Thumbnails Dec 20

by Tony Medley

The Last Vermeer (8/10) 118 minutes. R: Based on the story of WWII era Dutch art connoisseur Han van Meergren this is highlighted by Guy Pearce’s scintillating performance. Rarely do you find a performance like this, one that lights up the screen every second he’s on.  Van Meergren is arrested shortly after the end of WWII and accused of being a traitor by selling priceless recently “discovered” Vermeer paintings to the Nazis, especially Herman Goering. The cinematography (Remi Adefarasin) is entrancing. There is a scene at the beginning of two people sitting at a table with a garden that is so beautifully framed and set that it looks like an oil painting itself. The Dutch locations are equally captivating. Both are Oscar®-worthy and add immensely to the enjoyment of the film. The ending is bogus, but I don’t want to go into that because it would be a spoiler, and it’s too good a film that should be watched in ignorance of the facts. In Theaters Nov. 20.

Queen’s Gambit (8/10) Six episode mini-series TV-MA: I fell in love with Anya Taylor-Joy earlier this year when she starred in the delightful “Emma.” She is even better in this, playing Beth Harmon (played as a nine year old by Isla Johnson in a dazzling performance), the protagonist of the 1983 novel by Walter Tevis. This story of a chess prodigy is, at heart, a sports story of an amazing participant that is poignant and fulfilling, dealing as it does with competition and drugs. It is at times distressing, but is mostly uplifting. Netflix.

The Undoing (8/10) TV Miniseries, six episodes TV-MA: Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant give outstanding performances in this thriller about a seemingly loving couple whose lives are grossly interrupted by a brutal murder. This grabs you at the outset and never lets go. HBOMAX.

My Psychedelic Love Story (7/10) 98 minutes. NR: Timothy Leary was the high priest of LSD who told people to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” This is filmmaker Errol Morris’s introspective story told through a four-tape interview Leary gave with a prison psychologist and by his much younger (25 years) girlfriend, beautiful Swiss born, French raised heiress Joanna Harcourt-Smith who met him in Paris when he was a fugitive and they fell in love. She tells her story, disjointed but heartfelt, and it involves many icons of the ‘70s like Andy Warhol, Diane von Furstenberg, Adnan Khashoggi, even The Rolling Stones. The interview was conducted over two days. She jumps back and forth. It’s a unique, if convoluted, peek at Leary, but what’s more interesting is the naked look we get of her as she searingly bares her soul. Showtime.

Recon (4/10) 95 minutes. NR.  Inspired by a true event in WWII Italy, this tries to capture the tension and ambiguity of war by concentrating on a small squad of soldiers challenged not only by life-threatening, but life-altering experiences over the period of one day. It is terribly burdened by a myriad of technical and production design errors as well as serious plotholes. Like many new war films it consists mostly of walking and talking. If these undisciplined soldiers were ever on a mission they would have been wiped out in the blink of an eye. Prime

Last Call (3/10) 110 minutes. NR. This has been in the can for a long time. It should have stayed there. The story of the last year of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ (Rhys Ifans) life, 1953, it’s mostly Thomas orating poetically (and unrealistically) and drinking, almost two hours of it. While the abstruseness of what Thomas says may lead one to believe that writer/director Steven Bernstein was using Thomas’s words, not so. All the dialogue was written by Bernstein, and it is so over-the-top it is off-putting. When I lived in London the Welsh had a bad reputation. One of my roommates was Welsh and he was a manipulative, dishonest person, so it fits (not that all Welsh are that way). This Thomas is a real jerk and the two hours I spent watching him was agonizing. In Theaters Nov. 25.