Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

 

I found so much to love in Kelly Fremon Craig's screen adaptation of Judy Blume's classic YA novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970).

Though new directing, Craig masterfully stages Blume's naturalistic story of a pre-teen girl transplanted from New York City to a New Jersey suburb where she must contend not only with the usual adolescent trauma of boys and boobs but also the added thorny issues of faith and identity.

Under Craig's capable direction -- and with terrific performances from newcomer Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret and veterans Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates as Margaret's mother and grandmother, respectively -- Are You There charmed me with wit, warmth and wisdom. The story not only rings true, it peals like a cathedral bell. It is frank without being explicit; its lessons pointed without being strident.

My screening companion read Blum's book as a young teen, but I've never read it so I have no basis of comparison from page to screen. If the movie is a loyal adaptation of the novel, which is suggested by Judy Blume's producer role, then the banning of the work from high school libraries is even more unconscionable than it appears on first blush.

A story that challenges young people to be open and nonjudgmental, to question second-hand prejudice and search for their own truths seems to me worthy of inclusion in any library, on any recommended reading list for teens -- and their parents, frankly.

Beau is Afraid

 

Writer / director Ari Aster does not bury cheerful optimism within the dark depths of his feature-length films like some moviemakers. Both Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) were unrelentingly grim and bloody but, also, artfully captivating.

Aster's latest, Beau is Afraid, surpasses those pictures in nightmarish gruesomeness and in length, clocking in just short of three hours.

I can't say if audiences will feel all of those challenging minutes, but they will most assuredly connect with the title character's Kafkaesque escapades through a psycho-sexual dystopia that, though visually outlandish, feels amazingly true to life.

Joaquin Phoenix's remarkable performance as the doughy man-child Beau Wasserman is a mix of twitchy agoraphobic and strangling Mama's boy. Beau, who speaks as if he's always out of breath, lives in a spare and dingy apartment on a street crowded with wanderers and wastrels, exterior and interior walls covered with scatological vulgarity. Beau's greatest fears seem to be intrusion and contamination.

Beau plans to travel to his family home to see his corporate executive mother (a viperous Patti LuPone) on the anniversary of his father's death -- which viewers learn is also the anniversary of Beau's conception. The plans are disrupted by mysterious events that Aster leaves open for interpretation as either reality or Beau's repression.

Much of the film's running time is committed to Beau's odyssey, which includes sojourns in the home of a surgeon (Nathan Lane), his wife (Amy Ryan) and their randy, pill-popping daughter (Kylie Rogers), after Beau is hit by their car while running from a naked knife-wielding assailant.

Beau then finds himself with a theater troupe in a woodland commune that is staging a play bearing astounding similarity to the life he's known.

In Beau is Afraid, Aster leaves no kink untapped, and the cast, led by the tireless Phoenix, is up to the task of capturing the young auteur's signature madness. 

Evil Dead Rise, The Covenant

Pairing Lee Cronin's sardonic exploration of "motherhood," Evil Dead Rise," with Guy Ritchie's earnest depiction of the purity of human kindness, "The Covenant," makes for a heady afternoon committed to distinct visions of devotedness.

"Rise" is the fifth in the "Evil Dead" franchise, which began with Sam Rami's classic film in 1981. After a thoroughly bloody and hair-raising prologue, the latest episode dives into the story of newly pregnant, hipster guitar tech Beth (Aussie indie actress Lily Sullivan) popping in on her estranged sister, hipster uber-mom Ellie (Aussie fashion model Alyssa Sutherland) and Ellie's three kids in their ratty California apartment.

An earthquake shakes up things in the building and uncovers some ancient secrets that pique the interest of young Danny (Morgan Davies), who unlocks the door to unimagined wickedness that takes possession of Ellie and begins stalking him, older sister Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and cherubic Kassie (Nell Fisher).

Beth calls upon her nascent maternal instincts to fight the demonic Ellie for the lives of the children, using everyday household items to gouge and maim with the ultimate showdown in the parking garage and involving -- unaccountably -- a chainsaw and woodchipper. Between the quippy Satanic banter, Cronin has inserted some pretty sharp observations that might ring true to those whose Life with Mother was less than heavenly.

Guy Ritchie's elegy to the mindless war in Afghanistan is actually the story of the relationship -- friendship seems a little delimiting, considering -- between an American recon soldier (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his Afghani interpreter (Dar Salim) who are the lone survivors of a raid on a Taliban bombmaking site that goes sideways. Gyllenhaal's Kinley is injured while trying to evade capture and Salim's Ahmed totes and carts Kinley over 120 miles of mountain roads to the American base, using his wits and brute strength. It's an amazing feat.

The first half of Ritchie's riveting story is about the two men building trust in a country and during an enterprise that does not reward it. Gradually and masterfully, Ritchie gives these men crucial context for what they do, and, not surprisingly, this does not include conspicuous flag-waving and chest-beating. Their motivations appear much simpler. Matters of the heart.

In the moments just after Kinley loses all of his squad in a Taliban counter-attack, he is shown sitting with his back to Ahmed, his face moving in and out of contortions over the devastating loss of his friends. He slowly contains himself, and the camera cuts to Ahmed whose own face shows him battling his instincts to reach out to Kinley. Neither man trusts the other to make that connection. It's a powerful moment handled wonderfully.

After Ahmed delivers the wounded and delirious Kinley to the base, the interpreter and his family must stay on the run from the Taliban. Kinley, back in the States, works unsuccessfully to obtain the visas the U.S. promised interpreters and their families so that Ahmed can get out of the country. When he is told time is running out for Ahmed, that he will soon be discovered and captured and likely killed, Kinley mounts a rescue attempt with the Taliban at their heels.

The film's endnotes remind viewers that hundreds of interprets were left in Afghanistan after the American pullout, many killed by the Taliban, others lost. It was the devotion of these two men that made the difference in their fates.

Chevalier

 

Stephen Williams' 2022 biopic of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Chevalier, is a curiously anachronistic telling of the rise, fall and awakening of France's first Black classical composer and violin virtuoso.

When we meet Bologne (played with brio by the always-winning Kelvin Harrison Jr.), it is pre-Revolution Paris, and Bologne challenges a young Mozart to what amounts to a violin duel, leaving the great composer bested and flustered. The scene is well-staged with a patina of modern swagger. It sets the tone for the film.

Bologne was the son of a white Frenchman and an enslaved Black woman in Guadeloupe. He was brought to Paris by his father and enrolled in a prestigious academy where he excelled in fencing and music. His abilities, refutations to white supremacy, won him celebrity and the favor of Marie Antoinette (played by Lucy Boynton), who knights him "chevalier."

During most of the first act, Bologne's race is treated as nearly incidental, but as the story presses on, race moves more and more to center stage.

When his mother (Ronke Adekoluejo) joins him in Paris and the Chevalier begins an affair with a pretty young singer (Samara Weaving) he has cast in an opera, against her racist husband's wishes, the audience knows it is only a matter of time before Bologne realizes color in imperial France is immutable, inescapable, even for the supremely gifted. He faces abandonment by friends, lovers and sponsors and eventually joins the egalite' revolution.

Williams and screenwriter Stefani Robinson have folded into the movie's coda grace notes of Black cultural consciousness -- Bologne begins to wear his hair in cornrows and at one point he joins a drum circle that includes other Black men.

As has become de rigeur in films based on true events, the closing frames include notes about the movie's subjects. Bologne's presence was scrubbed from French culture after Bonaparte reinstituted slavery. He has only recently been rediscovered by historians.

Air: Courting a Legend

 

Actor / director Ben Affleck's Air: Courting a Legend takes the A-lister's famous masculine verbosity and applies it fully to a wonderful script by first-timer Alex Covery to tell the story of one Nike brand visionary, Sonny Vaccaro (Affleck's BFF and co-Oscar winner Matt Damon), who executes a plan to sign a young Michael Jordan to the company's fledgling and floundering basketball division.

For much of the film -- which is based on true events -- Vaccaro is a voice in the wilderness in his conviction that Jordan, who has been clear he favors Adidas shoes and gear, could be signed if the right pitch was crafted and the right approach taken.

Working outside of corporate parameters set by Zen master / CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) and industry protocols, Vaccaro makes an end-run around Jordan's agent David Falk (a hilariously profane Chris Messina) to call on Jordan's parents in Wilmington, N.C., Deloris (Viola Davis) and James (Julius Tennon). It's a gamble that the craps-playing Vaccaro knows might end his career, but he sees something in Jordan that others have glossed over --a hunger to dominate on the court. Greatness.

Because there is no mystery to how this will play out, Affleck invests most of the film's energy in the art of the deal -- inside basketball, if you will.

The movie features priceless exchanges between Vaccaro and Knight, marketing executive Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), brand manager Howard White (Chris Tucker), and shoe designer Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) and a painfully tone-deaf pitch meeting among all of these players and the Jordans.

The meeting is excruciating but leads up to a terrific monologue by Vaccaro that capsulizes the picture's message about authenticity, image and enterprise.

Despite his off-screen antics (or perhaps because of them), Affleck is a wonderfully affecting film director, as assured as they come with the right material and cast, as in Oscar-winner Argo (2012). In Air, Affleck has a winning combination of the right words and a team of a sharp, intuitive players, with Damon's Vaccaro the MVP.

It's a great ride with an '80s arena anthem soundtrack.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

 

John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein's Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a sharply written visual feast of both fantasy heroism and more mundane matters like family, sacrifice and devotion.

Based on the venerable role-playing game, the movie's sporting cast is led by Chris Pine as Edgin, a minstrel schemer, and Edgin's rogueing companion Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) who take on a mission that combines vengeance and looting. The tenor of this outlandish film leaves no doubt which of the two will be fulfilled in the last reel.

Joining Edgin and Holga are an under-achieving scam artist / sorcerer named Simon (Justice Smith of The Get Down and Jurassic World series), a shape-shifter named Doric (Sophia Lillis of the IT horror series) and Reger-Jean Page as Xenx, a humorless, overly literal warrior prince who possesses knowledge that could lead the band to a storehouse of treasures and the underworld.

The story, which is wonderfully written, is all over the place, which is not to say it is incomprehensible -- it is a well-told tale -- but it is a breathless adventure moving across many landscapes and times and dimensions, but never loses the thread of the quest or its sense of fun -- which is immense.

Jay Robinson

 

Jay Robinson became a big star 70 years ago for chewing scenery in Henry Koster's film adaptation of Lloyd C. Douglas's reverent novel The Robe (1953), which used to get a perennial Eastertide screening on the major networks back in the day.

Robinson played the laureled and effete Roman emperor Caligula. Caligula's reign did indeed track along with early years of the spread of Christianity, which at first was believed to be a subset of the Jewish religion. 

In the movie, Caligula has had his eye on the winsome Diana, played by Jean Simmons, but she is betrothed to handsome and gallant Tribune Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton). So there is bitterness there.

Before Caligula assumed the throne, Gallio was in charge of the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus. He took Jesus' robe, which was left at the foot of the cross, but is at first repelled and sickened by it. However, he is slowly won over to Christianity with guidance from his servant Demetrius (Victor Mature) and the Christian leader Peter (Michael Rennie). Gallio renounces his oath of loyalty to Rome and is brought before Caligula to answer charges of treason.

The last reel of the film is in a way a showdown between the emperor's resplendent brocaded cape and the simple carpenter's robe that Gallio refuses to part with. Unwilling to bow to Caligula, the emperor sentences Gallio to death. Diana joins him on his slow march to the archers and then on to the new kingdom. Caligula's taunts echo in the halls but are gradually drowned out by angelic Hallelujahs.

Everything about the film is stiflingly earnest except Robinson's performance, which is outsized and campy, though not entirely unfitting for the role and the purpose to which Koster puts him. Robinson reprised the role in the sequel Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) and went on to become one of the most familiar faces and voices among Hollywood character actors for many years.

Jay Robinson died in 2013 at age 83.

A Thousand and One

 

Writer / director A.V. Rockwell's A Thousand and One is as viscerally potent as the sights and sounds of the city that serves both as backdrop and counterpoint to the film's story of a Black New York City mother trying mightily over the span of a decade to protect her son from ravenous threats.

When we meet Teyana Taylor's Inez, she is trying to get her bearings after being released from Riker's Island Prison for theft. While standing outside a group home in Brooklyn, she spies the familiar face of a shy young boy, Terry. She is reunited with him and slowly begins to once again become a presence in his life.

When Inez learns some time later that the boy was injured while in the care of his foster mother, Inez decides that Terry would be safer with her even though she has neither a steady job nor a place to live. She takes him from the hospital, changes his name, gets fake papers for him and they begin new lives in Harlem.

It's Inez's determination not to be separated from Terry -- to see him to adulthood -- that is the beating heart of this uncompromising tale of artifice and survival during the Giuliani and Bloomberg years of crime suppression and urban renewal, both of which taking an untoward toll on the city's Black and poor.

Soon Inez and Terry -- who is played at various ages by Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney and Josiah Cross -- are joined by Inez's former boyfriend, Lucky (William Catlett), who slowly warms to the idea of being father to Terry. The three become that most tenuous of entities -- a struggling Black family in an urban environment that is crumbling emotionally, psychologically and materially. The only certainty in their lives is uncertainty.

It's nearly impossible to overstate the wonder that is Taylor's performance as Inez. Hers is a lived-in face and body, which is not to say Inez is worn or depleted, just experienced. Yes, she's damaged, as are most of the characters in Rockwell's story, but she's as wise as she is flawed and fierce. A marvelous character who will win viewers' hearts even as she breaks them.