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 audience 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

The Death of Robin Hood

 

Writer/director Michael Sarnoski's ruminative The Death of Robin Hood recasts the medieval legend as a meditation on the value of life and living, especially lives that were not lived well.

In this retelling, the aged Robin Hood (a by-turns brutish and stoic Hugh Jackman) is a grisly outlaw, on the run from those who want to avenge loved ones he's slaughtered over the years. He has not been taking from the rich and giving to the poor as the stories say. He's simply been taking from whoever crosses his path.

After gutting a victim's vengeful daughter (Jade Croot), Robin finds himself reunited with Little John now called Edward (Bill Skarsgård) after a skirmish leaves the bowman bandit seriously injured. Edward and his daughter Margaret (Faith Delaney) take Robin to the island priory where sister Brigid (Jodie Cromer) tends to the sick.

It is in the priory's infirmary that Robin not only heals physically but begins to assess the damage he has caused. He is befriended by a philosopher/leper (Murray Bartlett) who is hiding more than scarred flesh under his bandages and wrappings. Their exchanges add layers of thoughtful meaning to the story.

Soon Young Margaret returns to the priory, telling of her father's murder by avengers. This presents Robin with a dilemma -- does he answer his companion's death or continue down the new path he's found?

It is an interesting premise because Robin is presented as a man devoid of heroism or honor. He is feral, but not entirely without a conscience or humanity.

Sarnoski's Death of Robin Hood will reward moviegoers who enjoy films steeped in time and place (the art direction, costuming and makeup are splendid) and that capably blend contrasting visual and narrative tones.

Yes, the violence is graphic, but I think it's the quieter moments that will resonate best with patient audience members.

Supergirl

Director Craig Gillespie's Supergirl will challenge parents hoping for a little summertime girl-magic entertainment.
It's not that the movie isn't a roaring good time; it is. And it features a full-bore performance by Aussie millennial Milly Alcock. It's just that the story feels scattered, weirdly paced, with an odd mix of cinematic conventions -- the use of subtitles was especially curious to me.
Supergirl/Kara Zor-El is the cousin of Superman/Clark Kent (David Corenswet). She's a messy, drunken wreck who admits to not having a heart of gold like her cousin. So, IYAM, the story of a morose, drunken superhero, suffering from astronomical PTSD, might be hard for children to connect with.
The most relatable aspect of Gillespie's mashup of Road Warrior and a Star Wars' cantina is Kara's CGI superpooch Krypto, but he is not on camera for three-quarters of the picture. It's his absence that drives a huge part of the narrative. The other part is a revenge quest by the recently orphaned Ruthye (Eve Ridley), who is a sword-swinging, budding-Wonder Woman of steely indignation.
Kara and Ruthye are hunting the brigands who killed Ruthye's family and stole her father's prized battle swords and who is also carrying a life-saving drug. The brigands are led by the merciless Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), who is also being hunted by a Rob Zombie-esque biker named Lobo (a scenery-chomping Jason Momoa).
One might argue that the bonding between Kara and Ruthye is wonderfully femino-affirming, but, ultimately, the picture's last 10 minutes -- one of those exhausting battle scenes that punctuate these films -- undermine the "good work" that came before.
What's the movie's message to young girls? Be "good" but not "too good"? I hope not.

That Certain Summer

 

Pride Month television ...

In 1972, ABC aired Lamont Johnson's made-for-television film That Certain Summer, which starred Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen as two closeted male companions, Doug and Gary, and Doug's teenaged son, Nick, played by Scott Jacoby.

Doug has been divorced from Nick's mother, Janet (Hope Lange), for some time, but Nick doesn't know his father is gay and in a relationship with another man. Nick comes up from Los Angeles to visit his father in San Francisco (the mecca for gay narratives back in the day), and it's the "discovery" that becomes the fulcrum around which the characters act.

Penned by prolific TV writers Richard Levinson and William Link, the story is a fairly quiet, domestic drama with none of the trenchant speeches in some modern social issue shows. In fact, after reading the script, Holbrook initially turned it down, saying very little happened in it.

Even so, NBC refused to produce it, and ABC insisted on some soft-pedaling the story -- no physical contact between the male partners, for example -- before airing it. A line for Holbrook's character was added to the original screenplay where Doug said if he had a choice he would not have chosen to be gay. An interesting line with many resonating tones of resignation, acceptance, and a bit of fatalism, that today might sound clunky and defeatist.

Though no blood is shed, the film does not end on a cheery note. But it's not artificial either. Janet tells Doug as Nick leaves, dolefully, for LA to "give him time."

Maybe that's what the film was telling the LGBTQ+ community in regards to freedom and equality -- give it time.

TV critics and LGBTQ+ cultural historians point to That Certain Summer as an important step forward for visibility, if not acceptance. Interestingly, despite its star power and historical significance, the film is not available for streaming.

Disclosure Day

 

I have no doubt Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day will fascinate or enrage audience members, maybe not in equal numbers but enough to make summertime family barbecues even more interesting than they normally are.

In this welcome return to sci-fi thrillers, Spielberg has cast Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor in the roles of two strangers -- one a Midwest weather reporter named Margaret (Blunt) and the other Daniel, a Washington, D.C., data analyst (O'Connor) -- who seem to be connected to mysterious phenomena occurring just as global tensions start to boil over.

They are being pursued by Daniel's former boss, the humorless head of a tech firm, Noah (a fiendish Colin Firth), who has been handling top secret information for the U.S. government and keeping tabs on alien presences wanting to make uninvited contact. Daniel has stolen this information with plans to distribute it worldwide.

Noah's nemesis Hugo (played by Colman Domingo) is a former staff member leading a force of true believers who feel humankind has run out of answers, patience and time. They welcome an intervention and are proving to be formidable opponents to those wanting to maintain secrecy about what's been documented for decades.

The film is true to the quality one has come to expect from Spielberg's Amblin Studios. It's kinetic and absorbing, the chases (especially an elaborate set-piece involving a speeding train) are riveting and the subplots about the frailty of human connections thoughtful.

The film touches on matters of trust and faith, in both the secular and the spiritual senses, in a secondary story about Daniel's girlfriend Jane, which adds interesting shadings to the story.

Spielberg's staging of the finale -- the "disclosure" -- will frustrate some audience members, understandably, but I am confident it will strike others as "Yes! Perfect!"

I'm in the latter group.