Tag: review

Movie review: The Fabelmans

Director/co-writer Steven Spielberg

FabelmansI believe the film The Fabelmans is underrated. That may seem to be an odd conclusion, given the fact that it won the Golden Globe for Best Drama and director Steven Spielberg. Plus, it’s been nominated for seven Academy Awards.

It’s the commentaries, and I’ve read a few of them, that say, e.g., that “the ending is something of a foregone conclusion, as we all know what happened to Spielberg.” I think this is a banal observation, given the number of movies based on actual events for which the audience may know the outcome.

In any case, the protagonist is Sammy Fabelman (Gabrielle LaBelle), whose life is a fictionalized portrayal of Spielberg’s journey. It’s the journey that is interesting.

His mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), is a talented pianist without much chance to express it. Her artistic outlet was supporting Sammy’s desire to film everything, a passion that started after a family outing to a movie.

His dad, Burt (Paul Dano), a technological innovator, tolerates his son’s “hobby,” a term Sammy rails against.  Burt’s friend and colleague Bennie (Seth Rogan) is a like an uncle to the Fabelman kids.

Family

The movie worked for me because it shared some universal truths about family dynamics. Couples are complicated. Secrets are kept. For instance,  that uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch), who Mitzi’s mother warned Mitzi about from the grave, shows up.

Mostly, it’s about how, sometimes, an artist is compelled to do their art. Looking back at his growing up so late in his career may have given Spielberg the perspective a younger writer-director could not have mined as well.

Some critics thought it was overly sentimental. Sentimental, sure, but it also shows some family members as fish out of water, especially when the Fabelmans leave the relative comfort of Arizona for the foreign land that is California.

All the Oscar nominees are deserving. I was particularly taken by the not-nominated Paul Dano, whose Burt is walking a tightrope between being the left-brained breadwinner and trying to address his wife’s and son’s more right-brained passions.I’ve never favored the idea of a performance being ‘snubbed,” but some have used the term about his performance.

My wife and I saw the film at Albany’s Spectrum Theatre in mid-January.

Review: The Banshees of Inisherin

Nine Oscar noms

Banshees of InisherinAfter mulling it over for a few weeks, I’ve decided that  The Banshees of Inisherin is a COVID movie. I don’t mean this literally; it’s set in 1923 Ireland.

But there’s a specific isolation that the film, set on a small island, imbues.  Pádraic (Colin Farrell) is confounded when the musician Colm (Brendon Gleeson), without provocation, ends their friendship. Pádraic keeps wanting an explanation. Ultimately, there’s no profound reason for the fissure.

And Pádraic is a nice guy, as he reminds everyone in earshot, including his bright but underemployed sister Siobhán (Kerry Conlon), the troubled young Dominic (Barry Keoghan), an increasingly frustrated Colm, even Pádraic’s pet donkey (Jenny). All of the above actors, except Jenny, were nominated for Oscars, and understandably so.

WTOP film critic Jason Fraley wrote: “A beautifully bizarre tale of wistfulness that actually caused me to laugh out loud from its tragicomic tone. It certainly won’t be for everyone (I can’t quite put my finger on why…), but if you don’t absolutely hate it, you just might love it.”

My wife and I got into a conversation with the people sitting behind us at Albany’s Spectrum Theatre about the greater message in the film. Sometimes you do outgrow another person. And it got me thinking about who, between the former friends, is the wronged one.

I certainly didn’t hate the movie, which is listed as a comedy (comedy?) or a comedy-drama. The priest (David Pearse) in this remote locale WAS funny in his less-than-professional demeanor.

But the “solution” to the main conflict in the film is counterintuitive, let’s say. It’s certainly strange.

Academy Award noms

The Banshees of Inisherin was also nominated for Oscars in the categories of best picture,  original score (Carter Burwell), film editing (Mikkel E. G. Nielsen), original screenplay, director, and best picture (all Martin McDonagh, the latter with two others). It looks charming, and the score is enjoyable. It won some earlier awards. 

The movie may be, at 114 minutes – not that lengthy by current movie standards – too long for the story that’s being told. Still, it does show its craft. You may enjoy it more than I and possibly far more than my wife did.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

DreamWorks

Puss In Boots.The Last WishTrying to support the local cinema, my wife and I went to the Madison Theatre to watch Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. Once again, the film was NOT on the marquee but was listed online.

I had seen the first two Shrek movies, the second (2004) of which introduced our feline hero. But I had not watched the third Shrek film (2007) nor the first Puss In Boots (2011).

First, the new movie often looks marvelous. There’s an IMBd review that addresses this.  It “goes full Into the Spiderverse once a fight breaks out. Glorious 12 frames per second, hyper stylized with all the filters and gimmicks necessary to elevate the big set-pieces to something truly special and memorable.” This is different from what was used in previous films.

Second, the storyline works at one level for kids – and there were about a dozen of them during that week after Christmas – and quite another for the adults.

If you saw the trailer, you know the cat has only one of his nine lives left. But if he can find the Wishing Star…

First, Puss In Boots (voiced once again by the wonderful  Antonio Banderas) has to regain his mojo, helped by an unlikely cat, er, dog Perrito (Harvey Guillen). He also has to deal with rivals for the prize, including his old companion Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek).

More rivals

Others seeking the Wishing Star are Goldie (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears (Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone, Samson Kayo), and the amoral Jack Horner (John Mulaney). But the greatest threat to Puss is the Wolf (Wagner Moura) and what he represents.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is visually impressive but, more surprising, quite touching in dealing with mistakes and misunderstandings made in relationships. It’s no surprise that it was nominated for various awards and 96% of the  Rotten Tomatoes critics liked it.

It is my favorite 2022 movie so far.

Wakanda Forever non-review

Namor

wakanda foreverI saw the movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever back in November. Yet I didn’t review it because, in some ways, I found it almost unreviewable.

It was challenging to separate the death of T’Challa from the passing of the first film’s star, Chadwick Boseman. Even before the film was released, ABC-TV was plugging the stars, writers, and director on a primetime special, saying they were trying to make sure they honored the late actor. It succeeded at that.

Think Christian ran a spoiler-laden but touching piece,  Mourning Chadwick, Mourning T’Challa, back in November, which you should read unless you haven’t seen the film. Back in 2020, the publication ran Chadwick Boseman’s Sacrifice.

Also, there was a pre-review by Joshua Adams, who made a point of NOT reading any analyses of the new film. He commented that “some of the reactions towards the support of the first film left a bad taste in my mouth.” Specifically, “all the people (across the political spectrum) who implied or asserted that Black Panther was only popular because of black identity politics.” While I had not thought about it before,  I got that feeling too.

The other factor is that I went to see Wakanda Forever at the neighborhood Madison Theater. The marquee did not reflect that the film was even playing there. As a result, I was the ONLY person in the theater. I’m not much for private screenings because I like getting the audience’s reactions.

Namor

The one part of the film I will comment on is the introduction of Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía). He’s not exactly the villain, as he’s trying to protect his homeland. The emperor of Talokan, a hidden undersea kingdom, offers to fight with the Wakandans against the folks threatening both of their cultures.

The Mayan ancestry backstory worked for me. It was compelling and as logical as a narrative about a secret group of underwater humans could be.

They are not the blue people that Bill Everett drew in the 1940s  and again in the 1970s. I’m a huge fan of that Sub-Mariner published by Marvel and its predecessor. As I’ve noted, the comic book universe and Marvel Cinematic Universe are destined to be different, and I’m all right by that.

I read a reprinted column that the late Greg Hatcher wrote about Batman, where he counted eight different iterations, and that was just between 1964 and 2005.

Back to the film, maybe it was the lack of an audience in the cinema, but I started to find the fight scenes, which were well-choreographed, not so interesting, except for the one-on-one near the end. still, it was well done, and I’m glad I saw it.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever received decent reviews, 84% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s done over $446 million at the domestic box office.

Movie review: She Said

#MeToo

she saidIn late November, my wife and I saw the new movie She Said at the Landmark cinema Spectrum 8 in Albany. It’s about New York Times reporters Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), who broke the story that helped drive the #Metoo movement, especially as it applied to the Hollywood establishment.

It felt like real journalism, partly because of the shots inside and outside the Times offices. Among the big takeaways is that good journalism is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.

Finding the information and getting people to go on the record about sexual assaults by powerful people that took place years ago is difficult. When there are non-disclosure agreements involved, it’s even harder.

Add to this the reporters trying to have a semblance of a real life, with husbands and children – which felt genuine – and you also get the struggle of being working moms.

We liked it. The acting by the leads and by Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, and others was uniformly solid.

Compare and contrast

My issue is that it was a little too low-energy. I could not help but think about the film Spotlight. The stories are similar, the real-life story of a great northeastern newspaper – the Boston Globe –  taking on a powerful institution – the local Roman Catholic church – over abusing the less powerful.

Spotlight, though, was tenser.  In She Said, Harvey Weinstein offered threats of retaliation on the phone. But in Spotlight, it felt that if the reporters didn’t get it right, their investigative unit might have been dismantled, and the paper excoriated literally from the pulpits.  In Spotlight, the movie made me feel that a lot was at stake; She Said proclaimed it but was less successful in presenting it.

Still, I would recommend She Said. It ought to be seen. It did a terrible box office, despite decent reviews. There were fewer than a dozen people at our Thursday matinee, two men and the rest, women.

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