Zellweger does justice to ‘Judy’

Judy isn't great, but Zellweger's performance carries the show.

Judy, a drama about the final months of Judy Garland's all-too-brief life, turns the iconic entertainer into a kind of prisoner of her pubic image. Garland's life fell prey to studio tyrants, drugs, bad marriages, and her own need to connect with audiences. Judy already is being hailed as an Oscar showcase for a transformed Renee Zellweger. Fair enough. Judy derives most of its power from Zellweger's performance.

Based on End of the Rainbow, a musical play by Peter Quilter, Judy survives a series of sometimes wooden flashbacks and an overly familiar story arc to reach an emotional conclusion that pays tribute to Garland's enormous capacity to entertain while recognizing the deep sadness that could pervade her life.

I don't think it qualifies as a spoiler to tell you that the movie's finale involves a deeply felt rendition of Garland's signature tune, Over the Rainbow. If you don't see that coming when the movie enters its third -- and best act -- you probably need to see more movies.

Set mostly in 1968, the story places Garland in a swirl of trouble, notably a battle with former husband Sid Luft (Rufus Sewell) over custody of their two children. Garland loved her kids but she couldn't give them the stability they needed.

Problems constantly threat to drag Garland down. Broke and hardly in demand, Garland takes a job in London to play the Talk of the Town nightclub. Not surprisingly, her appearance is marked by difficulties: She refuses to rehearse; she drinks too much; she can't sleep; she barely makes it to performances on time, and in the middle of all that, she decides to marry Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock), her fifth and last husband.

It's obvious to us, if not to the love-starved Garland, that the marriage will be brief and bad.

In London, Rosalyn Wilder (Jessie Buckley) receives a tough assignment; she's supposed to look after Garland, who misses few opportunities to test Rosalyn's ample patience. As the impresario who brings Garland to London, Michael Gambon is given little to do aside from looking dyspeptic and skeptical. Underutilizing Gambon must always be regarded as a mistake.

In the flashbacks to her MGM days and The Wizard of Oz, Garland (Darci Shaw) finds herself in painful encounters with the tyrannical Louis B. Mayer (Richard Cordery), the mogul who controlled her with threats and humiliation. Garland eventually claimed that Mayer groped her, as well, something the movie hints at.

An effort to acknowledge Garland's importance in gay culture feels both necessary and yet forced. Andy Nyman and Daniel Cerqueira play a gay couple who meet Garland when she's leaving Talk of the Town after a performance. They wind up taking her to their apartment. She's lonely and their company proves welcome.

The two fans also figure in the movie's appropriately sentimental ending, which suggests that the only true love Garland ever experienced (aside from that of her children) was given by audiences.

Aided by prosthetics including a false nose, Zellweger's performance gathers the necessary force. A collection of tics, outbursts, displays of sincerity and vulnerability create a character who spent a lifetime taking morning pick-me-up drugs that she would counter with late-night sleeping pills.

The mannerisms that Zellweger employs make sense; they become Garland's mannerisms; her sometimes sharp motions suggest a person buffeted by ferocious gusts of inner turbulence.

Director Rupert Goold makes the most of Zellweger's transformation and the movie also benefits from the fact that Zellweger does her own singing. She's not Garland, but Zellweger works hard to sell Garland numbers such as Get Happy and puts brassy, entertaining showmanship into the musical numbers that she performs.

Make-up and singing aside, Zellweger hits home when it counts. When Garland calls young Lorna Luft (Bella Ramsey) from a London phone booth, Zellweger joins Garland's vulnerability to a level of self-realization that's heartbreaking.

Maybe this small and sometimes limited movie was inevitable. The figure of Garland was destined to dwarf any story about her and that happens here. Judy stands as a portrait of Garland at the end of a rainbow, one in which the promised pot of gold wound up being empty. You wonder whether the woman who had played Dorothy Gale, a character who awakened the dreams of so many, had lost the capacity to wish for herself.

Intriguing setup, limited payoff

Peter Sarsgaard headlines a story about a man who's obsessed with sound.

I’ve always been interested in obsessive characters who operate within a narrow range of behavior. In The Sound of Silence, we find one such character, a New York City man who calls himself a house tuner. Peter Lucien (Peter Sarsgaard) examines homes and tries to find the noise responsible for debilitations such as insomnia and depression.

A good night’s sleep might depend on something as simple as junking an old toaster and purchasing a newer model.

When he's not working with clients, Peter embarks on a far more ambitious project. Armed with tuning forks, he travels around the city to create a sound map. He's obsessed with searching for patterns. He's looking to see how sound shapes the lives of residents of a particular area.

Contrary to what you might expect, there’s nothing obviously freakish about Peter. He dresses neatly, treats his clients with respect and seems devoted to helping people.

Director Michael Tyburski brings a lonely woman (Rashida Jones) into the mix. Newly single, Jones's character asks Peter to help her deal with her insomnia.

Does she want something more from him? If so, is Peter capable of giving her more or is he too wrapped up in his pursuit of sonic revelations?

Tyburski widens the movie’s scope with other developments: At one point, Peter is courted by a tech firm that tries to convince people it can help bring harmony to their lives. He also struggles to find acceptance in the academic world, where he hopes the purity of his ambitions will earn him respect.

Despite a smart start, Tyburski and screenwriter Ben Nabors aren’t able to develop their movie into something rich and satisfying. Like the sound of the tuning forks Peter uses, the drama in The Sound of Silence starts strong and then fades out.

‘Dick Long’ harbors a bizarre secret

Two Alabama dimwits find themselves at the center of a comedy with a very weird twist.

Three Alabama dimwits are supposed to be rehearsing with their band, the oddly named Pink Freud. The rehearsal might be an occasion for the men to drink and smoke pot, but there's something more afoot. These good ole boys decide that it's time to "get weird."

It takes quite a while to learn what director Daniel Scheinert means by getting weird and when you find out, you may greet the newly acquired knowledge with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Death of Dick Long serves up a low-life comedy about backward folks who reside in a small Alabama town.

As a result of that night of partying, one of them turns up dead, even though his buddies dump him (literally) at the doorstep of the local hospital. One the man's surviving pals is Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.), a shaggy looking fellow with a wife and a daughter.

Zeke's running buddy Earl (Andre Hyland) seems detached from most everything, greeting just about any situation with a shrug as he vapes and blows out thick clouds of smoke. Perhaps intentionally, Zeke sports a haircut that evokes memories of Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber.

Scheinert treats the residents of this small town in a relaxed manner that allows them to make fun of themselves as the hapless Zeke and Earl try to cover their tracks to avoid being accused of murdering their friend.

But wait. A physician at the local hospital (Roy wood Jr.) has discovered something odd: The deceased man (Dick Long of the title) died from rectal hemorrhaging. Weirdness looms.

As his life falls apart, an increasingly nervous Zeke tries to deal with his wife (Virginia Newcomb), making up stories to ward off her suspicions.

At the same time, the local police chief (Janelle Cochrane) and her deputy (Sarah Baker) enter the story. They want to find out what happened to poor Dick Long.

No fair saying more, but know that the movie's big reveal is so off-putting and bizarre it challenges an audience to stay with these benighted characters as Scheinert begins to introduce a few serious touches to an otherwise wacky concoction that provides laughs while its characters squirm.

Abbott and Hyland make a good comic duo, but The Death of Dick Long eventually becomes a kind of kinky version of Dumb and Dumber. There are chuckles along the way but it's difficult not to wonder whether Scheinert wasn't trying too hard to sing in the weirdest possible key. The movie's big twist really is twisted.

'Ad Astra' proves weirdly involving

Brad Pitt travels deep into space -- both inner and outer.

Director James Gray's Ad Astra qualifies as a true oddity, a movie that manages to be both interesting and not entirely successful at the same time. Gray, who has made movies such as The Lost City of Z, Little Odessa and We Own the Night, this time dreams really big, setting his story amid the deep emptiness of space.

As astronaut Roy McBride, Brad Pitt takes a journey to Neptune where he must, roughly in this order, find the father who left him so that he could galavant around the galaxy, stop a powerful electric surge that has sent lethal shock waves to Earth, and, perhaps most importantly, commune with his emotionally wounded inner self so that he might finally be able to connect with someone else.

Pitt provides an offscreen narration in which he reveals Roy's thoughts, which come across as a dissertation on isolation; Roy tells us he's cut off from everyone. He does, however, sometimes confide with an unseen psychologist (an off-screen voice) who conducts a series of psychological evaluations. Roy generally passes -- although you might be tempted to think his answers feel a little too practiced, the speech of someone who's unable to connect his emotions to his thoughts.

The best parts of Ad Astra involve the set pieces that Gray stages with excitement and surprise: These include Roy's free-fall from an antenna that has been constructed at the atmosphere's outer limits, a chase sequence involving rovers on the surface of the moon, and a mission in which Roy and a colleague answer a distress call from a crippled vehicle.

En route to Neptune, Roy makes stops on the moon and on Mars. On Mars, he learns more about his father's fate from Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), the woman who manages the space outpost.

Along the way, Gray offers commentary on the commercialism of humanity's great adventure. The moon, for example, boasts a dreary mall. No wonder Roy's outlook feels mired in futility: He does his duty; he's calm; his pulse never rises above 80 beats per minute; he screws up relationships; he makes mistakes; he's miserable.

Liv Tyler, who I believe never speaks, is used to suggest Roy's failures with women, but she's more like a vapor than a physical presence in the movie.

You should know that Roy's father -- presumed dead for years but possibly still alive on a spacecraft that floats above Neptune -- is played by Tommy Lee Jones, a bit of casting that tells us that Roy's journey to find his rogue dad needs a lalapalooza of a payoff. It's the dynamic Francis Ford Coppola set up in Apocalypse Now when he sent Martin Sheen up a river in search of Captain Kurtz.

It takes guts for a filmmaker to give his film such singular focus; we're being set up to be blown away should Roy and his father ever meet. If we're not ... well ... let's just say, it's not a good thing.

I'm simplifying Roy's story for the sake of brevity, but -- in the end -- it doesn't prove especially complex. The movie's message (it has one) puts an aphoristic gloss on its promise of something vast, cosmic and mysteriously profound. We're set up to expect Kubrick and Gray gives us daddy issues.

Still, I found myself breathing the thin air Gray creates and moving along with a movie that takes us on a trip that's weirdly arresting -- at least most of the time. Hey, as we're always being told; it's not the destination but the journey that matters.

Gray splays Roy's inner voyage across vast spaces, turning his movie into a metaphor with mythic and psychological overtones centering on absentee fathers (take that where you will) and what it means to be a man. You'll have lots of opportunities to study Pitt's face, as Roy burrows deep into his own psyche. Pitt pulls it off.

I can't say too much more without spoilers, but it's possible that Gray may have made a space adventure that can be read as a critique of every other space adventure, as well as of our desire to watch them. This is either brave or a little crazy -- or some mixture of both.

All I can say is that when I emerged from the auditorium where I saw Ad Astra, the lights in the corridor seemed to emit an eerie glow. Ad Astra teeters on the brink of something awe-inspiring without quite falling over. Can a movie be "nearly" visionary?

'Downton Abbey,' a royal serving for fans

The popular series results in a big-screen effort that doesn’t make for a great movie but gives fans their money's worth.

In its final going, Downton Abbey —- the big-screen version of a six-season PBS smash-- began to feel like a six-season feature, at least it did for me. I'm saying the movie felt long. But, and it’s a major "but," Downton Abbey wasn't made for me. I'm a series slacker who only recently caught up with the first season in preparation for seeing the new movie. I owe my wife, an avid Downton enthusiast, for filling me in on the major plot points of ensuing seasons.

So, if you have a severe case of Downtonitis — stop here. Go see the movie. You will happily reacquaint yourself with most of the series’ characters and you’ll be able to indulge in the luxuriance of the fabled estate that imposes itself on the Yorkshire countryside.

If you love period-piece pleasures, Downton Abbey provides the season's most reliable overdose.

As you probably know, Downton Abbey also provides a home for bickering, scheming aristocrats who employ a cadre of bickering, scheming servants — almost all of whom are deeply committed to maintaining the estate and everything for which it stands.

Best not to think too deeply about what that estate stands for, notably class division and political stagnation that even the show’s creator, Julian Fellowes, can't present without showing a few cracks.

On TV, characters married downward or upward. The movie includes an assassination attempt and a bit of talk about British/Irish tensions. Mostly, though, characters ponder whether it's worth sacrificing personal fulfillment on the altar of propriety. Most vote for the propriety of the prevailing order.

Now because the movie is a mere 122 minutes long, not all the characters are given the kind of attention they received during six seasons. For some, it must have taken longer to don their costumes —- corsets for women, starched fronts for men — than to learn their lines.

Still, it can be rewarding simply to immerse in the carefully appointed aristocratic theme park that director Michael Engler and his production team create and, let’s be honest, celebrate. And, to be even fairer, I’ll say that Downton Abbey arrives on the big screen without too many visible signs of strain for having made the transition.

So what’s new about any of this? Well, there’s an episode in which a slightly more agreeable Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier), the gay footman promoted to the post of chief butler, openly and almost disastrously explores his gayness.

A fresh battle over inherited wealth breaks out, allowing cousin Maud Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton) and her maid Lucy (Tuppence Middleton) to arrive at Downton. Did I mention that the whole business centers on a visit from the King and Queen (Simon Jones and Geraldine James) that throws the entire Crawley household into a tizzy?

The pending arrival of royalty prompts Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) to bring retired head butler, a.k.a., Mr. Carson (Jim Carter), back to Downton so that he can enforce the standards to which he has dedicated his life.

The royal visit seems more important to the servants than those who dwell upstairs. They help is gravely offended when told that the royal party travels with its own staff and that the services of the locals will not be required or, worse, desired. What? Miss an opportunity to grovel at the feet of monarchs? Disasters don’t get much bigger, do they?

To heighten the snootiness brought by a team of royal servants, a traveling French chef (Philippe Spall) has been added, much to the dismay of down-to-earth Downton chef (Lesley Nicol).

The royal visit also provides a reason to introduce Princess Mary (Kate Phillips), daughter of the King and Queen. She's having marital difficulties and provides a reason for the story to take a brief side trip.

Written by Fellowes, the movie employs a farcical twist to deal with tensions between dueling groups of servants. It might be said that on-screen, Downton Abbey is more reliant on plot twists than on the kind of character issues the series more freely could explore.

I know. You’ve been waiting for me to say something about Maggie Smith. She's onboard of course as the imperious Violet Crawley, self-described as the old lady who frightens everyone, a role that she relishes. Smith fires a fair number of caustic darts and, in this telling, becomes part of a comic duo in which Isobel Merton (Penelope Wilton) plays counterpoint by insisting on empathy over insult.

I was a little disappointed that Lady Mary didn’t have more to do, that her sister, Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) has lost some of her edginess, having settled into something approximating happiness and that Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), the American-born mistress of the manor, had no crucial scenes.

You'll notice that I've omitted some characters but going any further risks turning this review into a scorecard -- if I haven't done that already.

If you have Downtonitis and you’ve read this far, you’ll be happy to know that I’m nearly finished.

Part reunion and part lovefest, Downton Abbey's reliance on the affection its audience brings to the theater struck me as near-total. I'd guess that Fellowes and his cohorts have done nothing that's likely to diminish the devotion of Downton fans. I wonder, though, whether those who've never seen a Downton episode will feel quite so welcome in the Crawley household -- or whether they'll even feel as if they've been invited.

Bob's Cinema Diary: 9/20/19 -- Fantastic Fungi and Running with the Devil

If you watch a lot of movies, your consciousness often inevitably fragments to the breaking point. It’s possible, in the span of two films, to go from the generally overlooked world of fungi (yes, you read that right) to the massively over-observed (at least in movies) world of cocaine smuggling. I’m talking about Louie Schwartzberg’s documentary Fantastic Fungi and director Jason Cabell’s Running With The Devil, films that have no business being mentioned in the same breath, which is why I couldn't resist putting them together.

Let’s start with the healthy side of the ledger and a confession. What I know about mushrooms (magic or otherwise) is precisely nothing -- and, at the moment, I'm not especially fond of them. Mushrooms have mounted a late-summer invasion of my lawn, and some of them are not pleasing to the eye, protruding from the earth in a form that resembles a rotting phallus.

Of course, I’m not giving mushrooms their due -- as those who spend their time studying them, appreciating them and sometimes eating them would attest.

Narrated by Brie Larson (who occasionally speaks for the usually silent mushrooms), Fantastic Fungi includes commentary from authors such as Michael Pollan and Andrew Weil. It also focuses on the work of Paul Stamets, a mycologist who has made mushrooms his life and who runs a business cultivating, finding and selling all manner of mushrooms, which evidently come in an astonishing variety, 1.5 million species worth. Judging by the movie, it might be wise to think of Stamets as a human ambassador to the fungi world.

The movie is designed to provide information about the essential role that mycelium, part of a fungus, plays in keeping the planet balanced. Mycelium helps the earth digest decaying, carbon-based matter, keeping the earth’s life cycle — birth/decay/death/more birth —- humming.

Schwartzberg offers time-lapse views of mushroom growth and introduces us to the staggering array of mushrooms that grow in the earth’s forests. He also includes commentary from psychologists who suggest that ingesting certain kinds of mushrooms in controlled dosages can play an important role in coping with depression and dealing with other psychiatric issues.

In short, we may not be paying enough attention to the psilocybin mushroom, which can take us on a trip without having to go through airport security. The documentary shows psilocybin being taken in pill form under supervised conditions.

A bit of a commercial for mushrooms, Fantastic Fungi nonetheless should please those who ascribe to the idea, as the film does, that nature is intelligent.

Now, for a different drug:

In the age of opioids, a movie about the cocaine trade immediately and perhaps inevitably feels passe.

Running With the Devil functions as a kind of primer about how cocaine moves from Columbia to the US market, increasing in price with each step of its illicit journey. A strong cast — led by Nicolas Cage and Laurence Fishburne — can’t do much to elevate a by-the-numbers movie steeped in the violence and debauchery surrounding the drug trade.

The characters who populate Running With the Devil all have generic names. Cage, for example, portrays The Cook, a pizza chef who supplements his income in the cocaine trade -- or maybe it's the other way around. Fishburne portrays a character called The Man, an ambitious participant in the trade who’s gotten too deeply involved in sampling the merchandise and cavorting with hookers. Barry Pepper plays The Boss, a character who needs no further explanation. Cole Hauser appears as The Executioner. Can you guess his occupation? I thought you might.

The movie eventually finds Cage and Fishburne hiking through the North American wilderness en route to their final destination.

A mostly male production, Running With the Devil does include one major female character. Leslie Bibb portrays the DEA agent who’s trying to stop the drug trade.

With big money involved betrayals can’t be far behind and the screenplay, also by Cabell, has them.

Hints of Tarantino blow through a story which includes a surprise ending that you should see coming. Looking bookish and scholarly, Cage puts on an all-business front, with traces of madness, of course. His performance contrasts to Fishburne’s display of wanton carelessness.

I can't recall seeing Fishburne play a character such as this, but Running With the Devil stumbles as it laboriously works its way through the familiar piles of white-powder crime.

Hard times in Los Angeles’s Koreatown

Director Justin Chon tackles cultural dislocation in Ms. Purple, the story of Kasie (Tiffany Chu), a young woman trapped in a life that revolves around men, notably her dying, comatose father and the abusive, demanding customers at the karaoke bar where she works. An affluent boyfriend (Tony Kim) -- also a karaoke bar patron -- gives Kasie money but treats her like a pet. Kasie lives a life of desperation in Los Angeles's Koreatown. Her mother long ago left to pursue a more affluent life. Kasie grew up with an immigrant father who called her a princess but did little to prepare her for adulthood in America. Now in a coma, Dad (James Kang) requires so much care that Kasie must call on her wayward brother Carey (Teddy Lee) for help. Flashbacks tell us that Carey's difficult relationship with his father explains, at least partially, why the young man remains shiftless and unemployed. At times, Carey pushes his father's bed -- with dad in it -- through the neighborhood, an act that's both amusing and hostile. Who does that to an unconscious man? Ms. Purple draws us into the multi-cultural environment of LA, sometimes using Mexican music in the background. Chon also introduces an under-developed Mexican-American character (Octavio Pizano). A guy who parks cars for a living, Pizano's character takes a liking to Kasie and invites her to his sister's quinceanera. Perhaps Chu wants to contrast a more rooted part of LA's diverse population with the more unsettled Korean enclave he depicts. Chon gets a lot out of his cast and he deglamorizes life among a segment of LA's Korean population. The story of second-generation alienation and exploitation can seem disjointed, but amid the chaos of Kasie’s life, Chon finds enough heartbreak to make his movie stick with you.

A documentary about Molly Ivins

Columnist Molly Ivins had a big career and a personality to match.

I didn’t know the late Molly Ivins personally, but I met her a couple of times, once in the newsroom of the Rocky Mountain News and once on a hilltop near Taos. At the time, Ivins was covering the West for The New York Times. As was often the case with journalists who landed regional assignments, Ivins occasionally dropped into the News to commandeer a desk, write and talk to reporters.

When Ivins was around the newsroom, you couldn’t miss her. She was big-boned, tall and imposing without being intimidating, what you might call a woman with a major personality.

In 1980, I attended an event called the D.H. Lawrence Festival. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime, irresistible cultural eruptions that any reporter would have killed to cover: An inharmonious blend of experts, celebrities and Lawrence enthusiasts who invaded Santa Fe for several days.

Academics delivered papers, poets read poems and those of us who were privileged to be there were exposed to a range of names that could wear-out a bold-faced font. From literary critic Leslie Fiedler to mega-star Elizabeth Taylor to poet Allen Ginsberg, it seemed everyone showed up. That's not to say that anyone really grasped exactly what the event signified -- other than a chance to mark the 50th anniversary of Lawrence's death and to remember the author in his adopted New Mexican setting.

Ivins, of course, was there, and, on a sunny afternoon, I found myself standing next to her at a ceremonial event that took place at the D.H. Lawrence ranch. It's all a bit fuzzy now, but I remember young women -- clad in white and portraying vestal virgins -- tossing flower petals to each side of a path as they approached the Lawrence Memorial chapel.

We were in the days before reporters traveled with computers. There was no tweeting or bleating taking place as events unfolded. We were expected to watch or, to put it in more high falutin' terms, to observe. In those days, writing kept a respectful distance from reporting until the point when deadlines intruded.

As the strange ceremony unfolded, Ivins — speaking in what I presume was an uncharacteristically low voice — began describing it. She offered a running account and she did it with style, grace, and an enviable amount of humor. I later came to think that she was writing her story out loud as this odd bit of theater unfolded. I'd bet she remembered it when she got back to a typewriter.

Although I can’t recall precisely what Ivins said, I knew I was watching a big-time talent reveal itself.

If you want to know what kind of woman Ivins was — and you should — you’d do well to spend some time with the documentary Raise Hell:: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins. Directed by Janice Engel, Raise Hell moves quickly, offering interviews with Ivins, as well as excerpts from public addresses she gave.

Fellow Texan Dan Rather adds a note of seriousness and other talking heads talk, helping to put Ivins’s personal and journalistic lives into context.

Watching Raising Hell, it's difficult not to wish that Ivins had lived well beyond 2007. She died of cancer at the age of 63, drastically depleting the national supply of irreverence that she sometimes served with a side order of bile.

For much of her life, Ivins was a hard-drinking, pickup-driving woman who, by not taking politicians seriously, managed to write seriously and engagingly about the political scene. Ivins famously referred to Geroge W. Bush — the younger and many would say "lesser" of the two Bush presidents — as “Shrub."

When she returned to Texas, she found her best subject. Ivins and the Texas legislature were made for each other, as were some of the state’s upper-echelon politicians. She was a whip-smart woman with a generous appreciation for elected officials who sometimes said and did things that were dumber than dirt.

She could spit in their eyes and get a chuckle out of them at the same time -- or so goes the mythology. Whether she left politicians laughing or not, Ivins remained an invaluable voice until the end of her life.

As I said, you had to take notice.

Jennifer Lopez dominates ‘Hustlers’

Flashy surfaces and energized performances keep this look at pole dancers on track — but it’s a narrow track.

Jennifer Lopez headlines Hustlers, an inside look at the world of pole dancers — in this case, pole dancers who scam Wall Street hotshots who wantonly spend money on booze, ego-indulgence and lap dances.

Director Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler) includes enough pole dancing and body exposure to keep the movie solidly in R-rated territory as she tells a story that revolves around the developing friendship between Lopez’s Romona and a fledgling dancer who goes by the name Destiny (Constance Wu).

Early on, Romona takes an eager-to-learn Destiny underwing, teaches her the rules of the pole, and offers to partner with her. When two women offer lap dances to drunken finance guys in the private rooms of clubs, the work proves more lucrative (and probably safer) than solo efforts.

Much of the movie consists of energetic sequences that gleefully chronicle the economic ascent of the two women. We also learn a little about each woman. Romona has a daughter. Destiny supports an aging grandmother who doesn’t offer much resistance when presented with thick wads of cash.

Mimicking the rush of a downed shot of vodka and buoyed by the abandon of the big-ticket shopping sprees in which the women indulge, Hustlers wastes no time getting down to business, drama on speed-dial. Written by Scafaria and inspired by a magazine article by Jessica Pressler, the screenplay races across a familiar dramatic arc.

In this case, the intoxications of the movie's early scenes receive sober comeuppance in 2008 when the market collapses. As stocks sink, so do the fortunes of the night clubs and strippers who have become part of the lower Manhattan scene.

After a few unsuccessful attempts to land day jobs, Romana and Destiny strike out on their own, pursuing an activity they call “fishing.”

They lure prosperous businessmen into nights of clubbing, drug their drinks with a combination of Ketamine and MDMA, and pretend to keep pace. The women then proceed to relieve the mark of his credit cards. Said cards get pushed to their limit. Romona and Destiny earn big bucks while ensuring that the clubs and any assistants receive their cuts.

It all seems too good to be true, crime with a safety net. These supposedly savvy sharks aren’t likely to admit they’ve been fleeced out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in their pursuit of a good time.

Lili Reinhart and Keke Palmer play strippers who join Romona and Destiny in their felonious enterprise. Neither character is especially well-developed but the movie gives them each comic moments. Reinhart's Annabelle, for example, tends to throw up under stress; i.e., at the worst possible moments.

I’m not sure that it adds much, but the movie employs a framing device. Destiny narrates the story as she’s being interviewed by a journalist (Julia Stiles) who plans to write a magazine article about how the women raked in money, did a fair amount of high living and ultimately got caught. The bond between them eventually eroded.

It’s worth noting that Hustlers adopts the women’s point of view in depicting men, nearly all of whom seem to be class-A jerks who deserve what they get. Many are married men who lord it over the lap dancers, often throwing money at them in a demeaning fashion. Hustlers is a movie about women -- not about the men who think they're entitled to exploit them.

I wasn’t looking at my watch, but my impression was that Wu receives more screen time than Lopez. If so, there's still no question that Lopez is the movie’s star. Her Romona exudes confidence and entrepreneurial savvy. When she teaches Destiny how to pole dance, you can tell that, no matter what anyone thinks, Romona controls her body. Smart enough to use her physicality to dominate any situation, Romona remains unscathed by her line of work. She's a force.

The women are motivated by a simple equation: Economic self-sufficiency equals freedom. So what if what they do is illegal? The whole country’s nothing more than a rigged game anyway. Why shouldn't they get their share?

Although deeply embedded in the fabric of the movie, this simplistically cynical ethos never seems entirely convincing. To paraphrase Romona: Some people have the money; others dance for it. Pole dancing as a metaphor for the way society works? I didn't buy it.

Full of flash and performance verve, Hustlers nonetheless remains a showcase for Lopez -- with entertaining cameo help from rappers Cardi B and Lizzo. I don't what it has to do with anything, but it seems worth noting: Cardi B's Bronx accent is thick enough to strip the pretension off just about anything.