David Mamet takes drama to prison

 

 David Mamet's Henry Johnson -- his first film in 18 years -- revolves around men who might be classified as either predators or prey. 

  First presented as a play in 2023, Henry Johnson relies on Mamet's ability to turn the tables on us and his characters, providing plot-twisting reveals that steadily raise the dramatic stakes. True to form, the movie delivers its bitter pill of a conclusion straight and without soothing chaser. 

    Four major scenes are given continuity by the work of Evan Jonigkeit, who portrays the title character. 

   In the early going, Henry asks his boss (Chris Bauer) to hire a newly released convict with whom Henry became acquainted during his college days. Our sympathies go to Henry, who seems intent on doing the right thing by someone who has, in his words, "paid his debt to society." 

  The unseen criminal, we learn, served time for manslaughter, having induced a miscarriage against the will of a woman he had gotten pregnant. Boss and employ bat around questions about guilt and punishment.

  If you know Mamet, you know that our initial impressions probably will be undermined. No need to say more except to note that Henry himself has laid the ground work that will turn him into a prisoner. On day one, he encounters Gene (Shia LaBeouf), a convict who spins shrewdly compelling monologues about matters of immediate and philosophical consequence. 

  LaBeouf deftly masters the flow of Mamet's dialogue, flourishing in the director's world. Jonigkeit ably creates questions about Henry's ability to survive in prison, but he's playing the movie's least interesting character, a bit of pawn in other men's power games.

   The drama concludes in the prison library, where Gene has helped Henry land a job. At this point, Gene tries to school Henry about what he sees as the manipulative intentions of the female prison psychologist. He challenge Henry to take action.

   Here, the story stretches plausibility, contriving to arm Henry and bring him into another conversation, this one with Jerry (Dominic Hoffman), a prison guard he holds captive. Near the end of his tenure, Jerry has seen everything the job has to offer. Hoffman's performance matches the others in its excellence.

   Every Mamet enthusiast knows that the once-heralded playwright, director, and screenwriter has shifted political gears. Once reliably liberal, Mamet now adamantly advances his brand of conservatism. I, too, have had difficult coming to terms with the "new" Mamet, but I still found myself caught in Henry Johnson's grip.

   My favorite Mamet movie remains Glengarry Glen Ross. Perhaps because its focus is narrower, Henry Johnson lacks Glengarry’s pathos, humor, and satirical sting. But Mamet's mastery over structure  can't be denied, and he knows how to push us to places we may not want to go.

    Maybe that's the point -- to rub our noses in the harshness the movie reveals. Whether this predatory world corresponds with the reality the rest of us perceive is open to question, but damn if Mamet doesn't compel us to at least consider the possibility.

The action in this 'Mission' delivers

 

  I enjoyed Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning (2023) but grumbled about the movie's two-hour and 41-minute length. And that was only Part I. 

 The second chapter, Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning, takes two hours and 51 minutes to conclude an epic battle between the IM force and The Entity, a hunk of super-AI intelligence that lingers from Part I and threatens to wipe out all of humanity. 

   Length and story aside, it’s unlikely that the audiences that flock to Final Reckoning will be discussing the dangers artificial intelligence poses to human life as they leave the theater.

   What will they be talking about? If you said “stunts,” you’re right on target.

    More on that in a moment.

   Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie begin Final Reckoning in a wobbly fashion, using flashbacks from previous movies as refreshers but also generating a bit of confusion.

   Once the movie settles in, the story becomes a springboard for a couple of major set pieces — one involving a sunken Russian submarine, the other centering on an airborne battle between Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and Gabriel (Esai Morales), the movie’s primary villain. 

   Gabriel wants to rule humanity by controlling The Entity; Hunt wants to save humanity by destroying The Entity. The aerial action takes off with each character flying a biplane in a fight that's augmented by an antagonistic history between Gabriel and Hunt to which the screenplay alludes.

   Both nerve-wracking sequences are executed with  exceptional skill and without benefit of CGI. As Hunt plies the freezing depths of the Bering Sea to find a device needed to fulfill his mission, the sub threatens to roll off a steep ocean precipice into even deeper waters. Unmoored torpedos slam against the sub’s interior and threaten to clobber Hunt as he conducts his search.

   The aerial antics find Hunt hanging from the struts of his plane and executing high-flying moves that make you wonder how they were done.

    Forget dialogue, Dead Reckoning is at its best when it allows action to speak louder than words. And keep this in mind: Each of these set pieces functions as a mini-movie: goals are set, obstacles arise, and a resolutions are reached.

    Much of the IM cast returns with notable contributions from Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, technician supreme. Hayley Atwell portrays Grace, a thief who has become part of Ethan’s crew and who flirts with the role of love interest. Ving Rhames returns as Luther Stickell, a character who serves as the voice of the franchise, offering an ode to Hunt and those heroes who, as he puts it, “live in the shadows.”

   Angela Bassett adds gravitas to the far-fetched plot machinations. As the president of the US, she must decide whether to trust the roguish Hunt or listen to the generals who want her to unleash nuclear Armageddon, part of the screenplay's growing accretion of risk. 

     The movie’s mildly ambiguous ending could signal the conclusion of a series that’s in its 30th year. Or it could suggest that there’s more to come — with or without Cruise in the lead. Cruise’s once boyish face shows the beginnings of jowls. At age 62, he may have had enough. 

    Whatever decision Cruise makes, it’s a good bet that audiences will follow. Sure, much of Final Reckoning proves uneven, but with this level of excitement, complaints seem beside the point.

A fun look at Cheech & Chong

   Movies rarely score a double triumph, connecting with their audience and with the national mood at the precise moment of their release. 

  That's my recollection of Up in Smoke (1978), the landmark Cheech & Chong comedy that focused on two pot-smoking guys who were too stoned to care about much of anything. They were also funny enough to create a near celebratory feeling among their fans, many of whom were as stoned as the protagonists of Up in Smoke, a road movie that became a kind of countercultural highlight reel.

  Up in Smoke was followed by eight other Cheech & Chong movies, the last an animated feature released in 2013. Although the Cheech & Chong filmography is decidedly mixed, the duo remained synonymous with pot-driven mirth.

   Now comes Cheech & Chong's Last Movie, a look at the individual and dual careers of Richard "Cheech" Marin and Tommy Chong. Marin, now 78, has appeared in other movies; Chong, 86, has done solo work. He also became a cannabis activist, and, in 2003, served nine months in a federal prison for selling drug paraphernalia over the internet.

   Billed as a documentary, Last Movie revolves around a car trip through the desert taken by Marin and Chong, who recall their lives and comedy exploits. Some of the scenes feel staged or, at least, prearranged, but the two still have chemistry, and the movie -- rich with clips and period footage -- serves up a tasty hunk of nostalgia.

   Marin and Chong were an odd couple. Marin, a Mexican-American, grew up in South Central LA. He wanted to be a potter. Half-Chinese and raised in Canada, Chong enjoyed early success as a musician.

   Before the movies, Cheech & Chong made a hit comedy album under the tutelage of music producer Lou Adler, who produced and received a co-directing credit for Up in Smoke. The movie grossed $104 million worldwide, but Cheech or Chong had signed a famously bad deal that favored Adler and others.

    Adler, by the way, appears in the film, and Cheech & Chong acknowledge the important role he played in helping them transition from improvisational club appearances to a national phenomenon.

    Eventually, Cheech & Chong lost some of that loving feeling for each other, arguing about who would direct their movies and who was responsible for writing them. They never officially broke up, but they had issues.

    Whether director Dave Bushell has made a "pure" documentary or not, Last Movie proves entertaining and informative. It also reveals the evolving personalities of comics who made the kind of pop cultural splash few have been able to match. 

'Clown in a Cornfield' plays with cliches

  Fear the clown. If you're familiar with horror movies, you know clowns are often associated with terror. (See movies such as It.)  In Clown in a Cornfield, director Eli Craig (Tucker and Dale vs Evil) follows suit, slamming teenagers in a small Missouri town with an ample dose of mayhem.  

  The town's tie to a clown -- named Frendo -- began with the now defunct Baypen Corn Syrup Company. A small Baypen promotional jack-in-the-box featured a clown. When the clown pops up, death usually follows.

   Clown in a Cornfield is one of those movies in which we wait to see what means will be employed to slash away at the town's youth as Craig plays with cliches: A celebratory parade where blood will flow, for example.

    Throughout, genre cliches are preposterously magnified, like jokes with a hundred punchlines. The movie makes abundant use of chainsaws as weapons, and we know the local sheriff (Will Sasso) can't be trusted because sheriffs in these kinds of movies usually reveal their dark sides.

   Did I mention that the town's fortunes have been declining since the local plant ceased operations? 

   The story focuses on Quinn (Katie Douglas),  the daughter of a widowed doctor (Aaron Abrams) who has fled Brooklyn, NY, for a more rural environment.

   Douglas does well as a newbie kid who fits right in with town's outcasts, and Kevin Durand proves amusingly creepy as one of the parents. 

  At times Craig's approach seems nervy. At other times, it feels self-conscious. But he keeps the film moving and gives it intermittent kick.

  Like many current horror films, this one presumes the audience will take pleasure in being in on the joke, happy to smile knowingly at the graphic invention with which successive murders unfold.

  Craig goofs on genre cliches to be sure, but -- for me-- cleverness can't entirely conceal the familiarity of the drill. Blood is shed, kids are slaughtered, and, by the way, pass the popcorn.

 

Another look at 'Bonjour Tristesse'

  In 1958, director Otto Preminger released Bonjour Tristesse, a film starring Jean Seberg, Deborah Kerr, and David Niven. I never saw that movie, but I've read that it received a better reception in France than in the U.S. 

   Now, the Francoise Sagan novel that inspired Preminger's film has attracted the attention of writer/director Durga Chew-Bose, who again travels to the Côte d'Azur for a story that embeds sharp psycho-sexual undercurrents in an atmosphere of soothing summer softness.

    The story centers on Cecile (Lily McInerny), an 18-year-old who seems to be gliding along nicely until she feels the need to meddle in her widowed father's relationships. 

    Claes Bang (The Square) portrays Raymond, a father who's spending the summer with Cecile and his girlfriend (Nailia Harzoune). He allows Cecile to flounder and make mistakes. He prefers not to give advice. 

    The trio’s emotional balance destabilizes when Anne (Chloe Sevigny) turns up. An assertive long-time friend of Raymond's late wife, she tries to manage Cecile, who seems to need guidance.

     The movie's conflicts sharpen when Anne and Raymond abruptly decide to marry. Cecile, who has her first sexual experience with a young law student (Aliocha Schneider), objects and schemes to derail the impending nuptials.

     Although the screenplay builds toward a tragic and provocative conclusion, the movie remains surprisingly placid. A story that may have seemed daring in the 1950s seldom feels charged with the fresh urgency you'd expect from a movie about a vacation stuffed with so much psychological baggage.

      Note: Sagan, who died at the age of 69 in 2004, was 18 when the novel was published. Note: This edition of Bonjour Tristesse isn’t a period piece; it’s set in the present.

A disappointing second helping

   

       During the sequel, Another Simple Favor, Anna Kendrick's character, a stout-hearted supermom and online influencer, mentions Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diabolique (1958). Don't be misled. Another Simple Favor is no match for Clouzot's devious classic. Not that it needed to be.

    Kendrick, a gifted comic actress, and Blake Lively, fine here as a self-possessed schemer, generate the requisite love/hate sparks, but the movie goes too far in substituting acceptance of the preposterous for suspension of disbelief.   

   Complications begin to accumulate when Lively's Emily, newly released from prison, reenters the life of Kendrick's Stephanie, who was snared in Emily's web of deceit in first film and wrote a book about it.

    Stephanie, who should know better, agrees to serve as maid of honor at Emily's impending wedding. Apparently well rehabilitated from her time in prison, Emily is scheduled to marry a wealthy guy (Michele Morrone) who lives sumptuously in Capri. Turns out he’s a Mafia boss.

   Another Favor benefits from the Capri setting where the wedding occurs and where Stephanie and her literary agent (Alex Newell) are flown on a private jet full of hard-partying guests. Nothing like luxe surroundings to amp up escapist fare. There's a reason you can't imagine a season of The White Lotus in a budget motel on the Jersey shore.

  A heaping basket full of plot twists tends to mangle a talented supporting cast. Elena Sofia Ricci plays the mobster groom’s mom. Allison Janey portrays Emily's aunt, and Elizabeth Perkins earns chuckles as Emily's addled mom.

    Henry Golding briefly reprises his role as Emily's former husband, a character the screenplay contrives to bring to Capri along with his now teenage son Nicky (Ian Ho).

    Once again, a series of murders pushes Stephanie into amateur-sleuth mode, providing formulaic echoes of the movie's predecessor.

   If you haven't seen the first movie, you probably needn't bother with Another Favor, which has been directed by Paul Feig, who also directed the earlier effort. 

    I was traveling when the original opened and only caught up with it recently. Hardly a classic, the first Favor was better than I expected; the second, worse than I had hoped. 

    *Another Simple Favor is now streaming on Prime Video.

He's determined to surf

 

   In The Surfer, Nicolas Cage plays a character who tries to surf on a thug-ruled Australian beach. If you're expecting Beach Boys music and sunny California dreamin', look elsewhere.

   So what's Cage -- known only as The Surfer -- doing in Australia? The Surfer grew up in the town where the beach is located. He was 15 when his father died and his mother relocated to LA. Now,  he's back.

   A successful investment exec teetering on the cusp of divorce, The Surfer wants to surf the beach with his teenage son. He also wants to buy the house in which he spent his early years, a gesture that suggests he's hoping to rediscover lost hope and innocence; i.e., his youth.

    The locals -- led by Scally (Julian McMahon) -- humiliate The Surfer in front of his son (Finn Little) and suggest he'd be wise to leave town and abandon his dream of home ownership.

   Not to be deterred, The Surfer endures a series of torments administered by the surfers, who behave like a cult members. These bros have created the ultimate gated community --only they're the gate. Their families sometimes join them for beachside barbecues.

   A beach bum who lives in his decrepit car (Nicholas Cassim) seems to be one of the sole townies who survives outside the surfing tribe. He blames the surfers for killing his dog. They probably had something to do with his son's death.

   Gradually deprived of his possessions (including his Lexus, cell phone, clothing, watch, and wallet), The Surfer begins to look like a vagrant who's relegated to using the beach's filthy public restroom. Forced to scrounge for food, he contemplates eating a dead rat and swallows bugs for nourishment.  

    One question underlies the tense proceedings: How much humiliation can one man stand? 

   When The Surfer finally strikes back, director Lorcan Finnegan plays his hole card, concentrating on warped notions about manhood that underlie the violent behavior of the surfers.

   Rather than deepening the movie, late-picture revelations turn the story into a kind of perverted frat-boy drama about the need, according to the surfers, to degrade those who seek their acceptance.

   Nothing wounds a movie faster than reasonable questions. It was never clear to me, for example, why The Surfer -- a supposedly savvy businessman -- didn't pursue legal recourse beyond asking a corrupted local cop for help. Hasn’t this guy ever heard of lawyers?

   For me, this undertow of disbelief kept the movie from gaining maximum impact, even when Finnegan self-consciously stirs things up with a signature line. "Eat the rat."

   Having said all that, it should be noted that The Surfer is watchable enough, less a failure than an attempt to draw from the well of fury Cage can unleash but which he does  here with moderation -- at least for him.

'Thunderbolts*' stakes out its own turf

 

   An aggressively bountiful stream of Marvel movies has created a specialized kind of viewer. Loyal fans and aficionados have become astute at parsing the intricacies that connect the numerous characters that populate the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

   An essential question raised by every new Marvel movie, then, revolves around whether its appeal extends beyond those who have submitted Marvel dominance.

   Thunderbolts* leans toward the middle when considering its appeal for the uninitiated.  It's difficult for me to call it must viewing, but I enjoyed the movie more than most recent Marvel fare, primarily because of a solid ensemble, a few memorable comic moments, and a commitment to the idea that six misfits are equal to one superhero.

    Here's the deal: A dejected group of MCU characters has been exploited by CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). If the Congress learns about these assassins, de Fontaine won't survive an already contentious impeachment hearing. 

    Fearing exposure, de Fontaine contrives to gather these Marvel losers in one place and eliminate them.

    A freshman congressman named Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) wants to topple de Fontaine. In addition to his Congressional day job, Bucky is trying to forget his life as Winter Soldier, an assassin with a prosthetic arm that, at one point, he pulls out of his dishwasher. Nice touch.

    Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) becomes the standout character among those de Fontaine wants to terminate. Raised to be a deadly killer, Yelena, a.k.a. Black Widow, sees her life as empty, a meaningless blip in the encompassing void of an indifferent universe -- or some such.

    John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a bargain-basement Captain America, helps round out the group. Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and Ghost (Hanna John-Kamen) also join the gang.

     All of these characters have Marvel backgrounds but you don't need to know much more about them than you'll learn from watching Thunderbolts*. 

    Know, though, that each Thunderbolt acknowledges a personal history that includes many bad deeds and a fair measure of regret.

    It takes time for director Jake Schreier to distinguish between each of the movie's non-superheroes and, more importantly, to get them to function as a team.

    When the characters meet at the underground facility to which de Fontaine has directed them, the movie introduces an oddball character named Bob (Lewis Pullman). Bob doesn't know how he arrived in the high-tech bunker, but it soon becomes clear that he's been the subject of secret biological experiments arranged by de Fontaine.

      Pullman delivers the film's pivotal performance as a character for whom the internal battle between good and evil becomes literal. Bob, whose name becomes the subject of the movie's best joke, also must learn about the temptations of possessing extreme power. 

     Comic relief and bonhomie arrive courtesy of the bearish Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour); Alexei operates a limo service and refers to himself as Red Guardian. 

     Alexei, who once served as a father figure for Yelena, becomes a cheerleader for group activities. He likes the name, Thunderbolts, which was taken from Yelena's losing childhood soccer team. The others consider it "meh."

    Existential concerns aside, there's plenty of action, the best of it set in New York City, which at one point is shrouded in a creeping dark shadow that looks as if it might have been at home in a Cecil B. DeMille Bible epic. 

    It takes time for the movie to settle in and scenes in which the characters flashback to their formative days aren't always elegantly handled, but the actors -- especially Pugh and Pullman -- find some depth and a few scenes evoke real emotion.

    You'll note the movie's title contains an * (asterisk). You'll have to see Thunderbolts* to discover why, but as Marvel movies go this one entertains and isn't afraid to be corny when it needs to be.

     What do I mean? When was the last time a Marvel movie resolved a major problem with a group hug? It happens here.

   

      

A wan drama fails to spark

 

    Set in post-Korean War America, On Swift Horses wrings much of the life out of a story about two characters trying to find their places during a sexually repressive American moment.

    The movie begins with Lee (Will Poulter) visiting his girlfriend (Daisy Edgar-Jones) in Kansas while on leave from the Korean War. Lee hopes to return from the war before settling down with Edgar-Jones's Muriel, who agrees to marry him.

     Chances for a successful marriage seem doomed from the start, partly because Muriel ignites more sparks with Lee's brother Julius (Jacob Elordi), who also served in Korea but isn't returning to the Army.

    Director Daniel Minahan creates expectations for a tale about a love triangle but soon shifts gears, alternately following Julius and Muriel as a way of exploring gay issues against a 1950s backdrop.

    When the story moves to San Diego, Lee -- now home from battle -- tries to realize his middle-class dreams and Muriel begins suffocating under the strictures of a life she doesn't want.

    Sexual identity forms the basis of the connection between Julius and Muriel. Julius knows he's gay; he senses Muriel is attracted to women, even though she has yet to act on her desires. For a time, Muriel tries to maintain her image as a typical married woman but soon begins an affair with Sandra (Sasha Calle), a woman who lives nearby. 

    Sometimes playing hooky from her job as a waitress, Muriel also spends time at the track, socking away her winnings, presumably for the marital split she (and we) know will culminate when she begins dipping her toes into the gay world, circa 1950.

      For his part, Julius heads to Las Vegas instead of joining Lee and Muriel in San Diego as he initially had promised. Skilled at poker, he lands a job identifying cheats at a gambling joint. He also begins a romance with a co-worker (Diego Calva), a young Mexican man with more ambition than Lee and a willingness to cut corners. Danger lurks.

     Elordi doesn't seem to have shed the Elvis vibe he brought to Sofia Coppola's Priscilla (2023); his performance -- or so it struck me -- sometimes plays as if it were culled from poses of the 1950s. Edgar-Jones convinces as Muriel wobbles her way into a new life.

    Credit Poulter, whose character is stuck in a factory worker's life, for bringing depth to a role that plays second fiddle to the two main characters.

   Burdened by a structure that shifts between Muriel and Julius, a slow-moving story benefits from the supporting work of Calva and Calle. Either of their characters might have given the movie a more compelling center.

    Adapted from a novel by Shannon Pufahi, On Slow Horses struck me as a wan version of a Todd Haynes  journey into '50s sexuality (see Carol). Minahan pushes a big pile of dramatic chips onto the table but can't cash enough of them in. For a movie fueled by repression, social pressure, and awakening desire, it's a bit of a slog.

     

A familiar tale in an exotic setting

The Legend of Ochi struck me as a small film straining to be a much bigger one. The movie focuses on the relationship between a teenage girl and a mythical creature that lives on the fictional island of Carpathia. Director Isaiah Saxon builds his story around the clash between the island's residents and the Ochi, creatures that have fierce teeth but look a bit like other movie creations, something of a cross between monkeys and a squirrel with Yoda-like ears and winsome eyes. An undernourished story centers on the developing relationship between Yuri (Helena Zengel) and a baby Ochi who's separated from its mother during a hunt conducted by Yuri's vengeful father (Willem Dafoe). Dafoe's Maxim recruits young men from his village to hunt the Ochi, a species he blames for killing  humans and animals. Yuri rescues a baby Ochi and begins a relationship that turns the movie into a display of well-realized puppetry and CGI. Emily Watson appears as Yuri's mom, the woman who left Maxim for a solitary mountain existence.Yuri and Ochi search for connections with their mothers, who represent home, the preferred destination of many fantasy movies. Yuri learns she can communicate with Ochi and the story (accompanied by an aggressive use of David Longworth's score) boils down to familiar movie tropes. Saxon celebrates the mystery of the landscapes but the storytelling can seem hurried. You may admire Dafoe for pushing his portrayal of Maxim over the top or you may wonder (as I did) what attracted him to this role in the first place. Parents should be aware that from opening scenes of hunting to various shots featuring gore and a darkly forbidding tone, Legend of Ochi might be too much for younger kids but not enough for adults.

A vibrant 'Sinners' makes its mark

 

  I don't want to refer to director Ryan Coogler's Sinners as a genre-bending work, although the term might be applicable.  I prefer to think of Sinners -- a story set in the Mississippi Delta during the 1930s -- as a movie in which Coogler employs an expansive film vocabulary to create a boldly exciting foray into the Deep South.

  Described in the broadest terms, Sinners is a horror movie. Coogler, who also wrote the screenplay, introduces vampires and builds toward a violent finale that takes the movie to near frenzied levels. At the same time, Sinners marks another vibrant Cooger entry into a filmography that includes Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

   Shock. gore and vampires aside, Sinners is the kind of horror movie that doesn't come along often, one that's culturally expressive and populated by vividly drawn characters -- horror with plenty of heart and soul.

    Set during the repressive days of Jim Crowe, the drama centers on identical twins, both beautifully played by Michael B. Jordan. Known as Smoke and Stack, the twins return to their Mississippi Delta hometown in 1932. Having accumulated funds in Chicago, they plan to open a juke joint. Independence awaits -- or so they hope.

  A young guitarist named Sammie (Miles Caton) enters the story as an aspiring bluesman who has taken possession of a guitar that may be connected to evil spirits, an evocation of some of the folkloric stories surrounding guitarist Robert Johnson.

   A preacher's son, Sammie becomes an eager mentee of Smoke and Stack, his older and savvier cousins.

   An early bit of narration tells us that certain musicians are so extraordinary that their music can pierce the veil between life and death, an idea evidently drawn from African cultures with traces of Irish and Mississippi Choctaw lore added. 

   All of these many influences become part of the cultural gumbo that Coogler serves with a visual clarity that gives the movie a bracing sharpness.

   Early on, Sinners plays like a period piece about young Sammie's foray into the world of juke joints. Sammie's choices evolve against a homegrown backdrop of religion and sin. Sammie's preacher father tells him that if he's foolish enough to dance with the devil, the devil may one day follow him home.

    Although thematically expansive, the movie takes place during the single day in which the brothers hurry to open their club.

   Smoke contracts with the owner of the town's grocery (Yao) and his wife Grace (Ji Jun Li) to provide food for the juke joint. Stack convinces a harmonica-playing alcoholic (a magnetic Delroy Lindo) to provide entertainment. 

    Each of the brothers also connects with a love interest from the past. Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) is a light-skinned woman who's perceived by some as white. Stack left her  because he thought outsiders would ruin Mary's life for taking up with a Black man.

   Smoke renews his relationship with Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a woman with whom he shares a tragic past and who knows her way around Afro-influenced spiritual practices. Jordan and Mosaku create memorable chemistry as the second helping of their relationship develops.

    Not to be sidelined, Sammie crushes on Pearline (Jayme Lawson), a woman who refuses to be confined by an unfulfilling marriage.

    At times, Sinners takes the shape of a musical with production numbers staged in the abandoned mill in which the brothers open their juke joint. These episodes operate on a surreal cultural continuum, mixing characters from different time periods, adding an anachronistic deejay, as well as African dancers and local revelers. All become part of a raucous explosion of energy.

   Jordan, who has appeared in all of Coogler's movies,  creates two characters who differ but share plenty of history. More adamant than Smoke, Stack is not one to be messed with. But both brothers have plenty of grit. Jordan makes them a dynamic duo, commanding the screen as men who've done their share of living.

    Oh yes, the vampires.

   A terrific Jack O'Connell portrays Remmick, the chief vampire who turns two farmers (Peter Dreimanis and Lola Kirke) into vampires, enlisting them in his efforts to convert (i.e., bite) every reveler at the juke joint. 

    Charming, insightful, and menacing in equal measure, Remmick offers his victims a deathless future that he portrays as utopian. Money never will give Smoke and Stack enough protection to realize their dreams of independence, he argues. 

    Perhaps to broaden the movie's palette, Remmick and his vampires sing a haunting Irish tune that contrasts with the music of the juke joint, yet seems entirely appropriate.

    The supporting performances bristle and come alive, and Coogler gives all the players stand-out moments during a day tinged with dread and desire.

    I'm sure all reviewers will advise audiences to remain through the end credits. Be sure to listen to them. Stay put and let the movie sit with you for a minute -- and allow Coogler to offer one last word.

      

     

    

Cronenberg tackles grief -- in his way

 -- A blind date in a trendy restaurant hardly seems odd, until you realize the restaurant sits in the middle of a  cemetery.

--  In the same cemetery, tombstones are equipped with video screens that allow relatives to observe the deteriorating bodies of their loved ones.

   You probably won't be surprised to learn that The Shrouds -- the movie in which this cemetery serves as a major backdrop -- was directed by David Cronenberg. 

   Cronenberg made his feature debut in 1970 with Crimes of the Future, a title he used again for an entirely different movie in 2022. 

  Known for movies such as Eastern Promises, Spider, A History of Violence, Naked Lunch, The Fly, Videodrome, and Scanners, Cronenberg has become a  recognized master of body horror, an artist who transforms ordinary realities into dreamscapes rich with bizarre possibilities.

   I was late seeing Cronenberg's second Crimes of the Future. I never reviewed the movie but reacted negatively to a work in which Viggo Mortensen played a performance artist whose body grew strange new organs that became part of an art exhibit. 

   In The Shrouds, Cronenberg employs three principal actors for a chilly exploration in which grief and technology make strained connections. 

    Vincent Cassel plays Karsh, an entrepreneur who owns a cemetery that boasts his technological innovations.  Karsh, we learn, abandoned his career making industrial videos, opening the cemetery after his wife died of cancer. He couldn't bear to part with her. Ergo, the cemetery where he could visit her corpse by using an app that, on command, peeked into the high-tech shroud that encased her decomposing body.

  Diane Kruger does triple duty as Karsh's wife (seen in flashbacks), as his sister-in-law Terry, and as the voice of Hunny, the Avatar who serves as Karsh’s secretary.

  A disheveled-looking Guy Pierce turns up as Maury, Karsh's tech-savvy brother-in-law; he helped design the movie's futuristic cemetery.

   Oh yeah, I forgot Sandrine Holt, who plays Son-Min, the cucumber-cool wife of a dying Hungarian industrialist who wants Karsh to open one of his signature graveyards in Budapest.

   If you've ever seen Cronenberg, you can't help but notice how much Cassel has been made to look like the director whose wife died in 2017. Similarities aside, Cronenberg doesn't deserve to have his film seen only through a personal lens, even if the movie began -- as he has said -- with his reaction to his wife's death.

    Both Kruger and Pierce bring energy to their roles. Cassel, on the other hand, creates a character whose subdued demeanor plays against an inner life mired in grief and obsession.

     As I watched The Shrouds, I weighed what I was seeing against horror notions about the body. Forget the soul, we’re nothing but accumulated flesh, bone, and blood -- or so the argument goes.

     When Karsh says he misses his wife's body, it's as if he's saying that her physicality encompassed the totality of her being, thought and emotions included. Don't take this as a sexist expression: In the body-horror canon, men are subject to the same existential condition. 

      All of this has a sexual component: Mired in desire, the body craves other bodies, and gives their loss the force of an addiction that can't be shaken.

     Of course, The Shrouds can't entirely be measured by any theory, partly because the movie extends a variety of other thematic tentacles: paranoia-inducing political theories, issues involving ecology and techno-tyranny (Karsh sometimes puts his Tesla into self-driving mode), and social taboos: A sexual scene between Karsh and Terry, his late wife's sister, brims with libidinal hunger.

     All of this begins when Karsh's high-tech graveyard is vandalized. The mystery behind the vandalization runs throughout the movie, but generates little intrigue, and a mostly chilly tone can make it difficult to tell when Cronenberg is serious or mocking the genre in which he's working. Maybe both are happening simultaneously. In any case, feel free to laugh.

      You can sense the presence of a complex intelligence at work in The Shrouds, but the movie suggests more than it delivers.  Cronenberg plays with many ideas that don't seem fully imagined, and the movie's many tangents sometimes obscure the unbearable grief that puts Karsh into an emotional shroud he can't seem to escape. 

      Someday, I may look at The Shrouds again. For now, I take it as the faltering work of a director I admire. 

           

     

     

     

Deneuve charms as a president's wife

 

For me, The President's Wife, a movie about the wife of French president Jacques Chirac, has less to do with recent French history than with the presence of Catherine Deneuve. The movie belongs to Deneuve, who's now 81, and director Léa Domenach wisely lets her claim it. Together, Deneuve and Domenach tell the story of a woman who steps out from behind her husband's shadow to establish herself as a prominent figure in French political and social life. As portrayed by Michel Vuillermoz, Chirac -- a conservative who held the presidency from 1995 to 2007 -- doesn’t welcome his wife's attempts to chart her own course. Bernadette decides she’s deferred to her philandering husband long enough when his affair with an Italian actress generates embarrassing headlines. With help from her PR adviser (Denis Podalydès), Bernadette becomes recognizable and respected on her own. Sara Giraudeu plays Claude, the Chirac daughter who serves as one of her father's principal advisers. Maud Wylerportrays Laurence, the daughter who suffers from an eating disorder and largely is kept out of view -- until her mother decides to talk publicly about her problem.  As a female empowerment tale, The President’s Wife proves predictable, yet the tone remains light and Deneuve charms as a woman of wit, spine, and intelligence. An early title card warns against taking everything in the story as factual. I don't know enough about Bernadette Chirac to know where fact yields to fiction, but The President's Wife proved amusing enough to keep me from fretting too much about questions of pin-point accuracy.

A movie that brings war close

  In 2006, a platoon of Navy SEALs entered a two-story apartment building in Ramadi, Iraq. One apartment was still occupied.

  Through an interpreter, the SEALs informed the civilians that they wouldn't be hurt. The SEALs then  set up a post from which they observed the street, possibly preparing for trouble. They weren't sure what awaited them.

  In the new movie Warfare, the SEALs begin their mission after whooping it up in manic fashion while watching an exercise video featuring women in skimpy outfits. Like everything else in the movie, which chronicles a real incident, the scene is based on the accounts of SEALs who fought in the Iraq war.

   It doesn't take long for macho ritual, if that's what we're seeing, to give way to a forceful portrayal of relentless combat during the course of a single day.

    Director Alex Garland (Civil War) and co-director Ray Mendoza, who served as a Navy SEAL and advised Garland on the battle sequences in Civil War, team for a movie that eventually concentrates on SEAL efforts to evacuate the platoon from the besieged house, and more importantly, to save the lives of  two badly wounded SEALs.

    We don't know these men as fully developed characters, but as part of a team. Garland resists further elaboration. Early on, the dialogue consists mostly of military information related to the job. 

    The SEALs are well-equipped and have high-tech gear at their disposal. Yet, Garland makes us aware that beneath helmets and body armor, these men are made of flesh that can be torn apart and blood that can be spilled.

   Garland often allows the action to unfold in real-time, and sound designer Glenn Freemantle recreates the shock of explosions and their impact on woozy SEALS.  At one point, the SEALs request what's called "a show of force," and a jet buzzes the street with ear-shattering intensity. It's meant to distract the enemy.

    When one of the SEALs (Cosmo Jarvis) is severely wounded, his sustained screams are chilling. Another wounded SEAL (Joseph Quinn) begs for morphine.

    For most of the film, Garland almost makes us forget that innocent civilians, including children, remain in the house.  Maybe that's the point: The SEALs don't want the building's occupants to be hurt but they're busy fighting for their lives, tending to the wounded, and communicating with the SEALs who ultimately will come to their aid. They continue to function.

   Garland, Mendoza, and a cast that includes D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and Charles Melton bring considerable skill to the task of making us feel the desperate urgency of a combat situation.

   So what to make of all this?

   I'm not sure how to process the movie beyond acknowledging its experiential power. Warfare isn't concerned with the rights or wrongs of the Iraq War. It's not about the policy decisions that led to the SEALs to combat; it operates on a narrower gauge, immersing us in a specific and dangerous moment in the Iraq War.

   If there's a conclusion to be drawn from all this, it may involve recognizing the stark gap between unseen policy makers and on-the-ground combatants. Who bothers with political thoughts when an IED delivers its shocking blow or when a friend and fellow SEAL is on the verge of bleeding out?

   Brutally effective, Warfare brings a vivid helping of Iraq war realism to the screen. Maybe that's enough of an accomplishment for a movie that reminds us that whatever else we might think about war, there's nothing abstract about it -- not for those who have to fight and possibly die.

'Drop' has some edgy kick

   

    Some movies practically demand not to be thought about. Such movies stretch their basic premise to the breaking point but still manage to hold attention and create suspense. Brimming with red herrings and creating one of cinema's most bizarre first dates, Drop qualifies as such a movie, an entertaining genre effort.

  The premise is simple: A widowed mother and victim of domestic abuse (Meghann Fahy) decides to dip her toe into social waters after making an online connection through a dating service. Fahy's Violet, a professional counselor for abused women, agrees to meet Brandon Sklenar's Henry, a photographer.

   The two arrange a date at an upscale Chicago restaurant located on the top floor of a skyscraper. Violet's sister (Violett Beane) agrees to babysit Violet's five-year-old son (Jacob Robinson). She also coaches Violet through first-date jitters.

   Once settled into the restaurant, Violet begins to receive what the movie dubs DigiDrops, ominous messages from a sender who knows her every move. From that point on, director Christopher Landon heightens the suspense because we learn that the sender of these hostile texts is in the same restaurant.

   The major threat: If Violet doesn't do the texter's bidding, he'll have her young son killed.  He's rigged cameras in Violet's home to show her that an intruder is ready to carry out his menacing orders.

   Violet's distracted response to her nice-guy date fuels Fahy's performance and leaves us wondering how much Henry will tolerate before deciding he's had enough.

   Landon effectively puts us in Violet's position as she surveys the room, hoping to identify her tormentor. Maybe the couple's aggressively cheerful waiter (Jeffrey Self) is responsible for the many alarming digital drops. Everyone becomes a suspect.

   The texter's messages appear on the screen as Violet attempts to carry on two conversations, one with Henry and the other with her antagonist. 

   No fair telling more or revealing what Violet has been ordered to do, but know that the movie remains involving -- at least it did for me -- until its ending goes too far over the top.

   Landon seems to bet that by the time the movie concludes, we'll be game for violent mayhem, having already forgiven the movie's implausibilities and contrivances. I'd have preferred a finale as clever as what preceded it, but sometimes you take what you can get: For much of its one hour and 40 minutes, Drop offers plenty of edgy kick.

 

A 'nerdy' spy goes rogue

 

  Watching Rami Malek play Charlie Heller, a grieving CIA intelligence expert in The Amateur, it's easy to forget that the actor won an Oscar for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody (2019). 

   Malek sometimes seems to be a different movie than the rest of the cast. That could have been a calculated choice because Heller's CIA colleagues consistently underestimate his abilities. We're repeatedly told that Heller, who everyone refers to with the diminutive 'Charlie,' lacks a killer instinct. 

   Maybe Malek's performance seldom clicked for me, but that's not the only problem with director James Hawes's revenge saga. The Amateur strings a series of improbable events together as it hopscotches the world in search of excitement.

     The event that triggers all the commotion occurs when terrorists murder Charlie's wife (Rachel Brosnahan) while she's attending a work-related conference in London. Guilty about having declined an invitation to accompany his wife abroad, Charlie expects a full-throttle reaction from his CIA employer. 

  When his boss (Holt McCallany) dithers about why such a response won't be forthcoming, nerdy Charlie shocks his superiors by asking if he can be the one to kill his wife's murderers. He requests some hardcore training so he can hunt the antagonists responsible for his wife's death.

  The CIA grudgingly agrees, hoping Charlie's inadequacies will help quench his thirst for revenge. Enter Laurence Fishburne as the officer assigned to train Charlie in the agency's darker arts.

  As expected, Charlie proves ill-suited for a killer's role, but that doesn’t stop him from going rogue and taking off on his own. No longer willing to humor Charlie, the CIA sets out to stop him.

  A low-credibility affair, The Amateur might have saved itself had it been able to wink at its intermittent preposterousness while jumping to London, Paris, Marseilles, Istanbul, and Russia. 

  In adapting a 1981 novel by Robert Littell, the screenplay takes too little time establishing Charlie's technical brilliance, giving him too few opportunities to win the audience over. And for a movie that feels longer than its two-hour and three-minute run time, the story often feels more sketched than developed.

  Though undernourished, some of the supporting performances provide colorful touches. Jon Bernthal has a nice turn as a scruffy CIA agent who knows the ropes; Caitriona Balfe portrays the widow of a Russian KGB agent who helps Charlie; Julianne Nicholson signs on as head of the CIA, and Michael Stuhlbarg gives the finale some life as Charlie's chief adversary.

     And, yes, some of the action clicks, notably Charlie's confrontation with one of his targets in a glass-bottomed hotel swimming pool constructed between two skyscrapers.

   Overall, though, The Amateur unfolds like a potentially intriguing conversation to which you listen but don't fully connect. I half wondered whether the movie was leaping from one location to another in hopes of finding a much-needed spark.

John & Yoko meet the counterculture

  If popular culture were to make room for saints, John Lennon already would have been canonized. After his murder in 1980, Lennon's legacy expanded -- as a former Beatle, as a solo performer, as a rebel ("nothing to kill or die for"), and as a figure indelibly linked to a period of jarring social upheaval in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

  During this period, Lennon married conceptual artist Yoko Ono. John and Yoko became a thing, a two-person team sharing music, performance art, and unexpected appearances. In 1972, for example, they spent a week co-hosting Michael Douglas's popular daytime TV show. Guests ranged from Chuck Berry to Eldrige Cleaver.

  A new chapter in Lennon's life unfolded after he and Ono chose to live in New York's West Village instead of London. The couple eventually would move to Manhattan's Upper Westside, occupying an apartment in the Dakota, a building already ripe with celebrities: Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, and Roberta Flack lived there. Not bad company.

   When I first started watching One to One: John & Oko,  director Kevin Macdonald's documentary, I was put off. Macdonald, it seemed, had assembled a jumbled collage of news footage, interviews, home movies, photos, and snippets of TV shows that Lennon watched. Nixon, George Wallace, and Charlie Chaplin were among those who hit TV screens with flashbulb pop. 

   But as Macdonald's film progresses, it begins to feel as if chaos might be its point. Macdonald deftly immerses us in the cultural splatter that marked the late '60s and early '70s. The Vietnam War still raged and countercultural figures -- Jerry Rubin turns up as someone Lennon and Ono admired -- suggested that the US was on the verge of a major social change, maybe even a revolution.

    The documentary derives its title from benefit concerts Lennon staged at Madison Square Garden in the summer of 1972 to raise money for mistreated children at Willowbrook, a New York facility for mentally disabled children. Wisely, Macdonald includes plenty of music, linking it to Lennon's growing social awareness. At one point, he organized a concert for John Sinclair, a poet and activist who was serving a 10-year sentence for a marijuana-related offense.

     Considering that Rubin, who died in 1994, eventually became a businessman, you may wonder whether Lennon and Ono weren't too quick to board the activist's hippie ship. But that's the thing, I suppose. In the early '70s, lots of folks were floundering, trying to determine what they believed and in whom they should or could believe.

   Perhaps that's why we see Lennon feeling his way through performance art (Lennon and Ono encamped in their bed), new musical directions, and personal issues (his relationship with his mother). That's not to say that the Beatles didn't produce art-worthy music before Lennon and Ono, but in teaming with Ono, Lennon began to see himself in more expansive ways.

   Snippets from phone calls made to Lennon and Ono crop up. Throughout the film, Ono's assistant tells her about his search for thousands of flies she needed for an art piece; Macdonald also touches on Ono's quest to reunite with the daughter who had been separated from her by her former husband, then a member of a Christian cult.

    Macdonald (One Day in September, The Last King of Scotland) skillfully creates a portrait that revolves around Lennon and Ono while holding up a mirror to the period in which their relationship blossomed.

  One to One can be wobbly, but some wobbles do more than shake you up, they recall a moment when the culture was forming, decomposing, searching, experimenting, finding moments of nobility, and, yes,  making a fool of itself. To quote another movie, everything was happening everywhere and all at once -- or so it seemed, and Lennon and Ono were part of it.

A writer inherits a very large dog

  When I first learned that the writing/directing team of David Siegel and Scott McGehee had adapted author Sigrid Nunez's novel, The Friend, for the screen, I reacted with a mild shudder. Smart, moving, and mired in grief, Nunez's novel seemed an unlikely candidate for a move.

   Fortunately, the filmmakers capture enough of Nunez's tone to elevate a slender story while avoiding the kind of cheap sentiment that could have trivialized Nunez's work, which, simply stated, focuses on the bond between a woman and a dog.

    The Friend revolves around Naomi Watts's portrayal of Iris, a college writing professor who's coping with the suicide of her mentor and one-time lover, a writer of some repute. Iris's grief begins to sharpen when she inherits the author's Great Dane, a 180-pound creature named Apollo.

    Like many New Yorkers, Iris lives in a tiny apartment that's ill-suited for a large canine companion, even one with a touching soulful gaze. Watching Iris walk a Great Dane makes for an arresting sight, even though the aging and arthritic Apollo hardly can be called rambunctious.

    Bill Murray portrays Walter, the author Iris regarded as an invaluable confidant. Walter forged the connections that led Apollo to Iris. His decision can be read as an ironic act of cruelty or as a jolt meant to shake Iris from the torpor that has stalled work on her second novel.

   The directors employ first-person narration from Iris to capture a bit of Nunez's spare prose as they work their way through a series of episodes. Iris fights with her landlord about a no-dogs-allowed policy. She meets with one of Walter's three ex-wives (Carla Gugino) and with his daughter Val (Sarah Pidgeon), a student who's working with Iris on an attempt to turn Walter's correspondence into a book.

    Watts skillfully portrays Iris's hesitant but growing attachment to Apollo. Though limited to brief flashbacks and a fantasy sequence, Murray proves convincing as an unapologetic womanizer who's keenly aware of his many flaws and betrayals.

   Ann Dowd helps rounds out the cast as Iris's neighbor, a woman who's allergic to dogs. Felix Solis portrays the super in Iris's building, a kindly fellow who’s tasked with delivering ultimatums from the landlord. 

    Late in the story, Tuesday (Constance Wu), the last of Walter's three wives, offers to take Apollo off Iris's hands. Iris quickly realizes that Tuesday won't tolerate an animal that can't respect her highly refined choices in furniture.

    Tom McCarthy plays the psychiatrist Iris consults in her increasingly desperate search for a solution to her Apollo problem.

  Though less precisely honed than Nunez's foray into the literary world, Siegel and McGehee's movie does a better job of translating her novel to the screen than Pedro Almodovar did with The Room Next Door, his adaptation of Nunez's What Are You Going Through -- at least that's how it struck me.

   You may never have wondered what it might be like to have a 180-pound dog dropped into your life, but The Friend will give you an idea of how much upheaval such a bulky intrusion can bring — both literally and metaphorically. 

    If I were looking for an alternate title for The Friend, I might consider this one: “Chamber Piece with Very Large Dog.”