Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit,” based on the book “Caging Skies” by Christine Leunens, is an anti-hate satire pitched somewhere between “The Death of Stalin” and “Hogan’s Heroes.” The director of “Thor: Ragnarok” and “What We Do in the Shadows” takes some liberties with the book, even conjuring images of Adolph Hitler, but holds true to the book’s exploration of the dark heart of obsession.
Set in World War II-era Germany, the movie stars newcomer Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo “Rabbit” Betzler a ten-year-old and member of his local Hitler Youth group. The youngster is discovering the world and making decisions about his place in it. That includes embracing Nazism and all its ugly ideology. “He’s a fanatic,” says his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson). “It took them three weeks to get over that his grandfather was not blonde.”
Jojo has even created an imaginary friend in the form of Adolph Hitler (Waititi) who provides the kind of encouragement his absent father isn’t able to. “You’re the bestest, nicest, most loyal little Nazi I’ve ever seen.”
What Jojo doesn’t know is that his mother is working with the Resistance and is hiding Elsa, a young Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic. The discovery of Elsa makes Jojo confront his belief system and a set of feelings as he comes of age.
“Jojo Rabbit” is going to polarize people. Some will see a film that simply treats Nazis as goofy caricatures and not the malevolent force of evil they were/are. Others may be offended by the use of extreme racial stereotypes for satirical effect. Waititi takes no prisoners on either account although he ends the movie with a clear and uncut message from poet Rainer Maria Rilke that, for some, will bring everything into focus. “Let everything happen to you / Beauty and terror / Just keep going / No feeling is final.”
“Jojo Rabbit’s” exploration of the power of love’s ability to defeat fascism, no matter how farcical, is a powerful message, particularly in our increasingly cynical age. It’s an uneven film, indulgent at times, but between the laughs are some very effective moments.
As usual Waititi’s ear for music adds much to the experience. “Komm, gib mir deine Hand” the German language version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” fills the soundtrack as images of Hitler Youth pumping their fists in the air fill the screen, providing a brilliant and subversive comparison of two kinds of fanaticism, Beatlemania and National Socialism. Later David Bowie’s “Helden” (“Heroes”) provides a sentimental blast as the final credits roll.
“Jojo Rabbit” isn’t simply an anti-hate movie as the ads say. More importantly, it’s a pro-love movie. The darkness inherent in the story is filtered through the experience of a ten-year grappling with concepts he simply doesn’t understand. Lonely and shy about a scar on his face (“He looks like a Picasso painting,” says Rebel Wilson as an instructor in the Hitler Youth camp) he looks to the Hitler Youth and their perverted ideas because they will accept him. As Elsa says, “You’re not a Nazi, Jojo. You’re a 10-year-old kid who likes dressing up in a funny uniform and wants to be part of a club.” Viewed through that lens the story becomes one of a misguided, ignored child simply looking for a home. In the end he discovers change is possible; that there is much more to life than hate.
Everyone knows wrestling is fixed, stage for p ure entertainment, but behind the costumes, the death matches and the five moves of doom are real people. “Fighting with My Family,” a new comedy written and directed by Stephen Merchant, dropkicks one real life story from the ring to the big screen.
Norwich England native Saraya-Jade Bevis (Florence Pugh) comes from a wrestling family. Her parents Ricky (Nick Frost) and Julia (Lena Headey) a.k.a. Rowdy Ricky and Sweet Saraya and siblings all throw down in the ring. When WWE trainer Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn) offers Saraya-Jade, known as Britani, and brother Zodiac Zak (Jack Lowden) a chance to audition it looks like they’re on the verge of going big time.
Well, at least one of them is.
After receiving some backstage advice from The Rock (who is also a producer on the film) and trying out, Hutch only calls one name, Saraya-Jade. Switching her name to the more American sounding Paige (inspired by the Rose McGowan character on “Charmed”) she begins in a training camp in Orlando where she will be assessed to see if she has the right stuff for the WWE. She’s an outsider who must fight for every win, both in and out of the ring. “Don’t worry about being the next me,” Says The Rock. “Be the first you.”
There are suplexes, trash talk galore, likeable actors like Nick Frost Lena Hadley and Vince Vaughn but it isn’t the wrestling moves and sports movie clichés that sell this movie. It’s the film’s beating heart, Florence Pugh, who plays Paige as a mix of empathy, ambition and self-doubt. Her path is a difficult one, from her brother’s jealousy to American audiences taunting her because of her jet-black hair, English accent and piercings. “Come on Ozzy Osbourne! Sing something!” We’ve seen this underdog character before, but by the time she says, “I am a freak. This belongs to the misfits who don’t belong,” it’s hard not to call a TKO on Pugh’s performance.
“Fighting with My Family” is about wrestling but like all good sports movies it isn’t just about what happens in the inevitable game or match at the end of the picture. It is a more universal story about outcasts who create community through sport and heart combined with the kind of “soap opera in spandex” storytelling that has made wrestling so popular.
Lisbeth Salander is back. The lead character in the Millennium film and novel series, she’s the leather-clad computer hacker with a large tattoo of a dragon on her back, an eidetic memory, and, if you are a movie fan, an ever switching identity. The look—dyed black hair, body piercings—hasn’t changed but the actresses playing her have.
Noomi Rapace became famous playing her in the Swedish franchise and Rooney Mara was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress as Salander in 2011’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Now another face takes on the role. In “The Girl In The Spider’s Web” Clair Foy trades the tiaras and trinkets of “The Crown” for cyber criminals and car chases.
Since we’ve seen her last Salander has been exacting a very specific kind of revenge. Using her hacking skills and some other, more physical life hacks, she, as a self-styled righter-of-wrongs, evens the score between cheating husbands and their wives.
Her life is thrown into chaos when she gets a call from her handler. “There is a client asking for the impossible. Interested?” Of course she is. It’s ex-NSA employee Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) who created a power program called Firefall. It can’t be reproduced, only be moved. Balder has lost control of it and wants it back. In the wrong hands a single user on the single computer could “be imbued with Godlike powers.”
She agrees and easily steals the program but when she misses the drop off Balder thinks she’s going rogue and alerts law enforcement. Her involvement also attracts the attention of The Spiders, a terror group who want the program and want her out of the picture. With an NSA agent Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield) and journalist—and former Salander love interest—Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) on the case things get complicated, especially when it turns out the big bad villain may have a direct link to Salander’s troubled past.
“The Girl In The Spider’s Web” is a thriller set to a slow simmer. The action comes in bursts, a car chase or an exploding building, followed by lots of atmosphere and shots of Salander’s brooding face. The Millennium film franchise are dark thrillers with overtones of murder, pedophilia, incest and even self surgery and while all those elements are on display here the tone of the film feels different than the previous films.
Set in Sweden, with all the trappings of an icy Nordic noir, the new film feels more American in its style. Salander is a little too much like James Bond and not enough like Elizabeth Salander. Foy is up to the task but the character, once edgy and daring, has become a Ducati-straddling superhero. In addition to being a world-class hacker she’s also a skilled hand-to-hand combat artist with a web of icy blonde girlfriends to do her bidding and a way with a Taser. But sometimes she’s a little too capable. An escape on a bridge works simply because it has too. Not because it makes sense. Her operations are timed with split second precision. There’s no real sense of danger, just boilerplate thrills. Things blow up real good but by the tenth time Salander has too easily and conveniently tamed an out-of-control situation you wonder why she’s wearing black leather and not spandex and a cape.
And don’t get me started on Blomkvist. Once a layered interesting character, he’s there simply because he’s always been there.
“The Girl In The Spider’s Web” is a serviceable action thriller with enough action to entertain the eye but too many twists and turns coupled with drab characters it feels generic when it should make your heart race.
Temperament wise, Hugh Jackman doesn’t have much in common with his most famous screen role.
As the embodiment of Wolverine — a mutant blessed with miraculous healing powers but cursed with a bad hairstyle and existential angst — Jackman is the face of the character. But off screen he is as gracious as his cigar-smoking X-Men alter ego is testy.
His Prisoners co-star Terence Howard told me Jackman was, “a sweet man,” while director Josh Rothstein said the actor “leads with smiles and warmth.”
Doesn’t sound much like Wolverine to me.
When he isn’t playing Wolverine he devotes his time to charitable causes like World Vision and Laughing Man, a coffee company he established that sells fair trade coffee and tea, products farmed using ecologically friendly methods and sold for the benefit of the farmer and consumer.
This weekend he stars in Logan, the third solo Wolverine film. In the new movie the X-Men antihero makes tracks to the Mexican border to set up a hide-out for ailing mentor Professor X, played by Patrick Stewart.
This installment marks the ninth time Jackman has slipped on the adamantium claws, and will be his swansong in the role.
Having played the character for almost 18 years Jackman owns the part, bringing real humanity to the mutant in a powerful and accomplished performance.
But, as he told me in a friendly, wide-ranging and informative interview, he wasn’t always as self-assured.
“When I started acting I was the dunce of the class,” he reveals. Success in school, he says, came because of his work ethic, a trait he picked up from his father.
“He never took one day off in his life,” he remembers. “He had five kids he was bringing up on his own. If anyone deserved a day off it was my old man, but he never did. I learned that from him.
“There’s always that feeling of, ‘I have to work harder than everybody else. I’m not born Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I’ve got to just work harder and I’m prepared to do it.”
Being the youngest of five children also contributed to his outlook.
“I always wanted to do stuff and not be left out,” he says, but adds, “I was quite a fearful kid, which I hated.
“I’ve always had a fear of fear. It’s weird to think back now but drama school is a pressure cooker situation. People get kicked out of drama school. You are constantly being judged on how you are doing; are you progressing, are you not?
“Almost everyday you had to get up and do a monologue. Sing a song. Do it in front of everybody. I noticed I was always first. I never wanted to sit there waiting. I’m not saying that out of courage. It was too uncomfortable to sit, stewing. I don’t think I’ve told anyone else that.”
Later, fear of unemployment pushed him to expand his talents.
“When I came out of drama school I was like, ‘I’m going to do anything I can just to keep working.’ In drama school you do Shakespeare to movement to circus skills to singing all in one morning. I know a lot of people hated it but I revelled in it. I loved it.”
Seems hard work and confidence is the X-factor that made Jackman the most famous — and friendly — of all the X-Men.
“Logan” takes a Canadian superhero played by an Australian actor and places him smack dab in the middle of the great American movie genre, the Western. The third solo Wolverine film stars Hugh Jackman in his ninth and final incarnation of the cigar-smoking X-Man but this one is different from the others.
Set in the near future, when “Logan” begins the mutant world seen in the other “X-Men” movies has changed. Mutants are almost extinct, their greatest champion, 90-year-old Charles Xavier (Sir Patrick Stewart) is senile and his school, the Xavier Institute, shuttered. Wolverine, a mutant blessed with healing powers but cursed with a bad hairstyle and existential angst, tends to Xavier, but age and a lessening of his powers have reduced the superhero to working as a chauffeur in Texas near the Mexican boarder. “Charles, the world is not as it was,” he says ruefully.
He is drawn back into his old life when he takes a job driving an 11-year-old girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) to a mysterious safe haven in North Dakota called Eden. Turns out the youngster is a chip off the old block, a clone-daughter of Wolverine. Like her old man the silent but deadly kid—she barely speaks a word until the last half of the film—has regenerative healing powers and retractable adamantium-coated bone claws; like most adolescents she’s volatile, with mood swings and the potential for violence.
They are on the run from the Reavers, a team dedicated to the destruction of the X-Men. Led by part cyborg head of security Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant), a surgeon whose father was killed by Wolverine, the Reavers are ruthless and possibly unstoppable.
Like the superhero at the heart of the movie, “Logan” is angsty and dark, a film that drips with sweat and regret. Director James Mangold tosses away the pop psychology of earlier “X-Men” outings, replacing it with something usually lacking in comic book movies, humanity. Wolverine may have super powers, but he’s never been more human than he is in “Logan.” A lion in winter, he’s a mentor, a friend, a warrior nearing the end of his run. “You are dying,” says Laura. “You want to die. Charles told me.” Sure, he can slice your head off with a flourish of his claws but this time around psychological vulnerability is front and centre, not his physical prowess.
Mangold has also done away with much of the computer-generated clutter that have become a de rigour in superhero flicks. He’s turned Wolverine’s valediction into a traditional drama. Think “Unforgiven” with claws. The character is wounded, wracked with regret for a legacy of bloodshed, a life he never asked for. It’s the kind of existential reckoning that fuelled Westerns like “Winchester 73,” “The Shootist,” “Shane” and “Ride the High Country” and while there are no cowboy hats on display, make no mistake, “Logan” is a call back to the days when antiheroes wore their wounds on their sleeves.
The movie works because Jackman digs deep. His portrayal of Wolverine has grown over the years from cartoon cut out to fully realized character. It would have been easy and probably commercially prudent to allow Wolverine to downplay his anguish and simply have him slice and dice his way through the “X-Men” franchise but Jackman rides the line. This is a violent movie that should satisfy fans hungry for action but his remorse, his regret is palpable and the character is more interesting for it.
There are echoes of other comic book tropes in “Logan.” There’s an evil Logan and an “Iron Man 3-esque” child sidekick, but it still feels like the evolution of the superhero movie. A hybrid of brains and brawn it is unafraid to call “X-Men” comic books “ice cream for bedwetters” while at the same time paying respect to one of it character cornerstones.
“People do weird things at weddings,” says Huck (Thomas Cocquerel), a handsome stranger who takes Eloise (Anna Kendrick) for a spin on the dance floor in the almost-rom-com “Table 19.” Maybe that’s true, but in the case of this movie, they do quirky and sometimes unpredictable things, but weird? Not quite.
On the day of her childhood friend’s wedding Eloise (Kendrick) repeats the mantra, “Today will not suck.” She may be close to the bride but is attending the wedding begrudgingly. Her ex-boyfriend Teddy (Wyatt Russell), a flame-haired dim wit who dumped her by text with the words “good luck in your future endeavours,” is the best man and she still hate-loves him.
She arrives to find herself seated at Table 19, a collection of misfits she says, “should have known to send regrets but not before sending an expensive gift.” There’s Jo Flanagan (June Squibb), a pot smoker who was once the bride’s nanny, the Kepps (Craig Robinson and Lisa Kudrow), distant friends of the family of the groom, ex-con Walter Thimple (Stephen Merchant) and Rezno Eckberg (“Grand Budapest Hotel’s” Tony Revolori), a young man who introduces himself with, “I have achieved puberty and I’m in the band.”
Because they are the outcasts, invited out of politeness and seated far from the action, they spend the day together. Secrets are revealed and the complex nature of relationships is explored. Will Eloise be able to speak to Teddy? Will the Kepps’ marriage survive the weekend? Will Renzo ever get a date? What will become of Jo and Walter?
“Table 19” is a rom com, but not a traditional one. It’s a super-reverso-rom-com that begins after the couple already has a history and broken up. It’s no secret that the heart of the movie will be their relationship so your enjoyment of the movie will be related to how much you care about this quirky collection of folks.
Kendrick is an agreeable presence, bringing equal parts edge and vulnerability to Eloise. Robinson and Kudrow banter like an old married couple and Squibb radiates warmth while Revolori and Merchant dial up their eccentricities. It’s an interesting group who by times are quite funny but most often feels like a collection of characters rather than real people. They shuffle from one set-up to another—Whoops! They knocked over the wedding cake!—lurching through the wedding on the way to the end credits and some sort of relationship resolution.
“Table 19” will raise a laugh or two or three, but the artificial nature of the situation isn’t weird enough to truly embrace the quirkiness of the characters or interesting enough to engage the audience.
Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit,” based on the book “Caging Skies” by Christine Leunens, is an anti-hate satire pitched somewhere between “The Death of Stalin” and “Hogan’s Heroes.” The director of “Thor: Ragnarok” and “What We Do in the Shadows” takes some liberties with the book, even conjuring images of Adolph Hitler, but holds true to the book’s exploration of the dark heart of obsession.
