Adam Sandler’s career arc is wide and weird. Rotten Tomatoes lists dozens of films, ranging from the wacky “The Ridiculous 6,” which earned a 0% approval rating, to the dramedy “Hustle” that clocks in at a healthy 93%. In between is a wildly diverse collection of movies that vacillate from beloved comedy classics like the goofy “Happy Gilmore” to the Oscar nominated “Uncut Gems.”
His latest, “Spaceman,” now streaming on Netflix, is something new, an outer space marital drama featuring the comedian as a Czech astronaut on a mission to Jupiter, who receives personal advice from an extraterrestrial six-eyed hairy spider, voiced by Paul Dano.
In space, nobody can hear you scream… but a giant spider can read your mind.
Based on Jaroslav Kalfař’s novel “Spaceman Of Bohemia,” the story revolves around Commander Jakub Procházka (Sandler), a withdrawn astronaut on a solo six-month mission to the fifth planet from the Sun. During a live press conference from space, organized by Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini), a child asks him, “Are you the loneliest man in the world?”
He may well be.
He hasn’t had a message from his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) in a long time. Unbeknownst to him, she has tired of being alone and sent him a Dear John transmission, which was suppressed by Tuma. “He’s not doing well,” Tuma says, fearing for Jakub’s mental health. “He misses his wife.”
Left adrift in space, alone and cut off from Lenka, Jakub receives relationship guidance from a large, chatty spider who says, “Your loneliness intrigued me. I wish to assist you in your emotional distress.” Whether the celestial spider is real, or a figment of Jakub’s fevered imagination, their conversations are therapeutic, forcing him to reassess his life and relationships.
“Spaceman” doesn’t play any of this for laughs. It is a low-key but high-minded film about a psychoanalytic spider, longing, loss and love. Set against the backdrop of a space mission, it examines the personal reasons why Jakub would leave behind the love of his life for the isolation of space.
“Billy Madison” this ain’t.
In a quiet, heartfelt performance, Sandler plays Jakub as a flawed man, deadened by emotional distress. It is sombre work, with whispered dialogue, longing looks and loads of introspection. He pulls it off, playing off of the goodwill earned from many years of making us laugh, to create a character we have instant empathy for. It’s another notch on his serious actor belt, even if it veers toward dreary for much of the film’s runtime.
Dano brings a whispery HAL 9000 vibe to the wise alien tarantula. He’s an eight-legged psychiatrist; a strange looking companion who knows how to ask the right questions to fire Jakub’s memories. Although the spider looks like something that may have escaped the set of “H.R. Pufnstuf,” Dano gives him real empathy.
As the earthbound Lenka, Mulligan isn’t given that much to do, but effectively displays her character’s deeply rooted, but conflicted, sadness.
As outer-space dramas go, “Spaceman” has more in common with “Solaris” than it does “Star Wars.” It is a slow-moving movie, with very little action—although a broken, on-board toilet threatens to pierce through the movie’s lugubrious tone—that is more concerned with the human condition; Jakub’s childhood trauma, his fear at impending fatherhood, his deep emotional scars.
Director Johan “Chernobyl” Renck does provide moments of great beauty and compassion, but the film’s listless pacing blunts the effectiveness of Jakub’s emotional journey.
Depending on what generation you belong to, Leonard Bernstein is either a name from the distant past, a prodigiously talented musician who wrote the music for “West Side Story,” or the subject of a well-loved name drop in the 1987 R.E.M. song “It’s The End of The World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” “Maestro,” a new film written, directed, produced and starring Bradley Cooper, aims to remind audiences of the complicated man who said, “music, it keeps me glued to life.”
The story of gender roles and genius begins in 1943 with Bernstein’s (Cooper) career making debut as a conductor at Carnegie Hall, filling in for an ailing colleague with only an hour’s notice and no rehearsal. The day before he was a talented but struggling musician, living in a cramped apartment with boyfriend David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer). The next day a star is born. He is the toast of New York, lauded on the front page of the New York Times.
At a party he meets Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), a Chilean actress with dreams of starring on Broadway. It’s love at first sight and Cooper stages their first night together as a romantic fantasy, a ballet in a theatre that is both beautiful and surreal as it morphs from stage bound to involving Lenny and Felicia.
The couple marry, and have three children, Jamie (Maya Hawke), Alexander (Sam Nivola) and Nina (Alexa Swinton), as Felicia turns a blind eye to her husband’s extramarital relationships with men. “One can be as free as one likes without guilt or confession,” she says to him. “Please, I know exactly who you are.”
She is his muse, a catalyst for his best work, who pushes him to perform with passion but his lack of discretion eventually takes its toll. The couple split, but when she is diagnosed with cancer, he returns to care for her in her final days.
“Maestro” is a tenderhearted tragedy, a movie about a complicated marriage and the push and pull between Leonard Bernstein public and private lives. It is not a cradle to grave portrait of the title character. Instead, it’s an ambitious film that disregards most of the usual biopic conventions to delve into Bernstein’s sexuality, creative genius and his marriage to Felicia, brilliantly played by Mulligan.
Bernstein may be the focus, but the contradictions of his life are best viewed through the lens of his relationship with his wife. With a sexual appetite that rivalled his passion for music, Bernstein is a compelling character, and wonderfully played in a career best performance by Cooper.
Any trace of his “Hangover” persona disappears behind an inch of make-up but this isn’t a performance made from cosmetic prosthetics. Cooper digs deep to get into the nooks and crannies of Bernstein’s life, from his playfulness—“I’ve slept with both your parents,” he jokes when he bumps into Oppenheim, wife and baby in Central Park—to his musical passions, to his warmth and self-absorption.
The performance’s pinnacle comes with a vigorous recreation of Bernstein conducting Mahler’s Second Symphony in London at the Ely Cathedral in 1976. The nearly six-minute sequence is a powerhouse of performance—Cooper reportedly spent six years learning Bernstein’s moves and conducts a live orchestra on screen—that captures the passion that fuels the character. It is the kind of work that wins awards.
As dynamic as Cooper is, it is Mulligan’s delicate work as Felicia that steals the show. She is a pillar of resilience and gracefulness, as composed as Bernstein is mercurial. Her final moments in the film (NO SPOILERS HERE) are quiet and reserved but devastating. It’s a radiant performance in an already impressive body of work.
When Cooper and Mulligan share the screen their effortless chemistry and the way they look at one another tells us as much about their lives and how they moved through the world as the script. Their dynamics and wonderful performances are invigorating in their portrayal of a creative life, marred and fuelled in equal measure by self-destructive behaviour and fervidness.
“Maestro” avoids most, but not all, of the usual biopic cliches.
It occasionally goes too heavy on expository dialogue to move the story along, is linear in its construction and a scene in which Felicia plunges into a pool, sitting on the bottom to escape trouble at home, is a film staple, but Mulligan, to her credit, makes it work. And while the film doesn’t shy away from Bernstein’s same sex liaisons, it is fairly chaste in the depiction of that aspect of his life.
Still, this is a stylish, passionate movie with just enough depth to both warm and break the heart.
“She Said,” a new film about the New York Times reporters Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and their Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of the sexual misconduct perpetrated by Harvey Weinstein, breathes the same air as other newsroom procedurals like “The Post” and “Spotlight.”
Based on the 2019 book by Twohey and Kantor, the movie begins with Twohey’s investigations into sexual assault allegations against presidential candidate Donald Trump and FOX TV commentator Bill O’Reilly. The success of those stories, which cost O’Reilly his lucrative television gig, led to a further investigation of abuse and institutional misogyny in the film business, specifically involving film producer Weinstein.
Working in tandem with Kantor, Twohey begins sorting through sexual abuse claims from Hollywood actresses like Rose McGowan (voice of Kelly McQuail) and Ashley Judd (as herself).
“If that can happen to Hollywood actresses,” Twohey says, “who else is it happening to?”
“She Said” follows their month’s long investigation, from the unwillingness of victims to go on the record for fear of repercussions and legal maneuvering to death threats and harassment.
“You have to imagine that every call you make is being recorded and you’re being followed,” warns New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet (Andre Braugher).
The story behind the story that rocked Hollywood is a boots-on-the-ground journalism movie. Director Maria Schrader and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz walk us through the uncovering of information, the dead-ends, the back-and-forth with reluctant sources in a slow-and-steady fashion. It’s a detailed portrait of the daily grind journalists go through to ensure accuracy and fairness.
Unfortunately, because this #MeToo story lived at the very center of popular discourse at the time and beyond, “She Said’s” efforts to document the making of the story contain very few surprises.
On an emotional level, however, the recollections of Weinstein’s victims, former assistant Zelda Perkins (Samantha Morton) and Rowena Chiu (Angela Yeoh), are as devastating as former Weinstein Co. Board Member Lance Maerov’s (Sean Cullen) comment—”Are you sure that this isn’t just young women who want to sleep with a movie producer to get ahead?” is maddening.
Schrader never sensationalizes “She Said,” but her retelling of the victimization of the powerless and Weinstein’s criminal behaviour is buoyed by some interesting choices, including using real audio of model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez and Weinstein as he tries to coerce her into joining him in his hotel suite. As the camera floats down a fancy hotel hallway, Schrader allows the tape to play to skin crawling effect. It is that level of detail and raw storytelling that captures the true horror of the case against Weinstein.
Like the archeological excavation that lies at the center of “The Dig,” a new drama starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes and now streaming on Netflix, the movie is slow and steady but reveals much if you’re patient.
Based on the 1939 unearthing of a ship burial site containing a bounty of Anglo-Saxon artefacts in Sutton Hoo, near Suffolk, England, “The Dig” stars Mulligan as Edith Pretty, a wealthy widow who hires amateur archeologist Basil Brown (Fiennes) to excavate ancient burial mounds on her property. Auto-didact Brown’s discovery of a treasure trove of priceless artefacts attracts the attention of the toffs at the British Museum, who insist on taking control of the dig. As World War II looms and Pretty’s health worsens, the job takes on a personal and professional urgency.
Unsurprisingly, “The Dig” spends a great deal of time at the excavation but, as the riches of the job reveal themselves, the interpersonal dynamics of the characters take center stage.
As the salt-of-the-earth Mr. Brown, Fiennes is a stoic figure who provides much of the film’s heart and soul. Early on, in an effective but clumsy metaphor, he is revealed to be the film’s real treasure after he is accidentally buried, swallowed up by the dig, and unearthed by his frantic co-workers. His presence is the film’s catalyst for a study of class and of respect born of hard work and study. He even becomes a father figure for Pretty’s son Robert (Archie Barnes). Fiennes plays him with an appealing mix of decency and stubbornness.
Mulligan’s chaste, but deeply felt relationship with Mr. Brown, is nicely played but as the ensemble cast grows to include the British Museum folks, the snobby Charles Phillips (Ken Stott), John Brailsford (Eamon Farren), Stuart Piggott (Ben Chaplin) and his young wife Peggy (Lily James) and Pretty’s cousin Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn), she takes a backseat as an illicit romance blossoms. She is, predictably, very good, but as her health declines so does her dominance of the story.
“The Dig” confronts big issues but maintains an intimate feel. It’s not a story of archeology, although James is shown lovingly dusting dirt encrusted artefacts. The portrayal of class and impending war never overshadow the more relatable topics of legacy and teamwork. It’s a quiet movie, one filled with longing looks where much is left unsaid, but nothing is ambiguous.
It would be easy to suggest that “Promising Young Woman,” a new drama starring Carey Mulligan, is simply a “Falling Down” for the #MeToo era but it is much more than that. It has elements of that but it is also an audacious look at rape culture and male privilege that weaves dark humour and revenge into the ragged fabric of its story.
It’s difficult to talk about “Promising Young Woman” without being spoilerific but here goes: Mulligan is Cassandra, a thirty-year-old drop out from medical school. She lives at home with her parents (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge), works at a coffee shop with her best, and only friend, Gail (Laverene Cox). “If I wanted a house, a career, a yoga class and a boyfriend my mom could brag about I’d do it,” she says. “In ten minutes. But I don’t want it.”
At night she hits the clubs, pretending to be intoxicated, waiting for men to approach her. Just when they think she is at her most vulnerable, she “comes to.” “What is this?” says one of the “nice guys” who tries to take advantage of her. “Are you some kind of psycho? I thought you were…” “Drunk?” she says, finishing his sentence.
At home she has a notebook, filled a list of the men she has encountered and the several names in store for a “day of reckoning.”
There’s more but one of the pleasures of “Promising Young Woman” is in its ability to surprise and shock with the story’s twists and turns. There is a lot in play here. The action here is fueled by Cassie’s trauma but writer-director Emerald Fennell keeps the action off kilter with the introduction of dark satire, revenge, an exploration of toxic masculinity and even some rom com-esque scenes. The culmination of all these disparate components is a film with a strange tone but a clear-cut point of view. It’s social commentary as art and it works.
Mulligan appears in virtually every frame, navigating the story’s left turns and holding its centre no matter what is thrown at her. The sense of loss that drives her is always present—she even wears a broken heart pendent—even when she is in control, steely-eyed and ready to rumble.
“Promising Young Woman” is occasionally rough around the edges structurally but despite its flaws is compelling and surprising.
Paul Dano needs no introduction as an actor. In front of the camera the Golden Globe nominee has impressed with powerful performances in films like “There Will Be Blood,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Love & Mercy.” He brings a similar quiet intensity to his directorial debut, “Wildlife,” a dysfunctional family drama adapted from Richard Ford’s disquieting 1990 novel of the same name.
Set in 1960s Montana, the story focuses on the frustrated Jeanette Brinson (Carey Mulligan), alcoholic husband, Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal), and 14-year-old son Joe (Ed Oxenbould). When Jerry gets fired from his golf pro country club gig he’s forced to take a job fighting wildfires, a dangerous occupation that only pays $1 an hour. With her husband gone most of the time Jeanette wanders, beginning an affair with car dealership owner Warren Miller (Bill Camp). “You’re mother is a very passionate dancer,” says Miller. “Did you know that Joe?” With his parents occupied Joe becomes a de facto parent to them both, struggling to keep them together as their relationship hits the rocks.
Dano, who co-wrote “Wildlife” with actress and significant other Zoe Kazan, provides an elegant showcase for Mulligan’s soul-searching performance. The story of this quickly unraveling family is meted out slowly, deliberately low key, in an effort to allow the audience to get under the skin of the three main characters. Bonded by blood and marriage they struggle with unity in an era of change.
At the heart of it is Mulligan. As an Eisenhower Era wife and mother she projects an aura of calm but is actually a churning vessel of emotions; a person clamouring for more. The cracks in her Norman Rockwell façade are beginning to show. “Do you like Mr. Miller?” asks Joe. “Not very much,” she replies. “Things do happen around him though. He has that feel about him.” Mulligan breathes life into Jeanette, subtly and believably portraying a woman coming of age.
Oxenbould as Joe, the son forced to become both protector and confidant to his mother—“This is my desperation dress,” she says to him, modelling a revealing frock—is also very good, effectively showing us the dissolution of his parent’s bond through his eyes. His character doesn’t grow, he is an observer, a conduit for the audience’s sympathy.
Despite the title “Wildlife” doesn’t exactly kick up its heels. It’s a chilly tale with a few unnecessary detours—like Joe’s after school job and his friendship with a female classmate—but its story of survival hits home.
There’s a noise I hear in my head when I’m watching dryly-presented historical dramas. It’s a faint scratching sound that always reminds me of sitting in Mr. Parkers history class, listing to him write thousands of words on the chalkboard before saying, “Copy this into your scribblers and read chapter 3 by tomorrow.” I was reminded of the sound during a recent screening of the new Carey Mulligan film “Suffragette.”
Set in 1912 London, the movie stars Mulligan as Maud Watts, a young wife, mother and laundry worker. It’s a tough life for the twenty-eight year old, who has worked at the laundry since she was a little girl. Long hours leave little time for her family, husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) and son George (Adam Michael Dodd), but they are a loving trio, at least until she meets Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff), a disciple of Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep), Britain’s leading suffragette.
In 1912 women were considered to not “have the temperament or the balance of mind” to take part in the political affairs. Following years of peaceful protest for equal rights the suffragettes begin a campaign of civil disobedience.
“You want to respect the law?” says Violet Miller. “Then make the law respectable!”
Maud becomes involved with the cause, helping Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter) blow up a Member of Parliament’s house and winding up in jail. Prison time was a badge of honour for the suffragettes, but Sonny wants nothing to do with it and soon Maud is separated from her family. With no legal recourse to get custody of her son she throws herself into the movement, fighting to get the vote and rights for women.
For a movie about rebellion “Suffragette” contains very little rebellious spirit. It’s a straightforward retelling of the story, a piece of history right out of Mr. Parker’s class. The only thing missing is the sound of Mr. Parker writing it out on the chalkboard.
It is a well-intentioned retelling of an important and still timely story but director Sarah Gavron leans too heavily on the kitchen sink drama—and a dull visual palette of beiges and reddish browns—for the broader story of the fight for women’s rights to have the impact it deserves.
“It’s deeds not words that will get us the vote,” and Gavron shows us the deeds—including the infamous mailbox bombings and a truly hard to watch prison force-feeding—but by the time the end credits roll there are story threads dangling all over the place and while we’re left impressed by the performances, the story telling itself is less impressive.
“Far From the Madding Crowd” isn’t a Masterpiece Theatre style remounting of the 1874 Thomas Hardy novel. Instead it’s vibrant soap opera, complete with love triangles, pregnancy, suicide, love sick neighbours, crimes of passion, more marriage proposals than you can shake a chaff fork at, missed opportunities, bad decisions, broken hearts and petticoats.
Carey Mulligan is Bathsheba Everdene, the headstrong and beautiful mistress of a sprawling farm inherited from her uncle. She’s independent—“I have no need for a husband,” she says.—but also an irresistible man magnet, beating off marriage proposals like Neo in a roomful of Agent Smiths. Suitors include manly sheep farmer (and aptly named) Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), high-strung middle-aged landowner William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) and a dandy in a Scarlet uniform, Sergeant Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge) who uses swordplay as foreplay.
Through reversals of fortune and chance encounters Bathsheba perseveres, making her way through the world, the very embodiment of resilience and grace.
Director Thomas Vinterberg breathes new life into the story by preserving the classic themes of the novel on marriage, class and gender while not being precious about it. The film’s pacing is as bucolic as the rural English countryside setting, but the movie feels very contemporary in its approach. It’s a rom com, without much com. There’s even the 19th century equivalent of the romantic movie staple, the Run to the Airport to Declare Undying Love.
Vinterberg takes advantage of the setting, using nature to guide the lives of the farmers—each changing season brings new developments in Bathsheba’s life—and human nature to explore the relationships that make up the tale’s love triangle. It’s mannered but clever, lively direction that values the location—it was shot on location in Dorset, the novel’s setting—and text while focussing on the themes that make a one-hundred-and-forty year old story seem fresh and universal in appeal.
Mulligan and Schoenaerts generate heat in their chaste scenes, slowly building their relationship through mutual respect. He is stoic, she is grounded but wistful.
“It is my intention to astonish you all,” Bathsheba says to her collected staff, and once again Mulligan does impress with a performance that digs deep to deliver a nuanced but soulful take on the shrewd character.
“Far From the Madding Crowd” is an abbreviated retelling of the story. The last version, from director John Schlesinger and star Julie Christie, was one hour longer but Vinterberg brings a luminous energy and modern feel to an old tale.
More a character study than a traditional narrative, “Inside Llewyn Davis” lives up to its name by painting a vivid portrait of its main character. Once you get inside Llewyn’s head you probably won’t want to hang out with the guy in real life, but you won’t regret spending two hours with him onscreen.
Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is an ambitious folksinger trying to make his voice heard in the center of the folk universe, 1961 Greenwich Village. Essentially homeless, he sofa surfs, imposing himself on an ever dwindling list of friends as he tries to deal with a cold New York winter, a shady record company, a wayward cat, a soured relationship and his career frustrations. Add to that the haunting memory of a former musical partner and you have an abstract parable about artistic temperament and the quest for success.
“Inside Llewyn Davis” opens with a song, the folk standard “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.” Performed in its entirety, it telegraphs that the music won’t be relegated to the background; that it will be telling part of the story.
Onstage we see Llewyn at his best. He’s an angel-voiced troubadour whose passionate performances contain the intensity with which he lives his off stage life. Oscar Isaac, in his first leading role after smaller parts in “Sucker Punch,” “Drive” and “W.E.,” has a built-in broodiness that services the character well. He’s a sullen guy, always borrowing money or asking a favor without offering much in return except his talent. It’s a carefully crafted but subtle portrait of the rocky terrain between brilliance and the rest of society.
The loose nature of the story allows for many cameos. People drift through Llewyn’s life like Jean (Carey Mulligan), a foul-mouthed folk singer with a sweet voice and her naïve partner Jim (Justin Timberlake). Mulligan is fiery; an embittered woman angry with Llewyn for very personal reason. Timberlake redeems himself for “Runner Runner” with a nice extended cameo as a wide-eyed folksinger who isn’t as talented as Llewyn but is destined to be more successful.
Garrett Hedlund appears as a monosyllabic beat poet to good effect, but it is John Goodman who wins the cameo showdown. As a jaded jazz player Roland Turner—who sneeringly pronounces ukulele as “ookelele”—he’s as vile a character as has ever appeared in a Coen Bros movie, (which is really saying something). Goodman seems to relish wallowing in the toad-like character’s most unsavory aspects and I suspect audiences will too.
“Inside Llewyn Davis” is a fictional look at the vibrant Greenwich Village folk scene. Imagine the cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” come to life. Sharp-eyed folkies will note not-so-coincidental similarities between the people Llewyn meets and real-life types like Tom Paxton, Alert Grossman and Mary Travers, but this isn’t a history, it’s a feel. It gives us an under-the-covers look at struggles and naked ambition it takes to get noticed.
