Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the alien thrills of “Disclosure Day,” the spoof “Stop! That! Train!” and the supernatural “The Voice Of Our Mother.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Disclosure Day,” the new Steven Spielberg alien thriller now playing in theatres, a television meteorologist’s on-air possession reveals verifiable proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, triggering a worldwide awareness.
CAST: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Colman Domingo. Directed by Steven Spielberg.
REVIEW: “Disclosure Day” delivers aliens and thrills in equal parts to sentimentality and spectacle. A high-stakes conspiracy thriller, it plays like Steven Spielberg directed an elaborate episode of “The X-Files.”
Emily Blunt plays Margaret Fairchild, a former journalist now working as a Kansas City television meteorologist. When she experiences an on-air possession and spouts a strange jumble of clicks, pops and grunts, cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) identifies the sounds as an alien language.
“I can see them,” Margaret says. “What’s happening to me?”
As clips of her possession go viral, evidence of extraterrestrial life emerges, despite the best efforts of government organizations and Wardex corporation head Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) to cover up any and all revelations.
Working together, Margaret and Daniel fight for full transparency; a disclosure day when the truth is finally revealed. “Full disclosure to the whole world,” says Daniel. “All at once.”
Spielberg’s other alien films—“Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “War of the Worlds”—are more intimate than this one, respectively focusing on family stories of connection, friendship and survival. Here the focus is widened to ask a simple question in a complicated, overstuffed film: What will happen when humankind discovers we’re not alone in the universe?
It’s an ontological point of view, pondering the world’s reaction to alien life, wondering if mutual acceptance is possible as it weaves together a world-changing revelation, shadowy government conspiracies, thrills and lens flares. In many ways it feels like classic Amblin, but the perspective is different. It’s not simply about acceptance; it’s about optimism in the aftermath of first contact.
It is also, in almost equal measure to the alien story, a chase film that allows Spielberg to stage a wild action set piece that sees Margaret and Daniel jumping between cars and a speeding train. It’s a big and brash sequence that brings together Spielberg’s technical mastery, John Williams’ exciting score, brilliant cinematography courtesy of longtime collaborator Janusz Kamiński and loads of practical effects.
It’s a highlight in an overlong film is otherwise a mixed bag.
On the upside are terrific performances from the leads.
From the tense, four-minute possession scene, to taking on the bulk of the film’s emotional and physical weight, Emily Blunt impresses.
It’s also fun to see Colin Firth and Colman Domingo as former colleagues now acting as avatars for secrecy vs. truth. As Scanlon, Firth plays against type, embracing his character’s villainy in ways that, were this a pantomime, would turn the audience into a sea of boos every time he appears on screen. An interrogation scene between Scanlon and Jane (played by a terrific Eve Hewson) a former nun who happens to be Daniel’s girlfriend, is a highlight.
Domingo balances the equation as the film’s moral core. It’s a difficult role, one that requires him to spout loads of exposition, but his calming presence grounds the film’s otherworldly action.
On the downside, as Spielberg, working from a screenplay by David Koepp, explores modern concerns like fear of AI and tech, faith, misinformation and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, the film becomes repetitious and unfocussed.
Add to that useless government operatives who create plot holes big enough to fly a spaceship through, and you’re left with a movie that grows ever more frustrating as the end credits approach. The movie’s desire for us to believe in aliens is easier to take than some of the logic lapses Spielberg wants us to buy into.
Still, “Disclosure Day” offers enough Spielbergian treats—like a cool shot of an intended victim’s face reflected in the blade of the knife that may, or may not, be used to kill them— to cover some of the script’s plot holes and clichés.
The glitzy new musical version of “The Color Purple” maintains the talking points of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Stephen Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film adaptation, but adds in a touch of old Hollywood glamor and rousing gospel, blues and jazz songs.
Set in Jim Crow era rural Georgia, Fantasia Barrino reprises her role from the Broadway stage to play Celie Harris, a timid young woman whose life is marred abuse and separation from loved ones. Impregnated by her father when she was just a teen, her baby is given away. Later, when she is shipped off to live with the abusive Albert Johnson (Colman Domingo), a man she is forced to call “Mister,” she is disconnected from her beloved sister Nettie (Ciara).
The cruel and overbearing Mister tells his terrified wife she’ll never see her sister again and blocks any communication between the two. “Whatever I say, go,” he tells her.
Isolated from everything she has ever known, she perseveres through strength of will, the power of imagination and the friendship of the indomitable Sofia (Danielle Brooks) and flamboyant blues chanteuse Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson).
Reimagined as a period drama with a healthy dose of magic realism, the new “The Color Purple” is a journey of self-discovery and triumph over adversity as Celie opts to take agency over her life and not be a docile victim. Despite her trauma, she has an eye to the future, hope and, above all, resilience.
Barrino plays Celie as soft-spoken, allowing the songs, like the moving “Superpower,” to stand out, fuelled by cathartic, powerhouse performances. The role is a weighty one, a stand-in for the evolution of many marginalized people, but this version of “The Color Purple” is an emotional Broadway-style crowd pleaser that turns Celie’s ordeal into a journey of empowerment.
The addition of musical weaves joy into the story.
Director Blitz Bazawule allows Celie’s flights of imagination to temper the story’s built-in oppressive tone. The film’s opening scene, featuring Mister playing banjo, while his horse’s hoof clomps keep time, is subtle, while a scene in which Shug, (a terrific Henson), takes Celie to the movies, becomes a luscious Art Deco fantasy reimagination of the song “What About Love?” It is lavish and lovely.
In terms of staging, one show stopping scene sees Celie sing to Shug while perched atop of spinning gramophone record. It’s a blast of old-school Hollywood glamour that cleverly demonstrates Celie’s use of imagination as a coping mechanism.
This isn’t the “The Color Purple” of old. Boldly stylized, it embraces humor, music, imagination and leaves some space for Mister’s redemption and a slightly more explicit depiction of the relationship between Celie and Shug than in the previous film version. More than anything, though, it is a tuneful, joyful journey from powerless to empowered, from heartbroken to healed that is sure to entertain and inspire in equal measure.
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.
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.
“Bigger,” says Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in the trailer for “Jurassic World Dominion.” “Why do they always have to be bigger?”
It’s a legit question. The good doctor is, of course, referring to the dinosaurs that, once again, are causing problems in our modern world.
But the question might also apply to the movie itself.
The follow-up to “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” and the sixth and final film in the franchise, is bigger and louder than the movies that came before it, but as a viewer you may ask yourself, “Why?”
Set four years after Jurassic Park was destroyed by an erupting volcano, “Jurassic World Dominion” begins with dinosaurs let loose worldwide, living among humans.
Dino whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and girlfriend, founder of the Dinosaur Protection Group Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), are in hiding, protecting Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). As a teenage clone of Jurassic Park co-founder Benjamin Lockwood’s daughter, her DNA is of great interest to Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), the villainous CEO of Biosyn. When she is kidnapped, Owen and Claire give chase.
At the same time, locusts with prehistoric DNA devastate the globe’s grain supply, prompting paleobotanists Ellie Sadler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to launch an investigation. Their search for answers leads them to Biosyn and a familiar face, chaos theory mathematician Ian Malcolm (Goldblum).
The dinosaurs and the story may be bigger than the last time round, but remember, bigger is not always better. The original “Jurassic” franchise worked because if a streamlined simplicity to the storytelling mixed with masterful execution. Oh, and lots of dinosaurs.
“Jurassic World Dominion” has lots of dinosaurs and some fan service but misses the mark otherwise. It is a talky dino-bore with none of the suspense that made “Jurassic Park” edge of your seat stuff. The action scenes are murky and few-and-far-between, there’s lots of dodgy CGI and unlike the reconstituted dinosaurs, it feels lifeless. Luckily Goldblum reappears after a quick cameo off the top to shake things up with his trademarked droll wit in the third act.
Near the beginning of the film Dern’s character Ellie sees a small dinosaur and coos, “this never gets old.” She clearly hasn’t seen “Jurassic World Dominion.”
The list of films Hollywood considers sacred and untouchable is a short one. Only a bugger for punishment would attempt a redo of “The Godfather.” And imagine the jeers that would accompany the announcement of a reimagined “Casablanca” or “Do the Right Thing.”
Until recently I would have put “West Side Story,” the classic 1961 musical that won ten Academy Awards, in the top five of films on the No Go list. But just as that show riffed on “Romeo and Juliet,” a classic if there ever was one, Steven Spielberg takes another look at a memorable movie the TCM crowd considers untouchable.
Set in 1950s New York City, the story of love at first sight is plays out against a backdrop of the gentrification of the Upper West Side, a then blue-collar neighborhood. Two gangs, the Puerto Rican Sharks and the Jets, the “Last of the Can’t Make It Caucasians,” run the streets as the NYC Department of Slum Clearance chop up their home turf. The only thing they have in common is a “womb to tomb” membership motto.
Into this comes Tony and Maria (Ansel Elgort and newcomer Rachel Zegler), star-crossed lovers whose infatuation causes friction between the gangs. “You’re going to start World War III,” says Anita (Ariana DeBose).
Tony’s best friend Riff (Mike Faist) runs the nativist white Jets—“Everything is being taken over by people I don’t like,” he sneers.—while Maria’s brother Bernardo (David Alvarez) leads the Sharks.
Tony is on parole for almost beating a boy to death in a rumble, but has turned over a new leaf. “I want to unlike myself,” he says, “because I was headed to the sewer.” He also puts to rest the notion that “once you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way.” He wants out of that life, but most of all, he wants Maria.
As Riff and Bernardo plan a rumble to viciously work out their differences, Maria begs Tony to put an end to the violence. “We can’t pretend what we do didn’t cause this trouble,” she says. Tony intervenes, but the situation quickly spirals out of control.
Steven Spielberg’s take on “West Side Story” feels rooted in the tradition of movie musicals but vibrates with current themes. The social mindfulness that was revolutionary for musical theatre in the 1950s Broadway run is present and expanded on. Tony Kushner’s script offers context and backstories for underdeveloped characters and plays on hot button themes of racial animus, poverty and violence.
Most of all, however, it’s about love.
It’s love that causes all the trouble but also gives the movie its beating heart. As the couple in question Elgort and Zegler are appealing, wide-eyed romantic figures. Zegler is a convincing swirl of determination and innocence, with a beautiful voice. Elgort can wrap his mouth around Stephen Sondheim’s lovely lyrics—”Maria, say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying”—but doesn’t shine as bright as some of his co-stars.
As Bernardo, Alvarez brings the menace, smooth charm and athletic dance moves to steal his scenes. Faist also impresses as hardheaded gang leader Riff. DeBose gives a high stepping performance as Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita, a role that grows more poignant in the movie’s third act.
But it’s a returning cast member from the 1961 film who gives the movie its soul.
Rita Moreno won an Oscar for playing Anita in the original. Here she plays drug mart operator Valentina. Kushner expands the role, making the character the conscience of the neighborhood. She is luminous in the part, and, in a major departure from the 1961 film, does a solo rendition of “Somewhere,” a song of hope usually sung by the romantic leads. Here it is devastating, played as song of longing and loss. If my goosebumps voted for the Academy Awards, Moreno would have another statue to put on her shelf.
“West Side Story” is Spielberg’s most compelling film in years. It reinvents, reimagines and recontextualizes a classic story with energy, respect and lots of finger snapping.
We all know how “First Man” will end. No surprises there. What may be surprising is the portrayal of its titular character, American astronaut and hero Neil Armstrong. It’s a small story about a giant leap.
Focussing on the years 1961 to 1968 “First Man” introduces us to Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) as an engineer and envelope-pushing pilot. When an X-15 test flight gives him a glimpse of space he becomes obsessed with going further. When his three-year-old daughter dies of a brain tumour he turns his grief inward, throwing himself at work. Becoming a NASA Gemini Project astronaut over the next seven years he fulfils the dream of President Kennedy 1962, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” speech. Alongside Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll) and Jim Lovell (Pablo Schreiber), he begins a journey that will take him to the moon and back.
“First Man” is based on one of mankind’s greatest achievements and yet feels muted on the big screen. Deliberately paced, it nails the bone-rattling intensity of the early flights, the anxiety felt by the loved ones left behind as the astronauts risk everything to beat the Russians to the moon, and yet it never exactly takes flight.
Part history lesson, part simulator experience, it doesn’t deliver the characters necessary to feel like a complete experience.
Gosling is at his most restrained here as an analytical man who loves his family but is so stoic he answers his son’s question, “Do you think you’re coming back from the moon,” with an answer better suited to the boardroom than the dinner table. “We have every confidence in the mission,” he says. “There are risks but we have every reason to believe we’ll be coming back.” He is buttoned-down and yet not completely detached. His daughter’s memory never strays from his mind, even if he never discusses her death with his wife, played by an underused Claire Foy. Gosling embraces Armstrong’s fortitude but has stripped the character down to the point where he is little more than a distant man of few words.
“First Man” contains some thrilling moments but for the most part is like the man himself, stoic and understated.
One thing is for sure, the “Jurassic Park” movies are not an endangered species. The film series, now entering its fourth iteration since 1993’s prehistoric original, has outlived most other monster movie franchises of its vintage. With another one already scheduled for 2021 the dinos-gone-wild-movies show no signs of extinction. It seems audiences have an endless appetite to see people become dinosaur snacks.
The new one, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” picks up three years after the “de-extinct” dinosaurs destroyed Isla Nublar, the island paradise where “Jurassic World” took place. Now abandoned and overrun by dinosaurs, the former theme park and its inhabitants face a new threat—“the flashpoint animal rights issue of our time,” we’re told—in the form of a volcano poised cover everything in a thick layer of molten lava.
Some people, like Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), feel nature should be allowed to take its course even if that means the end of the dinosaurs. Others, like Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), John Hammond’s partner in developing the dinosaur clone technology, want to see them rescued. Enter two former park employees, dinosaur trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt)—the Cesar Millan of the dinosaur world—and former park director Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and small team of helpers, computer whiz and comic relief Franklin (Justice Smith) and paleo veterinarian Zia (Daniella Pineda) who spearhead a campaign to relocate the creatures to a newer, safer sanctuary. “Save the dinosaurs from an island that is about to explode,” says Owen. “What could go wrong?” Lots. There’s more, like a nefarious plan to sell the rescued dinosaurs and a “creature of the future made from pieces of the past” but who cares as long as the creatures are let loose.
Sure enough, half-an-hour into “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” after some call backs and set up, dinos are chasing humans, summing up the two most important elements of the Jurassic franchise—giant dinosaurs and people for them to eat. Other stuff, like narrative logic, plain old common sense and interesting characters, come a distant second to gnarling teeth and big action set pieces.
The usual franchise mumbo jumbo about science tampering with the natural world is in place but it’s even more cursory than in the first “World” film. Instead it embraces the thing that has always been at the rapidly beating heart of these movies, monster mayhem and on that level it succeeds.
Ultimately, however, the stakes are very low. It is obvious who will become a dinosaur entree and who won’t. Also much of the danger has been replaced by more family friendly light moments—i.e. Owen doing a tranquilized acrobatic act to escape molten lava or Franklin’s ladder gag. There is some suspense, but it’s not subtle like Alfred Hitchcock style suspense. Instead it’s will-Owen-get-eaten-by-a-dinosaur-as-Claire-and-Franklin-roll-away-into-a-giant-motorized-orb suspense.
By the end credits what do we learn about “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”? Chris Pratt could probably outrun Tom Cruise without breaking a sweat. The rules of physics and do not apply in Dino Land. When you have dinosaurs you don’t need much else and some sequels are easier to set up than others.
