Movie Nation

There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t give at least a moment or two’s thoughts to one of the landmark projects in the history of TV and film, the “7 Up” series. That’s the power of film to burrow into your brain and influence your thinking.

A former high school classmate is forever Facebook posting vintage photos from the hometown newspapers of the Southern town where I grew up. I glance at these wholly-segregated accounts of life in that rural county and can’t help but see the same entitled surnames and faces, for generations, always worthy of a newspaper’s attention. And I note how these “whitewashed” Facebook history posts are indirectly making the point of the “7 Up” series of TV programs — following 14 kids of various social and demographic strata in Britain for decades, catching up with them every seven years — which was intended as a test of Aristotle’s maxim “Give me a boy until he is seven and I will show you the man.”

The kids, the series suggested as its class conscious thesis, would rise to rule or be ruled largely based on the affluence and class they were raised in. Orphans “in care,” Cockney working class “East Enders” who inspired their own soap opera and rural farm kids were born at a disadvantage to Latin-reciting (and singing) posh private school city girls and boys, their uniforms and accents and confident privilege ensuring their later success in life.

Director Michael Apted and assorted collaborators with Granada TV/ ITV started this intimate series, which began brilliantly and evolved into something psychologically and socially revealing and profoundly moving as England’s version of “Baby Boomers” aged and were tested by life as they grew up in the public eye.

In every episode clips from the first installment and earlier films are used to illustrate how they age, how their attitudes evolved or didn’t change over the course of their lives.

The movies, beautifully and evocatively boiled down from the TV episodes every seven years, could make you weep. I got pretty teary when Apted, one of the cinema’s most politically empathetic filmmakers, who brought humanity and social justice concerns to almost every film he made — Bond movies to “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Thunderheart” etc — died in 2021.

The films first gained notice on this side of the Atlantic with “28 Up,” a mid-80s point in time where the series’ brilliant conceit and probing execution truly started bearing fruit. “Siskel & Ebert” raved it up, and the documentaries based on the every-seven-years TV series became must-see pictures for cinephiles.

But that still means most people aren’t acquainted with the project or even its abortive American incarnation, which ended less than 20 years in.

I was delighted to find most of the TV series, and several of the films (including the most recent, “63 Up”) on not just streamers like Britbox, but on Youtube.

Here’s the first TV film.

My fiance hadn’t seen any of these films, and we binged a lot of them on a rainy day recently, and I was shocked at how moving they still are.

Yes, it’s Boomer Nostalgia. But here’s the thing, Generation X, Millennials, etc. The American version of this series was launched among Gen X kids raised to believe there was no “class war” in the “Land of Opportunity,” when the basic thesis of the series was under attack from conservative elites who didn’t want the proles to know they were getting screwed.

The series requires thinking long-term, delayed rewards not instant gratification. Such series require time and cash and sacrifice, something I was made keenly aware of whenever I interviewed Apted about another film project he was promoting. American filmmaker and Spielberg protege Phil Joanou was supposed to be the one committed to seeing this American “Up” series through. Not sure why it died — lack of generational interest, thus making it unsellable, Joanou’s own shortening attention span.

But it’s startling to look on the Apted films, from 1964-2019, and see the definition of “success”
and a “happy life” broaden, right before your eyes. A plucky Cockney jockey becomes a cabbie, a terminally depressed wanderer tranforms from homeless to politician, married-too-young girls struggle, posh kid becomes college prepped barrister and then there’s the librarian with no college degree whose life expanded around her until she is mistress of all she surveys at a British university.

Some are happy, some bitter and some go through periods where “broken” is the only word that fits. But most aren’t, and life — its ups and downs — progresses, sometimes happily, sometimes grudingly updated every seven years as we note which among them was the most fully-formed at Aristotle’s magical age “Seven.”

This is heartbreaking but hopeful bucket list cinema for film buffs, for aspiring sociologists and politicians and anybody who ponders the role “class” still plays in our lives. And if you haven’t seen it, Youtube just made that as easy as can be.

Wonder how infamously xenophobic Japan took to the idea of a tale of a public toilets cleaner directed by a German became Japan’s official Best International Feature entry and now Oscar nominee?

I dare say there was some grumbling.

Neon slipped this into theaters, and today I get to it. Love that Wim W.

One of the great stand- ups of his era, Richard Lewis, a professional neurotic who amusingly took credit for the comic use of the phrase “from Hell” during his many years of appearances on Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” has died.

He died from a heart attack, and after recently disclosing that he had Parkinson’s. He was 76.

His Twitter feed the past year or so had a “love life” sentimental edge, suggesting he knew the end was nigh. But It could be hard to tell. He built his career on self examining, self pitying and self loathing observations about himself.

Analysis, romance and head scratching self doubt were trademarks, as was that mane of hair he maintained long past an age when anybody not a rock star typically keeps it.

The King of Kvetching was just that, a rock star comic with a few movies, a few sitcoms and thousands of live sets to his credit over a fifty year career.

I saw him live a couple of times, interviewed him a few more, and always found him loose and blunt and funny, even on bad days where you could detect his self doubt mania. 

My favorite memory of him was catching up with Lewis as he got back on the road shortly after 9/11, talking about how honored he was to go out and try to make a despondent, worried country laugh, and how touched he was that fans were still showing up.

He was one of the great ones, and if nothing else, Larry David deserves our heartfelt thanks for giving a very smart, very funny man a great career curtain call. 

This June release has mystery, the threat of sudden gruesome death and a trip to the woods. 

Very M. Night Shyamalan.

Every time one interviewed Oscar winner Kevin Costner about Westerns, he’d speak of the life changing experience seeing the epic “How the West was Won” was as a boy.

Now that he’s reestablished his Western primacy thanks to a wildly popular (especially among older viewers), he’s ready to make one more big statement on the subject.

This epic, which might go as far as four planned installments, has an all-star cast of a “Lonesome Dove” size.

Sienna Miller, Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Sam Worthington, Michael Rooker, Michael Anagarano, Tatanka Means, Dale Dickey, Giovanni Ribisi, Glynn Turman, Angus Macfadyen, Kathleen Quinlan, Like Wilson and Thomas Haden Church are among the stars.

If he’s going to make his Big Statement on the West, I’d hope there’d be less white washing of the era that included Buffalo Soldiers, a Mexican diaspora, Black cowboys and lots more interaction with Native Americans.

Still not nuts about the title, embracing the American “Western” creation myth should be easy to get across without such vagaries.

Lots of proclaiming its themes from Danny Huston and others in this trailer.

But it’ll be something to see, in theaters in two parts this June and August.

Why keep coming back to a series of popular but dreadful “horny teen melodramas” from Spain, which have ranged from “vapid but titillating” to “Are you just here for the nudity?“

That rhetorical question can be aimed at the audience for this series, a trilogy which seemingly concludes with “Through My Window: Looking at You.” But that query can be turned back on any critic reviewing all three as well.

Am I just here for the cold-day-in-Catalonia nudity, the sex scenes that break up the monotonous soap opera between them? Nah. I’m back for the same reason I checked back on the films of Cheech and Chong, Tyler Perry, Dakota Johnson or Adam Sandler.

I’m wondering if they get better.

The answer, nailed shut on the third film of this sappy, prolonged romance, is “Alas! No!”

The acting isn’t awful, but the writing has degenerated from insipid to eye-rolling. It’s as if no effort is being made to keep the viewer engaged with what they’re watching on their streaming device between the sex scenes.

To catch us up, Raquel (Clara Galle) is no longer joined-at-the-groin with her rich neighbor, Ares Hidalgo (Julio Peña), an entitled med student (in school in Stockholm in the second film) who steals Raquel’s wifi every time he comes home to Barcelona to his family of pretentiously-named siblings, younger Apolo (Hugo Arbues) and older Artemis (Eric Masip), now in the family business.

But Raquel has been in love with Ares since staring him down “Through My Window.” The fact that she’s with Gregory (Ivan Lapadula) and Ares has married money — Vera (Andrea Chaparro) — can’t stop the love, or sexual assignations.

Apolo may be “with” Daniela (Natalia Azahara), but he’s scratching a different itch on the side.

And bitter Anne (Carla Taus) still hasn’t gotten over the tragedy at the end of “Through My Window: Across the Sea.” Yes, somebody died. If you haven’t seen the second film, I shan’t spoil it for you whilst you catch up.

Raquel has turned her stolen wi-fi romance into a novel that’s coming out, with another book on the way. Hilariously, she’s still got to work part time, dressed as an elf, wrapping gifts in a Barcelona gift shop at Christmas.

Everybody, it seems here, has “an unforgettable ex” and no separation or involvement and even matrimony with anybody else can shake that unfightable urge to climb back “Through My Window.”

And no matter what is going on in everyone’s life, there’s always time for clubbing, Christmas parties and New Year’s Eve blasts.

It’s all a little confusing to drop in on, even if you’ve seen the first two films. But as uncertain as I sometimes was about how this ended up as that and where she/he/they come into this, the ones we should be feeling sorry for here are director Marçal Forés and screenwriter Eduard Sola.

They’re the ones charged with keeping this all straight on an official basis. Do they? Only in a “keep the story going until the next sex scene arrives” sense.

Rating: TV-MA, sex, nudity, alcohol and drug abuse

Cast: Clara Galle, Julio Peña, Natalia Azahara, Hugo Arbues, Eric Masip, Andrea Chaparro, Ivan Lapadula and Carla Taus.

Credits: Directed by Marçal Forés, scripted by Eduard Sola, based on the novel by Ariana Godoy. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45

“From Italy with Amore” is like pasta your local Olive Garden left standing in water overnight.

It’s shapeless, tasteless, inedible goo, and about as Italian as Chico Marx.

The “Italy” here is a “we make our own pasta for our ‘authentic’ cuisine” eatery, apparently a novelty in Edmonton, Alberta.

That’s the unnamed setting, a city that presents itself as too lovely to deserve hosting the blandest romance ever filmed on that side of the border.

Ariel (Rebecca Dalton) is a features writer for a magazine/website named “Glow,” a career woman who is lovelorn but who has her ideal in mind.

“Six feet tall, strong build, chiseled” features, with “good eyes, a radiant smile.” And he should “drive a yellow sports car.”

That’s what Mr. Must-Be-Right pulls up in the moment she mentions this list to bestie Jules (Kara Duncan), who kidnapped her from the office for lunch on her birthday.

So the hunk with model good looks (Brendan Morgan) has to be made for her. And the good looking co-owner of Vicky’s Bistro, Daniel (Marcus Rosner) barely merits a second glance.

Jules notices him, but Ariel mermaids right past the guy serving them to the guy he’s giving an espresso. To put herself in yellow sports car Jamie’s field of vision, she’ll have to show up at Vicky’s Bistro, day after day, as it soft-reopens before Daniel and his chef brother Tony (Stafford Perry), gay and finally close to adopting a baby with his husband, stage their grand re-opening.

Maybe if she pitches an “Italian comfort food” feature to her “mst popular wellness magazine in the country” editor, she’ll kill two birds with one stone, and get the big promotion at work to boot.

That throws our blonde reporter together with the cuisine-championing, market-visiting, family business man Daniel, who is smitten but whom Ariel needs to shy away from because Jules is interested, and besides, Ariel’s ideal has that yellow sports car.

I mean, she “manifested” her “ideal man.” Who is she to argue with the universe?

The cooking is de-emphasized, so the “Italy” come-on in the film’s title is pretty much a total bait and switch. The cuisine we glimpse is underwhelming.

The leads are bland, the “chemistry” has no heat to it and the situations, all the way down to the gay couple who needs Tony and Daniel’s restaurant to succeed over the chain joint across the way (“The Olive Branch,” cute) in order to be able to adopt, are tepid.

This clunker is about as appetizing as a can of Chef Boyardee, and just as sexy as it is appetizing.

Maybe next time you’re making a movie in under-filmed Edmonton, you make something out of it, give it a little local color. Edmunton deserves better.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Rebecca Dalton, Marcus Rosner, Kara Duncan, Stafford Perry, Brendan Morgan and Dawn Ford

Credits: Directed by Dylan Pearce, scripted by Katy Breier and Erica Deutschman. A Freevee/Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 1:24

The French director of “Johnny Mad Dog”  puts Penn, Sheridan, Katherine Waterston, Mike Tyson and Michael Pitt through their paces for this March 29 release.

Looks like a solid genre drama.

This looks like a step away from the blockbusters she’s typically associated with on the big screen (“Greatest Showman,” “Spider-Man,” “Dune”).

Let’s see how a pixie-pretty leading lady holds the picture together in a dramedy about tennis and love matches and what not.

Funny “white boy” joke, a phrase that almost always lands a laugh.

April 26.

“The Peasants” is a film based on a village life melodrama of the same title written by the Pole Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont in four massive volumes in the 1920s.

Even the fact that Reymont won the Nobel Prize for literature for it isn’t much of a justification for giving it a second thought, as in those early years, the Nobel literary prizes were doled out to a string of forgotten figures, while giants such as Tolstoy, Conrad, Chekhov, Edith Wharton, Conrad and Ibsen went to their graves without such honors. Maxim Gorky, Thomas Mann and Thomas Hardy were Reymont’s esteemed competition in 1924.

But this potboiler of a book has been filmed and then those film frames painted to life in the same rotoscoping animating style deployed by the filmmakers who made the gorgeous Van Gogh biography “Loving Vincent” a few years back. After casting, rehearsing, acting and shooting the film, another five years were needed for 100 painters to get Poland’s official entry as Best International Feature for this year’s Oscars painted and ready for the public.

And even though it didn’t make that Oscar cut, this detailed look at the life in Lipce, the struggles, ambitions, greed, jealousies and transgressions of its often venaly inhabitants, is too beautiful to pass over.

Jagna (Kamila Urzedowska) is the most beautiful teen in the village, 19 and blonde and pony-tailed, she is indulged by her widowed mother (Ewa Kasprzyk), who spares her heavy labor so that she has time to be pretty, make artful cutouts and necklaces and such. All the men and boys notice her, and when she’s quizzed about her prospects, this or that “wealthy widower,” she lets one and all know that she won’t be “rocking someone else’s cradle.”

When the richest farmer in town, Maciej Boryna (Miroslav Baka of the “Squared Love” movies) is talked into taking this prize and clumsily flirts, she lets him know just how much trouble she’d be.

“I wouldn’t work in the fields,” she tells him (in Polish with English subtitles). She might not do much around the house, either. I mean, just look at her.

Unknown to the miserly patriarch, his resentful oldest son Antek ( Robert Gulaczyk of “Loving Vincent”) has noticed Jagna, too. Handsome and rugged and headstrong, his attentions are reciprocated.

The fact that he has a wife (Sonia Mietielica) and child doesn’t deter Jagna. When you’re that pretty, you get used to getting what you want.

But their trysts can’t stop the wheels of tradition, as matchmaking is underway. One courtship ritual in this place at this time (late 19th century) holds that when a man sends vodka over, things are about to turn serious and legally so. Boryna sends the vodka through a proxie.

A bit of haggling over acreage between Jagna’s mother and Boryna sets Jagna on the path to matrimony, and multiple families on the road to collision. Jagna practically weeps through her seranaded, danced-to-death wedding. This is destined to end badly.

Animated gimmick or no gimmick,”The Peasants” is gorgeous to look at, with almost every frame its own work of art.

This technique is put to great use on scenes of festive dancing and lurid moments of passion, with our trysting couple caught in a haystack and almost burned to death over their transgressions.

One doesn’t have to know the recent history of Polish art to appreciate the images even if we can’t place the direct influences on this scene or sequence, or that one. We see peasants harvesting cabbages, herding sheep, slaughtering a cow and at every turn, we hear them gossiping about the girl, the old husband, the lover, money and the land.

The melodramatic story touches on familiar themes, situations, conflicts and resolutions of conflict as we follow the rivals for old Boryna’s fortune and land.

But there’s no escaping the realization that melodrama is a perjorative description of any narrative, that many situations seem contrived, that characters act unnaturally, driven by passions or simple plot necessities as they do.

This isn’t the masterpiece that “Loving Vincent” was and remains, the definitive Van Gogh biography told by painters honoring his works, visual subject matter and style. But “The Peasants” is an engaging way of taking us back to a simpler time when the people are just as petty, inconsiderate and greedy as people have always been and always will be.

Rating: R, violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Kamila Urzedowska, Robert Gulaczyk, Miroslaw Baka, Mateusz Rusin, Ewa Kasprzyk and Sonia Mietielica

Credits: Scripted and directed by DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman, based on the novel by Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:55