Ever seen this on the stage? For hundreds of years, this was the great favorite of community theater/dinner theater/LITTLE theaters all across the English speaking world.
And elsewhere. Dame Judi, Isla F., Dan Stevens as the blocked playwright staging a seance…and as the “spirit?”
Watch and see.
“Blithe Spirit” opens May Day.
The resemblance borders on uncanny. With the right haircut, the proper dose of blonde, Kristen Stewart IS Jean Seberg.
But the Iowa-born Seberg, made famous by “Saint Joan,” made immortal in “Breathless (“À bout de souffle”), had a spark that the always-underplaying Stewart never manages, even as she’s capturing the star-crossed starlet in the most traumatic period of her life.
And “Seberg,” a semi-historical account of Seberg’s radical 1960s political dilettantism and her pursuit and persecution by J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I., never quite jells into the tragic jeremiad and Oscar bait it was intended to be.
After Truffaut’s groundbreaking “Breathless,” Seberg pursued a career, half in Hollywood, half in France — married French novelist, filmmaker and diplomat Romain Gary (Yvan Atal) and had a son with him.
“Seberg” captures the star at 30, fretting over whether to take a lucrative, high-profile role in a Hollywood picture.
“It’s a Western…a Western musical. It’s irrelevant,” she complains to her agent (Stephen Root). “I want to make a difference.”
As the musical was “Paint Your Wagon,” a debacle like few others, she was right in the first regard. Flying Pan Am to Hollywood she impulsively dives into achieving the second. A Muslim militant, Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie) creates a “class” incident on her flight, and in an opportunistic instant, she throws in with his group for a photo op on the tarmac.
That gets the attention of the F.B.I., which is dedicated to undermining “elements in society who don’t like the way we do things here in America.”
Seberg is no dummy. She figures she was being baited on that flight, probably for money and public support. And she doesn’t know Jamal is an ex-con, an unstable womanizer who has done time in a mental hospital. That we learn from the F.B.I. agents assigned by their station chief (Colm Meany) to wiretap the movie star and track the movements of Jamal.
Jack O’Connell of “Unbroken” plays the agent with a conscience. Vince Vaughn plays the racist rageaholic inclined to top his boss’s “shine revolutionary” description of Jamal with a few choice uses of the N-word.
Mackie turns up the charisma, making Jamal a compelling speaker and master of rhetoric. When Seberg speaks of her “frivolous” work, he reassures her “The Revolution needs movie stars.”
They have an affair, and when the F.B.I. snoops stop making their “dark meat on the bone” cracks, they have what they need — a famous face giving “money and a platform” to radicals. Let the surveillance begin.
She feeds fuel to the fire. It’s 1968, Young Paris is on the streets, youth protests against racism, injustice and the Vietnam War are everywhere. And Seberg, living in France and returning to her native America, is good for a quote on that.
“This country is at war with itself.”
The surveillance scenes feel quaint — guys in white shirts and ties, sitting in a van or in HQ, listening to conversations and sexual encounters. Then you think of what they’re doing, a government agency spying on non-criminals, leaking embarrassing truths and in many cases, noxious lies to ruin “enemies of the state.”
Seberg gets wind of this and grows more paranoid by the hour after realizing that SOMEbody is deep into her business, destroying her marriage and her career.
Jamal, married to a leader in the Movement (Zazie Beetz), is feeling the heat, too.
Agent Jack starts to question the ethics of what he’s doing once his wife (Margaret Qualley) gets wind of it.
Stewart gets across Seberg’s spiking paranoia, but never lets us feel it. She’s a chill actress, and that keeps a barrier up that hurts the movie.
Watch her scenes with Mackie and Beetz. She practically wilts in their presence (especially the fearsome Beetz).
The script veers away from history with its whole “agent with a conscience” balderdash. The crazed partner Vaughn plays is straight out of bad melodrama.
And director Benedict Andrews underscores just how deeply he doesn’t “get it” by finishing the film with a long closeup of Stewart/Seberg, failing to wring emotions out of her, her failing to wring them out of us. Maybe that’s his way of throwing her under the bus, but a guy best known for stage works translated for the screen and “Una” didn’t do his star and her “star vehicle” any favors at any point.
MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual content/nudity and some drug use
Cast: Kristin Stewart, Jack O’Connell, Anthony Mackie, Margaret Qualley, Zazie Beetz, Yvan Atal, Stephen Root, Colm Meany and Vince Vaughn
Credits:Directed by Benedict Andrews, script by Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse An Amazon original release.
Running time: 1:42
It’s a sports dramedy in the traditional “McFarland USA” (and 1900 variations) mold.
But with violence, life or death consequences and traditional native ways of life and mistrust of “Southerners.” When you live above the Arctic circle, even Canadians are Southerners.
Cute. But again, the stakes are a lot higher than even “Crooked Arrows,” which covered the same sport from a Native American point of view. Seeing as how North American tribes invented it, that’s only fair.
“The Grizzlies” growl March 20.
You think the daughter of Miss Diana Ross knows how to play the diva?
Yeah. “Black-ish” is where Tracee Ellis Ross has to do the real acting.
Dakota Johnson plays the long-suffering assistant to the diva.
Ice Cube, Eddie Izzard, Zoe Chao and Diplo also feature in the cast of this May 8 release, “The High Note.”
In this country, we hear about these kids from teachers. The stories of how one disturbed, disruptive child requires constant attention, eats up all the teacher’s time, are legion.
Manic, impulsive, sometimes, untamable rageaholics are stressing educators and social workers the world over. In Germany, they even have a name for them — “System Crasher.”
Here’s an unblinking portrait of such a child, a willful, possibly psychotic nine-year-old girl not old enough to be parked in a mental hospital, not responsive to any kindness, any “last chance” at foster care, disrupting schools, group homes, hospitals and lives with every violent tantrum.
Benni (Helena Zengel) is a blonde, blue-eyed fury — sweet and bubbly one moment, flipped-out and lashing out the next. Some trauma in her childhood contributed to this, but her over-scheduled doctor (Melanie Straub) lets the “s” word out, just once, in suggesting “off label use” of some different drug that might calm her down. It’s worked on “schizophrenia.”
The debut feature film of Nora Fingscheidt lets Benni (short for Bernadette) into our hearts, worthy of our pity. But our real sympathies bend toward the over-matched group home counselors, teachers, social workers and one “school escort” as they try everything to corral this uncontrollable child. There’s a lenience that seems delusional, the more times we see evidence of it play out. But they’re just following protocol. Their efforts always ends with her escaping, acting-out and hurting somebody, and in the hospital under restraint.
Benni is desperate to go home to her mum (Lisa Hagmeister), who shows us just enough of her poor choices to allow a single finger of blame pointed her way. Benni escapes, convinces a stranger to drive her to Helmstedt, where her mother and two siblings live with her latest boyfriend.
Benni bullies her younger brother and sister, but in a benign way. Mom and boyfriend come home, and in seconds a violent outburst has her attacking her mother and punched and locked in a closet until the police arrive.
Every time she’s on the loose, something goes wrong — an ugly confrontation with a dog, schoolyard taunting that turns violent, tantrums that have an entire group home on lockdown while she hurls things about in the playground.
Reasoning with her is pointless. Warning her about every new placement falls on deaf ears — “It’s got to work this time, OK?” (in German with subtitles).
American audiences may bristle at the laxity of her supervision. She is plainly a danger to herself and others. But “the system” dictates what steps they can take. And with other foster kids, group home children and schoolchildren to cope with, Benni is a test “the system” cannot pass. It’s gutsy of the film to show us how there are literally no easy answers in a case like this.
But when her doctor suggests an “intensive therapy abroad,” sending her and a counselor off to Africa, feel free to roll your eyes? Is she just shipping this problem south? Why on Earth would anybody think that would work?
Her school escort, Micha (Albrecht Schuch) figures a “vacation” in the less stimulating woods, a forest cabin on a farm, would help. Letting a male counselor take a little girl into the woods sounds too creepy to ever happen in the States, but the system in Germany is desperate enough to let him try.
Zengel is a balled-up fist of energy in the title role, getting across the sweetness that can convince those who take pity on Benni that “she’s making progress,” but unleashing hell in a flash to remind them she isn’t.
An excellent supporting cast suggests empathy that crosses into pity, which “the system” doesn’t allow.
And that next explosive mood swing is all it takes to remind each and every caring adult put in her path that pity and caring and hugs won’t be enough. Drugs and institutionalization, those last resorts, start to look like a blessed relief long before “System Crasher” checks out.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity
Cast: Helena Zengel, Albrecht Schuch, Gabriela Maria Schmeide, Lisa Hagmeister
Credits: Written and directed by Nora Fingscheidt. A Netflix Original.
Running time: 1:58
“The Invisible Man,” opening to strong reviews and a rising “Let’s not sit with crowds — ANYwhere” Corona (NOT the Beer) Virus fear, is falling right in the middle between low projections and its possible high water mark.
Last week, $20 was the safe bet for its opening, but as reviews flooded in late, expectations rose. Thursday night’s numbers pointed to a $33 million+ opening.
But the onslaught of bad news over this contagion and the growing sense of the incompetence of the Trump administration expected to contain it seems to be dampening its opening weekend take. A $27 million weekend isn’t bad, but people are already making informed decisions about risks they won’t take.And MAGAs have stopped drinking Corona beer.
The manga-based anime “My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising” sequel got a wide Wed. release and is doing quite well — a $9 million opening week and weekend. These aren’t typically of much interest outside their fan base, and dropping “in on it” expecting a movie that stands alone, impresses with its story, animation and novelty and, well — makes sense — is often an overreach.
I may try to get to it today. Most critics don’t bother.
“Bad Boys for Life” just crossed the $400 million mark worldwide. Looks like we have to pay attention to Martin Lawrence again. Will Smith just rebooted his previously fading career for another three years, at minimum.
“Sonic the Hedgehog” now looks like it will clear the $160 million mark before it fades away in March.
“The Call of the Wild” will clear $50 million before NEXT weekend ($46 by the end of this one).
All of which is predicated on how bad the virus news gets and how the public responds.
Yes, we’re living through “Contagion.” Yes, that film seems prophetic.
Ken Loach is the Scorsese of feature film realism, the Tarantino of naturalistic, lived-in dialogue, the Claire Denis of movies built on characters who show us life, as it happens.
His milieu is typically Britain’s working class, which he celebrates even as he shows its struggle and a system — capitalism — that has increasingly beaten it down since he first broke out with films such as “Poor Cow” and “Kes” in the ’60s, and in the decades since.
Unknown or inexperienced actors speaking thickly-accented working class argot, his movies sometimes come with subtitles — because they need them.
“Sorry We Missed You” is Loach’s intimate, scathing take on life in the “gig economy,” a family not getting ahead or even holding its own, but swimming as frantically as it can even as they spiral down the drain. It’s his best film in years, and with a resume that includes “My Name is Joe” and “The Angel’s Share,” that’s saying something.
Ricky Turner (Kris Kitchen) has worked in manual labor most of his life. Now, he’s ready to “be me own boss.” He’s hiring on as a parcel delivery “contractor” for PDF shipping. He gets the “owner-driver franchisee” from Maloney (Ross Brewster), but he has to flinch at every cost he’s expected to incur. Buy a van, or rent one (at extortionate rates) from PDF.
A hard talk with his home healthcare worker wife Abby (Debbie Honeywood). If they could just sell her car, he could get a van. “Just take the bus,” he pleads. And peacekeeper Abby agrees.
But with her working from 7:30 A.M. to 9 p.m., and him starting earlier and getting home almost as late, “family time” may be the ultimate sacrifice. Not a problem for studious tween Liza (Katie Proctor). Teenage Sebastian, Seb (Rhys Stone) is already lost, smart enough to do the math to see what little life holds to someone his age and refusing to buy in.
He’s cutting school so that he and his friends can tag the city with their graffiti, videoing their deeds as they do. So even as Ricky is being lectured on what everything costs, how his company-issued scanner will be his lifeblood, how “hit your ETAs,” prioritize “your precisors” (items like phones, etc., that have to be delivered at a specific time) and don’t take anything bathroom breaks (Here’s an empty water bottle, mate.), we can see the thin thread between the Turners and ruin stretching, with Seb blithely yanking at it for attention.
Abby’s compassion is captured in home visit after home visit, coping with the inform, the insane (feces flinging, scratching), the embittered and depressed even as her employer exploits her good heart and good nature in its pleading demands.
She’s made this home one where children are indulged and treated as adults, and Seb’s open rebellion seems a consequence. There’s no punishment meted out for disrespect, no corporal punishment for indifference, selfishness and endangering the entire family and not just his future.
Dad’s “Just give yourself some choices, mate” can’t even get the kid to look up from the phone.
Seb isn’t the best-drawn character here. He seems politically astute in sizing up the working class dream that was put on life support under Thatcher and has deteriorated ever sense. But the graffiti he risks all for isn’t political, and his myopic disregard for his family seems somewhat contrived, out of character.
Loach and his longtime screenwriting collaborator Paul Laverty give Darwinian capitalism its speech, coming from the mouth of Maloney, who explains — in the bluntest terms — how he keeps them all employed by working them until they doze off at the wheel. It’s because “the Patron Saint of Nasty Bastards” has to, or their clients will use another service.
Abby might be the first to see the cost their hours and thin finances are having on their lives, but Ricky voices the exhausted complaint against income inequality heard the world over when he mutters, “Everything is out of whack.”
The story’s predictable arc feels real when it is at its bleakest. Families disintegrate under these conditions. Check divorce filings in any town where big employers fail and folks grasp at “gig economy” straws to get by.
Loach and Laverty and their characters thrive when the margin of error is at its thinnest. Conversely, moments that force them appreciate the talent of the boy who is burning the family down in this their darkest hour seem melodramatic and naive.
But that “You never give up on your kid” ethos? That’s as real as rain.
From its pun title (the sticker you leave for a failed delivery) that really means the life the disenfranchised working class family is losing, to the gritty realism of working life in an economy that only “works” for the one-percent, “Sorry We Missed You” sounds an alarm — by turns desperate and simplistic. As Loach & Co. have been sounding it for decades, one wonders if anybody is still listening, as much as we should be.
MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity
Cast: Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor and Ross Brewster
Credits: Directed by Ken Loach, scripted by Paul Laverty. A Zeitgeist release.
Running time: 1:41
Elle Fanning and Justice Smith take a walk — and a bike ride — through love and death in “All the Bright Places,” a moon-eyed teen romance that never knows when to drop the mike.
It’s a movie that takes at least some of its prompts from one of the best young romances of the ’70s, “Breaking Away.” Novelist Jennifer Niven, taking her queue from the motto on Indiana’s license plates — “Wander” — throws two star-crossed and mentally struggling teens into each other’s path, and lets the sap flow until everything and everyone is sappy.
It’s not a bad film. Elle Fanning doesn’t make bad movies. But it crosses several “Give me a break” lines, and then goes on and on past its dramatic climax, grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you until you get the point. As if it has one.
Theodore Finch (Smith), who goes by “Finch,” is jogging the day they meet. Violet Markey is standing on the railing of a bridge, contemplating something rash.
He talks her down. And from that moment on, he takes an interest, becomes a sort of protector even as he’s online stalking her to figure out her story.
Violet lost her older sister. She is off-the-scale depressed. Finch, for all his problems — his meetings with the guidance counselor (Keegan-Michael Key) confirm he’s not coping, either — figures he’s saved her life and he’s responsible.
Violet’s would-be beau, Roamer (Felix Mallard) is running out of patience.
“How much longer are you gonna ACT like this?”
Her BFF Amanda (Virginia Gardner) may warn her off Finch, reminding her that his nickname is “The Freak” for a reason.
And he’s alarmingly persistent. Posting a song he’s written for her online should get him visited by the cops and maybe expelled — “I met you standing on a ledge…Why don’t you come talk to ME instead?”
But he wears her down. Her parents (Nicole Forester, Luke Wilson) are at a loss about what to do to bring her back to the land of the living. Finch figures a lot of attention, a few Virginia Woolf quotes and a “partnered” class project where they visit the Great Attractions of Indiana will do the trick.
There’s a lot of arch, forced banter that writers figure is how writerly kids talk these days — “My young brain is plump with knowledge!” But truth be told, the funniest bit in “All the Bright Places” is the idea that there are “bright places” in the Hoosier state, places these two will visit — on foot, by bike, etc., “the Wonders of Indiana.”
Pancake flat Indiana’s “high point” elevation marker is one of those. “I can see my house from here! Come on, the view is incredible.”
They stand together on a hope chest sized stone marker together. That’s the closest connection “Bright Places” makes with “Breaking Away,” a romance worth renting and swooning over 40+ years later. Indiana is, by rep, boring, a place to escape from.
Bike rides through the flat country, a swim in a quarry (They filmed “Bright Places” in Ohio, which tells you something.), all borrowed from the earlier film.
The romance here is more perfunctory, less heartfelt. And that goes for several big twists in the tepid plot. Events are mandated by script requirements, never organic.
But as Netflix has had great luck with teen rom-coms, and teen romances, spending the money on landing this novel and this cast was a smart gamble.
Who would have guessed “Bright Places” could be this dull?
MPAA Rating: TV-MA, suicide, sex, profanity
Cast: Elle Fanning, Justice Smith, Alexandra Shipp, Keegan-Michael Key, Luke Wilson, Nicole Forester and Virginia Gardner
Credits: Directed by Brett Haley, script by Liz Hannah and Jennifer Niven, based on Niven’s novel. A Netflix original.
Running time: 1:48
“The Invisible Man” seems destined to break the horror losing streak that 2020 began with. Universal’s Leigh Whannell vehicle for Elisabeth Moss did $1.65 million Thursday night, per Deadline.com.
That suggests a boffo Friday and Sat and that early projections of a $20 million opening were lowballing it. As Deadline points out, “Get Out” and “Split” went from Thursday night’s in that range to $33-40 million+ openings.
And reviews will certainly give this one a boost. Moss is perfectly castand could be Big Box Office after this, upping her quote at least within the genre.
“Sonic the Hedgehog” is headed towards $17 million. It’s well over $100 million now, just padding its “best performing video game adaptation ever” resume.
“The Call of the Wild” will tally another $13-14, to go with the $32 million mark which it passed this week. $45 by all in by midnight Sunday?
The anime continuation “My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising” opened Wed. and looks as if it’s headed towards healthy opening weekend plus 2 — $2.5 or so Wed., steep fall Thursday, big weekend ahead. Maybe $18 million since Wed. by midnight Sunday?
Hard to tell if it’ll hit “Dragonball Z” territory.
Another trip back to the “Braveheart” era.
Angus MacFadyen has the title role in this April 24 release.
Movie Nation 