A mushy 'Klara and The Sun'

   A few minutes into Klara and the Sun, director Taika Waititi’s schmaltzy adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s popular novel, it struck me that Waititi might be aiming for an idiosyncratic classic about the relationship between a friendly robot and a teenage girl.

    Set in the near future, Waititi's instructional fable focuses on Klara (Jenna Ortega), a slightly dated android who longs to be adopted lest she be cannibalized for spare parts. Klara languishes in The Friend Store, where she and her cohorts are ignored by a public that's more attracted to later models.

     Because her inventory is dated, The Friend Store manager (Natasha Lyonne) constantly finds herself bested by a spiffy store across the street, a comment on the rapid obsolescence generated by evolving technologies.

    All is not lost, though. One day, the teenage Josie (Mia Tharia) looks into the store window and makes a strong connection with Klara. She begs her reluctant mother (Amy Adams) to buy this artificial soul mate. 

   Mom would prefer a later model, but soon surrenders to her daughter's request. Klara is boxed and sent to Josie's rural home,  an estate surrounded by wheat fields that could have been selected by a color coordinator with a taste for Oz-like yellow.

   Adams’ Chrissy doesn’t welcome Klara. Neither does the family's housekeeper (Rachel House), but we suspect they're being set up for late-picture changes of heart.

  A screenplay by Waititi and Dahvi Waller poses the expected questions: What does it mean to be human? How does one deal with grief? And how are we meant to live with the inevitable brokenness of being alive in a world where love and pain are inextricably linked?

   For all its thematic ambition and splashes of visual cleverness, Klara smears a layer of sentimental mush over a story that doesn't generate the deep emotions that Michael Giacchino’s syrupy score tries to evoke.

   Waititi relies on Ortega to create an endearing character who mixes naïveté and intelligence. A sun worshiper of sorts, Karla talks to the sun, praising its warmth and asking for help when problems arise. More in tune with nature than her human counterparts, Klara must teach them a lesson in humanity.

    The film tries to ride the emotional wave created by Ortega and Tharia, both convincing, as is Josie’s young boyfriend (Aran Murphy). There’s even an android scarecrow (Jesse Griffin) who provides comic relief and invites a Wizard of Oz comparison. 

   As the movie imagines life after World War III (never shown), it introduces a gene-altering procedure called Lifting aimed at parents who can afford to put their kids on the road to high achievement. Chrissy has had Josie lifted — but the procedure generated a life-threatening side effect.

     Topical in these AI-obsessed days, some of the issues raised by Klara and the Sun are subjected to heavy-handed satire. When Josie meets with other “lifted” teens, we glimpse the class distinctions that have gripped this depleted world. Josie's fellow "Liftees" (my word) couldn’t be more obnoxious. 

     Steve Buscemi makes a brief appearance as a man who aspires creates artificial replacements for departed loved ones, a process that appeals to Chrissy, who already has lost a husband and a daughter, Josie’s older sister.

     I thought Waititi’s widely praised JoJo Rabbit, about a Jewish teen hidden during the Holocaust, soothed its audience by confirming what it already knew. The same could be said about Klara and the Sun. Love can hurt. Humanity can't be replicated. The sun supports life. Death sucks.

    Don’t worry, you won’t miss these points. Waititi makes sure they’re delivered out loud.

     

    

     

The tricky business of riffing on Ripley

   Patricia Highsmith secured her reputation as a brilliant writer of crime fiction with The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), a mystery followed by four more Ripley novels, the last appearing in 1991. Not that Highsmith was unknown before Ripley. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, appeared in 1950 and was adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. 

  A lesbian with a fondness for pet snails, Highsmith was quick to display her racism and anti-Semitism, as well as her contempt for those she considered to be less acute in their observations. American born, Highsmith lived most of her adult life as an expatriate. 

   Directed by Anton Corbijn (The American and Control), A Talent for Murder attempts to out-trick the tricky Highsmith, setting a high bar the movie can't quite jump over. Still, Joanna Murray-Smith expands her stage play to create a Ripley-like mystery that plumbs Highsmith levels of amorality.

    A Talent for Murder brings the fictional character of Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich) into the story. A Highsmith devotee who's looking to build his a career, Ridgeway has been sent by Highsmith’s publisher to visit her secluded Swiss home. He's supposed to persuade her to write another lucrative Ripley novel. 

   On the train to Zurich, Ridgeway meets Clementine (Olivia Cooke), an appealing American who's on her way to visit a rich aunt. She's also about to become an heiress. 

     The stage is set for Helen Mirren to enter as the thoroughly unpleasant Highsmith. In an unattractive wig and minimal makeup, Mirren brings plenty of bite to an author whose walls include a collection of antique guns. To ingratiate himself with the reclusive Highsmith, Ridgeway brings her a knife she has been coveting along with cans of Campbell's soup she requested.

   On stage, A Talent for Murder was a two-hander in which Ridgeway and Highsmith sparred and jostled. On film, Ridgeway’s relationship with Clementine unfolds in ways that bring him into contact with an upper-class crowd.

   Initially, Highsmith outpoints Ridgeway, but Ehrenreich gives a cagey performance as an editor Highsmith constantly tests, often in humiliating fashion. The ultimate challenge for Ridgeway: Devise a way to get rid of a character in the Ripley mystery Highsmith considers writing. Is he clever enough to concoct a murder that will convince her to trust him?

   Miren bites into Highsmith’s sarcasm and superiority without seeking audience sympathy. Cooke adds spark as a young woman eager to take her own bite out of life, and  Ehrenreich’s performance boasts increasing complexity.

  The attempt to blend Highsmith’s story with Ridgeway’s may not fascinate in full Ripley fashion, but it plays well enough to keep us involved with these devious, calculating characters.

'Wicker' weaves a touching tale

 Described in simple terms, Wicker sounds preposterous. A fisherwoman in a Medieval village falls in love with a man made of wicker created by the village basket weaver. Though made of wicker, this lover has a human-like physical presence. He’s even able to make bed-breaking love — vigorous enough to raise village eyebrows.

  Yes, it’s silly, but Olivia Colman, as the Fisher Woman who’s a bit of a village pariah, and Alexander Skarsgard, in an impressive wicker costume, make the situation real enough to carry a movie that easily could have gone badly wrong.

  Based on Ursula Wills-Jones's short story, Wicker also features fine performances from Peter Dinklage as the Basket Weaver, another village outsider, and from Elizabeth Debicki as The Tailor’s Wife, a conniving woman who envies the Fisher Woman’s independence — particularly in a patriarchal village. 

   How patriarchal? Villagers place a collar around the bride’s neck, an obvious symbol of male possession.

   Another village ritual puts the Fisher Woman in an awkward spot. By chance, she’s tagged as the next village bride. Knowing that her prospects for romance are limited, she asks the Basket Weaver to make her a husband.

  The movie doesn’t deal with how the wicker groom comes to life. He just does, which allows writer/directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer freedom to explore the relationship without having to drift into quasi-supernatural  terrain.

   Skarsgard creates a caring character who becomes a paragon of devotion, helping with chores and tending to Fisher Woman’s emotional and physical needs. Skarsgard works in a low-key fashion that brings credibility to his character’s innocent ways. His character may be simple, but by no means is he stupid.

  If one wanted to be cynical, one might say that Skarsgard's character had to be made of straw because no such man exists in real life, but Wicker isn't about promoting cynicism.

  Never shy about total commitment to a character, Colman plunges into the role with the gusto of a hungry woman presented with a heaping plate of food.

  The directors add humor, and the screenplay contrives to create the conflict that precedes a finale that caps an often offbeat critique of a society in which women's needs are neglected as a matter of course.

  The village environment has been ably created, and Wicker, which has enough harsh moments to avoid cloying sweetness, evolves into a generally pleasing fable about the comforts of equality in love.

 

 

A great mind-bending 'documentary'

   You Can See Everything focuses on Elizabeth Holmes, the former head of Theranos, a company that claimed to have developed a revolutionary miniature blood-testing device. 

    Things didn't go well. In 2022, Holmes was found guilty of four counts of investor fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and three counts of wire fraud. She was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison, and, along with the company's former president, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani,* was ordered to pay $452 million in restitution.

   From this you might expect You Can See Everything, a documentary directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, to chart the history of a fraud, detailing its intricacies and twists as if it were a 60 Minutes report.

  Fortunately, Fielder and Oppenheimer take a different route. I say fortunately because You Can See Everything qualifies as one of the year's most engaging films, a movie that puts us through mental gymnastics involving truth and the difficulties of telling it.

  Forget the movie's two-hour-and-54 minute running time. You Can See Everything commands interest  throughout what amounts to two related sections, one during the 34 days before Holmes reported to Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, and the other two years later.

  The less said about part II, the better. When you see the movie, you'll know why this is a case where knowing less before viewing is the right choice.

  The movie begins at a rented San Diego beach home shared by Holmes, her partner Billy Evans, and their two children, one an infant and the other a toddler. Why did Holmes agree to be filmed in what Evans calls an act of “radical transparency?” That's part of the ongoing mystery.

 Eventually, Fielder moved in with the couple, becoming a 24-hour presence who sometimes seems to be lurking about. Fielder and Oppenheimer so convincingly create the film's insularity that we're absorbed in it. 

   If you’re familiar with Fielder’s work in HBO’s The Rehearsal, you know that Fielder, who blurs the line between comedy and acting,  is too creative to deliver a straightforward account of Holmes’s fall from the heights of tech glory.

   If I tell you that at one point, Fielder shows Holmes a clip of the famous Abbot and Costello Who’s On First? routine to coax her into saying something about language, miscommunication, and truth, you’ll appreciate Fielder’s approach.

   Early on, Fielder and Oppenheim, the director of the recent Primetime, use extreme close-ups that allow us to stare at Holmes’s face, as if it were a map to read for clues. She claims innocence. She says she never lies. She says she doesn't care about money. She offers open-faced responses to Fielder, whose deadpan demeanor plays against questions that try to pry away at Holmes.

   Fielder and Holmes make an odd but intriguing combination. with Evans interpreting her “genius’ for Fielder and for us. Is he a reliable source? Is Holmes sincere when she says that she misled no one, or is she trying to create an image of a woman wrongly accused?

   At one point, Holmes stands at the kitchen sink beating eggs, one of those casual doc moments from ordinary life. Without asking her, Evans takes over the job, providing a telling clue about which no more can be said.

    Once Holmes can no longer appear on camera, Fielder’s creativity takes over, and the movie tosses us into a rabbit hole of shifting impressions and suspenseful revelations, skillfully asking us to unravel its title. Have we seen "everything," or does this "radically" immersive bit of moviemaking leave us to weigh big and small questions that will stimulate many post-movie conversations?

     Sometimes, it's good to get your mind bent, especially by a movie that's willing to live in a world where it's difficult to tell who's acting for the camera, who's being candid, and who even knows the difference. 

*The film makes reference to Balwani, who had a 12-year romantic relationship with Holmes, but Holmes remains the film's focus.

     

A lengthy doc about Elon Musk

   The documentarian Alex Gibney has never shied away from controversy. His filmography includes Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Taxi to the Dark Side, and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Musk, a three-hour-and-45-minute look at the world's wealthiest man, continues Gibney's immersion in the universe of hot topics.

   Yes, you read that right. Musk runs for almost four hours, serving as a comprehensive look at a career that began with Zip2, a company that provided online business directories and city maps. Musk continued with a variety of tech enterprises, including the electric car company, Tesla. Musk also runs SpaceX, which designs rockets and missiles, and operates Starlink, a satellite internet service. 

   Unless you've managed to ignore the news, you also know that Musk led President Trump’s DOGE, a brutal government cost-cutting effort. He has spoken about the need to travel to Mars, a journey his detractors may wish he'd make sooner rather than later.

    Musk, who has denounced the documentary as a hit job, refused to be interviewed by Gibney. Taking matters into his own hands, Gibney used a computer-generated avatar of Musk to address the camera, creating the illusion that Musk is talking to the audience. Taken from recordings of Musk interviews and public statements, the voice and words we hear are real.

    Gibney raises a question with which many have wrestled: Is Musk a genius with a prescient eye on the future, or is he a marketing wizard who knows how to sell himself and his many companies while landing lucrative government contracts?

    The film begins at a point when Gibney admires Musk’s energy and talent and slowly reveals that much about Musk and be questioned. 

    Musk, for example, arrived after Tesla already had been founded. Martin Eberhard, one of the original founders, was pushed out of the company. Ruthless? Maybe, but Musk did develop Tesla at scale, establishing electric cars as a credible alternative to Detroit gas-guzzlers.

     Musk’s personal life is … well … complicated. He has been married three times, twice to the same woman. He has fathered 14 children with four women. Gibney interviews Justine Wilson, Musk's first wife, but his interview with Ashley St. Clair proves more revealing. St. Claire had a child with Musk. She says she refused a multi-million dollar payment to sign a non-disclosure agreement that asked her not to talk about him or his heirs. 

     For me, the movie began to drag when the subject of DOGE takes over. Perhaps it's a bit too fresh to need reiteration. Those who've followed Musk’s career closely may find that the movie repeats much of what they already know, but Gibney's useful compendium raises important questions about the conflation of money and power and what might be the unprecedented influence of tech oligarchs on government. 

      It should come as no surprise that the film isn't an ode to someone Gibney regards as heroic. By the end, you may find that technical advances have taken a back seat to Musk’s greatest creation: himself. He has constructed an identity he equates with innovation and visionary achievement. 

     Musk may want to make himself the hero of his own story, but Gibney refuses to play along. That's hardly a groundbreaking approach, but Gibney molds his material with verve, insight, and a clearly made case.

On a downslide in Hollywood

  Rosalind Eleazar, an actress familiar to Slow Horses fans, provides the best reason to see Misty Green, Chris Rock’s fourth film as a director. 

 Eleazar plays the title character, an actress and singer whose career has declined. Back in the day, Misty won an Emmy for her work in a hit series, but a younger generation knows her as someone their parents used to love. On top of that, Misty’s drug use and alienating personality have put a damper on a career that should be deep into its sweet spot.

  Instead, Misty does signing gigs and attends humiliating auditions. A winning smile can transform her face in an instant, but she can also be insulting and unpleasant. On the night before an audition, she’s likely to party hard enough to throw her attempts to land a role, even one that's beneath her talents, way off balance.

  If Hollywood weren't enough to deal with, Misty’s being tossed out of the luxe apartment a recently deceased lover said she could occupy. Her bipolar brother, an amazing Daniel Kaluuya, has just been released from jail. Needy and explosively childish, Kaluuya's Jay seems likely to derail in a burst of fury.

   Rock appears in the film as Jordan Green (no relation to Misty), a director who was embarrassed by Misty on a previous filming. She punched someone on the crew.

  Rock has scenes in which he’s sharply funny. A rant on why he hates civil rights movies sounds as if it could have been lifted from one of his stand-up sets. Overall, though, I wondered whether the part should have gone to someone else.

     Important to the story’s development, Jordan is set to direct a reboot of Dreamgirls. The lead role of Deena would be perfect for Misty. Will she even get a shot at it? 

    Misty deals with racial obstacles in Hollywood and goes toe-to-toe with those who dismiss her as abrasive. But she’s a complicated character, so much so that it’s difficult to tell where Hollywood’s insulting treatment begins and Misty’s self-destructive tendencies leave off. 

    The supporting cast includes Adam Driver, as a marginal Hollywood director whose life has become more about drugs and high-dollar pimping than moviemaking. Anna Kendrik plays Misty’s friend, another actress, but one who has her eye on a suitor who can provide financial security. 

  Amy Landecker bristles in a small role as the venomous widow who gives Misty a week to vacate her late husband’s apartment.

   Overall, Misty may not be the movie that delivers the definitive work on Hollywood's transactional ways. But it makes room for pungent moments about after-hours Hollywood, and it captures the way the odor of failure can drift into self-abasement.

     Misty Green threatens to shatter into disparate pieces, even as it operates in loose fashion, a ramble through Hollywood with a chip on its shoulder that gives Eleazar room to create a memorable character at a moment of peak anguish.

   

  

  

A grim look at the American West

A Prayer for the Dying takes a grim look at a doom-struck western town that’s trying to expand in the years just after the Civil War. Director Dara Van Dusen, an American who lives in Norway and trained at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, has made one of the year’s darkest films, telling the story of a town residents struck by a lethal plague of diphtheria -- not that things were going all that well before that. Jacob (Johnny Flynn) does triple duty. He’s the bicycle-riding sheriff, undertaker, and pastor of the sparsely populated town. John C. Reilly, in another fine performance, plays the town’s doctor. Kristine Kujath Thorp portrays Jacob’s wife, a mom who breaks down emotionally when illness claims her child.  The movie tests one’s endurance — at least it did mine.  But if you stick with Prayer, you may find that it gets under your skin.  The film’s naturalistic images and dusty earth tones become a mask that Van Dusen peels away as she builds toward images of hellish horror. By the end, a locomotive becomes a monster surrounded by the red smoke of encroaching fires that threaten to consume everything. All of this gloom makes Payer for Dying difficult to recommend, but it also points to the work of a talented filmmaker who’s bold enough to present an unforgiving vision without apology or attenuation.

A president flees a rebellious militia

   Samuel L. Jackson teams with Michael Kinnaman in The Beast, a political action thriller boasting ample explosions, gunfire, and ... well ... not much else.

  Under the direction of Renny Harlin, Jackson portrays a US president who finds himself on the run in his heavily fortified car when a rebel militia tires to take over the country.

    As a Secret Service agent wounded during an early-picture fight, Kinnaman remains dazed in the backsea as Jackson communicates with the central command that tries to guide him to safety.

    The president, a military veteran who has known combat, calculates risk while fretting about the safety of his wife, the woman he credits with turning his life toward public service.

    President or not, Jackson’s dialogue contributes to the movie’s solid “R” rating, but neither he nor Kinnaman can keep this one from becoming anything more than another blood-soaked grindhouse junker.

 

Sorkin takes another run at Facebook

    Judging by Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning, few the world's ill can't be linked to Facebook. An overstatement on my part to be sure, but Reckoning scowls at Facebook for abetting dangerous political extremism, wrecking young lives with cyberbullying, and allowing Jan. 6 rioters to post about their assault on the Capitol.

   Social Reckoning isn’t entirely wrong in its assertions, but Sorkin, working from his own screenplay, has drained much of the suspense from a story built around two characters, a Wall Street Journal reporter (Jeremy Allen White) and a Facebook whistleblower (Mikey Madison).

   Madison’s Frances Haugen began as a true-believing coding engineer intent on saving Facebook from abandoning its professed desire to become the world’s town square.

   By the time the movie opens, Facebook already has attained trillion-dollar status, and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) has become an autocratic sphinx mired in capitalist tunnel vision.

   Much of the movie follows the guidelines of a journalistic procedural as White’s Jeff Horwitz, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, tries to get the goods on Facebook.

   Madison’s Haugen holds the key to Horwitz’s success; Haugen has access to important computer files, but she’s wary of breaking the law by giving them to Horwitz. She initially alerts Horwitz to the story, expecting that his investigative skills will be sufficient to obtain the needed evidence.

    Sorkin has a knack for depicting work-place vibes. The supporting cast rounds out Facebook’s headquarters. Billy Magnussen portrays the smiling head of PR.  Bill Burr plays a hard-boiled former employee, now a consultant who tries to steer Zuckerberg toward social responsibility. Betty Gilpin signs on as Horwitz’s brusque boss.

    The main events, which take place between 2019 and 2021, are undergirded by scenes devoted to a rehearsal in which a crisis manager (Wunmi Mosaku) tries to humanize Zuckerberg for a pending Congressional hearing, no easy task with a man whose deadpan expression never seems to have been interrupted by anything as foreign as a smile.

    The story culminates with a Congressional hearing at which Hougen testifies, leaving us to assume that the problems the movie raises are the bedrock on which Sorkin has built an old-fashioned expose.

     Facebook, the movie contends could have been more responsible, but it would have come with a cost. If the company had refused to post obviously false or inflammatory content, it would have had to accept a one percent loss in profits, one exec says. Zuckerberg declined.

     As is the case with many Sorkin efforts, Reckoning bolsters a talky screenplay that brims with the kind of clever repartee that distinguishes the Sorkin brand, but here can feel a bit formulaic.

     White plays Horwtiz as a good guy and persistent reporter. Madison ably depicts a young woman who’s wrestling with her conscience, but, by the end, it’s difficult to feel as if the movie has reckoned with anything more than a point of view that’s clearly established at the outset.

     Enough of this. I needn’t tell you that Facebook, now Meta, still operates as do the company’s other businesses, which include Instagram, Messenger, and What’sApp.

     As for Zuckerberg, he was one of the tech honchos who late last month was  summoned to the White House to discuss AI … er … I mean Super Intelligence. It all makes you wonder whether any movie involving tech ethics can avoid feeling like yesterday’s news.