An Egyptian actor gets in over his head

   In Eagles of the Republic, an Egyptian movie star finds himself caught in the dangerous machinations of Egypt's authoritarian government. 

   In a commanding performance, Fares Fares, a Lebanese-Swedish actor, plays George Fahmy, an actor who so dominates the Egyptian film scene he has been dubbed "Pharaoh of the Screen." Toping six feet, George also commands most of the social situations in which he finds himself. He knows how to use his magnetism.

  That may sound like familiar terrain, but Fares's portrayal doesn't dip into caricature. Although George no longer lives with his wife (Donia Massoud), he stays in touch with his 20something son (Suhaib Nashwan). George doesn't always know how to handle his role as a father, but when he talks about acting and art, we believe he's sincere. 

     George lives with a younger woman (Lyne Khoudri), but we understand that he's been around several blocks when it comes to romance; he's skilled in the arts of flirting and philandering. 

    George's world begins to unravel when he's enlisted to play the lead in a biopic about Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. George looks nothing like el-Sisi, but the government's representative on set (Amr Waked) insists a stubby, balding el-Sisi doesn't care. The president wants to look like a movie star. He wants to look like George.

   Director Tarik Saleh, who lives in Sweden, turns out a movie of engaging surfaces that veers toward a pointed depiction of how authoritarian governments employ coercion to put the squeeze on artists. George takes a role he doesn't want because state agents threaten his son.

     Saleh, who also wrote the screenplay, pulls George deeper into an environment populated by the regime's officials. He meets the minister of defense (Tamim Heikal) and becomes attracted to the minister's beautiful, sophisticated wife (Zineb Triki). He uses his influence to help friends who are threatened by the regime.  He thinks he's untouchable -- until he isn't.

   All of this leads to an explosive finale built around a shocking attempted assassination.

   Saleh's satirical cinema savvy doesn't always mesh with the movie's increasingly sketchy political thriller elements. That may be part of the point. Artistic ambition and governmental control make for a bad, sometimes murderous marriage.

     George is bound for trouble he won't be able to act his way out of. Celebrity may not be powerful enough to resist heavy applications of tyrannical power. Poor George. He may be a star, but he's out of his depth.

Big violence erupts in a small town

 If you’ve been following the career of Bob Odenkirk, you already know that the star of Better Call Saul has become an unlikely kick-ass action hero. Normal, which follows 2021’s Nobody and its 2025 sequel, continues Odenkirk’s foray into big-screen mayhem with a story about the sheriff of a small Minnesota town called Normal.

  You needn't know much about irony to guess that the town of Normal won’t be anything like its name.  

  Clocking in at a brief (by current standards) hour and 30 minutes, Normal spins out a shamelessly improbable plot in which Yakuza gangsters use the town to store part of their American loot. The townsfolk profit, and the mayor (Henry Winkler) wants to keep the funds flowing.

  After a prologue set in Japan, director Ben Wheatley moves to Normal, where we meet Odenkirk’s Ulysses, a law officer with a troubled past that uprooted his life and disrupted his marriage.

    Having lost his bearings, Ulysses found work as Normal’s “interim” sheriff, an opening created by the previous sheriff's death.

   The residents of the small town immediately strike Ulysses (and us) as odd. Moira (Lena Headey), the town's bartender, seems a bit too straightforward. One of Ulysses’s over-eager deputies (Billy MacLellan) wears a leather jacket so squeaky, you can hear him approaching. Another deputy (Ryan Allen) wants to be the next full-time sheriff. Ulyssses also meets the late sheriff’s daughter (Jess McLeod), a troubled young woman.

    After about half an hour of goofing on small-town USA, Wheatley gets around to the movie’s point: comic violence that mixes laughter and revulsion. The slaughter begins when a couple of thieves (Reeana Jolly and Brendan Fletcher) try to rob the local bank.

     A twist that shifts rooting interests makes for a nice touch, but Normal isn't really about taking sides. No, Normal is more about watching the chaos, which is designed to play in a familiar jokey, gross-out key with enough armaments to fight a small war. But wait. That's pretty much what the movie becomes, a small war.

    Odenkirk gives his character a core of decency; the rest of the cast resembles cartoon creations, but no one goes to movies such as Normal for deeply explored character development. 

    Written by Derek Kolstad, who also wrote the Nobody movies, Normal makes no bones about what it is, but I've been down this road too many times to fully embrace another movie that can be likened to a fireworks display -- only with blood.

    And if Normal never seems particularly brainy, maybe it's because so many of the town's 1,890 residents have gotten their heads blown off.

    

McKellen, Coel shine in art drama

   Ian McKellen probably could read your tax return and make it sound as if Shakespeare had written it. The 86-year-old British actor has a voice that can mellow like aged wine or cut as sharply as a newly stropped razor.
   In an age of mumbled, half-whispered dialogue, McKellen delivers the written word with a theatrical precision that's perfectly suited to director Steven Soderbergh's The Christophers, a movie in which McKellen plays Julian Sklar, an aging but once prominent painter.

   Time and disrepair may have made Sklar vulnerable. It doesn't take long for Michaela Coel’s Lori, a talented younger painter, to become Sklar’s sparring partner, quasi-mentee, and muse.

  Working from a screenplay by Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move), Soderbergh fleshes out what’s basically a two-hander by introducing a couple of additional characters, notably Sklar’s conniving adult children (Jessica Gunning and James Corden). 

   For variety’s sake, the story occasionally leaves the confines of Sklar’s cluttered studio, another cliched association of creativity with messiness. Small matter, I suppose. 

   The spotlight rests on McKellen and Coel. Sklar once sold paintings for millions and is now regarded as a spent talent whose late work amounts to rubbish, an assessment he himself acknowledges. Even in sweaters that always seem two sizes too large, McKellen manages to project an air of royal authority, suggesting that Sklar hasn’t totally abandoned his art-star stature. 

     Wary but also wily, Coel’s Lori stands up to McKellen's Sklar. Lori  can’t easily be read, a quality that works to her advantage when Solomon’s screenplay deploys a series of tricky moves based on art forgery, greed, and betrayal.  Skilled at cagey silences, Coel also makes the most of Solomon’s arch, funny, and perceptive comments about art. 

     The Christophers, by the way, are a series of unfinished paintings Sklar made of a former lover. The relationship ended badly, and Sklar refuses to discuss it with Lori. He goes one step further, insisting that she destroy the paintings. This presents a key conflict because Lori has been hired by Sklar’s duplicitous offspring to secretly complete the Christophers for sale upon Sklar’s demise, which we learn is fairly imminent.

     Criticisms of the contemporary art world poke their way toward the surface. Works are bought for tax purposes, and billionaires buy paintings at ridiculously inflated prices that turn them into one more luxury acquisition. None of this feels fresh, but Solomon’s screenplay doesn’t belabor its art-world criticisms, either.

     Good as McKellen and Coel are, the screenplay's trickier plot points and revelations lack the satisfying snap of crisply thrown punches and counterpunches, lessening the story’s overall impact.

      Still, it’s possible to deem The Christophers as a worthy showcase for McKellen and Coel, each of whom paints with the precision of actors who know what marks they wish to make on the canvas Soderbergh and Solomon have given them.

    

Love and cliches in Tuscany

    Tuscan tourist associations should collect royalties on every ticket sold for You, Me & Tuscany, a glossy romcom in which every meal looks ready for its close-up and the countryside seems blessed by  soft summer light. 

   It's hardly surprising that the movie's Tuscan locations add convivial charm to a contrived story about a professional house sitter (Halle Bailey) who finds her true calling and also love in Italy.

   Bailey stars as Anna, a New York woman who dropped out of culinary school after her mother's death. Bridgerton star Regé-Jean Page joins Bailey for a romance that casts him as the movie's hunk in residence, offering him an opportunity to display his abs to the delight of Anna and a group of touring women who conveniently show up at the vineyard he runs.

     The story begins in a bar in New York where Anna meets Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor). Matteo and Anna trade stories. A foodie at heart, Anna's at loose ends. Matteo left his native Tuscany because he wanted no part of the family restaurant business. He advises Anna to be bold and visit Italy, a trip she once hoped to make with her late mother. 

    Against the advice of her best friend (Aziza Scott), Anna heads for Matteo's Tuscan village only to discover that all the hotels are booked because of a summer festival. Desperate, she decides to crash at Matteo's empty villa. She knows he's not there.

     Once discovered by Matteo's mother and grandmother, Anna avoids being arrested for trespassing by posing as Matteo's fiancee. His family is joyous that the wayward Matteo soon will return.

    In Matteo's absence, Page's Michael, an Englishman by birth, serves as Anna's guide to the village and to the family, which he has become part of. We know Anna and Michael will fall for each other, raising the movie's big problem: How will Anna extricate herself from the lie she's told?

     Additional complications arise when Matteo turns up and learns about Anna's ruse. 

     Working from a screenplay by Ryan Engle, director Kat Coiro forks up a heaping plateful of stereotypes. A robust gardener (Emanuele Pacca) makes like Pavarotti, singing opera while trimming hedges. A local cab driver (Marco Calvani) offers Anna advice, and cousin Francesca (Stella Pecollo) makes winking jokes about her sexual exploits.

    The family patriarch (Paolo Sassanelli) must be convinced that Anna is special before he welcomes her into the tribe. Mom (Isabella Ferrari) fawns over Anna. Scowling grandma (Stefania Casini) remains skeptical.

      Oh hell, why say more? You, Me & Tuscany is a picture postcard masquerading as a movie. Bailey radiates enough warmth to toast marshmallows, and Page exudes the kind of charm that can seem as much directed at the audience as at Anna.

     Judging by the reaction at a preview screening, there's an audience for the mix of comedy, romance, and escape that You, Me & Tuscany serves. I'm not part of it. If you're not, either, join me as I roll my eyes and look for what's next on the menu.

  

       

A feverish ‘Hamlet’ with Riz Ahmed'

  I’d been looking forward to Riz Ahmed’s Hamlet, a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic play directed by Aneil Karia, a director who had won an Oscar for his short film, The Long Goodbye, a harrowing take on an encounter between a South Asian family and right-wing racists.

  To set the stage, let me say that I don’t insist that Shakespeare be approached with liturgical reverence. Why not set a big-screen adaptation in an East Asian community in contemporary London? And instead of royalty, how about centering the play on corporate big shots vying for control of (ready for it?) the Elsinore corporation?

  Karia also takes liberties with Shakespeare’s dialogue, giving certain speeches to characters who didn’t deliver them in the original. I guess that’s OK. too. 

   After all, this lean one-hour and 53-minute rendition of Hamlet has been given a modernist edge that includes a foray into a nightclub where Hamlet snorts cocaine, an activity that seems superfluous for an already amped up prince who might be wobbling on the edge of insanity.

   Artistic license notwithstanding, some things in this bleary, agitated fever dream of a Hamlet seem like self-inflicted errors. Timothy Spall plays Polonius but the character's pompous cautionary speech to his son Laertes (Joe Alwyn), has been scrapped. (“Neither a borrower nor lender be.”)  

   If you're familiar with the play, you'll find other  such omissions in a work that writer Michael Lesslie adapted for the screen..

   Those who see this version of Hamlet may welcome seeing Ahmed deliver Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy behind the wheel of a BMW that’s racing on a rainy highway. It suggests that a reckless Hamlet might actually stop being at any moment. 

   But I wanted to focus  I wanted to focus on Hamlet's speech without worrying about the fact that Hamlet, at one point, takes his hands off the steering wheel while driving on the wrong side of the road.

  A dance number recreates the play in which Hamlet stages his view of the way Claudius (Art Malik) bumped off Hamlet’s dad so that he could marry his mom, Gertrude (an excellent Sheeba Chaddah),  and take over a corporate kingdom.

 Maybe it’s me, but much of the dialogue seemed mumbled, and Ahmed’s performance leans heavily on half-crazed anger. It's almost as if Hamlet is  being devoured by revenge-seeking demons.

   Karia's invention tends to de-emphasize Shakespeare’s language. And as much as anything, isn't the spoken word the point?

   Viewing this risk-riddled Hamlet can feel a bit like buying a ticket to hear your favorite musical group only to discover that it won’t be performing the tunes that made you love them in the first place. 

   You get why they wanted to branch out, but sometimes, the old tunes are better.

    

'The Drama' can't find its footing

 

  An intriguing movie gets lost somewhere in The Drama, the story of a pending marriage that's shaken when one of the partners reveals something horrible about her past.

  I won't spoil the big reveal, but I will say that Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli might have done well to pick a less explosive issue for a story that begins with a coffeeshop cute-meet between the partners in this prospective couple.

   Museum curator Robert Pattinson falls quickly for literary editor Emma (Zendaya). They seem headed for the proverbial happily-ever-after, but Borgli's jittery direction suggests otherwise. 

  The story kicks into gear when Emma and Charlie meet with a couple who have become friends (Alana Haim and Momoudou Athie). After some drinking, Haim's character suggests they play a game in which each of them reveals the worst thing they've ever done. Emma's revelation shocks everyone and turns Haim's character judgmental. None of them are able to look at Emma in quite the same way again.

  At its best, The Drama toys with the way information can change and distort perception, creating a near-paranoid vision for Pattinson's Charlie, who turns out to be the least stable character in the movie. 

  Flashbacks to Emma's high school years feature Jordyn Curet as a teenager who was bullied, pointing to possible reasons for Emma's extreme youthful behavior, but these scenes aren't developed well enough to dig deeply. 

   Zendaya is caught between Borgli's comic aspirations and the story 's seriousness, and Pattinson delivers a stammering, halting performance that looks as disheveled as his haircut. Charlie's an annoying wreck, and we begin to wonder why Emma, the supposed shaky one, doesn't just dump him.

   Not surprisingly, the whole business moves toward a big wedding scene that features a major helping of excruciatingly presented comic conflict. By then, I'd given up on Borgli's ability to handle the movie's abundant tonal shifts. Throughout, Borgli leaps around in time, cutting into scenes to offer bits of flashback and fantasy and striking discordant notes with a musical score that, at times, suggests horror. 

     The Drama doesn't lack ambition. It uses an extreme example to pose interesting questions about relationships, but winds up being a dispiriting collection of hits, misses, and questionable choices.

An agreeable comic drama

  Movies about psychologically damaged people can easily lead to dramatic overkill. Fantasy Life, which stars Amanda Peet as a 50ish actress whose career has evaporated, takes a different approach. Written and directed by Matthew Shear, who also plays a lead role, the movie takes place against a backdrop of ongoing crises that have become the soundtrack for the characters’ lives.

  Shear plays Sam, a schlub who, after losing his job as a paralegal, consults with his therapist (Judd Hirsch). Hirsch’s Fred prescribes drugs for OCD and also suggests that the unemployed Sam might babysit for his son’s three preteen daughters. 

   Shy and subject to panic attacks, Sam seems entirely unsuited for the job, which — of course — he takes.

  David (Alessandro Nivola), the girls’ father, works as a musician who’ll soon depart on an Australian tour as a fill-in bassist with a popular rock band. 

  The real story begins when Mom (Peet) arrives in Manhattan after having taken a mental health break on Martha’s Vineyard. Mired in depression about her vanishing career, Dianne decides that Sam should accompany her to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer. He’ll look after the kids, and she’ll continue with her inertia.

   Sam agrees. It doesn’t take long to see that he’s attracted to Dianne. Why not? Dianne’s attractive, both she and Sam are emotionally wounded, and Dianne’s marriage has hit a rough patch. It’s also clear that Dianne likes Sam, who makes no demands and praises her skills as an actress.  Less a matter of sexual attraction, the two create a comfort zone that both of them desperately need.

   Shear gently develops a relationship that raises eyebrows with Dianne’s parents (Bob Balaban and Jessica Harper). Hirsch is joined by Andrea Martin, who plays his wife and secretary.

  Aside from Sam, the characters seem affluent enough not to have to worry about money, and Shear’s eye-averting characterization turns him into a kind of walking human apology. 

  The story builds toward a climactic dinner scene. Dianne’s resentments erupt in comic fashion — or at least that seems to be the intent.

  Shear operates on a human scale, but Fantasy Life can seem a bit edgeless, and Sam’s mental issues --he's Jewish but antisemitic phrases pop intrusively into his head -- feel under-explored. Sam's inability to cope is made clear enough without what seems an  extraneous embellishment.

  Mostly, though, Fantasy Life passes easily without being uproariously funny or straining for satire. Call it agreeably light.

Does AI spell promise or peril?

 Directors Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell's documentary, The AI Doc: or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, benefits from a personal twist. Already in progress, the movie’s urgency amps up when Roher, who does the movie's interviewing, learns that he and his wife are about to become parents. 

  Given the many dire forecasts about AI Roher has already heard, he's understandably apprehensive about the life that awaits the child he'll be raising.

  At first, Roher's questions seem motivated by a fear that AI, in relatively short order, will make humans superfluous, creating a society dominated by polarities: wealthy elites and impoverished masses. More extreme naysayers wonder whether AI will come to regard humanity as superfluous to its needs. In which case, goodbye to us.

  Roher poses his questions to a variety of computer scientists and corporate leaders who work in the field as he weaves a tightly edited film that includes news footage and amusing sketches drawn by Roher. The movie’s interviews have been mixed in ways that illuminate the documentary’s three parts: Doom, optimism, and reflection.

    Those interviewed include Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, Daniela Amodei, president of Anthropic, Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, and Deborah Raji, a computer scientist.

   Snippets of interviews fly by so quickly, I sometimes wondered whether it might have been worthwhile for Roher and Tyrell to slow down, but if they wanted viewers to begin thinking seriously about artificial intelligence, their documentary makes for an engaging beginning.

    Roher, who directed Navalny, a documentary about the Russian dissident, and Tyrell raise big questions about the race for all-powerful general artificial intelligence, the system that will surpass human intelligence. They frame the discussion in terms of a broad question: Will AI that's smarter than humans offer promise or peril?

   As the title suggests, Roher winds up somewhere near a cautious middle.

   Great at generating concern, AI: The Doc functions more as a one -hour and 44-minute skim of the topic rather than the deepest of dives. Never dull, the film outlines the pluses and minuses of a technology that, like it or not, seems to be developing faster than any of us can digest.

    

  

        

Sofia Coppola's 'Marc by Sofia'

                  

 Among the many things I generally ignore, high fashion ranks near the top of the list. Occasionally, I peruse the photos in one of the New York Times' glossy Sunday supplements, an activity that seldom fails to amuse. How could it not, with designs so exaggerated they might be taken as examples of human absurdity?

  Keep my attitude in mind as you read this review of Sofia Coppola's documentary, Marc by Sofia, a look at the way fashion icon Marc Jacobs goes about the business of designing clothes and creating a show. 

    Set in the months before Jacobs's 2024 spring show, the movie mixes show preparations with clips from the movies that inspired Jacobs (Sweet Charity, All That Jazz, and Hello Dolly). He's also partial to the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and an admirer of Elizabeth Taylor's jewelry. Diana Ross's sequins? The best.

    A long-time friend of Jacobs, Coppola takes a casual stroll through Jacobs' world, stitching together a tale that puts the designer's sensibilities on display while offering sketchy biographical material: At the age of 15, Jacobs left home to live with his grandmother, a meticulously organized shopper. His widowed mother had remarried, and Jacobs didn't like the stepdad. 

    Perhaps biographical detail doesn't matter. Jacobs seems to live in a world ruled less by the accumulated sediments of his past than the cultural ether he inhales, absorbs, and, then, transforms. 

   Some have seen Coppola's film as a look at Jacobs's creative process, which includes attention to every detail of his looming show: from set design to the quality of the false eyelashes for models to the music he’ll play. I approached the movie as I would a visit to another planet, a journey into exotic and unfamiliar terrain.

    In the 2024 show, women wearing wigs bigger than beach balls, display their chalky, mannequin-like expressions and wear outsized clothing that falls slightly short of qualifying as housing. 

   The clothing seems part of a satirical joke. 

   Is it?

   Beats me.

    It probably helps to be familiar with the arc of Jacobs' career, which Coppola presents mostly with references -- from his stint at Perry Ellis to his mold-breaking work at Louis Vuitton, where he added humor and flash that stretched the Vuitton brand. 

   And, of course, there's Jacobs' fabled Grunge period, that moment in the 1990s when sighs over elegance were replaced by the enraged banshee screams of rockers and those who followed them. We even see a clip from Jacobs' days as a student at the Parsons School of Design.

   But Jacobs works in the real world, too -- sort of. He once designed clothes for Winona Ryder's shoplifting trial. 

    The movie can be amusing, although it seems directed at those who already know that Jacobs is a major designer whose work has proven influential. 

   Coppola doesn't tell us, by the way, where Jacobs, now 62, stands in relation to other contemporary designers. And she doesn't include much by way of outside observation about his work. A little more context would have been welcome.

    I've admired Coppola's work in movies such as The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), Marie Antoinette (2006), and The Bling Ring (2013). Nothing about Marc by Sofia made me think less of Coppola as a filmmaker, although it does seem like a bit of a digression.