A mild life-swap comedy

 

 If a rich young man were forced to change places with a gig worker, would he be a better person because of the experience? And would the struggling gig worker learn that his life already had value?

   What? You thought a comedy starring Seth Rogen, Keanu Reeves, and Aziz Ansari, who also wrote and directed, would endorse a lavish lifestyle in which one of the rich guy's biggest challenges consists of leaving the sauna for a cold plunge? 

   Nah, spreading its Capraesque values as thick as peanut butter, Good Fortune casts Reeves as Gabriel, a lower-ranking angel whose job involves saving the lives of people who are texting while  driving, sort of a heavenly being turned into a public service message.

    But Reeves’ Gabriel not only wants to save lives; he hopes to change them.

     Through a series of contrivances and missteps, Gabriel arranges for Ansari's Arj — an aspiring film editor stuck in gig world hell — to trade places with Jeff (Rogen), a Los Angeles entrepreneur with a watch collection whose value might rival the budget of a small nation.

     At first, Arj believes he’s had the ultimate stroke of luck. He thinks that money might help him impress a young woman (Keke Palmer) who works at a hardware megastore, where he had a part-time job.

     Besides, who can blame him for being happy that he no longer needs to sleep in his car.

      After Gabriel's life-swapping mistake, his supervising angel (Sandra Oh) strips him of his wings and turns him into a human being. The best part of the comedy involves Reeves'  transformation from a naive and slightly dopey angel into a human who develops a love for tacos, dancing, and bro-style companionship.

      Meant to be temporary, the life-swap extends when Arj decides he doesn’t want to return to a life of thankless hustling and poverty. For his part, Jeff would like to get his life back.

      More attuned to chuckles than belly laughs, the rest of Good Fortune involves attempts to restore Jeff and Arj to their original lives and allow Gabriel to resume angelic life.

        Perhaps to tone down the movies's cornier  aspects, Ansari introduces mild critiques of income disparity, careless capitalism, and status-oriented consumption.  He even adds a bit of activism when Palmer’s Elena tries to unionize her co-workers. At another point, a gaggle of gig workers walks off a job site.

      If Good Fortune is intended as an assault on heartless capitalism, it's not an especially provocative one, but that same benign quality helps keep the comedy from grating.

     Ansari doesn’t work with too heavy a hand, so even the bits that don’t succeed (an over-the-top 40th birthday party, for example) land softly. Ansari's best achievement involves coaxing an amusing performance from Reeves, who's more like Ted (from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) than either his Neo or John Wick characters.

      I don't give movies stars, but if I did, I'd tag Good Fortune as the quintessential ** 1/2 star entertainment, a predictable comedy that delivers its message with bit of amusement and without too much hectoring.

'After the Hunt' has its rewards

    Watching Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, a movie about a purported sexual assault in a high-stakes academic arena, put me in mind of David Mamet's Oleanna, a 1994 movie that dealt with betrayal and accusations between a student and teacher in a college setting. Oleanna was delivered with sharp elbows. After the Hunt deals with similar issues but plays in a less insistent register.

   Mamet took aim at the staunch MeToo inflexibility.  Guadagnino tries a more tempered approach, leaving key questions unanswered and focusing on the way an incident of abuse plays out at Yale in 2019.

    Working from a screenplay by Nora Garrett, Guadagnino begins his movie with a dark screen and what sounds like the ticking of a clock, perhaps to suggest that the characters we'll meet are about to undergo a severe test. 

   Rather than turning his movie into a MeToo screed or a rant against cancel culture excesses, Guadagnino focuses on how the ambitions of his characters become enmeshed in circumstances over which they steadily lose control.

    After the Hunt centers its story on a Yale philosophy professor (Julia Roberts) who's on the verge of receiving tenure, the gold ring on the academic carousel. Roberts' Alma has a flirtatious buddy relationship with another professor (Andrew Garfield) who's also seeking tenure in the philosophy department.

   Alma's psychiatrist husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) seems like a vestige from a relationship that formed when Alma was immature enough to idolize him. The glow has worn off, but the relationship staggers on.

   Ayo Edebiri plays Maggie, the movie's most problematic character, a gay graduate student who sets off a campus firestorm when she accuses Garfield's Hank of crossing a sexual line.

   Is the ambitious Maggie -- who is suspected of having plagiarized her doctoral thesis -- telling the truth? Having pegged Maggie as a rising star, will Alma continue to support her or give her friend the benefit of the doubt? Do donations made by Maggie's wealthy family prevent the truth from being uncovered? And why did Alma single out Maggie for special attention in the first place?

   Roberts conveys flinty credibility as a scholar who has mastered academic speak while struggling with inner torment. Alma occasionally doubles over with stomach pain. She harbors a secret that, as the movie progresses, becomes easier to guess.

 Garfield does what might be his best work yet as a gregarious scholar whose affability could conceal predatory behavior, and Stuhlbarg ably plays a man who, when feeling pressed, expresses his anger in childish ways.

   Chloe Sevigny offers additional support as an academic who serves a guidance role with students and faculty alike, smoothing ruffled feathers and providing mental health counseling.

   Some of Guadagnino's scenes bristle with tension, and it's a pleasure to watch Roberts sink her teeth into a role. In one of the movie's strongest scenes, she eviscerates Maggie for being a spoiled child of privilege. In another memorable moment, she skewers one of her students deeply enough to scar the kid for life.

   It’s possible, though, that the movie overdoes things. Maggie, for example, is Black, gay, and super-privileged, a loaded deck of traits that supposedly grants her immunity in a DEI-dominated world. 

  Some of Guadagnino's choices seem like self-conscious strains to establish the film's intellectual bona fides. Ambiguities about the nature of truth might have been clear without references to the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's arty score can be both intriguing and jarring.

   Beyond all that, sexual abuse and cancel culture aren't exactly the freshest of subjects.

   Still, I got caught up in the way Guadagnino and his cast create the insular bubble in which academic power games are played. The movie's pleasures derive from the ways in which Guadagnino finds the  blood and bile that boil beneath a surface of academic refinement. I may be pushing the point, but After the Hunt sometimes felt as if a high-class helping of pulp somehow had gotten into Yale.

The thief who lived in a toy store

   Roofman, the story of a thief who broke into McDonald's restaurants, gaining entry from their roofs and hauling off a small fortune, leans heavily on Channing Tatum. Tatum's challenge: to create a smart, appealing criminal who's considerate of those who fall into his sphere. 

   Tatum's Jeffrey Manchester doesn't use politeness as a branding gimmick. He's not trying to dub himself as  "The Thief who Cares." He's aware that he's stepping out of bounds, but has no desire to hurt anyone. 

   Based on Manchester's real-life story, Roofman requires Tatum to remain likable throughout. I'd say he succeeds in what might be his most memorably appealing screen performance yet.

    The story doesn't dwell on Manchester's larceny. Early on, Manchester is caught in North Carolina. He's sentenced to a whopping 45 years in prison, partly because of kidnapping charges stemming from one of his signature moves.

    If they happened to be present, Manchester locked McDonald's employees in store freezers. He sometimes gave them coats so they wouldn't freeze. In the movie, he calls 911 to arrange for their rescue as soon as he flees.

   Working from a screenplay he wrote with Kirt Gunn, director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines) respects the basics of Manchester's story, but his movie intrigues with a tone that falls between unadorned realism and lighthearted absurdity.

  Once imprisoned, the keenly observant Manchester contrives a clever escape. He then flees to Charlotte, where he holes up in an unlikely spot, a Toys R Us store. 

    Manchester's ingenuity blossoms. He learns how to survive in the store by eating lots of candy. He sets up his own surveillance system using baby monitors while disarming the store's video recording capabilities. He builds a comfortable enough hideout to keep him in the store for six months, a long time to spend in the company of Tickle Me Elmo dolls.

   Eventually, Manchester ventures out of the store. He's attracted to one of the its employees (Kirsten Dunst's Leigh), a single mom who's struggling to make ends meet.

    Manchester quickly becomes enmeshed in Leigh's life, attending her church, donating toys (stolen, of course) to the church's Christmas drive, and eventually impressing her daughters. It takes time, but he even wins over Leigh's balky teenage daughter by buying her a seriously used car and teaching her how to drive.

   He's discovering the joys of family, and he's good at it, perhaps by way of atoning for having become estranged from his former wife and three kids.

   Additional support comes from Peter Dinklage as the martinet manager of the Toys R Us store. LaKeith Stanfield signs on as one of Manchester's former Army pals, a character who figures in some late-plot maneuvering. 

    Other actors come off as drop-ins. These include Uzo Aduba, as one of Leigh's churchgoing friends, and Juno Temple, as the girlfriend of Stanfield's character.

   Set in 2005, the movie includes a few retro touches, but Cianfrance gives it a lived-in feel that allows the chemistry between Tatum and Dunst to grow during the time that Manchester lives without being recognized. A hide-in-plain-sight kind of guy, he never alters his appearance.

  Manchester, of course, puts himself in a terrible bind. Using a fake name, he deceives people he cares about. The point is made without underlining. His ruse isn't without cruelty. Maybe that's Manchester's biggest flaw; he's sincere but not perceptive enough to fully understand the impact he's having on those he encounters. He's not good at consequences.

    Interviews with the real people from the Manchester tale pop up during the end credits, mostly confirming the story's slant about a good guy who committed crimes. Roofman isn't up for moral finger wagging. That may trouble some, but it makes Roofman a welcome oddity, an enjoyable movie that avoids the usual true-crime cliches.

Spectacle can't save 'Tron: Ares'

   

  Throughout the year, I have a fair number of movie conversations. I mention this because in more than 40 years of reviewing, no one in my admittedly limited circle has ever wondered why there weren't more sequels to Tron, the 1982 movie that was admired for its CGI innovation but fell short in most other ways. 

  Tron may have spawned its share of devotees. If so, I don't happen to know any of them.

   I begin my review of Tron: Ares, the third Tron installment, this way because I wondered why Disney had opted to give Tron another run. Had advances in CGI allowed for richer visual expression? Have current obsessions with AI spurred enthusiasm for a story in which virtual reality plays such a significant role?

    I don't know, but I do know how Tron: Ares, which I saw in IMAX, struck me. Mostly, it didn't. 

    Brimming with red-hued visuals and offering complex visualizations of The Grid (the movie's version of virtual reality), Tron: Ares builds a world that alternates between captivating and repetitive.

    As was the case with the first installment, story often feels less than compelling. Director Joachim Ronning sets up a simple conflict as two tech moguls (Greta Lee and Evan Peters) square off at a moment when science  has advanced to the point where virtual programs (seen in human form) can be transported into the real world. 

    A moral problem results. Lee's Eve Kim wants to use these AI creations to help humankind; Peters' Julian Dillinger aims to enhance the authoritarian power he craves by transporting state-of-the art warriors into his real-life world.

    Dillinger wins the race to bring virtual beings into reality, but with a catch. After 29 minutes, his creations collapse into piles of debris. Not to worry. Kim has an antidote. Using work initiated by her late sister, Kim discovers a code that can sustain the life of virtual beings indefinitely.

    The big twist, I suppose, involves a change of heart by Ares (Jared Leto), Dillinger's warrior in chief. Ares quickly (too quickly perhaps) begins to question his main directive, which requires him to capture Kim so that Dillinger can retrieve the desired code. Ares's unexpected flaw: benevolence.

      Lee gives Kim the requisite enthusiasm, but her performance is subordinated to the movie's ongoing light show. A mostly deadpan Leto adds flickers of wit to Ares's repertoire. At one point, Ares affirms his desire to become human by confessing that he prefers the synth-pop music of Depeche Mode to the classicism of Mozart.

      Action pounds and abounds. As the plot unfolds, spiffy light cycles race through city streets, trailing red beams that turn the movie into a showy spectacle, displays that seem more the point than the outcome of any of the movie's many chase sequences. A mood-setting Nine Inch Nails score pushes toward the final credits, which include a short epilogue.

      Among the supporting performances, Gillian Anderson registers as Elizabeth Dillinger, Julian's conscience-stricken mother.

     References to the first movie can be found, and, of course, Jeff Bridges reprises his role as Kevin Flynn, hero of the first edition. Bridges's late picture appearance made me wonder whether The Dude hadn't dropped in on a sci-fi epic. If only he had.

     Whether AI poses an imminent threat to humanity is a subject for others to consider. As for Tron: Ares: I seldom felt the one quality any movie, whether virtual or reality-based, should provide: involvement.

    

An explosive 'House of Dynamite'

 

    Terse and chilling, director Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite tackles a situation most of us would prefer not to contemplate: a nuclear attack on a major American city.

    Working from a screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, Bigelow divides her movie into three sections, each offering a different vantage point on the same brief time during which a missile hurtles toward the US.

    Few in the movie’s large ensemble of military and civilian characters are psychologically prepared for an event that probably will kill 10 million people in the initial blast. Scores of additional deaths from fallout are sure to follow. The missile's origins are unknown, but it's headed for Chicago.

     Those familiar with previous Bigelow hits such as Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Hurt Locker (2008) know she’s skilled at sustaining tension, and A House of Dynamite  stands as confirmation of her ability to rivet attention. In keeping with an intensely concentrated approach, Bigelow shorthands character development, opting instead to put her characters to the test.

    How quickly can they accept that they’re not dealing with a routine exercise? How good are they at handling  fear? Can they react reasonably under intense pressure?

     A strong and well-selected cast includes Rebecca Ferguson as a White House Situation Room official, Gabriel Basso as a Deputy National Security Advisor, Jared Harris as the Secretary of Defense, and Idris Elba as the President of the United States. Tracy Letts portrays a folksy general who commands personnel who scan banks of monitors. A FEMA official (Moses Ingram) tries to prepare an evacuation response.

     House of Dynamite employs too many actors to name them all. Many roles are relegated more to function than revelation. Still, Ferguson, Harris, and Elba convey the emotions accompanying concern for those outside the security perimeter, seen in glimpses that remind us that most people are unaware of a pending Armageddon.

      Snippets of story detonate along the way. A Major General at a remote outpost (Anthony Ramos) falls into despair when his crew fails to intercept the missile. The Secretary of Defense grapples with the fact that his daughter lives in Chicago, the targeted city. An expert on North Korea (Greta Lee) watches a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg with her son when she's called for advice.  

       This contrast between two kinds of horrible warfare may be a bit on the nose for a movie that avoids extraneous observation, but A House of Dynamite mostly meets its subject head-on.

      Given current preoccupations — wars in Gaza and the Ukraine, National Guard troops in major cities, and a government shutdown — A House of Dynamite may seem a little out of sync with today's worries.

    Perhaps that’s the point. Bigelow’s movie serves as a sobering tap on the shoulder from someone intent on reminding us that other dangers lurk. Heaven forbid that one day a missile makes a mockery of the quotidian unfolding of what, for most of us, will begin as just another day. 

 

A father and mother's daring rescue

  I want to start by saying that there's no way to review The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue without acknowledging that many will view the film through a lens of their feelings about the current war in Gaza.

 Those who lean pro-Palestinian may be disturbed by the documentary's intense Israeli focus. Those who tend toward support of Israel may argue that there's no need for Palestinian voices in a purportedly apolitical story about a retired Israeli general who races from Tel Aviv to the Nahal Oz Kibbutz in an attempt to rescue his son's family from the terrorist onslaught of Oct. 7, 2023.

  I'll say this: I'd be open to watching a documentary about displaced Palestinian civilians in Gaza, even if it made no reference to Hamas's brutal attack, focusing only on the plight of a family caught in the storm of war. The human dimension in all these stories matters.

  Road Between Us arrives with a bit of history. Initially, the Toronto International Film Festival disinvited the film from its program, arguing that it lacked the required clearances. Some felt the festival had capitulated to fears of disruptive protests. 

  Ultimately, the festival reneged and showed the film. which tells the story of how retired Israeli general Noam Tibon, and his wife Gali, traveled from Tel Aviv to the Nahal Oz Kibbutz to rescue their son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren who were under siege by Hamas terrorists. The film went on to win The People's Choice Award for best documentary at the festival.

   Road Between offers interviews with Noam and Gali, kibbutz security officials, survivors, and Noam's son and daughter-in-law, who spent hours locked in a safe room where they remained silent lest they be discovered and killed by Hamas marauders who were inside their home.

   All I'll say here is that if I were in trouble, I couldn't think of two better people to come to my rescue. Retired or not, Noam approaches his task like a soldier whose skills remain undiminished.

  I should caution that some won't want to see the sampling of video Hamas live-streamed during the attack and which appears in the film. But if you're open to a story about a father and mother's courage when facing an extreme situation, Road Between Us deserves a look.  Canadian director Barry Avrich tells the story in tense, involving ways.

    Just don't expect to emerge with a full understanding of the current conflict: That's something no film could accomplish and, it's beyond what this pulse-pounding chronicle of a heroic rescue can achieve.

Daniel Day-Lewis returns to the screen

   

  Unfortunately,  the focus of the new film, Anemone, centers on actor Daniel Day-Lewis’s emergence from a retirement he declared after the release of Phantom Thread eight years ago. Because the celebrated actor has created indelible screen performances in movies such as There Will Be Blood (2007), Lincoln (2012), and more, a new work from Day-Lewis creates an out-sized load of expectation.

   Sadly, Anemone can't stand up to the pressure of our justifiable expectations. Made in collaboration with his son, Ronan Day-Lewis, who directed and  co-wrote the screenplay with his father, the movie puts a tortured soul at its core but never feels fully realized.

   Early on, Ronan Day-Lewis relies on arty, sometimes over-composed shots of the woods where Day-Lewis’s Ray has been living for 20 years. A visit from his brother Jem (Sean Bean) disrupts Ray's hermetic existence. Embittered and boiling with unexpressed fury, Ray doesn’t welcome the reunion.

  Ray, of course, is no Thoreau figure transposed to the wilds of Northern England. He finds no solace in nature or anything else. He has devoted his life to the shame-filled brooding that resulted from his service during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. When Ray picks up a hatchet, you fear what he might do with it.

  Ray protects two secrets that explain his willed isolation. He's also never seen the son he abandoned when he took to the forest. That's plenty of dramatic fodder, but the material might have worked better as a play, a two-hander that needed no other characters beyond Ray and his brother.

   Additional characters do, however, appear. Samuel Bottomley plays Brian, Ray’s son, a young man who has gone AWOL from the Army, and Samantha Morton, portrays Brian’s mother. Her hope is that Ray will return to help Brian straighten himself out, to fill in the blanks that Brian has lived with concerning his radically absent father.

     Ray's slowly disclosed secrets prove insufficient to stave off the dullness that results from slow pacing and lingering images that encourage contemplation when there doesn’t seem to be much on which to dwell. A couple of surreal touches don't help, either.

   Despite its small supporting cast, the movie remains Day-Lewis’s. His performance includes two spellbinding monologues.

   Like just about everyone else on the planet, I’ve never felt anything less than admiration for Day-Lewis’s command of the screen. Even when Day-Lewis has his back to the camera, you feel Ray's foreboding presence. 

    So, yes, Day-Lewis still compels, but Anemone might not have been the best opportunity to once again display the mixture of talent, intelligence, and commitment that makes him so great.

Dwayne Johnson's raging nice guy

 

     Generally, I'm interested in movies that explore worlds that are unfamiliar to me. That inclination made me eager to see director Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine, a look at the early days of UFC full-contact fighting as told through the story of former champion Mark Kerr.

   UFC's current popularity aside, the movie's big selling point involves the performance of Dwayne Johnson, who has been made unrecognizable thanks to prosthetic face makeup, fake teeth, and a short crop of curly dark hair. Muscular and hulking, Johnson's Kerr might be mistaken for a Marvel character in search of a series.

   Johnson's natural likability underlies the contradiction that makes his performance intriguing. Often displaying Boy Scout-like politeness, Kerr seems like a nice guy, but he's unremitting in the ring where he unleashes his inner beast and, if necessary, beats opponents to a pulp. 

   Taking place from 1997 to 2000, the story deals with the days before UFC fighting entered the mega-money sweepstakes. Kerr eventually sets his sights on a 2000 championship bout in Japan. The payoff: $200,000 to the winner of a bruising tournament. 

    Interestingly, the characters refer to $200,000 as life-changing money, chump change in today's athletic environment.

   The movie begins with an undefeated Kerr taking on challengers in Brazil. A subsequent bout in Japan results in a crushing "no-contest" decision due to an opponent's foul. What Kerr sees as a devastating  failure brings him face-to-face with his addiction to pain-killers and performance enhancing drugs.

  Out of the ring, the film slips. Safdie chart's Kerr's stormy relationship with Dawn (Emily Blunt), a woman who becomes a bit of a Delilah figure for Kerr's Sampson. He accuses her of interfering with his need to intensify his focus during training, and the movie sometimes feels like a watered-down version of Raging Bull.

    Numerous fight scenes left me gasping at how much pain was being inflicted: heads slammed against canvases, knees bashing torsos, and faces pummeled by jack-hammer blows.

    Given the demands of ring life, it's hardly surprising that Kerr finds his closest relationship with fellow fighter Mark Coleman, played by Ryan Bader, himself a former UFC fighter. Another former fighter, Bas Rutten, helps prepare Kerr for a second try at the championship. All of these guys share what they might call "warrior love."

     Smashing Machine covers too short a period of time to be considered a full-fledged biopic. Heavy make-up also comes with a price: At times, I found myself distracted searching for traces of Johnson under his heavy makeup.

      Skimpy on psychological probing, the movie offers a face-value view of Kerr's motivation. Winning brings the highest of highs, the charge of victory that can't be duplicated elsewhere, Kerr says. There's a cruel if obvious irony to be found here, as well: If victory is the highest of highs, defeat becomes the lowest of lows.

     A rudimentary look at UFC fighting, Smashing Machine might have benefited from some perspective about the society that idolizes these modern-day gladiators.

    Enough said -- at least for me. Johnson stamps his signature on a real-life figure, providing Kerr with bulk that threatens to burst through the screen, but this tightly wound slice of a battler's life never quite finds a larger point to make.

      

 

 

A cop caught in an entrapment game

 Set in 1997 -- before gay liberation and law reforms -- Plainclothes focuses on a young Syracuse, NY police officer assigned to vice squad duties. His job: hang around malls and entice gay men into bathrooms where they’ll soon be arrested for indecent exposure, lewd  behavior, or indecency. Tom Blyth plays Lucas, the young cop who lures men into restrooms and then bolts as his fellow officers race in to make an arrest. The twist: Lucas is coming to grips with his own gayness. The situation spawns a complex drama about Lucas's struggles with his conscience and with his blue-collar family, which isn't exactly gay friendly. Blyth ably captures the conflicts tearing at Lucas, who's also in the midst of separating from his wife. A key story component arrives when Lucas develops a relationship with a man (Russell Tovey) he refuses to arrest. Tovey's Andrew teaches Lucas to operate on the sly, introducing him to a world in which homosexuality often involves men leading double lives. Maria Dizzia, as Lucas's mom, and Gabe Fazio, as one of his uncles, make the family dynamics real, if not always pleasant. The film also deals -- albeit briefly -- with Lucas's relationship with his fellow officers. I thought it would be interesting to tell this kind of story from the perspective of a straight man whose conscience begins to nag at him. That's probably another movie, though. As it is, Lucas's story serves as a reminder of what life had been like for many gay men before society began to change.