Movie Nation

Big break for Denzel’s son.

Howard Ratner is the kind of irritant that never lets up, never allows you a moment’s relief.

The constant tirades on the phone, shamelessly ranted out in public, the empty threats, the impulse-control explosions of profanity in inappropriate places, the general shiftiness that makes everyone in his presence feel that this lowlife is somehow hustling you — it’s all of a piece.

Add in the excuses, the endless torrent of lies and blame-shifting in a braying voice that rarely stops to take a breath.

“I’m broke!” “That wasn’t my money!” “Last time wasn’t my fault. We TALKED about that!” “I’ll handle it! I’ll handle it!” “I’m gonna need a couple weeks on that.” I’m begging you…” “Don’t be mad at me!” “I happen to be a litigious individual!” “It’s in the safe.” “I left it on Long Island.”

This guy is grating as only Adam Sandler could make him.

Sandler may not show us anything that’s new in his limited repertoire in “Uncut Gems.” He just serves up his two or three notes of range relentlessly and often at top volume as this gambling jeweler juggling his business, family, marriage and sickness, risking ruin, injury or worse.

The effect is a movie that has a couple of great scenes tucked into a brilliantly excruciating tale that will not let go of its feeling of dread, or its manic energy.

If they gave Oscars for Most Unpleasant Performance — and they don’t — Sandler would be the cinch that many are saying he is for Best Actor. I see the same expressionless, nuance-free stiff he’s always been, this time with a goatee, ugly bling, coarse patter and an unfiltered rage that at least this once seems motivated by something. It’s born from razor’s edge desperation fueled by an addiction deadlier than cocaine.

If B’nai B’rith issued sanctions for films that embrace ugly stereotypes, they’d be tempted to hand one to filmmakers Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie (“Good Time”) for the nasty “New York Jew” tropes trotted out in this uneven but often riveting drama about a risk junky who cannot control his worst impulses. Loud, coarse, vulgar, Weinstein carnal, greedy and tribal, donning the yarmulke for a Passover dinner that is anything but pious, it’s right on the edge of cringe-worthy.

Try not to notice the prosthetics the kids wear in the school play scene.

Howard’s sick, and we’re not talking about the colonoscopy that introduces him. He runs one of those tiny jewelry shops “upstairs” from the street life, door-buzzers allowing customers in to get “a deal” on tacky baller bling (a diamond-encrusted “Gremlins” necklace), “fell off a truck” Rolexes and the like.

He works with a former street hustler (Lakeith Stanfield) who socializes as a way of networking potential customers — rappers, athletes, etc. — into Howard’s store.

Boston Celtics center Kevin Garnett is one of the “whales” Demany cozies up to and lands. Ballers love their bling, and dollar signs dance through Howard’s head as he pitches merch to the star and his entourage.

Howard’s married (Idina Menzel is his had-enough wife) with three kids, and is keeping his laziest sales clerk (Julia Fox) as a mistress, in a tacky-swank apartment whose decor mirrors his house, and gaudy/dumpy shop.

The murderous, pasta-sucking Italian Americans of “Married to the Mob” have nothing on the Jewish underbelly of “Uncut Gems.”

Howard knows a lot of bookies, and that’s a problem. Anthony (sports talk show host Mike Francesa) is on friendly terms today. That means the two goons hanging out in Howard’s store, shadowing him around town, must be collectors for Arno (Eric Bogosian, gimlet-eyed menace). Arno’s the guy Howard lies to the most.

Because there’s this big deal. If he can fend everybody off, just close it, auction off this uncut lump of black opals from Ethiopia he’s had smuggled in for big bucks, all his problems will be solved.

Until the next “NBA on TNT” telecast, anyway.

The film begins by showing the opal being mined, and that’s the first major contrivance of a seriously-contrived tale. How would Howard network his way into getting a stolen stone from the mine to New York? No, he doesn’t seem the type and no, his explanation doesn’t wash.

Another contrivance? Garnett, whose name is similar to another gemstone, WANTS that rock of opals. He attaches mythic, playoffs-altering power to it. And that’s how Howard gets in REALLY deep — with Arno, Arno’s brutish mugs, Garnett, the auction house, with family (Judd Hirsch), the wife, the girlfriend and even the kids he’s teaching to gamble on those few occasions he’s home to watch the games he’s wagered on.

As with “Good Time,” the Safdies keep their story on the move, sometimes building suspense, sometimes covering ground simply for the nervous energy that’s expended doing it.

The movie has that juggler’s buzz and drive. Sandler’s never been a physical actor, comic or otherwise. Howard’s hustling, lying, cursing and berating are the engine here — his vocal shtick driving the action. His every-dumb-risk is its reason for being.

But do we root for him? He and Howard are grating in the extreme, first scene to last. There’s not a single noble or relatable character in this. Even the kids, in so many ways potential victims of Dad’s gambling and the family’s collapse, are tuned-out and annoying.

The grating feel of the film is underscored, literally, by an irritating, dated electronic music soundtrack by Daniel Lopatin. The setting is 2012, not 1972.

Few movies have reached as far in treating as a true addiction, a compulsion the gambler cannot resist.

Sandler seems both perfect for this part, and the same old out-of-his-depth Sand-man in it. Put him in scenes with Stanfield, Bogosian and Menzel and it isn’t just Howard who’s eaten alive (a bully easily bullied). They act rings around him.

His best moments are with Garnett, a comic sports fanatic feeding the non-actor in the scene enough to bounce off of, and not outclassed for once.

Whatever the sentiment to honor Sandler for this departure from the unwatchably bad comedies he’s made his fortune through (now relegated to Neflix), I see “Uncut Gems” as a melodrama that could use a little more polish, no matter how perfect its star is at being what he’s always been best at — annoying.

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive strong language, violence, some sexual content and brief drug use

Cast: Adam Sandler, Lakeith Stanfield, Julia Fox, Idina Menzel, Eric Bogosian, Judd Hirsch and Kevin Garnett

Credits: Directed by Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie, script by Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein. An A24 release.

Running time: 2:15

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

Yes, it’s the “Dracula” of young adult lit, adapted for the screen more times than “Spider-Man.”

But Greta Gerwig rounded up an impressive cast for this latest take on Louisa May Alcott’s enduring classic.

Saoirse and Laura Dern and that Chalomet fellow…

A holiday sleeper during “The Rise of Skywalker?” Mayhaps.

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