A great big beautiful bore

 

  Kogonada (he goes by a single name) directed Colin Farrell in a low-key helping of sci-fi called After Yang (2021), a quietly realized movie about an android who becomes a companion to a father's adopted daughter. 

   Considering After Yang's off-kilter lilt, it's hardly surprising to see Kogonada put a fairy-tale spin on a big-screen romance starring major Hollywood names, Farrell and Margot Robbie.

   From the start, it's clear that A Big Bold Beautiful Journey shouldn't be taken literally. Working from a screenplay by Seth Reiss, Kogonada abstracts the ingredients of romance into a series of scenes meant to depict stages that his characters must go through before love can blossom.

     Setting formula aside can be rewarding, but Beautiful Journey doesn't allow Farrell or Robbie to create the credibility and chemistry any romance requires, regardless of form.

     Theatrical but lifeless, Beautiful Journey plays like a series of scenes lifted from an acting class. Put another way, the movie feels self-conscious and contrived. Too often, Kogonada's fantasy flatlines.

      So how does all this happen? Early on, Farrell's David rents a car from a mysterious agency that insists he take an older vehicle with a GPS added. David drives to a wedding, where he meet's Robbie's Sarah. It turns out that Sarah has rented a car from the same agency. 

      Soaked in rain, these early scenes feature colorful umbrellas. They may not enhance the story's charm but they sure make it feel soggy.

       After the wedding, Sarah's car won't start and the two wind up taking a purportedly magical road trip on which the GPS dictates numerous stops. At several of these stops,  a free-standing door (many incongruously placed in rural settings) must be opened. Sarah and David walk uneasily  into these pre-determined spaces, revisiting moments in their pasts that have impeded their ability to form meaningful relationships.

      In scenes in which David returns to high school, he's pushed into a musical (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) in which he once played a starring role. The moment has some energy, but it also strains to make a point: Rejection in high school can create lingering pain.

      The point is clear: Before they can find fulfillment, David and Sarah must overcome internal barriers. Early on, we learn that David has been closing himself off from intimate relationships. Robbie's Sarah makes no bones about her resistance to love. She has a habit of cheating, thus destroying any attempt at sustained intimacy.

       None of this rings true, and instead of creating a magical aura, the movie drifts through patches of boredom.

      A supporting cast adds little. Kogonada casts Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the agents at a car rental facility that's so obviously lacking in realism, it makes us suspect more weirdness than the movie ever delivers.

       Kogonada tries for tears when he inserts when Sarah finally copes with the death of her mother (Lily Rabe), but little about A Big Bold Beautiful Movie clicks. 

      As for that sound you hear in the row behind you, It could be someone sighing over the movie's poignancy or it might be light snoring.

       

Catching Up: 'Small Engine Repair' and 'Starling'

Two quick hits on movies I missed. Put these brief reviews under the heading “Better Late Than Never.” 

Small Engine Repair

Set in Manchester, New Hampshire, Small Engine Repair adapts a play by John Pollono for the screen. Pollono portrays Frank, a guy who runs the repair shop of the title. He has two pals (Shea Whigham and John Bernthal). For a while, it looks as if Small Engine Repair is going to be another evening with the bros, guys who often jockey to see who can be grosser. Pals for a long time, the men argue in a bar and stop talking. The story then leaps ahead to a night when Frank invites his estranged buddies to the repair shop for an evening of reconciliation. Another study in toxic masculinity, Small Engine Repair features performances by Jordana Spiro (as Frank's ex-wife) and Ciara Brava (as Frank's college-age daughter). The movie begins to shift gears when a college kid (Spencer House) shows up at Frank's shop and Pollono's screenplay begins to raise serious issues involving privacy, internet abuse, class conflict, and revenge. None of these themes are fleshed out enough to compensate for flashbacks of variable power and an ending that seems contrived to take some of the sting out of the meanness that precedes it. And in a movie focused largely on "the guys,'' Spiro has the movie's most commanding moment.

Starling

Starling, a movie about a husband and wife (Melissa McCarthy and Chris O'Dowd) attempting to cope with the loss of an infant daughter, casts Kevin Kline as a veterinarian who once was a prominent psychiatrist. The oddball combo of carers is indicative of something about the movie: Director Theodore Melfi mixes what seem like mismatched elements in a movie that makes a powerful subject seem almost banal. Burdened by sentiment, the movie derives its title from a bird that pesters McCarthy's character as she tries to garden. The screenplay by Matt Harris uses the bird -- a starling, of course -- as a metaphor for nest building and even, at one point, has McCarthy's Lily trying to nurse the pesky  bird back to health after she hits it with a stone. The movie mistakenly separates Lily and her husband Jack, who's in a mental institution after the loss of the child, which means we never really see them trying to work out their issues. No point in faulting the performances, but Starling is a wounded bird of a movie that just doesn't fly. 

A cartoonist struggles with grief

Comedian Demetri Martin plays a New York-based cartoonist who makes a trip to LA in the new movie, Dean. Martin also directed this slender tale about a young man who's having difficulty coping with the recent loss of his mother. Martin mostly focuses on Dean, an illustrator whose journey to LA is prompted by a job offer from a "hot" new ad agency. Dean's bullshit meter is far too sensitive to fall for a ton of LA optimism, but he decides to hang around LA with his pal Eric (Rory Scovel). Dean soon meets an appealing young woman (Gillian Jacobs). He's smitten. Meanwhile, Dean's father (Kevin Kline) also attempts to put his life back together. In scenes that parallel what's happening in LA, Dean's New York father begins dating the real estate agent (Mary Steenburgen) he hires to sell the family home. Neither Kline's character nor Martin's Dean handles loss particularly well, but Dad seems to be doing a better job of it. He's more honest about his inability to move on. Martin shows us some of Dean's work, simple stick-figure drawings that are ... well ... simple stick-figure drawings. Mildly amusing and nicely acted by the supporting players, Dean nonetheless doesn't feel like a big-screen breakthrough for Martin, who doesn't dig deeply enough into the movie's most interesting element: undigested grief.

'Beauty and the Beast:' One more time

Disney's reprise of its 1991 animated hit should please old fans and make some new ones.

The idea that love can break the spell of a powerful curse sounds as familiar to us as fairy tales themselves. In the case of Beauty and the Beast -- as imagined by Disney in a new live action version of its 1991 animated edition -- the Beast, a callous prince who has been cursed by a haggard old woman, must find love before the last petal drops off a rose kept in his dank castle. Absent such a love, the Beast and a gaggle of courtiers who've been turned into inanimate objects forever will be doomed to their cursed fates.

Disney's lavish remake its 26-year-old animated classic, Beauty and the Beastt, created little by way of anticipatory excitement for me. I'm no fan of remakes that take advantage of advances in digital technology just to wow us, in this case with talking versions of a clock, a teapot, a candelabra and a feather duster. And, yes, these digitally created do-dads probably show more personality than some of the story's human characters.

Having said that, this version -- starring Emma Watson (Beauty), Dan Stevens (Beast) and directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) -- has enough whimsy and amusement to satisfy those who also will be buoyed by reprises of the Alan Menken/Tim Rice musical numbers -- with a couple of new additions.

Much of the credit for the movie's engaging collection of talking bric-a-brac goes to the actors who supplied the voice work: Emma Thompson voices Mrs. Potts, the teacup; Stanley Tucci gives life to as Maestro Cadenza, a harpsichord; Gugu Mbatha-Raw adds her vocal prowess to Plumette, the feather duster. The voice behind Cogsworth, the clock, belongs to Ian McKellen; and Ewan McGregor can be heard as Lumiere, a dashing candelabra.

Condon spices things up with references to Busby Berkeley, a ton of production design, a major investment in costumes and a generally capable cast that includes Luke Evans as the impossibly conceited and ultimately duplicitous Gaston and Josh Gad as his loyal sidekick LeFou.

You've probably read that Disney has made LeFou a gay character. That may be daring for a Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, but nothing in this upbeat entertainment seems designed to take the glow off the movie's mass-appeal luster.

The film even neuters the Beast, who has been given a leonine countenance -- with horns and bad teeth added for the sake of fright. This Beast makes threats on which he fails to deliver, and isn't quite as self-assured in his menace as you might expect.

Still, he's softened by Beauty, and by the end, it's difficult to say that anyone would mind if the Beast remained a beast rather than returning to his more Disnified form as a devilishly handsome prince.

In a nice touch, Beauty and the Beast begin their rapprochement when Belle (Beauty) discovers that the Beast has a well-stocked library. She's an avid reader, evidently the only one in the tiny village she and her father (Kevin Kline) call home.

There have, of course, been numerous versions of this 18th century tale from Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Velqleneuve, including Jean Cocteau's landmark 1946 version, but classic stories seem capable of enduring as many retellings as anyone possibly could desire.

This one opts for a visual razzle-dazzle that plays against Watson's plucky but somewhat ordinary Belle. I wouldn't say that Condon and company achieve perfection, but they've provided a lively, entertaining version of Disney's animated entry from the 1990s.

If we were going to have another Beauty and the Beast, I'm not sure what more we could have justifiably asked or expected.

'Ricki and the Flash' never pans out

Yes, that aging rocker is Meryl Streep..

Ricki and the Flash, a movie starring Meryl Streep as an aging rocker who never made it to the big time, brims with unintended distractions -- at least for me.

Streep brings credible touches to everything she does, but I couldn't quite forget that I was watching Streep not the character she's playing -- a lead singer named Ricki Rendazzo.

Is that Streep doing her own singing? (Yes)

Did she decide that Ricki always should look as if she's having a bad-hair day. (No idea).

Because Ricki and the Flash also is a mother/daughter story, it's a bit distracting to know that the daughter in the movie is played by Mamie Gummer, Streep's real-life daughter.

In addition to all of that, Jonathan Demme -- who lately seems to have spent a lot of time on music documentaries (Neil Young is a Demme favorite) -- has made a fictional feature that, at times, feels like a wannabe concert film .

Demme devotes a fair amount of time to Ricki and her band's musical numbers, most of them set in a Los Angeles bar where a graying crowd seems to be trying to cling to memories of its boogie-down youth.

Ricki and the Flash come across as a competent bar band. That may be realistic, but it undermines any reason for the movie's extended musical sequences.

Without ever finding an entirely appropriate tone, Demme tries to mix family drama, comedy and music. The approach doesn't add up to much.

The family drama begins when Streep's Ricki (formerly Linda Brummell) is asked to return to Indianapolis by her former husband, a straight-arrow businessman played by Kevin Kline.

Ricki's daughter (Gummer) is in the midst of a crisis because her husband has left her for another woman.

It's not clear why Kline's Pete Brummell thinks Mom may be able to help her aggressively bitter daughter: Mom hasn't really been part of her children's lives (there are two grown sons, as well) since leaving for LA to pursue her musical dreams.

Dad long ago remarried. For her part, Ricki has an unstable relationship with the guitar player (Rick Springfield) in her band, the Flash. He likes her, but she never lets down her guard.

To add to the family drama, Ricki's son Josh (Sebastian Stan) is about to marry a woman (Halley Gates) whose family doesn't approve of Ricki's lifestyle: musician by night, supermarket cashier by day.

Another son (Nick Westrate) from the Pete and Ricki union is gay, a fact Diablo Cody's screenplay treats as a reveal, although you can see it coming from miles away.

Not surprisingly, Ricki's visit to Indianapolis founders: She eventually finds herself in conflict with Dad's second wife (Audra McDonald), the woman who did most of the heavy lifting when it came to raising the Brummell kids.

A pot-fueled scene in which Kline and Streep strain to show what might have brought Ricki and Pete together in the first place feels awkward, a wan attempt by the actors to get at something meaningful.

Come to think of it: That might describe the entire movie.

When bad movies happen to good people

Great cast -- and not much else in Darling Companion.

I hate when this happens.

About a month ago, writer/director Lawrence Kasdan visited Denver with his wife Meg. They were on the road promoting Kasdan’s independently produced Darling Companion, which they co-wrote, which Kasdan directed and which opened the Boulder International Film Festival. (See interview below.)

Kasdan, of course, has had an estimable career, co-writing the screenplays for great populist fare such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and distinguishing himself on smaller movies such as Body Heat and The Big Chill.

So what’s to hate about any of this?

Only this: I liked Kasdan and enjoyed meeting him, which makes it all the more difficult to report that his latest movie struck me as thoroughly mediocre.

See what I mean? I hate when I like the filmmaker, but not the movie. But in the case of Darling Companion, that's what I'm stuck with.

Put another way, if a director has a cast that includes Kevin Kline, Diane Keaton, Richard Jenkins, and Dianne Wiest and still comes up short, it’s a good bet that the material is to blame.

Darling Companion isn’t funny when it wants to be, and it's not dramatic enough to be taken seriously as a sobering look at family frictions. It's strictly middle of the road.

Kline and Keaton play Joseph and Beth, a Denver-based husband and wife mired in a stale marriage. After their second daughter (Elizabeth Moss) marries at the couple's mountain retreat, the family hangs around for a little R&R.

Beth and Joseph are joined by Joseph's sister Penny (Wiest) and her obnoxiously friendly boyfriend (Jenkins). Penny's son Bryan (Mark Duplass) serves as a youthful add-on. Like Joseph, he's a doctor.

A lost dog puts the story in motion. Freeway -- so named because Beth found him on the side of a road -- races off, creating relationship tension between Joseph and Beth and setting off a variety of searches, one of them prompted by the family’s supposedly clairvoyant housekeeper, a preposterous character played by Ayelet Zurer.

Kasdan allows our perceptions about at least one of the characters to change as the movie progresses. Jenkins' character, whose life-transforming idea involves opening a British pub in Omaha, turns out to be less horrible than he initially seems.

Look, Darling Companion is small potatoes, a pallid misfire from Kasdan and his stellar cast.

Enough. I think you can tell where I'm coming from. I had more fun talking to the Kasdans than I did watching their movie. And I hope the fact that Darling Companion hasn't exactly been lighting critical fires -- as of this writing, the movie had earned an unfortunate 15 on Rotten Tomatoes -- doesn't dissuade them from trying another small, personal drama -- only one that works.

A history lesson from Robert Redford

The Conspirator tells an interesting story, but it's awfully earnest -- and that's the trouble.

What do you do when a movie tackles an interesting subject, boasts a prestigious cast, delivers a message with which you generally agree, and you still give it your enthusiastic endorsement?

Here's what I do: I say that you may want to see Robert Redford's new movie The Conspirator, but you probably shouldn't expect to be blown away. Redford's movie has its virtues, but it's also overly earnest and dry, a bit of civics lesson on film.

I'm betting that not many Americans know the story of Mary Surratt, a 42-year-old woman who was hanged in 1865 for being part of the conspiracy that led to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. Surratt, a staunch Catholic and proud Southerner, owned a Washington, D.C., boarding house where the conspirators plotted the president's murder. She claimed innocence.

At one point, Surratt was offered leniency on condition that she disclose the whereabouts of her youngest son, John. John later admitted to helping hatch a plot to kidnap Lincoln, but insisted that he had no part in the president's assassination. John Surratt remained in hiding during his mother's trial; he ultimately was tried and acquitted.

In telling Surratt's story, Redford takes a step forward from his last directorial outing, 2007's Lions For Lambs. Preachy and obvious, Lions made a head-on attempt to deal with the consequences of the war in Afghanistan. Steeped in period atmosphere, The Conspirator proves more subtle, although it's impossible not to see parallels between the issues raised by the Surratt trial and those surrounding military proceedings at Guantanamo.

Rather than providing us with a definitive answer about Surratt's guilt, Redford uses the movie to defend a principle: A nation of laws - especially during times of heated public sentiment -- must offer fair trials even to those whose guilt seems beyond question. Justice must be served; the craving for vengeance, resisted.

Working from a script by James D. Solomon, Redford focuses on Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), the lawyer who's assigned to defend Surratt before a military tribunal.

At first Aiken wants no part of the Surratt case. Like just about everyone else in Washington, he has little doubt about her guilt. As the story develops, Aiken begins to understand that, at minimum, Surratt deserves a hearing, something the military seems disinclined to provide.

Redford surrounds McAvoy with a powerful cast. Robin Wright portrays Surratt as a strong and devoted mother: She won't betray her son to save he own life. Surratt makes no bones about her loyalty to the Confederacy, but insists she knew nothing about what the plotters were discussing when they gathered in her boarding house.

Tom Wilkinson plays Reverdy Johnson, the Maryland lawyer who involved Aiken in Surratt's defense; Danny Huston portrays Joseph Holt, the prosecuting attorney; and Kevin Kline appears as Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War.

According to the movie, Stanton wanted a quick verdict; he was interested in satisfying the public hunger for vengeance that followed the assassination. Kline's Stanton is a severe, unforgiving man who thinks the demands of the nation, as he sees them, take precedence over individual rights.

Evan Rachel Wood terrific as Veda Pierce in HBO's recent version of Mildred Pierce, brings emotional urgency to a movie that sometimes seems to be striking courtroom-drama poses. She plays Surratt's daughter.

Credit Redford & company for attempting to illuminate a little-known chapter of American history, and giving the movie a persuasive period look, but The Conspirator can feel restricted by its courtroom setting and by what seems a carefully worked-out agenda, the need to remind us that emergency situations shouldn't obliterate our freedoms. At times, the movie seems as committed to making points as it is to telling a story.

Still, there's no point damning Redford's effort, even if it ultimately emerges as a musty addition to the canon of socially conscious movies that don't so much raise questions as answer them.

Will love get in way of wanton sex?

Portman's fine; Kutcher, not so much. No Strings Attached falters.

Having won a Golden Globe and a variety of critics' association honors for her performance as a disturbed ballerina in The Black Swan, Natalie Portman seems a shoo-in for a best actress Oscar. The new and, alas, negligible romantic comedy No Strings Attached, isn't exactly a warm-up for Oscars' big prize, but it probably won't do anything to diminish Portman's glow.

No Strings Attached isn't much of a movie, but consider this: Portman's playing a role that might have gone to such rom-com divas as Drew Barrymore, Katherine Heigl or Jennifer Aniston. If you see the movie, think about what it might have been had any of those actresses taken Portman's place.

Proving herself an able enough comic actress, Portman holds the movie together as it zips through a variety of situations that are designed to delay the inevitable union of on-again/off-again lovers.

No Strings marks the first movie to be directed by Ivan Reitman (father of Jason) since 2006's My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Reitman's spry direction and screenwriter Elizabeth Meriwether's mildly off-color script keep No Strings from feeling precisely like every other rom-com that's been cluttering the nation's multiplexes.

Meriwether builds her R-rated script around a provocative question: Is it possible for two young people to carry on a torrid sexual affair without wanting to deepen their relationship?

That brings me to Ashton Kutcher, the movie's other marquee name. Kutcher piles on his all-too-familiar sheepish charm, and, at one point, bounces his naked butt across the screen. When it comes to rom-coms, he may be the male equivalent of the Barrymores, Heigls and Anistons, which means he's entirely too predictable.

Here's how the story goes: Portman's Emma, a medical resident at a Los Angeles hospital, proposes a sex-only affair to Kutcher's Adam, an assistant on a TV sitcom. Scorched by a large helping of paternal humiliation - his dad (Kevin Kline) is dating one of his ex-girlfriends -- Adam agrees to Emma's proposition.

Adam and Emma go at it with enthusiasm until Adam begins craving some real intimacy. The emotionally defended Emma doesn't want to detract from her consuming schedule. She's also terrified of commitment.

No Strings is not without sour notes, the loudest of them sounded by Kline, who starred in Reitman's 1993 comedy, Dave. Kline plays Kutcher's father, a faded TV star whose embarrassingly randy behavior pushes the dejected Adam into a drunken evening during which he kicks off his relationship with Emma.

Gifted a comic actor as he is, Kline can't entirely remove the odor of unpleasantness from the role of an older man who craves the fawning attentions of younger women.

There's an increasingly familiar quality to its overall arc, but Meriwether's script makes room for some decent one-liners. Too bad it doesn't allow for more significant contributions from the supporting cast. The only minor character who gets any decent play is Adam's co-workers, an obsessive talker played by Lake Bell.

I'm told that folks who sleep together but maintain every other form of distance are called "friends with benefits." Think of No Strings as a mediocre movie with benefits, most of them due to Portman who - up until the script calls for her to suffer - seems to be having loads of fun. Why not? Someone had to have a good time.