An arty, but remote 'Mother Mary'

    All I can say after watching Mother Mary, a muddled quasi-horror film, is that actress Michaela Coel has one of the most expressive voices in contemporary cinema. In Mother Mary, Coel delivers her dialogue with a whispery authority that masks some down-to-earth bite. If the voice is an instrument, Coel sure knows how to play it.

    So much for the enjoyment I got from Mother Mary, a movie about a American pop star (Anne Hathaway) who travels to Great Britain to have a dress designed by a woman (Coel) who the movie establishes as an important voice in the world of exotic fashion. 

    In desperation, Hathaway’s Mary barges into the life of Coel's Sam Anselm. The two may once have had an affair, or maybe they were close friends, or maybe they shared the kind of relationship a gifted designer might have with her most important client — until, that is, the designer is summarily dropped. 

     Director David Lowery has written a movie that mostly takes place in Sam's barn-like studio, where Mary and Sam engage in verbal sparring before the movie gets around to blurring genre lines and dabbling in symbolism. Lowery even includes a seance and what appears to be an exorcism in which a floating amorphous stream of red is extracted from Mary's body. 

    Of course, the gossamer stream represents more than a color; perhaps it's a stand-in for the conflicted essence of Hathaway’s character and a nod (complete with some cutting of flesh) to the movie's vaguely defined horror aspirations.

     All of this has something to do with Mary's request for a dress in which she feels like herself. She's evidently trying to burst from the cocoon of rock star life; she wants to fully release herself.

     Somewhere after the halfway mark, I gave up trying to determine what Lowery was after. Hathaway wears some showy costumes when the movie flashes back to Mary's concerts, scenes in which Hathaway  sings songs written by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff, and FKA Twigs.

     I'm sure there will be critics and audience members who find deep meanings in all of this. But Mother Mary struck me as duller than deep, a self-conscious display of arty choices that often made the movie feel too remote to connect. 

    

      

 

Music, dance dominate 'Michael'

     It's probably a mistake to look at Michael as a biopic that explores every facet of Michael Jackson’s life with nuance and studied objectivity. Approved by the Jackson estate and made with its participation, the movie makes no mention of the widely known child sex abuse claims against Jackson. The deconstruction of Jackson’s image began in 1993. Michael concludes in 1988, offering a terse title card at the end, “The story continues.” 

  I’ll say.

  Whatever you think about Michael Jackson, director Antoine Fuqua concentrates on something incontestable: Michael Jackson’s riveting performance skills and the connection he made and still makes with his legion of fans.

   If you think that’s insufficient, stay home. Otherwise, you’ll find a movie that can be regarded as an entertaining slice of showmanship with selective biographical footnotes. 

   Fuqua begins with 10-year-old Michael (Julian Valdi). who’s under the dictatorial sway of his father Joe Jackson, a menacing Colman Domingo. 

   From the start, it’s clear that Michael occupies his own world, separate even from the brothers who make up the increasingly popular Jackson Five. 

    Michael's relationships with his brothers get short shrift. Instead, Fuqua concentrates on Joe’s command of his sons. When Michael errs during rehearsal, Joe beats him with a belt. Mom (Nia Long) remains sympathetic to Michael, but Joe runs the show.

     A father/son conflict sets the stage for the movie’s theme: Michael struggles to gain independence, to become the master of his destiny, without rejecting his family. Michael lives at the family home throughout most of the movie,  albeit a much improved version when the newly prosperous Jacksons relocate from Gary, Indiana, to Encino, Ca.  The entire movie takes place in pre-Neverland days.

     In many ways, Michael remains a child throughout. He reads illustrated versions of Peter Pan, amasses an army of stuffed animals, and then begins collecting real ones, notably Bubbles, a chimp that becomes his friend. (It's evidently a CGI creation.) The movie seems to accept all this at face value, leaving us to decide whether there's something slightly pathetic about Michael's juvenile preoccupations.

    The movie also deals with the business side of Michael’s life: his alliances with Motown and Berry Gordy (Larenz Tate); his work with Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson), and his move toward solo performing, which culminates with the firing of his father as his manager. Michael instructs his attorney, John Branca (Miles Teller), to deliver the news. He does so by fax.

      Another glimpse of Michael’s manipulative power comes into view when he meets with the head of CBS (Mike Meyers) and threatens to persuade the label’s major white artists— Bruce Springsteen among them — to quit the label unless Michael’s creative and dazzlingly produced videos are shown on MTV, which at the time didn’t play much work by Black artists.

    Without the right Michael, the movie would have been laughable. It doesn’t take long for the movie to be placed squarely on the shoulders of Jafaar Jackson, Michael’s real-life nephew and the son of Jackson Five member, Jermaine. 

    Jafaar looks like Michael, moves like Michael, and sings with a voice that — to my untrained ears — sounds like Michael. It’s either an amazing act of mimicry or an amazing performance. Either way, Jackson's presence in the movie feels real.

     Jafaar also gives Michael an aura of innocence; he visits sick kids in cancer wards and donates big money to the burn center where he's hospitalized after a serious accident during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. Michael's relationship with his mother remains tender throughout, and he plays peacemaker when he meets with Crips and Bloods to lower antagonisms. He also uses the gang members as inspiration for the choreography in his “Beat It” video.

    Michael's battle with Joe continues to the end. The elder Jackson tries to cling to Michael’s earning power as long as possible, even concocting a deal with Don King (Deon Cole) to promote the famous “Victory Tour.” 

    At its best, the movie functions as the best imitation act you’ve ever seen. Jafaar does his own singing and the score has been cranked to maximum effect. The infectious rhythms of a showcase number such as Billie Jean prove irresistible.

    Sure, reality, or what we know of it, casts a shadow of skepticism here, and it occurred to me that the family might still be riding Michael’s coattails, but if you see Michael as a show that captures the magnetism and performance energy that underscored Michael’s ascendance, you may have to agree that the King of Pop earned his crown.

His struggles with Tourette's

   Coprolalia is the term applied to people with Tourette's Syndrome who are subject to involuntary bursts of profanity. These often untimely explosions affect somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of those afflicted with Tourette's.

     The movie I Swear uses coprolalia to serious and comic effect in telling the real-life story of John Davidson (Robert Aramayo), a young Scottish man who suffers from the rejections of those who don't realize that his disruptions are involuntary. Davidson eventually becomes an educator about the syndrome, as well as a helpmate to those who, like him, suffer from it.

     Director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) begins his film in 2019 with a scene in which Davidson is about to receive an award from Queen Elizabeth. Nervous about appearing at a public ceremony, Davidson is struck by an outburst in which he shouts, "Fuck the Queen."

      This prologue encapsulates the difficulties faced by those dealing with Tourette's. Elizabeth carries on, obviously prepared for a man who's being honored for his service to the Tourette's community. 

      The movie then flashes back to 1983 when, at the age of 14, Davidson (played as a boy by Scott Ellis Watson) began to develop Tourette's, perhaps the most effective part of the movie because a relatively unknown affliction is misunderstood by the educators who encounter it and by Davidson's parents.

    Davidson's mom (Shirley Henderson) treats the malady as if it were a breach of propriety. His father (Steven Cree) leaves the family, and Davidson begins to suffer from isolation and rejection.

      Later, as a young man, Davidson meets Dotty (Maxine Peake), a nurse who invites him into her home, encourages him to get off the drugs he's being fed, and tries to normalize Davidson's life. She becomes a surrogate mom, aided by a caretaker at a local community center (Peter Mullan), where Davidson finds employment.

      A barroom brawl lands Davidson in court, an example of what can happen when others misread his behavior, which sometimes includes abrupt lunging movements. Later, he'll take part in a University of Nottingham study that uses a device to control tics and disruptive speech. Davidson gets a taste of normality.

     Eventually, Jones turns the movie into didactic lesson on Tourette's that's clearly designed to expand audience awareness, somewhat in the fashion of a public service announcement. By then we've already gotten the point, the problem with Tourette's isn't Davidson; it's an ignorant public.

    Marked by explosive tics and inappropriate outbursts of profanity as it is, Aramayo's performance brings Davidson's Tourette's to life while making sure that we can relate to the human  behind it. *

*Ironically, the real John Davidson found himself in the news recently when he disrupted Britain's BAFTA awards, shouting a racial epithet when actors Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were on stage for Sinners. The BBC apologized for not editing Davidson's outburst from the broadcast, which was shown on tape delay. The point of I Swear is to remind viewers that people with Tourette's can't control these episodes. At the awards, Robert Aramayo won best actor for his performance. 

        

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.