After a long rest, Beetlejuice returns

  It’s easy to see why Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, director Tim Burton’s follow-up to the 1988 classic, opened the 2024 Venice Film Festival. By the end of its high-spirited one hour and 32 minutes, the film has established itself as a celebration of the original. 

   Some might call that fan service, but I prefer to say that Burton, who’s now 66, treats Beetlejuice Beetlejuice more as a belated encore than a sequel.

  I'm leaping ahead but, for me, the best thing about the movie arrived at the end. A finale built around Donna Summer’s rendition of MacArthur Park — lip-synched by two of the film’s characters — gives Burton's second helping a near lyrical lift, a small triumph of silliness.

    Generally, though, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice provides intermittent amusement built around a few veterans of the original cast, most notably Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, the scuzzy demonic dead guy with a wiseass show business flare and an uncontrolled libido.

    Other returnees include Catherine O’Hara as the narcissistic self-proclaimed artist Delia, who’s also stepmother to Lydia Deetz, the returning Winona Ryder. Once a sullen teenager, Lydia is now the widowed mother of Astrid Deetz (Jenna Ortega), this edition’s skeptical teen. 

    As if to goof on the monetization of horror, the screenplay makes Lydia the host of a popular TV show called Ghost House, which purportedly investigates hauntings. Justin Theroux serves as the host’s producer, a self-aggrandizing sleaze ball who wants to marry Lydia. 

    The joke fizzles. Theroux’s Rory is so obviously phony that his sincerity becomes a one-note gag.

    The plot consists of a variety of contrivances that connect the movie’s set pieces and introduce new characters such as Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson, a TV actor whose afterlife existence consists of acting out tough cop roles. 

   Monica Bellucci plays Delores, a soul-sucking corpse who reassembles her severed body parts with the help of a staple gun. Delores once was married to Beetlejuice and now seeks vengeance for no better reason than he chopped her into little pieces. It's an old story; some people can't take a joke.

    Arthur Conti appears as Jeremy, a young man who seems to connect with Astrid until the movie adds a dark twist.

      The 1988 original -- which I saw in a long-gone theater in a long-gone mall -- certified Burton as a director to watch. Beetlejuice felt like a breakthrough, an outrageously inventive second film from the director of Pee-wee's Big Adventure. 

       In the new edition, Burton smooths out rough edges with an animated sequence about the death of Lydia’s father, a healthy application of gook, and the addition of Beetlejuice’s mini-spawn, a flesh-chomping baby. A brigade-sized horde of ghosts in large suits sport heads that have been shrunk to the size of grapefruits. 

       Don't look for Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, the original ghosts. Their characters have moved on in their afterlife journeys.

       It's hardly surprising that the feeling of discovery has waned, but there’s still some fun left in a movie with a plot that can feel as stitched together as Bellucci’s Delores.    

       Besides, with Keaton fully embracing Beetlejuice’s slimy ways, Burton finds enough comic life among the dead to keep his movie from foundering.

       

  

On saving a beloved attraction

 

    For some folks who were raised in the Denver area, the restaurant Casa Bonita evokes fond memories of childhood. Once called the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants, Casa Bonita opened in 1974 and quickly became the star attraction of a Lakewood, Co., strip mall.

   Among those smitten by Casa Bonita were Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame. The restaurant appeared in a South Park episode, a touch of nostalgia garnished with the series' satirical hot sauce.

  In 2021, Parker and Stone purchased the dying restaurant  for $3.1 million. They then embarked on a restoration project that wound up costing $40 million, a major leap from an initial estimate of $6 million.

  Casa Bonita Mi Amor! documents the restaurant's history while providing a lively and entertaining chronicle of what initially looks like one of history's worst investments. 

   More guided by passion than spreadsheets, the South Park creators stuck with their venture, reopening the restaurant in 2023. They brought back a 30-foot indoor waterfall and restored other signature attractions that make the current version seem less like Disneyland than something on the order of Meow Wolf with Mexican food.

   It wasn't easy. The restaurant Parker and Stone purchased might be likened to a corpse left to fester in the desert sun. Pipes oozed ... well ... ooze, and the building's infrastructure was so deteriorated, it had become gross and dangerous.

    Anyone who has ever been caught in a cycle of escalating costs during a home renovation project will recognize the problems Parker and Stone faced. At one point, they wondered whether it might be wise to pull the plug and cut their losses. 

    Like most possessed people, they proceeded with their outlandish pursuit of resurrecting the past while giving it contemporary polish and a new infusion of imagination.

    Was it insane? Probably, but director Arthur Bradford understands the passion, commitment, and, yes, love, necessary to achieve a cockeyed goal.

     Casa Bonita Mi Amor! put me in mind of collectors who remain undeterred by the oddity of their quests. I once met a woman who prided herself on her collection of doors. (Don't ask about storage.) 

      A large dose of idiosyncratic passion explains why Parker and Stone's nostalgia trip was more inspired by Elvis's 1963 movie, Fun in Acapulco, than anything that might be called authentically Mexican. To yearn for Casa Bonita, at least as it was during its heyday in the 1970s and '80s, meant reveling in a collection of unashamed kitsch.

   To me, there's something irresistible about folks who pursue eccentric ventures; Casa Bonita Mi Amor! thrives on the contagious fondness for the place displayed by Parker, really our guide through the story.

   Casa Bonita wasn't known for haute cuisine, but Parker and Stone hired Dana Rodriguez, a multiple James Beard award nominee, as the restaurant's executive chef. I've read mixed things about the food since the restaurant's opening.

  But food was never the entire focus: The Casa Bonita experience created ardent devotees, including Stone and Parker, two exceptionally creative guys who refused to let the embers of childhood delight smolder. 

   Parker and Stone indulged a heartfelt belief that some dreams don't deserve to die -- no matter how crazy they might seem or maybe because they are too crazy to abandon.

The abused kids of Sugarcane Reserve

Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie direct the quietly compelling Sugarcane, a documentary that exposes the horrific treatment of children from the Sugarcane Reserve in Canada. The directors deal with the consequences of a Canadian government policy that in the late 1800s established some 139 boarding schools run by the Catholic Church. Thousands of indigenous children found themselves in these schools, which resulted in separation from family and culture, physical and sexual abuse, and, in some cases, suicide. In part, the directors focus on NoiseCat's father, who was a "student" at the St. Joseph's school, which was founded in 1886 and housed children from the Williams Lake First Nation people. The most shocking detail: the incineration of babies born to female students who were sexually abused by priests. Yes, you read that right. Incineration. Although the account sometimes becomes muddled, significant details remain clear and the emotional impact of the various stories is undeniable. One of the film's principal interviewees, for example, learns that his father may have been a priest at the school.  A visit made by some of the Sugarcane Reserve people to Rome resulted in a meeting with Pope Francis. No apology was forthcoming.  But, then, the past can't be undone and apologies, though essential, can’t address the wrongs committed by the church and the Canadian government. Previously ignored mistreatment of children set off an inquiry which the film tells us uncovered 159 burial sites at St. Joseph's. Although the school was closed in 1981, the emotional scars of abuse and neglect continue in the present, and that makes Sugarcane an ongoing and essential story.

In space, who’s to be trusted?

 In Slingshot, Casey Affleck plays an astronaut traveling to Titan, Saturn's largest moon, as part of a mission with earth-saving potential. The title derives from the mission's plan: The ship will be hurled slingshot fashion from Jupiter to Titan, a source of much-needed methane.

  The journey involves months-long periods of hibernation induced by drugs that may have dangerous side effects, including paranoia, hallucinations, and mistrust.

   Two additional astronauts accompany Affleck's John on his voyage, Laurence Fishburne's Captain Franks and Tomer Capone's Nash.

   Named Odyssey-1, the Titan-bound vessel’s cramped surroundings regularly are pierced by flashbacks to the relationship John formed with Zoe (Emily Beecham), a scientist who helped prepare the mission.

   Working from a screenplay by R. Scott Adams and Nathan C. Parker, Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom  focuses on emerging tensions among the astronauts. Alarmed by a problem with the ship, Nash wants to abort the mission; all-business Franks insists on continuing; John vacillates between the two views.

   Hafstrom creates an environment of uncertainty about what's real and what’s not. Is John hallucinating when he sees Zoe aboard the ship? Are Nash's worries the result of scientific calculation or drug-induced paranoia?

    Though obviously laid out, such questions create a bit of ambiguity and suspense, building toward a third act that plays with expectations as we try to anticipate the story's outcome.

   For a drama that’s meant to brim with psychological tension, Slingshot remains low-key, and Affleck's performance hardly can be called magnetic, a problem for a movie that makes him the centerpiece of a drama about astronauts who might be losing their grip.

    Slingshot pays homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the characters are as pinched as the ship they occupy, the romance between John and Zoe remains lukewarm, and there’s no HAL to serve as a worthy antagonist on a journey that too often seems routine.

  

   

The world of Merchant and Ivory

   The documentary Merchant Ivory may not be the place to look for definitive critical analysis of the work of Ismail Merchant (producer) and James Ivory (director, the duo that made a staggering 43 films between 1961 and 2007.

   Instead, director Stephen Soucy gives us an intimate look at a team composed of the meticulous, Oregon-bred Ivory and the audacious Merchant, born in India and raised as a Muslim. Soucy takes us on an informative, often revealing journey into Merchant/Ivory world. 

 Merchant and Ivory were best known for highly regarded costume dramas based on literary works such as A Room With A View (1986), Howards End (1992), and Remains of the Day (1993).  They brought a sense of literacy to art house audiences, as well as to a larger public that found the team's work beautiful and edifying. 

   Although the movie contains interviews with both Ivory and Merchant, who died in 2005 at the age of 68, it also brings insights from what could be called the Merchant/Ivory repertory company: Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves, Simon Callow, Vanessa Redgrave, Hugh Grant, Anthony Hopkins, and more.

  Packed with detail, Merchant Ivory's accomplishments are twofold: to serve as a reminder of the scope of what some regarded as prestige cinema. The documentary also reveals how two men -- often working with writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins --  struggled to bring their pictures to the screen. 

   Not surprisingly, Merchant emerges as the dominant personality. He's described as a lovable rascal and conman with the nerve and faith required to begin productions before the money to complete them had been raised. Merchant charmed actors who hadn't been paid, and cooked for casts and crews as an act of endearment meant to convince them they were part of a family.

      Merchant and Ivory lived together as a gay couple. Few talked about their gayness, but it was understood by those who traveled in their sphere.

     It's a bit of a stretch, but when we contrast Ivory with  Merchant, we might say that skill (Ivory) makes interesting things; flamboyance (Merchant), on the other hand, tends to be interesting in and of itself.

   Soucy assembles impressive clips from the Merchant/Ivory catalog, snippets of a varied filmography that should encourage viewers to revisit favorites or discover movies they may have missed.

    It's possible that the Merchant/Ivory names no longer speak to younger audiences, but Ivory, now 95, still works. In 2018, he won an Oscar for adapting the screenplay of Call Me By Your Name, and the body of Merchant Ivory work remains impressive.

     Whatever you think about the Merchant/Ivory movies -- some saw them as stodgy, conservative throwbacks -- the two were responsible for some of the most impeccably cast and best-acted movies of the 1980s and 1990s. That’s quite an achievement.

A wobbly oddball comedy

 

 After the death of his alcoholic wife, Ben Gotlieb slid into an extended funk. He could no longer sing, a major liability for a small-town cantor who chants  prayers at the synagogue that employs him. 

  As if to deepen his sense of ineptitude, Ben — the central character in the offbeat comedy Between the Temples  — has taken up residence with his biological mother and her wife, a duo that tries to manipulate him out of his grief.

   As Ben, Jason Schwartzman creates a character who had ceased being at home in the world -- if he ever was. Ben doesn't seem interested in escaping his grief-stricken wallow, giving Between the Temples a sad-sack quality that can be both drab and amusing, occasionally both at the same time.

   The screenplay contrives to penetrate Ben's hopelessness by introducing him to a character who embodies life at its messiest. Ben’s former elementary school music teacher, the widowed Carla (Carol Kane) asks Ben to prepare her for the bat mitzvah she never had.

     We also suspect she wants to reconnect Ben with the lively, talented elementary school kid she once called "Little Benny."

    Director Nathan Silver, who co-wrote the screenplay with C. Mason Wells, mostly confines Between the Temples to Jewish life in a small New York town. 

     When not focusing on Ben and Carla, Silver brings in supporting characters that include Ben’s rabbi and boss (Robert Smigel) and, eventually, by the rabbi’s daughter Gabby (Madeline Weinstein). The rabbi hopes that his daughter, who he says has problems, might help Ben jumpstart his life -- and provide Gabby with a husband.

   Dolly De Leon and Caroline Aaron play Ben’s Jewish mothers, women whose lives center on Ben, work, and the synagogue, where they participate in fund-raising efforts.

    Initially, Ben resists becoming Carla's teacher, but she’s insistent, candid, and charming in a scattered way that Kane enhances with a welcome touch of uncertainty about herself.

     So how far will this relationship go? Carla, after all, has a son (Matthew Shear) who might be close to Ben’s age. Besides, Ben shows few signs that he can handle any sort of relationship, much less one involving a major age gap.

     Between the Temples lopes toward an ending that culminates with a Shabbat dinner scene that strains to hit the right notes. So, at times, does the rest of the movie.

      I wondered whether Silver wanted his film to feel both eccentric and ordinary, an attempt at capturing the weirdness and contradictions of ordinary life.

      Well and good, and Kane’s presence proves refreshing. But I felt the same way about the movie as I felt about Ben. Like him, it needed to find some spark.

Alluring surfaces enliven ‘Blink Twice’

 

  Actress Zoe Kravitz makes her directorial debut with Blink Twice, an energetic, often entertaining variation on a theme in which luxury-hungry women suddenly find themselves living lavishly on an island owned by a tech billionaire played by Channing Tatum.

  Kravitz, who co-wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum, understands the need to seduce an audience before letting the other shoe drop. Kravitz optimizes the pleasure offered on a tropical island, where the point is to have a good time with fine food, carefully curated drugs, and no money worries.

   Blink Twice is about being captivated by surfaces that promise ease and pleasure, while ignoring indications that something sinister looms.

   Naomi Ackie, who gave a strong but overlooked performance in Whitney Houston: I Want To Dance With Somebody, plays Frida, an ambitious woman who works for a catering company that's running a fund-raising gala for Tatum's Slater King. 

   King says he's stepping down from his company to reflect. He also wants to atone for an offense that presumably went public but which the film never defines. 

    Laying on the soft-spoken charm, Tatum presents Slater as a model of newly acquired consideration and empathy that he attributes to a recent therapeutic epiphany.

    Posing as a partygoer rather than the help, Frida embarrasses herself when she stumbles. Slater puts her at ease.

     Before you can say "glitz," Frida and pal Jess (Alia Shawkat) are elevated from the ranks of servitude. They find themselves on Slater's private jet, living a fantasy of style and privilege.

      Ackie’s performance also suggests that Frida may have found someone who cares about her. If he owns an island, so much the better. It beats the hell out of gig work.

      Other women have been taken on the trip. Slater is also accompanied by a posse of fun-loving male loyalists, played by Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, Christian Slater, and, later, Kyle MacLachlan.

       Geena Davis portrays Stacy, Slater's assistant, the woman who tends to the details that are supposed to make everyone happy while the women compete for Slater's attention. Stacy also makes sure to collect everyone's cell phone upon arrival on the island, where the women are given the same white outfits to wear. 

        Adria Arjona plays Sarah, a woman who begins to suspect that something terrible may be happening, particularly after Shawkat's Alia disappears. Several of the women can't even remember that Alia had been there. 

      Another sign that there's a dark side to paradise arrives in the form of a stern maid (Maria Elena Olivares), whose forbidding look makes it seem as if she might have dropped in from a horror movie. 

        In some sense, Blink Twice needs the audience to be ahead of its characters. We've been schooled to go along with such things as we wait for Slater's true intentions to emerge.

        Despite its upbeat tempo and sustained glamor, the film eventually must deliver what we know is coming -- a serving of horror that steers Blink Twice into the choppy waters of revenge.

        Kravitz could have done more to modulate the movie's propulsive rhythms, and she takes the movie's  opulence beyond the point of diminishing returns. A concluding coda seems as tricky as it is meaningful.

        Still, Kravitz’s increasingly nasty tropical shenanigans glide through a lively one hour and 42 minutes that suggest a career behind the camera may take Kravitz far beyond Blink Twice's island.

'Alien: Romulus' spews acid on new faces

    

  The events in Alien: Romulus occur between the time of the original Ridley Scott’s Alien and Aliens, James Cameron's follow-up. That makes Romulus both a sequel and a prequel, or, a midquel or interquel if you want to get technical about it.

  Whatever you choose to call this eighth installment, Alien: Romulus brings a younger cast headed by Cailee Spaeny into the mix while reviving the movie's main attraction: hideous, acid-spewing creatures that can grow inside humans.

   Director Fede Álvarez (Evil Dead, Don't Breathe) provides plenty of jolts, although he can't entirely reinvigorate the basic Alien formula: Monstrous creatures knock off humans in confined corridors that are often sealed by locked doors. You might call this “hatch-and-latch” cinema.

   Adjustments have been made with the addition of an artificially created person named Andy (David Johnsson) and the presence of Rook,  a mangled droid that looks and sounds like the late Ian Holm, who played Ash in the first installment. And, yes, Rook makes for a creepy self-referential addition.

    In this version, dribbles of emotion trickle into the story from the relationship between Andy and Rain; she regards the child-like android as a brother. About midway through, a change in Andy's programming turns his personality from benign to rentless, a shift Johnsson makes the most of.

   Romulus gets a considerable boost from the boiler-room aesthetic that began with the original, which delivered a welcome counterpunch to sleek futuristic space operas.

    Space remains a source of minerals. The movie opens in the Jackson Mining Colony, home to scores of grizzled workers. The company that runs the place treats its employees like indentured servants.

   The story picks up when Tyler (Archie Renaux) invites Rain to join him on a rogue mission to salvage spare parts from an abandoned space station that's divided into two sections, Romulus and Remus. The group wants to escape the mining life for a freer part of the universe. Rain hopes to flee the darkness and see the sun.

  A corporation (evil, of course) had been conducting genetic experiments in the Romulus part of the station. If you don't know why all the station's residents are dead, you've never seen an Alien movie.

   Oh yeah, one space traveler (Spike Fearn) hates synthetics, the movie's term for droids; another is pregnant (Isabela Yolanda Moner), allowing for the appearance of a grotesque ... 

   Never mind. No sense spoiling Alvarez's finale, although you may see it coming.

   The proliferation of alien monsters effectively upgrades opportunities for tension. Alvarez has emphasized that the actors  mostly worked with animatronics or puppets rather than computer-generated effects. I suppose that’s another virtue.

    Slime and gore aside, corporate exploitation seems like a worn-out theme. Moreover, the movie's fresh faces, bizarre genetic twists, and strong atmospherics only carry Romulus so far -- better than some recent Alien movies, but not as good as first two.

    And, look, the previous Alien movies haven't left much unsaid.

    As for the big reveal during the movie's concluding battle, I chuckled. I don't think that was the response the movie was looking for.

A bestseller hits the screen

 

  I guess I'm behind the times. Or maybe it's because I don't hang out in bars anymore.  I probably don't read the right magazines, either. Whatever the reasons, I'm new to the idea that some men -- as in grown men -- wear onesies, one-piece garments once associated with toddlers. 

  I learned about this fashion statement while watching It Ends With Us, a big-screen adaptation of a best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover. In a scene that caught my eye, two men are wearing onesies in a bar. 

   If there's an implied meaning in this -- something about men stuck in childhood -- it eluded me. No matter. I'm not a member of the target audience for the movie, which stars Blake Lively as Lily Bloom, a Boston florist who falls for a neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni).  

    No offense to younger generations but if I ever need neurosurgery, I'm going to insist that it's administered by a physician who doesn't wear onesies.

  Directed by Baldoni, It Ends with Us dresses itself in the trappings of romance. Lily's stylish wardrobe sure as hell didn't come from a bargain basement. The characters dine in upscale restaurants, and no one's wallet seems pinched.

   After traveling to Maine for her father's funeral, Lily heads to Boston, where she tries to stake out a new life. Having quit an apparently good job, she's ready to fulfill her flower shop dreams.

   Lily soon meets Allysa (Jenny Slate), the character who assumes the story's best-friend duties. Lily hires Allysa, who evidently doesn't need a job to pay the rent but wants to help Lily upgrade the abandoned shop she'll soon turn into a trendy Boston retail spot.

    At this point, the story begins to trip over its contrivances. As it turns out, Allysa is also the sister of neurosurgeon Ryle and the wife of Marshall (Hasan Minhaj), a character I mention because he's also seen wearing onesies.

     We learn two things early on: Lily's father physically abused her mother (Amy Morton), and Ryle has a temper.  

     When Lily and Ryle first meet on the rooftop patio of a Boston apartment, Ryle smashes a chair in a fit of rage. He doesn't realize Lily is watching. 

     Lily's sitting on a wall, looking as if she might topple off the building's edge. She's probably contemplating her father's funeral. She was supposed to deliver the eulogy but couldn't find five good things to say about the man.

     To add more complication, Christy Hall's screenplay contrasts Lily's life in the present with her high school days. As a teenager, she developed a relationship with homeless kid Atlas (Alex Neustaedter). He's her first love, and, damn, if he doesn't turn up later as the owner of a trendy Boston eatery. 

      Does a love triangle loom?

      Brandon Skelnar plays the grown Atlas. For the record, Isabela Ferrer portrays the younger Lily

      Bear with me while I try to climb out from under the woods of the entanglements woven into the plot.

       Unless you're familiar with Hoover's 2016 novel, you might think I'm writing about a routine romance, one full of eye candy and gloss. But Hoover's book and its big-screen version give romantic fantasy a serious edge by shifting the story's tone to focus on domestic violence -- albeit without entirely abandoning the movie's earlier vibe.

      The mixture gives Lively, who holds the movie's center, a role that relies both on surface and depth. Lily slowly accepts the idea of entering a relationship with Ryle, a guy who has given off warning signals that his interest in women seldom gets beyond sex. 

     Baldoni's performance relies on his character's carefully cultivated charm, encouraging belief that he wants to shed his roving ways and find a lasting relationship. 

      I'll stop here because the rest involves the ways in which the story resolves.

      It Ends with Us may not have an audience beyond fans of the novel, although there may be enough of them to make for success. The book, after all, was on the New York Times bestseller list for 164 weeks and probably will get another boost from the movie's release.

      On the plus side of the melodramatic ledger, Baldoni deserves credit for showing how signs of impending violence often are ignored. Scenes involving physical abuse have undeniable impact, and, as the title suggests, the ending tries for hopeful assertion.

     At the same time, the movie's seductive slickness allows its seriousness to slide away too easily. So, I'll vacillate, as I think the movie does: It Ends with Us could have been better, but it also could have been a whole lot worse.