There is a certain kind of British feel-good movie that, while predictable, still packs an emotional punch. Movies like “The Full Monty” and “Calendar Girls” are underdog tales, filled with colorful characters and improbable situations, yet, somehow, they rate a fist pump in the air by the time the end credits roll.
“Military Wives,” starring Kristin Scott Thomas and coming this week to VOD, is cut from that same cloth. A story of resilience tempered with large dollops of sentimentality, it’s a heartwarming drama about the healing powers of friendship and music.
Based on the BBC docu-series “The Choir,” the film is set at a small military base outside London. The year is 2011 and Kate (Thomas) has just said goodbye to her husband (Greg Wise) as he left for Afghanistan for the fifth time. It’s more poignant goodbye than usual as it is the first deployment since the death of their son, a soldier who perished while in service.
Meanwhile, Lisa (Sharon Horgan) the base’s welfare officer, in charge of coming up with ways to keep the wives and partners of the soldiers occupied and entertained. At one meeting, however, Kate takes over. “Let’s come up with some exciting activities to do while our service people are away.” The idea of forming a choir is raised and implemented, which only amplifies the differences between the laidback Lisa and hard-driving Kate. “This reminds me of when my parents got divorced,” says one choir member as Lisa and Kate passive-aggressively jab at one another in rehearsal.
The early practices do not yield musical result. They sound “like the incantations of a bunch of witches,” says Lisa, but with time a bond forms between the members, both personally and musically. These women, who live in fear of a bad-news phone call or knock at the door, find strength together and when tragedy strikes the choir becomes more important than ever. “You may not need the choir Lisa,” Kate says, “but those women do.”
Nothing in “Military Wives” will come as a surprise. Beat for beat it echoes the ups-and-downs of “The Full Monty’s” moments of triumph and tragedy. Peter Cattaneo directed both, and while it feels a bit been there, done that, I’d add, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Predictability is “Military Wives’” biggest sin. But the familiarity is blunted by the performances—Thomas expertly portrays the bubbling anger and heartbreak hidden behind Kate’s smiling façade—inspirational messages of comradery and the way it portrays the women’s strength in the face of grief and loss.
Like the offspring of Jane Austen’s original text and “Clueless,” the 1995 American coming-of-age teen comedy it inspired, the new version of “Emma,” now on VOD, is a period piece with a modern sensibility.
Anya Taylor-Joy is the title character, a young woman of high birth. As the opening credits say, she is “handsome, clever and rich and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” She lives in a large manner house with servants and her father (Bill Nighy), a dour gent who constantly feels a draft. Next door is the wealthy and handsome George Knightley (Johnny Flynn), a landowner who is almost like a brother to Emma.
When she isn’t painting portraits of her friends Emma meddles in the life of her naïve protégé Harriet (Mia Goth). Harriet loves a local farmer, but Emma, hoping the young woman will marry up, pushes her toward the town vicar (Josh O’Connor). Romantic complications and status problems arise when the impossibly wealthy Frank Churchhill (Callum Turner), who catches Emma’s eye, and the poor but beautiful Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson) return to town at the same time.
At the heart of every scene is Taylor-Joy. As Emma she is whip smart, arrogant, devious and charismatic even when she’s being unpleasant. Her journey toward self-awareness is an eventful one, speckled with manipulation, some kindness and casual cruelty. One of the film’s best scenes involves an offhand remark that deeply cuts a down-on-her-luck acquaintance (Miranda Hart). In this one scene Emma’s entire attitude toward class is laid bare. She can be cruel and unthinking because the subject of her insult is not of the same social strata. Taylor-Joy brings the mix of sophistication and brattiness necessary to understand why Emma is the way she is. She has lived a life with no fear of social reprisal but will not be able to move ahead until she learns about sensitivity. It’s in there, all Emma has to do is find it.
Every frame of “Emma” is sumptuous, like “Downton Abbey” on steroids, but this isn’t “Masterpiece Theatre.” It brims with life and mischievousness, becoming more alive as Emma inches toward adulthood.
Director Autumn de Wilde has assembled a top flight cast of character actors to decorate the already beautiful scenery. Nighy literally leaps into frame, delivering a deadpan performance tempered with some good physical humour. Hart is both annoying and vulnerable before her character’s circumstance takes a heartbreaking turn. The supporting cast isn’t always given much to do but each, particularly Goth as a young woman who wears her emotions on her sleeve, help us understand the mosaic of Emma’s life.
“Emma” is a tad too long as the mixed messages and missed connections build up, and the story’s inherent rom com format—there’s even a running to the airport, or in this case a carriage, scene—seems familiar, but retains the wit that has made the story a classic.
“Marriage Story” is not a first date movie. It is a three hankie, emotionally fraught movie about appealing but damaged people whose divorce is filled with a sense of loss and a growing shroud of incivility.
Adam Driver is Charlie, a hotshot avant-garde theatre director living and working in Brooklyn, New York with his wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson). She is a former movie star with a list of teen comedies to her credit. They met at a party, instantly fell in love, had son Henry (Azhy Robertson) all was well until it wasn’t. Charlie may have slept with a stage manager but it’s Nicole’s growing dissatisfaction that widen the chasm between them. “I never really came alive for myself,” she says. “I was only feeding his aliveness.”
What begins as a simple conscious uncoupling becomes complicated when Nicole accepts a starring role on a television series based in Los Angeles, taking Henry to live with her. The family, stretched between two coasts and two careers, wears thin and soon the pressures of the split take their toll. “It’s not as simple as not being in love anymore,” says Nicole.
On my way into the press screening for “Marriage Story” a publicist handed me a small package of Kleenex branded with the movie’s logo. “I won’t need these,” I thought. “I’m a professional, here to dispassionately judge this film on its merits. I made it through ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ like a dry-eyed superman and if I can do that, I can do anything.” I’m not too proud to tell you that I was glad I had the Kleenexes. “Marriage Story” is so agonizingly vivid, so without melodrama, that I felt at times as though I was a voyeur, that I shouldn’t be watching some of these emotionally charged scenes. As Charlie and Nicole drift apart and lawyers, like the ruthless Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern in full beast mode), become involved the idea that they might have a chance of staying friends once this is all said and done becomes heartbreakingly remote.
Driver and Johansson convincingly play the bond that made them a couple and as it unravels both reveal the fatal flaws that drove a wedge between them. The two actors, unshackled from the constraints of the blockbusters that pay for their Italian castle retreats, dig deep, wallowing in their character’s self-absorption and anger.
Johansson, in full monologue mode, thrills in a lengthy speech detailing her state of mind. And do not even get me started by Driver’s final scene with his son as he reads a long-forgotten note. (NO SPOILERS HERE) Director Noah Baumbach keeps those scenes—and the entire movie for that matter—uncluttered. Simple and direct, he allows the actors to do the heavy lifting with naturalistic performances and both pack a wallop.
“Marriage Story” may not be a great choice for a first date but the emotional, sincere truth Baumbach and cast wring out of the material is best seen with a companion, or at the very least a package of Kleenex.
“Sometimes Always Never,” a new dramedy starring Bill Nighy and Sam Riley, applies a light touch to some heavy topics.
Adapted from Frank Cottrell Boyce’s short story Triple Word Score, the film sees Nighy play Alan, a widowed tailor with a fractured family. He has a strained relationship with his ice cream van painter son Peter (Riley) stemming from an incident decades before when his son Michael disappeared after an argument over a game of Scrabble. Alan is still a Scrabble fanatic—he’s a walking dictionary of obscure, high-scoring words like scopone and muzhik—but these days he mostly plays on-line. It’s there he comes across a competitor whose word choice and style of play reminds him of his AWOL son. Could it be Michael? “The only thing I am scared of is ding before I sort this thing out,” he says.
There’s more. Alan cheats a couple out of £200 bending the rules to his favor, and hips his grandson to the joys of Scrabble over first-person-shooter games but the heart of the movie has little to do with the word game. It’s a father and son story about a tormented man who is a master of words but could never find the right thing to say to either of his sons.
“Sometimes Always Never” plays on director Carl Hunter’s background in graphic design—he has designed record sleeves for The Clash and his own band The Farm—to create the movie’s stylized, quirky look. Visual echoes of Aki Kaurismaki and Wes Anderson resonate throughout, lending a kind of magic realism to a story that is grounded in basic humanity—a search for the missing piece of the family’s puzzle.
This is another of Nighy’s gently eccentric characters, a man touched with sadness but hopeful enough to pursue an answer to the mystery that has plagued him for years. Nighy is always immensely watchable but here he brings an easy, elegant charm to Alan despite the character’s emotional handicap.
“Sometimes Always Never” is a small film about big topics that balances an overarching feel of sorrow with heavy doses of whimsy. Eloquent both visually and emotionally, it speaks volumes about heartbreak even when the characters can’t quite find the words to do so themselves.
If they gave out Oscars for pole dancing the release of “Hustlers” would place Jennifer Lopez one step closer to completing her EGOT collection.
“Jenny from the Block” plays Ramona Vega, centerfold turned superstar stripper. It’s the 2000s and the dancers at New York’s Sin City Café are lap-dancing all the way to the bank. “2007 was the best,” says Destiny (Constance Wu). “I made more money than a brain surgeon.” Ramona has taught Destiny the craft of separating the Wall Street bros who frequent their club from their money. She teaches the neophyte fancy pole moves like the “fairy sit” and “fireman spin,” and the nuances of customer service. “Get them a single, a double, then a triple and then a single,” she says. “You want them drunk enough to get their credit card but sober enough to sign the check.”
They follow the “green brick road” until September 29, 2008. Wall Street is gutted by a stock market crash, putting a stop to open-ended expense accounts and the dolla bills that showered the women as they danced. “It’s the end of an era in American business,” says Brian Williams on the news, and the end of way of life for Destiny, Ramona and friends.
Overnight everything changes. The business turns from glamourous to grimy. “The guys don’t want to spend the dollars,” says the dancer’s den mother (Mercedes Ruehl), “the girls don’t want to share tips in management took the cameras out of the champagne rooms.” With lap dances no longer enough to make money Ramona comes up with a new way of separating the Wall Street guys from their cash. “We can’t dance forever. We have to think like them. Nobody gets hurt.” A mix of sex appeal, flattery and knock-out drugs, it’s not exactly legal but they have no sympathy for the businessmen who they say robbed the country but didn’t get any jail time. “I know it sounds bad that we were drugging people,” Destiny says, “but in our world it was normal.” New recruits to their booming business bring trouble and soon it’s not the stock market crashing but police, crashing through their apartment doors.
Based on a true story and inspired by the New York Magazine article “The Hustlers at Scores” by Jessica Pressler, the movie’s narrative spine is an interview between a journalist (played by Julia Stiles subbing in for Pressler) and Destiny, giving the movie an as-told-told vibe.
The result is a fleet-footed dramedy that captures the heady, high-heeled days at the club when the money flowed like water and it was all giddy good times for the dancers. An early scene puts you in the mind of an R-rated snowglobe as J-Lo swings around a pole, dollar bills filling the air around her. Like the time it evokes, it’s over-the-top but easily upped by the next sequence which finds Ramona finding a quiet moment on a New York City rooftop. As the lights of the city twinkle behind her she is in repose, smoking a cigarette, a fluffy fur coat barely concealing her stage costume. Like some kind of Venus on the Half-Shell by way of 42nd Street she embodies the decadence of the time.
In the first part of the film the camp is amped. By the time Usher shows up, strutting into the club with the cool factor of Sinatra in his prime, a fistful of Benjamins in hand, the picture of the wild ‘n woolly era is complete. Director Lorene Scafaria then gear shifts, adding in the sense of desperation that comes when the money dries up. The movie shifts gears, becoming more of a caper flick as Ramona and pals go fishing for Wall Street sharks.
At the core of the story is the sisterhood between Ramona and Destiny. It’s a mother, mentor pairing that sees the two women bond on a level that transcends simply being business partners. “We are the untouchables,” says Ramona, “like Kobe and Shaq.” They become intricately involved in one another’s lives, which makes the sting of the coming events even more complicated. Lopez and Wu have spark together onscreen, bringing some heart to a story of people who trolled the dark side for a living.
“Hustlers” is a glitzy caper about money, friendship, and revenge against the bankers who went unpunished after a financial crisis brought the country and the dancers at the Sin City Café to their knees. “Everybody is hustling,” says Ramona. “This city, this whole country is a strip club. You’ve got people tossing the money and people dancing.”
Set in the American South, the new Shia LeBeouf film, “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” is an odd couple flick that plays like an updated “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Zack Gottsagen, a first actor with Down syndrome, plays Zac, a 22-year-old abandoned by his family, now living at a nursing home for the elderly. “The state has to put you somewhere and this happens to be that place,” he’s told.
When he isn’t socializing with volunteer Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) and the older residents, he spends his time watching wrestling old VHS’s of his hero, “The Saltwater Redneck” (Thomas Haden Church) with dreams of attending Saltwater’s Florida wrestling school dancing in his head.
Eventually he makes a break for it, with the help of his roommate, a retired engineer named Carl (Bruce Dern), who sends him on his way in dressed only in his underwear, with no money.
Zak sprints away, rushing toward his dream of becoming a pro-wrestler. Tired and looking for a place to sleep he hides under a tarp on a boat owned by Tyler (LaBeouf), a tidewater fisherman who has fallen on hard times. On the lam from the law and a very angry crab-trapper (John Hawkes), Tyler first tries to rid himself of his stowaway but soon grows fond of him, taking him on an adventure that reunites him with Eleanor and brings him closer to fulfilling his dream.
“The Peanut Butter Falcon” (that’s the name of Zac’s wrestling alter-ego) is a gentle film, ripe with human connection. LeBeouf’s Taylor takes a minute to warm to Zac but turns into an older brother character whose empathy is rivalled only by Johnson’s Eleanor. The three leads become a family, equals in life, never condescending to Zac or allowing his disability to be an issue. He’s simply a guy with a dream and the courage to follow it. It’s an uplifting movie without a bit of cynicism that (as the title might suggest) isn’t afraid to be sweetly silly by times.
The latest movie to mine the legacy of classic rock comes as a tribute to Bruce Springsteen. Based on a memoir by Sarfraz Manzoor, “Blinded by the Light,” joins “Rocketman,” “Yesterday” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” in dramatizing the power of music to change lives.
Viveik Kalra plays the British Pakistani Javed a.k.a. Jay, a 16-year-old aspiring writer with dreams of getting away from Luton, a town he describes as “a four letter word,” where he is an outsider, tormented by skinheads, and his strict father Malik (Kulvinder Ghir). “You can choose to be a doctor or a lawyer or an estate agent,” his father says, “so don’t say I don’t give you any freedom.”
Things improve when he heads out to a local sixth form college. There he meets a teacher (Hayley Atwell) who tells him, “Stop doubting, keep writing,” the politically aware anarchist Eliza (Nell Williams) and best friend Roops (Aaron Phagura). When Roops hands over cassettes of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and Born in the USA” with the words, “Bruce is the direct line to all that is true in this s****y world,” it’s as if Jay has been struck by lightning. “It’s like Bruce knows everything I’ve ever felt, everything I’ve ever wanted,” he says.
As his obsession grows he begins dressing like his hero, speaking in Bruce quotes and papering his walls with Springsteen posters. His family thinks he’s gone bonkers. “Do you think this man sings for people like us,” asks his father, but the connection between Springsteen’s lyrics of working-class life and Jay’s existence are too powerful to ignore.
Directed by “Bend It Like Beckham’s” Gurinder Chadha “Blinded by the Light” is a coming of age story fueled by the invigorating power of music to change lives. Springsteen’s songs are specific in their American roots but universal in meaning. When Jay, sitting on the other side of the Atlantic, frustrated and unhappy, hears Bruce sing, “Man I’m just tired and bored with myself,” it hits home. It’s the epiphany moment when he realizes others feel the way he does. Call it “The Tao of Bruce” if you like, but the lyrics, set against the bleak backdrop of Thatcher’s England and the rise of the racist National Front, take on a meaning that resonates with Jay. It borders on corny and is earnest in the extreme but the earnestness is the movie’s strength, celebrating the virtues of the best of human values. “Bruce sings about not letting the hardness of the world stop you from letting the best of you slip away,” says Jays, with an acolyte’s devotion.
“Blinded by the Light” is a crowd-pleasing confection, sentimental and predictable, but bound together with the giddy feeling of first hearing music that speaks to you.
I went to see “Pulp Fiction” on its October 1994 opening weekend at a 2:30 pm screening. I arrived at 2:15 pm, stood in line and waited. And waited. The shows were delayed because audiences weren’t leaving after the credits. They were sitting in their seats talking about what they had just seen. Months of hype in the newspapers and on shows like “Entertainment Tonight” ignited curiosity and the movie delivered, using a broken timeline, ultra-violence and witty dialogue to bend the idea of what a movie could be. Just after 3 pm the movie finally started. Later, mind blown, I didn’t stick around the theatre to discuss the movie with anyone. I ran to the box office, bought a ticket for the next screening and got back in line.
Quentin Tarantino’s new film, “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” doesn’t have quite the same impact as “Pulp Fiction” but it digs deeper, expanding on themes the director has spent a career exploring. “Pulp Fiction” was a seismic shift, a movie changed the face of 1990s cinema, while “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” is an allegory for changing times.
As the title would suggest “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” has dark fairy tale elements. Set in sun dappled 1969 Los Angeles, it focusses on two almost down-and-outers, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) a former series star now reduced to doing episodic television—“It’s official old buddy. I’m a has-been.”—and stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), a self-described “old cowboy.” Both are on a race to the bottom in an industry they don’t understand anymore.
Next to Dalton’s luxury Cielo Drive home is a mansion owned by starlet Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and director Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha), party place to L.A. luminaries like heiress Abigail Folger (Samantha Robinson) and hairdresser to the stars Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch). As Dalton and Booth’s Hollywood era comes to a close, another is blossoming next door and further on down the road at Manson Family HQ and former western movie set Spahn Ranch.
There will be no spoilers here. I can say the various narrative shards dovetail together in a frenzy of grindhouse violence near the end, but “OUAT… IH” isn’t story driven as much as it is a detailed portrait of a time and place, the moment when the sea change was coming. Piece by piece Tarantino weaves together a nostalgic pastiche of b-movie tropes and expertly rendered sights and sounds to create a vivid portrait of a time and place. With the setting established, he plays mix and match, blending fact and fiction, creating his own history that feels like a carefully detailed memory play.
Pitt screaming down Hollywood Boulevard in a powder blue sports car is the essence of what the movie is about. The propulsive energy of Hollywood, dangerous, glamorous with the promise of ending up who knows where. The characters may all be headed for uncertain futures but an air of optimism hangs over the story. Dalton is down on his luck but when he realizes his neighbor is a world-famous director he says, “I could be one pool party away from starring in the next Polanski movie.” He’s a man out of time but still feels there might be a place for him in that world and that is the lifeblood of Hollywood, the city built on dreams.
One such dreamer is Tate. Robbie has a lovely scene as the actress enjoying her own movie in a darkened theatre. It does away with the stylized dialogue Tarantino is known for and instead focusses on the pure joy the character feels at watching her dreams come true on the big screen. It’s a lovely scene that speaks to the excitement of the first blush of success, untouched by cynicism in an increasingly cynical world.
“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” is unique in its feel. Tarantino has always been singular in his filmmaking but this one feels different. It’s clearly rooted in the b-movies that inspire his vision but here he is contemplative, allowing his leads—DiCaprio and Pitt in full-on charismatic mode—to channel and portray the insecurities that accompany uncertainty. The film is specific in its setting but universal in portrayal of how people react to the shifting sands of time. Funny, sad and occasionally outrageous, it’s just like real life as filtered through a camera lens.
“Based on an actual lie,” reads the opening title credit of “The Farewell,” a new dramedy with “Crazy Rich Asians” breakout star Awkwafina. It’s a funny reminder that the story is actually taken from director Lulu Wang’s life experience of visiting her terminally ill grandmother under false pretenses.
Bad news keeps coming Billi’s (Awkwafina) way. She can’t pay her pricey New York City rent, a Guggenheim Fellowship she hoped to land was denied and worse, she learns her beloved grandmother Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhou) in Northeast China has terminal cancer. The family, lead by Billi’s stern mother Jian (Diana Lin), have decided to shield the older woman from the news so she can enjoy her whatever time she has left. “Chinese people have a saying,” she says. “It’s not the cancer that kills them, it’s the fear.” Instead the family plans a ruse, an elaborate wedding for Billi’s cousin in Changchun, to serve as an excuse for the family to gather and pay their last respects. Billi hates keeping the truth from her grandmother, but with few reasons to stay in New York she shows up at the “wedding” unannounced to say her goodbyes and confront traditions that seem foreign to her.
“The Farewell” is a lo-fi family drama that brims with heart and humour. Wang maintains focus, never veering from the central premise of a family taking on the burden of pain, sparing their much-loved Nai Nai any feelings of distress. There isn’t much actual drama, no screaming matches, very little interpersonal conflict; just nicely observed naturalistic behaviour.
Holding the film’s center are Billie and Nai Nai. As a young woman grappling with a tradition she doesn’t completely agree with or understand Awkwafina does nice, understated work. It’s a far cry from her more flamboyant supporting performances in “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” and “Ocean’s Eight” that heartbreakingly illustrates the push-and-pull she feels between the two belief systems that have shaped her life.
“The Farewell’s” beating heart is Nai Nai. Her love for her family is unconditional and, as the family’s matriarch, she is the hub that these very different people orbit around. Zhou brings a sprightly charisma to the role that steals every scene in which she appears. Her light touch brings with it a great deal of humour but the smaller, more intimate moments between Nai Nai and her family are packed with emotion.
“The Farewell” is a slow burn, a movie that builds to a poignant climax that not only feels earned but deserved.
