Movie Nation

She is a tiny woman, white-haired, hard of hearing and stooped with age.

When the film crew checks in with her, Marthe Cohn is about to turn 96 (she’s 99 now), long-retired from nursing and the medical research assistant work she did with her husband, Dr. Major Cohn.

But the small and “shrinking” (as she puts it) woman with the French accent still has work to do, traveling the United States, which has been her home for over half a century, and Europe, which is where she earned that chest full of medals she sometimes has on her coat.

“Chichinette,” they called her during World War II. “Little pain in the neck,” Cohn translates with a laugh. The Jewish Cohn — her name was Hofnung then — is a Holocaust survivor “bearing witness” to the tragedy that befell her sister and millions of Jews, Gypsies and others under Nazi rule.

But the people who gave her that nickname “for asking too many questions” and being a pest about it were in French Intelligence. “Chichinette: The Accidental Spy” is about the story she tells when she speaks to schools, colleges, Jewish groups and others. She went into Nazi Germany to help the Allies finish the job of winning World War II.

Director Nicola Hens follows Cohn and her equally-elderly husband as they revisit her life, the places she lived, and remember what she did as she catches up with relatives and speaks to groups all along the way.

It’s mainly just the two of them, mostly her speaking (in English and French with English subtitles) as they venture from Paris to Metz, where she was born, fleeing to Poitiers in “Free France” after the Germans invaded and occupied the rest of the country.

Life was mainly about avoiding discovery, a large family of Jews hiding in Occupied France. Her beloved older sister was arrested. Her fiance joined the Resistance and was executed. Marthe, after becoming a nurse, acquired a fake passport and moved from Marseilles to Paris, mourning her lost love and wondering if she had a future.

But after D-Day, she found new purpose. Fluent in German as well as French, she enlisted as an agent, and in the very last days of the war, provided important intelligence to the French army as it was about to move into Germany.  

Those expecting derring do and fireworks in this story, which she didn’t tell publicly under the early 2000s in the book Behind Enemy Lines: the True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany, won’t find a lot of it here. It took several tries for young Marthe to cross into Germany-held territory. She took as few extra risks as possible, gathered just a couple of key bits of information, and made sure it reached the right people.

She doesn’t over-dramatize her exploits. It’s enough to know that in an age and place where her ethnicity alone was a death warrant, she took risks and “a mission” that saved soldiers lives and helped shape plans at the tactical level in April and May of 1945.

Stylistically, “Chichinette” is a personal story told in almost entirely her voice (mostly in French), with much detail skipped over about her daily survival, if not her long-ago travels in Occupied France and Vichy France. Dramatically and cinematically, it’s quite flat, almost drab at times. I didn’t find it nearly as emotional as other documentaries I’ve seen on the subject, but that’s because while she suffered tragedies, Cohn’s life was plucky and even heroic.

It’s a compelling Holocaust/espionage story not given the most dazzling treatment, cinematically.

Hens uses animation to recreate scenes, such as the dance where she met her beloved Jacques, and draws from a large supply of still photos Cohn and her family were able to keep throughout the war.

These serve to remind us that not every Holocaust story was a relentless tragedy, and that some survivors, when given the chance, fought back — even if they had to be a “pain in the neck” to do it.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Marthe Cohn, Dr. Major Cohn.

Credits: Directed by Nicola Hens. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:26

Why do the British hate Christmas so much?

Is it their anti-Catholic thing, the culture’s sturdy and vigorous undercurrent of atheism?

Or maybe the better question is WHEN did they start hating Christmas?

Is it because they’re sick of the whole hullaballoo, thanks to 150 years of “God bless us, every one!” Yes, Dickens all but “invented” the holiday. But for some time now, it’s been obvious that filmmakers from there have nothing new to add to the Christmas entertainment canon.

Rubbish pop tunes about the holiday and rubbish holiday movies, some of them (“Last Christmas”) based on rubbish holiday pop tunes.

James Dearden scripted “Fatal Attraction” in the last millenium, went on to make “A Kiss Before Dying” and pretty much disappear. When his latest big screen project came out in the UK, it was titled “Surviving Christmas with the Relatives.” Kind of on-the-nose and artless, as titles go. But accurate.

“Christmas Survival” it is called as it reels onto Netflix, and a bigger bollix job of a holiday comedy I cannot remember seeing.

As a genre, such films are churned out, mostly for The Hallmark Channel and Netflix these days, inisipid almost to a one — “Christmas Prince” this and that. But they’re often perfectly acceptable background (visual) noise for when you’re wrapping gifts, ordering online and prepping holiday meals and treats.

I mean, you can’t watch “A Christmas Story” but so many times. And not everybody has Amazon Prime where they can see the lone new “holiday” comedy that works this year, “Feast of the Seven Fishes.” 

But the very least one can expect from such fare is that it won’t offend the family. Because who, other than families, is even interested in movies of this type?

Dearden’s lump of coal in the stocking has profanity, annoying in-laws, domestic strife times two families, groping, drunken infidelity, a pot addict who’s gone mental and has to be hospitalized, and every few minutes, a word nobody drawn to “The Hallmark Holiday” and its movies wants her or his children to hear.

“Bastards!” That’s just for starters.

Dan and Miranda (Julian Ovenden and Gemma Whelan) are a couple of who given up London life and careers and taken over Miranda’s family farm. They’re spending everything they have to convert it to a B&B/organic vegetable and goats milk business.

They’ve hired a cadre of Eastern European laborers for the work (on the cheap). The house is half-wrecked in restoration projects. And they’re having her whole family over for the holidays.

Lila (Joely Richardson) is her sister, a fading film star married to Hollywood agent Trent (Michael Landes). They bring their American kids, and a Chinese exchange student (Jade Ma), with them. And they’ve gone ahead and invited more family to show up.

There’s also the local “tradition” that their parents started of inviting the entire village over for Christmas Eve drinks.

The stove doesn’t work. The roof leaks. Miranda is so rushed and distracted she never takes off her night gown during the hectic day.

Dan? He’s put off shopping, coping with his stoner teen son from an earlier marriage (Jonas Moore) and killing “Gobbles,” the big turkey they were planning on serving for dinner, until the last minute.

Elaborate set-up, drawn-out Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to follow, thank you very much.

There are hollow debates about presents. Trent is Jewish, and they shower their kids with Channukah baubles. Dan and Miranda want theirs to believe in Santa just a smidge longer.

Cooking debacles, kids who want to “prank Aunt Peggy” (Patricia Hodge) and yell “Child abuse!” the moment they’re corrected, a newly-broken-up-with-her-boyfriend aunt (Ronni Ancona), the wheelchair bound uncle (James Fox) who is no help at mediating financial disputes, drunken workers who flee the scene of the restoration, the whole drunken groping between in-laws, the Amerian teen daughter (Sophie Simnett) wondering how boy crazy she can go…

Oh, and the family “football” game.

Did I leave out a cliche? Did they?

There’s not a laugh in the bloody thing, and “grating” — what’s left — is not what you want out of your holiday romp, even if it’s just background noise with a British accent for everything you and yours have going on over the holidays.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, drug and alcohol abuse, infidelity, profanity

Cast:  Julian Ovenden, Gemma Whelan, Joely Richardson, Michael Landes, Patricia Hodge, Sophie Simnett and James Fox.

Credits: Written and directed by James Dearden. A Studio Soho/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44

As the various holiday-themed trailers that have come out this past week or three have demonstrated, Universal and the cast are selling the hell out of this holiday sequel.

A “soft opening” in China may be behind that. Fear that those “Jungle Cruise” trailers give away how overexposed Dwayne Johnson is (Kevin Hart, too).

It still looks funny, and acting out old guys in younger bodies has promise. It’d be funnier if the players were played by comically gifted kids. Still…

I’ve seen and reviewed a lot of surf documentaries over the decades, but “And Two if By Sea: The Hobgood Brothers” stands out from the pack in two important regards.

One is the degree to which it dives into the lives of the surfing twins, C.J. and Damien Hobgood, surfers from Kelly Slater-land (Satellite Beach, Florida) who made names for themselves and made a living while not wholly escaping Slater’s multi-world-championship winning shadow.

We hear other surfers good-naturedly recall the identical twins “ganging up on” their competition in meets in their teens, see the ups and downs of their lives and careers, grapple with their ferocious competitiveness and see how flawed people can be.

One cheats on his wife and loses a marriage over it.

And we’ve never been told just how much “sponsorship” it takes to work your way into the good life. It takes $90,000 and up just to hit the meets on the World Surf Tour, travel, etc. Damn.

The other way “And Two if by Sea” stands out is the cutesiness filmmaker Justin Purser brings to the proceedings. He got comic Daniel Tosh to narrate it. Unless I’m missing a title in my surf filmography lifelist, that’s a first.

That narration is not quite omnipresent, but close — Tosh noting that “I believe that the medical term (for “identical twins”) is ‘the creepy kind,” pausing to identify the Florida Space Coast statue of Kelly Slater as “the only statue in the South NOT of an old racist.”

Funny enough, and certainly funnier than the way the movie opens — with a lot of folks venturing an opinion as to “what a Hobgood is.”

That sets the tone for the picture, which features cute captions (“Speaks Fluent Australian”) in identifying interview subjects, the half-joking presence of a medical expert on identical twins (“There’s a lot of power in twinship!”) and a little self-aware perspective that the Hobgoods didn’t team up to cure cancer or put a woman on Mars. They were just looking for that wave that would “land them in the history book, the SURF history book.”

The cutesiness doesn’t kill the film, and a little perspective is welcome in a genre that has given us decades of glorious slo-mo of gorgeous Aussie, Hawaiian and California (and Florida) girls and boys on gorgeous, thunderous slo-motion waves. But I won’t lie, it’s grating, like an endless series of generally limp rim-shots redundantly whacked on every joke in an indifferently-funny comic’s routine.

“That ISN’T what the Cialis commercials portray. Wait, is this a LIFETIME movie?”

The surfing footage is good, nothing that would make the picture stand out in a crowded genre. But the legion of interviews, with the Hobgoods, their parents, sibling and spouses taking part, get across a few new ways of considering surfing.

It starts with competitors noting what “competitive a–h—s” the two were to everybody else, and the Hobgoods confessing what we’re never told about this world and its laid-back, “chillaxed” subculture. “It’s a very selfish sport,” with head games played out in the water waiting for a wave, stare-downs and fierce paddling to beat the other surfer (even in non-competitive settings) onto a wave, behavior that flirts with bullying.

We see the brothers yelling at each other in the water, gesturing and shouting at the judges for giving them a poor score, even as these Christian competitors never let things turn profane or ugly.

The ebb and flow of their disparate careers is only mildly interesting, as is the conflict. Because, as we’ve been assured, with a twin “you’ve got a friend for life,” so none of this Everly Brothers antipathy, here.

Still, there’s enough new information and candor to make “And Two if By Sea” worth a look if surf docs are your thing. Just brace yourself for the cutesie.

MPAA Rating: unrated, one graphic injury scene, some profanity

Cast: C.J. Hobgood, Damien Hobgood, Kelly Slater, Carissa Moore, Sal Masakela, Charlotte Hobgood, Rachel Hobgood, narrated by Daniel Tosh.

Credits: Directed by Justin Purser, script by Justin Purser, Daniel Tosh, Christopher Gessner and Carly Hallam. A 1091 Media release.

Running time: 1:43

In total agreement with the various pieces around the web about this Golden Globes snub.

Natalie Portman pointed it out in reading off the “all male nominees” list o the telecast this morning.

Three or four women directors were worth considering for their hit movies this year, one of whom should have warranted a nomination.

The only way Marielle Heller, of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and last year’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” is going to become as familiar a name as Jordan Peele, James Mangold or self-promoter Ava DuVernay is for a nomination to show up when she does one of the best directing jobs of the year.

For my money, Heller did a better job than Scorsese or Baumbach, even if this year’s field of would-be contenders is overrun — Boon Jong Ho, Heller, Mangold, Todd Haynes, Todd Philips, Sam Mendes, Tarantino, Alma Har’el, Lorene Scafaria and Lulu Wang did impressive jobs, and Scorsese and Baumbach have both been much better in earlier projects.

Our “Neighbor” should be in the Oscar mix, no matter what the Globes people think.

The problem with any award given out by a group of voters is figuring out who to get behind. I dare say three or four women behind the camera got some Globes nomination votes. “Neighborhood” and “Honey Boy” were the best films directed by women in 2019. Kasi Lemons is the most experienced female director of an awards contender (“Harriet”).

“Booksmart” didn’t gain much traction with the audience, but Olivia Wilde had a lot of buzz before it faded.

The best directing job by a woman was Scafaria with “Hustle.” A dozen of good directing jobs are ignored every year. This year, several of them are sure to be by women. Will one of them break through?

In November of 1957, the biggest gathering of mob bosses in Mafia history took place in tiny Apalachin, New York. Every Big Name in La Cosa Nostra showed up in upstate New York — some 60 mob bosses from across the country, 100 mobsters in total.

It was so theatrical, so celebrated, such a legendary affair that many a mob movie — “The Valachi Papers” covered the real thing, “The Godfather” fictionalized a version, even “Analyze This” went there  — felt the need to depict it.

Sure, it was raided by the cops and the Feds. But did you ever think about the catering? I mean, who fed them? Where’d they get all that meat, wine and pasta in the middle-of-nowhere, New York?

That’s the most promising premise wrapped up in “Mob Town,” a historically and dramatically sloppy version of the“Apalachin Conference” made on a shoestring and starring David Arquette.

Building the film around the doggedly suspicious real-life state trooper, Sgt. Ed Croswell, is earnest and well-intentioned. But Croswell (Arquette) noticing that “all the meat in town has disappeared,” bickering with his boss over “The taxpayers are paying you to pull in SPEEDING tickets!” when “I KNOW something big is going to go down, here” and treating it as a mystery he is solving might not have been the right way to go.

Because it’s the laughs that work here, the comic possibilities that beg to be explored. The actor-turned director behind the camera, Danny A. Abeckaser, seemed to get this. He directed and gave himself the role of Joseph “Joe the Barber” Barbara,the host for this “barbecue.” And his scenes, bickering with the fish market guy who keeps vetoing the fish he wants to serve (while sipping from a flash, because we all need a prop in our “big scene), bribing and cursing the meat wholesaler, show us the movie that might have been. He’s funny and they’re funny.

“The devil is in the details,” the old expression goes. “Men stumble on stones, not mountains,” Big Boss Vito Genovese (Robert Davi) growls. So if you don’t have the money to rent an estate that looks big enough to pass for the rambling, two-wing stone structure that Barbara, a Canada Dry wholesaler whose real money came from being a “made man,” if you have to make this epic mid-November meeting “a barbecue,” if you can’t hire polished actors who pop off the screen for the supporting roles, if most of your budget seems set aside to rent vintage Caddies, Chevys, trucks and coupes, then maybe you go the “Analyze This” route.

Comedy is always cheaper. And we’re a lot more forgiving of butchering history when it’s all a laugh, a promenade of F-bombs and food featuring “every goombah in the country,” and not a dramatic thriller “based on true events.”

In 1957, Sgt. Croswell first realizes there’s something fishy in this sleepy town when he pulls over a guy with a new Chevy Bel Air, a fake ID and a wad of bills he wants the trooper to have “to speed things along.” A high-priced, insulting attorney with a writ from a state court judge ends that case. “Sergeant, park ranger, WHATEVER you are, go chase some squirrels!”

But Croswell’s attention turns to this Barbara guy and his many pricey cars and “18 acre estate” (it was 53).

The script blurs the context, messing up the years Genovese was in exile in Italy (it was during WWII), but the mob wars of the day are slapped together — assassinations and botched assassinations abound.

Let’s settle this, peaceful like. Get everybody together, someplace out of the way.

As Barbara gets the word that he’s the Host on the Spot, the script meanders into the divorced Crowswell’s efforts to court the widowed mother of three (Jennifer Esposito), the clumsiness of his idiot fellow trooper (comic actor P.J. Byrne), the arguments with the patrol chief called “Lieutenant” in some scenes, “sergeant” on the phone and “Chief Lane” in the credits (James McCaffrey).

A ninety minute movie about a seminal event in Mob Wars history doesn’t need filler of this sort. And when you’ve got a capo working for Barbara who knows the price of failure will be “They ransack the house, and shoot us all, or maybe they shoot us and THEN ransack the house,” you know this is better suited for comedy.

Davi can be funny, as can Arquette. Some of the bit players, those sharing scenes with Abeckaser, are amusing. That capo is funny enough, although figuring that they’ll be slaughered with “a model Remington 870” (a Remington Model 870 shotgun) is funny for being a blown line, which neither he nor his director (who was in “Holy Rollers,” “The Iceman” and “The Irishman”) caught.

After showing a light touch in the opening pull-over scene, Arquette plays the rest of the movie straight as an arrow. Sometimes, there’s somebody funny making him the straight man in the scene, too often there isn’t.

It’s a pity they didn’t figure all this out before filming began. Because there’s no suspense to “Mob Town,” no feelings of imminent peril. The violence is all in the “mob wars” context scenes in the prologue.

And in spite of the history recited in the opening and closing titles, they didn’t have the money or the wherewithal to make this accurate enough to be dramatic.

Make it a comedy, make it about the catering, make it more an “Analyze This” sort of mob movie, then you’ve got something.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout and some violence

Cast: David Arquette, Jennifer Esposito, Danny A. Abeckaser and Robert Davi.

Credits: Directed by Danny A. Abeckaser, script Jon Carlo, Joe Gilford. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:30

I will withhold my “What’s the point of THIS?” judgment because, well, this is a novel approach to take to a “reboot.”

A “Ghostbusters” without the comedy? A sequel assuming the originals are all, or mostly, in the Harold Ramis Wing of the Afterlife?

Rural and almost “It” serious?

Could work. Gave me a little chill, I have to say.

Next summer we learn if indeed “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” reinvents the wheel.

A peak Netflix moment? Or a predictor of the Oscars?

Big day for “The Irishman” and “Marriage Story,” some notice for “The Two Popes,” “Dolemite,” a near tidal wave.

“Ford v Ferrari” a token nomination, “Once Upon a Time.. in Hollywood,” “The Farewell,” “Parasite,” the usual suspects of this award season are represented.

JLo and Margot Robbie…

Phoenix and Bale and Hanks and Craig and Pitt and DiCaprio and DeNiro and Pacino and Pesci and Hopkins…

Awkwafina and Beanie Renee Z. and Blanchett…for “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” Seriously?

Cynthia Erivo tapped for “Harriet,” middling movie but a great performance.

“Us” and Lupita forgotten and shut out. “Dark Waters” and “Clemency” got no love.

At least the HFPA has overcome its Eastwood Icon Worship. A single Kathy Bates nomination for that one.

But best director’s a bit of a mess. They couldn’t rally support for one great directing job by a woman this year? Three impressive directing jobs by women, and no love?

There are a LOT of reasons to suspect that the Oscar nominations will NOT look like this list.

No argument against the “Marriage Story” acting nominations, but I am calling it. “The Irishman” has peaked. “Marriage Story” and it are over-rated, and dashing for the finish line before we can all take stock of that.

The “Jo Jo Rabbit” hype has faded, but just a bit.

NOBODY is claiming Awards Season glory on behalf of anything with Marvel in its lineage.

But “Joker” hasn’t peaked, so there may be some comic book movie love, come Oscar time. “1917” may not make a bigger splash than this, but “Ford v Ferrari’?” Come come now. “Dark Waters?” “Clemency?” Alfre? Mark?

The Academy has just enough time to step back, shrug off “Irishman” and “Bernadatte” and “Popes” and honor movies with more heft and relevance.

Best Picture-DRAMA

1917
The Irishman
Joker
Marriage Story
The Two Popes

Best Picture–COMEDY

 

Best Director

Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
Sam Mendes, 1917
Todd Phillips, Joker
Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Screenplay

Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
Bong Joon Ho & Jin Won Han, Parasite
Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Steven Zaillian, The Irishman

Best Foreign Language Film

The Farewell
Les Miserables
Pain and Glory
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Best Animated Film

Frozen 2
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
Missing Link
Toy Story 4
Lion King

Best Score

Alexandre Desplat, Little Women
Hildur Guðnadóttir, Joker
Randy Newman, Marriage Story
Thomas Newman, 1917
Daniel Pemberton, Motherless Brooklyn

Best Original Song

“Beautiful Ghosts” (Cats) — Taylor Swift & Andrew Lloyd Webber
“I’m Gonna Love Me Again” (Rocketman) — Elton John & Bernie Taupin
“Into the Unknown” (Frozen 2) — Robert Lopez & Kristen Anderson-Lopez
“Spirit” (The Lion King) — Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Timothy McKenzie & Ilya Salmanzadeh
“Stand Up” (Harriet) — Joshuah Brian Campbell & Cynthia Erivo

Best Supporting Actress

Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell
Annette Bening, The Report
Laura Dern, Marriage Story
Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
Margot Robbie, Bombshell

Best Supporting Actor

Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
Al Pacino, The Irishman
Joe Pesci, The Irishman
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

For the TV nominations, which are an entity unto themselves as they are so far removed from the TV Academy’s Emmy Awards, and reflect nothing so much as “What’s new on TV this year” most years, thanks to the voters in the Hollywood Foreign Press Asssociation, go to The Hollywood Reporter. 

If you think anything is going to stop Disney from remaking “live action” versions of its animated classics, Marvel movies or “Star Wars” installments, think again.

The Mouse has become the first studio to ever cross the $10 billion mark on tickets sold at the box office, globally.

And the latest “Star Wars” hasn’t opened. So this record year isn’t over yet.
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