The Devils (1971)

 

 

The art in Ken Russell's cinematic burlesque The Devils (1971) has been restored after having been purged of its more "offensive" sequences for decades.

Now that we're living in more "enlightened" times, Russell's once excised staging of lustful nuns in a 17th-century French monastery, cavorting naked around an altar and writhing like serpents on a crucifix might be read more properly and fully as Russell's comedic comment on hysteria that is fed by repression and deceit -- something we see routinely at MAGA rallies.

Oliver Reed plays the lascivious French cleric Fr. Urbain Grandier, a mass of sweaty testosterone in cassock and cross. Grandier, who has impregnated the impressionable daughter of a town leader, is a rock star in Loudoun, where he is a vociferous anti-Protestant rebel against unwanted intrusion from the Church (Christopher Logue) and the King (Graham Armitage).

Vanesssa Redgrave is the physically, spiritually and mentally twisted Sister Jeanne, who dreams of ravishment by Grandier. When she learns of Grandier's affection for the comely Madeleine (Gemma Jones), the nun goes mad and is swept up in a magistrate's plot to accuse the priest of bewitching not only her but all of the women in the abbey so he can be removed and the town leveled.

Schemes and devices are hatched, and Grandier, an undisciplined, sinful but likable fellow, is apprehended on Jeanne's compelling testimony of nighttime spectral visits, and on the echoes of her cloistered sisters.

The Devils is a beautiful, unholy mess that is based on true events. It ends with the Grand Guignol torturing and torching of Grandier by an ecstatic exorcist (Michael Gothard) and assorted other sanctimonious sadists who enjoy watching others suffer.

Again, not unlike a 21st century MAGA rally in this great Christian nation. 

You Can See Everything

 

The genius in the Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheimer-directed documentary about convicted technology scammer Elizabeth Holmes, You Can See Everything, is how many ways her story twists in the mind of the viewer -- and how those twists will undoubtedly vary based on where you are in the audience and where you are in life, figuratively speaking.

Holmes' storied rise and fall is as convoluted as the device she and her lover at the time, Sunny Balwani, created that would/could/should run many/every/all blood tests from a single drop. The device was found not to be functional, and both Holmes and Balwani were sentenced to federal prison in 2023 for cheating investors and patients.

Holmes and her boyfriend, Billy Evans, provided Fielder, a Comedy Central star, and Oppenheimer 24/7 access to them in their San Diego home a month before Holmes was to report to prison. The couple said they wanted to get the "true story" out to the public.

Fielder and Oppenheimer, who also directed the recently released film Primetime, fuse actual footage of interviews with Holmes and Evans with canny recreations of transcribed, unrecorded exchanges starring actress Amanda Seyfried as Holmes and Christopher Abbott as Evans. The resulting film is hypnotic and deeply distressing because truth and reality are so elusive.

The wide-eyed Holmes seems genuine at times but eerily manipulative at others. Are those real tears? But Evans never ceases to be a domineering creep with clear narcissistic tendencies, but what does that say about his partner and the mother of his two children? She seems oblivious to his darker side -- or is that a "character she created"?

You Can See Everything is a Möbius strip of fact and inference, murky suggestion and confidence, where certainty twists back on itself and turns into doubt.

It's a fascinating piece of work.

Whalefall

 

Director Brian Duffield's Whalefall is a cerebral, low-concept film trapped inside an actiony, high-concept picture.

This is to say the underwater entrapment thriller is about much more than how the hero Jay (the intrepid Prince of Peril Austin Adams) escapes (or doesn't) from the guts of a sperm whale, before his air runs out.

Duffield, working with Daniel Kraus from Kraus's book, delivers the mechanics of surviving the unthinkable, while also offering a thoughtful reflection on college boy Jay's estrangement from his monomaniacally controlling diving instructor father, Mitt (King of Chaos Josh Brolin), and the events leading up to Mitt's death and to young Jay's dive into coastal waters near a chasm where his father disappeared.

Duffield intersperses scenes of Jay fighting against being digested along with a clingy giant squid with those of Mitt's derisive instruction to his son about aquatic life and valuable lessons lurking beneath the waves. As audiences might expect, those lessons will be tested the longer "Jonah" remains in the whale's belly.

Much of the film's weight rests on Adams, who moviegoers recently saw in the latest entry in the apocalyptic Resident Evil game and picture juggernaut. Reports are that Adams performed all of the contorting stunts himself, which is quite impressive. He's also a steady presence in the homestead scenes with Elizabeth Shue as his mother, Zara, and Jane Levy and Emily Rudd as his sisters, Eva and Nan, even though those sequences felt underwritten and a little static when compared with the father-son exchanges between Adams and Brolin.

Despite a little bit of sputtering while on dry land, Whalefall is a satisfying thrill-ride about the nightmare of confinement -- all kinds -- and the things we will do to get free.

Sense and Sensibility (2026)

 

A poster for British director Georgia Oakley's recrafting of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility that features Daisy Edgar-Jones and George MacKay in a clinch is a huge spoiler for those who don't know the story of the fetching but poor Dashwood sisters' quest to marry well in early 19th-century England.

Edgar-Jones plays Elinor, the oldest of the three Dashwood daughters, her sisters being Marianne (a terrific Esmé Creed-Miles) and the youngest Margaret (a feisty Bodhi Rae Breathnach). When we meet them, Mrs. Dashwood, played by Caitríona Balfe, has received notice that ownership of the baronial manor where she and her daughters have been living is to be passed on to her late husband's son from his previous marriage, John (Tom Brooke).

The letter reads that Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters are to be provided for, the exact sum of that support left to John. To avert potential penury, the Dashwood ladies begin strategizing for promising couplings, for professional options for women do not exist.

John's irritating wife, Fanny (Stacy Martin), and her dashing brother, Edward (McKay), move into the manor, and in short order stirrings begin between the reticent Elinor and the courtly but peculiarly beset Edward.

In the meantime, the effervecent Marianne, to whom Elinor is especially devoted, draws the attention of both a taciturn officer just returned from overseas, Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum), and a rakish gentleman named Willoughby (Frank Dillane), who rescues her after a tumble and for whom she falls.

This being the Regency period and aristocrats being who they are, more intimacy is exchanged during a dance than by the hearth. So assumptions, miscues and misunderstandings are plentiful between parties, frequently given a boost by a well-meaning and boozy cousin Mrs. Jennings (the delightful Fiona Shaw).

As is the case in romances set in this period, social conventions intrude, opportunities missed, hopes crushed, and someone goes walking in the pouring rain, inconsolable.

Oakley's film is a sumptuous recreation of Austen's world, dressing her actors and sets in miles of linen and satin and brocade. And Diana Reid's adaptation of Austen's melodrama is lush and poetic.

No doubt, Sense and Sensibility (2026) will be graced with nominations for the precision of its cinematic vision and the honesty in its depiction of the title's two intertwined but often combative sides of life -- the brain, the center of reason, and the heart, the center of emotion.

Which one will rule the day, the film holds, depends on the person, and, perhaps, the season.

The Social Reckoning

 

Writer/director Aaron Sorkin still delivers! In spades!

Sorkin's The Social Reckoning, a follow-up to 2010's The Social Network directed by David Fincher, is a recreation of the work that went into a blistering series of Wall Street Journal articles about Facebook's use of manipulative algorithms to retain and drive traffic on its sites.

The stories were broken by conscientious Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen (another awards-caliber performance by Anora's Mikey Madison), who uncovers troubling correlations between extremist group membership growth and the platform's recommendations.

The isolated but warmhearted, social-media-true-believer can't interest her harried co-workers in what she has found. This is understandable, considering the culture of dismissive intimidation founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong of Succession and The Apprentice) has created. Keep rowing; don't disrupt.

Coincidentally, downsized investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White of The Bear and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere) joins the thinning ranks of the WSJ's San Francisco bureau to cover tech, exploring the highly secretive social media giant's unprecedented growth and dominance of the industry.

Horwitz, notably NOT tech savvy, floats online invitations in hopes of finding someone willing to talk about the company. He and a highly anxious Haugen eventually team up to unravel Facebook's Byzantine data trail of audience manipulation and negative impacts, including increases in hate speech and bullying.

Strong's Zuckerberg, as written by Sorkin, is a market-driven automaton, pushing staff members who sweat the details to cut to the chase during department presentations, bottomlining costs and benefits, free of ethical and moral concerns, at least those that don't impact earnings.

The film's narrative timeline moves back and forth to show the reporting coming to gather and Zuckerberg's being prepped by crisis consultant (Wunmi Mosaku of Sinners) for a congressional hearing about the company. The story is capped with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and Zuckerberg's response to the postings from the scene and those from the White House.

True to form, Sorkin's Social Reckoning is intricate and verbose, his characters talk a lot and rapidly, and the film bears Sorkin's brand of liberalism, which seems to be a version of the old newsperson's saw -- "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." This picture is an example of how this was done.

Digger

 

Alejandro G. Iñárritu's pitch-black, politically-bombastic Digger has so much structural and narrative depth that it will challenge even the most ardent admirers of the Mexican auteur's films. His previous works include Birdman, Babel and The Revenant. Serious heady stuff.

But, for the record, I loved Digger. Every minute of it. And discovered renewed respect for the sometimes egregiously self-serious Tom Cruise, whose work as the titular oil baron is phenomenal.

The film's opening card urges audiences not to reveal too much about the movie, and I will comply, and only say movie mavens might be reminded of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, Anderson's There Will Be Blood, or Levinson's Wag the Dog. And that's a good thing.

Digger's surreal story line and near vaudevillian theatricality might overwhelm; everything is cranked up to "12," which means audience members will either go with the madness or bail, but I sincerely hope no one chooses the latter.

Eagle Eye

 

In 2008, D.J. Caruso directed an AI-gone-rogue thriller that starred real-world PITA Shia LaBeouf and the always welcome Michelle Monaghan. 

The film featured supporting performances by Billy Bob Thornton as an FBI agent and Rosario Dawson as an Air Force investigator chasing LaBeouf and Monaghan's hapless puppets who they believe might be domestic terrorists. (They're not; they're being manipulated by artificial intelligence embedded in government hardware.) 

It's an outlandish but entertaining trifle that did fairly well in worldwide box offices.

The movie's last reel takes place at the Kennedy Center, where a children's orchestra is scheduled to play. A bomb has been rigged to go off when a certain note is hit -- leveling the arts center and killing everyone inside.

It's a diabolical scheme but not nearly as chilling as the one the real-world PITA in the White House is planning for the illustrious arts complex. He can't commandeer it so he'll make sure no  one else in the world will be able to enjoy it -- ever again.

Seems like the biggest domestic terrorist we have lives in the White House.

Buddy

 

Writer/director Casper Kelly's wildly demented creepfest, Buddy, takes a bloody stab at satirizing gooey children's television programming like Barney and Teletubbies by crossing those genres with the psycho-horror of slasher movies like Chucky or M3GAN.

Kelly's colorfully trippy movie is set in the world of the eponymous character, an orange unicorn (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) who leads a small group of children, led by the gritty Freddy (Delaney Quinn), through a variety of inane activities, accompanied by cloyingly trite kiddie tunes, most of which in praise of Buddy. 

Young Josh (Luke Speakman) refusing to take part one day sets Buddy off on a murderous spree of vengeance and control. He must be loved and obeyed!

Act II in this freewheeling nightmare features Cristin MIlioti and Topher Grace as parents Grace and Ben, who are challenged by Grace's feelings of dreadful menace, eventually revealed to be connected to Buddy. 

Kelly brings the two worlds together in a manner that audience members will either go with or not -- and I believe that is by design. In fact, the entire surreal experiment in storytelling is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

The film's outlandishly loopy story will undoubtedly reveal more about the folks who embrace its lunacy than about the world and characters it has created. 

On that point, it struck me more than once that the rebellion against Buddy's carrot-colored control is a welcome metaphor for these times of social/cultural/political manipulation and fabrication.

The Sound of Music

 

One of the songs that didn't make it into the film version of The Sound of Music (1965) is a trio in which the Baroness Schraeder, the impresario Max and Captain Von Trapp bemoan the inevitability of the rise of the Reich.

The baroness and Max are tunefully fatalistic, intoning that political domination and social disruption are as routine and predictable as a sunrise. The only thing one can do is keep your head down and go with it.

(Baroness)
A crazy planet full of crazy people,
Is somersaulting all around the sky.
And everytime it turns another somersault,
Another day goes by.
And there's no way to stop it,
No, there's no way to stop it.
No, you can't stop it even if you tried.
So, I'm not going to worry,
No, I'm not going to worry,
Everytime I see another day go by.
...
(Baroness and Max)
And there's no way to stop it
No, there's no way to stop it
If the earth wants to roll around the sun
You're a fool if you worry
You're a fool if you worry
Over anything but little number one

The captain humors them, but is determined to resist.

The Broadway production debuted in '59, and no doubt WWII was still fresh in the minds of many, so maybe the sting of the song's cynical egoism was viewed differently then. Neither the baroness nor Max were particularly lovable characters, redeemed by their less oily depictions in the film.
Still, for me, Rodgers and Hammerstein were onto something truly resonant with this bubbly number of selfish expediency -- something relevant for today's world.

Who would have thought the United States, historically a defender of freedom and justice, would be feared and despised by other nations as a marauding behemoth, threatening its neighbors; persecuting its citizens; rounding up, deporting or imprisoning undesirables; stifling speech, truth and information; erecting vain totems, destroying art and literature and rewriting history?

All while too many folks within its borders shrug their shoulders, crouch low and whistle away their days until the chaos passes.

Shameful.

 

By Any Means

 

Elegance Bratton's cinematic telling of an actual FBI pairing of a mob enforcer who is also a government asset (Mark Wahlberg) and a Black special agent (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) in Mississippi in the '60s is a brutally visceral presentation of a wide gray line walked by law enforcement in pursuit of justice in a hostile and unjust region.

The film opens with Wahlberg's Greg Scarpa putting a baseball bat to the body of a known Klansman to extract information on the location of the bodies of missing Civil Rights workers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. Scarpa is clearly a sadist who derives great joy from the bashing. That he is able to pull the needed information is almost an incidental by-product.

When Abdul-Mateen's Wayne Strider is pulled into the case of the firebombing and murder of a local NAACP organizer (Giancarlo Esposito), he has been sitting idle in the field office for a while, stifled by administrative indifference and the Klan's terrorism.

As one would expect, Strider doesn't trust Scarpa or his methods at first, but eventually comes around to seeing that the hit man's ways, while criminal in themselves, are effective.

An early conversation between the two revolves around the film's title statement, attributed to Malcolm X, whom Scarpa sees as a more serious threat to embedded racism than Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful resistance. When Strider's own home is fired upon by Klansman, he is given more reason to adopt more forceful methods.

"By Any Means" is not a film about a questionable ethical code. It's more a rationalization for fighting fire with fire, one which many members of the audience will embrace ... possibly seeing contemporary applications, as well.

Zendaya

 

Of Zendaya's many admirable qualities, the one I am most struck by is her unapologetic self-assurance.

I have no doubt she's aware of how much she gets dragged for her choices of film and television projects (and that she works so much), her wealth, her choice of mates, her fashionista sensibilities, her feminist independence, and maybe even her biracialism, and she doesn't seem to care.

From where I'm sitting, she is as grounded and level-headed as a Hollywood A-lister can be. She knows the depth and breadth of her abilities and her appeal, she projects keen audience awareness and genuine generosity; her philanthropy for a 30-year-old is especially impressive.

She's a brand -- and a very high-dollar one -- but she also presents as an authentic entertainer, a solid performer and truly decent human being.

I'm a fan.

Hedge and Donna

 

California folk singer/songwriters Hedge and Donna Capers were what we called back in the '60s a "mixed couple."

They were popular in the music underground for a while. They even made it onto the Smothers Brothers Show in '69. (You'll either get how subversive that was or you won't.)

I have Hedge and Donna's six albums, released between '68 and '73, and dig them all. They have a hip, poppy musicality with some soulful Aretha-swing and moments of social topicality.

They hung out with the West Coast set -- Jackson Browne, Joe Walsh -- but never really broke into the big time. Was it a race thing? Undoubtedly in some places it was. Maybe they didn't have enough edge to be radical but too much edge to be pop. Dunno.

I'm not sure what happened to Hedge and Donna, but the dissolution of their marriage/partnership was evident when their last record was titled Capers and Carson (Donna's maiden name). Here one day and gone the next.

After the separation, Hedge continued his musical adventures in other arenas, including mental health therapy. I could not find any reports of his current whereabouts. He would be 81 years old now.

Donna died in 2019; she had been a social worker in LA, I believe. They were REAL hippies, yo.

George Spell -- The Trailblazer

 

 

 

For culture vultures of a certain age, George Spell's is a very familiar face, despite having a relatively brief film and television career.

In the '60s and early '70s, Spell, a Chicago native, was THE Black kid cast in serial television comedies and dramas. He made a few film appearances, too: Sidney Poitier's son in They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) and The Organization (1971) and opposite Johnny Whittaker in The Biscuit Eater (1972).

A piano prodigy who performed with the Los Angeles Symphony as a teenager, Spell appeared in my favorite That Girl episode, The Defiant One (1969). He was a young boy named David, befriended by the soft-hearted Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas), who believes David, whom she caught stealing in a corner grocer, was impoverished and desperate.

She brings him home to her apartment and tries to get him help but eventually discovers David comes from a wealthy family on the Upper East Side. He weaves tales of woe to mess with people. The unstated implication is "mess with white people."

I like this episode a lot because -- aside from its message about racial assumptions and "liberal guilt" and its homage to the Poitier/Tony Curtis prison-escape film The Defiant Ones (1958) -- Spell is a warm character from a time when television was taking steps -- small and sometimes unsteady -- toward inclusion, if not full acceptance and equality. In a way, Spell was a trailblazer.

Spell, who neither married nor had children, always landed on his mark. I bought what he was doing, why he was in the role, what he meant to the story, and, even when I was young, what he meant to those of us in the audience who needed to see and hear him.

Spell's last acting credit was 40 years ago. He died in 2022, after a bought with cancer. He was 64.

 

Elmer and the executive

 

You can hardly blame Elmer and the executive for being cads.

Audiences were just too willing to buy their guff.

Folks feel good about the deception.

And what's better than feeling good?

We enjoy being around people who make us feel good,

who tell us we're attractive and charming,

who flatter us and laugh at our jokes,

who shovel our half-baked grub and boxed wine with gusto,

who will say just about anything to keep the party going.

Who can blame Elmer and the executive for getting a little crazy when the audiences start to leave, having had enough of the lies and the show.

We eventually get tired of people blowing smoke at us, taking us for fools, who aren't interested in friends but fans.

Thinning crowds mean there's more room for those who have been fleeced and conned to come for their pound of flesh.

Some will get it. Others won't.

And some will say getting caught will make the shysters change their ways.

Maybe Elmer did. Maybe.

The executive won't.

Running on Empty (1988)

 

All of this noisome blather about communists in America inspired me to pull out Sidney Lumet's 1988 family drama Running on Empty, which stars Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti, River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton.

Phoenix was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance, and screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (mother of Jake and Maggie) was nominated for an Oscar but won the Golden Globe for the script.

Hirsch and Lahti are fugitive anti-war protestors (Paul and Annie Pope) who have been on the run since their college days, when they set off an explosive in a laboratory that contributed to the manufacture of napalm. The Popes are part of the radical underground movement involved in above-ground community action and citizen organizing while also providing the Popes with needed resources to help them stay ahead of the FBI.

The Popes have two sons: 17-year-old Danny (Phoenix) and 10-year-old Harry (Jonas Abry). It would be a gross understatement to say the boys have not had a conventional upbringing. They have always been on the move, changing towns and hair color, learning new backstories and family histories ... constantly lying about who they are. The film is mainly about the toll the parents' choices have taken on the older boy, who yearns for roots and connections outside of the family.

After being traced to a town in the Southeast, the Popes relocate. At his new school, Danny meets Lorna (Plimpton), the daughter of his music teacher, and they begin a tentative teenage romance, during which Danny finally comes clean to someone outside of the family about his life.

The revelation does not deliver the relief he seeks, however, because he is desperately loyal to his parents, especially his father, whose own parents were immigrant Bolsheviks. Paul is determined to keep the family together; they are all he has in the world, he says at one point.

Annie, who shares Danny's love for music, feels his painful isolation and tries to find a way out for him, knowing she will probably never see him again.

Lumet, one of my five favorite directors, doesn't overplay his hand or offer cheap sentiment in the wrenching story. He lets Foner's wonderful script unfold steadily, the tensions building deliberately and the four principal players -- Hirsch, Lahti, Phoenix and Plimpton -- carrying the anguish with great skill.

The film does not celebrate anarchy or violent protests. The Popes are paying dearly for the injury they caused a security guard in that bombed laboratory. They were wrong, but, somehow, the audience doesn't want them punished more than they are already are.

The film's last scene -- when they must leave their first-born to find his life -- is both heartbreaking and hopeful.

The Odyssey

 

Christopher Nolan’s epic reconceptualization of Homer’s The Odyssey has an impressive creative breadth that will undoubtedly put it in contention for industry awards next year.

But this rendering of the ancient story of Greek hero Odysseus’s bedeviled journey home after winning the Trojan War with grit and clever invention might leave some audience members wanting more. Not more spectacle, more narrative depth.

Matt Damon leads the large, eclectic and energetic cast through the familiar perils — some introduced by the hero’s hubris, others by punishing, begrudging deities. The actor’s challenge is not unlike that of his character — wrangling large, seemingly impossible tasks, over bitter terrain, through unforgiving elements in pursuit of an elusive goal.

Damon and the film’s other principals — Anne Hathaway as wife Penelope, Tom Holland as son Telemachus, Robert Pattinson as suitor Antinous and John Leguizamo as Odysseus‘ servant and Telemachus’ teacher Emaeus — capably push through Homer’s sprawling story with Nolan’s modernized dialogue and against the film auteur’s exquisite backgrounds, adding some philosophical aspects absent from previous sword and sandal versions, like Italian director Mario Camerini’s Ulysses (1954), which starred Kirk Douglas.

And it’s those resonating narrative bits that lift the picture above its magic and mayhem into the realm of humanity and morality. The movie could have used more.

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Elliot Page

 

Elliot Page's performance in Christopher Nolan's highy stylized retelling of Homer's The Odyssey is, yes, quite good and, yes, a bit of stunt casting, but in the best way, I think.

Critics have been assessing the picture as "monumental this" and "spectacular that" -- whether talking about achievement or disappointment. They have been responding to the planned or genuine outrage over Nolan's casting choices -- mainly Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy / Clytemnestra and Page as Achilles, which actually is not the role, but why let accuracy stand in the way of rage?

It was apparent to me that Nolan is up to much "good trouble" in his latest impressive work. This is not new for the heralded British director, whose films always leave me with the impression he has much more on his mind than he was able to put on the screen -- witness Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), Oppenheimer (2023), for example. He leaves much for us to chew on and to ponder about what was left out.

I think Nolan's films are about big, human ideas but also about the meaning of the motion picture experience. How "truth" is created with light and sound and motion. What the face on the screen is saying about the fiction in the frame and the real world. (Nolan LOVES big vistas AND faces).

This brings me back to Elliot Page, who as the young Greek soldier Sinon is a small figure set against an enormous backdrop and, not incidentally, a giant wooden horse resting in the surf, the gift of the gods that the Trojans will carry into their city.

At the end of this scene, Nolan sets a close-up of Page's face in the viewer's mind, and those who know of the actor's FTM transition might join me in seeing this as an important statement about the off-screen world the audience lives in.

Page has fewer than a handful of scenes in Nolan's marvelous, sprawling -- and, frankly, exhausting -- picture, but his appearances are pivotal to this timeless narrative about loss and restoration and its new spin about overcoming disastrous choices, pushing through misdirection and deceit, shaking off menace to find truth and peace.

Hadestown: A Musical

 

Aussie director Brett Sullivan's artful filming of a live West End performance of the Tony-winning musical Hadestown does what modern musicals have been doing with greater and greater regularity lately. It uses stagecraft to transport audiences to other worlds while revealing important truths about the one beyond the wings, outside the theater, out on the streets.

Indie singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell wrote the book and composed the music for Hadestown, pulling largely from Americana (folk, country, blues and jazz), to tell the mythological tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice (Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada) who strike a bargain with the god of the Underworld, Hades (Patrick Page), and his seasonal bride Persephone (Amber Gray), who leaves the Underworld once a year to deliver spring, wine and revelry to those above ground. Broadway veteran and Tony winner Andre DeShields plays Hermes, the tale's mischievous and not wholly reliable narrator, who leads a Greek chorus of about a dozen other cast members through the rousing two-act.

Mitchell takes ancient tales already layered with earthly application to comment on despotic bosses (Hades) who exploit laborers, building great wealth (the Underworld) on the backs of the masses who are trapped in the darkness of soulless, repetitiive toil (the chorus).

Orpheus, a wandering poet and songwriter with a heavenly voice, meets and falls for the poor, begging wastrel Eurydice. She is captivated by his music but soon finds herself pulled into Hades' pit of numbing servitude. Orpheus follows her into the pit and tries to rescue her but ... well, you know what happens.

Mitchell, who won a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, has a remarkable ear for gorgeous melody and a nuanced sensibility about language. The score entices and energizes with soaring through lines and rich harmonies -- marvelous stuff -- and borrows from operative conventions with the heroic tenor (Orpheus), the villanous bass (Hades), the winsome soprano (Eurydice), and the brassy mezzo (Persephone). They're all singularly wonderful and make for a devilishly good ensemble, as well.

Bernie Taupin

I read today that venerable wordsmith and Elton John collaborator Bernie Taupin will be releasing his first TRUE solo album this fall, with the award-winning lyricist handling both words and music.

The news about Taupin got me thinking back to when I was 15 and pedaled my 10-speed Schwinn over to the Eckerd's Drug Store at the mall to buy Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player. This was the first of a couple dozen EJ/BT purchases I would make over the years.

I bought Don't Shoot Me after hearing the singles "Daniel" and "Crocodile Rock" on AM radio and reading a fulsome review of the album in a music magazine. The critic described the record's closer, "High Flying Bird," as one of the duo's greatest songs. Looking back, that was pretty high praise considering John and Taupin had already released "Your Song," "Tiny Dancer," and "Rocket Man," among other classic pop tunes that are superb, IYAM.

Being a big movie buff even then, I liked Don't Shoot Me's cover photo of a ticket booth and marquee. And as was record industry practice back then, major label releases were heavily packaged with art, lyrics sheets and notes. Good stuff!

After listening I decided "High Flying Bird" is indeed a fine song, but I liked the wandering romanticism of "Blues for Baby and Me," the brassy bombast of "Midnight Creeper," the countrified takedown of intolerance on "Texan Love Song" and the nostalgically cinematic "Have Mercy on the Criminal."

After 50 years of listening and having never NOT owned Don't Shoot Me in some form, I still think it's a fine record, maybe the best from the duo's early period, and certainly before their game-changing masterwork Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which was released later the same year.

Taupin's upcoming album is titled The Sea Has No Mercy. He is 76; John is 79 and just finished work on a new record. That they're both creatively vital is inspiring, for sure.

Glen Hansard

I was so sorry to read yesterday of the Oscar-winning Irish singer/songwriter Glen Hansard's death. He died in a motorcycle crash, as tragic and poetic an ending as one can imagine.

Hansard starred opposite his Czech counterpart Marketa Irglova in John Carney's Once (2007). The two musicians played buskers who meet in Dublin, merge their artistry and fall in love, sort of. The link to the video for Hansard's Oscar-winning song is below.

Once is a beautiful, bittersweet story about creative spirits and tough choices. I loved it and Carney's similarly themed follow-up Begin Again (2013), with Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo; it also has a terrific soundtrack.

Hansard, a philanthropist and activist who was well-loved by fellow musicians and the citizens of Dublin, was wonderfully affecting in his role as "Guy" in Once. (Irglova was "Girl.") He was disarmingly genuine in his melodies and voicings, his energy and passion put me in mind of early Cat Stevens, which is pretty high praise.

I remember trying to master the guitar chords of the film's "When Your Mind's Made Up" back in the day. That song sums up the duo's dilemma, the frustration and then release that comes from deciding which of two roads to take. Who hasn't been at those crossroads?

Hansard died in a single-vehicle wreck early Wednesday morning. He's survived by a wife and 3-year-old son.

https://youtu.be/k8mtXwtapX4?is=rdRMKe-c_kXgSnkW

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

 

Spider-Man: Brand New Day delivers the required fan service in spades and enhances the complexity of the franchise's central characters while not relying too much on the cosmic hoodoo and time-bending that, frankly, weighed down previous installments.

This is quite an accomplishment for director Destin Daniel Cretton's first venture in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Of course, he gets major assists from returning screenwriters Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna and the much-loved principals Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Zendaya as girfriend MJ, and Jacob Batalon as BFF Ned.

At the end of the previous episode, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Peter suffered a devastating personal loss, and, to avoid further pain, he invoked a spell via Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to restart the universe and wipe him from everyone's memory. This meant his true love MJ and bestie Ned would not know who he was, even though he would be the neighborhood genius boy and masked crime fighter, a lonely double life.

Brand New Day borrows crucial elements from both the Avengers and X-men story world for its tale about the inhibition of people with "special gifts." One of Spider-Man's particularly challenging opponents, played by Sadie Sink, has mind-control powers and seems intent on using them to thwart the work of the secretive Department of Damage Control, headed by Bill Metzger, Emmy-winner Tramell Tillman of Severance.

With assists from Black Widow (Florence Pugh) and the loose cannon Punisher (an always welcome Jon Bernthal), Spider-Man takes on the formidable puppetmaster and discovers the mystery behind Damage Control, all while his spider side goes through raging puberty. (Cue guest appearance by Avengers MVP Mark Ruffalo as Empire State University professor Bruce Bannon/Hulk.)

Brand New Day is a guaranteed crowdpleaser with the right mix of MCU utility and new flavorful spice. The film swings and swoops with both a huge heart and street-level brawn.

Tea and Sympathy (1958)

 

Vincente Minnelli's 1958 melodrama Tea and Sympathy gave the patrician British actress Deborah Kerr (The King and I) the pivotal role as provider of both the warmth and compassion referred to in the title of Robert Anderson's celebrated play.

Kerr was cast as the wife of a prep school coach (Leif Erickson, later of High Chapparal), who encourages the torment of a boy named Tom (John Kerr, no relation to Deborah), who is not one for sports, preferring the classics and the company of women.

Though Tom gets some support and "guidance" from his roommate Al (Darryl Hickman), he is pushed to the brink of self-destruction by the bullying. In one scene, she lays the responsibility squarely at the coach's feet, with the coach being the avatar for toxic masculinity, to use modern parlance.

Though 70 years old, the film still resonates, and offers safe consideration of the breadth of male identity, if not sexuality. Rendering young Tom as a sensitive, cis-gender man, who returns to the prep school years later, married and with children, no doubt rested easily with Eisenhower-era audiences. ("Thank God he's not really ... you know!")

Would the story's message be irreparably damaged if Tom grew up to be gay or bisexual or aromantic? Hard to say, but my gut tells me his coming into his own sexual identity would in no way invalidate the love he had found for the woman who offered him a safe cuppa.

The Invite

 

Olivia Wilde's The Invite is a four-character comedy of (ill)manners starring Wilde and Seth Rogan as San Francisco homemaker/artist Angela and music professor Joe and Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton as their new neighbors, therapist Piña and interior designer Hawk. The four gather over dinner for reasons that aren't altogether clear at first but we disregard once the quartet settles into an evening of discovery.

The film's spankingly good screenplay by Cesc Gay, Will McCormack and Rashida Jones rips and snorts with barbs and indignation (Angela and Hawk) and much sexy provocation (Piña and Hawk).

It is not quite true that nothing is as it first appears; in fact, the audience's likely suppositions about these couples will be on the money, I think. What is surprising is the kind of twists and turns these deliriously damaged people take over the course of their evening together.

The Invite leaves us to wonder if Sammy Cahn was right:

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell ya, brother
Ya can't have one without the other

Power and Dominance

I often return to Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) when I reflect on power and dominance.

As I posted just a few months back, the opening sequence -- which has been probed by scholars across fields and disciplines, not just film studies -- depicts a drastic evolutionary shift, caused at least in part by alien forces.

This shift involves early man's discovery of discarded animal bones as useful weapons for hunting. Rather quickly, though, these weapons are used to dominate, to threaten, and to destroy other humans. This section of the film bears the layered title "The Dawn of Man," but that language does not appear in Arthur C. Clarke's original novel. It's occurred to me that we, the descendants of these fictional "monkeymen," spend a lot of time trying to control things and people -- our environments and fortunes, family and friends, enemies and strangers. And in doing so, many of us use benign tools for purposes other than those for which they were created. We cheat and corrupt to gain advantage, to gain power. This desire for power presents itself in many ways -- from speeding and running red lights to fabricating credentials on job applications. We "pull strings" to get a relative hired or a rival fired. We plant seeds of doubt about another's capabilities or intelligence. We present ourselves as inherently good or moral, implying that those who are not like us are not. In Kubrick's film, the hominids win control over a watering hole -- a vital resource that had previously been used by all in a rudimentary pecking order. The louder and more numerous hominids drank first, then all others according to fearsomeness. But then, weaponized hominids were able to maintain control of the valuable resources, even when they were not present or in need of them. That is, until the others became weaponized, and escalation began. That is when "Dawn" became "Dusk.

Pressure

 

Anthony Maras's second feature film is the solidly assured Pressure, written by Maras and writer/actor David Haig, based on Haig's stage play of the same name.

Pressure is set in 1944 at Allied command headquarters in England, where Gen. Dwight Eisenhower (a smart and layered Brendan Fraser) is planning an enormous land, air and sea invasion of Normandy beach in France three days later. At the recommendation of Winston Churchill, Eisenhower has summoned British meteorologist Group Captain Dr. James Stagg (another wonderful job by Andrew Scott) to join his staff and coordinate the weather forecasts for June 5.

A taciturn, humorless figure, Stagg immediately rubs Eisenhower's aide Lieutenant Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon) the wrong way and locks horn with Eisenhower's trusted meterologist, Colonel Irving Crick (Chris Messina), who looks to historical records to support command's expressed goals, assuming weather consistency year after year.

In contrast, Stagg's approach is to gather as much contemporary data as possible and then propose "go" or "no go" depending on those findings.

Crick is a likeable and fun-loving cuss; Stagg is Crick's antithesis and is as abrasive as a hair shirt. It is this bold dichotomy that is the picture's core conflict and lends meaning to the double entendre in the film's one-word title.

Maras and Haig have rendered a fresh story with crucial clarity about all that was at stake in WWII. No small feat considering how much audiences know about D-Day. Maras and Haig have re-scaled to a clash between science and intuition, that, nonetheless, would have lasting, global ramifications