An Iranian director assays revenge

   Director Jafar Panahi has paid dearly for his art. He’s been in and out of Iranian prisons, initially for "propagandizing" against an oppressive regime.

   In his new movie, It Was Just an Accident, Panahi tackles issues of guilt and responsibility while raising disturbing ethnical questions: How far should those who've been tortured in prison go to avenge themselves? If it's justice they seek, how would that look?

  That sounds heavy, and it is, but when you see It Was Just an Accident, you may be surprised that Panahi’s thriller includes moments of absurd humor. And as is the director’s practice, Panahi embeds his story in the rhythms of ordinary life. His movie can be as deceptively simple as its title.

  Where to begin? A chance incident on a lonely road brings Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) in contact with Eghbal, the man he believes tortured him in prison. Vahid recognizes the man’s walk because "Peg Leg," or "The Gimp" as the prisoners called him, had a prosthetic leg with an identifiable squeak. You could hear him approaching.

  Like other prisoners, Vahid was blindfolded during his interrogation; he never saw Eghbal's face.

  After kidnapping his purported tormentor, Vahid is about to take his revenge. He starts to bury Eghbal  alive in parched land outside Tehran. But the man’s pleading raises doubts. Is this really the sadist who ruined Vahid’s life, costing him his marriage and his job? He needs confirmation.

   Vahid's captive winds up in a trunk in Vahid’s van, and Vahid begins contacting other prisoners, hoping they'll help him make a positive identification. If he harms an innocent man will he be any different than the men who tormented him?

    Former prisoner and photographer Shiva (Maryam Afshari) is in the middle of taking wedding photos when she’s recruited by Vahid. She leads him to Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), a hot-tempered fellow with no compunction about killing the man suspected of torturing him.

  Also on the journey are the prospective bride (Hadis Pakbaten) and the unsuspecting groom (Majid Panahi) who've been posing for Shiva's photos. Still wearing the gown she wore for pictures, the bride is eager to take revenge for having been sexually abused by Eghbal -- not to mention the nooses that were tied around her neck when she was threatened with hanging.

   Putting the suspected government official off-screen allows Panahi to shift the film's focus. He's less interested in the abuser than in the abused and how they behave when confronted with an opportunity to turn the tables.

  This unlikely group winds up traversing Tehran. At one point, Vahid's stalled van must be pushed through a busy street, an odd sight considering that the bride and groom haven't shed their formal wear.

   All of this follows a disorienting opening that sets the story's stage. A bearded man (Ebrahim Azizi) drives at night with his pregnant wife (Afsaneh Najmabadi). His young daughter (Delmaz Najafi) bounces to the beat of songs on the radio in the back seat.  

  When the driver's car hits a dog, he needs a mechanic, which brings him to the garage where Vahid works. Vahid's boss attends to the car. From the shadows, Vahid decides that the driver is the same intelligence officer he blames for ruining his life. The walk is a giveaway.

  Panahi has said that the descriptions of torture related by his characters derive from stories he heard in prison, and if anyone’s entitled to add humor to a tough movie, it’s Panahi, who displays a taste for the absurdity that confronts characters who often deal with the unexpected by acting on impulse.

 Considering his circumstances, every Panahi movie can be viewed as an act of courage. It Was Just an Accident, which won the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, qualifies as an important movie from a director whose struggles with oppression haven’t extinguished the spark that makes him human; that's the same spark that allows him to tell stories that touch our humanity as well.

 

 

  

Seeking redemption in a city of neon

 

    Director Edward Berger is best known for his stunning remake of All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) and his box office hit Conclave (2024). Both movies qualify as well-made conventional offerings, movies dealing with battlefield horror during World War I and political intrigue within the Catholic church on the cusp of selecting a new pope.

  Berger's latest, Ballad of a Small Player, represents a shift, a movie that can be viewed as an adventurous -- if not entirely successful -- spiritual journey. I'm talking about religion, but about the journey of a desperate man who -- not entirely willingly -- seeks his freedom.

   The story centers on an Irishman (Colin Farrell) on the run. Having landed in Macau, Farrell's character adopts an upperclass British accent and becomes a regular at the baccarat tables. He calls himself Lord Freddie Doyle, but he’s slippery enough to slide off the screen.

    Berger veers from what could have been a standard noir offering, opting instead for high-gloss glamor; he revels in Macau's neon lure, and the charged sense of hope that animates a city that has been called the Las Vegas of Asia. Ballad of a Small Player might be the most brightly lit noir ever.

    Doyle’s troubles center on money, beginning with an unpaid hotel bill of $145,000 Hong Kong dollars that launches his compulsive attempt to win enough  to pay off his debts, including money he stole from an elderly British woman.

    A British investigator (Tilda Swinton) arrives in Macau, threatening to turn Doyle over to the authorities if he doesn’t return the money he stole. Doyle — who sweats a lot — does his best to evade her. Despite significant evidence to the contrary, he  continues to believe he can win enough at baccarat to solve his problems. 

     Farrell sinks into the role, creating a tragic figure — a compulsive gambler who has no control over his life, but tries to convince himself that he’s master of his fate. 

      It's obvious to us that Doyle can't beat the odds, a point that's reinforced by an older woman (Deanie Ip) who plays against Doyle at the baccarat table. An oracle of misfortune, she immediately pegs Doyle's as a hopeless loser. At the same time, he meets Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a loan shark who becomes an increasingly mysterious ally and a pivotal figure in moving the story.

       Once Berger sets the pieces in place, he turns his movie into a modern fairy tale that makes room for references to Hungry Ghosts — insatiable creatures of the afterlife — the unexplained appearance of a large sum of money, and a near-magical turnaround in Doyle’s sagging fortunes.

       Working from a screenplay credited to Rowan Joffe and Lawrence Osborne, who wrote the novel on which the movie is based, Berger doesn’t bother to dot every “i” or cross every “t." He pushes the movie into a metaphoric world in which Doyle must redeem himself by paying off his debts, both financial and spiritual. At times, the story feels as if it’s unfolding in a neon-lit dreamscape.

      That’s a big burden not only for Doyle but for a movie whose themes are expressed in ways many will find obscure and confusion, meaning dropped into a color-drenched mess.

       I understand that point of view, but I'm also glad to see Berger, like the hero of his movie, overreach. In so doing, he sounds surprising notes and finds moments of strange resonance. I'm eager to see where he goes next.

A dive into a conspirator's world

  Bugonia, director Yorgos Lanthimos’s take on the 2003 Korean genre mashup Save the Green Planet!, focuses on two conspiracy-minded men who kidnap the head of a large and powerful pharmaceutical corporation. They believe she’s an alien intent on destroying Earth.

  With Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone headlining, Bugonia continues what's beginning to look like a Lanthimos repertory company. Plemons worked with Lanthimos on the recent Kinds of Kindness, and Stone appeared in Lanthimos's The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness.

  Despite its outlandish premise, Bugonia might be the least obscure film in Lanthimos’s catalogue, a bizarre tale with cautionary overtones, humor, and sudden bursts of horror-level violence.

  Plemons plays Teddy, a disheveled man who lives in an isolated rural home with his cousin Donny  (Aidan Delbis). The brains of this duo, Teddy bosses Donny around, encouraging him to chemically castrate himself so that he’s not distracted from his mission by nagging desires. Teddy argues that sex  makes men more malleable, which is why he already neutered himself. Dependent on Teddy, Donny goes along.

    Stone portrays Michelle Fuller, the object of Teddy's obsessions. With help from Donny, he kidnaps Michelle at her upscale home.  Teddy wants Michelle to transport him to her mothership so that he can negotiate the withdrawal of invaders from the Andromeda galaxy, hostiles who are responsible for all that's wrong with life on Earth. 

  I said the movie might be Lanthimos’s least obscure; I didn’t say that it wasn’t bizarre. This time, though, much of the strangeness is explained by Will Tracy’s screenplay, which finds its best moments as it follows the intricate logical gymnastics that led Teddy to his conspiratorial epiphanies.

   Teddy approaches his preoccupations with a student's zeal. He purports to be an expert on Andromedan physiology, for example. In addition to shaving Michelle's head, supposedly to cut off communication with her alien superiors, Teddy and Donny try to impede her alien powers by coating her body with antihistamine cream.

   Teddy's intelligent enough to give his rants a credible backdrop: He says he's arrived at is conclusions only after exhausting all other explanations for what's wrong with the world.

  Smart and wily, Michelle tests a number of strategies to deal with the only two members of Earth’s resistance, self-appointed ambassadors in ill-fitting suits who try to behave as if they're interrogating a foreign dignitary.

  Eventually, we learn that Teddy has another motivation, one involving his mother (Alicia Silvestone). Mom was left in coma after participating in an anti-opioid drug trial run by Michelle's company. 

  Most of the movie belongs to Plemons, who brings deranged seriousness to his role as an alien-hunting nutcase. That's not to say that Lanthimos doesn't toy with our perceptions. Crazy as Teddy may be, what if he's onto something? And isn’t Michelle a bit too severe, a bit too transparent in her calculating efforts?

   The story ties itself to themes about endangered life on Earth, signaled here by references to a declining bee population. A beekeeper, Teddy looks to hives for inspiration. Bees work selflessly for the good of the group. That’s his rationale, as well.

   Plemons and Stone make convincing adversaries, and Delbis adds pathos as a paunchy assistant who occasionally wrestles with his conscience. He's the guy who can't quite figure anything out. 

   Teddy’s meeting with the local sheriff (Stavros Halkias) creates another moment of weird deadpan comedy, this one capped off with bloodshed.

  Cinematographer Robbie Ryan gives the movie's images plenty of edge, and the jolts in Jerskin Fendrix's score can arrive like slaps in the face.

  Scenes of torture may prove too much for some viewers, and I thought the movie’s ending took some steam off Lanthimos's fastball. That may have been intended. The ending is meant to resonate in haunting ways, but I'm not sure the somber tonal shift was fully earned.

   Bugonia won’t replace The Favourite or Poor Things on my list of superior Lanthimos movies; it’s better at being amusing than at being terrifying, and it's fairly limited in terms of the story it tells. At times, it resembles a demented sketch.

    Still, the bold and unapologetic Bugonia commands attention, taking us deep inside a world in which insanity seems the norm.

   And, yes, I had to look it up, too. Bugonia is an ancient Greek word referring to the sacrifice of a cow so that bees would emerge from its carcass. Spend as much time as you wish connecting this to Lanthimos's film.

Springsteen in a dark time

 

  Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere has a message. I don't mean to suggest that the movie spends any time moralizing on the good life. Rather, the movie's message is embedded in every scene and in its main character. It goes something like this: Rising acclaim and recognition provide no immunity from depression, a dark occupying force that can take over a life.

  Set during the period after Springsteen's 1980 hit album The River and before the release of Born in the USA, the movie focuses on Springsteen's retreat into feelings and memories that consumed his creative life while also building toward an immobilizing breakdown.

   The result was the album Nebraska (1982), which became a commercial and critical success, but initially felt like a bad bet. Prior to the album's release, many of those around Springsteen viewed the work as a major mistake, a downbeat acoustic album that strayed from hard-driving rock. Nebraska, some feared, would push Springsteen into a career-shattering detour.

   As Springsteen, Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) had a difficult job. He doesn't look like Springsteen, and much of the movie shows Springsteen thinking or recollecting about his upbringing. His Springsteen is often seen responding to the world around him, digesting images that he may not fully understand.

   Black-and-white flashbacks focus on young Springsteen (Matthew Anthony Pellicano Jr.) and his relationship with his drunken, rage-prone father (Stephen Graham). Gaby Hoffman has a small turn as young Springsteen's mom, a softer counterpoint to her husband's fury.

   Jeremy Strong portrays Jon Landau, Springsteen's manager. Sympathetic to Springsteen's interior life,  Landau finds a secluded home in Colts Neck, NJ, where Springsteen is supposed to rest after a grueling tour.

    Instead, Springsteen does drop-in appearances at Asbury Park's fabled The Stone Pony. Eventually, he begins composing songs that reflect a dark, disoriented mood that resulted, at least in part, from worries that stardom would separate him from the Jersey roots that nourished his creativity. 

   During his semi-seclusion, Springsteen establishes a relationship with Faye (Odessa Young), a waitress and single mother. Too caught up in himself and too  isolated by depression, he's unable to commit to Faye. But his rejection of her doesn't seem cruel; it's more a reflection of what Springsteen has come to accept as limitations he might not overcome.

    Paul Walter Hauser portrays Mike Batlan, a Springsteen crew member, who helps The Boss record the songs that will become Nebraska on rudimentary equipment set up in the rented home.

   Springsteen resisted performing the songs he was writing with his band. He eschewed slick production values. He wanted to keep the music raw. The flaws of bargain-basement recording appealed to him; perhaps he wanted to present his pain without polish.

   Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart), who based the movie's screenplay on a book by Warren Zanes, overdoes the flashbacks, which function like the echoes Springsteen incorporated in the Nebraska tunes. Some of Springsteen's influences (a fascination with Terrence Malick's Badlands and a trip to the movies with his dad to see Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter) overemphasize the dreariness that purportedly infiltrated Springsteen's soul.

   At times, Deliver Me From Nowhere feels like an idea in search of a movie; it's possible that the making of a single album by someone suffering from severe depression isn't enough to keep a picture buzzing. Imagine a movie about Van Gogh that only dealt with his making of Starry Night.  On second thought, that might make for an intriguing movie; Van Gogh was living in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum when Starry Night was painted.

    But you get my point: Deliver Me From Nowhere looks at Springsteen through a narrow lens.

   Still, Deliver Me From Nowhere strikes some resonant emotional chords. I'd put it this way: If Deliver Me From Nowhere were an album, you might say that not every song is a hit, but many are strong enough to carry the day in a story about a man teetering on the cusp of losing himself.

Many twists, not much credibility

Those who've seen It Ends With Us, the big-screen adaptation of Colleen Hoover's 2016 novel about domestic abuse, may be looking forward to Regretting You, another movie based on a Hoover novel, this one published in 2019. Director Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) finds little credible drama in a movie that wraps itself in enough contrivance to squeeze most of the life out of it. The movie begins by introducing four characters who've known each other since high school. Morgan (Allison Williams) seems happily married to Chris (Scott Eastwood). Meanwhile, Morgan's sister (Willa Fitzgerald) is about to marry the father of her baby (Dave Franco). Like most teenagers Clara -- Morgan and Chris's 17-year-old daughter -- is starting to chart her own course. A big-time tragedy upsets everyone's apple cart, setting off a cascading series of events that can't be revealed without spoilers. Clara's story, which feels like it belongs in another movie, charts her relationship with Miller (Mason Thames), a kid who's more mature emotionally than she is. Despite dropping a tragic bomb into the story, the movie scatters little emotional shrapnel. AMC Theaters receives a major product placement in a film that comes up short on interesting characters and credible behavior. 

Ben Stiller looks at his parents

 Watching Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost sometimes feels as if you're sitting through 98 minutes of therapy -- not yours but a session belonging to Ben Stiller, who directed this engagingly introspective documentary about his parents. The movie chronicles the careers of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, a comedy duo that rose to prominence in the 1960s, receiving a major boost from frequent appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Ben Stiller, 59 and now a star in his own right, joins his sister Amy to clean out their parents' Manhattan apartment after Jerry passed away in 2015 at the age of 92. Anne died five years earlier at the age of 85. The couple had been married for 60 years. Jerry Stiller, we learn, did a lot of filming and taping of his family, and their West Side apartment brims with personal and career memorabilia. Growing up in a show-business dominated household isn't easy, and some of the problems -- an overly intense a focus on work, for example -- passed from Jerry and Anne to Ben, whose wife, Christine Taylor-Stiller, and kids also appear in the film. Despite the difficulties of being the children of people whose careers dominated their lives, neither Ben nor his sister seems irreparably harmed, and the movie emerges as a love story (Ben for his parents, and Jerry and Anne for each other) that navigates enough difficulties to keep it percolating: Jerry's perfectionism and Anne's alcoholism, for example. So we get a double hit here: a biopic about Stiller & Meara, him Jewish and her Irish, and a look at Stiller grappling with his relationship with his parents. That means Stiller has hold of something that goes beyond show business: The idea of children trying to understand their parents and, in the bargain, themselves.

The lights dim on a Broadway legend

 

 Blue Moon takes a tightly focused look at a humiliating final chapter in the life of Lorenz Hart, the fabled lyricist whose 20-year collaboration with composer Richard Rogers produced such hit tunes as Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, I Didn’t Know What Time It Was, Thou Swell, My Funny Valentine, and Blue Moon. 

  An alcoholic who became a prominent figure in the history of Broadway musicals, Hart died in 1943 at the age of 48. By then his partnership with Rogers, who owed his career to Hart, had deteriorated, and Rogers had begun collaborating with a new partner, Oscar Hammerstein.

   Set on the opening night of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, Blue Moon takes place in Sardi’s, a renowned Theater District restaurant where Rogers, Hammerstein. and other luminaries gather for a post-opening party.

   Embittered wit makes fine fuel for a drama, and Ethan Hawke makes the most of it, continuing a series of movies he has made with director Richard Linklater, notably Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2024), Before Midnight (2013), and the masterwork Boyhood (2014). 

    His hairline pushed to drastic levels of recession, Hawke turns Hart into a witty, talkative, and at times, movingly vulnerable figure who despises Oklahoma!. Hart expresses disdain for any title that requires an exclamation point to assert itself, deriding the show’s romanticized serving of middle-American corn.

     Hawke owns most of the movie’s dialogue, and, in some ways, Blue Moon can be viewed as a monologue with supporting characters, notably the bartender (Bobby Cannavale), who treats Hart’s claims at newfound sobriety with gentle derision. Andrew Scott signs on as Rogers, a composer who makes it clear that Hart’s drunken unreliability ruined their collaboration; and Simon Delaney plays Hammerstein as a man trying his best to be deferential toward a contemptuous Hart.

      But the key supporting role belongs to Margaret Qualley, who appears as Elizabeth Weiland, a 20-year-old Yale student who becomes an intoxicating love interest for the bisexual Hart, who — in this telling — turns her into a kind of redemptive presence who could love him in a way that no one else ever had. That's what he wants.

       Qualley’s performance reveals a student who  appreciates Hart’s genius, but also sees him as a stepping stone for a career in the theater. In a lengthy confession to Hart about how she spent the night of her 20th birthday, Elizabeth rejects the lyricist in a way that’s devastating to him, all the worse because her dismissal is couched in admiration and respect.

        Like many of the moments in Blue Moon, the scene brings Hart's humiliation into painful focus.   Hawke makes us understand that despite his self-aggrandizing pronouncements, Hart realizes the pathetic state into which he had fallen.

       Considering Hart’s theatrical background and the movie’s narrow focus, I wondered whether Blue Moon might not have worked better as a play. Linklater and cinematographer Shane F. Kelly mostly defeat the limitations of a single-setting story dominated by a character whose ability to annoy others sometimes spills off the screen, irritating us.

      Still, Blue Moon showcases a memorable Hawke performance as Hart marinates his talent in bitterness and rue. Hart, by the way, says he hates Blue Moon -- the song, not the movie -- which became one of his most popular creations.

        

  

A ‘Frankenstein’ infused with passion

 

   Throughout the first half of Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited Frankenstein, I kept waiting for an aria to pierce Alexandre Desplat's heavy orchestral score. For the record, a variety of operas based on the Frankenstein story have been written. Add a few arias, and del Toro's movie happily could have joined their ranks.

   But, no, del Toro presents his operatic melodrama without anyone breaking into song.

  Instead, Frankenstein serves as the director’s adaptation of and meditation on the classic Mary Shelley story, which first appeared in 1818, spurring more than 200 years of sustained interest. That’s a hell of a run.

   A del Toro dream project, Frankenstein swells with passion. I guess that's notable -- a director displaying palpable enthusiasm for the dark corners of the stories that inspire him. There's no question that del Toro -- The Devil's Backbone (2001), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Shape of Water (2017) along with movies such as Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004), and Crimson Peak (2015) -- has built a visionary body of work that's often rooted in mythic aspiration.

    In Frankenstein, del Toro puts his considerable visual skills to work, but adds another dimension: He splits the story in two, telling it from the perspectives of both Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and his monstrous creation (Jacob Elordi).

   To quote the current lingo, the poor creature has “his own truth,” and insists on sharing it.

    Of the two stories in del Toro’s 149-minute opus, the monster -- listed in the credits as The Creature -- gets the best of things, emerging as a near holy innocent in a corrupt human world. Stitched together from the carcasses of dead soldiers, The Creature learns to speak as he wrestles with questions of identity and loneliness. 

   If the movie has any heart, it belongs to the monster. NBA tall and rendered in cool tones reminiscent of a cadaver before rot sets in, Elordi becomes the movie’s sorrowful centerpiece, a wounded outlier whose torment never can be eased. The poor creature can’t even die.

      Abuse, of course, breeds fury. The Creature's super-strength comes off as the justifiable rage of a character whose very existence represents an act of exploitation. Frankenstein keeps The Creature chained in the nether regions of his laboratory, denying him even rudimentary freedoms.

    Del Toro guides us toward the story's all-too-obvious irony: The monster may be more human than the mercilessly driven Frankenstein, played by Isaac with a verve that borders on hysteria.

   Not surprisingly, del Toro loads the movie with statements (sets, costumes and make-up) that burst with Gothic mood and intent, beginning his story with a bracing chill. A Danish sea captain (Lars Mikkelson) tries to free his ship, which has become stuck in Arctic ice. Enter the badly wounded Frankenstein, whose presence and condition will be explained later. 

       Once tucked away on the ship and after a tussle with the now tattered monster, Frankenstein tells his story, narrating the tale until The Creature catches up with his creator and delivers his side of the story.

      Backstory accumulates, fragments of narrative stitched together in quilt-like fashion. We learn of young Victor’s abuse at the hands of his father (Charles Dance), a gifted surgeon and brutal taskmaster who schools his son in anatomy. He disciplines young Frankenstein with a stick across the face lest he damage the hands the boy will need for his own surgical career. 

       Later, Frankenstein will meet Harlander (Christoph Waltz), the patron who wants to fund research into reanimating the dead.

      We also meet Victor’s younger brother William (Felix Kammerer) and his fiancee Elizabeth (Mia Goth),  who happens to be Harlander's niece. Recognized as a rare beauty, Elizabeth has a scientific mind and a keen interest in insects. Frankenstein’s pheromones kick in, but Elizabeth remains loyal to her betrothed.

      Elizabeth quickly develops a sympathetic interest in Frankenstein’s creation, raising another question:  Are humans more than an accumulation of body parts?  She surveys Frankenstein's body and asks which part contains the soul.

     As for body parts, they abound.

     When Frankenstein moves into the tower that serves as his laboratory, del Toro embraces the opportunity to show the products of war carnage that Victor accumulates for his experiment, a task made easier by Waltz's Harlander, an arms dealer already familiar with ravaged battlefields. 

      A psychological motif makes its presence felt as two father/son relationships are juxtaposed: Victor’s relationship with his tyrannical father and The Creature's relationship with Victor, who summons the monster with an assist from an elaborate lightning rod constructed in the tower he has turned into his laboratory.

      The film’s emotional heart beats loudest during touching scenes in which the creature, fleeing after Frankenstein tries to destroy him, is sheltered by a blind old man (David Bradley) who expands The Creature's vocabulary and teaches him the meaning of the word “friend.” 

      No matter how wobbly the build-up, Del Toro sticks the ending.  Isaac’s performance calms down, and the movie sounds a melancholy yet slightly hopeful note. 

      I wish I could say that Frankenstein was gripping throughout its entire 149-minute length. Moreover, del Toro's impassioned approach arrives with a downside; it sometimes feels overblown, an exercise in overstatement that gushes rather than unfolds.

       Honesty compels me to confess that Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974) has made it difficult for me to watch any Frankenstein movie without playing an alternate comedy version in my mind, a problem I presume most viewers won’t have. 

       My idiosyncrasies aside,  del Toro's boldly conceived version of Shelley's first novel finds some of the tragic grandeur in an oft-told tale. Imposing as Frankenstein can be, I couldn't help wondering, though, whether all the effort couldn’t be reduced to something narrower and much less lofty: two guys struggling with unresolvable daddy issues.

A mild life-swap comedy

 

 If a rich young man were forced to change places with a gig worker, would he be a better person because of the experience? And would the struggling gig worker learn that his life already had value?

   What? You thought a comedy starring Seth Rogen, Keanu Reeves, and Aziz Ansari, who also wrote and directed, would endorse a lavish lifestyle in which one of the rich guy's biggest challenges consists of leaving the sauna for a cold plunge? 

   Nah, spreading its Capraesque values as thick as peanut butter, Good Fortune casts Reeves as Gabriel, a lower-ranking angel whose job involves saving the lives of people who are texting while  driving, sort of a heavenly being turned into a public service message.

    But Reeves’ Gabriel not only wants to save lives; he hopes to change them.

     Through a series of contrivances and missteps, Gabriel arranges for Ansari's Arj — an aspiring film editor stuck in gig world hell — to trade places with Jeff (Rogen), a Los Angeles entrepreneur with a watch collection whose value might rival the budget of a small nation.

     At first, Arj believes he’s had the ultimate stroke of luck. He thinks that money might help him impress a young woman (Keke Palmer) who works at a hardware megastore, where he had a part-time job.

     Besides, who can blame him for being happy that he no longer needs to sleep in his car.

      After Gabriel's life-swapping mistake, his supervising angel (Sandra Oh) strips him of his wings and turns him into a human being. The best part of the comedy involves Reeves'  transformation from a naive and slightly dopey angel into a human who develops a love for tacos, dancing, and bro-style companionship.

      Meant to be temporary, the life-swap extends when Arj decides he doesn’t want to return to a life of thankless hustling and poverty. For his part, Jeff would like to get his life back.

      More attuned to chuckles than belly laughs, the rest of Good Fortune involves attempts to restore Jeff and Arj to their original lives and allow Gabriel to resume angelic life.

        Perhaps to tone down the movies's cornier  aspects, Ansari introduces mild critiques of income disparity, careless capitalism, and status-oriented consumption.  He even adds a bit of activism when Palmer’s Elena tries to unionize her co-workers. At another point, a gaggle of gig workers walks off a job site.

      If Good Fortune is intended as an assault on heartless capitalism, it's not an especially provocative one, but that same benign quality helps keep the comedy from grating.

     Ansari doesn’t work with too heavy a hand, so even the bits that don’t succeed (an over-the-top 40th birthday party, for example) land softly. Ansari's best achievement involves coaxing an amusing performance from Reeves, who's more like Ted (from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) than either his Neo or John Wick characters.

      I don't give movies stars, but if I did, I'd tag Good Fortune as the quintessential ** 1/2 star entertainment, a predictable comedy that delivers its message with bit of amusement and without too much hectoring.

'After the Hunt' has its rewards

    Watching Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, a movie about a purported sexual assault in a high-stakes academic arena, put me in mind of David Mamet's Oleanna, a 1994 movie that dealt with betrayal and accusations between a student and teacher in a college setting. Oleanna was delivered with sharp elbows. After the Hunt deals with similar issues but plays in a less insistent register.

   Mamet took aim at the staunch MeToo inflexibility.  Guadagnino tries a more tempered approach, leaving key questions unanswered and focusing on the way an incident of abuse plays out at Yale in 2019.

    Working from a screenplay by Nora Garrett, Guadagnino begins his movie with a dark screen and what sounds like the ticking of a clock, perhaps to suggest that the characters we'll meet are about to undergo a severe test. 

   Rather than turning his movie into a MeToo screed or a rant against cancel culture excesses, Guadagnino focuses on how the ambitions of his characters become enmeshed in circumstances over which they steadily lose control.

    After the Hunt centers its story on a Yale philosophy professor (Julia Roberts) who's on the verge of receiving tenure, the gold ring on the academic carousel. Roberts' Alma has a flirtatious buddy relationship with another professor (Andrew Garfield) who's also seeking tenure in the philosophy department.

   Alma's psychiatrist husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) seems like a vestige from a relationship that formed when Alma was immature enough to idolize him. The glow has worn off, but the relationship staggers on.

   Ayo Edebiri plays Maggie, the movie's most problematic character, a gay graduate student who sets off a campus firestorm when she accuses Garfield's Hank of crossing a sexual line.

   Is the ambitious Maggie -- who is suspected of having plagiarized her doctoral thesis -- telling the truth? Having pegged Maggie as a rising star, will Alma continue to support her or give her friend the benefit of the doubt? Do donations made by Maggie's wealthy family prevent the truth from being uncovered? And why did Alma single out Maggie for special attention in the first place?

   Roberts conveys flinty credibility as a scholar who has mastered academic speak while struggling with inner torment. Alma occasionally doubles over with stomach pain. She harbors a secret that, as the movie progresses, becomes easier to guess.

 Garfield does what might be his best work yet as a gregarious scholar whose affability could conceal predatory behavior, and Stuhlbarg ably plays a man who, when feeling pressed, expresses his anger in childish ways.

   Chloe Sevigny offers additional support as an academic who serves a guidance role with students and faculty alike, smoothing ruffled feathers and providing mental health counseling.

   Some of Guadagnino's scenes bristle with tension, and it's a pleasure to watch Roberts sink her teeth into a role. In one of the movie's strongest scenes, she eviscerates Maggie for being a spoiled child of privilege. In another memorable moment, she skewers one of her students deeply enough to scar the kid for life.

   It’s possible, though, that the movie overdoes things. Maggie, for example, is Black, gay, and super-privileged, a loaded deck of traits that supposedly grants her immunity in a DEI-dominated world. 

  Some of Guadagnino's choices seem like self-conscious strains to establish the film's intellectual bona fides. Ambiguities about the nature of truth might have been clear without references to the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's arty score can be both intriguing and jarring.

   Beyond all that, sexual abuse and cancel culture aren't exactly the freshest of subjects.

   Still, I got caught up in the way Guadagnino and his cast create the insular bubble in which academic power games are played. The movie's pleasures derive from the ways in which Guadagnino finds the  blood and bile that boil beneath a surface of academic refinement. I may be pushing the point, but After the Hunt sometimes felt as if a high-class helping of pulp somehow had gotten into Yale.

The thief who lived in a toy store

   Roofman, the story of a thief who broke into McDonald's restaurants, gaining entry from their roofs and hauling off a small fortune, leans heavily on Channing Tatum. Tatum's challenge: to create a smart, appealing criminal who's considerate of those who fall into his sphere. 

   Tatum's Jeffrey Manchester doesn't use politeness as a branding gimmick. He's not trying to dub himself as  "The Thief who Cares." He's aware that he's stepping out of bounds, but has no desire to hurt anyone. 

   Based on Manchester's real-life story, Roofman requires Tatum to remain likable throughout. I'd say he succeeds in what might be his most memorably appealing screen performance yet.

    The story doesn't dwell on Manchester's larceny. Early on, Manchester is caught in North Carolina. He's sentenced to a whopping 45 years in prison, partly because of kidnapping charges stemming from one of his signature moves.

    If they happened to be present, Manchester locked McDonald's employees in store freezers. He sometimes gave them coats so they wouldn't freeze. In the movie, he calls 911 to arrange for their rescue as soon as he flees.

   Working from a screenplay he wrote with Kirt Gunn, director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines) respects the basics of Manchester's story, but his movie intrigues with a tone that falls between unadorned realism and lighthearted absurdity.

  Once imprisoned, the keenly observant Manchester contrives a clever escape. He then flees to Charlotte, where he holes up in an unlikely spot, a Toys R Us store. 

    Manchester's ingenuity blossoms. He learns how to survive in the store by eating lots of candy. He sets up his own surveillance system using baby monitors while disarming the store's video recording capabilities. He builds a comfortable enough hideout to keep him in the store for six months, a long time to spend in the company of Tickle Me Elmo dolls.

   Eventually, Manchester ventures out of the store. He's attracted to one of the its employees (Kirsten Dunst's Leigh), a single mom who's struggling to make ends meet.

    Manchester quickly becomes enmeshed in Leigh's life, attending her church, donating toys (stolen, of course) to the church's Christmas drive, and eventually impressing her daughters. It takes time, but he even wins over Leigh's balky teenage daughter by buying her a seriously used car and teaching her how to drive.

   He's discovering the joys of family, and he's good at it, perhaps by way of atoning for having become estranged from his former wife and three kids.

   Additional support comes from Peter Dinklage as the martinet manager of the Toys R Us store. LaKeith Stanfield signs on as one of Manchester's former Army pals, a character who figures in some late-plot maneuvering. 

    Other actors come off as drop-ins. These include Uzo Aduba, as one of Leigh's churchgoing friends, and Juno Temple, as the girlfriend of Stanfield's character.

   Set in 2005, the movie includes a few retro touches, but Cianfrance gives it a lived-in feel that allows the chemistry between Tatum and Dunst to grow during the time that Manchester lives without being recognized. A hide-in-plain-sight kind of guy, he never alters his appearance.

  Manchester, of course, puts himself in a terrible bind. Using a fake name, he deceives people he cares about. The point is made without underlining. His ruse isn't without cruelty. Maybe that's Manchester's biggest flaw; he's sincere but not perceptive enough to fully understand the impact he's having on those he encounters. He's not good at consequences.

    Interviews with the real people from the Manchester tale pop up during the end credits, mostly confirming the story's slant about a good guy who committed crimes. Roofman isn't up for moral finger wagging. That may trouble some, but it makes Roofman a welcome oddity, an enjoyable movie that avoids the usual true-crime cliches.

Spectacle can't save 'Tron: Ares'

   

  Throughout the year, I have a fair number of movie conversations. I mention this because in more than 40 years of reviewing, no one in my admittedly limited circle has ever wondered why there weren't more sequels to Tron, the 1982 movie that was admired for its CGI innovation but fell short in most other ways. 

  Tron may have spawned its share of devotees. If so, I don't happen to know any of them.

   I begin my review of Tron: Ares, the third Tron installment, this way because I wondered why Disney had opted to give Tron another run. Had advances in CGI allowed for richer visual expression? Have current obsessions with AI spurred enthusiasm for a story in which virtual reality plays such a significant role?

    I don't know, but I do know how Tron: Ares, which I saw in IMAX, struck me. Mostly, it didn't. 

    Brimming with red-hued visuals and offering complex visualizations of The Grid (the movie's version of virtual reality), Tron: Ares builds a world that alternates between captivating and repetitive.

    As was the case with the first installment, story often feels less than compelling. Director Joachim Ronning sets up a simple conflict as two tech moguls (Greta Lee and Evan Peters) square off at a moment when science  has advanced to the point where virtual programs (seen in human form) can be transported into the real world. 

    A moral problem results. Lee's Eve Kim wants to use these AI creations to help humankind; Peters' Julian Dillinger aims to enhance the authoritarian power he craves by transporting state-of-the art warriors into his real-life world.

    Dillinger wins the race to bring virtual beings into reality, but with a catch. After 29 minutes, his creations collapse into piles of debris. Not to worry. Kim has an antidote. Using work initiated by her late sister, Kim discovers a code that can sustain the life of virtual beings indefinitely.

    The big twist, I suppose, involves a change of heart by Ares (Jared Leto), Dillinger's warrior in chief. Ares quickly (too quickly perhaps) begins to question his main directive, which requires him to capture Kim so that Dillinger can retrieve the desired code. Ares's unexpected flaw: benevolence.

      Lee gives Kim the requisite enthusiasm, but her performance is subordinated to the movie's ongoing light show. A mostly deadpan Leto adds flickers of wit to Ares's repertoire. At one point, Ares affirms his desire to become human by confessing that he prefers the synth-pop music of Depeche Mode to the classicism of Mozart.

      Action pounds and abounds. As the plot unfolds, spiffy light cycles race through city streets, trailing red beams that turn the movie into a showy spectacle, displays that seem more the point than the outcome of any of the movie's many chase sequences. A mood-setting Nine Inch Nails score pushes toward the final credits, which include a short epilogue.

      Among the supporting performances, Gillian Anderson registers as Elizabeth Dillinger, Julian's conscience-stricken mother.

     References to the first movie can be found, and, of course, Jeff Bridges reprises his role as Kevin Flynn, hero of the first edition. Bridges's late picture appearance made me wonder whether The Dude hadn't dropped in on a sci-fi epic. If only he had.

     Whether AI poses an imminent threat to humanity is a subject for others to consider. As for Tron: Ares: I seldom felt the one quality any movie, whether virtual or reality-based, should provide: involvement.

    

An explosive 'House of Dynamite'

 

    Terse and chilling, director Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite tackles a situation most of us would prefer not to contemplate: a nuclear attack on a major American city.

    Working from a screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, Bigelow divides her movie into three sections, each offering a different vantage point on the same brief time during which a missile hurtles toward the US.

    Few in the movie’s large ensemble of military and civilian characters are psychologically prepared for an event that probably will kill 10 million people in the initial blast. Scores of additional deaths from fallout are sure to follow. The missile's origins are unknown, but it's headed for Chicago.

     Those familiar with previous Bigelow hits such as Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Hurt Locker (2008) know she’s skilled at sustaining tension, and A House of Dynamite  stands as confirmation of her ability to rivet attention. In keeping with an intensely concentrated approach, Bigelow shorthands character development, opting instead to put her characters to the test.

    How quickly can they accept that they’re not dealing with a routine exercise? How good are they at handling  fear? Can they react reasonably under intense pressure?

     A strong and well-selected cast includes Rebecca Ferguson as a White House Situation Room official, Gabriel Basso as a Deputy National Security Advisor, Jared Harris as the Secretary of Defense, and Idris Elba as the President of the United States. Tracy Letts portrays a folksy general who commands personnel who scan banks of monitors. A FEMA official (Moses Ingram) tries to prepare an evacuation response.

     House of Dynamite employs too many actors to name them all. Many roles are relegated more to function than revelation. Still, Ferguson, Harris, and Elba convey the emotions accompanying concern for those outside the security perimeter, seen in glimpses that remind us that most people are unaware of a pending Armageddon.

      Snippets of story detonate along the way. A Major General at a remote outpost (Anthony Ramos) falls into despair when his crew fails to intercept the missile. The Secretary of Defense grapples with the fact that his daughter lives in Chicago, the targeted city. An expert on North Korea (Greta Lee) watches a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg with her son when she's called for advice.  

       This contrast between two kinds of horrible warfare may be a bit on the nose for a movie that avoids extraneous observation, but A House of Dynamite mostly meets its subject head-on.

      Given current preoccupations — wars in Gaza and the Ukraine, National Guard troops in major cities, and a government shutdown — A House of Dynamite may seem a little out of sync with today's worries.

    Perhaps that’s the point. Bigelow’s movie serves as a sobering tap on the shoulder from someone intent on reminding us that other dangers lurk. Heaven forbid that one day a missile makes a mockery of the quotidian unfolding of what, for most of us, will begin as just another day. 

 

A father and mother's daring rescue

  I want to start by saying that there's no way to review The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue without acknowledging that many will view the film through a lens of their feelings about the current war in Gaza.

 Those who lean pro-Palestinian may be disturbed by the documentary's intense Israeli focus. Those who tend toward support of Israel may argue that there's no need for Palestinian voices in a purportedly apolitical story about a retired Israeli general who races from Tel Aviv to the Nahal Oz Kibbutz in an attempt to rescue his son's family from the terrorist onslaught of Oct. 7, 2023.

  I'll say this: I'd be open to watching a documentary about displaced Palestinian civilians in Gaza, even if it made no reference to Hamas's brutal attack, focusing only on the plight of a family caught in the storm of war. The human dimension in all these stories matters.

  Road Between Us arrives with a bit of history. Initially, the Toronto International Film Festival disinvited the film from its program, arguing that it lacked the required clearances. Some felt the festival had capitulated to fears of disruptive protests. 

  Ultimately, the festival reneged and showed the film. which tells the story of how retired Israeli general Noam Tibon, and his wife Gali, traveled from Tel Aviv to the Nahal Oz Kibbutz to rescue their son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren who were under siege by Hamas terrorists. The film went on to win The People's Choice Award for best documentary at the festival.

   Road Between offers interviews with Noam and Gali, kibbutz security officials, survivors, and Noam's son and daughter-in-law, who spent hours locked in a safe room where they remained silent lest they be discovered and killed by Hamas marauders who were inside their home.

   All I'll say here is that if I were in trouble, I couldn't think of two better people to come to my rescue. Retired or not, Noam approaches his task like a soldier whose skills remain undiminished.

  I should caution that some won't want to see the sampling of video Hamas live-streamed during the attack and which appears in the film. But if you're open to a story about a father and mother's courage when facing an extreme situation, Road Between Us deserves a look.  Canadian director Barry Avrich tells the story in tense, involving ways.

    Just don't expect to emerge with a full understanding of the current conflict: That's something no film could accomplish and, it's beyond what this pulse-pounding chronicle of a heroic rescue can achieve.

Daniel Day-Lewis returns to the screen

   

  Unfortunately,  the focus of the new film, Anemone, centers on actor Daniel Day-Lewis’s emergence from a retirement he declared after the release of Phantom Thread eight years ago. Because the celebrated actor has created indelible screen performances in movies such as There Will Be Blood (2007), Lincoln (2012), and more, a new work from Day-Lewis creates an out-sized load of expectation.

   Sadly, Anemone can't stand up to the pressure of our justifiable expectations. Made in collaboration with his son, Ronan Day-Lewis, who directed and  co-wrote the screenplay with his father, the movie puts a tortured soul at its core but never feels fully realized.

   Early on, Ronan Day-Lewis relies on arty, sometimes over-composed shots of the woods where Day-Lewis’s Ray has been living for 20 years. A visit from his brother Jem (Sean Bean) disrupts Ray's hermetic existence. Embittered and boiling with unexpressed fury, Ray doesn’t welcome the reunion.

  Ray, of course, is no Thoreau figure transposed to the wilds of Northern England. He finds no solace in nature or anything else. He has devoted his life to the shame-filled brooding that resulted from his service during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. When Ray picks up a hatchet, you fear what he might do with it.

  Ray protects two secrets that explain his willed isolation. He's also never seen the son he abandoned when he took to the forest. That's plenty of dramatic fodder, but the material might have worked better as a play, a two-hander that needed no other characters beyond Ray and his brother.

   Additional characters do, however, appear. Samuel Bottomley plays Brian, Ray’s son, a young man who has gone AWOL from the Army, and Samantha Morton, portrays Brian’s mother. Her hope is that Ray will return to help Brian straighten himself out, to fill in the blanks that Brian has lived with concerning his radically absent father.

     Ray's slowly disclosed secrets prove insufficient to stave off the dullness that results from slow pacing and lingering images that encourage contemplation when there doesn’t seem to be much on which to dwell. A couple of surreal touches don't help, either.

   Despite its small supporting cast, the movie remains Day-Lewis’s. His performance includes two spellbinding monologues.

   Like just about everyone else on the planet, I’ve never felt anything less than admiration for Day-Lewis’s command of the screen. Even when Day-Lewis has his back to the camera, you feel Ray's foreboding presence. 

    So, yes, Day-Lewis still compels, but Anemone might not have been the best opportunity to once again display the mixture of talent, intelligence, and commitment that makes him so great.

Dwayne Johnson's raging nice guy

 

     Generally, I'm interested in movies that explore worlds that are unfamiliar to me. That inclination made me eager to see director Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine, a look at the early days of UFC full-contact fighting as told through the story of former champion Mark Kerr.

   UFC's current popularity aside, the movie's big selling point involves the performance of Dwayne Johnson, who has been made unrecognizable thanks to prosthetic face makeup, fake teeth, and a short crop of curly dark hair. Muscular and hulking, Johnson's Kerr might be mistaken for a Marvel character in search of a series.

   Johnson's natural likability underlies the contradiction that makes his performance intriguing. Often displaying Boy Scout-like politeness, Kerr seems like a nice guy, but he's unremitting in the ring where he unleashes his inner beast and, if necessary, beats opponents to a pulp. 

   Taking place from 1997 to 2000, the story deals with the days before UFC fighting entered the mega-money sweepstakes. Kerr eventually sets his sights on a 2000 championship bout in Japan. The payoff: $200,000 to the winner of a bruising tournament. 

    Interestingly, the characters refer to $200,000 as life-changing money, chump change in today's athletic environment.

   The movie begins with an undefeated Kerr taking on challengers in Brazil. A subsequent bout in Japan results in a crushing "no-contest" decision due to an opponent's foul. What Kerr sees as a devastating  failure brings him face-to-face with his addiction to pain-killers and performance enhancing drugs.

  Out of the ring, the film slips. Safdie chart's Kerr's stormy relationship with Dawn (Emily Blunt), a woman who becomes a bit of a Delilah figure for Kerr's Sampson. He accuses her of interfering with his need to intensify his focus during training, and the movie sometimes feels like a watered-down version of Raging Bull.

    Numerous fight scenes left me gasping at how much pain was being inflicted: heads slammed against canvases, knees bashing torsos, and faces pummeled by jack-hammer blows.

    Given the demands of ring life, it's hardly surprising that Kerr finds his closest relationship with fellow fighter Mark Coleman, played by Ryan Bader, himself a former UFC fighter. Another former fighter, Bas Rutten, helps prepare Kerr for a second try at the championship. All of these guys share what they might call "warrior love."

     Smashing Machine covers too short a period of time to be considered a full-fledged biopic. Heavy make-up also comes with a price: At times, I found myself distracted searching for traces of Johnson under his heavy makeup.

      Skimpy on psychological probing, the movie offers a face-value view of Kerr's motivation. Winning brings the highest of highs, the charge of victory that can't be duplicated elsewhere, Kerr says. There's a cruel if obvious irony to be found here, as well: If victory is the highest of highs, defeat becomes the lowest of lows.

     A rudimentary look at UFC fighting, Smashing Machine might have benefited from some perspective about the society that idolizes these modern-day gladiators.

    Enough said -- at least for me. Johnson stamps his signature on a real-life figure, providing Kerr with bulk that threatens to burst through the screen, but this tightly wound slice of a battler's life never quite finds a larger point to make.

      

 

 

A cop caught in an entrapment game

 Set in 1997 -- before gay liberation and law reforms -- Plainclothes focuses on a young Syracuse, NY police officer assigned to vice squad duties. His job: hang around malls and entice gay men into bathrooms where they’ll soon be arrested for indecent exposure, lewd  behavior, or indecency. Tom Blyth plays Lucas, the young cop who lures men into restrooms and then bolts as his fellow officers race in to make an arrest. The twist: Lucas is coming to grips with his own gayness. The situation spawns a complex drama about Lucas's struggles with his conscience and with his blue-collar family, which isn't exactly gay friendly. Blyth ably captures the conflicts tearing at Lucas, who's also in the midst of separating from his wife. A key story component arrives when Lucas develops a relationship with a man (Russell Tovey) he refuses to arrest. Tovey's Andrew teaches Lucas to operate on the sly, introducing him to a world in which homosexuality often involves men leading double lives. Maria Dizzia, as Lucas's mom, and Gabe Fazio, as one of his uncles, make the family dynamics real, if not always pleasant. The film also deals -- albeit briefly -- with Lucas's relationship with his fellow officers. I thought it would be interesting to tell this kind of story from the perspective of a straight man whose conscience begins to nag at him. That's probably another movie, though. As it is, Lucas's story serves as a reminder of what life had been like for many gay men before society began to change.