A writer's journey begins at a bar

 

    Some thoughts after watching The Tender Bar, the big-screen adaptation of JR Moehringer's 2005 memoir about growing up in Manhasset, NY: I'll get to a review of the movie in a bit, but I left s preview screening with two thoughts I couldn’t shake.

   First, Ben Affleck is getting better and better as an actor. He was terrific as the flamboyant Pierre d'Alencon in The Last Duel and equally good as a beer-soaked alcoholic in The Way Back, the story of a high school basketball coach wobbling toward redemption.

   In The Tender Bar, Affleck scores again as Uncle Charlie, a bartender who schools his nephew JR, the story's ostensible main character, in a variety of arts -- thinking, reading, drinking, and the behavior of men.

   A bachelor and barroom philosopher, Uncle Charle proves vital to young JR's survival -- and also to the movie's.

    Observation two: I wish I could say that George Clooney was getting more interesting as a director.

   Clooney started with the brilliant Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) and followed with the solid Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) but his Midnight Sky (2020) foundered (at least in my view) and The Tender Bar, with a screenplay by William Monahan (The Departed), doesn’t meet expectations, either.

  Moehringer, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, wrote a well-received memoir but the movie feels cut from pieces of variable interest. 

   Played by Daniel Ranieri as a nine-year-old boy and as a young man by Tye Sheridan, JR wants to be a writer but the movie never persuades us that we should care whether he achieves his goal. 

  It's not JR's dream that made his book enjoyable; it was his practice of the writer's art, which he brought into play when dealing with the bar -- named the Dickens. Uncle Charlie presided over the Dickens and its  cast of oddball characters who gathered for fun, solace, and moments of commemoration.

   On screen, the story becomes a collection of episodes joined by several themes: The absentee father, the devoted Mom, and JR's initiation into the world of love. None of these land with much force.

   JR's biological father (Max Martini) is barely a presence in his life. He's a New York disc jockey who JR's family calls "The Voice." Abusive and prone to drink, he's hated by JR's mom (a warm Lily Rabe). 

    Rabe's Dorothy has one dream for young JR. He'll attend either Harvard or Yale. He's going to get a first-rate education.

    JR, by the way, attends Yale, where -- in the movie version -- he tells friends that he wants to be a writer. He also meets a young woman (Briana Middleton), a biracial student whose snooty architect parents make it clear they have little use for someone of JR's low breeding.

   The movie works overtime trying to establish JR's working-class bona fides; he may be a Yalie, but he's more a graduate of the bar and of his unruly family than of the prestigious university. 

   Christopher Lloyd portrays JR's grandfather, a grump who comes through for JR when it counts.

   The picture loses focus as JR steps into the "real" world, landing a job as a copy boy at the New York Times and trying to figure out next steps.

    Sheridan may be stuck with a thankless job. If JR entertained as a writer; Sheridan can't entertain by telling us he wants to be a writer.

   The story weakens whenever Uncle Charlie isn't around and feels far more comfortable with scenes in the bar than anywhere else.

   Enough. The Tender Bar generates neither antagonism nor deep affection. Put another way: If you haven’t read the book, you’d do well to start there.

Need revenge? Better call Bob Odenkirk

 

    Nobody — a prime example of preposterous violence and brutal action tropes — feels derivative and self-conscious in its attempts to dish out as much cathartic vengeance as 91 minutes allows.

   But there is one distinguishing difference between Nobody and the rest of the field: Bob Odenkirk.

   Famous for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Odenkirk makes an unlikely avenger, a new champion of butt-kicking manhood.

    Director Ilya Naishuller begins in a minor key. Odenkirk plays Hutch, a drab guy living a resigned life of droning repetition.  Hutch sleeps next to his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen). She keeps a pillow between them to ward off any possibility of sex.  He takes a bus to the small factory where he handles accounting chores. He watches his kids come and go, indifferent to what appears to be Dad's meaningless life.

   Odenkirk opts to play an anti-Saul Goodman. No wheels churn as various schemes play out in a restless mind. There's no sense that he’s one step ahead of a disaster that he won’t be able to dodge.

   From the start, it looks as if disaster already has struck Hutch's nondescript life, void of even the desperation that might have given it flavor.

   And then the movie begins in earnest. During a home invasion, Hutch finds himself poised to deliver a violent blow to one of the invaders. He demurs, allowing the man and woman to flee. 

    Non-violence comes with a cost. Hutch’s son (Gage Munroe) sees his father's choice as an act of cowardice, although some of Hutch’s co-workers say they respect the pragmatic nature of his decision. After all, no one was killed.

     A low body count, however, doesn't make for a thriller that draws its energies from violent vapors extending as far back as 1974's Death Wish and ably continued here by director Ilya Naishuller.

    A note of caution: The movie's violent choreography is no match for, say, the John Wick movies.

   Predictably, Hutch has a mysterious a past. And, of course, that past involves his ability to wreak violent havoc, to inflict punishment even as he takes beatings that would kill a lesser man.

   The first hint that Hutch isn't the man he appears to be arrives when he exposes a secret radio in his office that allows him to talk to his adoptive brother (RZA), a black man who we learn has had to go into hiding for reasons of his own.

    Hutch also visits his father (Christopher Lloyd),  a dad who knows that his son inevitably must rise like an avenging Phoenix and reclaim his true identity. 

     Of course, it's all nonsense. But then there's Odenkirk. 

     Odenkirk doesn't have the physically imposing stature of, say, a Liam Neeson, who, unlike Hutch, always seems to trying to rescue an imperiled family member. Hutch isn't trying to save his family, which the movie conveniently ushers to safety. What's Hutch trying to save? Maybe his self-respect.

     The movie wastes little time getting down to its real business, staging explosive confrontations that lead to a showdown with a sadistic Russian mobster (Alexey Serebryakov). 

    A freelancer who launders money for the Russian mob, Serebryakov's Yulian is so vicious even the Russian mob finds him a bit over-the-top.

    If you're not part of the crowd that loves over-cranked violence, don't bother. Otherwise, Nobody sustains interest, even though an exaggerated finale makes it feel as if the filmmakers are paying off a genre debt, which they are.

      Nobody concludes with an epilogue suggesting that someone might be thinking franchise, an all-too-familiar prospect. I hope Odenkirk, who's wrapping up Better Call Saul this year, finds something else to keep him busy. Wouldn't it be great if once were enough?

      

Christopher Plummer charms in a road movie

It's rare that a mediocre movie survives because the cast proves endearing. That may be the case with Boundaries, a story about an aging and very conniving father (Christopher Plummer) who tries to reconcile with his grown daughter (Vera Farmiga). Director Shana Feste quickly turns Boundaries into a road movie in which Plummer's Jack, a character who has been expelled from an assisted living facility for growing marijuana on the premises, rides from Oregon to California with his daughter. Farmiga's Laura wants her recently evicted father to move in with his other daughter (Kristen Schall), a ditzy woman who lives in California. Also along for the ride: Laura's son (Lewis MacDougall), a high-school kid who receives lessons in creative irresponsibility from his grandfather. Bobby Cannavale turns up briefly as Laura's ex-husband, a man who -- like his former father-in-law -- seems to be involved in the pot trade. Other stops include a meeting with old pals to whom Plummer previously sold pot or engaged in other dubious activity (Christopher Lloyd and Peter Fonda). Predictable and never totally convincing, Boundaries nonetheless features a fine performance by Plummer, who pours on the roguish charm. Little about the screenplay proves memorable, but Plummer, who's ably supported by the rest of the cast, makes this road trip tolerable.

A comedy that doesn't age well

Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin are all wonderful actors, but they're not miracle workers. They can't save Going in Style.

Three aging friends who are trying to scrape by on Social Security organize a bank robbery. That was the premise of a 1979 movie called Going in Style, which starred George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg. Writing about that movie in the Chicago Reader, critic Dave Kehr said the movie, which was directed by Martin Brest, "imposes a quiet, attentive style on the story, saving it from cuteness and emotional facility. There are laughs, but the prevalent tone is one of discreet compassion, without condescension or sanctimony."

Leap ahead to 2017, and you'll find another movie entitled Going in Style, which has the same basic premise, but which stars Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin. Sadly, Kehr's quote isn't applicable to this new comedy, which has little to say about aging and hardly draws blood with its stab at social relevance. Our aging and embittered protagonists consider robbing a bank because the company for which they worked for many years has dissolved their pensions.

It shouldn't need saying, but I'll say it anyway. Freeman, Caine, and Arkin are all worthy of much admiration, and they do their best to keep this leaky ship afloat. They're all watchable, but the material with which they're working proves neither funny nor poignant.

Caine portrays Joe, a retired factory worker who lives with his daughter and granddaughter in Brooklyn. After falling behind on house payments, Joe's on the verge of losing his home. Freeman's Willie and Arkin's Albert are roommates who share an apartment across the street from Joe's house. They, too, worked at the factory and will fall into dire straits when their pension checks stop.

To further complicate matters, Willie needs a kidney transplant because dialysis no longer is doing the job for him.

Director Zach Braff, working from a script by Theodore Melfi, who re-worked the Edward Cannon story on which the 1979 movie was based, takes us through a variety of stock situations, including a ludicrous (but not funny) warm-up robbery in which the three men enter a local convenience store to try their hands at shoplifting.

Recognizing their incompetence at larceny, Caine's Joe consults with his former son-in-law as he searches for a consultant to help plan a bank robbery. The trio commits to stealing only enough to cover their pensions. Any additional monies will be given to charity.

Enter Jesus (John Ortiz), a pet-store owner who instructs the would-be felons in the intricacies of bank robbery, which he regards as an art.

Additional support comes from Anne-Margret, as an older woman who's interested in Arkin's character, from Matt Dillon as an FBI agent, and from Christopher Lloyd in the thankless role of a demented senior who belongs to the same neighborhood club as the movie's three main characters. If nothing else, Lloyd demonstrates what you might expect, senility is no laughing matter.

Braff, still best known for his work on TV's Scrubs, has directed before (Wish I Was Here and Garden State), but his touch here is far from deft.

Because the movie's stars all qualify as treasures of the cinema, the best approach to Going in Style might be simply to sigh with disappointment and move on.