The Automat: Magic for a nickel

The Automat (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated TV-PG, and suitable for all ages

Available via: HBO Max, Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

There was nothing like the coffee at the Automat

Its aroma and its flavor was supreme

From a silver dolphin spout, the coffee came right out

Not to mention at the end a little spurt of cream.

 

The Automat at 21557 Broadway, in New York City, circa 1930s.

Viewers must wait until the end credits of director Lisa Hurwitz’s charming little documentary, to watch Mel Brooks sing those lyrics — along with additional droll verses — of the song he wrote to honor a topic obviously near and dear to his heart.

Brooks also gets considerable face time in this affectionate ode to what once was a gleaming jewel of progressive food service technology, and was for decades the largest and most popular restaurant chain in the United States … despite having locations in only two cities: Philadelphia and New York.

 

“This was by any measure,” notes Automat historian Alec Shuldiner. “The number of restaurants, the number of people served every day, the number of people employed. It was a true phenomenon of its time.”

 

Essential history and background commentary, as this film proceeds, is provided by Shuldiner, New York City historian Lisa Keller, and Marianne Hardart and Lorraine Diehl, authors of the 2002 book, The Automat: The History, Recipes and Allure of Horn & Hardart’s Masterpiece.

 

Hurwitz began work on this film in 2013, having been intrigued — while in college — by the communal nature of cafeteria food, and having discovered Shuldiner’s PhD dissertation, Trapped Behind the Automat: Technological Systems and the American Restaurant, 1902-1991. This prompted her deep, eight-year dive into the careers of Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart, who opened their first restaurant — a lunchroom with a counter and 15 stools, but no tables — in Philadelphia in December 1888.

 

The venue became a quick success because of their secret weapon: Hardart, raised in New Orleans, introduced Philadelphians to his home city’s style of coffee, blended with chicory. People couldn’t get enough of it.

 

Horn & Hardart incorporated in 1898. Four years later, inspired by Max Sielaff’s Automat Restaurants in Berlin, they opened their first U.S. Automat on June 12, 1902, in Philadelphia. The first New York Automat followed a decade later, after which this “mini-chain” exploded in number.

Blind Ambition: An excellent vintage

Blind Ambition (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

Inspiring underdog sagas are can’t-miss entertainment.

 

Inspiring underdog documentaries are even better.

 

This one’s a jaw-dropper.

 

Matching team pullovers are a nice touch, but Team Zimbabwe — from left, Marlvin Gwese,
Pardon Taguzu, Joseph Dhafana and Tinashe Nyamudoka — must train hard, if
they're to enter the annual World Blind Wine Tasting Championships.

Filmmakers Robert Coe and Warwick Ross have a winner with this profile of Joseph Dhafana, Marlvin Gwese, Tinashe Nyamudoka and Pardon Taguzu: refugees who risked life and limb to flee Zimbabwe during the violent 2008 presidential election and subsequent hyperinflation crisis, exacerbated by the ill-advised policies of Robert Mugabe.

They wound up in South Africa, which was ill-equipped to handle what eventually grew to roughly 1.5 million refugees from its northern neighbor.

 

Joseph, Marlvin, Tinashe and Pardon — who didn’t know each other — initially accepted whatever menial jobs they could find. Over the course of time, in each case entirely by accident, all four discovered they had an amazing talent for winetasting. 

 

This, despite the fact that none had even tasted wine before.

 

Marlvin, raised Pentecostal, technically isn’t even allowed to drink alcohol, although he cheekily points out — on camera — that since Jesus turned water into wine, drinking it surely must be allowed.

 

Eventually, each man became a well-respect sommelier in a top-notch South African restaurant … where, it must be mentioned, they often were the only Black presence among the staff and patrons.

 

They came to the attention of expat French sommelier Jean Vincent Ridon, who had the audacious notion to bring them together as exiled “Team Zimbabwe” for the 2017 World Blind Wine Tasting Championships, held each year in (where else?) Burgundy, France.

 

The film begins as Ridon gifts the four men with numbered, matching Team Zimbabwe pullovers (probably also the moment when Coe and Ross decided to make a film).

 

The quartet is irresistible. All four men have great camera presence; they’re modest, cheerful, passionate, a little bit shy, and obviously overwhelmed by how their lives have changed … and how they’re about to change a lot more.

 

Coe, Ross and editor Paul Murphy divide this saga between the intense training that takes place, during the weeks leading up to the competition, and each man’s back-story. They’re uniformly grim: even more sobering, given the matter-of-fact manner in which each recalls his personal experience.

Last Night in Soho: Absolutely exhilarating

Last Night in Soho (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for drug use, violence and considerable profanity

Available via: HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

Director Edgar Wright’s new film is an exhilarating, boldly audacious slice of cinematic razzle-dazzle: a breathtaking experience with a true sense of wonder.

 

Last Night in Soho barely achieved theatrical release late last year, which is a shame; it screams to be seen on the big screen.

 

Sandie (Anna Taylor-Joy, left), resigned to the direction her life has taken, prepares for
another evening at the club, while Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) watches from the
other side of a mirror.

Wright is no stranger to boldly imaginative fantasies — often laced with a cheeky sense of humor — with an oeuvrethat stretches from 2004’s Shaun of the Dead to 2017’s Baby Driver. Thanks to a cunningly crafted storyline co-written with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Last Night in Soho constantly confounds expectations, plunging its young heroine into a most unusual journey.

Wright also is known for making savvy use of music, and at first blush his new film seems a sweet love letter to 1960s pop tunes. A lengthy prologue introduces Eloise “Ellie” Turner (Thomasin McKenzie), a sweet but unsophisticated young woman who lives with her grandmother Peggy (Rita Tushingham) in rural Redruth, Cornwall. Ellie adores the music and fashion of the Swinging Sixties; the title credits appear against Peter & Gordon’s “A World Without Love,” as she capers about her bedroom in a handmade newspaper dress.

 

Wright augments this nostalgic atmosphere by casting 1960s icons — Tushingham, Diana Rigg and Terence Stamp — as supporting characters. (Sharp-eyed viewers also might recognize Margaret Nolan, who memorably played the voluptuous Dink in Goldfinger, and who pops up here as a wise barmaid.)

 

Ellie has long dreamed of studying at the London College of Fashion, and her eyes go sparkling wide upon receiving an acceptance letter. Peggy is concerned; she knows that Ellie’s mother — also a fashion designer — killed herself for reasons unspecified, and that the impressionable Ellie has a tendency to occasionally “see” her mother, like a watchfully lingering spirit.

 

Peggy’s apprehension is justified, because nothing could have prepared Ellie for the cacophonous hustle and bustle of her late-night arrival in London, against the deafening opening bars of John Barry’s jazz/rock title theme to 1960’s Beat Girl. Her rowdy college dorm is even worse, when she’s immediately targeted by a posse of “mean girls” — led by her new roommate, Jocasta (Synnove Karlsen, impressively bitchy) — who feign friendship just long enough to more accurately mock Ellie’s country-mouse innocence.

 

Knowing that she’d never survive in this unrestrained atmosphere of alcohol, drugs and casual sex, Ellie flees to a charming upstairs room in a bedsit run by the elderly Ms. Collins (Rigg, in her final role). Naturally, this abode is located on Goodge Street, popularized in a 1965 song by Donovan (which, I was surprised to discover, is not included in this film’s retro soundtrack).

 

That night, Ellie wakens into a participatory dream; she wanders down a shadowy corridor until — just as Cilla Black’s “You’re My World” hits its crescendo — she stumbles into 1960s Soho. The transition is breathtaking; Wright, production designer Marcus Rowland and costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux fill this streetscape with sparkling vintage vehicles, nattily attired men, gorgeously dressed women, and all manner of period-specific décor.

 

Sean Connery presides over everything from a massive marquee poster for Thunderball, atop a handsome movie theater.

 

The authenticity notwithstanding, the result is an opulently stylized, somewhat larger-than-life London: much the way Quentin Tarantino re-imaged Los Angeles, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; and Jean-Pierre Jeunet gave us an impossibly perfect Paris, in Amélie.

The Phantom of the Open: Cheekily spirited

The Phantom of the Open (2021) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Not quite two months ago, The Duke treated us to the delightfully dramatized account of disabled pensioner Kempton Bunton, and 1961’s “mysterious” theft of a famed Goya painting from London’s National Gallery.

 

Maurice Flitcroft may have been even more eccentric.

 

With son Gene (Christian Lees) bringing up the rear as caddy, Maurice Flitcroft
(Mark Rylance) blithely trudges to the next tee, oblivious to the catastophic score
that he's racking up.

In 1976, with no golfing experience, Maurice — by claiming to be a professional — audaciously conned his way into the qualifying competition for that year’s British Open Championship. After all, the event was “open” … right?

His resulting score was — and remains — historic.

 

And, just as Bunton’s eventual court case prompted British law to clarify the distinction between “theft” and “borrowing,” Flitcroft’s escapade thoroughly annoyed the snooty aristocrats who ran the British Open; they quickly changed the rules, in an effort to prevent any further “incursions” by undeserving members of the lay public.

 

Not that that stopped Maurice, during subsequent years.

 

His unlikely saga has been made into a cheeky dramedy — in the irreverent style that British filmmakers do so well — by director Craig Roberts and screenwriter Simon Farnaby, the latter adapting sports journalist Scott Murray’s 2010 non-fiction book of the same title.

 

Their film is highlighted by yet another richly nuanced performance from Mark Rylance, whose impersonation of Flitcroft is flat-out astonishing. 

 

Rylance is, without question, one of today’s finest, most artfully accomplished actors. I’ve no doubt that watching him in everyday mundane tasks — such as purchasing groceries — would be just as captivating as what he does on screen.

 

Roberts and Farnaby begin their film with a prologue that sketches Maurice’s earlier days. He meets and marries Jean (Sally Hawkins), and adopts her son Michael; they subsequently augment the family with twin sons Gene and James. 

 

Years pass. Michael (Jake Davies) has grown up to become the mature, business-minded “sensible” son — read: buttoned-down twit with a stick up his fundament — while Gene and James (twins Christian and Jonah Lees), clearly more in tune with their father’s Walter Mitty nature, have become limber disco dancers.

Peace by Chocolate: A tasty confection

Peace by Chocolate (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.10.22

Everybody in our bunkered, “fear the other” country should be forced to sit down and watch this Canadian charmer: as uplifting and (ahem) sweet a story — based on actual events — as I’ve seen in quite awhile.

 

Tareq (Ayham Abou Ammar, left) listens politely, but with mounting dread, as his father
Issam (Hatem Ali) explains how they can work together to rebuild the family's
chocolate empire.

In the real world, Issam Hadhad began his chocolate-making business in 1986, initially working from his grandmother’s kitchen in Damascus. He soon expanded into two shops, and within a quarter-century the business had grown to 30 employees, who helped distribute Issam’s chocolates throughout the Middle East and much of Europe.

In 2012, everything was destroyed by bombs dropped during the Syrian civil war, which had begun the previous year. The war forced the entire Hadhad family to leave Syria for Lebanon, where they pondered what to do next.

 

This is where director Jonathan Keijser’s quirky little film begins. He and co-scripter Abdul Malik depict this family’s subsequent saga with warmth, respect, a whimsical tone, and (more or less) fidelity to what actually happened.

 

Their narrative focuses on Issam’s son Tareq (a delightfully nuanced performance by Ayham Abou Ammar), the first family member to be accepted as a refugee sponsored by citizens of the tiny town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He arrives in the middle of a punishing winter; the shocked, wide-eyed expression on Ammar’s face — as he surveys the snowbound surroundings — speaks volumes.

 

(“In the Middle East,” the actual Tareq recalled, during a 2021 interview with The National News, “Canada [is regarded as] the coldest country that escaped from the Ice Age.”)

 

When greeted at the airport by sponsors Frank (Mark Camacho), his wife Heather (Cary Lawrence) and their friend Zariah (Kathryn Kirkpatrick), they gift him with a woolen cap emblazoned with the word “Canada.” This random act of kindness, along with cheery greetings from everybody Tareq meets, results in a severe case of culture shock (which Ammar plays with hilarious bewilderment).

Montana Story: An unhurried, thoughtful study of grief

Montana Story (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Trauma and disappointment drive us apart.

 

If we’re lucky, the nagging desire for closure might prompt a reunion.

 

Cal (Owen Teague) thinks that bringing an elderly, arthritic horse to upstate New York
is a crazy idea, but his half-sister Erin (Haley Lu Richardson) is adamant: She wants
the horse to accompany her back home.

Writer/directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel — working from a story by Mike Spreter — must be intimately acquainted with emotional pain. This quietly contemplative character drama is an unhurried, thoughtful study of grief, regret and — at times — barely repressed rage.

The often wrenching angst is driven by nuanced performances from Owen Teague and Haley Lu Richardson, as estranged half-siblings brought together as morose, somewhat reluctant witnesses to a crucial passing. The tone is relentlessly somber, the pacing just this side of glacial (likely too slow, for some viewers.)

 

The story begins as twentysomething Cal (Teague) returns to the family home and ranch in the big-sky landscape of Montana’s Paradise Valley. He has been summoned by tragedy: A stroke has rendered his father comatose and dependent upon life support and the patient attention of a full-time caregiver (Gilbert Owuor, as Ace).

 

The homecoming is far from comfortable, and Cal never comes close to rushing to his father’s bedside; he’s perfect content to leave ministration in the hands of Ace, a Kenyan immigrant who — no doubt a veteran of such vigils — likely is familiar with prickly family dynamics. Ace isn’t the slightest bit judgmental; Owuor radiates kindness, sympathy and understanding.

 

Cal is easily distracted by the mountain of mortgage debt and creditors’ statements that have long been ignored (nor does this surprise him). There’s also the matter of Mr. T, an arthritic, 25-year-old black stallion kept in the barn and cared for by Native American housekeeper Valentina (Kimberly Guerrero) and her adult son Joey (Asivak Koostachin), once a childhood friend of Erin and Cal’s.

 

The multi-ethnic casting is deliberate. We get a sense that Cal’s father’s many sins — unspoken and mostly unacknowledged, until the third act — include racism, and that Cal may have inherited enough of this tendency to be instinctively uncomfortable in Ace and Valentina’s presence … while simultaneously struggling against such knee-jerk behavior, in an effort to be a better, fair-minded person.

 

All of this remains unspoken; we infer and deduce such details, and likely back-story, via Teague’s thoughtful, richly layered acting. This is one of those cases where viewers’ likely unfamiliarity with his previous work — some may recognize him from the recent TV miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand — is an advantage, because it allows Teague to more easily become Cal. It’s not merely a performance; we recognize that this could be somebody living next door.

Compartment No. 6: Strangers on a train

Compartment No. 6 (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and vulgarity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

We meet Laura (Seidi Haarla) as she wanders among — but not part of — the people gathered at a party hosted by her somewhat older lover, Irina (Dinara Drukarova); they treat Laura with mildly mocking disdain, as if she’s the hired help attempting to rise above her station.

 

Laura (Seidi Haarla) and Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov) — separated by nationality, schooling,
refinement and just about every other possible human quality — seem unlikely to
get along, when forced to share a cramped train compartment.

In a few quick scenes, Finnish writer/director Juho Kuosmanen deftly sketches Laura, Irina and their clearly unequal dynamic; we sense that Irina keeps her around like a toy, for the amusement of her snobbish, condescending friends.

Even so, the two have planned a trip together. Laura, a Finnish student studying archaeology at Moscow University — Irina probably is one of her professors — is eager to see the Kanozero petroglyphs. This will involve a train ride to distant Murmansk: a 35-hour trip that’ll cover roughly 925 miles.

 

But Irina backs out at the last moment. (Possibly as a means of severing the relationship? Kuosmanen doesn’t bother with such details.) Obviously stung but still determined, Laura boards the train by herself.

 

She winds up sharing a two-person sleeper compartment with Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov), a loutish Russian who assumes that she’s a sex worker, and makes appropriately vulgar remarks to that effect. She’s more repulsed than frightened; he doesn’t exactly radiate menace, but he seems the worst sort of guy with whom to share such a confined space. Sadly, efforts to switch compartments prove fruitless.

 

When she returns to their compartment, Ljoha has passed out in an alcoholic stupor.

 

The time is unspecified, although it feels like the mid- to late 1990s, shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union (an event that fits this story’s evolving moral center). Laura listens to music on a Walkman, and takes photos — and narrates her impression of things — with a hand-held camcorder.

 

By daylight Ljoha is less threatening, if still vulgar; they trade superficial details, and he explains that he’s traveling to work at a massive mine near the Arctic Circle. He’s amused by her “scholarly ways”; she regards him with mild contempt, having decided that his limited education puts him beneath her (little realizing that she’s now treating him the way Irina’s friends treated her).

 

You’d expect such a film to be claustrophobic and confined, but that isn’t the case; Kuosmanen finds plenty of ways to “open up” the narrative. Other passengers briefly sit in their compartment as the trip proceeds; Laura and Ljoha encounter numerous other people during the train’s many station stops, some of them lengthy. These interactions further shape their evolving dynamic.

 

He seems able to make friends with anybody, which impresses her.  

 

She repeatedly calls Irina, with limited satisfaction.

 

Belfast: Deeply moving snapshot of a nation in crisis

Belfast (2021) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters, Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

Armed with an impressive seven Academy Award nominations, Kenneth Branagh’s riveting, semi-autobiographical drama has just become available via streaming services.

 

This is must-see cinema.

 

Buddy (Jude Hill, his back to camera) listens quietly while his mother (Caitriona Balfe),
grandmother (Judi Dench) and grandfather (Ciarán Hinds) explain what has been
happening in their neighborhood.

It isn’t easy to layer an era of chaos, tumult and danger with warmth and humor, and Branagh — who wrote the script, as well as directing — has done so sublimely. He wisely followed John Boorman’s lead, who in 1987’s Hope and Glory similarly depicted the horrors he experienced as a child in London during World War II.

In this case, Branagh’s quasi-surrogate self is 9-year-old Buddy, played with beguiling innocence and impishness by Jude Hill, in a stunning feature film debut. Because this story is viewed through Buddy’s experiences and imagination, Hill is in practically every scene, and he capably carries the film; he’s beyond adorable. 

 

Branagh extracts an amazingly accomplished and nuanced performance from this young lad. It’s a crime that he didn’t secure a Best Actor nod to accompany all the other well-earned nominations.

 

Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos opens with an imposing, full-color overview of today’s Belfast. We then slide into a crowded, working-class pocket neighborhood; the image turns monochromatic as we’re whisked back to the summer of 1969. Children play merrily in the sun-dappled streets; adults chat amiably while walking to and from the little shops nestled in between row houses.

 

Everybody knows everybody else. When Buddy’s Ma (Caitriona Balfe) calls him in for tea, the message is passed along via children and adults until it finally reaches him. 

 

Then, suddenly, anarchy: An angry mob rounds a street corner like a swarm of maddened bees, laying waste to homes, shop windows, vehicles and anything else in their path … with a focus on Catholic families. It’s the opening salvo of the five-day political and sectarian violence that quickly spread through Ireland and led to the 30-year conflict dubbed “The Troubles.”

 

Buddy, terrified, stands frozen like a deer caught in headlights. We see the disconnect in his gaze; the boy cannot begin to comprehend the savage reality of what’s happening.

 

In that instant, his life — and that of his family, and everybody else — is altered. Forever. The calm of sociable neighborliness has been shattered, never to return; Catholic and Protestant families, once close friends, now eye each other warily. (Buddy and his family are Protestants.)

 

In the aftermath, streets are barricaded; watchers are posted 24/7. Buddy’s universe — this tiny portion of Northern Belfast — has become an artificial island.

 

Cyrano: Love's labours lost

Cyrano (2021) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.25.22

We’ve seen two noteworthy big-screen versions of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play up to now: José Ferrer’s Oscar-winning turn in director Michael Gordon’s modest 1950 American translation; and Gérard Depardieu’s robust, Oscar-nominated work in director Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s far more lavish 1990 French adaptation.

 

Cyrano (Peter Dinklage) has long loved Roxanne (Haley Bennett) from afar, but kept
silent out of the fear that she'd find his worship comical or insulting. She, in turn,
has eyes only for a new King's Guard recruit glimpsed briefly in a crowd.

Nor should we overlook star/scripter Steve Martin’s kinder, gentler rendition in 1987’s Roxanne. (Which is to say, nobody dies.)

Director Joe Wright’s Cyrano is adapted from Erica Schmidt’s new 2018 stage musical, with Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett reprising their starring roles; Schmidt also handles the script. And while Rostand’s story seems an unlikely candidate for musical resurrection, the same could have been said of (among others) Les Miz and Evita … and “unlikely” certainly didn’t damage their popularity.

 

That said, this Cyrano is an awkward beast. Many of Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s songs aren’t memorable, and several interrupt/interfere with the on-screen action in the manner of all clumsy musicals.

 

On the positive side, Dinklage owns this film; his performance is a masterpiece of carefully nuanced expressions and body language. He puts heart and soul into even the most trivial of lines, and his frequent displays of silent, earnest anguish — it’s that sort of story — are heartbreaking.

 

Bennett’s work is similarly charismatic, albeit on a different level. Her Roxanne shimmers with giddy, joyous delight at everything she encounters: most particularly when she swoons over her desire to be swept away by passionate, soul-deep love.

 

Wright’s touch, with the accomplished assistance of frequent cinematographer colleague Seamus McGarvey, is stunning. All of their visual tricks are in evidence: the sliding walls and lengthy tracking shots; the arresting framing of scenes and characters; and the expansive, ethereal depiction of war. (Think back to their work on 2007’s Atonement.)

 

When things work here, they work extraordinarily well.

 

Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen often enough.

 

The setting is Paris, the year 1640. Roxanne attends a stage performance in a theater hosting an audience that ranges from the cream of Parisian society to thieves, pickpockets and cutpurses. She’s escorted by the powerful Duke De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), who craves her in a way that is slimy from his first words; rashly heedless of this, Roxanne flirts as a means of enjoying his wealth and status, while having no intention of marrying him.

 

She chances to lock eyes with newly arrived King’s Guard recruit Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), buried within the rabble-rousing theatergoers. The connection is instant and electric, but he’s swept away by the crowd.

Licorice Pizza: Quite warped

Licorice Pizza (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor, drug use and considerable profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Well, this one’s all over the map.

 

That’s no surprise, since we’re dealing with writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson; outré is his calling card. Who could forget the rain of frogs toward the end of 1999’s Magnolia, or the freakishly violent finale in 2007’s There Will Be Blood?

 

Alana (Alana Haim) surprises herself by agreeing to act as chaperone and driver for her
new "business partner," Gary (Cooper Hoffman), and his younger brother, Greg
(Milo Herschlag).

Anderson always is more concerned with atmosphere, attitude and location, than anything remotely approaching credible human behavior. And there’s no denying that Licorice Pizza nails its 1973 San Fernando Valley setting: the clothes, cars, strip malls, seedy pop-culture palaces, and the vibrant, awakening youth culture sense that anything was possible, and anything could happen.

Anderson also handles much of the cinematography here, alongside Michael Bauman; between them and production designer Florencia Martin, they’ve re-created the razzle-dazzle Valley vibe to a degree that’s almost spooky. That said, this is a heightened reality, laced with sidebar characters who usually are more burlesque than believable.

 

In fairness, though, this is a kinder, gentler Anderson: possibly because — in his typically outlandish way — he intends this film as a valentine to the area where he grew up. The on again/off again mutual crush that bonds this saga’s two primary characters is quite sweet at times … even as everything around them becomes aggressively weird.

 

(The film gets its title, by the way, from a once-famous chain of record stores that ruled Southern California from 1969 to ’85.)

 

Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), a 15-year-old child star, meets cute with 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim) at his high school’s yearbook portrait day; she’s assisting the photographer. He boldly chats her up, much to her initially amused annoyance … but he’s so self-assured, so persistent, that she can’t help being curious.

 

Gary is an anomaly, in that all the adults in his orbit respect him as an equal (even if some roll their eyes when he leaves the room). He’s on familiar speaking terms with the manager at the iconic Tail o’ the Cock restaurant, who respectfully reserves Gary’s “special table” and also tolerates his presence at the bar (sipping only sodas, of course). Alana finds it hard to resist when he suggests that she meet him there, and it’s emotionally deeper than that; she surprises herself by accepting.

 

Although Hoffman’s Gary ostensibly dominates what subsequently transpires — frequently through sheer force of personality — this really is Alana’s story; she’s the character trying to figure out how to become a better version of herself, whereas Gary never really changes.

 

Alana is a failure-to-launch decades before that phrase became a thing, still living at home with her parents and two older sisters (Haim’s actual sisters, Danielle and Este), who also still are stuck with their parents. The high school photography gig obviously is just the latest in a long string of dead-end temp jobs that give Alana a reason to get up each morning.

 

Initially, she’s seduced more by Gary’s lifestyle and environment, than the boy himself. She agrees to become a combination chaperone/handler, leaving his mother Anita (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) more time to focus on the business side of his career. 

I'm Your Man: Absorbing parable on the nature of humanity

I'm Your Man (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor and profanity

Available via: Hulu and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

I love intelligent, quietly thoughtful sci-fi films: an increasingly rare commodity in this era of Star Wars, Star Trek and all manner of superhero movies.

 

Although ostensibly a genre devoted to science and speculative advancement, the best examples focus on how futuristic technology impacts the human condition.

 

Anna (Maren Eggert) isn't wild about introducing Tom (Dan Stevens) to her museum
research team ... but she prefers this to leaving him alone in her apartment.

2009’s Moon comes to mind, as does 2014’s Ex Machina.

Director Maria Schrader’s Ich bin dein Mensch — released here in the States as I’m Your Man — belongs in their company. This disarmingly beguiling little drama is one of 15 films short-listed for this year’s International Feature Film Oscar. And deservedly so.

 

The script — by Schrader and Jan Schomburg, based on a short story by Emma Braslavsky — is by turns ingenious, whimsical, poignant and remarkably insightful. All concerned have concocted a cheeky modern riff on the ancient Greek Pygmalion legend; the result is equal parts rom-com and shrewd philosophical musings on the nature of humanity.

 

The setting feels like modern-day Germany — in terms of clothing, cars and personal tech — but clearly is a bit in the future, given the story’s focus. We meet Alma Felser (Maren Eggert) as she nervously joins the crowd at what appears to be a posh speed-dating nightclub. She’s greeted by a “handler,” (Sandra Hüller), who in turn introduces her to Tom (Dan Stevens), apparently her companion for the evening.

 

It’s a shame to telegraph all the little ways in which this initial encounter goes oddly awry; not knowing the reason robs viewers of the delight to be experienced by Stevens’ impeccably nuanced and oddly balletic performance. Suffice to say that Tom tries much too hard to be gallant and charming, his fervent declarations of love and devotion far better suited to couples married for a decade or two, than a first “date” … if, indeed, that’s what this is.

 

But it isn’t. At least, not exactly.

 

Alma, in turn, clearly isn’t happy, doesn’t want to be here, behaves like a trapped rabbit. Eggert radiates wariness and discomfort, her guarded expression revealing a bit of condescension, if not outright contempt.

 

All becomes clear when Tom is revealed to be a meticulously crafted AI: human in appearance and — theoretically — behavior, down to the last detail. (Rest assured, matters eventually do get down to the last detail.) Alma is an archaeological research scientist at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, specializing in deciphering ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform writing; she’s also one of 10 “experts” selected to evaluate the newest line of robots made by a never-specified corporation.

 

Her boss, Dekan (Falilou Seck), is part of an ethics committee that will determine the degree to which these … beings … are entitled to some (any?) of the protective rights that society grants its human members. Dekan has dangled a plum trip to Chicago — where Alma will be able to examine some key cuneiform tablets in person — as a means of securing her participation in this three-week trial.

 

To that end, and following Alma’s exhaustive earlier battery of tests and psychological evaluations, Tom has been designed as her “ideal man.” He’s to live with her for three weeks, after which she’ll render a final evaluation.

 

And, so, she brings him home. Very reluctantly.