Movie Nation

You don’t have to be a teacher to be triggered by the tense and suspenseful drama “The Teacher’s Lounge,” Germany’s most worthy contender for a Best International Feature Oscar nomination.

A gripping story of idealism battered by bruising reality, high-handed authority and arrogant, misguided students who organize themselves to achieve maximum chaos, “Lounge” is a cautionary slice of education in an “Every parent’s an expert” era. Over-booked teachers are an easy target for parental ire in what passes for a political satire of the corrosive effects of ever-bending tolerance in the face of anarchy. And yet there’s still room to believe the final line of every teacher’s prayer about “reaching just one kid.”

Like schools themselves, Iker Çatak’s film, co-scripted by Johannes Duncker, is loaded with a lot of hopes, expectations and baggage. It is a riveting, intensely disquieting experience.

Leonie Benesch of TV’s “The Crown” stars as Carla Nowak, an idealistic young teacher who seems popular with the sixth graders in her new school. The kids even buy into her cutesy little “Guttentag” call-and-response clap exercise to start each (math) class.

But when we meet her, she’s squirming in her chair and blurting out words of protest. A couple of colleagues, including one who had his pocket picked, are leaning on the two student council representatives who sit in on faculty meetings with the principal (Ann-Kathrin Gummich). There are thefts happening in school, even in the teacher’s lounge. And one teacher in particular (Michael Klammer) is going full authoritarian on making these two name a suspect.

Ms. Nowak’s protests fail. The boys are separated from the girls in her class, and then a “voluntary” search of wallets has the adults accusing a Turkish boy of stealing. That falls apart under examination, and the boy’s parents are understandably outraged at the stigma this puts on their child.

Ms. Nowak may be vindicated, but at what cost? We start to count the ways she’s overly permissive and downright lax in keeping her students in line above and beyond simple “pay attention in class.” She’s intent on giving one and all the benefit of the doubt, allowing a cheater a second chance at taking a test, seeing students to slip out of P.E. to sneak a smoke, and then letting them talk her out of “calling your parents.”

But it’s when Ms. Nowak notices a colleague raiding the coffee fund piggy bank that she decides to take action on this injustice of accusing kids of stealing. She leaves her wallet in her jacket in the lounge, and leaves her laptop open and secretly “watching” that jacket.

Her “discovery” seems damning enough. But even after the accusation, she and we have doubts. The principal gets ahead of herself and in legal terms, they have to retreat to a CYA position. And that’s when parents, students and Nowak’s fellow teachers sense blood in the water.

“What happens in the teacher’s lounge stays in the teacher’s lounge” isn’t funny in this context, deflected in German with English subtitles. Nowak is embattled and at a loss for allies.

Some will try to devour her, or get her fired. Others will fume at how her lack of “solidarity” with the faculty has exposed them all. And she finds herself carrying guilt over the accusation, fretting over collateral damage (the accused thief’s student son, played by Leonard Stettnisch) and under figurative and literal assault from all sides.

It stands to reason that a nation of “tinkerers,” motoring enthusiasts and hobbyists would be the birthplace of classic, vintage or “veteran” car restoration and collecting.

A culture celebrated for its fix-it-yourself ingenuity and preserve-the-past mania would of course find value in combining all that in an “It’s the journey, and journeying in style, not the destination” hobby.

Whatever supremacy America might claim in this global avocation is trumped by Great Britain’s pride of place as the first to recognize and organize those who didn’t want the legendary motorcars of the past recycled out of existence or allowed to rust to dust.

The founding document — the Magna Carta in all this — is preserved in celluloid form, a winning 1953 British comedy whose title character is a 1904 Darracq Type O named “Genevieve.”

It’s a classic “road comedy” that’s almost more interested in the road and the cars on it than the men who insist on puttering ancient or “Veteran” cars, as the Brits call them, to life, and their long-suffering better halves.

Director Henry Cornelius (“Passport to Pimlico”) battled cantakerous and ancient automobiles and British weather in this almost-romp set against the famed London-to-Brighton Veteran Car Run. That’s an annual road rally for enthusiasts that mimics “The Emancipation Run,” a celebratory rally in 1896 designed to commemorate Britain’s acceptance of cars as conveyances allowed on roads without earlier encumbrances on their use.

The recreation rally has been held every year — barring World War II — since 1927, and brings “vintage” cars — labeled “Brass Era Cars” in America — from all over the world as participants. The catch? The car has to have been built before 1905.

It’s so colorfully famous that it used to be covered by ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” and many a classic car restoration program (“Wheeler Dealers,”“Chasing Classic Cars,” etc.) has had its hosts participate in this “bucket list” event for collectible car enthusiasts.

In the movie, “Genevieve,” with brass fittings and headlamps and primitive technology evident throughout, is a car that’s been in the McKim family for three generations. That’s what made her the pride and joy of barrister Alan McKim (John Gregson). Even his wife Wendy (Dinah Sheridan) suspects she takes a back seat to keeping this car and this “tradition” of driving it to Brighton alive.

She figures all this ancient auto stuff is “childish and a bore,” but the real trouble starts when Alan offers to let her out of the next rally so that she can attend a party she’s just been invited to.

“I simply don’t see what’s ‘wonderful’ about getting into a 50 year-old (then) car and taking two days to drive to Brighton and back.”

There’s back and forth about who won’t disappoint whom. But of course she’s on board, seeing as how he bought her a fancy new bonnet for the ride.

Alan’s richer ad-man pal, given the on-the-nose name “Ambrose Cleverhouse,” is played by Kenneth More. Kay Kendall plays Rosalind, “this year’s model,” the beauty he’s talked into riding in his 1904 Stryker in this year’s rally. The men are rivals, and on this particular rally, that turns into bad blood as this “not a race” soon becomes one — a two day (round trip) dash full of breakdowns, flats, pranks, detours, bitter disagreements and offers to “buy you a jolly good lunch” which lapse into “buy you a jolly good dinner” thanks to the endless mechanical problems.

Cleverhouse isn’t ever-so-clever in his Genevieve insults, so he always punctuates them with a prep school laugh — “Ha ha HA ha!”

The cars smoke, and the engine noise is such that we can tell when the drive and conversation are taking place on a towed trailer next to the camera operator.

Shots mix sunny days with the odd insert of a rain-drenched road, underscoring how tricky it was getting this Technicolor shoot in the can in British weather.

We drive by a lovely collection of houses and historic pubs on the old A23 and get a further taste of the past via the “modern” cars folded into this caravan of (mostly) early internal combustion.

The jokes are somewhat droll, and a bit sparse, if we’re honest. Having to spend the night in a “limited bath” and even-more-limited-bath-time hotel parked next to a thunderous clock tower is bound to enrage Wendy.

“No one’s ever complained before,” the upbeat proprietor bubbles.

“Are they Americans,” another guest asks?

The story’s a tad myopic, focusing on these two “petrolheads” and their increasingly testy rivalry. Sportsmanship may fall by the wayside. Might manners follow? Not necessarily, old boy.

The veteran character lead More (“The Admirable Crichton,” “The Longest Day”), playing something of a bounder here, is fun and in fine form. Kendall. best known for marrying Rex Harrison (and dying young), vamps up posh Rosalind, a woman with a musical past, little tolerance for hardship and unable to hold her liquor. Keen-eyed viewers will notice James Bond’s future Minister of Defence,” Geoffrey Keen, here playing a too-tolerant motorcycle cop.

Seventy years after its release, “Genevieve” can be appreciated for the Technicolor snapshot-in-time that it was and remains, even if the comedy is more jovial than genuinely funny at this point in film history. And we can still marvel over how “new” those “fifty year old” antiques — all of them well over 100 years old now — look and the fact that there are fanatics who can keep them running to this very day.

Rating: “approved,” with an “ass” here or there

Cast: John Gregson, Dinah Sheridan, Kay Kendall, Geoffrey Keen and Kenneth More

Credits: Directed by Henry Cornelius, scripted by William Rose. A J. Arthur Rank production originally released bu General Film Distributors, Gaumont and Universal, now on Youtube.

Running time: 1:26

Claudia Piñeiro’s novel “Elena Knows” comes to the screen as a convuluted and mournful affair, a moody murder mystery whose solution seems too obvious too soon to truly come off.

Gabriela Larralde’s script transforms the compact single-day search for answers about why Elena’s adult daughter was found hanging in the bell tower of the church school where she taught into something more drawn-out, immersing us in the sadness and the building of “the case,” but spoiling any sense of mystery.

When we meet her, Elena (Mercedes Morán) is enfeebled and bitter. Stooped, walking with her eyes always fixed on the ground in and around Buenos Aires, it takes a while for us to figure out what ails her.

She has a pill regimen and a fridge full of prepared meals, all of this maintained by her 40something daughter. And whatever’s going on with her now, “life itself” gives her no pleasure. Daughter Rita (Erica Rivas, quite good) is prone to tears in her presence.

Maybe a visit to the hair salon will cheer her up. A nice dye job. Sure, the conversation with the hairdresser has a disappointed edge, but let’s move past that.

But when nobody comes to pick Elena up at the end of the day, when Rita doesn’t answer her phone, we expect the worst. It comes in the form of a cop at her door late at night, a body to identify in the morgue, and questions.

Rita was mortally afraid of lightning. Would she go out in a storm? Why would she hang herself in the church, where her long-standing crush, Father Juan is priest? What’s up with her husband, the weepy Paolo? Why are her students — one in particular — so disrespectful at the funeral home?

The cops consider the “case closed.” But Elena knows there is more to this, and is determined to get an autopsy and get some answers — harassing people, collecting appointment books and the like, even paying to have a banner demanding answers hung across the street from the parochial school.

Director Anahí Berneri is stingy with the clues here. Elena’s malady isn’t mentioned until midway through the movie. Other wrinkles in the narrative, designed to make us doubt this or that conclusion, are underwhelming if plausible.

Because the flashbacks are the real story.

Morán (of “Norma” and “Neruda”) is a riveting presence, carrying the narrative along its path, creating an unlikable heroine of stern convictions and unbending principles. Elena is one of those women (We never see a husband or hear a word about Rita’s father.) to whom EVERYTHING is a “principle.”

Miranda de la Serna ably plays Young Rita in flashbacks — open-hearted, desperately wanting to have a cat, and shut down every time she brings in a stray. We see young Rita struggling against them, but slowly absorbing her mother’s values.

The problem with “Elena Knows” is how early on we “get” that. It’s not that we “know” as soon as Elena does. We know sooner, too soon for this mystery to remain mysterious.

Rating: TV-MA

Cast: Mercedes Morán, Erica Rivas, Mey Scápola and Miranda de la Serna

Credits: Directed by Anahí Berneri, scripted by Gabriela Larralde, based on a novel by Claudia Piñeiro. A Neflix release.

Running time: 1:39

This Christmas will host “The Color Purple” musical, George Clooney’s take on “The Boys in the Boat” and a pre “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Willie Wonka origin story.

The trailers to “Wonka” have a lovely Dickensian winter sheen sheen and lots of recognizable elements from the Wonkaverse.

Will it be the holiday blockbuster? Should it be? Let’s find out.

A wasting death, a trip to celebrate a life, and to recover from “Good Grief.”

Levy tries something sensitive and not at all funny for his writing and directing and starring debut.

Jan. 5 on Netflix.

“Cuarancena” may not be the most bourgeois comedy ever to come out of the Dominican Republic. But I’ve seen a few, and I’m guessing it is, and I mean that in the most flattering way.

A high-toned dark comedy that only really turns comic in the third act, it’s about folks who break curfew for a posh meal paired with fine wines late in the “cuarencena” (quarantine). The “price” they pay for breaking the rules for nouvelle cuisine are hurt feelings, sorely tested relationships, mistrust and a genuine fear of infection, or worse.

Chef Mateo (Luis José Germán) and restarateur Claudia (Soroya Pina) have invited his younger brother Jonas (Joshua Wagner), the gay couple Jojo (Isabel Spencer) and very pregnant Aurora (Elizabeth Chahin) and the ex-couple Carmen (Nashla Bogaert) and the goof everybody knows as El Chompi (Frank Perozo) for a multi-course meal and possible overnight stay, depending on what curfew is ordained that day.

Claudia doses almost everybody (not the pregnant Aurora) with disinfectant as they enter, checking their vaccination status as she does. Somebody didn’t follow her protocols.

But everyone knows everyone else, and it’s not just the noisy bro El Chompi and Carmen who have “history.”

There are secrets to be revealed, old feelings that haven’t gone away, and if we’re to believe the opening moments — the heard, not seen aftermath of violence — somebody’s going to get hurt.

The sixth film from writer-director David Maler (“Todas las mujeres son iguales” and “La Boya) is a blend of fine dining and furious hurt served up in sumptuous close-ups of each dish with each “chapter” of the picture including a wine suggestion for that dish.

“Main Course, Oyster Mushrooms in duck gelatin on a bed of seaweed and spinach” to be “paired” with a cabernet sauvignon. Of course.

The picture starts slowly, letting us settle into the characters and the “types” they play. Aurora and Jojo are a vegan and almost-vegetarian, fellow social justice warriors who refer to their baby-to-come as a “They-by” (in Spanish with English subtitles), because “We’re going to let them choose their gender after birth.”

Carmen is frantic that her new boyfriend wasn’t able to make it and seems unreachable by phone. And El Chompi, a life-of-the-party smoker, joker, COVID conspiracy buff and lesbianism is “just a phase” flirt, is giving his ex the full court press.

Something’s “off” about our married hosts. And some of it might have to do with Mateo’s relationship with his and Jonas’s parents.

Maler takes time setting all this up, with little bursts of testiness popping up out of nowhere. We get the feeling that were it not for the curfew they’re violating, somebody would be stomping out.

But the real drama — dark and then darkly comic — breaks out in the third act as shocks are followed by surprises, almost every one of them landing laughs.

Germán, Spencer and Perozo have the chewiest roles and stand out in the cast. But we buy into everyone playing her or his or “their” part, no matter how archly-drawn the characters might be.

Every Oscar season has a Best International Feature underdog or two worth championing and rooting for the “honor just to be nominated.” I’m pulling for this, a COVID “Cuarencena” from the second largest island in the Caribbean, and a pretty funny movie that streaming services should be fighting over any minute now.

Rating: violence

Cast: Nashla Bogaert, Luis José Germán, Isabel Spencer, Soroya Pina,
Frank Perozo, Elizabeth Chahin and Joshua Wagner

Credits: Scripted and directed by David Maler. A Lantica Media release.

Running time: 1:34

There’s something to the notion that bomb-battered and nearly bled-out Britain had more to celebrate than most after the end of World War II. That explains the time-delayed explosion of wry, giddy comedies that poured out before they’d ended rationing or even begun to clean up the rubble from six years of world war.

“Kind Hearts and Coronets,” “Passport to Pimlico” and “Whisky Galore!” all came out the same year, every mother’s son of them a bonafide classic, and all of them heralding more classic farces to come.

“Whisky Galore!” is the most eccentric and hilarious of the lot. But its 1949 competition, “Passport to Pimlico” gives it a very nice run for the money, a romp that folds in pent-up privation, anarchic capitalism, “We’re all in this together” socialism and a Who’s Who of Great British character players to make funny characters stick and Cockney-flavored punchlines sting.

It’s about a corner of London — hemmed-in by the city and pinned-down by national and local austerity — where everyone is resigned to their limited diet and still putting things on layaway for that sunny day when they have the ration points to buy a car or a dress or what have you because little was available as the country was as broke as could be.

Then one day, the “19 families” of Miramont Place, Pimlico, learn that they’re still under the domain of the French Duchy of Burgundy. “British” austerity “rules” don’t apply. That martinet bank official has “no jursidiction” over his put-upon but independent-minded local manager (Raymond Huntley). The dress shop owner (Hermione Baddeley) can sell whatever she wants as “imports.”

Even the local bobby (Philip Stainton) no longer has the power to close any business on Sundays, or close the pub at “Last orders, ladies and gents.”

Right. “I’ll have a pint, too” then.

Director Henry Cornelius (“Genevieve,” “I Am a Camera”) had the budget to fill the streets and Ealing Studios sets with extras and the cast with famously funny faces for this farce. They treat us to the giddiness of “freedom” from a rigidly-controlled wartime economy. And one and all serve up the sour aftertaste as unregulated “freedom” leads to cheating, inequity and (British) government crackdowns, a “siege” of this little bit of Burgundy in Olde Britannia.

T.E.B. “Tibby” Clarke was a big reason we call “Ealing comedies” a genre and a writer largely responsible for the “Golden Age” of British screen farces. He won an Oscar for scripting “The Lavender Hill Mob,” and “The Titfield Thunderbolt” and “Passport to Pimlico” decorate his classic-strewn resume.

Here, he deftly sets us up for the fun with a “Dedicated To the Memory” image of a wreath with ration books “buried” inside it. The bobby walks the streets, warning residents of what the viewer can hear on the radio, that the area’s “last unexploded bomb,” nicknamed “Pamela,” is due to be removed.

Is there anything more WWII “British” than nicknaming a long-unexploded German bomb?

As we meet various locals — fishmonger Frank (John Slater), Baddeley’s dress shopkeeper, etc. — we get the news that the bomb won’t be removed at all. It’s to be inconveniently blown up in that crater in the middle of a ruined city block that nobody wants to build on.

Pranks-prone schoolboys solve that problem by rolling an old factory flywheel into the crater.

One “ka-BOOM” later, and what’s beneath that crater reveals itself — a treasure trove from a former lord of the region’s stash. One coroner’s inquest later, an expert royalist (Dame Margaret Rutherford) is consulted, and damned if it doesn’t appear that this 15th century Duke of Burgundy didn’t die on a battlefield and lose his lands that way. He lived on, and this parcel still belongs to his descendents — in France — and its people aren’t exactly English or British.

“You mean that these Londoners are…Burgundian?!”

“Indubitably!”

There was something familiar in the tropes, tricks, twists and gimmicks in 2014’s Korean thriller “A Hard Day.”

A cop, in trouble and dashing about trying to cover his tracks in a corruption scandal, running over a pedestrian in his mania, covering up those tracks by stashing that body here and there. The corpse is stuffed into a car trunk and eventually into coffin with another body — that of the cop’s mother, who just-died.

The moment other concerned parties enter the funeral home, not knowing where that extra body is, and the dead guy’s cell phone rings? I feel as if I’ve seen that in other films before 2014 as well.

Damned if “Hard Day” wasn’t remade for French Netflix back in 2022. “Restless” was the title of what I called an “inferior copy.”

And hell’s bells, here we are at the end of 2023, and damned if that intellectual property isn’t back, only this time in Japanese (with subtitles, or dubbed into English).

“Hard Days” has a few Japanese touches, such as death and funeral rituals, and the gangsters this time are yakuza, and not Korean or French.

I will say this for it. I see and review so many films that titles and plot points become a blur. But it took me a good 30 minutes before I lost any thoughts of “deja vu” and paused this one to look over the writing credits to confirm my suspicions. It starts well, even if it runs out of gas and into complications that beggar belief.

Nobi Nakanishi plays Detective Yuji Kudo, a man about to have all his chickens come home to roost, and just in time for the New Year.

His mother is dying in the hospital, his estranged wife (Ryôko Hirosue) is furious he hasn’t made it to the hospital. His boss and colleagues are freaked out that Internal Affairs is investigating the “mob ties” in their precinct. And then damned if he doesn’t run over a pedestrian (Hayato Isomura) and frantically have to shift gears in order to cover up that crime.

The body’s in the trunk. There’s a sobriety check point where the street cops aren’t going to let the detective pull rank and avoid getting the breathylizer, maybe even his trunk searched, as they smell blood in the water around the mob-connected Kudo.

He misses his mother’s dying breaths, and is distracting by a phone that won’t stop ringing as he’s talking with his not-quite-ex-wife, child, a nurse and a funeral home representative.

Kudo is dragged into a meeting with Yazaki, a lean-maybe-mean Internal Affairs investigator. And just when he thinks he’s in the clear, questions start popping up around a missing person who happens to be the corpse he’s been trying to dispose of, and the Yazaki (Gô Ayano of the yakuza thriller “A Family”) turns out to be on the payroll of some mob or other.

Maybe not the Senba gang. Not if their old boss (Akira Emoto, who’s been in Japanese films since the ’70s) can be believed.

A Taiwanese/American gangland thriller/action shoot’em up, this one looks jokey and bloody and kind of fun.

Jan. 4. Netflix

Hiyao Miyazaki’s latest “final film” (he’s retired a few times, most recently in 2013) is doing bang-up business at the U.S. box office as “The Boy and the Heron” looks to win a weak, no-real-competition early Dec. opening weekend.

Deadline.com was projecting a $10-12 million take for this fantasy fable from the master Japanese animator who gave us “Spirited Away,” “Ponyo” and “The Wind Rises.”

The final tally is $12.83, per @TheNumbers.

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be enough to win a weekend. But early December is traditionally a weak stretch for new openings, and this year’s Thanksgiving offerings — a new “Hunger Games” installment winding down, “Napoleon” underperfoming ($4 million) and last weekend’s concert film blockbuster, “Renaissanse: A Film by Beyonce” taking a STEEP dive on its second weekend — left the box office door open for this anime event.

“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” took in $9.4 million in its umpteenth week of release.

The real “race” here was between “Renaissance,” “Trolls Band Together” and last weekend’s other “big” (ish) release, “Godzilla Minus One,” with all three films expected to tally about $6-6.5 million, based on Friday’s box office take.”Godzilla” is only losing 40-45% of its opening weekend take, a much better hold than the front-loaded ticket sales of the Beyonce movie.

A reminder, this is how singing star concert films normally perform in theaters — a big opening, a steep drop-off (But 77%+? Ouch.), and quick disappearance. “Renaissance” only took in $5 million this weekend. Taylor Swift’s “Eras” was a blockbuster exception, opening huge and sticking around for an epic month of big box office.

“Godzilla Minus One” easily took third place, with $8.34 million.”Trolls” added $6.2, “Napoleon” only managed $4.2 and seems not destined for greatness.

Limited release/low box-office expectation pictures such as the filmed stage musical “Waitress” ($3.2) starring Sara Bareilles, Oscar-bait “Poor Things,” ($644K), less Oscar worthy “Eileen” ($615) and the corrosive “Saltburn” are left fighting for the Top Ten leftovers, along with “Silent Night” and “Dream Scenario.”

Angel Studios’ faith-based sci-fi “The Shift” is doing middling business, $2 million or so.

“Thanksgiving” faded to black even faster than “Wish” (another $5 million and change). Disney isn’t reporting “The Marvels” earnings any more, because the pain is too deep.