Thelma: Absolutely adorable

Thelma (2024) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.30.24

Delightful surprises like this are why I’ve been a film critic for so long.

 

Writer/director/editor Josh Margolin’s impressive feature debut is a whimsical riff on action films, with their formulaic stunts “gentled down” to a human scale that cleverly blends laugh-out-loud humor with a sharply perceptive exploration of aging, fragility and anxiety. And if all that sounds like an unlikely mix, well, you’re not reckoning with Margolin’s savvy filmmaking and story chops.

 

Shortly after Thelma (June Squibb) and Ben (Richard Roundtree) begin their unlikely
mission, she insists on visiting an old friend, in order to "borrow" something from her.

It also doesn’t hurt that this enjoyable romp is turbo-charged by a scene-stealing performance from June Squibb — 94 years young, as these words are typed — who continues to take advantage of a late-career Renaissance kick-started by 2013’s Nebraska.

Margolin obviously took the old adage to heart: Write what you know. He was inspired by his spunky 103-year-old grandmother, who — in his words — “survived the Great Depression, World War II, the death of her husband, a double mastectomy, colon cancer, a valve replacement and an ongoing but allegedly benign brain tumor.”

 

Goodness, he even took bits of dialogue from his grandmother’s lips.

 

Squibb stars as Thelma Post, a feisty 93-year-old who still lives alone, much to the chagrin of her pestering daughter Gail (Parker Posey) and son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg). But their son Daniel (Fred Hechinger) isn’t the slightest bit worried about his grandmother, on whom he dotes, and the feeling is mutual. They spend a lot of time together.

 

The story begins with a scene that’ll be familiar to every competent computer user who has attempted to instruct a clueless older relative on concepts such a folders, passwords, and drag-and-drop. But Margolin immediately telegraphs his charming touch, as Daniel sensitively guides Thelma through baby steps, without the slightest touch of impatience; indeed, he turns the process into a fun, shared experience. And Thelma gets it.

 

This interlude also introduces one of her tics: She often interrupts herself, or somebody else, to ask oblique questions such as “What is a computer?” or “What is electricity?” It’s not that she isn’t familiar with such concepts — she absolutely is — but she genuinely wants to know what things are, in the sense of what they’re made of, or how they came into being.

 

Squibb’s quiet sincerity, as Thelma unexpectedly drops such queries into a conversation, add gentle hilarity to this running gag. When in public, Thelma also frequently stops to chat with elderly individuals who look familiar, but turn out to be total strangers, after several rounds of “Do you know so-and-so?” and “No, but do you know whozit?”

 

(That latter bit also has a cute third-act payoff.)

Café Society: Order off the menu

Café Society (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for suggestive content, occasional violence and a fleeting drug reference
By Derrick Bang

Once or twice each year, I come across a film whose mere existence is baffling.

They’re not bad, at least not overtly; they’re simply bewildering. We endure them for somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes, and then the lights come up, and we frown at each other with the same unspoken question: Is that it? Seriously?

It's love at first sight, at least for Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg), when Vonnie (Kristen Stewart)
agrees to show him all the wonders of Hollywood's film colony. Alas, the course of true
love never is steady in a Woody Allen film.

And why, precisely? What was the point?

Woody Allen’s newest is just such a film.

The package is attractively wrapped: Production designer Santo Loquasto transports us back to 1930s New York and Hollywood with an opulent level of verisimilitude. The actors are luxuriously garbed by costume designer Suzy Benzinger, every member of the large ensemble cast well selected for each part.

Allen supplies narration throughout the film, often with the same passionate, poetic devotion that he displayed for the Big Apple in 1979’s Manhattan. The various characters seem reasonably interesting, the story’s unusual romantic triangle an intriguing hook on which to hang what we expect will be an homage to Golden Age cinematic classics.

Doesn’t work out that way.

Café Society is a textbook case of a movie being all dressed up, with nowhere to go. I’ve no idea what Allen intended us to gather from his bizarrely random script, unless it’s the oft-stated cliché that people are remarkably adept at screwing up their own lives. But even that doesn’t seem quite right, because several of these characters do get their heart’s desire.

With an oeuvre as lengthy and varied as Allen’s, we tend to categorize each new film on the basis of its many predecessors; this one feels like a clumsy blend of Crime and Misdemeanors and Radio Days, if the latter’s young protagonist were half a generation older. That’s a rather unholy mash-up, to say the least, and Allen doesn’t do anything remotely interesting with it.

Café Society also is burdened with far too many sidebar characters, many of whom don’t get the attention they deserve. Their various side issues don’t integrate well with the core narrative, leaving us to wonder why they were included in the first place.

The storyline, more or less:

Bronx-born Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg), not satisfied with joining his father’s jewelry business, decamps for the much more exciting life he imagines awaits on the opposite coast, in Hollywood. Bobby has an entry of sorts: his uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a high-powered agent who drops famous names, like adjectives, into every spoken sentence.

At first blush, Phil seems a superficial, puffed-up phony who merely talks a great show, but no; turns out he really does know and represent everybody from Errol Flynn to Judy Garland. Even so, he’s too self-obsessed to waste much time with a nephew, and so hires Bobby as a glorified gopher and assigns his secretary/assistant, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), to look after the kid.

Irrational Man: The perfect crime?

Irrational Man (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Lively philosophical discussions can be vicarious fun, but — as this film’s title character frequently reminds us — the theories of Sartre, Nietzsche and Kant don’t hold sway in the real world of blood, sweat and tears.

And when somebody does take such concepts to heart ... well, that can be a dangerous thing indeed.

Despite gentle admonitions from Abe (Joaquin Phoenix), who is trying to be the
responsible adult, Jill (Emma Stone) allows herself to fall in love with him. And, truth be
told, Abe probably doesn't mind that much...

Woody Allen’s newest dramedy is another of his occasional musings on crime and punishment — with that deliberate nod to Dostoyevsky — to be placed on a shelf alongside 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors and 2005’s Match Point. In each case, we’re confronted with a character who tries to argue himself into a “just” crime ... whereupon, as viewers, we’re forced to confront how subsequent events challenge our own comfort zone.

It’s an unsettling notion, because we prefer our murderers to be easily identifiable lunatics along the lines of Charles Manson or Robert Pickton. No surprise, then, that Agatha Christie based her entire mystery career on the opposite notion: that casual killers likely live among us, cheerfully interacting with friends and neighbors on a regular basis.

But the bad guys and gals always get caught, in a Christie novel. Not necessarily so in real life, or in a Woody Allen film, where chance and circumstance might allow somebody to get away with murder. A sobering thought, and even more so Allen’s directorial approach makes things so light and droll.

Philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), emotionally damaged and forever awash in single-malt scotch, has accepted a summer session post at Braylin, a small East Coast college. He drags along a cloud of dark despair like a puppy on a leash, barely able to muster the will to show up for each day’s classes.

He’s a shattered idealist: a former political activist and impassioned deep thinker, who traveled the world and tried to help victims in disaster zones ... only to conclude that, for all his efforts, nothing changed. People continue to suffer and die; evil governments and corporations continue to aid and abet such misery. So what’s the point?

There’s also something mildly troubling, even dangerous, about Abe. This isn’t a jovial, rumpled university rascal along the lines of Michael Douglas’ Grady Tripp, in the 2000 adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys. Abe radiates anxiety like musk; we’re hardly surprised when, at a party, he impulsively seizes a pistol and horrifies everybody by spinning the chamber and playing Russian roulette with himself.