Dark Waters

Queer Cinema icon Todd Haynes (Carol, Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, Safe) directs films about the exploited, the marginalized and the dispossessed, people who are injured by circumstances but press on or don't depending on their proclivities. In many ways, the Mark Ruffalo-project Dark Waters fits into Haynes' portfolio neatly, as it tells the true story of a West Virginia town on the Ohio River being poisoned by the corporate goliath DuPont and challenged by Ruffalo's legal eagle David, Robert Bilott, a partner in a corporate law firm and former DuPont defense attorney. Bilott is made aware of the case of a farmer (a terrific Bill Camp) whose herd of cattle is decimated, he believes, by runoff from DuPont's nearby dump. Bilott is first reluctant but the farmer's insistence, and his own childhood memories of his grandmother's home in the town, spur him into what he believes will be a quick resolution. Haynes' direction is methodical and by-the-numbers, with Ruffalo (who never fails to hit his marks in any film -- from Avengers to Spotlight) displaying the physical manifestations of Bilott's professional and personal battles with the first-reticent and later-defiant chemical manufacturer. Haynes and screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Mario Correa have crafted a compelling story of greed and indifference that has several stirring moments of indignation and outrage rooted in the filmmakers' deep commitment to the value of human life and dignity. It is not a perfect film (some performances feel weary and indeliberate) but it is a marvelous statement for these times -- which is much more important.

Pain and Glory, Honey Boy

Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory and Alma Har'el's Honey Boy are, respectively, the tender story of the celebrated Spanish writer / director's relationship with his spicy and withholding mother and actor Shia LaBeouf's traumatically dysfunctional boyhood in the care of his disastrously incapable father. The films are reflective, fanciful and decidely ambivalent about the central character's feelings toward the wounding parent.
In Pain and Glory Antonio Banderas is Almodóvar's alter ego, a stifled filmmaker racked with physical and emotional ailments that he tries to quell with opioids and heroin. Banderas's addled, somnambulate Salvador seems suspended between dream worlds, one lively and magical, the voice of his mother (the always radiant Penelope Cruz) providing the soundtrack for his colorful awakening, and the other, his decorous, doleful and dismissive maturity, resplendent with wall art and loneliness.
In Honey Boy, LaBeouf's alter ego Otis at 12 is played by the fine young actor Noah Jupe (A Quiet Place) and at 22 by the estimable Lucas Hedges. The younger Otis lives with his father (a striking LaBeouf) in a grungy roadside motor inn at night and acts in various forgettable roles on a studio lot during the day. Driven by his father's shame and self-loathing, Otis grows into a defiant, destructive and self-sabotaging young man whose only memories of warmth are of another abused child (FKA Twigs), a teenaged girl living in the motor court with her bottomfeeding parents. Both Hedges and LaBoeuf do the heavy emotional lifting in this unsparing, conflicted but ultimately forgiving letter to LaBeouf's father.
Both Pain and Glory and Honey Boy feature elements of magical realism that enhance their messages of regret and forgiveness despite the damage done by those charged with loving us.

Waves

 

The family at the center of Trey Edward Shults's Waves is frayed, but nearly undetectably at first. Exchanges between father (Sterling K. Brown) and his coltish son (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) feel prickly but maybe that's just the natural push-pull between two alphas. Nothing more. And maybe daughter Emily (Taylor Russell) is reserved because she's shy and uncertain and not because she's lost, overshadowed by her athlete-brother and hurt by the attention both father and mother (Renee Elise Goldsberry) pour on him. The family home is a pressure cooker of expectation and disappointment, and the stresses quickly begin to show both physically and psychologically until an event sends these four damaged people flying off in different directions, taking their pain with them. Waves is quiet but its intensity is nearly unbearable. All four leads deliver extraordinary performances but young Mr. Harrison's is far and away the most real and raw depiction of youthful confusion and agony I have seen in quite a while. He is truly outstanding and on par with generational peers Timothee Chalamet and Lucas Hedges, who also appears in Waves as daughter Emily's love interest and rescuer. Waves is devastating and exhausting but richly detailed, knowing and human.

Richard Jewell

Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell takes the story of the Centennial Park security guard falsely accused of setting off a bomb that killed and injured visitors to the Atlanta Olympic in 1996 and turns it into a blunt instrument to bludgeon the media and the FBI. The film -- which features a fine performance by Paul Walter Hauser as Jewell -- also takes swings are higher education-- a prime target for rabid red staters. Jewell comes across as a socially awkward underachiever with a juvenile zeal for law enforcement that is both admirable and naive. Olivia Wilde and Jon Hamm play an unscrupulous Atlanta newspaper reporter and an FBI agent, respectively, who sacrifice Jewell for personal ambition. The rendering of these characters is so atrocious, the dialogue so dull and unimaginative that they make viewing the film a real chore. Watching their interactions was like witnessing a mob hit. Jewell's relationship with his mother Barbara (a strangely off-kilter Kathy Bates) is cloying and with his lawyer (Sam Rockwell) is peculiarly uninvolving and underdeveloped. This picture has precious little of Eastwood's usual workmanlike competence. It feels incomplete, more of a notion than a picture, but it will be raw meat for MAGA heads everywhere and more the pity.

The Irishman

Martin Scorsese’s mobster epic The Irishman harnesses the latest in film technology to follow the story’s primary characters as they age through decades of gangland maneuvering and murder. Robert De Niro is the narrator and pseudonymous fixer, Frank Sheeran, who performs both painting (hits) and carpentry (disposals) for pay — he’s got mouths to feed. When we meet Sheeran, he’s an old man reflecting on his life after war duty in Italy. He begins with driving a meat truck in Philadelphia, stealing from his bosses and making friends with powerful criminals, including mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and later Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) and becoming a trusted consigliere as well as wet worker. That Sheeran is his own witness leaves his accounting open to question, of course, but his tale of rising to capo in a crime family while serving two masters (the Mafia and the IBT) is fascinating. Scorsese is nonpareil as a storyteller, and he manages the complexity of mob action and political wrangling with dexterity. Yes, he loves criminals, and his treatment of these wise guys is no less affectionate than his earlier valentines Goodfellas, Gangs of New York and The Departed, but that’s not to say he’s amoral or that The Irishman celebrates corruption. In fact, the film includes screen notes on the often grisly deaths of the gangsters Sheeran encounters over the years — those we don’t actually see dispatched by a bullet to the face. That Sheeran himself survives to tell the tale — or at least his version — is not so much cynical as existential. As one G-man reminds him, everyone he’s known and loved is either dead or has abandoned him. That he is alone and hoping for more — redemption? expiation?  — in the picture’s last reel is a powerful statement.

Marriage Story

Writer/director Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story puts the auteur's signature wit and insight to work in a tale of the most personal and excruciating of human trials -- the dissolution of a marriage. Scarlett Johansson and Adam Drive are New York off-Broadway theater couple Nicole and Charlie, parents of young Henry (Azhy Robertson), and parties in a marriage that is threatened, we come to discover, by presumption and resentment. When we meet them they are seeking counsel, not altogether successfully, to resolve issues driving them apart. Then Nicole, who has been genius director Charlie's muse and leading lady, accepts a role in a television pilot and moves to L.A. with Henry. Charlie is unperturbed, thinking the change is temporary and he'll visit frequently. In the meantime, Nicole, who has discovered Charlie's infidelity with a company member, hires a top-dollar eviscerator (the wonderful Laura Dern) to represent her in a divorce. This action leads to an escalation of tension and spiraling bitterness that culminates in a scene of blistering vitriol the likes of which I've not seen since Liz and Dick tore at each other's throats in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966). It's a sad, depressing clash of two decent but damaged people trying to perfect the imperfectible. (And alone is worthy of the accolades the film is receiving.) Baumbach is a masterful wordsmith but in two particularly nice set pieces near the end he juxtaposes musical numbers from Stephen Sondheim's Company that Nicole and Charlie perform to different audiences. These are nice moments -- one frothy and the other wistful -- that had they been given to lesser actors would have fallen flat or been soupy. Instead, they capture two people who are slowly finding their ways out of misery..

The Lighthouse

Imbued in every image of a lighthouse are questions about the inhabitants, how they deal with the isolation, what they have seen, close calls their beaming signal has averted ... if the keeper is sane. Writer / director Robert Eggers second feature, The Lighthouse, is richly evocative of those seaside sentinels but delivers no definitive answers.This film is just as genuine in its depictions of location and dread as Eggers' first, The Witch (2015), a visually stunning scarefest set in Puritan New England. Once again, Eggers' meticulosity is in every frame, in every word uttered by the picture's two principals, a keeper (Willem Dafoe) and his taciturn assistant (Robert Pattinson), in every forboding inch of the New England lighthouse's barren, wasted rock. Eggers is working in black and white to startling, unsettling effect, as the men check into the battered quarters for a month's duty. Dafoe's Thomas Wake browbeats the younger Ephraim Winslow with humiliating invectives, forbidding him from doing anything but scullery chores and mindless repairs, and most certainly denying his requests to ascend to the top of the lighthouse, Wake's peculiarly, jealously guarded domain. As for the matter of the men's sanity, well, Eggers certainly makes a case for madness, but a powerfully evocative speech by Wake actually suggests there might be more at work than minds being devoured by personal demons.

Parasite

South Korean writer / director Bong Joon Ho (Okja, Snowpiercer) is a visionary, but he's no sentimental optimist. His films luxuriate in bloody class conflicts, where audience favorites are often sacrificed on the altar of art. The poor are not necessarily nobler than the rich, and they often don't get what they deserve -- or maybe they do. His latest film, the marvelous award-winner Parasite, is true to form -- a thoroughgoing tale of an under-employed family of frauds living below ground (the picture is brimming with metaphors) who through an elaborate ruse insinuate themselves into the lives (and home) of a wealthy family in need of an English tutor, and, incrementally, an art therapist, chauffeur and housekeeper. Bong shows true genius in building the crafty Family Kim's plan to ride the vain and vacuous Park family's gravy train until a dark and stormy night threatens to bring the scheme to a screeching halt. Bong uses a loving skeptic's eye in staging elaborate set pieces that alternate between shrieking hilarity and horror.

Queen & Slim

In the soon to be iconic photograph from Melina Matsoukas's distressing Queen & Slim, stars Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith posed on the hood of one of several getaway cars they drive while fleeing the shooting of a Cleveland police office on the night of their first date. That sequence is anguishing, and sets the bar high for the rest of the film. If only the disciplined intensity was sustained. Matsoukas and screenwriter Lena Waithe serve up quite a melange during the fugitive couple's trek toward Miami and a plane to take them to Cuba. Some episodes are comic, some romantic, some philosophical, some political but the inconsistency does not enhance the story; it left me puzzled. The tonal variety feels like a mix-tape, which is probably not coincidental as Matsoukas is a veteran music video director; this is her first feature film, and it has a phenomenal soundtrack. The film's premise feels undermined by a surfacy narrative that can not withstand close scrutiny; leaps of logic and geographic dislocation detract. These would not be matters of concern if the film was being offered as a parable, the characters more totems than real people trapped in an unbelievably untenable situation, but that doesn't seem to be what's going on here. Communities are shown embracing and protecting the fugitives but for reasons that don't rise above vengeance and bloodlust. At this moment in history -- with tensions between black communities and law enforcement raw -- audiences, particularly audiences of color, need rational stories that explore all aspects of human loss -- not just BLM agitprop.

The Laundromat

Steven Soderbergh's unique brand of political subversion doesn't always deliver the audiences but his films certainly are entertaining. His latest, The Laundromat (Netflix), weaves together a handful of ironic tales of people crushed by a predatory cartel of gouging, phantom underwriters. Meryl Streep heads a cast of characters caught in Gary Oldman and Antonio Bandera's web of fraud and unaccountability that spans the globe.(Yes, ripped from the headlines.) Streep's Ellen Martin is left a widow after a touring river boat capsizes near Trenton, Michigan. When she discovers the tour company's insurer can't pay she investigates and finds nothing but false leads and dead ends. Her story intersects with several others, each taking the level of corruption deeper. Although Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns sermonize during the last five minutes of the film, it's a welcome and timely message about the threat greed and deception pose for democracy.

Knives Out

Rian Johnson's deviously comedic, big house murder mystery, Knives Out, is artfully composed -- from the script to the art direction to the cinematography -- but not at all precious. The A-list cast for this story about the death of the wealthy patriarch (Christopher Plummer) of a ridiculously pampered family (see poster) are generous with their gifts in Johnson's rich story space; no scenery chewing here. The movie's surprises are abundant, many howlingly funny sequences. Daniel Craig's gentleman sleuth, Benoit Blanc, is a marvelous (awards-worthy) creation, erudite and cagey. The lovely Ana de Armas is the dead patriarch's young Latina nurse at the center of what appears to have been her employer's suicide ... but was it? This film is not what I expected.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Marielle Heller's engrossing Can You Ever Forgive Me? from last year depicted the descent of a blocked and frustrated writer into a morass of self-destruction through fraud. Heller's latest, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, charts a different though still riveting course as it recounts the beginning of the friendship between a magazine writer (Matthew Rhys) and Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks with his usual uncanny brilliance). Cynics will no doubt chuckle at Rogers' unrelenting cheesiness but will quickly be entranced by his steadiness and abiding decency. It's those qualities that the wounded and bitter Lloyd Vogel doesn't trust, and tries to reveal as Rogers' attempt to mask his own demons. A new father who has resisted the role, Lloyd is estranged from his own father (a wonderful Chris Cooper) who is trying to reconnect after years of absence. Heller has crafted a visually arresting and narratively complex story that brings together fine actors for exchanges that resound with truth and healing. At one point toward the end of the film, Rogers and Lloyd are sitting over lunch and Rogers asks for a minute of silence to call to mind all of the people who made their lives possible. For that entire minute, not a sound, not a breath was heard in the theater during the screening I attended. What a touching sequence!

Doctor Sleep

Mike Flanagan's Oculus (2014) was an ably crafted entry in the new horror genre of spirits who kill for no reason, just because they can. In Flanagan's latest film, Doctor Sleep, the demons certainly seem to have purpose but it's tough to care if all we're given is "evil has always been." Working from Stephen King's sequel to The Shining, Flanagan expands on the original's world of clairvoyants, angry haints and mad men with axes for an intermittently entertaining update on mind-reader Danny Torrance, who as a boy escaped the haunted Overlook hotel with his mom, leaving his possessed father to freeze to death, lost in a hedge maze. Thirty plus years later and Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is walking roadkill, who stays drunk to keep his demons at bay. His "shine" is awakened by a young girl Abra [as in Cadabra] (Kyliegh Curran), who "sees" the kidnapping and murder of a boy by a witchy mystic (Rebecca Ferguson) and a tribe of fairly redundant hench-people who feast on the souls of shining folk. Yes, the premise lacks the subtle creep of King's best work; it's loopy, ham-fisted and bombastic.The last reel showdown takes place in the abandoned Overlook hotel where the ghosts from the previous picture make a not-unexpected curtain call. It's all a bit annoying and silly. Stanley Kubrick's film broke new cinematic ground and Jack Nicholson powered through his role as the unlucky Jack Torrance, and delivered moviedom's most memorable Kubrick stare. Flanagan and crews' energetic effort does not rise to the level of artistry of the original (and, frankly, the story never actually gels) but it probably fits nicely in the new world of meaningless menace.

Motherless Brooklyn

Writer / Director / Star Edward Norton's hommage to Hollywood gumshoe features, Motherless Brooklyn, has so many stellar elements to it -- the cast, the period detail, the story, the music -- that I wish it were a better movie. Norton's heart is in the right place in putting this tale of big city corruption and racism in the New York boroughs based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem on the screen in Trump's America. I just didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to. Maybe the narrative reminded me too much of Chinatown (1974). Maybe Norton's character's Tourette tick didn't seem to add as much to the character or the story as his obsessive compulsiveness. Maybe it was the draggy pacing and some seemingly interminable passages that a more seasoned director would have sensed were extraneous and repetitive. Maybe it was the unevenness in dialogue that seemed to borrow both from gangland flicks of the Cagney era and the streetwise banter of a more recent age, with some pretty jarring moments of "they wouldn't have said that in 1950s New York." The picture still entertains; it's just not the keeper I really hoped it would be.

Jojo Rabbit

The most pressing question about Taika Waitit's Nazi satire Jojo Rabbit is not IF it works (it does), but HOW. Waititi carries much of the film's outrageousness himself as a spectral Adolph Hitler, the ghostly best friend to the film's lead, 10-year-old Jojo (a fine Roman Griffin Davis), a softhearted member of the Hitler Youth, who doesn't understand war, hatred or prejudice but is willing to fake it until he makes it. Jojo's loving mother (Scarlett Johansson) is a member of the resistance and is hiding a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in crawl spaces. Jojo, on the mend from a youth camp grenade accident, discovers Elsa while recuperating at home and begins the real journey into manhood. Waititi has a keen eye and ear and masterful way with childlike enchantment and heartache. The picture, bold and bracingly funny with its anachronistic soundtrack, is loaded with small moments of emotional eloquence.

My Nephew Emmett

Kevin Wilson Jr.’s short film My Nephew Emmett (2017) is as devastating as the movie’s premise would suggest. It is Aug. 28, 1955, and 14-year-old Emmett Till is taken in the middle of the night from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, by the husband of a white woman Till reportedly whistled at earlier that day. L.B. Williams plays Till’s Uncle Mose Wright, who was unable to protect his nephew from the hate white folks were steeped in. The moment when he begs the raging husband (Ethan Leaverton) to take him and not the boy evokes disdain and pity, which are key to appreciating this film. One must understand how powerlessness works and see how anguishing it is.

The King

David Michôd directs Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris in The King, a literate and intriguing staging of the early days of the reign of England's Henry V. With a script by Michôd and Edgerton, the film depicts the young king's determination and uncertainty. He's determined not to be like his despised father (Ben Mendelsohn) but uncertain how to be his own man because, to date, he's done little but carouse. As played by Chalamet, who has established himself as an actor of uncanny emotional depth, Hal, as he's known, is a pensive commander. Uneasy lies the head ....His scenes with both Edgerton as his confidante, the former knight and wastrel Sir John Falstaff and Harris as senior counsel William Chief Justice are smart exchanges that merge period drama elegance with contemporary bombast. That's not to say the exchanges are always transparent. Hal questions the motives and loyalties of the nobles and courtiers who surround him and so his movements are a negotiation between forthrightness and wariness. The movie builds to the famous Battle of Agincourt, where Henry led England in defeating the French, led by the ridiculous dauphin (Robert Pattinson). The sequence does not feature Shakespeare's famous St. Crispin's Day speech but Hal's address does not lack in dramatic heft. The battle itself is fairly bloodless, more a rugby scrum in chain mail than medieval slaughter but it is still pretty stirring. A fine, entertaining picture.

The King

 

David Michôd directs Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris in The King, a literate and intriguing staging of the early days of the reign of England's Henry V. With a script by Michôd and Edgerton, the film depicts the young king's determination and uncertainty. He's determined not to be like his despised father (Ben Mendelsohn) but uncertain how to be his own man because, to date, he's done little but carouse. As played by Chalamet, who has established himself as an actor of uncanny emotional depth, Hal, as he's known, is a pensive commander. Uneasy lies the head ....His scenes with both Edgerton as his confidante, the former knight and wastrel Sir John Falstaff and Harris as senior counsel William Chief Justice are smart exchanges that merge period drama elegance with contemporary bombast. That's not to say the exchanges are always transparent. Hal questions the motives and loyalties of the nobles and courtiers who surround him and so his movements are a negotiation between forthrightness and wariness. The movie builds to the famous Battle of Agincourt, where Henry led England in defeating the French, led by the ridiculous dauphin (Robert Pattinson). The sequence does not feature Shakespeare's famous St. Crispin's Day speech but Hal's address does not lack in dramatic heft. The battle itself is fairly bloodless, more a rugby scrum in chain mail than medieval slaughter but it is still pretty stirring. A fine, entertaining picture.

Harriet

Kasi Lemmons' Harriet is a star vehicle for Tony winner Cynthia Erivo (The Color Purple) that strikes familiar chords in its depiction of slaver tyranny along with a few fresh notes in its treatment of the dynamic between its black character. London-born Erivo is Minty (later Harriet) whose fiery temperament has made her a liability to her resentful young master Gideon (Britisher Joe Alwyn). When bills advertising her sale are posted about, she leaves her husband (Zackary Momoh), a free black man with whom she cannot live, and escapes the Maryland plantation that has been her home. She heads for Philadelphia with the help of a local preacher (Vondie Curtis-Hall), and there she meets a free black abolitionist (Leslie Odom Jr.) who helps her find lodging and work and unwittingly stokes a fire for her to return south to lead her family to freedom. And thus she begins her journey to becoming a conductor for the Underground Railroad. The film's treatment of the many dimensions of blacks' relationship to enslavement is its most interesting aspect and I wish there was more of it rather than the long sequences of Harriet running from pursuers, which, of course, is the core of her story but is certainly not all of it. Scenes between Harriet and her husband, her parents, and the free blacks of Philadelphia are all exceptionally well done and insightful. The interactions with slavers, menacing but trite. Also, the spiritual aura in which the Harriet is cast will undoubtedly resonate with some audience but it does not enhance her persona. Rather, it seems to diminish her bravery and brilliance.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice

Directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman offer fans a musical treat in their bio documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice. Epstein and Friedman (The Celluloid Closet) are masters of the narrative arc and smartly recount Ronstadt's discovery and rise, her musical experimentation and embrace of her Mexican roots and these later years that have been quieted by Parkinson's disease. The joy of the film is not just in the soundtrack, which is irresistible, but in hearing Ronstadt tell her own story throughout. She reveals herself to be not a detached superstar but insightful and reflective about herself and the world. She's had one hell of a career, inspired numerous other female artists in popular music and been a cherished friend. Hearing Emmylou Harris's story of Ronstadt's generosity will fill your heart and hearing Ronstadt join her cousin and nephew in a lovely Spanish love song will break it.

Dark Ages

 

 

If you ask me, black folks have been catching hell ever since the church made up white Jesus and the black devil. Since then darkness has been the code for badness. It's a deep, deep stain in Western culture. So deep we've laughed at it and cheered it on. Now that's powerful.

Marguerite (film short)

Canadian director Marianne Farley's beatific short film Marguerite (2017) is a two-character portrait of an aged woman in her last days and the young home-health nurse who makes daily visits. The film has barely a page of dialogue but the women are involved in an intimate exchange of care and trust. So much is said with their smiles and eyes. When Marguerite learns nurse Rachel has a girlfriend, at first her face shows surprise but then she seems to wander off into memory. We learn of Marguerite's lingering regret and are nearly broken when she asks Rachel, haltingly, what it is like to make love to a woman. "C'est beau," the nurse says, tenderly. "C'est beau," the older woman repeats. This exquisitely humane story is wrapped in fallen snow and downy comforters and warm light: it speaks to our need for love and our capacity for loving.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

Vince Gilligan's El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is smartly crafted but cruises rather than races. Compared to the original series, the film feels lethargic in spots, but that's purposeful. Gilligan has crafted an epilogue for fan reflection and contemplation. There's gun play and explosion, but this picture, this chapter closes the book softly. Quietly.
Aaron Paul's performance is wonderful. His Jesse Pinkman does the heavy lifting for the story about the meth-chef's next steps after escaping from brutal bondage with a vital assist from his mentor Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in the series' final episode.

The unfamiliar might assume El Camino is a wanderer's tale, in which the hero encounters various characters, some familiar and some new, each holding a valuable piece of his fate. It is that tale, for sure, but it is also something more existential. It's about a human's transformation.
Pinkman -- once high wattage and "bitch" obsessed -- is now a low drone. His speech is laconic, his eyes are steely. His PTSD is authentic, his scars are quite visible and his future is an open question.
The film's close is satisfying, if not certain. And such is life.

Judy

British director Rupert Goold's Judy depicts an iconic figure, Judy Garland, near the end of a life that's been addled by a drug addiction spawned by a merciless motion picture studio system when she was a teenager. Renee Zellwegger, stripped of her cherubic girlishness, is a gaunt and enervated Garland, kept alive by booze and pills and love for her children, performing a series of concerts in London just months before her death at 47. Though the script by Tom Edge has moments of near campy hysterics, it also has some lovely, quieter moments that resonate. Judy's evening with a gay couple (Andy Nyman and Daniel Cerqueira) is respite from the grind of performance, isolation and insomnia. She enjoys a meal and a moment of genuine connectedness. It's a passage of warmth in the film to counterbalance the alienation the character has felt most of her life. The film's unevenness in tone will keep it out of the running for Best Picture but Zellwegger's total encasement in the body of an abundantly talented and tremendously tragic woman will most assuredly get a nod.

Joker

That Joaquin Phoenix’s physical form appears to have been broken and improperly mended adds levels of credibility to his performance as Arthur Fleck a/k/a Joker in Todd Phillip’s brutal character study. The picture, an origins film of sorts for the Batman saga, depicts a grim and violent Gotham City, the filthy home to teeming masses of the discarded and forgotten and a few wealthy princes of the city. Phoenix’s Joker is a distressing, sunken presence who dreams of making it big as a stand-up comedian but lacks the imagination to pull that off. Instead he works as a clown-for-hire, tends to his feeble mother (Frances Conroy) and fixates on a local late-night talk show host (Robert DeNiro). After a punishing beatdown by teenaged thugs and a series of other indignities, Arthur decides to fight back against a world that threatens to devour him. His actions inspire imitation and insurrection. Phoenix gives his usual masterful performance in a movie that taps contemporary societal stressors to leave viewers shaken and disoriented.