Steven Spielberg has made personal films before but none are as intimate as the semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans,” now playing in theatres. In the film, the teenage Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) finds the power of movies and storytelling help him deal with a family crisis.
Set in the 1950s and 1960s, and loosely based on the director’s childhood, the story focusses on Sammy, played by Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord as a child and LaBelle as a teen, oldest son of post-World War II era Arizona housewife Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and engineer Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano).
On his first visit to the movie theatre he sees “The Greatest Show on Earth,” a dazzler of a picture that leaves a lifelong impression. Soon, he is making his own short films, staging elaborate scenes with his toy trains, and later making live-action war movies with his pals. He figures out how to make special effects—like poking holes in the film to replicate gun flashes—and constantly has the camera pressed against his eye, even on family camping trips.
The world of make-believe is a comfort to the youngster whose home life is showing signs of strain. As Burt moves the family cross country for work, Mitzi, an artistic soul like her son, becomes despondent, and even buys a pet monkey to keep her company in their new house.
As Burt and Mitzi’s marriage crumbles, Sammy faces antisemitism and bullies at his new school, a father who calls his all-consuming interest in filmmaking “a hobby” and an over-the-top girlfriend (Chloe East), who has pin-ups of Jesus on her wall next to the pop stars of the day.
His journey ultimately leads him to a Hollywood legend who teaches him a valuable lesson in how to make movies—which is also the film’s best visual joke—just before the end credits roll.
Spielberg is often accused of sentimentalism, so it is curious that “The Fabelmans” is not a maudlin movie. It bristles with life, love, frustration and heartbreak, all blended together to bring the family, and especially Sammy, to vivid life. Sometimes life is messy—the cause of Mitzi’s “episodes” is difficult for Sammy to understand—and sometimes it is sublime—Sammy’s discovery of his pure, unadulterated love of film—but it never feels as if Spielberg is romanticizing the past.
The 1950s part of the film has a certain glow about it, as if it’s being recounted by a Sammy, just a boy at the time. As he grows up, and his understanding of his family dynamic grows, the film takes on a different personality. The rough edges are not smoothed over as Sammy retreats into the world of make believe as a remedy for the tensions at home. The storytelling is episodic, but never less than emotional.
As “The Fabelmans” unfolds, two scenes reveal the mix and match of the effect of Spielberg’s parents, one a technician, the other an artist, on young Sammy.
The first comes in the form of a visit from Sammy’s Uncle Boris, played by Judd Hirsch in what may well be an Oscar nominated performance. In his quick in-and-out scenes, he is the truth teller who explains what it means to make art; the pain, the constant need to express yourself. It is a burden, but a beautiful one, and these scenes lie at the heart of the film, the idea of what it takes to create something extraordinary.
The second scene, near the end of the movie, sees Sammy learn an important technical lesson from a legendary filmmaker played by David Lynch. Lynch chews the scenery, clearly enjoying himself, while Sammy drinks it in. Spielberg even throws in a visual joke to ensure that we understand how fundamental the lesson was to him.
Both are fun sequences that reveal the filmmaker’s twin brain, a mix of art and science, that also echo his upbringing.
“The Fabelmans” ends with a shot that will warm the heart of any movie lover, but this is not simply a film for fans of the director. It’s a contemplative, poignant look at how art, and how it is a balm that helps sooth us in troubled times.
Another semi-autobiographical movie adds itself to the ever-growing list of films about filmmakers. Recently movies like “Belfast” and “The Fablemans,” lovingly detailed the young lives of Kenneth Branagh and Steven Spielberg. Now, “Armageddon Time,” starring Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins and Jeremy Strong, and now playing in theatres, treads similar ground, as an edgy Reagan-era period piece about director James Grey’s early life.
Set in Queens, New York, the story takes place over two months in the run-up to Reagan’s election in 1980. Red-headed sixth-grader Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), is an artistically inclined kid, who lives with his second-generation Jewish American parents, Ester and Irving (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong). His older brother Ted (Ryan Sell), now studying at private school, is an over-achiever, whose example has set the bar very high for the head-in-the-clouds Paul.
Only his doting grandfather Aaron (Anthony Hopkins) seems to understand him, and support his artistic ambitions. “You can be an artist if you want to be,” Aaron says. “Nothing’s going to stop you.”
At school his stuffy teacher Mr. Turkletaub (Andrew Polk) doesn’t appreciate a caricature Paul draws of him and punishes him, along with African-American classmate Johnny Davis (Jaylin Webb), a more worldly youngster, who dreams of being an astronaut. The two dreamers hit it off, forming a friendship that teaches Paul difficult lessons about the nature of friendship and family.
“Armageddon Time” draws its name from a Ronald Reagan news interview, seen in the film, where the former “Bedtime for Bonzo” star warned that, unless he is elected to straighten the world out, “We might be the generation that sees Armageddon.”
On a more direct level, the titular Armageddon refers to the battle Paul wages between his good intentions and evil deeds. The impulsive sixth-grader is torn between Ester and Irving’s desire for him to excel at anything, it seems, except for the thing he loves most, his grandfather’s advice to always be a mensch and his friendship with Johnny, and it pushes him to act out, without regard for the consequences.
It is in that push-and-pull that Paul makes the mistakes that will shape the film’s study of race and class, and inform his relationships and, presumably, his future.
The melancholy movie finds its drama within that push-and-pull. At the start Paul and Johnny are goofy troublemakers, bonded by a shared enjoyment of walking their own path, but as their stories become intertwined, their innocence is soon stripped away as the disparity of their life situations is highlighted. Both young actors bring a palpable sense of confusion, disappointment and eventually resignation, to their roles. It is remarkable work from each, performances that shine a harsh light on adolescence, rather than the usual coming-of-age wistful glimmer.
“Armageddon Time” features predictably interesting work from the entire cast, who come together in an ensemble that often feels like a real, dysfunctional family. There is also a subtle showstopper of a scene between Hopkins and Repeta that packs an emotional punch by what it doesn’t say, rather than what it does, but director Grey’s biggest achievement may be the uncompromising, unsentimental and uncomfortable approach to his own coming-of-age story.
Richard and CTV NewsChannel host Angie Seth have a look “The Tender Bar” (Amazon Prime), the Olivia Coleman drama “The Lost Daughter” (on Netflix) and the heartwarming “June Again” (VOD/Digital).
There are many life lessons in “The Tender Bar,” a new easygoing drama starring Ben Affleck based on the life of journalist and author J.R. Moehringer, and now streaming on Amazon Prime. Set in and around The Dickens, a bar named after the author of “David Copperfield,” barstool wisdom about the value of books, education, taking care of your mother and “not keeping money like a drunk” in the front pocket of your shirt, abounds.
The story begins in 1973 Long Island. “Radar Love” by Golden Earring out of the car the car radio and the impressionable J.R. (played as a youngster by Daniel Ranieri) lives with his mom Dorothy (Lily Rabe) and cranky grandfather (Christopher Lloyd). His father, a radio DJ nicknamed The Voice (Max Martini), isn’t in the picture.
J.R.’s father figure is Uncle Charlie (Affleck), charming bookworm and owner of the Dickens. He is a font of advice, all of which J.R. soaks up “the male sciences” like a sponge. Charlie’s instructions range from the pragmatic—never order bar scotch neat—to the ideological—he urges J.R. to study philosophy. “You always do well in that class,” he says, “because there’s no right answers.”
Charlie’s guidance and the colorful regulars who populate the bar, like Bobo (Michael Braun) and Joey D (Matthew Delamater), help form J.R.’s young life. “When you’re 11 years old,” he says, “you want an Uncle Charlie.”
Cut to a decade later.
J.R., having inherited his Uncle Charlie’s love of storytelling and words, is a student at Yale, studying law but with aspirations to be a writer. Now played by Tye Sheridan, he falls in love with Sidney (Briana Middleton), a smart, “lower upper middle class” schoolmate who gives J.R. another lesson in heartbreak.
“The Tender Bar” is a low key coming-of-age story that works best when it has a glass in front of it. That is to say, when it concentrates on the Dickens and the life lessons young J.R. absorbs at the bar. Those scenes have a lovely nostalgic feel. Director George Clooney vividly recreates a time when ten-year-olds were sent to the local corner bar to by a pack of cigarettes for grandpa. Clooney sets the stage, but it is the actors who bring it to life.
As Affleck settles in to the character actor phase of his career, he’s doing some of his best work. His Uncle Charlie has an effortless charm, a fierce intellect and is a bit of a scoundrel. It’s a performance that feels perfectly shaped and worn in, like an old baseball glove.
The scenes Affleck shares with Ranieri provide the film’s highlights. The young actor, making his film debut, brings genuine curiosity to J.R., a kid who has been knocked around but who always has his eyes to the future. It’s a delightful performance. Sheridan nicely mirrors the character as a young adult, but it is Ranieri who makes us care about J.R.
“The Tender Bar” is a nicely crafted, circumspect look at J.R.’s life. The stakes feel low and big dramatic moments are few and far between, but this textured look at the importance of community, including the drunks at the bar, in the formative stages of J.R.’s life is an understated winner.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Merella Fernandez to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including director Kenneth Branagh’s poignant coming-of-age drama “Belfast,” the Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot action comedy “Red Notice” and the literary adaptation “Passing” starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.
“Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s look back at his early life in Ireland, now playing in theatres, is a story very much of its time, but it resonates with contemporary themes.
The movie opens with tourist bureau beauty shots of modern Belfast before jumping back in time to the film’s black-and-white vision of the city in 1969. The Troubles have come to 9-year-old boy Buddy’s (Jude Hill) street. There’s the Unionists, the Ulster Protestants, who want Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom. They are in in violent dispute with Irish nationalists, mostly Irish Catholics, who want Northern Ireland to exit the United Kingdom to join a united Ireland. Buddy is inquisitive but he doesn’t understand what’s going on when an explosion sets his neighborhood, a mix of Catholic and Protestant households, on edge. He’s too busy being smitten with Catherine (Olive Tennant), the pretty girl who sits in front of him at school.
Buddy’s father (Jamie Dornan), a construction worker whose job takes him to England for weeks at a time, is very much aware of the situation. Local hardmen advise him to join the Unionist cause… or else.
For the rest of the tightly-knit family, Ma (Caitriona Balfe), older brother Will (Lewis McAskie) and grandparents (Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench), life goes on, but the city’s increasing violence forces them to make a choice; Will they stay in the only home they’ve ever known, or relocate to safety in a strange city?
Seen through Buddy’s eyes, “Belfast” tackles big subjects like religious intolerance, senseless neighbor against neighbor violence and ethno-nationalism, but focusses on the effect of those elements, not the elements themselves. That perspective allows Branagh to set the scene with the dramatic opening, a series of period television news broadcasts and the concerned looks on the faces of the adults. But set against a time of upheaval, this is a family drama, but not a political one.
Branagh calls “Belfast” his most personal film, and it feels like it. Every frame radiates with the warmth of the connection Buddy shares with his family, and his family’s relationship to their home and country. Hill’s coming-of-age performance is the anchor that keeps the movie from drifting off course. His joy and infectious laugh when his grandfather cracks a joke is delightful, and you can really see the gears turning as he struggles to figure out why his once peaceful neighborhood isn’t the Eden it once was.
The performances are uniformly interesting, but Balfe, as Ma, shines as a steely, protective presence.
Hinds and Dench, as Buddy’s grandparents, are frisky, lovable and bring an intimacy to their portrayals of people who have been married forever, that is the very definition of heartfelt.
“Belfast” is a lovely, earnest movie that paints a vivid picture of a time, a place and, most importantly, its people. The scenes of Buddy and family at the movies, or crowded around the television also reenforce something many of us have realized during the pandemic, and that is the importance of art—in this case, the movies and television—as an escape from the stark realities of the world.
