Secret Television

TV babies of a certain age (read "old") no doubt remember the sitcom trend of the '50s and '60s where the lead character, usually a guy, was keeping a big secret from family and friends, and around which many of the shows' storylines revolved.

I've come to believe this theme spun out of national paranoia about commies and other "enemies within" [see McCarthyism, '47-'59], especially in show biz. Series creators were taking those worries and suspicions and making hay of them.

There was Leo G. Carroll's TV-adapted stage character Topper and his ghostly friends ('53-'55), Alan Young's Wilbur Post and his talking gentleman horse in Mr. Ed ('61-'66), the original My Favorite Martian ('63-'67) with Bill Bixby as a newspaper reporter and Ray Walston as the stranded alien passing as his "Uncle Martin," David Crabtree (Jerry Van Dyke) and the vintage car through which his dead mother (Ann Sothern) spoke to him in My Mother the Car ('65-'66), Maj. Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) and his winsome genie housemate (Barbara Eden) on I Dream of Jeannie ('65-70) and the especially long-running ('64-'72) "my wife is a witch, but in a good way" series Bewitched (Elizabeth Montgomery).

Some of these venerable shows were remade more recently as movies -- I never could bring myself to see any of them. I guess I resisted wanting to reframe them into something more contemporary. They'll always represent for me that time when Tinsel Town struck back against lingering insulation and distrust and helped us lower our guard just a bit, if only for a while.

The Sound of Music (1965)

 

We're coming up on the 60th anniversary of the film The Sound of Music, released in 1965. It was adapted from the Broadway musical that opened in 1959 and ran for more than 1,400 performances. Its stage production has been in revival a few times, but the movie has been a perennial holiday release on television for generations.

Though based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, the Austrian postulate-turned-governess-turned-Nazi-resister and her family, the movie is a fairly sanitized treatment of the rise of the Third Reich. There are no scenes of mass arrests and deportations or concentration camps. Just an ominous feeling for those aware of the history. (Unlike the starkness of Sophie's Choice and Schindler's List, for example.)

You can't blame folks for missing the underlying ugliness in the picture when they are distracted by pretty music and pretty scenery and pretty people.

And I guess that's what's fascinated me about network TV's scheduling of the movie during the holidays. It's most decidedly NOT A Christmas Story, even though "Edelweiss" is sublime.

I do like the subplot about lovestruck Liesl von Trapp and her Nazi Youth beau Rolf Gruber. They represent for me tyranny's seductive quality and the sobering realization that, unlike in Oklahoma and The King and I, also Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, love does NOT conquer all.

Rolf and Liesl's lovely courtship number in the garden ("Sixteen Going on Seventeen") is a high point of Act One and serves as a nice counterpoint to a similar moment between the Captain and Maria in Act Two ("Something Good"). But young Rolf, the officious telegram deliverer, would be the one to blow the whistle on Liesl and the Von Trapps, showing his true love was named Adolf.

Maybe this year, in anticipation of what the future might hold for this country, folks will watch TSOM with new eyes and ears and resolve to kick Rolf to the curb before it's too late.

Benjamin Clementine

 

Some faces stick with me.

Benjamin Clementine's face is one of them.

The British singer / composer / actor had a small but memorable role in Dune: Part 1 (2021) as the Herald of the Change. He was on screen for about 5 minutes but made a huge impression on my brain. His eyes, skin tone, bone structure, voice. Unforgettable.

I'd never seen Clementine's face before and had not since, until today, when I got a glimpse of it in the trailer for Steve McQueen's upcoming feature film.

I went on a hunt and discovered Clementine has a remarkable story. Born in London, moved to Paris, slept in the streets, busked in subways and was discovered. He has an even more remarkable talent.

In 2016, Clementine appeared on NPR's wonderful Tiny Desk concert series, performing original compositions that are nearly impossible to describe. https://youtu.be/00yQGeJ6AOM?si=5NcJ8sUOY7Gj9bej

One commenter on the video of his appearance mentioned Nina Simone. She is absolutely present, along with Anohni Hegarty and other more contemporary baroque pop artists.

In the midst of so much mediocrity, spending time with excellence is enriching.

Clementine will be on a world tour starting in December.

Beaver Becomes a Hero (Leave it to Beaver, 1960)

 

TV babies of a certain age might remember the Leave it to Beaver episode where Theodore and Wally find a missing canoe at the lake while fishing one Sunday (Beaver Becomes a Hero [1960]). It was re-run on MeTV this morning. https://tubitv.com/.../s04-e03-beaver-becomes-a-hero...

Beaver tells his class about the "adventure," and they build the story into a daring rescue involving a millionaire and his daughter. (Kids can be forgiven for letting their fakery run wild. Adults? Not so much.)

After school, Beaver's classmates, including toothy Whitey and annoying Judy, ask their teacher Miss Landers to help them pitch the story to the Mayfield Press. She agrees and off they go, without Beaver's knowledge.

The paper runs the story on the local front, misspells Beaver's name (Theodour) and turns him into a hero. (Newspapers are not treated well in this ep.) June and Ward read the paper together when he gets home from work and complain about the downer headlines. They see the story and are amazed the boys kept the good news from them.

Then the calls begin, congratulating the Cleavers on Beaver's heroism. (It's gratifying to know so many people read the paper back then.) Wally comes in and hears about the story, hits the roof because it's all lies and tells Beaver to come clean on what happened, which he does.

Miss Landers commends Beaver for admitting the story was false, and his classmates are told to write a letter to the editor that cleans up the mess.

As is true with all of the Beaver's misadventures, solid humanistic morality is at the heart of this Eisenhower-era program. Winking at its cultural monochromatics, Leave it to Beaver's messaging, what it said about American values, stands in startling contrast to today's cynicism.

Nostalgia gives a warm feeling, but we can't really build on it and we can't reshape the present to be the past. But I think we can find some comfort in knowing we are capable of being better than we are going into the future because we know that we have been better.

A Real Pain

 

First, you either get actor/writer/director Jesse Eisenberg or you don't. Full Stop.

His frantic twitchiness and searing braininess are your cup of tea or they're not. Again, full stop.

That being said, I still find it puzzling that so many people DON'T get his disarming unconventionality. I dig his defiant lack of Hollywood manner; his angular, ungainly features; rapid-fire delivery and ticks. They make me want to listen to him closely to hear what's on his mind.

Judging by his second directorial feature film, A Real Pain, Eisenberg has been pondering many big questions about human damage, the cataclysmic variety and that which is much more intimate but still devastating.

In the film, Eisenberg, who also wrote the remarkable screenplay, stars as Dave, an online marketer living in New York with his wife and child. He and his seemingly rootless cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin in a marvelous performance that's not to be believed) go on a Holocaust tour of sites in Poland and an added trip to the home of their grandmother, a camp survivor who died recently.

The two -- quite different in demeanor and outlook -- join a small group that Benji, a manic bundle of love and judgment, begins first to smother then to seduce. Watching this happen, as both a fly on the wall and through Dave's long-suffering eyes, makes this journey both bracing and unnerving.

Eisenberg reveals late in the picture the source of Benji's need to love and annihilate and this casts new light on a character that seems intent on being both embraced and scolded. Culkin's work is amazing from start to finish and leads one to wonder if Eisenberg had the actor in mind when he wrote the part; he owns it completely.

The film is psychologically layered and emotionally complex and the backdrop of atrocity and extermination adds an important dimension to the work the two main characters clearly must do to repair their damage -- if they can.

Superman and the Mole Men (1951)

 

Before The Adventures of Superman became a television series in 1952, the film Superman and the Mole Men (1951) was released to theaters. It would be added to the 1953 television season as the two-parter titled "The Unknown People."

In this episode, Clark Kent / Superman (George Reeves) and Lois Lane (Phyllis Coates) go to a Texas town to cover the drilling of the world's deepest oil well for The Daily Planet. They discover that the well has struck radium rather than oil.

One night, a couple of mute, bald dwarves dressed in black come out of the well and start exploring the surface world, leaving glowing flowers and children's toys in their wake.

Predictably, townspeople freak out over the strange-looking men whom they call "monsters." One of the mole men gets shot while trying to flee a lynch mob and, saved by Superman, ends up in a hospital where folks don't want to treat him.

Other mole men come to retrieve their injured friend. They're carrying a huge device that shoots laser beams. It's not clear why it is too big for any one of them to fire alone. Perhaps it was never intended to be used as a weapon.

It looks like there will be a stand-off between the townspeople and the mole men. Superman, of course, intervenes before things get further out of hand. The mole men are permitted to return to their underground world. From below, they fire a beam that destroys the drill and seals the well. Closing off any future exploration.

To this day, I love "The Unknown People," despite the cheesy effects, unconvincing makeup and mime-school costumes. I love what it says about our irrational fear of strangers, our need to attack what we don't understand, and how we so quickly assume those who are not like us are dangerous. And the trouble prejudice causes.

Needed messages these days, for sure.

Superman and the Mole Men can be rented on YouTube and Amazon.

Heretic

 

Writers / directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods take matters of belief and religiosity and set them ablaze in their chilling horror thriller Heretic.

In the film, two young female Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) ride their bikes up to a deceptively charming house in response to an internet inquiry for more information about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (a real giveaway that something is amiss, IYAM).

The door is answered by a cheery Hugh Grant, who says he did indeed ask for the visit and invited the missionaries in for a chat. They ask if a woman is present in the home, as per the church's practice, and Grant's Mr. Reed says his wife is in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie. 

The missionaries, Sisters Paxton and Barnes (East and Thatcher, respectively), slip easily into their witness but are quickly challenged by Reed about Mormon beliefs, including the church's former practice of polygamy. 

The missionaries acquit themselves admirably at first, but the visit becomes ominous as Reed's inquiries about faith systems become more pointedly hostile and his wife's mysterious absence becomes more concerning.

The film's narrative -- which is more psychological thriller than full-blown horror -- includes a central passage about religious institutions' claims of authenticity. Grant, in sparkling form in a unique character mode, picks at the missionaries' composure and slowly reveals their growing dread of him is warranted. 

The film then moves into the familiar territory of entrapment but adds the twist that gives the film its title, pulling in the picture's bloody aspects. 

Beck and Woods, who co-wrote and produced John Krasinski's 2018 alien invasion hit A Quite Place, know that the most compelling and enduring fright is that which does not just repulse but unmoors the viewers' sense of reality and gets the audience to enter into spaces they know they shouldn't but can't resist -- including the questioning of one's long-held beliefs.

Danai Gurira

 

I don't know all of Danai Gurira's story but what I do know is every bit what America is about when it's functioning properly.

Gurira, despite one's assumptions based on her name and bearing, was born in Iowa to Zimbabwean immigrants, a chemistry professor and college librarian. Her family returned to Africa after some years in the U.S., but Gurira returned and earned a bachelor's in psychology from a small college in Minnesota and an MFA from NYU. She has appeared on and written for the stage, acted on television and in films. By all accounts, Gurira, the 46-year-old daughter of immigrants, has thrived.

She is perhaps best known as the swordswoman Michonne in the ravenous fan favorite The Walking Dead (2010-2022) and later as Okoye the Black Panther series of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, both critically acclaimed and celebrated productions.

But I first saw her in Tim McCarthy's highly engaging The Visitor (2007), in which she co-starred with Richard Jenkins, who played an emotionally isolated Connecticut university professor, and Haaz Sleiman, in his role as a Syrian drummer who along with Gurira's Senegalese merchant were undocumented immigrants living in the professor's vacant New York apartment without his knowledge, having been conned by an unscrupulous rental agent.

McCarthy's screenplay explores many human connections, and the audience is drawn into the dynamic of affection and trust that grows among these three and a fourth, the drummer's mother, who illegally immigrated to the U.S. with her son and fears their deportation.

The professor tries to facilitate the young man's release from detention after he is falsely accused on jumping a subway turnstile, but the drummer is quickly deported back to Syria and to an uncertain fate. The mother decides to join her son in Syria.

Gurira's jewelry merchant moves in with family, disappearing into the mist of anonymity that shrouds the millions who come to the U.S. seeking safety, hoping to thrive. And if not to thrive, to simply stay alive.

I loved this distressing picture, the clarity of the presentation of the thorny immigration issue but also the underlying optimism of the professor's arc of going from detachment to boldness, isolation to openness.

Perhaps he recognized that the label "visitor" could be applied to himself, as well, as we are all just visiting this old world for a while.

Conclave

 

Oscar-winning director Edward Berger's Conclave is as pristine as the marble floors of the Vatican halls that serve as the location for this engrossing adaptation of Robert Harris's novel of the same name. The screenplay, which I suspect will get nods during awards season as will the film itself, is by dramatist Peter Straughan, and involves the election of a pope after the sudden death of a beloved though controversial pontiff.

The film presents with immaculate precision the age-old process of convening the College of Cardinals -- a segment of the Curia, the body that runs the Vatican -- to select the church's new leader from among its 100+ members. Berger doesn't dwell too long on the machinery, which is as byzantine as the garments worn by these princes of the church. He prefers to dive quickly into the politics that permeates everything in the Holy See.

Ralph Fiennes is splendid as the reluctant dean of the College, whose job it is to "manage" the election, which straightaway becomes mired in turfism, with liberal and conservative factions naming their champions and carving up the delegates. At one point, Fiennes's character, Cardinal Lawrence, who is in the midst of a private crisis of faith, compares the conclave to a political convention. It's not as much of a throwaway line as one might think, which becomes clear as the story progresses, hidden agendas and secret transactions are revealed.

Lawrence's closest ally is the liberal Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), who was a confidante of the late pope and the man Lawrence would like to see as head of the church. Bellini says he would refuse the election if chosen, but his actions suggest otherwise.

Several others whose ideologies range from moderate to ultra-conversative (played by John Lithgow, Lucian Msamati and Sergio Castellitto) are much more deliberate in making their intentions (ambitions) known.

An additional complication is the arrival of the newly installed Cardinal Benitez (Mexican actor Carlos Diehz), who was secretly anointed as archbishop of Kabul, Afghanistan. He's unknown to the other cardinals and so little attention is paid to him, his arrival or the impact he will have on the election (and only a cinema novice would think likewise).

The august body is sequestered in the Sistine Chapel to make their choice, and they will stay locked away until a candidate wins a majority of the votes. With each passing ballot, and explosive discovery, the field gets smaller and tensions mount.

How much does Catholicism play into the drama? The church's practices, dealings with marginalized communities and failures regarding children will likely register more with observers of that tradition than others. But the film's overarching issues of conscience and truth will have universal resonance with those open to personal reflection using the picture's intrigues as a backdrop.

Highly recommended.

Rebel Ridge

 

Jeremy Saulnier's Rebel Ridge (Netflix) is not as coiled and precise as the film's star, British actor Aaron Pierre, but it's still an entertaining diversion and welcome introduction to Pierre's measured intensity.

The picture is set in a present-day Louisiana town that is scamming motorists and falsely detaining minor offenders to put money in the town's coffers. Pierre's ex-Marine Terry Richmond is on the way to deliver bail for his cousin when he runs afoul of the police, who seize the bail money as asset forfeiture and warn Richmond to move on or else.

Of course, he doesn't, and thus begins a pretty convoluted scheme to avenge himself, his railroaded cousin and deliver some payback to the police. He receives some help from a court staffer (AnnaSophia Robb) who has her own worries with law enforcement.

Rebel Ridge reminded me a bit of the Black avenger flicks of the '70s -- Fred Williamson, Jim Kelly, Jim Brown -- sans the blatant racism and more politics. Saulnier isn't peddling easy tropes but does leave some narrative gaps, especially in the Third Act showdown.

Still well worth a watch for Pierre's performance and the primer on how to stay alive when stopped by police.

Smile 2

 

I didn't hate Parker Finn's opening salvo for the Smile horror / gore franchise back in '22 and thought it had some solid jolts and a freakish gimmick (the facial expression of the title) to set it apart from the plethora (to actually mean "excessive amount" rather than just "a lot") of other cinema blood fests that seem to appeal to millennials and their juniors.

In this serving, Finn delivers the story of a musical superstar Skye Riley (a commendable singing / screaming Naomi Scott) who is returning to the concert stage a year after being seriously injured in a car wreck that killed her boyfriend (Ray Nicholson, son of Jack), whom we meet in harrowing flashbacks and spectral visitations.

Because she's still recovering from painful injuries, Skye, who was already a coke fiend, has a wee-bit of a drug problem, a stage-mother-from hell (Rosemarie Dewitt) and recurring hallucinations {?) about eerily grinning people offing themselves in front of her. It's a lot for a young woman to handle -- even one who lives in a Chrysler building apartment and has an eager assistant (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) to indulge her spoiled ass.

In the first Smile, Finn's protagonist was a therapist who discovered this suicidal phenomenon first in her weirdly smiling patients and later among strangers. In #2, Finn merges the worlds of emotional trauma, mental deterioration and the supernatural to bend the audience's perceptions (one might say twist them into pretzels) about what we're seeing as Skye makes her descent into hell.

As is true for the rest of this money-making genre, much of this filmmaker's budget has been spent on raspberry jam, fake entrails and gross prosthetics. Depending on one's expectations about gore, Smile 2 will deliver bucketsful.

That's not to see there aren't other interesting things going for it. In fact, I thought the film's cold opening was especially keen; kudos to cinematographer Charlie Sarroff for setting the bar high for the rest of the picture, which often meets but does not exceed those first minutes.

We Live in Time

 

Irish director John Crowley has fashioned Nick Payne's unconventionally structured tale of love and loss, We Live in Time, into a warm film of tender moments between Almut, an ambitious chef (Florence Pugh), and Tobias, a recently divorced, unassuming information technologist for a cereal company (Andrew Garfield).

She's a decidedly alpha restaurateur; he's a retiring beta who is smitten with her dynamism. They have wonderfully civilized conversations and galvanic sex; they court and soon have merged their lives. All of this is shown in jumbled pieces, which seems to be a narrative choice by more and more arthouse moviemakers.

In time, Almut develops uterine cancer and chooses rather than have a complete hysterectomy to undergo a partial in hopes of possibly having a child with Tobias, a prospect she rejected out-of-hand earlier in their relationship.

They have a daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney), and when Ella is three or four, Almut's cancer returns.

Almut proposes to Tobias, in one of the picture's beautifully crafted exchanges, that they consider not undergoing six or eight months of chemo and surgery and the wretchedness that comes with the treatment. Instead, might they spend whatever time she has left living life with abandon.

The story progresses through the period after the couple's decision, their conflicts and clashes, personal revelations and disappointments. Nearly every moment feels real, every misstep authentic, and the final scenes both heartbreaking and, surprisingly, life affirming.

Jules

 

Marc Turtletaub's short and sweet film Jules is the story of Martin, Sandy and Joyce (Ben Kingsley, Harriet Sansom Harris and Jane Curtin, respectively), septuagenarians in rural Pennsylvania whom we first meet as they make individual remarks at the weekly town meetings, sharing their rather mundane concerns with the council until something extraordinary happens to them.

When a UFO crashes into Martin's azaleas and a little blue being (Jade Quon in a non-speaking role) emerges, injured, Martin, who is showing early signs of dementia, is frightened but fascinated. He reports the event at the next council meeting but is dismissed as an aging coot. His daughter, Denise (Zoe Winters) is concerned about Martin distancing himself from others and unexplainable behavior, like reports he's buying dozens of apples for an alien living in his home. Martin successfully hides the alien's presence from his daughter and most others in town.

When Sandy unexpectedly discovers the alien sitting in Martin's living room eating apple slices, she becomes Martin's cohort in keeping the creature, whom she names "Jules," safe from those who would eventually show up to take him away and do God-knows-what to him. A snooping Joyce eventually finds out about Martin and Sandy's pact and wants to be part of the action.

The lovely and often hilarious script by Gavin Steckler is concerned less with the alien visitors vs. government agents story (ala ET: The Extraterrestrial) and more with the spiritual and emotional holes in people that Jules' presence seems to fill (ala Close Encounters ....).

Kingsley, Harris and Curtin are wonderful in this unconventional story about the trials and triumphs (and temptations) that go along with getting old.

Curtin, a marvelous performer who had fallen off my radar some years ago, has a terrific moment mid-way through as Joyce, a big-city transplant to the boonies, puts her own captivating stamp on Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird. It's a funny and amazingly touching moment, perfectly pitched to match the character and Curtin's inimitable style. Brava!

Joker: Folie à Deux

 

I waited quite a while to screen Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie à Deux because I suspected from the trailers and early critical buzz that it was not a must-see for the reasons most people consider any film to be such, i.e., brilliant execution or daring, artistic vision or Marvel's latest excesses.

Phillips' stylistic mash-up of psychological drama and musical homage is indeed the misfire many people say it is, but it is also enormously entertaining.

It is NOT a work for DC Universe fangirls and boys and will likely disappoint Lady Gaga's legions of admirers (she sings but doesn't belt). But those of us who will go to the ends of the earth to see Joaquin Phoenix do his thing, will relish the work of the master of outré characterizations as he takes us down dark passages as the murderous freak Arthur Fleck a/k/a Joker.

In Folie à Deux, which is introduced by a toe-tapping cartoon reprising the events of 2019's Joker, Phoenix's Fleck is in a desolate prison / psychiatric hospital waiting to be tried for five murders, including one committed on a national talk show. While being escorted to a meeting with his lawyer (Catherine Keener), Fleck meets a young woman named Lee (Lady Gaga), who tells him she was committed after setting fire to her family home.

This moment is not quite "meet cute," but it is nearly staged as such. In fact, Arthur and Lee duet on a dozen or so pop standards and Broadway and motion picture musical numbers, some minimally staged, others more burlesque. I pictured lots of eye-rolling during these scenes, but I thought they were refreshing. (I also thought ABC's experimental police musical Cop Rock from 1990 was pretty bold television.)

Setting aside the movie's musical aspects, one might still find much to appreciate in Folie à Deux's statements about criminality and identity, how society creates demons and what we do with our fixation on fame. It's pretty heady stuff.

As I told the theater manager after today's screening, I could imagine this picture finding life among those who fancy films that are by turns chilling and inspiring, visceral and cerebral, and, well, tuneful, too.

That's Entertainment!

The Substance

 

French writer / director Coralie Fargeat's The Substance is a celluloid nightmare of body grotesquerie that floods the screen with more blood and viscera than has ever been presented by masters of repulsion Davids Cronenberg and Lynch.

Demi Moore plays celebrated-film-star-turned-fitness-guru Elisabeth Sparkle, who receives word from her unbelievably sexist boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) that she's run out of audience appeal and the studio would be looking for someone younger and prettier to replace her.

When Elisabeth follows a murky lead to a solution for aging that will transform her into her "best self," she's introduced to The Substance, a program that offers bodily changes on the cellular level by creating another, separate, perkier version of Elisabeth.

The program warns Elisabeth that she and her alter ego, who takes the name Sue (Margaret Qualley), are limited to a week each before switching back to the other. They can continue this exchange indefinitely, but the time limit rule -- among others -- is not to be broken, which, of course, means it will.

Sue goes to the studio and in short order becomes television's new fitness darling, leaving Elisabeth to sulk and gorge. The experiment soon goes off the rails, as we fully expected, and Fargeat's stunningly imaginative production and sound designs shift into high gear to make fuller comment on dysmorphia and misogyny.

Moore is a wonderful and underrated actress, IMO, who does phenomenal work here as Elisabeth's physical and mental states steadily decay. Qualley (who also appears in Yorgos Lanthimos' latest freak-out Kinds of Kindness) is a fierce presence who handles her highly physical role with enormous commitment even when covered in a hundred pounds of foam and latex.

The Substance is not an enjoyable film, strictly speaking. It is exhausting and revolting, but it is also instructive, insightful, frightening and weirdly funny, so the disorientation and nauseousness are not wholly gratuitous.

Ghastly imagery comprises three-quarters of the film, with the last quarter the true test of the audience's mettle. It will take a lot of fortitude -- and a strong stomach -- to stick with it to the bitter, bitter end.

Don't eat before going.

Never Let Go

 

Alexandre Aja's Never Let Go is a modest tale of possession and evil that doubles (triples?) as a story about family ties (literally) and faith, truth and trust.

Halle Berry stars as the mother of twin boys Sam and Nolan (Anthony B. Jenkins and Percy Daggs IV, respectively) and the three have taken refuge in their cabin in a forest where "evil" waits to take possession of them. The cabin is secured by a blessing that keeps the demons at bay. Or does it?

On their daily foraging excursions, the three tie around their waists a thick rope that is secured to the cabin's foundation. Momma says the connection protects them from spirits that only she sees.

As provisions run out and foraging produces less and less -- they're reduced to eating tree bark -- Nolan questions more and more his mother's stories. His doubts turn an already perilous situation into a fiery nightmare.

Oscar-winner Berry, who is also one of the movie's producers, is a steady anchor in a picture that asks relatively little of her as the lead. She is the veteran in what is ostensibly a three-character flick.

Berry has a couple of wonderful scenes -- one midway through in which she offers her sons insight into the kind of threats that lurk around them, although she doesn't say why, only that the evil got to them.

The other I won't spoil by giving away too much, but it involves a heartbreaking decision that could mean the difference between life and death. Berry nails it, solidly.

Sam and Nolan (two strong performances from child actors) actually dominate the last third of the picture, as the cabin walls no longer offer them safety and they face harsh truths their Momma has kept from them.

The narrative in Never Let Go is pretty sparse in background and context even though the mythology upon which the movie's central conceit -- the rope -- feels fresh, to me. Aja's production design is suitably pasty and claustrophobic, his demons and ghouls restrained compared to big budget horror shows.

But that's no matter because the movie's greatest appeal, to me, is its depiction of familial, especially filial, devotion, and how love can both heal and harm.

Maggie Smith

 

Dame Maggie Smith's only leading role Oscar was for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), in which she played the title character, a teacher in a Scottish girls' school.

While reflecting on the picture last night, using a contemporary-culture lens, I began to see the auburn-haired Brodie as something other than a lonely spinster who toyed with men's affections while captivating her young charges with her spirited rejection of convention and mores, hiding her sadness behind bravado and shallow charm.

As I listened more intently to all of those wonderful words coming out of Dame Maggie's mouth, it occurred to me that this marvelous character (based on the Muriel Sparks novel and given cinematic life by screenwriter Jay Presson Allen) was a thoroughgoing narcissist, enamored of her own irrepressibility and unwilling to bend favorably toward anyone who would not feed her egoism.

What a rich, layered performance by Dame Maggie, whose clipped aristocratic warble was a terrific invention in itself! I studied more closely her affect when finally confronting her demons, as they were shown to her by a student (Pamela Franklin) who had grown tired of Miss Brodie's manipulation and emotional indifference.

That last-reel lashing of the teacher, despondent to learn she was no longer in her "prime," is a comeuppance for the ages, which, nonetheless, might leave some in the audience pitying the teacher, who was, yes, an arrogant, cagey, Fascist sympathizer who claimed no responsibility for the lives she'd ruined. But she was also quite mad and should not have been in a position of authority.

Miss Brodie was ejected from her position by the head mistress (Celia Johnson) based on reports of misbehavior and grooming of her "girls" to be radical nonconformists, but she would not accept the board's decision. Rather she would appeal to the public, arguing that she was well-known and popular, and her students would defend her.

Of course, all of that was a facade, and Miss Brodie eventually folded, having been unmasked by someone she had trusted, simply because that person reflected the teacher's treachery back at her.

Megalopolis

 

Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis intrigues with its bold blending of Shakespeare and Fellini (part Julius Caesar and part Satyricon) and a host of visual homages to 1927's Metropolis and 1955's The Night of the Hunter and to the tableaux of Stanley Kubrick and Peter Greenaway. It is more of a feast for cinephiles than a satisfying meal for casual moviegoers.

Coppola wrote, directed and produced this "fable" about an architectural genius / master of time and space Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) who has been contracted by the people of the future city New Rome (a remade/remodeled New York) to turn it into a model of sustainable, soul-enriching urban living, using not concrete and steel but a highly malleable material with properties that will last forever.

Catalina's vision is opposed by the city's mayor, Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who wants solutions to more immediate problems -- affordable housing being most pressing. They represent the eternal conflict between idealism and pragmatism.

Animosity between the two men extends back to Cicero's prosecution of Catalina on charges related to the drowning death of Catalina's wife, whose body subsequently went missing. Catalina was exonerated of her murder.

Catalina's efforts are underwritten by his aging uncle Crassus (Jon Voight), who is smitten by Catalina's mistress, a television reporter named Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza). Platinum eventually consorts with the old man and begins to plot his ruin.

Crassus, like King Lear, is surrounded by many nefarious underlings, most notably grandson Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), whose unabashed greed and need for attention might sound familiar to some. Clodio (oh, the names in this picture!) is a scheming rabble-rouser trying to work both sides against the middle, and LaBeouf might deliver the most entertaining performance.

No epic is worthy of the name without a romantic subplot as counterpoint to the politics. Coppola invests a lot in the pairing of the indefatigable Driver with British beauty Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays the beloved daughter of Catalina's nemesis Cicero. (Cue "A Time for Us" from Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet [1968].)

The picture is graced with featured turns from Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter and Dustin Hoffman.

Yes, Megalopolis is crammed full of acting notables and notions, stunning images and ideas, but, as others have said, it lacks true coherence. It's an expressive venture from a master of the cinematic arts that will have audience's talking more about HOW the movie was made more than what it MEANS.

Speak No Evil (2024)

 

Speak No Evil is James Watkins' remake of the Danish psycho-horror film of the same name from 2022. If one were to strip away the narrative clunkiness, one would find the new picture celebrates the power of existential threat to restore the tattered fabric of family life. The original picture was a much bleaker story.

Watkins' picture is about the perils of a small family -- Ben Dalton (Scott McNairy), wife Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and daughter Agnes (Alex West Lexler) -- who are visiting Paddy (James McAvoy), wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and mute son Ant (Dan Hough) at their remote farmhouse in England after becoming fast friends while vacationing in Italy. (Who does that?) 

When they arrive from their London flat, the Daltons quickly discover Paddy is a boundaries-obliterator -- stepping all over Louise's sensibilities as a vegetarian and poking at Ben's apparent insecurities as a cuckolded beta. 

As events unfold, Paddy becomes increasingly insinuating and Ciara more intrusive, much to Louise's chagrin (Davis is a particularly potent force here). Eventually Agnes, between panic attacks and emotional meltdowns, discovers the non-speaking Ant holds the key to his family's weirdness.

Even if one were to give in to the bottomless gullibility that is the setting for Watkins' version of the Danish creep out, one might still be frustrated by the bone-headedness on display -- especially that of Ben, a master of indecision and self-pity. 

To be fair, some of Ben and Louise's "unspeakably" bad choices can be attributed to the couple's emotional distancing from each other and 12-year-old Agnes's arrested development. To wit a stuffed support bunny rabbit plays an important role in this tale.

In the end, Watkins' Speak No Evil is a tour de force for the sneering, scenery-chewing McAvoy's maniacal Paddy, a psychotic Daddy Dearest candidate, for sure. The movie is a messy mash up of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf's toxic passive-aggressiveness and Straw Dogs' bloody aggressive-aggressiveness. But it's occasionally an entertaining one-off mess.

Didi (2024)

 

Celebrated Taiwanese American director Sean Wang's first feature, Dìdi, is his personal reflection on a familiar cinematic theme -- budding-teen-ager angst -- set against an Asian immigrant backdrop of cultural identity and assimilation in Fremont, California. Seventeen-year-old Izaac Wang plays Sean's alter ego, Chris, called "Wang-Wang" by his "friends," "Dìdi" by his mother and grandmother (Joan Chen and Zhang Li Hua, respectively), and all manner of vile creature by sister Vivian (Shirley Chen). It's 2008, and we see the somber, hooded Chris at the family table where the hectoring is endless and at school where a different sort of hectoring goes on. He is dreading the transition to high school, even though mates Faud (Raul Dial) and Soup (Aaron Chang), who turned junior high into their own miscreant playground, are eager to make the move and expand their territory. The film does not connect the emotional and psychological dots that make up Chris's profile, leaving the audience to weigh how much an absent father and bickering elders contribute to the kid's painful lack of confidence. The move to college that sister Vivian is preparing for seems remote and entrance examinations pointless. Chris finds some joy through his video camera and posts shaky scenes of his friends' stunts on YouTube. When he sees a group of boys skating, a skill he has yet to master even though he carries his board around with him, he poses as a "filmer" and agrees to shoot some scenes for them so that they can get sponsors. The scheme doesn't work out and hard lessons are learned. Chris Wang's drive to be accepted is overshadowed by a more basic need -- to be seen, which is ironic considering how often he hides from others. When Dìdi feels shame, he disappears, erasing the evidence of his existence, be it YouTube videos or chatroom exchanges. At 30, Sean Wang captures the raging, impulsive, profane swagger of early adolescence, when high school freshmen are flex, fight or fondle 24/7. We cringe for young Chris's missteps but a scene between him and his mother paints in some important details and the picture's last frame glows with hope.

The Crow (2024)

 

I'm probably one of the few true movie buffs who has not seen Brandon Lee's The Crow (1994), so I can't comment on similarities / differences between Lee's original, which was directed by Alex Proyas, and Bill Skarsgard's version, directed by Rupert Sanders.

Critics have not been impressed by Crow '24's storyline or the under-energized performances by Skarsgard, tatted musician Eric, and co-star British singer / actress FKA twigs, as Shelly. Watching two impossibly attractive people's slithering courtship is not enough to compel interest in an undercooked story about, well, it's hard for me to say. 

Film veteran Danny Huston plays Vincent Roeg, a tech villain with an ominous power of suggestion -- not sure how he came to have it -- who in in an unholy alliance with Shelly's mother, played by celebrated British stage actress Josette Simon, and other mysterious folk. The script does not explore comprehensibly any of this satisfactorily, but it all ends with the murder of one of Shelly's friends by Roe's agents and an attack on her and Eric as they try to avoid capture. 

The lovers are killed, and Eric finds himself in a mucky limbo with another of the undead, Kronos (Sami Bouajila), who tells him his love for Shelly will keep him suspended between life and death until her murder can be avenged. (It is quite likely all of this made more sense 30 years ago.)

I agree with those who say the first two acts of the film -- the courtship and the after-death revelation -- are a moody, atmospheric slog -- and the third act is where the real party is. But by then interest has passed and despite some pretty artful swordplay by Skarsgard and an astounding John Wickian body count in the halls of an opera house, the movie is DOA.

Requiescat in pace

Strange Darling

To even the boldest of cinephiles, J.T. Mollner's Strange Darling will be the damndest (strangest?) picture this year.  And THAT, most assuredly, is a GOOD thing.

Mollner, with actor Giovanni Ribisi as director of photography, has constructed a beautifully vibrant, non-linear, highly unpredictable story, billed as a re-enactment, of the final rampage of a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest. It has elements of horror, and the gore is substantial, but it is also terrifically funny in spots, which only adds to its intoxicating effect.

Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner are the principals in this bloody, freakishly disturbing story of hunter and hunted that begins in the middle of the chase and bounces among the hours leading up to and following the final standoff. The film's last minutes are a single shot of the killer staring into the camera lens as the color is bled out of the frame. To say more would be to ruin a nearly perfect picture.

I'm not that familiar with Fitzgerald nor Gallner but their performances are wonderfully synched, bending to every unexpected twist, making every excruciating moment totally believable, riveting. Veteran actors Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey are featured in one of the story's six chapters that is risibly titled "Mountain People."

This picture is NOT for the squeamish or those triggered by, well, just about anything.

Alien: Romulus

 

I've viewed the Alien franchise (excluding the crossovers with Predator) as an extended metaphor about how human vanity and greed can be supplanted by virtue and grit. It has also been a HUGE "you go, girl" to female empowerment, while rewriting the script on tension and viscera and gore.

Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus tracks along with the first three films in the series, especially, with corporate scheming being the villain and the skeletal anger machines that gestate inside of human hosts being the tools to galactic domination.

In this sequel, scrappy young orphan Rain, a wonderful Cailee Spaeny, is trapped on a dark mining planet with her brother Andy -- a masterful David Jonsson who, frankly, owns this picture. Andy is an android programmed by Rain's father to be her guardian.

After being denied permission to leave the planet, having completed her required number of hours in mines, Rain joins with a band of young renegades -- Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu -- who have spotted a damaged space station, the Romulus of the title, in the planet's orbit. They figure the station is carrying enough fuel to get them off the planet and to a better life where there is sunshine. They need Andy's machinery to make it all happen.

Problems with the pirating excursion present themselves almost immediately, with multiple disastrous threats just ticks of the clock away. The most pressing threat is the orbiting station's steady descent into the planet's asteroid rings and sure destruction. Added to this, of course, is the discovery of a hive of hungry, hungry aliens in the ship's inner chambers.

Alvarez, whom I first noticed for his excellent home-invasion thriller "Don't Breathe," has directed a film with three distinct acts. The opening exposition is smartly crafted so that audiences can overlook the thievery at the core of the narrative and see the scheme as getting back at The Man -- the soulless, grubby human counterpart to the snapping creatures on board.

The second act ratchets up the tension and the stakes as the team lands on the damaged station and discovers there is "life" on board, other than the reptilian monsters hibernating within -- a pretty neat narrative link to Ripley Scott's Alien (1979).

The third act raises the stakes on the existential threat even further, saying the alien enemy lies within us.

It's a great ride, with Alvarez using all of the cinematic tools at his disposal to create both claustrophobia and isolation in the battle and the chase, but also the intimacy of connections across the vastness of space -- represented most clearly and, yes, lovingly by Rain and Andy's devotion to each another.

Some might take issue -- as I did a bit -- with the story's infantilizing of Andy, who is Black, as a boy in a grown man's body. A charitable reading of the final moments of the film suggests Alvarez understands this and will "fix it" in the next picture -- which there surely will be.