Movie Nation

It’s been filmed so many times it’s like the “Dracula” of Young Adult lit, an American novel as beloved as those Jane Austen petticoat pieces the Brits adore.

But Greta Gerwig’s version of “Little Women” does more than merely put a new generation’s mark on a classic. She rearranges the chronology, trims much that is over-familiar and adds a framing device. She cast it adroitly, took the starch out of the dialogue by making conversations fractious, chaotic and cluttered, and staged it beautifully in glorious locations covering all four seasons.

That makes this the liveliest, loveliest “Little Women” ever, practically a reinvention of “Masterpiece Theatre” fodder into something vital, fresh and new.

It’s still the story of the March sisters, mostly seen through the eyes of aspiring novelist Jo. But we meet Jo, played with too-busy-for-boys glee by Saoirse Ronan, as she’s submitting a story to a sympathetically curt New York publisher (Tracy Letts, perfect).

The lives of Jo, conventional Meg (Emma Watson), aspiring artist Amy (Florence Pugh), pianist Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and their believed mother, Marmee (Laura Dern) are followed through two timelines. In the fictive present, Jo is in New York, tutoring kids, writing and avoiding close-ties to dashing European music teacher Friedrich (Louis Garrel), and most of the other sisters and Marmee back in Concord, Massachusetts, either settled in or on the cusp of entering adult lives. And “seven years earlier,” we see their rosy late childhood, sibling rivalry, hormones, sumptuous feasts and Marmee teaching her not-quite-bourgeois charges about charity and kindess. Father is off doing his part in the Civil War.

Personalities are sketched in with a single line.

Jo — “I can’t get over my disappointment at being a GIRL!”

Meg — “I wish I had heaps of money and could have lots of servants!”

Amy — “I’ve always known I would marry rich. What’s wrong with that?”

Beth — “Marmee said we oughtn’t spend money for pleasure, when our men are suffering so in the army.”

Marmee — “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.”

In the past, they pine for letters from father, dance at balls and despite supposed privation, are served sumptuous meals, which Marmee would love for them to donate to the poor.

They are chatterboxes, who stage Jo’s plays for the neighborhood children (always starring Beth), bicker, brawl and constantly find ways of getting into “mischief,” Marmee says.

And then there’s the rich boy next door, the grandson of the sweetly stern Mr. Lawrence (Chris Cooper). Hollywood “It” boy Timothée Chalamet gives us the most louche Theodore “Laurie” Lawrence in the history of the movies. He is catnip to the whole clan, but especially to Jo, who otherwise doesn’t give boys a second thought.

If you have any memories of the many earlier incarnations of “Little Women,” you know the rough outlines of the story and the nature of the various characters. Gerwig concentrates on Jo, leaving the others less time to make an impression.

Pugh’s fizzy, almost mercenary Amy stands out, largely to her connection to the grumpy, practical and rich Aunt March, given a regal, wizened harrumph by Meryl Streep.

“I may not ALWAYS be right, but I’m never WRONG!”

Gerwig stages three big dance numbers, two of them formal, one in a Bowery beer house. There’s a day with kites on the beach and ice skating, of course.

And as ever, everybody is just so…nice. Letts, playing publisher Dashwood, could be speaking for the audience when he wants a little more titilation and drama in Jo’s stories, the more lurid the better. In Louisa May Alcott’s world, the rich are compassionate, the sisters rarely forget to be kind and always make up, tragedies are teachable moments and crushing disappointments almost shrugged off.

The big emotional payoffs are few, this time out. Only Dern’s put-up-a-brave-front Marmee gives a hint of all that the brocade, lace and big dinners served by a housekeeper hides.

“I’m angry almost every day.”

But we don’t come to “Little Women” for that. And Gerwig, for all her chattering girls and their many, many costume changes, captured in motion by an almost always moving camera, gives the fans what they want — whimsy, family, longing and heartbreak.

Maybe, as a gaggle of teen girls were saying as I left the theater, “Winona Ryder’s still the best Jo,” and perhaps other versions have been more faithful to the novel. But Gerwig’s concocted a fresh, frothty and fun take on a timeworn classic, the perfect family film for the holidays.

MPAA Rating:  PG for thematic elements and brief smoking.

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Laura Dern, Timotéee Chalamet, Eliza Scanlen, Florence Pugh and Meryl Streetp, Chris Cooper and Tracy Letts

Credits: Written and directed by Greta Gerwig,  based on the Louisa May Alcott novel. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 2:14

Sometimes, feel-good stories come with subtitles. Except, of course, for the fact that “Rock My Heart” is on Netflix. You can hear it in any language you desire, should the original German — with subtitles — be a turn off.

It’s a perfectly pleasant, sentimental and far-fetched story of a sickly but rebellious to the point of reckless teen, and the nervous wreck of a race horse that she bonds with. Good acting, solid if unsurprising story, and a few German touches make this would-be weeper a winner — by a nose.

Lena Klenke is Jana, a teen of 17 when we meet her, fresh off a drunken police chase on a motor scooter.  She’s in the hospital because she crashed at the end of that chase. It turns out she’s got a rare congenital heart condition that’s going to kill her. That’s made her fatalistic, and dismissive of her “You need experimental surgery” parents (Annette Frier, Michael Lott).

But she’s having these dreams, or what she thinks might be dreams. She encountered a horse during her latest escapade. They connected, somehow.

Getting out of the hospital puts Jana on a bike in search of that mysterious stallion. She finds it on the failing horse farm of Paul Brenner (veteran German character actor Dieter Hallervorden). He’s about to be foreclosed on — by his own daughter (Anneke Kim Sarnau).

He sees the skittish, untrainable three year-old around Jana. He knows nothing of her situation, but he can sense she’s a tad untamable.

Maybe the untamable teen can hang around and help him calm and train the untrainable “Rock My Heart.”

Yeah, that’s “kitschig” — “corny” in German. So’s a lot of other stuff in this movie. But it kind of works.

Yes, she’s hiding her heart condition as she shows up for “work” each day. Yes, she has to learn to ride, get on the racehorse simulator that will put her through the exertion of riding a full Rhineland Derby. That’s the “big race” Paul wants to win to save the farm, with his splitting the prize money with Jana.

“Kitschig.”

Because it turns out “Rock” only will let her ride him. Will Jana survive the training? Will her folks find out?

Either way, she tells them, she is NOT going to “sit around the house and wait for my heart to stop.”

There’s a love interest, the teen boy Samy (Emilio Sakraya) she met at dying kids camp last summer. She’s lukewarm on him, but he grows on her.

And director Hanno Olderdissen gives us just enough inside-horse-racing stuff — the milieu, the rivals, the training, etc. — to keep the intended audience for this (tweens) informed when the leads aren’t on the screen.

There’s no point over-selling this, but young Ms. Klenke has a pouty/bratty charm, Hallervorden the proper folksy sadness and Sakraya a pleasant voice-of-common-sense who happens to be the cute guy who wants to “be with” Jana.

The banter with parents and Paul is lightly amusing. Call it kid friendly and “pleasantly unsurprising” and suggest “Rock My Heart” to kids looking for something fun and unchallening to watch, would be my advice.

MPAA Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Lena Klenke, Dieter Hallervorden, Emilio Sakraya, Annette Frier, Michael Lott and Anneke Kim Sarnau

Credits: Directed by Hanno Olderdissen, script by Clemente Fernandez-Gil and Hanno Olderdissen.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:50

A telling moment in “Bombshell,” the film account of the Fox News sexual harassment meltdown that took out founder Roger Ailes, star Bill O’Reilly and others, has rising star Megyn Kelly in the car, driving home through a toll booth where the sign “STAY IN YOUR LANE” is illuminated.

It’s that kind of movie — on-the-nose, preachy, and when it’s being funny, not that subtle. Yes, director Jay Roach did “Trumbo.” But it’s moments like this — and others just as obvious — that remind you he’s also the pound-a-thumbtack-with-a-sledgehammer fellow behind the “Fockers” and “Austin Powers” comedies.

But by that moment, “Bombshell” and its peerless cast has already lured you in to the chilling “Mad Men” era sexual culture of Fox News, a land of ethical and in the case of too many of its female employees, limitless moral compromises, its airwaves filled with “outrage machine” older white anchors, and much younger women, many of whom fit the descriptor that is the film’s title.

“Bombshell” tells the story of ex-beauty queen Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), older and as presented here, growing more independent and less deferential to men with every broadcast, a woman fired for one too many “break from the party line” moments such as advocating for the return of the assault weapons ban. She fought back with the lawsuit that would unmask paranoid “casting couch” king Ailes (John Lithgow).

Her suit is pitched as a moment of 2016 election year truth for Fox star Kelly (Charlize Theron), a smart and canny anchor who took fire from “The Crazies” (how everybody in Fox describes their far right audience) when she stopped declaring Jesus and Santa Claus were white and started hitting MAGA candidate Donald Trump for his lifelong misogyny. In the film, Kelly is reluctant to speak up in support of Carlson, but eventually moved to act, even as she lets us pick up on her being cunning enough to see how this could be of personal benefit.

And then there’s naive, idealistic conservative Florida Christian Kayla (Margot Robbie), a fictional young producer with Carlson’s show, then O’Reilly’s. She’s a True Believer, “an influencer in the Jesus space” speaking up for “Evangelical Millennials” who becomes EveryWoman whose experiences with the Weinstein-esque Ailes represent decades of his predations.

All three narrate their chunks of the story, taking us through Carlson’s seeing the writing on the wall for her and plotting her revenge, and Kelly’s eye-opening realization that these rabid right wingers she’s been throwing red meat to will hurt her or her family (Mark Duplass is well-cast as her husband), fanatics egged-on by then-candidate Donald Trump.

Kayla? She has a fellow producer, Jess, played by “Saturday Night Live’s” Kate McKinnon, to guide her through the minefield of this toxic, egomaniac-packed newsroom. Jess is gay and knows how to keep her head down, in addition to knowing to never ever pitch O’Reilly an idea Rush Limbaugh has had first.

A flood of clips from actual “Fox & Friends” moments (real and re-created) and others making sexist remarks on air, and in the halls and offices capture a workplace where women either silently endured, or elbowed back to little effect.

We see the hiring practices that got all these “legs” put behind clear-glass desks. “Television is a VISUAL medium!” is the Ailes mantra. But legions of men at all levels of the organization felt free to comment, sometimes luridly, on women’s appearances, and proposition them if they were in positions powerful enough to demand compliance.

Roach, screenwriter Charles Randolph and a dazzling cast which keeps adding dazzling new members, first scene to last, capture the chilly paranoia in that “news” room, some women bridling at their treatment and happy that Carlson, at least (she is all alone for the longest time) is standing to the treatment.

Other women are handing out “Team Roger” t-shirts as the scandal explodes into America’s legitimate media and the Murdoch owners of Fox launch an investigation into Ailes and the culture he created.

When even Kelly’s staff is so afraid, on a daily basis, of her being labeled that they bark “She is NOT a feminist,” repeatedly, you get it. And you understand why Fox News America would never vote for a woman who didn’t look like these bombshells, or a reasonable facsimile from Alaska.

Aside from the men, Foxists Greta Van Susteren (Anne Ramsay) and Jeanine Pirro (Alanna Ubach) come off the worst, strident Ailes defenders who claimed to have never experienced his come-ons.

Connie Britton plays the Camille Cosby of this horror show, Mrs. Ailes, a virulent right-winger who feigns ignorance at what her husband was accused of.

Alice Eve, Jennifer Morrison, Ashley Greene, Bree Condon — a veritable pageant of Hollywood’s prettiest and whitest starlets spanning a generation show up in small roles as Fox personalities or “survivors.”

Whatever else Roach managed here, pitching “Bombshell” as a cause, something “name” actresses wanted to be seen in out of support, really paid off.

A third Oscar winner (after Kidman and Theron) shows up as Ailes’ lawyer, with Allison Janney playing Susan Estrich.

And none of this would work without impressive villains. Lithgow’s prosthetically-altered Ailes is, if anything, more deranged than Russell Crowe’s portrayal of Ailes last summer in “The Loudest Voice.” Hobbled, raging like Dr. Strangelove as he waddles about on his walker, paranoid and cruel, he orders his pretty young things to “Stand up and give me a twirl,” show more and more leg, and demands “loyalty” above all.

And media oligarch Rupert Murdoch, who has sewn crippling dissent via media smears, dirty tricks and lies in his native Australia, Britain and the U.S., is given a cold, calculating turn by Malcolm McDowell.

The laughs may be a little too easy — dressing ANYbody up as Geraldo Rivera is a cheap guffaw — and the messaging too pointed and lopsided to appeal to every viewer.

But I loved how every time we think Kelly has a conscience, that perhaps her racism or conservative fanaticism is just “an act,” the script and Theron give us hints that maybe she doesn’t. Kidman’s Carlson is similarly undercut, not just for her motives, but for standing up FOR Fox at its most indefensible, as much as the movie likes to present her as a moderating voice AT Fox.

“Bombshell” won’t win converts. But if the only-channel-we-watch crowd does show up, they should be chastened and chilled. Yes, this happened. And boy, when women decide to gang up on bullies, rapists and harassers, watch out.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual material and language throughout

Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Kate McKinnon, Allison Janney, Alice Eve and Malcolm McDowell

Credits: Directed by Jay Roach, script by Charles Randolph. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:48

The old “lost dad was a wizard and suburban son goes on a quest to find him” plot. With teens and a van and unicorns. March.

Maud’s conscientous. Maud has the Holy Spirit in her. Or something like that. Maybe unholy?

Jennifer Ehle is the cynical dying socialite cared for by Maud (Morfydd Clark) this late March/early April horror tale. 

Some of us are old enough to remember when Romany Malco was funny. “40 Year Old Virgin” and “Baby Mama,” even “Think Like a Man” Romany was edgy, testy, antic and funny.

None of which are in evidence in this tepid traipse into the tinsel. “Holiday Rush” is a rush-job Christmas comedy with romance that has maybe two laughs in it, one of them a flashback to Malco’s more manic past.

He plays Rush, a top rated New York DJ with all the trappings of affluence, and four kids who have never known want or struggle.

And then, BOOM, he’s fired. This is the first ridiculous thing that happens in “Holiday Rush.” One minute and his hand-holder/producer Roxy (Sonequa Martin-Green) are prepping a presentation to buy part ownership of the urban music station they’ve made a success. The next minute, the station’s been bought, the manager (Deon Cole, trying way too hard) can’t protect them and a new syndicated pop program (hosted by a pretty blonde out of LA) is replacing them.

All this is crashing down on Rush ight before Christmas, too. How will he tell the twins, who want ponies for Christmas? The bling-fixated teen? The son with Harvard in his sights?

Rush is widowed, so it’s a good thing he’s got Aunt Jo (pop legend Darlene Love) there to critique his child-rearing.

“The richer you get, you greedier these kids get!”

She’s readier than he is to break the news to the spoiled brats that things are going to be a lot more like they were when SHE was a child — “Five of us, sharing ONE EGG!”

Dad’s more sanguine. “There’s a whole lot of ‘not happening’ that’s about to start happening.”

Roxy may have a plan, raise money to buy a competing station.  That’s the SECOND ridiculous thing to pop up, here. You know what any New York FM station would go for these days? Millions and millions.

Rush has to ride herd on rebellious kids, put their suburban McMansion on the market to raise cash, and give the kids a taste of what Christmas is REALLY supposed to be about.

A visit from his dead wife, a little interior monologue as he recites his rewritten version of “The Night Before Christmas,” scheming at the old radio station (Tamala Jones is the corporate ball-breaker) to do their new radio station in, none of it adds up to anything funny.

A smart-aleck kid hamming through “Oh SNAP, I didn’t see ‘homeless’ on the menu,” a generous helping of screenwriterly “Afro-American slang” “up in here” cracks — “About to get ‘humbuggy in here,” etc. — a dad telling his daughter “Only rich kids play lacross” and all of them “We’ve all gotten a little…what’s the word?” “Bougie?”

Malco only gets up to speed once, a testy exchange with former neighbors over “Why aren’t you on the radio any more?”

The priority here is in not generating comic conflict and friction, not letting Malco and Cole and Jones mix it up. The kids aren’t funny enough to build the movie around them, the obstacles to “romance” don’t set off angry sparks.

And Love’s talents, in the Jenifer Lewis role, are best appreciated in song.

There’s little to this film that hints that “Holiday Rush” could have been saved. But mixing it up, more, centering more on the adult conflicts because the kids aren’t funny enough, might have reminded us that Malco can still be funny. This just makes that a distant memory.

MPAA: TV-PG

Cast: Romany Malco,  Sonequa Martin-Green, Deon Cole, Tamala Jones and Darlene Love

Credits: Directed by Leslie Small, script by Sean Dwyer, Greg Cope White.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34

In theaters August 21, 2020. https://t.co/K4tXKihPem https://twitter.com/BillandTed3/status/1206986853523640320?s=20

Imagine, if you will, something like a Key & Peele riff on a particularly blasphemous Monty Python Nativity sketch, rendered in the most profane Portugeuse.

That’s “A Primeira Tentação de Cristo,” a comedy special by Brazil’s Portos dos Fundos comedy Youtube channel. The English translation of the title? “The First Temptation of Christ.”

It’s bawdy, crude and manic, and it’s offensive enough to inspire “cancel Netflix” movements in certain corners of the world.

And by the way, it’s pretty damned funny, too. It pokes fun at religions in general, Christianity in particular, with a “people will believe anything” jocularity. It riffs on Brazilian homophobia and a vengeful, irresponsible “absentee father” God Almighty.

“Absent father? I’m OMNIPRESENT!”

Yeah, you’ve got to read subtitles to get the jokes — most of them. But the energy and liberating mockery of it all win you over.

The Three Kings/Wise Men are shlepping back to Bethlehem — “Are they still in that place with the manger?” — OK, NAZARETH then, with more gifts.

They kvetch about all the fun they could be having in Mykonos, on a Greek beach. They’re cheaping out on the gifts — flowers plucked along the way,”Myrrh, again?” Melchior’s brought his famous ham and cheese sandwich. Only an IDIOT woud bring pork as a gift, right?

“I said HAM.”

They arrive and realize this year it’s to be a surprise party for the Son of God. He’s 30. He’s off in the desert, but he’ll be back any minute. Have a drink!

“There’s no wine because Jesus hasn’t got around to doing miracles, yet,” Joseph (Rafael Portugal) complains.

The unruly family mingles and mills about. There’s a synethesizer playing a little dance music. But “Uncle Vittorio” (Antonio Tabet) is here and threatens to ruin the entire evening. He thinks it’s time to have “the talk” with Jesus, tell him that he’s his real father.

That’s right, the guy Mary (Evelyn Castro) has been passing off as an “uncle” is God Almighty. Well, at least he brought cake.

“NO ANGELS were harmed in the making of it,” he jokes. Joseph isn’t having it.

“That joke’s so old Noah told it!”

That’s the tenor of things here, poking, teasing, lightly mocking. Yes, Jesus was just in the desert “finding himself.” Yes, he came back with a special friend, Orlando (Fábio Porchat).

Yes, the family’s entirely too concerned, tactlessly so, about his sexual orientation. Jesus (Gregório Duvivier) is sure they’ve been reading his diary.

“Am I to be the ONLY one who can’t have a relationship? Is it a CRIME for a boy to have dreams? About a cousin?”

Jesus has visions that include a chat with other dieties — Shiva, Buddha, Haile Selassie and a Lizard Man from Scientology (I guess).

That’s the only gutless thing in “The First Temptation.” No ridicule for The Prophet? THAT would be edgy. Next year, take a shot at Ramadan.

“Temptation” is basically an overlong sketch leaning heavily on Christianity, stereotypes — got to convince the Hebrews a ham & cheese is made from soy, slaughtered in the kosher Shechita tradition — and the whole “They can’t SAY that, can they?” incorrectness of it all.

But the pacing, the in-your-face energy of “The First Temptation” put it over. If you’re easily offended about anything described above, it’s not for you. Watch something else.

And Portos de Fundos? We’re waiting for that Ramadan special.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity, touchy content

Cast: Evelyn Castro, Gregório Duvivier, Fábio Porchat, Rafael Portugal, Antonio Tabet

Credits: Directed by Rodrigo Van Der Put. An MPCA/Netflix release.

Running time: 46 minutes

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a man who may or may not be a serial killer in “Awake,” a thriller that promises to start quickly and find a fresh twist or two by the end, and fails at both.

We meet his character on a rural Oklahoma road, see him chased by a Land Rover and run off that road. When he wakes up, covered in bandages and in the hospital, he can’t remember who he is.

But a tippling FBI agent (Malik Yoba of TV’s “First Wives Club”) and his old pal, a local sheriff (veteran character actor William Forstythe) find a body in the guy’s trunk. “John Doe” might be the guy killing all these girls along the Texas/Oklahoma border.

“John” barely has enough time to register all this, and certainly doesn’t have the time to charm his nurse (Francesca Eastwood) into helping him escape.

“Whatta you suggest I do? Go to the PO-lice? Oh, they’ll help me…all the way to a lethal INJECTION!”

She becomes his hostage. He forgets his accent. And they’re on the run from the PO-lice, hunting for “the real killer,” just like OJ.

Yoba and Forsythe have an easy chemistry, playing old pals who refuse to judge each other (drinking on the job, etc.).

“What you think of me is none of my damn business!”

Eastwood makes a pretty convincing nurse, earthy and warm. The part is undemanding, even when the script makes far-fetched leaps for her character to cross. She’s a bit too “real” though — bland. There’s little here that suggests the intuition that must be why she buys into this guy’s “I can’t have done this.”

Meyers generally gives fair value, and he does a passable job of suggesting “frantic” even as this “John” fellow betrays an instinctive revulsion for harming others. There’s no chemistry between the two. Perhaps Meyers is wary of her old man.

“Awake” serves up a decent tussle or two, an awful murder and a few righteous kills. As the picture progresses, it almost draws one in — eventually.

But then the finale, all flashback “explanations” and actions we see coming long before they play out, finishes the job the dead early chapters started.

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody violence

Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Francesca Eastwood, Malik Yoba, Jamews Austin Kerr and William Forsythe

Credits: Directed by Aleksandr Chernyaev, Fedor Lyass, script by Elana Zeltser. A Cinedigm release.

Running time: 1:30

If he is making just one more feature film, he doesn’t want it to be a franchise popcorn pic based on a TV series.

R-rated or not, “Tarantino-esque” Trek. Not happening.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/quentin-tarantino-backs-away-his-star-trek-movie-1263001