If you’re a film buff, you should have seen it already.
Let’s face it, film going is devolving into spectacles aimed only at comic book fanatics or horror aficionados.
Movies about cinema are a high profile gasp at providing an alternative this awards season. Babylon,” ” Fabelmans” and “Empire of Light” are shots in the dark at keeping a broader audience engaged and connected to higher minded cinematic storytelling.
And nobody is going to see them.
Can you believe “Maverick” and “Avatar” have Oscar buzz?
Love it or hate it, “Babylon” has real intellectual ambition.
New Year’s resolution number, go see it if you haven’t, while we still have a choice.
Tyler Perry turns his melodramatic eye on the recent past for his latest, a jazz-and-blues in 1940s Georgia tale titled “A Jazzman’s Blues.”
It’s about race relations under Jim Crow, when miscegenation was a multi-syllable word even the trashiest rednecks could pronounce, when “passing” for white had its perils and when jazz got serious about integration, at least in the cities of the north and west.
Perry’s cooked-up a soapy, sad story of a love-that-could-never-be framed within a little old lady’s efforts to get justice for a murder that happened 40 years before the story’s fictive present — 1987. It’s a musically, dramatically and cinematically flat affair, as Perry leans on the hoary device of having old, exposition-filled love letters read in voice-over, makes little effort hide the fate of our murder victim, whose death isn’t “investigated” at all, and tries to pass off a middling singer as an emerging big band star.
Elderly Hattie Mae (Amirah Vann) picks the right time to hit up lawyer Johnathan Dupree (Kario Marcel) to dig into this case, she figures. He’s running for Congress, and he’s a white candidate trying to prove he’s “not a racist” in rural Hopewell County, where enough Black votes could be the difference come November of 1988.
Her “evidence” about this murder is what she remembers, but more importantly, the letters of the dead man, her son.
Bayou (Joshua Boone) was a sensitive sort, growing up in the Mississippi Delta, dismissed as useless and stupid by his bluesman Dad (J. Roger Mitchell), bullied by his taller, more manly trumpet-playing brother Willie Earl (Austin Scott).
But in those letters, the once-illiterate Bayou lets us hear how he met and fell in love with a fellow outcast, the fair-skinned Leanne (Solea Pfeiffer), nicknamed “Bucket” because her mother dumped her there to be raised by her cantankerous father.
Leanne taught him to read, shared his feelings and was yanked away — as a teen — when the mother who didn’t want to raise her (Lana Young) — showed up to intervene and prevent her Leanne from limiting her life with some poor country boy.
Bayou never lost faith, never stopped writing, even though his letters were intercepted by Leanne’s mother. He and his mother moved to Georgia. He did his time in the Army, came home and started singing in his mother’s juke joint, and pined for his lost love until the day she returned — married to a white man (Brent Antonello), brother to the racist sheriff (Brad Benedict), passing for white herself.
When Bayou’s prodigal brother returns, he has a Jewish emigre and would-be agent (Ryan Eggold) with him. That means Bayou might graduate from singing “Let the Good Times Roll” at his mama’s place, if he can just get discovered.
Yes, the tropes and cliches line up at the door for this pokey, corny and old-fashioned potboiler.
The cast, made up of lesser-knowns and unknowns, doesn’t manage to make most of the characters interesting or the situations that engaging.
The music’s OK, but all over the place in terms of quality. Our “new star waiting to be discovered” couldn’t have won a talent show in any town big enough to be worth mentioning, much less succeeded at a major Chicago club’s showcase.
The entire affair plays out like a middling TV movie, with the “murder” not ever investigated, simply explained via a two hour back story that is the film’s “plot.” Perry barely wrestles with the terror of trying to pass for white in the rural Deep South and brushes by other can’t-miss sources for drama just to keep this drifting movie moving.
There’s no suspense, little that’s thrilling or that justifies any investment in this dawdling melodrama with music. At least Netflix’s accountants are happy. This didn’t cost “White Noise” or “Slumberland” money. But expect them to ask “Madea” to make an appearance next time, if they’re staying in the Tyler Perry business.
Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, sex, profanity
Cast: Joshua Boone, Amirah Vann, Solea Pfeiffer. Austin Scott, Ryan Eggold and Brad Benedict.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Tyler Perry. A Netflix release.
How cool is it that Sir Anthony Hopkins is “47 years” sober, that he’s 85, and that he shares his New Year’s Eve birthday (TODAY) with Sir Ben Kingsley?
This message reminds us that the Great Drunks of British Acting could have claimed another Burton, O’Toole, Oliver Reed and Richard Harris in Hopkins among their ranks — all, even the longest-lived among them, dead too soon.
And he got sober and lived long enough to win Oscars, become a legend and wish you all a happy new year.
Well, if it took a Henry Selick stop-motion animated horror comedy to put Key and Peele tother again on the screen, we’ll take it.
Netflix wrote the checks and the director of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Coraline,” co-adapting a novel with horror hot property Jordan Peele conjures up an animated laugher that is at its funniest when the former team of Peele and Keegan-Michael Key are swapping funny lines in funny voices as the title characters, “Wendell & Wild,” hapless demons who aren’t really the center of the story.
That’s a bit of a letdown in this properly dark, occasionally daft and visually-arresting tween-to-young-adult comedy about death and letting go of the deceased. Oh yeah, it goes there. It’s just not as hilarious or as twisted as you might hope, given the clever folks involved.
A little girl leaves a carnival in Rust Bank, only to distract her Dad on the drive home, causing their station wagon to plunge off a bridge. Mom (Gabrielle Dennis) makes sure Kat (Lyric Ross) doesn’t panic and gets her out of the flooding car. But the child’s last image of Mom and Dad (Gary Gatewood) is of them sinking into the watery abyss.
Years later, we catch up with Kat as she’s headed towards her “do-over,” her second chance. She’s a troubled orphaned teen who can’t stay out of jail. But a new state program gets her enrolled at Rust Bank Catholic School, a once-prestigious institution in a city that’s in its own death spiral.
Father Bests (the legendary character actor James Hong) and Sister Helley (Angela Bassett) would love to keep the doors open. But Rust Bank is in the sites of the Klaxon Korp, whose entitled owners (David Harewood and Maxine Peake) see it as prime real estate for their next for-profit prison.
That’s where “Wendell & Wild” come in. They’re lower-level functionaries in the underworld run but their father, the demonic giant Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames). His Satanic pride and joy is his carnival of lost souls, Scream Faire. The sons would love to redesign it into a Dream Faire. And failing that, they get the notion of leaving Hell and setting up their operation in the world of the living.
It’s while they’re tending to the business of restoring their gigantic father’s hair (a follicle seed-drill and hair growing cream operation) that they stumble into their ticket out. That cream brings even the dead and squished ticks in their father’s enormous scalp back to life.
“I bet folks would pay a LOT to come back from the dead!”
Kat, trying like hell to avoid making friends at her new school, where even the rich girls are nice enough to suggest “Prison chic is the next big thing” as encouragement, gets caught up in the prison-building schemes and underworld intrigues thanks to “The Mark” she bears, the dead parents burden she carries, the counsel of her favorite nun and helpful hints from the transgender kid (Sam Zelaya) still stuck at a girls’ school even though he identifies otherwise.
“Wendell & Wild” is based on a story that Selick and horror writer Clay McLeod Chapman came up with and turned into a novel, and it makes for a cluttered, dead end-littered narrative. The title characters want to be and demand to be center stage, but the movie’s far more interested in its “Coraline with Color” teen girl and her story.
That’s how we get into a whole “chosen one” “hell maiden” story, the murderous politics of unscrupulous developers and Kat’s desire to atone for her role in her parents’ demise…by bringing them back to life.
There’s nothing here that couldn’t have worked, all stuffed into the same film. But the dark, dry and whimsical touches of Selick’s best work have their best outlet in the Wendell & Wild scenes, with Key and Peele trotting out their peerless timing to make even bland lines zing to life.
They want to finance their carnival dreams via bringing-corpses-back-to-life?
“We can’t raise the dead!”
“Well, we DO know how to lie!”
“Oooo, I LIKE that plan!”
Rhames is also funny, and Hong can be hilarious.
But the film keeps getting bogged down in teen angst and school and developer intrigues, and that sidelines its funniest voices and funniest characters. The script may score political points, having a transgender character who doesn’t make a big deal out of that transition, nor do his classmates, and commenting on the scammy, corrupt, pro-mass-incarceration for-profit-prison industry.
“You make a pile of money for every prisoner you take. So you pack them in like sardines, provide crap food, crap medical, dangerous conditions, and zero rehabilitation.”
But too little of that plays as comical, or even seems all that promising as fodder for funny.
The arresting, nightmarish visuals and sight gags pay off. It’s just the scanty supply of them that keep a clever idea or three and a novel setting from ever jelling into a movie destined to become an evergreen, a seasonal classic.
So here’s some more unsolicited advice, Netflix. Try again with these guys. They’re onto something, and given another shot, they might just deliver something special.
Rating: PG-13 for some thematic material, violence, substance use and brief strong language
Cast: The voices of Lyric Ross, Angela Bassett, Keegan-Micheal Key, Jordan Peele, David Harewood, Maxine Peake, James Hong and Ving Rhames.
Credits: Directed by Henry Selick, scripted by Jordan Peele, based on the novel by Clay McLeod Chapman and Henry Selick. A Netflix release.
Every film buff has her or his own interpretation of what “Altmanesque” means.
It’s the torrent of words, the hyper-naturalistic dialogue that has everybody talking at once, leaving it to the viewer — with a little help from the sound mixer — to pick out and concentrate on what the most important characters in a scene or situation are saying. A lot of the dialogue is improvised on set, and that simple aural touch gives many of the films their realistic feel, along with a camera plunging us into a seemingly familiar milieu and immersing us in the sights, smells and sounds of it.
He dabbled in a lot of genres, and not every movie Altman filmed fit that style or lent itself to his “Altmanesque” touches. But even in something like “Vincent and Theo,” the Van Gogh picture that preceded his big “comeback” with “The Player,” he could impose his idea of what reality felt like on the frame and in the soundtrack. He was perhaps the most influential filmmaker of his era, and you can see and hear his touches everywhere, on episodic TV, in any cinematic crowd scene, in the movies of Tarantino, Linklater, Paul Thomas Anderson, Soderbergh, the Brit Michael Winterbottom and Mr. “Funniest line on the set wins,” Judd Apatow.
One trademark touch that really stands out in Altman’s grand gambling “bromance,” “California Split,” is the importance of milieu to Altman’s storytelling. In interviews with me and others over the years, he talked about the community he loved to create on the set, and how his archetypal movies mimicked that on screen.
The man loved creating chaos and letting his actors and us make sense of it.
He’d hurl them and us into an Army surgical hospital (“M*A*S*H”), “A Wedding,” a convention (“Health”). He’d visit fashion week (“Pret a Porter/Ready to Wear”), a traveling tent show (“Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson”), a live radio variety show broadcast (“A Prairie Home Companion”), a political campaign (“Tanner ’88”), a nascent jazz scene (“Kansas City”) or “Nashville” and an English manor house (“Gosford Park”). And he’d let humans act human, exposing character, story and themes from the chaos that might eventually illuminate the organizing order of life and human behavior.
Elliott Gould, one of the most popular leading men of his day, was a key to Altman’s rise to his 1970s peak. Gould joined an ensemble (“M*A*S*H”), showed off how good he was in buddy pictures (“California Split”) and helped bring Altman and the Altman Touch to classic film noir (“The Long Goodbye”).
Gould, like his “Split” co-star George Segal, was shockingly good at buddy pictures. Segal and Redford chased “The Hot Rock,” Gould and Donald Sutherland made “M*A*S*H” settle into buddy picture rhythms, paired up again for “S*P*Y*S,” and Gould almost made James Caan funny in “Harry and Walter Go to New York. Even Segal’s peak-years rom-coms (“A Touch of Class,” “The Owl and the Pussycat”) felt like buddy pictures, buddy pictures with a hint of sex.
Parking these two in the same picture pays off in pretty much every shared scene of “California Split,” with Gould playing the Jewish tummler here, although both actors took on that guise in films during their peak years, with Segal the better “reactor” and straight man of the two.
Charlie (Gould) is a chatterbox professional gambler, handsome and gregarious but seedy and an adrenalin junky looking for “action,” wherever it might be. William (Segal) is a magazine editor, separated from his wife and deep enough into gambling that his path is sure to cross Charlie’s in their corner of Southern Cal — at the poker room or at “the track.”
Charlie’s literal rough-and-tumble lifestyle — he gets beaten up by the pals of a poker player he humiliates, carelessly mugged on another occasion and crashes with a couple of call girls (Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles) because he can’t be bothered to own more than one sports coat or rent his own place, even when he’s flush — is what William gets sucked into over the course of a long, indulgent dive into this form of addiction.
There’s the usual Altman love-hate relationship with women and sex here, as world wise Barbara (Prentiss, younger sister of Paula) and Charlie are constantly having to buck younger Susan up after she lets herself fall in love with some client and naively hope for a better, normal life out of what the men always treat as a transaction. Charlie and “Bill” hustle a transvestite client (Bert Remsen) of theirs without a hint of guilt, or prejudice.
And unlike most Altman films, you never lose the feeling that you’re immersed in the reality of the seedy bars, backroom poker games or Reno-sized casinos, which sometimes have actors in bit parts, but rely a lot of real dealers and barmaids and amateurs who seem like real gamblers. The crowd scenes here — at the track, at the fights — are the most realistic Altman ever filmed.
He even gave the cliched “get even with the guy who beat me up” scene Altman comic touches to go along with a degree of “What it worth it?” blood.
“California Split” is a classic “on a roll” gambling comedy, more “Let It Ride” than the tutorial and scary “Rounders,” and very much the inspiration for “Win It All” or the somewhat more straight-laced Ryan Reynolds/Ben Mendelsohn gambling partners tale, “Mississippi Grind.”
Segal’s William is either a chronic loser, or a guy who’s settled into a losing streak — a lost marriage, a teetering career and an increasingly intimate relationship with his bookie.
Gould’s Charlie takes his wins and never really lets us see his losses, which is where William’s complaint “Where do you get your CONFIDENCE?” comes from. We see Charlie snake some woman out of placing a winning bet at the track, a bet which he makes and becomes a huge score. We see him clean up at assorted poker tables, and hear where he went when he disappears for a chunk of the picture as William slides into debt and into trouble at work (a young and pimply Jeff Goldblum plays his callow editor in a single scene). Charlie went to Mexico, and the fact that we’ve seen him with rolls of cash just makes us realize that he’s a social media era gambler before there was social media.
“I’m in Tijuana. I’m at the dog track. What do I know about dogs?”
He only lets us see what he wants us to see.
Throw these two together, soak them in alcohol and flop sweat and let them sing and kvetch their way from Santa Anita to Reno, with Segal playing the straight man to Charlie’s offhand, laid-back but non-stop “Altmanesque” patter.
At a poker club’s table filled with little old ladies, overheard above the bets, antes and banter — “I don’t care how old you are, right in the choppers, lady.”
They sing songs from “Dumbo” and bet on everything from pick-up basketball games to who can name all seven dwarfs.
And when the end of the line comes, it lands with a soft thud. Because in gambling, as in life, there are no hard finales or final curtains, just a “streak” that ends, a chapter that closes and another one begins. There’s always another “40-80 lowball stud game in Reno” on the horizon.
Cast: Elliott Gould, George Segal, Ann Prentiss, Gwen Welles, Bert Remsen
Credits: Directed by Robert Alman, scripted by Joseph Walsh. A Columbia release on Tubi, Roku, Amazon, etc.
Running time: 1:48
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You’d think, in this still-pandemic-limited climate of fewer theatrical releases making it to theaters, and the slow return to “normalcy” as Hollywood and other corners of film culture gear back up, concocting a “ten best films” list would get easier.
Thanks to the ever-broadening range of streaming platforms, pretty much the opposite is true. I mean, I didn’t always review 1000 films a year, and if you think most titles don’t turn into a memory blur at that volume, you’ve not been inside my head lately.
Normal “prestige pictures” pouring out at the end of the year used to make this easier. But they’re struggling to get a foothold with the public and develop an “awards season” consensus these days. As the New Yorker helpfully points out, nobody’s going to such films grown-up fare post-COVID.
Woody Allen and The Weinstein in The Weinstein Co. are canceled. Great filmmakers are working less and winding down their careers. Netflix has also played a role, throwing huge sums at one indulgent “personal” movie after another, films that no one else would finance and nobody is going to see in a cinema.
Almost all of Netflix’s prestige pictures, save for the animated ones, are terrible busts this year, which feels like Noah Baumbach et al chickens coming home to roost. Was “White Noise” ever filmable? Did “Bardo”need to be made?
Competing “personal” pictures, two film memoirs about growing up Jewish and becoming famous filmmakers, didn’t click with audiences. Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans”should get an Oscar nominations bounce, but maybe not. James Gray’s“Armageddon Time” was never going to be as much “magic of making movies” fun, but had the potential to be more “Basketball Diaries” gritty and interesting. And it just isn’t. Why was this made, again?
Both films, “Fabelmans” in particular, drive a stake through the heart of the old notion that “famous directors sell tickets.” That goes for Sam Mendes as well. “Empire of Light” was a personal picture that just wasn’t very well thought out and scripted, much like “Armageddon Time.”
Oscar nominations may help Spielberg, and the lack of them would/will kill“Babylon.” And as far as directorial indulgences go, everybody who went that route with their 2022 film can be relieved that at least they’re not David O. Russell, at least their “hot mess” (a term I also used for “Babylon”) wasn’t the debacle titled“Amsterdam.” The best I can say about that disaster is that it made me hopeful that Nepo Baby Exhibit A John David Washington actually might make a decent actor someday.
The older audience required to prop “personal” films and adult dramas up is killing these higher-minded movies by having permanently gotten out of the habit of going out to the cinema.
But of course, “Elvis” was the exception to ALL of the above. The King is Dead, long live The King. Older viewers showed up for that one.
This fall produced plenty of worthy films that didn’t quite make it over the top for me. Park Chan-wook’s “Decision to Leave,”a fine basic training while gay drama “The Inspection,” a grand and understated turn by Bill Nighy in “Living,” “The Menu,”“Causeway,” “Aftersun,”and going back to the summer, Ron Howard’s terrific “Thirteen Lives” are all rightly considered Oscar contenders. “The Whale” is quite moving and doesn’t seem like the “fat shaming” exercise the blowback suggests, although I’m willing to admit I’m not the best judge of that. It’d be a shame to deny Brendan Fraser an Oscar nomination because of a disagreement over the best of intentions.
The “Top Ten” process this year involved scanning through my reviews by “rank” via Rotten Tomatoes, which is how I came up with twenty-two worth lauding again via this Top Ten list. As there’s no hedging allowed (really, if you can’t winnow it to “ten,” don’t bother), this week became teeth-gnashing time as one tries to prognosticate which movies moved me, made an impact, thrilled and will “matter” five or ten years from now.
I saw a lot of documentaries this year, and loved “Sidney” and the grimly moving“Cow.” Those standouts were not quite on a par with a documentary that did crack my Top Ten.
It was a stand-out year for horror, which produced both blockbusters and high quality genre entries such as“Black Phone,”“Smile” and the best of that lot, “Barbarian,” which was just shy of Ten Best-worthy.
International features that make it to theaters or onto streaming are always problematic because what “year” did they really “come out” gets in the way. Look at President Obama’s list. Half of the films are 2021 releases. The pandemic didn’t make that call any easier, but the Iranian “Hit the Road” is a most rewarding viewing experience, and the Danish-made Iranian serial killer thriller “Holy Spider” is a must-see.
It was a very good year for African American cinema, even as one notes what letdowns “Nope” and “Wakanda Forever” were. A couple of decent musical bio-pics — Jennifer Hudson as Aretha in “Respect,” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” — were joined by two very good takes on non-musical history, the Viola Davis hit“The Woman King,” and a Civil Rights story nobody saw, which made my Top Ten.
This past fall saw a string of Best Actress/Best Supporting-actress-loaded films, one of the best year’s for women in cinema EVER. From “The Woman King” to all-star-female-cast dramas such as Sarah Polley’s feminist fable “Women Talking,” and many others should ensure, for once, that the Academy has no trouble filling out the Best Actress/Supporting Actress fields.
The hilarious anarchy of “Minions: The Rise of Gru” was underestimated by most critics, but not by your kids.
If you haven’t figured it out before now, lengthy Top Ten list “prologues” like this are both efforts to CYA, mention every title that by rights should at least be mentioned when considering the year in movies, and a next to last step in winnowing 22-30 memorable movie experiences down to ten. And in case you hadn’t noticed, every film mentioned here has a link to my review of it.
“A Night at the Kindergarten” is a dark dramedy about a committee of Polish parents gathering to consider a few matters concerning their semi-exclusive school, and rehearse and prep for the next night’s Christmas pageant, which they will perform for the kids.
The wild card tossed into their midst in Eryk, the pothead “sound engineer” who decides to come, as his nurse/girlfriend can’t make it and she really needs to make an appearance. Her kid’s in the Little Ray of Sunshine School via financial aid, and little Tytus is wildly unpopular because he’s acting out and constantly in trouble at home and at school.
It’s meant to be a broader comedy than it plays, with Eryk (Piotr Witkowski) ringing up his pot dealer/pal to babysit the kid for the night, with one parent bringing booze to the meeting and another quick to show off his pistol. The uneven movie that results doesn’t quite deliver, even when matters turn manic in the third act and make the inevitable turn towards soft and sentimental. But it’s worth a look.
Eryk figures he’s making a Grand Gesture by showing up in Dorata’s (Masza Wagrocka) stead. They need this school in his Tytus’ life because he’s on the cusp of “special needs” and kind of disturbing to boot.
But Eryk has no idea what he’s walking into. The eight parent executive committee is run like a semi-benign dictatorship by the organized and commanding Justya (Lena Gora), a severe blonde who is basically a mean girl turned martinet parent. And she’s ready to kick Tytus out.
“Sooner or later,” Eryk overhears her fume, that kid “is going to kill someone.”
Mr. “I came here just to show I care” finds himself on the defensive, almost sure to be blamed if the boy is tossed and their homelives are upended. But Eryk can read people, and starts lobbying, one-on-one, this shrinking violet mom, that oversexed couple of single parents who “met through the school,” and the older, drinking and a tad needy dad (Zbigniew Zamachowski) who keeps referring to himself in the third person, assuming he’s more respected and beloved than he actually is.
Tyrants are only effective when their subjects are compliant, and Eryk rattles starchy, callous Justya, whose sneering facade is just that.
“I just want to see the look on your face when you lose,” Eryk sneers back.
But as we hear about the boy’s many transgressions, how upset he’s making all the other kids, we wonder if all of Eryk’s charms, and his entreaties to the nearly powerless headmistress (Julia Wyszynska) will be in vain.
The broad caricatures within this nine parent sample size aren’t dizzy, testy, scared or randy enough to be instantly funny. The lobbying, back-stabbing and back-biting isn’t hilarious either, and the slack pacing means these other sins stand out and stare us in the face all through this “Night at the Kindergarten.” It’s a “romp” that doesn’t romp.
The bickering over what a “Christmas Pageant” should have in it (“A real TREE!”) and who should have more lines (the Virgin Mary’s odd-man-out husband, Joseph) is amusing, in that “Best Christmas Pageant Ever” seen-it-before way.
Still, it ends well, the leads are nicely contrasted and some of the twists manage just enough interest to keep you watching.
But even the madcap moments have a sort of “no rules in Poland” brittleness that work against its more melodramatic flourishes. When things finally go over the top in the moonshine-induced mayhem of the rehearsal that comes after their “meeting,” it’s a bit of on-screen sizzle that seems too little, too late.
Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, put use, profanity
Cast: Piotr Borowski, Lena Gora, Aleksandra Domanska, Masza Wagrocka, Dobromir Dymecki Zbigniew Zamachowski and Julia Wyszynska
Credits: Directed by Rafal Skalski, scripted by Marek Baranowski. A Netflix release.
The script is bad enough to make one pity the actresses saddled with role-playing this dog, seven women who might have found themselves envying the chap cast to play the unspeaking corpse. Not that their emotionally-dead, enervated performances are wholly free from blame.
The direction? Let’s just say “7 Women and a Murder” is so lackluster, so utterly lacking in urgency, whimsy or whatever the hell it was director and co-writer Alessandro Genovesi was going for that one can’t help but notice when he tries something cute.
But even a flashy 360 degree pan between two of the rival women in this tale of one dead husband/ lover/father/employer/son-in-law and his seven possible killers merely calls attention to how tedious everything surrounding it is.
What a waste.
Titled “7 donne e un mistero” in Italy, this winter-in-the-early-1930s yarn is set in a plush country mansion, which daughter Susanna (Diana Del Bufalo) returns to from Milan, where she’s been living and studying.
Mama Margherita (Margherita Buy) isn’t overly thrilled to see her. Granny Rachele (Ornella Vanoni) seems more interested in adding Susana back to her list of family members who consider her a “burden to everyone.”
Bitter unmarried Aunt Agostina (Sabrina Impacciatore) is eager to share her “ignored” unhappiness to the returning niece.
“Look Agostina, I’m paying attention to you this ONE time, and then I’m done,” her imperious sister Margherita fumes, in Italian with subtitles, or dubbed into English.
At least Susanna’s younger sister, Caterina (Benedetta Porcaroli) seems to bear up under all this friction and unhappiness well.
We’ve barely learned that patriarch Marcello has taken to sleeping in a guest bedroom when the new housekeeper, Maria (Luisa Ranieri) discovers him face-down in his bed with a knife in his back.
Margherita bemoans how unhappy he must have been to do this to himself, but Susanna cracks that “I don’t think he acted alone,” knife in the back and all.
The phone lines have been cut, the “car’s wires” as well. There’s nothing for it but to discern if there’s a stranger in the house who killed Marcello, or if one of the six woman there — one of whom just arrived and would seem to have an airtight alibi, another of whom is aged and in a wheelchair — did it.
But wait! The title mentions “SEVEN.” Let’s see how long it takes for the mistress, Veronica (Micaela Ramazzotti) to show up.
“7 Women” sets up as a farce, and taking place in a mansion, we might rightly expect it to be a door-slamming one. Don’t let the fact that it’s an all female cast chase sexual dalliances, jealousies and intrigues out of your mind.
But nothing remotely interesting happens. A character gets a makeover, another is robbed, there’s a pregnancy and a pistol. And none of it is fashioned into a “mystery” we want to solve, funny characters we want to spend time with or whose safety we fear for or catfights we’d pay cash money to see.
Nothing these “7 Woman” and the folks behind the camera conjure up amounts to a hill of fagioli.
Rating: TV-MA, violence, some profanity
Cast: Margherita Buy, Diana Del Bufalo, Sabrina Impacciatore, Benedetta Porcaroli, Micaela Ramazzotti, Luisa Ranieri and Ornella Vanoni.
Credits: Directed by Alessandro Genovesi, scripted by Lisa Nur Sultan and Alessandro Genovesi. A Netflix release.
British editor-turned-director David Lean is most widely-known for his epics. Starting with “Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Lawrence of Arabia,” on through to “Dr. Zhivago” and “A Passage to India,” he gave the cinema films of scale, scope and depth, and collected accolades and Oscars for his trouble.
His pre-epic career is best remembered for a couple of classic Charles Dickens adaptations. But even if “Oliver Twist” and “Great Expectations” managed a light moment here and there, the maestro was never known for comedy.
It’s not like he couldn’t manage it. “Hobson’s Choice” is proof of that. This 1954 farce, based on a comically timeless 1915 play, made a fine showcase for the great Charles Laughton, marked another successful teaming with Lean’s early career acting muse John Mills, and features the future Mrs. Basil Fawlty, Prunella Scales, in a role that would become her first big break.
It’s adorable.
The plot and character “types” are what make it timeless. It’s about a lazy widower (Laughton) who runs the most-highly-regarded bootery in 1880s Salford, suburban Lancashire — near Manchester. “Runs” is a tad generous as a description of his duties. Old Henry Hobson started the business and built it, but he’s got two cobblers in his employ, and when he’s not around, he has three daughters running the shop, his house and his life.
Maggie (Brenda de Banzie, also seen in “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and “The Pink Panther”) is the eldest, the one with the head for business. Alice (Daphne Anderson) is the middle daughter, the one who can cook. And Vicky (Scales, immortalized in “Fawlty Towers”) is the youngest and prettiest, trusted mainly with housekeeping.
Vicky and Alice have wary suitors who must time their visits to her father’s habits, his mid-morning and mid-afternoon treks down the street to the Moonraker’s Inn, his favorite public house, where he regales one and all about how he keeps his daughters under his thumb and his business thriving thanks to the underpaid wizard with leather in his employ, unassuming William Mossop (Mills).
But all it takes is one severe but enthusiastic and wealthy dowager (Helen Haye) to upset Hobson’s life of dipsomaniacal leisure. She compliments Mossop, and Maggie does the quick math and resolves “You’re for me, then,” deciding that they’ll marry, start their own shop and build their lives together, whether Mossop is amenable to this or not.
With the other two daughters already plotting their marital escape, what choices does that leave for our pint-happy capitalist?
Filmed mostly on Shepperton soundstages, “Hobson’s” relies on a mere handful of sets. But Lean and especially Lawton find funny things to do on them. Laughton’s drunken dash up the stairs, reminiscent of Teddy’s “CHARGE!” up San Juan Hill in “Arsenic and Old Lace,” is a stitch.
This is a comedy of classic set-ups, double-crosses, schemes and true love, with a generous peppering of witty one-liners — mostly delivered by Laughton — regarding Hobson’s situation, his growing exasperation and the daughters he finds less “manageable” by the hour.
On Vicky’s provocative fashion sense, he gripes about the “bump” on her rump (a bustle) that he notices as she walks the streets “with the kind of waist that’s normal in wasps, unusual in women.”
On a lawyer he finds himself haggling with — “I’m not so fond of the sound of your voice as you are.”
His elbow-bending mates at the Moonraker’s hear why he is determined to foil that first marriage of his most indispensible daughter, Maggie.
“I’ve noticed that if you get one marriage in a family, it goes through t’lot like measles.“
Laughton was never funnier on screen. More sadistic, sure. But he makes a perfectly delightful blowhard drunk in his sole collaboration with Lean.
The film’s immaculately-framed compositions and perfect editing don’t make an effort to hide how slight this all is. The story is Shakespearean in its multiple daughters unable to easily marry their way out from under their father’s control. But the play and the film give them agency, especially Maggie, who sets all this in motion with an unflinching march towards the altar, dragging poor Mossop along because he plainly and amusingly doesn’t know what’s good for him.
Lean’s black and white films about Victorian Britain — Wilfred Shingleton did the art direction for “Hobson’s” and “Great Expectations” — have aged into what amount to historical documentaries of the era. If it didn’t actually look and feel like his, that’s still the way we expect even today’s gloriously colored versions of Dickensian London and environs to appear.
Shingleton won an Oscar for “Great Expectations.” Cinematographer Jack Hildyard would go on to win an Oscar for filming Lean’s “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
“Hobson’s Choice” has enough delights that while one would never wish Lean had forgone any of his later films for another out-and-out comedy (Well, maybe “Ryan’s Daughter”), perhaps he might have had a better go of it than his next film, the heavy and more wistful romance “Summertime,” with Katherine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi, also an adaptation of a play.
But if you’ve missed choosing “Hobson’s” in your survey of Lean’s 19 film (a few uncredited assists) directing career, it’s definitely worth a look. Laughton, the always warm and engaging Mills, de Banzie and the future and forevermore SYBILL!” of our nightmares seal the deal.
Rating: unrated, alcohol abuse, with an “ass” here and there
Cast: Charles Laughton, Brenda de Banzie, John Mills, Daphne Anderson and Prunella Scales.
Credits: Directed by David Lean, scripted by Norman Spencer and David Lean, based on the play by Harold Brighouse. British Lion production on Tubi, Youtube, Amazon etc.
And just like that, Gerard Butler’s back to making B and C movies?
Sure, he’s got the imaginatively-titled thriller “Plane” due out in January, and not everything Lionsgate releases is a B-movie. But is this it? Is “Last Seen Alive” is the end of his “Olympus Has Fallen” late-career bounce?
Butler still gives fair value, bringing the emphatic “Where’s my WIFE?” pleas, threats and beat-downs in this riff on “The Vanishing” and “Breakdown.” But it’s inferior material, with a script that does a poor job at deepening the mystery of a missing wife, never giving us enough misdirection to believe for a second that, as the cops always say, “it’s usually the husband.” The waypoints in the plot are laughably worn out, the direction is pedestrian, at best.
Butler plays Will, a New England property developer in what one doesn’t need to stay through the credits to recognize as Over-Filmed Rural Georgia and not New Hampshire. He and Lisa (Jaime Alexander) are “going through some things” and she “needs to take a break.”
He’s driving her to her parents’ (Cindy Hogan and Bruce Altman) place when that last “stop for gas” is where she disappears. We don’t even have time to wonder why she isn’t driving herself in her own car. Because this isn’t 1959, even if she did cheat.
Will goes through an increasingly frantic search, calls in a cop (Russell Hornsby), and when he doesn’t seem to “get” the urgency, or pick up on the fact that “broken” CCTV cameras at the gas station actually work, Will takes matters into his own hands.
The picture’s clumsiest scene is the contrived fight Will starts with her parents, who couldn’t possibly think he’s done something to their daughter. Its most predictable scene involves that trope of big city screenwriters who see romance in rural trailer park meth labs.
Aside from that, it’s interesting to see former child star Ethan Embry devolve into The New Clint Howard, not a bad thing to be if you want to keep working.
I remember posting the trailer to “Last Seen Alice” last June, and half-wondering what happened to it. Netflix is the answer, and that might be a good place for Butler’s agent to be door-knocking these days. He’s still good value, even if the movies he’s offered are no longer reflecting that.
Rating: R violence, drug content, profanity
Cast: Gerard Butler, Jaime Alexander, Russell Hornsby, Ethan Embry, Michael Irby, Cindy Hogan and Bruce Altman.
Credits: Directed by Brian Goodman, scripted by Marc Frydman. A Voltage release on Netflix.
