A family story seen obliguely

  Blue Heron, an absorbing debut film from Canadian director Sophy Romvari, begins as if it's going to be an idyl about the joys of childhood. Romvari introduces us to the kids of a Hungarian immigrant family that's settling into a new home on Vancouver Island in the 1990s.

  A truck is unloaded, and the kids are encouraged to get out of the way. Romvari and cinematographer Maya Bankovic keep the camera close to their characters. You almost feel the children brushing past.

    Romvari bases the film on her experiences, and she shifts times and viewpoints to intriguing effect. Romvari juxtaposes a poetic cinematic vocabulary with more straightforward scenes. But even those can be tricky. At one point, Romvari's central character appears as an adult social worker who visits her parents to discuss what happened to her older brother.

      But I get ahead of myself. To clarify, Sasha — the story’s main character — is eight at the film's outset. Eylul Guven gives an amazingly unaffected performance as an eight-year-old who plays with her siblings and seems to be living a normal childhood. 

      Gradually, we learn that Sasha's older stepbrother, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), has behavioral issues. At times, he seems fully present, but he's often remote. At one point, he falls asleep on the front porch steps and can't be roused. 

    Amid the disorientation, Romvari evokes richly evocative childhood moments: Sasha watching her mom peel potatoes, for example, an ordinary moment but one that lingers. Sasha is forming a memory.

        The role of each of Sasha's parents becomes clear. Dad (Ádám Tompa) works at his computer and sometimes takes photos of the kids. He's as much an observer as a parent. Mom (Iringó Réti) participates more actively in family life, although she can be frustrated by the demands of a difficult son and three other children.

       Romvari seldom offers context, slowly revealing as much as we need to know. Jeremy's  worst behaviors are kept off screen, but his impact registers in the faces of his parents and in Sasha's struggle to come to grips with what's happening.

       Before we have a complete handle on any of this, Ramvari pushes her film 20 years forward. Now grown, Sasha appears as a filmmaker played by Amy Zimmer. She's working on a documentary about her brother, who — we learn — committed suicide. Sasha films a scene in which a group of social workers reflects on whether anything might have prevented Jeremy's suicide. 

      At times,  Romvari’s shifting perspectives push us out of the film, forcing us to reorient ourselves. Some may find this distracting, but Romvari’s approach serves an important thematic purpose. You can turn Jeremy's story this way and that. You can talk to those involved. You can lament the lack of services that might have helped. In the end, though, there is no single revelation that puts Jeremy’s suicide into perspective. 

       But even if something traumatic can never be fully understood, it still must be remembered, mulled, and played again in the mind's eye. Romvari may not be able to explain Jeremy's suicide, but she makes the experience of growing up and carrying it into adulthood deeply affecting.

      Perhaps when it comes to visiting the past in search of answers, we all become immigrants in foreign terrain.

A road movie ends with heartbreak

   In the movie, Omaha, a recently widowed father (John Magaro) takes his nine-year-old daughter Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and his six-year-old son Charlie (Wyatt Solis) on a road trip. The family travels in a car that's so beat-up Ella must help Dad push the vehicle in hopes of getting a jump start. 

   From the outset of this ultimately troubling film, it's clear that this is no pleasure trip. 

   Setting a slight but emotionally rich story against lonely American landscapes, director Cole Webley focuses on two kids we can't help but worry about.

  Dad doesn't tell the kids where he's going or why he's rushed them out of the house. Ella is old enough to sense that all is not well, and it's clear that this road trip isn't an interlude; it's a departure. Dad even takes the family dog Rex along. He also instructs Ella to bring something she values. She should, he says, act as if the house they're leaving is on fire and a hasty escape has become necessary. 

  At times, cinematographer Paul Meyers turns the movie into an ode to childhood play. At one point, Ella and Charlie fly a kite, and Rex chases them across an open field. But we can't let go of the uneasy foreboding about what's in store for these kids.

  Both young actors give amazingly naturalistic performances. Magaro ably plays a troubled but reticent father. Perhaps a construction worker by trade, Dad  clearly loves these kids but can't express himself about the emotional and financial burdens he carries.

   Dad and his kids stop at stop at motels, take dips in pools, and visit fast-food outlets. Clearly under economic strain, Dad scrapes together just enough money to pay for food. 

  Working from a screenplay by Robert Machoian, Webley reaches a conclusion that throws the rest of the movie into sad perspective. We're tempted to try to extend the story in our heads. What will become of three characters whose lives will never be the same after their trip to Omaha? 

  As we suspected, the destination of this road trip is heartbreak.

'Prada 2': Less devlish but still amusing

 

  It has been 20 years since The Devil Wears Prada became a box-office hit. The Devil Wears Prada 2, a belated sequel, reunites the principal players -- Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci -- for a movie that loads up on glamor, fashion, and unbridled ambition in the world of magazine publishing.

   Director David Frankel returns with a story that contrives to bring Hathaway's Andy Sachs back into the world of Miranda Priestly (Streep), the tyrannical taste-making editor of the first installment.  Tucci's loyal Nigel still works as the design maven at Priestly's Runway magazine, which resembles Vogue in stature in the world of high fashion.

   Blunt's Emily has moved on to an influential position with Dior, which receives a major plug here. She's still embroiled in a rivalry with Andy, who's more or less the movie's main character. 

    Andy's trouble's begin when the newspaper for which she has been working is closed, a bit of news delivered by text while half the staff is attending an awards ceremony. Andy's investigative reporting wins first prize, a Pyrrhic victory that precedes her unemployment.

     No unemployment checks for Andy, though; she's quickly hired to help bring some "integrity" to Runway, where she once worked. In the midst of a PR crisis, Runway's owner hires Andy behind Miranda's back.

     The luxe atmospherics, definitely part of the movie's appeal, seem a little at odds with the many lofty defenses of journalism that are launched, mostly by Andy.

    A few other characters work mostly in service of the plot. Justin Theroux plays gazillionnaire Benji Barnes, who also happens to be Emily's new love interest; Lucy Liu, plays Benji's wealthy ex-wife, a woman who's not caught up in all the corporate craziness, and Kenneth Branagh portrays Miranda's new love interest, a role that pretty much wastes his talents. Same goes for Patrick Brammall, who's squeezed in as Andy's partner in a superfluous romance.

    Devil Wears Prada 2 also plays a game of cinematic name-dropping with cameo appearances by Donatella Versace, Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum, Tina Brown, Molly Jong-Fast, Kara Swisher, Jon Batiste, Marc Jacobs, Karl-Anthony Towns, and more. The movie even manages to add a number by  Lady Gaga to its bold-faced parade of glitter.

     Despite the celebrity glut, the real attraction centers on the interactions between the principal actors who are part of a scheme in which Andy tries to save the magazine and Miranda's job as a corporate takeover and major cutbacks loom.

     Miranda may be as haughty as ever, but Streep makes her a bit more subdued in this outing. If the rest of the cast breaks no new ground, the actors ably meet the script's requirements, and the movie passes easily.

     Put another way, Prada 2 delivers a fair measure of upscale amusement in an expectedly glossy package. 

     

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.