Looking for light in Mumbai

 

   Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a nurse, lives in the bustling city of Mumbai. She's married, but her husband, who traveled to Germany seeking work, gradually vanished from her life. The phone calls have stopped coming. 

   Prabha shares her apartment with Anu (Divya Prabha), a young woman who works at the same hospital as Prabha. Devoted to her work, Prabha is an empathetic nurse, but work and routine take their toll on her spirit. 

    Lively and impetuous, Anu seems open to having a good time. She's secretly dating Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), a relationship that challenges long-standing antagonism between Mumbai's Muslim and Hindi-speaking populations.

   In All We Imagine as Light,  director Payal Kapadia makes Mumbai a part of the story; her camera explores the city’s streets, buses, and cramped apartments. Kapadia understands how feelings of disconnection arise in a city where almost 22 million people reside, many uprooted from smaller communities where they seldom encountered strangers.

     An independent woman, Prabha still trusts in her marriage. We suspect she may be deluding herself. At one point, her husband sends her a pressure cooker, not the most romantic of gestures. He doesn't include an explanatory note or greeting. He's become anonymous.

      Still, when a well-intentioned doctor (Azees Nedumangad) tries for a deeper connection with Prabha, she balks. She's stuck, bound by tradition and her own reserve.

    After watching All We Imagine as Light, you can  look back and realize how much you've learned while watching two women navigating life in an environment that breeds loneliness.

   Prabha and Anu, who have their disagreements, eventually travel to a seaside village to escort a genial co-worker (Chhaya Kadam) back to her hometown.  Developers are on the verge of evicting Kadam's Parvaty from her apartment. She's had enough of Mumbai.

    An important scene in the village -- perhaps the movie's most important -- needn't be taken literally. I can’t say more without spoilers, but I suggest allowing the scene to throw you off track. Go with it as Kapadia begins to resolve the stasis of Prabha's life and the ambiguities of Anu's romance.

     All We Imagine as Light ends as gently as a sigh. Credit Kapadia for reminding us that it's possible for a film to say a great deal without raising its voice.

'Maria' needed some operatic heft

 

  When Maria Callas died in 1977 at the age of 53, the New York Times obituary called her "the most exciting opera singer of her time." 

 Director Pablo Larrain's Maria presents Callas at her height only in flashbacks when the singer recalls previous triumphs. Known for Jackie and Spencer, the Chilean-born Larrain tends to focus his biographical efforts on well-known women at low points in their lives. In this case, Callas faces an artist's worst nightmare: diminishing powers.

   Larrain's abbreviated biopic hits few high notes as it chronicles the final days of an artist who already has begun to fade; tormented by inexorable decline, both Callas and the movie lose spark.

   In Maria, Angelina Jolie plays Callas, who's living in Paris, where she occasionally meets with a pianist in hopes of regaining her voice. The pianist (Stephen Ashfield) refuses to coddle her. He knows she's done. She knows she's done, but our emotions aren't summoned by the magnitude of Callas's loss.

    By this time, Callas was popping pills and ignoring the physician who told her that if she kept pushing to regain her vocal prowess, she'd kill herself. She disregarded her doctor’s advice and suffered a fatal attack. Larrain opens his movie with Callas dead on the floor of her apartment, her body mostly hidden by a sofa. 

    There are two stars of Larrain's film: Jolie's Callas and Callas's lavish apartment, the Paris abode where she lives with her housemaid and cook (Alba Rohrwacher) and her loyal butler (Pierfranceso Favino). Favino's Ferruccio cares for Callas despite her sometimes excessive demands. He may evoke memories of Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard.

    Jolie brings regal aloofness to the role of a woman whose life began in poverty and ascended to the upper levels of celebrity, wealth, and artistic recognition. She was known for being “temperamental,” but some of the more publicized turmoil in her life (getting fired from the Met, for example) are omitted in this telling.

        Several of Larrain's flashbacks depict Callas's relationship with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), the shipping magnate who eventually dumped Callas for Jaqueline Kennedy.

       We see scenes of Callas's difficult girlhood. The mother she grew to hate made Callas and her sister (briefly played as an adult by Valeria Golina) provide diversion for German invaders during the Nazi occupation of Greece. Thankfully, the movie refrains from showing us how carnal these diversions may have gotten.

       Larrain makes structural mistakes, the worst of which involves having Callas interviewed by a TV journalist (Kodi Smith-McPhee) who's making a film about the great singer. Really? Haven't we seen enough of this worn out conceit?

       I’m not saying Maria isn’t watchable. Mixing black-and-white and color footage, cinematographer Ed Lachman creates a somber beauty of a movie, and the musical selections, some of which reportedly blend Jolie's voice with Callas's, create moments of majesty.

       Clips of Callas singing on YouTube make it clear that she performed with a heightened level of passion few could match. Larrain's film could have used some of the singer’s operatic sweep, a sense that it’s riding a tragic wave as it hurtles toward its inevitable crash. 

         And one more thing: Given its subject, the movie might better have been titled Callas. There are many Marias, but there was only one Callas. No offense to anyone who goes through life with that same surname.

    

How repression chokes a family

 

   Director Mohammad Rasoulof lives in exile from his native Iran. In 2022, Rasoulof was sentenced to eight years in prison, a fine, and flogging as a purported threat to Iran's national security. He did what any rational person would do; he fled.

    So when Rasoulof makes an intimate film about the impact of oppression, you can be sure he knows what he's talking about. In The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Rasoulof builds a story around a moment in which protesters flooded the streets of Teheran, decrying the fate of a 22-year-old  woman who died in custody after being arrested for improper wearing of her hijab.

    This uprising serves as a backdrop for a story about a family living under escalating levels of stress. Dad (Missagh Zareh) receives a promotion to a job of interrogator for the state, a particularly fraught position because so-called "investigative judges" can authorize the death penalty for dissidents. Zareh's Iman had been hoping for a different, more prestigious job.

     Iman has two daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki). The natural rambunctiousness of these young women prompts Mom (Soheila Golestani) to urge caution lest Dad be taken off the promotion track she hopes will bring a better apartment.

     Filmed in secret, The Seed of the Sacred Fig takes a multi-layered approach to its story after a protester (Niousha Akashi) befriends the girls. Mom sees the young activist as a threat to the family's security.

   Gradually, Rasoulof tightens the tension that grips the household where Golestani's character has insisted on turning a blind eye to her husband's work.

     Rasoulof creates a stir when Iman's boss gives him a pistol for protection. Interrogators aren't the most popular guys in their neighborhoods. When the weapon vanishes from the family's apartment, panic ensues. Dad's career may have been jeopardized, possibly by someone in the family.

     Will Iman be more influenced by his fear or by love for his wife and daughters? For a man who worries that missteps not only may cost him his job but land him in prison, it seems an impossible choice?

   As the story progresses, Mom becomes less compliant. Eventually, Iman brings his family to the mountain village where he grew up. There,  he hopes to settle matters, learning what happened to the fun and restoring the norm that allowed him to enjoy his patriarchal status while doing dirty work for the regime. 

   Until this point, his family has helped Iman create the denial on which his self-respect hinges.

   The power of brutal repression squeezes characters and viewers alike, and the final act of this 172 minute proves as nerve-wracking as any thriller. 

    If you entertain any doubts about what it might be like to live in a theocratic autocracy, Rasoulof's movie will dispel them. Oppression isn't something that can be walled off from one’s personal life. Like a deadly fog, it seeps under doorways, corrupting ties once thought inviolable. Both defiance and complicity exact their price.

    The Seed of the Sacred Fig proves an essential, chastening and meticulous depiction of how abusive power not only corrupts social institutions, it penetrates and sullies ordinary life.*

Note: Akashi, Rostami, Maleki, and Golestani reportedly now live in exile.  

Exuberance marks Beatles US tour

 

 Odd thing about youth. You don't really know what it means until you lose it. It's not that you want to go back in time, it's more that you can recall moments before you realized your personal future had an expiration date.

  I thought about that while watching Beatles '64, a documentary made from footage shot by two great documentarians, the late Albert and David Maysles for What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A., a documentary released about nine months after the Beatles tour.

  Produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi, who worked with Scorsese on George Harrison: Living in the Material World, '64 reworks some of the Maysles footage, bringing present-tense immediacy to a bygone moment, along with a bit of reflection and improved sound.

   The Beatles arrived in the US about two and a half moths after JFK's murder. I believe it was John Lennon who later said that the Beatles helped jolt the country out of its post-assassination gloom. Frank Sinatra and Elvis were followed by plenty of screaming teenage girls, but the Beatles reinvigorated fan frenzy.

  In the documentary, the Beatles bring their long hair and impudent charm to New York, Washington, and Miami. Their songs don't so much plumb depths as they burst with what felt like a new kind of energy. It was music with exclamation points. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 Beatles '64 also chronicles a time before the US was deeply involved in Vietnam, and, in retrospect, it seems like it might have been the last good time before young Americans began dying in a country few of them had ever heard of.

  The documentary includes plenty of shots of the Beatles doing what they seemed to do so well, goof around, often in a posh suite at the Plaza. Rockers' having fun? That's the way it was, maybe because fame had yet to exhaust John, Paul, Ringo, and George.

    Of course, we see the landmark appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and the Beatles' concert at Carnegie Hall, but the Beatles had yet to push the musical envelope as far as they would. It would take two years for the Beatles to release Revolver, the album that featured Eleanor Rigby, Yellow Submarine, and Good Day Sunshine. It would be three years until St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and six years before the Beatles broke up. 

    Yes, there are talking heads, David Lynch, Jamie Bernstein, the late conductor's daughter, and Smokey Robinson of the Miracles among them. Paul McCartney, another of the film's producers, adds perspective. So does Ringo. Both are in their 80s.

    The Beatles excitement about visiting the US, an enthusiasm amply reciprocated by their fans, buoys this infectiously lively doc. Ordinary women -- long past their teens -- still glow when recalling their Beatles' ardor. 

  That's a key: Beatles '64 fires a shot of youthful exuberance. No, it doesn't last, but it's still possible to remember how it felt.

   Beatles '64 will be available on Disney+ beginning on Nov. 29.

A strong cast lifts 'The Piano Lesson'

  Members of the Washington family -- as in Denzel, Malcolm, and John David -- are playing a major role in preserving the literary legacy of the late August Wilson, at least on screen. It has been eight years since Denzel Washington directed and starred in Fences, but the deep connection between Wilson's material and the Washingtons continues.

    For the latest entry, The Piano Lesson, Denzel Washington serves as one of the film's producers. His son -- director Malcom Washington -- offers a screen version of The Piano Lesson, one of 10 pieces in Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle. 

  Ma Rainy's Black Bottom (2020), another play in the cycle, was directed by George C. Wolfe with Denzel Washington as one of the film's producers.

   Marked by inspired acting and richly colored cinematography, The Piano Lesson features John David Washington, the oldest of Denzel's four children, as Boy Willie, a young man who arrives in Pittsburgh during the 1930s with hopes of selling an elaborately carved piano that has become a prized family possession. 

   When Boy Willie's sister Bernice (Danielle Deadwyler) refuses to sell, a drama about memory, family history, and heritage begins to take shape.

 A strong supporting cast adds to the movie's richness. Samuel L. Jackson portrays Doaker, a family uncle who presides over the house where Bernice and her 11-year-old daughter (Skylar Aleece Smith) also live. They've become the northern branch of the family.

 Corey Hawkins plays Avery, a Pittsburgh man who wants to marry Bernice and establish himself as a local preacher. Michael Potts appears as Doaker's older brother, a former piano player and heavy drinker who adds jolts of live wire energy whenever he's on screen. 

  Adapted from Wilson's play by Malcom Washington and Virgil Williams, the movie uses a ghostly reminder of the Old South to symbolize the lingering oppression that the family tried to escape by moving north. It struck me as a bit too literal.

  This part of the play, complete with an exorcism, rattles the screen but doesn't go down easily. Attempts to open the confinement of an essentially  one-room drama are semi-successful.

   But Wilson’s strength, his ability to find characters who encapsulate and enrich depictions of Black American life remains and his themes (family tensions, crushed dreams) have broad reach.

   Malcom Washington's debut directorial effort gives a strong ensemble cast an opportunity to bring memorable life to Wilson's richly drawn characters. They take full advantage of it. So should we.*

*The Piano Lesson currently is available for streaming on Netflix.

When London was under attack

 

   I’ve read that some critics have been disappointed by director Steve McQueen’s Blitz. It’s true: McQueen’s war-time opus has the familiar feel of a well-crafted movie that, at least on the surface, breaks little new ground as it tells a story set in London during the intense German bombings of World War II.  

    Stylistically, Blitz makes no major leaps, but that doesn't mean McQueen, who also wrote the screenplay, hasn't provided a rich, nuanced portrait of London under stress. McQueen's screenplay makes room for admirable and despicable behavior, calling attention to incidences of racism that inflected London, even in a situation that demanded unity.

   McQueen’s screenplay revolves around the bond between a mother (a strong Saoirse Ronan) and her nine-year-old biracial son George (Elliott Heffernan). Marcus, George’s father (CJ Beckford) was deported to Grenada from Britain, leaving Ronan’s Rita and her father (Paul Weller) to raise the boy. Marcus was arrested while defending himself from an unprovoked attack by whites.

   Rita and her dad are “good” Brits, but George can be treated cruelly by kids who won't accept him. Still, McQueen never turns the plucky Hefferman into a victim. The kid has heart.

    The plot begins in earnest when Rita convinced that London is too dangerous for a nine-year-old, sends George to the country where English children were considered to be safe from German bombs. It's painful for her and even more painful for George, who experiences his mother's decision as rejection.

   McQueen has difficulty accommodating the various plot threads. In pre-war flashbacks, we learn how Rita and Marcus met, and the narrative eventually fractures, focusing on Rita’s life in London (working with other women at a bomb factory) and George’s adventures. He jumps off the train en route to the country, works his way toward London, and eventually finds himself being exploited by a thief who evokes memories of Dickens' Fagin (Stephen Graham). 

    This episode may not quite fit with the rest of the movie, but Blitz is no Oliver Twist redux. Throughout, the horror of the Blitz never fades: Firefighters battle chaos and flames, and frightened residents seek refuge in London’s subways. McQueen shows a horrific sequence of flooding in a subway station where residents are sheltering. 

    Poor George; he reaches London but doesn't know how to find his neighborhood. At one point, a noble Nigerian civil defense worker (Benjamin Clementine) takes George under wing, but mostly the kid fends for himself.

   McQueen (12 Years a Slave) takes a moment that has been glorified as a symbol of solidarity, determination, and courage and expands its meaning. Blitz doesn’t trash an important part of the British story, but it widens the lens through which we see it.

  That's a worthy accomplishment.

A popular musical reaches the screen

 

     Staged and restaged, Wicked has sustained an extraordinary level of popularity since the show debuted on Broadway in 2003. Wicked features songs with lyrics fans probably can recite from heart and its dancing goes heavy on stomping. Still playing on Broadway, Wicked has chalked up about $3.2 billion in ticket sales.

   Small wonder then that Wicked finally has made it to the screen with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in starring roles and a ton of emphatically expressed production value that sometimes seems to stand on equal footing with the main event, a story about two of Oz's fabled witches.

   Director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) adds little by way of  nuance or depth to obviously stated themes about  racial prejudice, bullying, and sneaky authoritarian rule.

   Instead, Chu leans into colorful images, dazzling special effects, and the undeniable commitment of both stars. Much of the time, the combination works to create an unabashedly showy entertainment that may not rank among the great movie musicals, but has enough frivolous  kick to click. 

   Think of Wicked as a vibrantly ornate helping of fan service that may also will appeal to those who’ve never seen the stage production — and who welcome the movie's glossy references to trendy notions, adapted from the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

   The story revolves around the polarity separating two witches, Glinda (Grande) and Elphaba (Erivo). Glinda, of course, is the good witch, who in this telling is more popular than virtuous. Born with green skin, Elphaba is the scorned victim of bigotry who'll become the Wicked Witch. 

   The story's best twist: Elphaba's the character we root for.

   Wicked stands as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, complete with origin stories about the Cowardly Lion and the creepy flying monkeys that have frightened several generations of children. But mostly the movie is a pop cultural lollipop, much of it set at Shiz University, a Hogwarts-like institution where students learn the art of sorcery. 

    Glinda arrives at the school ready to become the Big Girl on Campus — conceited, bratty, blonde, insensitive, and addicted to the color pink.  Accustomed to rejection, Elphaba never applied to the school, but her supernatural talents are recognized by Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), the school’s Head Mistress. 

   Peter Dinklage gives voice to Doctor Dillamond, the goat who serves as Shiz’s last remaining animal professor. A history teacher, Dillamond creates sympathy for animals, who are being stripped of the power of speech for reasons revealed in the movie's second half.

    Jonathan Bailey provides hunk appeal as Fiyero, a prince who attracts the attention of both Elphaba and Glinda and who might not be quite the empty vessel he initially seems.

   Ethan Slater portrays Bog Woodman, the resident Munchkin who crushes on Glinda but reluctantly agrees to date Elphaba's sister (Marissa Bode), a Shiz student born with a disease that keeps her in a wheelchair. 

   Grande finds comic and bitchy notes in Glinda’s flighty personality, and Erivo makes a moving Elphaba, an intelligent young woman fighting a battle with anger and resentment on one side and natural empathy on the other. The song, I'm Not That Girl, highlights her personality in an assertive but mildly mournful way.

   Eventually, the plot contrives to send Elphaba and Glinda to the Emerald City for an audience with the Wizard (an amusing Jeff Goldblum.)

   Chu and his team go all in during the Emerald City finale, concluding the movie on a soaring (literally) note, the culmination of what already has been a mega-display of production design.

   I’m not pressing Wicked into my book of cherished movie memories, but I had the feeling that this big-screen musical wasn't intended for me. Put another way: Not exactly my cup of tea, but Wicked had its pleasures -- most stemming from Grande and especially Erivo, who gives the movie a welcome helping of humanity.

    A note: Even though the movie runs for a sometimes taxing two hours and 41 minutes, the story is slated to conclude with a second helping next November.  Maybe I'm jaded, but I can't help wondering why an already lengthy running time wasn't sufficient. Guess we'll find out.

  

 

‘Gladiator II’: More but not better

 

    I’d been looking forward to Gladiator II, hoping director Ridley Scott would deliver an epic-scaled movie that provided a healthy dose of sword-and- sandal escapism while paying homage to an idealized version of bygone Roman virtues: honor and strength. 

  What I experienced was a mixture of involvement and disappointment, a movie that prioritizes spectacle as it labors to refresh the structure of the original movie, which made its debut 20 years ago.

   Gone, aside from a few references in flashback, is Russell Crowe as Maximus, an obvious necessity prompted by the fact that Maximus died in the first installment. He's replaced by Paul Mescal as Lucius, who we first meet on the eve of the Roman siege of Numidia, a North African Berber kingdom.

    David Scarpa’s screenplay introduces Lucius as an adult who was taken in by North African "barbarians” (as the Romans refer to its non-Roman subjects) as a child. The Numidians are ripe for conquest by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a loyal Roman who’s devoted to imperial expansion and to the republican ways of the past.

    Early on, we get the whole Scott enchilada: big ships, catapulted fire balls, gory hand-to-hand combat, scaled walls, and flaming arrows. 

    It should surprise no one that the empire is evil. The cunning wickedness of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus -- so important in the first movie -- has been replaced by Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, a conniving entrepreneur who owns and wagers on gladiators and angles to surpass those who belong to the senatorial elite.

    Returnees include Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, Maximum’s one-time lover.

   As if to differentiate this belated and somewhat boated sequel, two actors (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) play callow brothers who rule the empire, providing dual helpings of cruelty. 

   Plenty of action, much of it set in the Roman Coliseum, follows as the movie ratifies its status as a collection of CGI thrills. Digitally created super-monsters battle gladiators. These include vicious creatures that look like a combination of rabid dogs and monkeys and a rhinoceros the size of a small building.

    At one point, the arena is flooded for a simulated naval battle conducted while man-eating sharks ply the shallow waters. 

   Though obvious, the word "overkill" leaps to mind.

   I won’t bother you with details about a plot that includes reasonably predictable elements that echo developments in first movie. In case it isn't already clear, I'll summarize: After Lucius' wife is killed in the battle for Numida, he's captured and taken to Rome, where Macrinus purchases him and makes him a gladiator.

    The principal performances are all up to snuff. Mescal rages and looks muscular, a man contemptuous of his origins but not entirely freed of them, even as he seeks his vengeance for his wife’s death at Roman hands. 

   Playing a man of conscience, Mescal’s presence is missed when he's not on screen. The movie needed  more of his weight.

   In what becomes the movie's stand-out performance, Washington brings Shakespearean stature to a man of wit and cunning.

   Nielsen acquits herself well as Marcus’ wife, a lady with a "secret" that’s eventually revealed but which is obvious from the start.

   Although many of the movie's characters are based on real historical figures, the minority of viewers who are versed in Roman history in the 200s, may blanch at inaccuracies. 

   Those aside, Gladiator II finds Scott putting himself through the required paces. His battle scenes serve as crowdpleasers, much in the way battling gladiators served the Roman yearning for bloody escapism.

  I found the movie — which unfolds over two and a half hours -- a somewhat mechanical attempt to highlight a checklist of themes: Roman intrigue, Roman debauchery, the Roman taste for spectacle, Roman stoicism in the face of doom, and a buffed version of Roman virtue.

   Put it all together and you have a movie that finds  captivating moments amid a scattered, unexceptional plot. Gladiator II can't replicate the sorrows of the first movie or reach its noble heights.

   As a long-time spectator in the entertainment area, I'll turn my thumb sideways and move on.

 

A look at the life of Humphrey Bogart

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cousins on a heritage trip to Poland

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But that would be another movie.

     

     

Christmas Eve with a large family

 

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

Hugh Grant takes a turn at horror

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A coal man's troubled conscience

   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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