A Sondheim musical rolls on screen

 

Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along premiered on Broadway in 1981. The show ran for a mere 16 performances, a shocking failure for any Sondheim work. The musical evidently evolved through the years, returning to the Broadway stage in 2023. In its new incarnation, Merrily received strongly positive reviews, earned four Tony Awards, and ran at Broadway's Hudson Theater for about a year. Now, the show's director, Maria Friedman, has offered a filmed version of the revamped musical. Still best known as the original Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe boosts name recognition in an energetic production. Radcliffe plays half of a showbiz duo, a lyricist whose career is linked to a successful composer played by Jonathan Groff. Based on a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, Merrily tells its story in backward order, focusing mainly on Groff's character and two friends who have been with him from the start. In addition to Radcliffe, the trio of pals includes Lindsay Mendez, a critic who harbors a not-so-secret love for Groff’s Frank.  Aside from employing close-ups, Friedman highlights the energy of the stage production, filmed with an audience that can be heard applauding at the appropriate times. Friedman obtains strong performances from the principal cast and from Krystal Joy Brown, as the Broadway star who breaks up Groff's marriage to Beth (an equally good Katie Rose Clarke). Serving mostly as a filmed record of the Broadway hit, Merrily We Roll Along should appeal to Sondheim fans. Others may find its two-and-a-half-hour run time a bit taxing, and a segment that tries for political satire seems dated. Had Merrily We Roll Along not been made into a film, I probably never would have seen it. For people such as me that may be the film’s biggest virtue. 

Bob's Cinema Notebook: 'Jay Kelly' and 'Left-handed Girl'

A movie star with problems 

When I first read about Jay Kelly, I thought, “Who better to play aging movie star Jay Kelly than George Clooney? And for seasoning, why not cast Adam Sandler as Ron, Jay's devoted manager and longtime fixer? If the movie assesses the cost of stardom, so much the better.  But for me, director Noah Baumbach's latest proved a disappointing immersion in the life of a big-time star whose ambitions have marred the lives of others. Following a run-in with a roommate (Billy Crudup) from his early days in LA, Jay decides to bail on an upcoming feature and follow his college-bound daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards) to Europe. After years of prioritizing his career, Jay wants to strengthen his bond with Daisy, even if she’s not all that eager to reciprocate. Jay uses the offer of a career tribute in Tuscany as an excuse to make the trip. Jay's entourage (Laura Dern and Emily Mortimer are part of his traveling circus) dutifully tags along — until they've had enough. Clooney's relaxed, low-key stardom is outdone by Sandler, who scores as a devoted, slightly sad guy who realizes that his loyalty is a one-way street. Ron isn't entirely ungrateful, though: He knows that he’s built a life taking 15 percent of Jay’s earnings. Jay's oldest daughter (Riley Keough) turns up in scenes that expose the actor's parenting failures. When a star plays a star, it can put an unfair burden on both actor and audience to figure out where one begins and the other leaves off. That aside, I never felt as if I were being taken inside Hollywood but inside an idea for a movie that didn't match Baumbach's best work: For me, that would be  Marriage Story (2019), The Squid and the Whale (2005), and Frances Ha (2012).

Left-Handed Girl Gets it Right

Set in Taipei, Left-Handed Girl, a family drama full of twists and hidden agendas, operates on a welcome human scale. Single mom She-Fen (Janel Tsai) returns to Taipei with her two daughters after a long absence. The teenage I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) bristles with adolescent anger. I-Jing (Nina Ye) --a cute five-year-old --  has already learned how to win others over. Mom works in a night market and struggles to make ends meet. To help with expenses, I-Ann dresses in a sexy outfit to hawk betel nuts for her young boss -- with whom she'll have a disastrous fling. Among I-Ann’s complaints: She fumes because her mother has agreed to pay for her ailing husband's funeral. He deserted the family a decade ago, leaving Mom with piles of debt. For her part, I-Jing begins a stealth career as a shoplifter, blaming her larceny on her cursed left hand. Her sourpuss of a grandfather (Akio Chen) filled her head with superstitions: The left hand is evil, he thinks. Almost everyone in the film hustles. Grandma (Xin-Yan Chao), for example, is caught up in a scheme involving immigrants. Just when it looks as if the plot will resolve neatly, director Shih-Ching Ching brings the characters to Grandma's 60th birthday party. There, emotional storms erupt, and shocking revelations emerge. Shot with iPhones, Left-Handed Girl teems with city life: You finish feeling as though you've learned something about how people -- especially those who struggle -- live in a bustling city where keeping one's head above water isn't easy.

An additional note:

*I love movies full of characters that feel as if they might exist off screen. Equally important, I admire movies that provide a real sense of how life is lived in a specific place. I'd put Left-Handed Girl in this category. The film has a plot, which, by necessity, means contrivance can’t totally be avoided. But the plot never overpowers the characters; the story feels like something they're living. To be clear, films such as this aren't the only kind that move me. But films that effectively embrace both individual and social realities hold a special place in my heart.

Two kinds of grief in 'Hamnet'

  Hamnet, director Chloe Zhao's adaptation of a 2020 novel by Maggie O'Farrell, takes us into the Elizabethan world where Shakespeare began both his career and domestic life. Perhaps to clarify matters about the title, we're immediately informed that in Shakespeare's day, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable. 

  By necessity, Zhao's grief-laden movie (more to come on that) must be regarded as speculative. As the author of 38 plays, four long narrative poems, 154 Sonnets, and some shorter poems, it's no wonder that the English language's most famous author didn't have time to keep a diary.

  Zhao (Nomadland) builds her story around the marriage between Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Agnes Hathaway (Jesse Buckley). The pivotal event arrives when the couple's 11-year-old son, Hamnet, is struck down by the plague, shifting the story toward Agnes's inconsolable grief and simmering resentment. 

   Busy establishing his theater, William wasn't around when Hamnet passed.

   On screen, the independent-minded Agnes embraces nature and considers herself inseparable from it. A pet hawk rests on her gloved forearm when summoned to feed. She spends so much time with trees, she might as well be moss-covered. 

   Communing with nature aside and writing with a quill pen aside, William and Agnes had time to have three children, a daughter (Bodhi Rae Breathhach) and twins (Olivia Lynes and Jacob Jupe). 

   Mescal's performance has both cheery and doom-struck aspects, but Zhao focuses more on Agnes, who carries most of the burden of child-rearing. Preoccupied with running The Globe in London, William left Agnes in Stratford. She insisted he go off and fulfill his destiny as a writer, but later came to resent his absence.

   I guess it's a new take, Shakespeare as the workaholic dad and absentee father. 

    Zhao makes the most of the wooded mysteries around Stratford, Agnes's leafy domain. Make what you will of Zhao's fondness for turning dark holes into a motif. Ah, the deep void, the gaping yaw in which undiscovered countries can be found, as Agnes puts it, echoing the line Shakespeare gave to Hamlet. 

    Hamlet, you'll remember,  referred to death as "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns."

   Throughout, we're primed to expect problems. When we first meet William, he's working as a Latin tutor to pay off the debt his irresponsible, glove-making father had accumulated. The looming marriage between William and Agnes isn't greeted favorably by either family. Agnes's brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn) seems more sympathetic.

    So what is this movie trying to accomplish? 

    When Hamnet's death scene arrives, Zhao gives full vent to the agony of loss. Garments may be rend both on screen and off as Zhao contrasts two kinds of mourning: Agnes's, direct and visceral, and William's, expressed through writing, the arena in which he presumably could deal with it.

    Jupe's performance as a playful kid who's devoted to his twin sister augments the grief.

   In Zhao's finale, William takes on the role of the ghost of Hamlet's father in the first production of the play. Agnes becomes a vocally avid member of the audience, initially derisive but ultimately understanding that Will grasped the agonies poor Hamnet endured. Dying from the plague was a gruesome ordeal, reflected in the ghost's speech about being poisoned by his brother, Claudius, and recited by William during the movie's recreation of the performance of Hamlet on the Globe stage. 

    It's better written than anything in the movie.

    "The leprous distilment, whose effect

         Holds such an enmity with blood of man

         That swift as quicksilver it courses through

         The natural gates and alleys of the body,

         And with a sudden vigor it doth (posset)

         And curd, like eager droppings into milk

         The thin and wholesome blood."

     Did the death of Shakespeare's son really inspire Hamlet? Having seen a number of productions of Hamlet, I'm dubious. And it's impossible to watch Hamnet without constantly reminding ourselves of what Shakespeare was destined to become no matter how much Zhao grounds him in 16th century realities.

     That's a problem for any movie that brings Shakespeare into view; it must withstand suspicions that it is trying to gain prestige through association with greatness. Hamnet can't entirely dodge such doubts, but Zhao -- particularly in the movie's final scenes -- finds a startling immediacy in Buckley's unadorned grief, revealed finally without the embarrassment of artifice by an actress unafraid to walk out on a limb grown from unbearable pain.

    

    

    

 

An overloaded 'Knives Out' mystery

  A somber Catholic church in upstate New York provides a gloomy backdrop for writer/director Rian Johnson's third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man.

   Johnson, who also wrote the screenplay, immediately distinguishes his movie from its predecessors, introducing an unexpected character, a freshly ordained priest who's in trouble with his superiors.

  Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor) has anger-management issues. As punishment for socking a deacon, Father Jud is sentenced to clerical exile at the remote Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude parish.

    It's immediately clear that Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude has taken a bizarre turn. The church's crucifix has been removed from behind the altar, and its priest, Monsignor Jeffrey Wicks (Josh Brolin), quickly asserts himself as a power-hungry nut job.  Obsessive about confession, Wicks can't talk enough about his feverish bouts of masturbation.

   Wicks also preaches a gospel of fear. In his weekly sermons, he selects one parishioner for chastisement, gauging the success of his remarks by how quickly his intimidated victim heads for the door. 

    Although Wake Up Dead Man hosts strains of mordant comedy, it's also a mystery in which the characters become pawns in a game Johnson plays, one involving a tangled plot, excessive complications, and enough red herrings to stock a fishery.

    The parishioners, of course, become suspects after the mystery’s obligatory murder, which precedes the arrival of series savior Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), an ace sleuth who speaks with the lilting intonations of a southern gentleman.

     By the time Blanc arrives, a typically large gallery of actors has already elbowed its way into the proceedings: These include a doctor (Jeremy Renner), an attorney (Kerry Washington), a cellist (Cailee Spaeny) who no longer plays, a local politician (Daryl McCormack), and a struggling sci-fi author (Andrew Scott).

     We also meet the administrator (Glenn Close) in charge of the church’s business and the caretaker (Thomas Haden Church) who has pledged his devotion to her.

     In case the cast weren’t stuffed with enough names, Mila Kunis eventually turns up as a local sheriff who’s skeptical about Blanc’s deductive methods. 

      Fair to say, Johnson’s screenplay offers laughs throughout, and an able cast knows how to mine them, even when the targets loom large. 

      In a semi-serious turn, Johnson also gets some mileage out of the faith vs. reason tensions that develop between Jud and Blanc, who begin investigating the murder together.

     As the movie's most developed character, Jud valiantly tries to conquer his anger with love and compassion. He also struggles with guilt. A former boxer, he once killed a man in the ring.

      O’Connor gives a standout performance, although Johnson wisely provides Craig with a spotlight speech  during the movie’s finale. Blanc calls it his Damascus moment.

     Watching Wake Up Dead Man, you needn't go very far before bumping into another plot point. All of this rests on a foundation filled with plot and backstory, some of it involving a valuable jewel. 

      Call it a matter of taste, but I found some of the maneuvering tiresome, and the gaggle of idiosyncratic characters can become little more than pawns in a mystery game.

     Early on, Jeffrey Wright turns up as the sensible priest who assigns Father Jud to obscurity. Wright's appearance at the end reminded me how much I missed his presence and the character he plays.

     Johnson, who's often compared to Agatha Christie, clearly has mastered the form he has employed in a trilogy that began with Knives Out (2019) and continued with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).

     But clever as it can be, Johnson's latest sometimes drags through its two-hour and 24-minute run time, fighting headwinds created by the story's storm of complications.

    

      

       

      

Finding smiles in the afterlife

 The afterlife isn't a new subject for movies. Albert Brooks tried his hand at it in 1991 with Defending Your Life, and we've seen other big-screen journeys into the beyond. Consider Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), It's a Wonderful Life (1946)  Heaven Can Wait (1978) or the 1943 version, The Sixth Sense (1999), make your own list.

  Now, David Freyne (Dating Amber) plunges into the life to come with Eternity, a clever movie that's good in the setup, amusing in its midsection, and overextended in its final act. Generosity lands me on the positive side of the ledger.

  When Larry (Miles Teller) dies, he awakens in a crowded junction surrounded by faceless apartment buildings. He's  told that his understandable confusion will be addressed by his personal AC (Afterlife Coordinator). 

   If the late Larry immediately saw his reflection, he might not recognize himself. The recently departed arrive in the afterlife at the age at which they were the happiest during their lives. 

    They then must pick the place where they will spend eternity, choosing from an array of choices that are presented as if they were theme park attractions: Famine Free Ireland or Weimar World, a happy German romp that's free of Nazis. Those addicted to nicotine can choose cancer-free Smokers' World. Others prefer beaches or mountains.

    The catch: The choice, once made, is irrevocable. 

     No wonder, then, that Larry tells his AC (DaVine Joy Randolph) that he wants to defer his decision on where to spend eternity until the terminally ill wife he left behind (Elizabeth Olsen) arrives. He can't imagine eternity without her.

    The now youthful Larry -- he was in his 70s when he died -- tries to learn the ropes of afterlife living, if that's not too weird a contradiction in terms, but it doesn't take long for Olsen's Joan to turn up. 

    Larry's exhilarated until he learns that Joan's first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), a young man who was killed during the Korean War, has been waiting for her as well. Luke has spent 65 years pining for the woman he never had a chance to mature with.

   What's Joan to do?

   That's pretty much the movie.

   Freyne offers comedy and sentiment along the way while differentiating between two kinds of love. Luke represents heart-throb, head-over-heels ardor. Larry's more of an endurance guy; he understands what it takes to build a long marriage and raise two children.

    Temperamentally different, the two men find themselves at odds. Luke has charm; Larry indulges in cranky complaining.

    The supporting cast includes Olga Merediz in a nice turn as one of Joan's former friends. Her ideal happy age turns out to be 72, the time when she finally came out as gay. 

   A screenplay credited to Freyne and Pat Cunnae includes additional invention, notably a hall of mirrors in which each of the major characters watches key scenes from the past.

  Too bad, Freyne has trouble sticking the landing, which means that the film's charm runs out before the final credits roll.  Maybe it was inevitable that a film titled Eternity would have trouble ending.

    Films such as Eternity demand healthy suspensions of disbelief. Throughout, the dead are told that ironclad rules govern their choices. Trying to switch eternities, for example, will throw one into a never-ending void. But what's the good of rules if they can't occasionally be broken?

    Oh well, if Eternity has trouble letting go of these characters, so be it. There are enough smiles along the way to snuff out reservations. 

A very long 'Wicked' goodbye

 

   Fans probably will differ, but I've had enough. Four hours and 58 minutes of Wicked -- the popular play divided into two halves for the big screen -- is more than the material can easily support. 

  Sure, Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba work with palpable commitment and fervor, and, yes, director John M. Chu and his crew haven't skimped on production value with sets that may be theme-park worthy.

  Still the finale, proves less than grand.

  I was lukewarm but respectful toward Wicked (2024), and, like most critics, I was impressed by Erivo's captivating performance. The first movie even ended with enough momentum to suggest that Wicked: For Good might outdo the first installment.

  Alas, For Good drags enough to tamp down some of the pleasure in watching Glinda, The Good Witch, and Elphaba, a.k.a., the Wicked Witch of the West, battle for the future of Oz. 

  Be assured, though, Elphaba retains her against-the-grain posture. She wants to expose the fraudulence of the storied Wizard, played here by Jeff Goldblum without benefit of much winking humor.

  The movie generates little doubt that the feuding Glinda and Elphaba will eventually acknowledge their lasting bond. Ergo, For Good feels as if it's working through two hours and 18 minutes of maneuvering to reach its inevitable conclusion.

   Some of the charm has faded. In this edition, the now subjugated animals of Oz have an unimpressive CGI aura. Supporting actors Marissa Bode, as Nessarose Thropp, and Ethan Slater, as Munchkin Boq, reach the screen in the flesh, but to limited avail.

   For Good treats the arrival of Dorothy as a marginal event, although it provides origin stories for Tin Man and Scarecrow, characters that figure in the plot, but don't have much dramatic or comic resonance.

    Fans already know that Grande and Erivo have the chops to sell popular tunes such as No Good Deed and For Good.  New songs include No Place Like Home and The Girl in the Bubble. They didn't leave me humming on the way out of the theater.

    Oops. I almost forgot. John Bailey returns as heartthrob Fiyero, whose fate involves straw and an unexpected (if you're unfamiliar with the material) shift in affections. 

    Michelle Yeoh reprises her role as Madame Morrible. Her one big scene stirs up a storm that could have found a home in a disaster movie.

     The Wicked phenomenon hinges on upsetting expectations created by familiarity with The Wizard of Oz: Glinda retains her bitchy qualities, the Wicked Witch earns our sympathy, and the story delivers a message about how lying, self-serving leaders can manipulate a gullible populace into compliance.

      Fan involvement with these characters may be strong enough to keep For Good's box office solid. Costumes and Wicked-inspired hairdos were in evidence at a preview screening, and it would be unfair to tag For Good as a flop. 

     As I've said, Grande and Erivo know how to hold the screen, and Chu created a few high points that had the audience applauding.

    But if I find myself looking at my watch during a film, I take it as a sign that I wasn't being transported into a world of enchantment -- no matter how much the movie seemed to be insisting on it.

       Oh well, I don't know if there are plans for a movie in which the once-frightening flying monkeys (yes, they return, too) assert their independence and conquer what's left of our rapidly foundering planet. Maybe they'd do a better job than we have.

Joachim Trier's complex family drama

 On the surface, Norwegian director Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value seems poised to tell a conventional family story. That might have happened had Trier not placed his characters against a backdrop that includes theater, film, and acting, a choice that deepens questions his film raises about the complicated nature of father/daughter relationships.

   Stellan Skarsgard brings a weary yet calculating quality to the role of Gustav Borg, a filmmaker trying to make one last great movie, a swan song he hopes will confirm his fading stature and solidify his legacy. He's the father of two daughters with whom he has become estranged.

   As Gustav's daughter, Nora, Renate Reinsve, who starred in Trier's The Worst Person in the World, plays an actress who could make Gustav's film soar. Unfortunately for him, she harbors too many resentments (many justifiable) to accept an offer to play the movie's lead.

   In the movie's third key performance, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas plays Nora's sister Agnes. Less embittered, Agnes has more tolerance for a father who basically abandoned his family and has only now returned to attend the funeral of his former wife.

   Gustav's reappearance may not be motivated by grief or sentiment. Due to a legal technicality, he owns the home in which his late wife raised his daughters. It's also where he plans to shoot his film.

   Temperamental and deeply neurotic, Nora is introduced in an alarming way. She's playing the main character in a reimagined version of a Chekhov play but finds excuse after excuse not to go on stage when cued. 

   Perhaps in an attempt to manipulate his reluctant daughter, Gustav casts Elle Fanning's Rachel Kemp, an American actress  to star in his film. She's bankable, but we get the feeling Gustav knows her casting is a mistake. 

  Reticent to the point of cruelty, Gustav offers little support as Kemp struggles to find her way into the role. Numerous rehearsal scenes highlight Kemp's inability to connect to the role she's been offered; but Fanning makes it clear that the talented, committed actress baldy needs guidance that Gustav refuses to supply. 

   And on another level, Gustav knows he's asking too much of Kemp. An alcoholic, he's capable of spewing drink-fueled sarcasm, but he's not mean enough to humiliate an actress who's trying.

   Gustav's film -- his first in 15 years -- isn't his first attempt to direct one of his daughters. He directed Lilleaas as a child in the movie that made him famous. She expressed no further interest in acting. He focused on her during the filming, but then deserted the family.

    To further complicate matters, Agnes is married with a child that Gustav relates to with affection he seldom showed his daughters. 

    Tender scenes between the sisters enrich the emotional environment, and Trier adds a historical dimension to the proceedings. Gustav grew in the home he now owns and where his mother was snatched by the Nazis, who tortured her during the War.  Gustav wants to tell his mother's story, although he insists that his film is not autobiographical. 

   It's clear from the outset that Gustav wants to reconcile with Nora. Perhaps the only way he knows how to do that is to direct her while letting her talent blossom, to give her a splendid showcase. Still, his attempt also reflects the self-absorption of an artist who's thinking about what's best for his movie.

    Sentimental Value has its comic moments but Trier, working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Eskil Vogt, has made a rewarding dramatic work, one that allows gifted actors to create characters of uncommon complexity.

An actor finds unusual work in Japan

 

 Some movies fit like old sweaters that are too comfortable to throw away. That’s how I felt about Rental Family, a movie starring Brendan Fraser as an unsuccessful American actor who has been living in Japan, where he hoped to develop a career. 

 It's not going well. After a decade of trying, Fraser's Phillip Vandarpleog's greatest accomplishment seems to be a toothpaste commercial. Hulking and, let’s say, chubby, Fraser’s Phillips Vandarpleog stands out wherever he travels, an instant misfit.

   Director Hikari (Beef) brings a novel twist to this soft-edged comedy. Unable to find work elsewhere, Vandarpleog — henceforth to be called Phillip — takes a job with a company called Rental Family.

  Evidently, such companies exist in Japan, catering to folks who wish to rent mourners for funerals, hire escorts for events, or serve in other surrogate capacities. Phillip’s first assignment involves appearing as a mourner at a funeral. 

      Amusingly, the dearly departed isn't dead. He just wanted to bask in the glow of all the faux eulogies.

      Phillip doesn't immediately realize that he's stumbled into a different kind of acting job. His new boss (Takehiro Hira) eagerly puts a positive spin on the work. It really helps people, he says. 

     More to the point, the agency needs a big white guy for specialty situations, one of which involves playing father to Mia  (Shannon Mahina Gorman), an 11-year-old mixed race girl whose single mother (Shino Shinozaki) wants to get her into an elite Tokyo private school.

       Much of the movie depends on Fraser, an Oscar winner for his performance in 2022's The Whale. Phillip's  a bit of a sad sack, but he has a good heart, and his relationship with Gorman’s Mia gets serious when she begins to accept him as her real father. Mom never tells her daughter the truth about what she's doing.

      For his part, Phillip begins to warm to his role as companion for hire, accepting jobs in which he marries a gay woman to help deceive her tradition-bound family. She plans to marry her real lover and move to Canada but doesn't want to shatter her parents. 

     Another episode receives more attention. To boost the ego of an aging actor (Akira Emoto), Phillip poses as an American journalist writing a definitive retrospective on the actor’s career.

      All of these encounters prove reasonably amusing and full of soft-pedaled sentiment.

       Phillip, of course, has his dejected moments.  During such times, he confides in a co-worker (Maria Yamamoto). Is this an ethical way to make money, or is it a form of exploitative fraud? How much does the movie really care?

      Fortunately, the screenplay — by Hikari and Stephen Blahut — refrains from romance. Phillip has a physically intimate relationship with a friendly "escort" with whom he talks about his life, even though she never forgets she's on the clock.

      It would be misleading to say that Rental Family brims with insights about identity and role-playing, but the movie passes in easy, formulaic way: Rental Family sets up Phillip's deceptions, adds a complicating twist that threatens exposure, garnishes its story with sprinklings of Japanese culture, and resolves matters without causing too much of a stir.

     In short: Enjoy it. Then go about your business.

    

       

Not the greatest story ever told

    

 

    When I first heard about The Carpenter's Son, I thought it was going to be a sacrilegious over-the-top horror movie anchored by another memorably outrageous performance from Nicholas Cage. 

     How could it not be with Cage playing The Father, a character clearly meant to evoke Joseph of Holy Family renown?

    The movie opens with a title card that suggests that director Lotfy Nathan has something different in mind. His story, we're told, has been adapted from the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a book that deals with parts of Jesus's early life you won't find in the New Testament. 

    Those who see the movie will understand why a gospel that's not widely read by most Christians has been deemed heretical by Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox clergy.

   To begin with, The Carpenter is an agonized doubter about his son (Noah Jupe). Frustrated and desperate for answers, he wonders whether he's The Boy's "real" father. At one point, anger gets the best of him and he rants about how The Mother -- played  by rapper FKA Twigs - might have had sex with a Roman soldier and, therefore, became unclean.

    Twig and Cage seem don't look like they belong in the same movie, but only The Mother seems certain about The Boy's identity. The Boy himself seeks answers and is only beginning to understand that he has supernatural powers -- and I don't mean this in the superhero sense of the word.

     From the moment of his birth, The Boy faces danger. After a screaming birth scene, The Carpenter and The Mother take flight. The movie then leaps ahead to 15 AD. To avoid exposure, the Carpenter keeps moving his family around Egypt, finally settling in an eerie-looking village. A local merchant hires The Carpenter to carve an idol, a sure sign that something -- perhaps many things -- will go wrong.

    The heart of the movie involves The Boy's encounter with a village child called The Stranger (

Isla Johnston). We immediately know that The Stranger is Satan because Johnston has a fierce gaze and speaks with a beautiful British accent that's unlike any other in the movie. 

     If you see Johnston's work, you'll instantly know why director Baz Luhrmann cast her to play Joan of Arc in his upcoming Jehanne d'Arc. Even as the devil, there's something grounded yet spectral about his young actress.

     As played by Jupe, The Boy seems a bit of an adolescent misfit, although the story takes place long before anyone knew there was such a thing as adolescence. When The Boy has sleep-disrupting dreams about the crucifixion that awaits him, he wakes up screaming. His sometimes rambunctious behavior angers The Father, who frequently runs out of patience for the strange, preoccupied Boy.

     A creepy torture chamber -- crucifixions and other forms of horrible punishment -- can be found on the village's outskirts, adding a further disturbing note. Watch out for snakes.

     Lilith (Souheila Yacoub), a young woman who catches The Boy's attention (make of that what you will) suffers demonic possession and winds up in this doomed section of the village. We await The Boy's intervention.

     Can Satan lure The Boy away from his true calling, thus marking what might be deemed the First Temptation of Christ?

     I suppose you already know the answer, but this darkly hued, sometimes creepy, and determinedly strange movie is neither a horror movie nor a conventional piece of religious storytelling.

    The Carpenter's Son sets its story in a Manichaean world of light and darkness, but, in the end, I'm not sure what the movie captures -- other than a rare instance in Cage can't seem to find his footing, in which Twigs doesn't quite fit, and cosmic issues are supposed to vault over everything. 

      Whatever the movie had it mind, it's definitely not operating in the world as we know it, but that doesn't mean it's clear what world it's meant to occupy and, equally important, why it's taking us there.