Oviedo, Florida can sample a different sort of Holocaust story in this fictional tale of a Jewish teen so deep into the smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd and the promise of the limelight that she minimizes the harrowing reality swirling up around her in1942 Paris.
Not great, but not bad. Get to it before some book banner decides DVDs about the Holocaust are offensive to her Aryan Brotherhood relatives.
The exciting, clever bang-up finale to “Maggie Moore(s)” rather softens the disappointing blow that this off-key dark comedy’s first 90 minutes have delivered. I’m not saying that makes the film worth watching, but it makes this Jon Hamm and Tina Fey vehicle a much closer call than it might have been.
An “inspired by a true story” tale of the bizarre murders of two women with the same name, it’s basically a sweet (ish) rom-com starring old friends and sometime collaborators Fey and Hamm pasted over a deadpan (ish) “Only Murders in New Mexico” mystery.
There are many “ishes” here — funny(ish), exciting(ish), clever(ish), cute(ish). They don’t add up to a wholly satisfying experience, despite that killer combo of leads.
What Hamm’s “Mad Men” co-star and sometime director John Slattery and screenwriter Paul Bernbaum conjure up is a “Columbo” styled “We know whodunit, but will they get away with it?” comedy with cruelty, corpses and a touch of Cohen Brothers rube-comedy absurdism.
Hamm plays the police chief in a town big enough to have maybe five cops and a casino, small enough to have only two “Maggie Moores.”
One of them (Louisa Krause) is married to a short-cuts taking sub-shop franchisee (Micah Stock of TV’s “Bonding”). Jay Moore is buying and serving expired meats, cheeses and ingredients rather than buying those products from his franchiser. That’s got him in business with the shady ex-con Tommy D (Derek Basco).
And that’s why Jay’s side-hustle includes distributing child porn. The waitress wife finds out, threatens to tell the cops, and Jay needs somebody to “scare” her out of that notion. Not to worry. Tommy D “knows a guy.”
Bizarre turn number one — the “guy” (hulking Happy Anderson) is deaf. He takes “contracts” by reading lips and passing notes, which he destroys with the shredder he keeps at hand for such cover-ups. The goon with the unlikely name “Kosco” is also not fond of loose ends.
“Scare her” isn’t where he stops. Suddenly, Jay’s got a dead wife, her car burnt in the desert and a neighbor (Fey) who heard them fighting.
Luckily for Jay the cops are nobody’s idea of “Columbo.” The chief (Hamm) is serious-minded, and grieving a dead wife. His Brit-immigrant sidekick (Nick Mohammed) is here for the one-liners.
“We have a victim who is unable to yield any clues because of her…”
“Crispiness?”
Jay’s the obvious suspect. But bizarre turn number two is when he realizes there are two “Maggies,” so he comes up with a plan and the cash to have another Maggie (Mary Holland) attacked, to throw the police off the scent.
Matters get messier and more bizarre as the second Maggie turns out to have an anti-Semitic enemy from work and a cheating husband (Christopher Denham) who isn’t any more torn-up about his Maggie’s death than Jay Moore seems to be.
Lots of suspects, a chief who takes a shine to one of the witnesses — neighbor Rita (Fey) — and a partner who is looking for the next joke, not a logical chain of evidence, so maybe the real killer will never be caught.
Fey and Hamm have an easy rapport that doesn’t really lead to sparks. But it’s cute seeing him play “the vulnerable one” in this pairing, considering their “30 Rock” relationship.
The performances that seem properly pitched to match the material are around the edges — a brazen casino waitress (Bobbi Kitten) here, a sassy store clerk (Oona Roche) there.
The problem is that the serious stuff is barely more interesting than the funny stuff — maybe six chuckles — is amusing.
You’re kind of left with the nagging feeling that this could work or could have worked with a more deft touch at the wordprocessor or sitting behind the camera on set.
Funny “ish” and twisty “ish” don’t quite get it done.
Rating: R for (profanity) throughout, violence, some sexual material, brief nudity and drug use
Cast: Jon Hamm, Tina Fey, Nick Mohammed, Christopher Denham, Micah Stock, Happy Anderson, Derek Basco, with Mary Holland and Louisa Krause.
Credits: Directed by John Slattery, scripted by Paul Bernbaum. A Screen Media release.
Running time: 1:39
Yes, a film buff can get his or her hands on every Bogart, Alan Ladd and John Garfield film noir in an economical amount of time. But it seems like there’s always another Dick Powell outing that you’ve passed-over, missed, or has become hard to track down.
And you want to track down Dick, who was Bogie-tough with William Powell’s sharp-edged patter and way with a one-liner.
In the Andre de Toth thriller “Pitfall,” Powell barks off a half a dozen zingers just in the opening scene, establishing what an “average American” insurance guy/family guy John Forbes is.
His second-grader needs cash for a school fund drive.
“Don’t spend it on a woman!”
John’s wife (Jane Wyatt) needs money for new shoes for the kid.
“What does he DO with his shoes? Eat’em?”
To the kid — “Until my rich uncle dies, stop GROWING!”
“Pitfall” is a shorter, more domestic variation of a “Double Indemnity” theme. Andre de Toth (“Crime Wave,” “House of Wax,””Day of the Outlaw”) never had Billy Wilder’s sophistication or cachet or studio security. “Pitfall” was released by Regal Films, which I’d never heard of before today.
But the movie crackles with sharply-drawn characters, deadly complications and murky motivations, a brisk, brief noir with bite…and Lizabeth Scott.
John Forbes is a recovery officer with Olympic Mutual, someone in need of the services of a “weird” private eye, played by Raymond Burr during his “screen heavies” period. Mack has tracked down the woman a jailed embezzler was stealing for — “quite a girl,” a looker, and as it turns out, a model.
But “finding” her is all the P.I. has to do, even though he tried to figure out where the money went. This is where Forbes comes in. And even though he doesn’t let on, Mister Married “Old Man of Routine” is smitten by this seeming innocent who had the bad luck to fall for a guy whose only means of spoiling her was stealing.
A leopard skin coat, an engagement ring, but will Forbes insist on seizing the weathered runabout motorboat she just repainted, too?
If she playing him? Is he ripe to be played? He seems awfully settled, even if he’s griped to his wife how unsettling that is. Mona flirts and judges him and he’s not happy with that.
“I’d shoot myself if I thought I was turning into the kind of guy you describe.”
“I have a gun,” she mentions, helpfully.
The script, adapted from a paperback potboiler, sets up the jealous jailbird (Byron Barr), the delusional stalker (Burr) and the “family man” who doesn’t let on that he is for reasons Mona might easily guess, if she’s noticed his ring. If she cares. If she’s looked in the mirror lately.
There are beat-downs and shootouts and “We can’t go to the police,” a plot that resembles “Double Indemnity,” without the acid-stained prose or body heat.
But Powell is a movie star in his element here, with de Toth parking him in lots of LA and Marina del Ray late ’40s locations for him to navigate, by land or by sea, chasing after the life he didn’t choose with the looker who might not offer the comforts of home. But then, femme fatales, if that’s who Mona is, never do.
Rating: “approved,” violence
Cast: Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Jane Wyatt, Byron Barr and Raymond Burr.
Credits: Directed by Andre de Toth, scripted by Karl Kamb, based on a novel by Jay Dratler. A Regal Films release.
Running time: 1:25
Two-time Oscar winner, former member of Parliament, grande dame of the stage, the small screen and the big one, Glenda Jackson was one of a kind.
She lived 87 years, most of them bathed in glory.
Tough, flinty, a British Hepburn only less patrician with more middle class roots, adept at dramas, romances and boundary-pushing cinema of the daring ’70s — “Women in Love” — and loopy laughers like “A Touch of Class.”
She also made a helluva funny sparring partner for Walter Matthau in two pretty funny films of the ’80s, “Hopscotch” and “House Calls.”
And she still has one more movie “in the can,” as they say. Well done.
The journey isn’t epic, and it doesn’t cover a great distance — emotionally or geographically.
But Mikhaël Hers’ latest film, set entirely in the XVth arrondisement of Paris and taking place over just under ten years, shows us the little details, small-scale tragedies and minor triumphs of a woman, her children and a homeless girl they take in, all of them thrown together as “The Passengers of the Night.”
Charlotte Gainsbourg is Elisabeth, 40something and her kids in the car with her, giddy at the sight of the street celebrations that accompanied the election of a Socialist president in 1981. It is a high moment and but the prologue of a story with a lot of ups and downs to it as she and her family pass through the decade.
By 1984, she is weeping at the news that her husband has moved in with his girlfriend, leaving her with teenager Matthias (Quito Rayon Richter) and college-age Judith (Megan Northam) and a high rise Beaugrenelle apartment that she can’t afford without going to work. Her ex won’t even support his kids.
The fact that “you’ve never worked” shouldn’t hold her back, her father (Didier Sandre) insists. Any job that “requires common sense and sensitivity” (in French with English subtitles) would be lucky to have her.
Elisabeth despairs of finding anything until her desperate letter to the hostess of her favorite late-night radio show, Vanda (Emmanuelle Béart) gets her an interview and a job as a call screener.
In the world of night owls, confessional callers and empty streets, the insomniac Elisabeth finds a home.
Meanwhile, the witty, writerly Matthias is failing at school, more interested in girl-watching than buckling down. Judith is making protesting a full-time job. And a drug-abusing street urchin (Noée Abita) brought in as an anonymous, “tell me nothing but truths” interview subject on the radio show taps into Elisabeth’s empathy and she takes her in.
Talulah, as she calls herself, will change lives and have her own changed, but mostly in tiny, incremental ways as she drifts in and out of lives and Elisabeth struggles to get out of the funk a divorce and the rejection that comes with it entails.
The dramatic touches here are simple and real-world relatable. We see — early on — that Elisabeth is a breast cancer survivor. Gainsbourg, a French actress with a resting depressed face, wholly inhabits Elisabeth’s self-loathing plight, her journey and the impulses — good and bad — that guide her out of it.
Matthias begins the tale as a 16 year-old almost too shy to flirt. But he throws over anything that might develop with a cute classmate to fall deep into a crush on Talulah, who shows the siblings “the streets” and the easiest way to sneak into a cinema.
Sure, you may want to see Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage in “Birdy.” But “Full Moon in Paris” will have to do. Street urchins can’t be choosie.
Talulah is troubled, and her connection to Matthias has its dangers. They end up in the River Seine at one point. But even this melodramatic moment plays as a slice of the life-that-happens-to-you while you’re wondering what to do about your addictions or how to express yourself to your first love or trying to figure out how one becomes a writer in Paris.
The story isn’t the most arresting, with Elisabeth’s journey from call-screener to part-time librarian and fill-in on-air hostess mere background to the family life/love life/”real” life outside of work that Hers (“Amanda” and “This Summer Feeling” were his) is capturing here.
The late night radio milieu is arresting, but barely in the film. Judith, the ever-protesting “leftist” daughter, is one character whose story is given short shrift. I generally like movies that give us more to grab hold of than intimate, myopic melodramas like this offer.
But Hers and his leading lady highight the minor miracles, little kindnesses and “we’re all in this together” idealism of the film’s socialist era and make the idea of traveling as “The Passengers of the Night” inviting, if never quite exciting or intoxicating.
Rating: unrated, sex, nudity, alcohol abuse, smoking
Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Quito Rayon Richter, Noée Abita, Megan Northam and Emmanuelle Béart.
Credits: Directed by Mikhael Hers, scripted by Maud Ameline, Mariette Désert and Mikhael Hers. A KimStim release.
Running time: 1:52
Reviews out of Cannes weren’t enthusiastic, no surprise given the age of the franchise and the advanced years of its Man of Action leading man.
But this trailer is the one that sells it for me and gives me some hope that the delightful Phoebe Waller Bridge, villainous Mads and new director Mangold deliver the goods.
It opens June 30, but tonight I see for myself whether the early buzz is accurate.
A little one-eyed boy whose Mom works with…NORAD? The first guy you think of when aliens say, “Bring us your LEADER.”
Trying to build a lockdown drama around “What we learned” during the Pandemic — about outselves, our racial divide, our “privilege” and our empathy — would be a daunting task for anybody.
As yet, virtually no one’s quite gotten their arms all the way around it. “The Same Storm” came the closest, a film by one of our most’s empathetic filmmakers, Peter Hedges.
So there’s no shame in trying and failing. But Daniel Holland’s “Moon Students” opens its arms wider and wider…and trips, stumbles and exasperates as it does.
A bitter college professor (Nicholas Thurkettle) takes out his utterly-exhausted patience on two disorganized, unprepared students who botch their presentation on what turns out to be the last day of classes at L.A. Coastal College before COVID shuts the school down.
Ethan Cole dismisses Lita (Sydney Carvill) and Antonio (Eddie Navaro) with extreme prejudice. Antonio doesn’t take it well, and seems to go all punk on Cole’s “My first name is either Mister or Professor” attitude
A dean (Rachanee Lumayno) tries to make peace. As an assault was involved, the fact that she doesn’t toss the kid and/or call the cops says something.
Antonio is encouraged to drop out, the struggling professor teaches the remaining students remotely, and Antonio’s relationship with Lita deteriorates as he drinks and breaks quarantine, drives them to San Diego to “hang with my homies” and basically makes us wonder what Lita sees in him.
It’s a movie of long and somewhat inane monologues, starting with the bookish pal D’Andre’s (B.A. Tobin) San Diego soliloquy mashing up “Hamlet” with Lennie from “Of Mice and Men.”
Professor Cole’s obsession with the near-run thing that was the Apollo 11 Moon landing is his anaology for what he’s hoping for from his students, “American exceptionalism” of a sort, overcoming long odds to achieve greatness.
We’re a long way from that peak moment, the movie suggests. And maybe the white folks who mythologize should get a clue.
Lita is of the opinion that students’ struggle and back-stories are worth considering in how you treat them. What really happened in that office that last day of class?
Everybody deals with loss, before and during COVID. And everybody’s kind of asking for “one true thing” out of their human connections.
“Moon Students” has a couple of nice locations and a few theatrical scenes and moments in scenes. It’s collected awards from some lesser known festivals.
The players don’t embarrass themselves, but don’t really move us when they’re supposed to. The script? Kind of a collage of impressions and feelings about America at its peak — July, 1969 — and during the pandemic and after.
I found it pretentious in those moments where it wasn’t subjecting the viewer to some banality being passed off as insight, or some racial epiphany about John Sayles’ labor movement classic film, “Matewan,” with one of them mispronouncing the title.
These “Moon Students” missed their Moon shot, and not by a little. By a lot.
Rating: unrated, alcohol abuse, some profanity
Cast: Sydney Carvill, Nicholas Thurkettle, Eddie Navarro, Nicholas Heard, Rachanee Lumayno and B.A. Tobin
Credits: Scripted and directed by Daniel Holland. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Running time: 1:49
Kim Seon-Ho stars in this Park Hoon-Jung action pic from KPop Land
June 30 is when we see it in theaters.
Cage at his Cagiest, a “Collateral” plot, a July 28 release.
Movie Nation 