A look at the life of Humphrey Bogart

 

Here's an odd thing about Humphrey Bogart -- or at least about how I see one Hollywood’s greatest stars. For me, Bogart isn't dead. Never will be. I know he passed away in 1957 after a bout with  esophageal cancer. But hardly a month goes by when I don't see Bogart on Turner Classic Movies. He’s always available, even if only on small screens. I know Bogart from his movies -- from The Petrified Forest (1936) to Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), and The Roaring Twenties (1939). Then came High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon (both 1941) and a slew of other films, 75 in all.  I haven't even mentioned Casablanca, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or In a Lonely Place. The Bogart that intrigues me regularly turns up as Duke Mantee, Rick Blaine, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Roy "Mad Dog" Earl, Fred C. Dobbs, and Philip Francis Queeg. He was all those guys, but he was still always Bogart. 

   The documentary Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes summarizes the actor's life and screen work, beginning in 1957 with Bogart's funeral. The rest is flashback. Working with Bogart's estate, director Kathryn Ferguson delves into Bogart's relationships with four wives, all actresses. She provides insight into Bogart's quick temper, as well as his fabled romance with Lauren Bacall. Bogart was 45 when he married the 20-year-old Bacall.

Canadian actor Kerry Shale substitutes his voice for Bogart's in a narration that captures Bogart’s spirit -- smart, rebellious, serious about his work.

 A framework for psychological evaluation emerges; Bogart came from a family that was rich when he was born. His mother wasn't especially affectionate. 

  If you're a Bogart fan, you should watch. You’ll learn things or refresh your memory: It took Bogart 40 years to establish his big-screen career. You'll find abundant clips from his filmography and some remarks from director John Huston on Bogart’s less-than-admirable brush with the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee.

  Now, it's back to Turner Classic Movies where, for me and many others, Bogart lives on.

Cousins on a heritage trip to Poland

 

  Jesse Eisenberg directs himself and Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain, a movie about two cousins who take a heritage trip to Poland. The trip's planned culmination involves a visit to the house where the cousins' late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, once lived. 

   Before reaching their destination, the men travel with a small tour group to the site of the Warsaw ghetto, various spots in the city of Lublin, and to Majdanek, the death camp constructed not far outside the Lublin city limits. 

    Notably, the trip was financed by the cousins' grandmother; she must have wanted these sometimes self-absorbed men to get a taste of their bitter family history. They do, and we get a movie that's not weighted by the self-seriousness we might expect. The cousins don't always know how to react during their potentially unsettling travelogue.

   As it happens. I've been to many of the places the cousins visit -- although for different reasons. I can tell you from experience that it's impossible to find yourself at some of these sites without being struck by conflicting impressions.

   You think, "I'm OK. The sky has a preternatural clarity. So how do I reconcile that with the feeling that I'm walking through a mass graveyard?"

  Some commentators have discussed A Real Pain in terms of Jewish characters who are three generations removed from the Holocaust. Can they relate to what they're seeing? If so, how? Is humor allowed? Can they enjoy a meal in the luxury car of an express train without remembering the  boxcars that transported so many Jews to their deaths?

   The relationship between the two cousins begins to take shape at the airport before their flight to Warsaw. Born two weeks apart, the cousins were close as kids but drifted apart. Jittery and ill at ease, Eisenberg's David is married. He has a son and a stable job. Charming, quick-witted. and emotionally unsettled, Culkin's Benji is at loose ends. 

   The movie's title deserves unpacking: Benji can be a  pain when it comes to ignoring proprieties. He often masks his hostility by insisting that he's being playful. The Holocaust -- more referenced than explored -- provides another source of pain. And David's concern about and estrangement from his cousin gnaws at him.

   In Poland, David and Benji are joined on their tour by Jennifer Grey, as a woman readjusting her life after a divorce, Kurt Egyiawan, as a convert to Judaism who survived the Rwandan genocide; and Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes, as a married couple who want to learn something about their roots. 

   Will Sharpe portrays a British tour guide who, at one point, becomes a target for Benji's sarcasm. The guide has information, but Benji senses he doesn't feel the story in his gut.

   Anyone who has seen Culkin in Succession knows he can dazzle with a quicksilver wit that conceals irritations that spill into torment. His character is aptly described by David as someone who can light up a room upon entry and then find ways to piss on everyone and everything in it. 

   Eisenberg wisely resists overdramatizing, particularly when the group visits Majdanek. They and we know what happened there. Images of barracks, ovens, and a gas chamber speak for themselves. 

    For Jews, responding to a trip to Poland involves memory, history, emotion, and an appreciation for the role distance and time play in shaping perception. Eisenberg's film doesn't always reflect that complexity but it knows these characters and allows them to bring their own sensibilities on a journey that leaves them to consider where they've been, and perhaps, where they're going.

    But that would be another movie.

     

     

Christmas Eve with a large family

 

Movies about families gathering for holiday celebrations tend toward nostalgic recollections or satirical pokes at low-hanging fruit. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point takes a different approach, although it’s not clear what that might be. Employing a teeming ensemble of actors, the movie  chronicles an evening in the life of a large Italian-American family: kids, teenagers, adults, and what’s left of an older generation. Absent a central character, director Tyler Taormina turns his Long Island-based movie into a heap of asides that feel as if they may have been drawn from personal experience. Homage is paid to family tradition, but the teenagers eventually slip away, seeking the familiarity of a world their parents don’t understand. A packed soundtrack (from Sinatra to The Ronettes) seems keyed to evoking smiles of recognition. Set in the early years of the 21st century, the movie also includes mother-daughter tensions and disagreements about whether it’s time to move mom into a nursing home. Perhaps to solidify its indie cred, the movie casts Michael Cera and Gregg Turkington as two cops who sound dissonant comic notes. If you attend this densely populated party, look for performances by Maria Dizzia, Tony Savino, and Francesca Scorsese.  To summarize: The movie resembles a Christmas meal at which everyone overindulges. Put another way, all of this gets to be too much. Enjoyable in bits and pieces, Christmas Even in Miller’s Point did for me exactly what a real evening like this might have accomplished. Halfway through, I was ready to go home.

Hugh Grant takes a turn at horror

 

   Two young Mormon women on a mission knock on the door of a man who seems amenable to hearing their pitch. Acting the kindly older gentleman, the bespectacled fellow invites the evangelizing duo into his home for talk and a piece of freshly baked blueberry pie. 

 You needn't know much about movies or have seen the trailer for Heretic to guess that a downward spiral awaits.

  Notable for allowing Hugh Grant to display a smug, intellectualized form of evil.  Grant's Mr. Reed almost immediately begins challenging the faith of his visitors (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East), missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

    Mr. Reed revels in his well-honed mental agility. He claims to have spent years searching for the one true religion. He delights in debunking every religious idea he assumes the young missionaries take for granted. Mr. Reed even references Mormon material in his attempt to undermine the women's faith. 

    Grant seems to be having as much wicked fun as Mr. Reed. He delivers lengthy monologues, one of which is based on the idea that the game Monopoly qualifies as an apt metaphor for religion. He references Radio Head's music and speculates on how popular culture might one day evolve into religion. Could Jar Jar Binks be a holy figure in the future?

     All of this unfolds with an irreverence that's more witty than outrageous, and as Mr. Reed declaims, the personalities of the two women begin to clarify. Thatcher portrays Sister Barnes, who wasn't raised as a Mormon, smartly parries with Mr. Reed. Sister Paxton seems more reluctant to engage.

    Both women, of course, are terrified when they realize they’re locked in a house where Mr. Reed slowly reveals his sinister intentions. Oh, and by the way, no shy wife putters around the kitchen, as Mr. Reed initially claims, a ploy to calm any rising anxiety the women are sure to feel.

     Directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers with John Krasinski of A Quiet Place,  deftly set things in motion as we wait for the movie to bare its horror fangs. When we learn that Mr. Reed’s isolated home contains secret chambers, the aroma of conventional horror becomes too prominent to ignore.

     No fair telling more. Know, though, that Heretic stands a cut above typical Hollywood helpings of blood and guts. Too bad a wobbly third act feels like a betrayal of the  unease created of earlier scenes, which -- at least by horror standards -- prove refreshing. Heretic is at its creepy best when Mr. Reed wields his most powerful weapons: verbal assaults on his prey's sense of security.

A coal man's troubled conscience

   

   A  drama of tormented conscience, Small Things Like These cloaks a tough-minded story in the somber light of a forbidding Irish winter. In his first screen performances since his Oscar-winning turn in Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy directs his energies inward to play Bill Furlong, a family man who earns his living delivering coal to locals in the small town of New Ross.

   Bill lives modestly with his wife (Eileen Walsh) and five daughters. By nature an observer, Bill eventually learns what's happening at the local convent, the place that houses both the town's Catholic school and one of Ireland's notorious Magdalene laundries, now-defunct institutions where abused unwed mothers provided unpaid labor.

    A perfectly cast Murphy concentrates a growing sense of anguish in Bill's beneficent face as awareness of what transpires in the laundry takes its toll. At the end of each day's work, Bill scrubs his hands vigorously, a hard scrapple metaphor for trying to wash away sights that can't be unseen. 

      Set in 1989 during the week before Christmas, Small Things Like These employs flashbacks to shed light on Bill's past, a mixture of small disappointments and substantial grief. One Christmas, Bill’s mother gave him a hot water bottle instead of the jigsaw puzzle he wanted, but Bill’s real torment comes from knowing that his unwed single mother, who died young, barely escaped the Magdalene laundries.

      Bill’s sensitivities were nourished by a woman (Michelle Fairley) who took Bill and his teenage mom underwing. Among other things, Fairley's Mrs. Wilson helped Bill develop an enduring taste for Dickens, an author who knew how to drown a story in a sea of troubles.

     The plot conspires to bring Bill’s adult conscience to a boil when a young woman (Zara Devlin) who has been exiled to the laundry’s coal shed asks for help. Bill is moved but doesn’t know what to do.

      The head nun (a terrific Emily Watson as Sister Mary) knows Bill has penetrated the convent’s "secret." She tries to salve Bill's conscience with a fat Christmas bonus. 

     Aware that money always presents a problem for her struggling family, Bill's wife encourages him to go along to get along. The town has spent years ignoring the laundry. No one wants to upset the prevailing order.

       Mielants and screenwriter Enda Walsh aren't interested in big emotional effects. Spare as it is poignant, Small Things Like These turns a novel by Claire Keegan into a revealing big-screen story about one man who wrestles with the price of denial in a dreary town where most consider it wise to keep their eyes averted and their mouths shut.

Liam Neeson plays an aging thug

 

It's been more than a minute since I bothered with a Liam Neeson movie. In films such as Nonstop and Taken, Neeson proved a reliable action star. His movies tended to mire him in formula, the reluctant savior who eventually kicks ass. I’d had enough — until now. I decided to check on Neeson with Absolution, a thriller about a former boxer who spent most of his post-ring life toiling as a gangster for a Massachusetts drug boss (Ron Perlman). Looking grey as a New England fog, Neeson's character suffers from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which means he's losing his memory -- and sometimes his temper. Dreary and depressing, Absolution includes scenes in which the boxer hallucinates about being on a boat, finds a bit of tenderness from a woman (Yolanda Ross), and tries to reconcile with his estranged daughter (Frankie Shaw) and his grandson (Terrence Pulliam). Eventually, Neeson's character is forced to seek absolution for sins of violence and family neglect through an explosive outburst in which he attempts to right his many wrongs. Neeson turns down his star wattage and looks forlorn as a man on the cusp of death; he creates a real character, but director Hans Petter Moland, who directed Neeson in 2019's Cold Pursuit, keeps the movie on a slow track, steering it into territory that feels more dispiriting than driven.

The wild ride of ‘Emilia Perez’

 

     Hints of mad surrealism blow through Emilia Perez, a film from French director Jacques Audiard that stars Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and transgender actress Karla Sofía Gascón.  

     The central conceit of Audiard's story shouldn't work at all. The story's animating twist involves a brutal Mexican drug lord (Gascon) who makes a late-life decision to -- brace yourself -- become a woman. 

    Clearly, Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) has something bold in mind, and he creates an intoxicating hybrid, a musical drama full of stylized flare and operatic emotion.  

   The story begins by introducing us to Saldana's Rita, a whip-smart attorney who plays second fiddle to her less than competent male boss. Unhappy with her status and income, Rita's ready for a change.

   A macho drug lord who's also a husband and loving father, Gascon's Manitas Del Monte contacts Rita and asks her to arrange for his disappearance, an ironic request in light of Manitas' role in "disappearing" others. 

   Once taken for dead, Manitas will complete his gender transition, a process he's already begun with a regimen of hormones.

   After accepting Manitas’ offer, Rita faces a myriad of problems. Manitas' children and wife (Gomez) must believe that he's dead and their financial futures must be secured. Rita also must make Manitas' new life plausible and possible.

   Filmed mostly in a Paris studio, employs sets that take us to Mexico City, London, Bangkok, and Switzerland.  Emilia Perez becomes a high-speed, cinematic ferris wheel that knocks us off our bearings. In a way, the movie is about the sense of disorientation it breeds.

   In addition to being well paid for her services, Rita  becomes part of the world created by the newly emerged Emilia Perez as the movie explores a provocative question: Can Emilia shed the criminality that scarred Manhitas' soul? Can his insides be reborn along with his transformed exterior?

   A skeptical Israeli doctor (Mark Ivanir) performs the surgery that changes Manitas' identity. Initially, Manitas’ move seems like an extreme way to evade capture. But, no, Manitas sincerely wants to become the person he believes he was born to be.  

   Performing musical numbers with angular acuity, Saldana commands the movie until Emilia emerges. She claims to be a cousin of Manitas' who insisted that she care for his family should anything happen to him. Unrecognizable to Manitas' former wife and two children, "Aunt" Emilia still knows how to be the center of any environment in which she finds herself.

    Eventually, Emilia moves the family to a beautiful home in Mexico City where the film broadens its scope. Emilia, who dotes on the children, dedicates  her life to locating the bodies of people who have been murdered by the cartels. 

      Stability, if not a happy ending, seems to loom but Gomez's Jessi has passions of her own: She yearns to restart a relationship with Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez), a guy with whom she once had a torrid affair. 

    The movie was shot in a studio in Paris with Audiard employing sets that are supposed to be located in Mexico City, London, Bangkok, and Switzerland. Audiard can't solve all the structural issues raised by so many disparate pieces, but there's a plus side here, as well.

     Different elements bump into one another in ways that reinforce the movie's insistence on charting its own course. Tunes by Camille Dalmais and Clement Ducol bring propulsive energy to a movie that doesn't so much bend genre conventions as ignore them.

     Saldana and Gomez give striking performances, but the movie belongs to Gascon, who embodies a character in desperate need of resolving gender and moral contradictions. 

    It's a copout, I suppose, to say that Emilia Perez isn't for everyone, but it's worth noting that the movie divided audiences when it premiered at last May's Cannes Film Festival. I understand those who found the movie somewhat indigestible and wondered whether it could have used more musical numbers.

   But for me, Audiard's audacious approach trumped many of the movie's problems. Audiard asks us to take a wild ride with him. Why not be adventurous and take the dare?

What happens 'Here?' Not much

   Watching the new movie Here, I felt as if I were peering into a diorama devoted to mundane helpings of Americana. Set mostly in a single room and spanning a variety of eras, Here's narrow focus seems intended to open wide vistas of life in different eras.

   But the movie sacrifices depth for an artificial sense of breadth as it delivers a series of domestic scenes, many featuring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as husband and wife.

    Director Robert Zemeckis, who directed Hanks and Wright in Forrest Gump, uses AI to de-age or age many of the characters as he tires to deliver meaningful moments in the lives of successive owners of the same house.

    OK, but was it necessary to show how the site on which the movie's modest home was built looked during prehistoric times? And did Zemeckis need to acknowledge a time before the arrival of settlers?

   The movie includes segments in which a Native American couple falls in love in a wooded setting so idyllic I half expected Bambi to nuzzle up against one of them.

   The movie's parade of vignettes features a full menu of ordinary events: births, deaths, marriages, divorce, Thanksgiving dinners, and Christmas celebrations, all of which serve as signposts that, I guess, are intended to encourage a sense of unfolding lives. Add a few cultural shifts and a bit of nostalgic set decoration and you've got the idea, a tableau of American life.

  Based on a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, Here mostly concentrates on Wright and Hanks, who play Richard and Margaret, a couple who meet as 17-year-olds during the 1950s. Economic concerns and Margaret's unexpected pregnancy force the couple to move in with Richard's parents, a hard-drinking dad (Paul Bettany) and a devoted mom (Kelly Reilly). 

    Scenes of the house's other occupants come and go, appearing as if they were someone else's memories. During the early 1900s, we meet Pauline (Michelle Dockery), who occupies the home with her pilot husband (Gwilym Lee). She fears flying will kill him.

   During the 1920s, Leo (David Fynn) and Stella (Ophelia Lovibond) take over. They like to drink and party and remain oblivious to anything that might resemble a problem. Leo invents a recliner that catapults the twosome into the upper economic rungs.

   To show what happens once Richard and Margaret move away, we meet a Black family (Nicholas Pinnock, Nikkie Amuka-Bird, and Cache Vanderpuye) that offers a glimpse of life in the 21st century.

     Lest the proceedings be swamped with greeting-card sentiment, the movie introduces a slew of unrealized dreams. Bettany's character fails to advance on his job. Hanks' Richard abandons his artistic aspirations to sell insurance, and Wright's Margaret feels stifled by living with her in-laws. She once hoped to go to law school.

    Eric Roth's screenplay tackles serious themes but they come off as obvious signposts: Problems unfold as if on schedule, and the movie’s deep focus images draw unneeded attention to themselves, as does a stationary camera that turns the screen into a near-theatrical space.

     Even with the introduction of a case of Alzheimer's, Here proves less maudlin than I expected, but that doesn't mean Zemeckis resists all schmaltz, and some scenes  -- notably those involving Benjamin Franklin (Keith Bartlett) and his son William (Daniel Betts) -- become distractingly silly.

   Zemeckis seems to be aiming for something poignant, meaningful, and broadly appealing, but, for me, Here had about as much emotional impact as a bouquet of artificial flowers. When you sort it all out, there's too little “there” in Here.

A sex worker's dizzying journey

   

 I’ve been reading about Anora ever since the movie won the Palm d'Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and began catapulting its way around the festival circuit. My initial anticipation was sparked not only by an award but by the movie’s pedigree. Anora is the work of Sean Baker,  a director whose The Florida Project I admired for its specificity and down-to-earth credibility. 

  Baker’s interests tend to be married to narrow forms of realism that resonate beyond each movie’s carefully chosen setting. His movies are about specific places -- Los Angeles in Tangerine -- but they're also about characters who struggle with chaotic forms of living -- the transgender sex worker in the same movie.

     In Anora, Baker immerses himself in Brighton Beach, a Brooklyn enclave defined by its community of Russian emigres and business people. If that description makes it sound as if Baker plans to chart an inspirational course through immigration issues,  think again.

    Baker builds his movie around an American-born woman who works in a nightclub that specializes in lap dances, some held in private VIP rooms.

    In what rightly has been described as a breakthrough performance, Mikey Madison plays Anora, a woman who’d like to escape the sex-worker grind. Ambition aside, Anora does her job with convincing enthusiasm. She’s not embarrassed by her work and has learned how to sell herself.

     The story’s pivotal event occurs when Anora meets Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a 21-year-old Russian club patron who’s goofy and  immature. As it turns out, Ivan is also the son of a powerful Russian oligarch. Happy to pay for sex, he’s so taken with Anora — who calls herself Ani — that he offers to pay her $15,000 to spend a week him. They’ll party, take drugs, have sex, and party some more.

      Ably created by Eydelshteyn as a kid who's nothing but loose ends, Ivan lives in a beautifully appointed modern home in a gated community. His ocean view offers a stark contrast to Ani’s apartment. She and her sister share a dingy flat next to subway tracks where trains rumble their insult past smudged windows. Ani needs the money, does her sex duties willingly, and enjoys her new exposure to the high life. 

      Early on, the movie feels like a giddy party that includes a major bash at Ivan’s home, trips to upscale clubs, romps on the beaches of Coney Island, and a stay at a luxurious Las Vegas hotel where Ivan is a regular customer. The characters take a deep dive into what seems to be an inexhaustible supply of drugs. 

       We're not sure what to make of it when Ivan proposes and the couple hurries through a Las Vegas wedding. Suddenly, Ani is living the dream, much to the envy of at least one of her former co-workers.

       We wait for the fall of the other shoe, the hard kick that will shatter Ani’s dreams, but Baker is too shrewd to crash the gates of formula. Instead, he turns Anora into a near-hysterical comedy, bringing a farcical tone to the increasingly wild proceedings.

     A time bomb ticks beneath the story’s surface. Ivan’s disapproving parents are about to arrive in New York to nullify their notoriously irresponsible son's marriage.  

     Enter a cohort of subservient family employees who, with Ani in tow, must locate the fleeing Ivan. He runs off without Ani at the suggestion that he’s about to be transported back to Russia. Sans Ivan, there can be no annulment.

       Included in this gaggle are an Armenian (Karen Karagulian) who works as the loyal family fixer and two henchmen (Vache Tovmasyan and Yura Borisov).  Hired as the muscle of the group, Borisov's Igor has a disarming soulful quality that throws us off guard.

       The Brighton bumblers fail to take Ani’s toughness into account. A scene in Ivan’s apartment turns into an explosive comic brawl in which Ani holds her own. Baker allows the scene to play out as the mayhem spirals out of control. 

        Eventually, Ivan’s father (Aleksey Serebryakov) and mother (Daryl Ekamasova) arrive in New York to retrieve their wayward son. Ivan's no-nonsense, steely mom makes no bones about asserting her authority. Ani isn't impressed. 

       Madison handles her role with bold confidence. She ignites sparks of humanity that keep Ani from becoming a caricature, and Baker continues his exploration of boisterous nihilistic situations that resist easy compartmentalization.

       Anora brings us into a tipsy, fascinating, ethnically specific world where Brooklyn funk and obscene amounts of money create an intoxicating mix that can be funny, bitter, and impressively true to itself.