sidebar events get short shrift, or no shrift at all; this overly ambitious narrative screams for the long-form episodic treatment enjoyed by the HBO series.

 

Matters aren’t helped by the fact that the Italians share the stage with Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), a childhood friend of Dickie’s who now — on his behalf — oversees the numbers racket in the Central Ward, Newark’s predominantly Black neighborhood. Odom’s performance is thoughtful and multi-layered; Harold is intelligent, ambitious and angered by the circumstance of skin color that thwarts a desire for his own piece of the action.

 

Frankly, Harold deserves his own separate movie.

Come from Away: May it stay forever!

Come from Away (2021) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated TV-14, for dramatic intensity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

Oh. My. Goodness.

 

This Irene Sankoff/David Hein stage production isn’t merely an electrifying experience; it’s also a badly needed reminder that kindness still exists in this world.

 

As the reason for their unscheduled landing in Newfoundland becomes clear, four plane
passengers — Kevin J (Caesar Samayoa), Diane (Sharon Wheatley), Hannah (Q. Smith)
and Kevin T (Tony LePage) — express their anxiety and fear in a song.

Its filmed arrival was deliberately timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of 9/11, given that the play illuminates a quite unique incident — 1,100 miles from New York City — that unfolded over the course of several days immediately following the terrorist attacks.

This riveting production is more than a mere musical; it’s quasi-opera, in the mold of Les Misérables or Hamilton, with only brief bits of dialogue interspersed between patter-song storytelling. Plans for an actual film adaptation were scuttled by COVID-19 — and the Broadway production was suspended after March 12, 2020, for the same reason — so the original Broadway cast gathered for a one-off performance this past May in the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater; that was filmed in place of the intended big-screen version.

 

(I figure if James Whitmore can snag an Academy Award nomination for 1975’s Give ’em Hell, Harry! — essentially just a film of his one-man stage show — then I’m entitled to treat Come from Here as a movie.

 

(Besides which, this is must-see viewing.)

 

The staging is cleverly bare-bones, with little more than chairs and tables hastily rearranged, often mid-song, to convey a café, a meeting room, the rows of seats in a plane or bus, and any number of other interiors immediately recognized via context. Everybody in the impressively versatile 12-member cast plays multiple roles, often switching in the blink of an eye, although each actor also has one “core” character.

 

Which means that the actors also switch nationalities and accents in the blink of an eye. (Think about bouncing back and forth between that adorable Newfoundland brogue and something else.)

 

The production is rigorously faithful to actual events, with many characters based on actual people, and in some cases even an actual person. One key character, Beverley Bass, truly was the first female captain of an American Airlines commercial plane.

 

Cry Macho: Lamentably thin gruel

Cry Macho (2021) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

Much as it pains me to write these words…

 

Clint, it’s time to hang up your acting spurs.

 

Although Rafo (Eduardo Minett, right) eventually agrees to accompany Mike (Clint
Eastwood) across the border and into Texas, to reunite with his long-estranged
father, the boy insists on bringing his prize rooster along.

Cry Macho has several problems, but the most glaring is that Eastwood is visibly too old for the starring role. Yes, the part calls for the wisdom, maturity and measured assurance of a man in his dotage, but there’s such a thing as carrying that too far. Eastwood looks wan and fragile on the screen; we wince when he simply crosses a room, praying that he doesn’t fall and break a hip.

It’s also obvious — even though this is a totally calm story, by Eastwood standards — that this man, as presented, couldn’t possibly accomplish the mission he’s been given.

 

Eastwood would have been perfect for this part 10 years ago, perhaps even five. But not now.

 

It’s distracting, and rips us right out of the movie.

 

Mind you, the Nick Schenk/N. Richard Mash screenplay is nothing to write home about. It’s a deliberately old-school entry in the “bonding road trip” genre; that would be fine, if the scripters paid better attention to detail. But their uneven narrative has plot holes that would swallow a pickup, and the non-conclusion leaves far too many hanging chads.

 

The year is 1979, the setting Texas. Mike Milo (Eastwood) is a former rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder deadened by depression: unable to do the work he loves best, and also devastated by long-ago personal loss. His former employer, Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakam, nicely understated), calls in a favor with a request: Cross the border into Mexico, find Polk’s long-estranged teenage son Rafo, and bring him home.

 

It won’t be easy, Polk warns. His Mexican ex-wife might know where the boy is, but they’re long past speaking terms. Even so — with one of Eastwood’s long-suffering sighs, and an expression of grim resignation — Mike accepts. It’s not as if he’s otherwise occupied.

 

Once across the border, his first stop is a chat with Leta (Fernanda Urrejola), the aforementioned ex-wife. She’s a spiteful alcoholic who apparently couldn’t care less about Rafo; Urrejola makes the woman thoroughly unpleasant. But Leta does know where her son can be found: at the local cock-fighting ring.

 

She cheerfully parts with this information because — and this is important — having appraised Mike, she doesn’t think him capable of making any headway with Rafo.

 

(People have underestimated Eastwood characters for more than half a century. It has become a Hollywood cliché.)