Thumbnails Mar 20

by Tony Medley

Emma (9/10): 117 minutes. PG. So many good things to say about this movie I don’t know where to begin. Delightful music, wonderful cinematography of evocative English locations, directed by Autumn de Wilde from a screenplay with captivatingly polite dialogue by Eleanor Catton, Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma is a, well, joy in the titular role. She is beautiful and haughty and self-possessed, dominating the lives of everyone around her. There’s an Oscar® somewhere in Taylor-Joy’s future. One of my favorite scenes in all of film is when Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer fall in love dancing “The Leandler” in The Sound of Music (1965). That is replicated here when Emma and Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn) dance together near the end of the film. It is a beautiful, touching scene that I could watch over and over.

Seberg (8/10): 102 minutes. R. This was not what I expected or desired, which was the story of Jean Seberg’s start and maturation in Paris. Instead, the film picks up after she had become a star and was involved in the black civil rights movement, both emotionally and sexually. This film follows her as she interacts with powerful people in the black power movement while, unknown to her, being closely monitored (spied upon) by the FBI in the persons of several fictional characters, chief among them Jack O’Connell, who is increasingly dubious of the rightness of what the FBI is doing. Not only does Kristen Stewart closely resemble the beautiful Seberg, she gives an Oscar®-quality performance as the conspiracy against her continues to break her down. In English and French.

The Gentlemen (8/10): 113 minutes. R. The problem or allure, depending on your POV, of this comedic film is that it is so convoluted you really don’t have a clue about what’s going on. It jumps back and forth between characters and events. It doesn’t immediately (or even anytime soon) become very clear until the absolute end. It has very good pace in its own tortuous way. It is filled with violence, but one saving grace is that there isn’t the idiotic car chase that seems endemic to this genre. While the acting is very good throughout, the movie belongs to Hugh Grant, who is selling a movie idea. Grant has given many delightful performances (2002’s About a Boy for instance) but this is far and away the best he has ever done.

Downhill (8/10): 85 minutes. R. Much better and a half hour shorter than its inspiration, 2014’s Force Majeure, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, who co-produced, carries the film with her outstanding performance as a wife who suddenly sees her beloved husband as something other than a knight in shining armor after an avalanche. Will Ferrell gives the good performance of which he is capable, exemplified by 2006’s Stranger Than Fiction, when he is not acting stupid.

Call of the Wild (6/10) 93 minutes. PG. The beauty of Jack London’s classic novel “Call of the Wild” was that it told the story totally from the dog’s POV. This one doesn’t, and, ay, there’s the rub. Despite amazing CGI and performance-capture acting in creating the dogs and other animals plus the presence of the always entertaining Harrison Ford (both of which are worth the price of admission), this one with its puerile Hollywood Ending isn’t as good as it could have been.

The Last Full Measure (6/10): 115 minutes. R. Headed by a terrific cast, this is based on the efforts to get a posthumous Medal of Honor awarded to William Pitsenbarger (Jeremy Irvine), a 21-year-old USAF pararescueman. Pitsenbarger voluntarily dropped down from a rescue helicopter into the middle of the Battle of Xa Cam My, one of the fiercest battles of the Vietnam War on April 11, 1966, and is credited with rescuing 60 men before losing his life. The film only barely touches on Pitsenbarger and his actions; his character is onscreen for maybe 10 minutes. It is basically the story of the people who fought for 30 years to get the medal awarded to him posthumously. But it never tells how he “rescued” the 60 men, leaving one to wonder what he actually did other than treating their wounds that set him above the more than 50,000 men who lost their lives fighting in Vietnam.

The Burnt Orange Heresy (5/10): 99 minutes. R. Despite fine performances by Mick Jagger, Donald Sutherland and Elizabeth Debicki, drab direction of a potentially good story that results in virtually no tension makes this mystery a disappointing drag.

The Rhythm Section (5/10): 109 minutes. R. An action film made by the producers of the James Bond franchise, this is the origin story purporting to create a female James Bond in the person of Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively). The first half is banal absurdity. It picks up a little in the last half. Even so, nothing in the film makes any sense whatsoever, as it is just a collection of set pieces with no segues and little relation to one another. The questions are, is it worth sitting through the first nonsensical hour for the last 49 minutes? And, is the last 49 minutes of nonstop action worth sitting through despite the fact that the scenes are incoherent and full of flights of fancy? James Bond films are mostly comedic, but at least one scene leads into another and the segments are cohesive. In the unlikely event that they make more of these they should spend some time (any time would be an improvement) on structure and interrelationship.

Buffaloed (4/10): 93 minutes. R. After such a boffo comedic performance in Zombieland: Double Tap (2019), Zooey Deutch totally drops the ball in this morally opaque misstep about bill collectors in Buffalo devoid of humor or premise.

The Assistant (3/10): 85 minutes. R. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovic this is not. One day in the life of Jane (an unhappy Julia Garner who has done such exceptional work in the Netflix show Ozark) is something that seems to be of no interest to anybody. Unlike Solzhenitsyn’s protagonist, Ivan, Jane is not a prisoner. Rather, she’s an assistant in some kind of Film Company with a goal of becoming a producer. The first half of the movie is her doing the mundane deeds of a gofer, making coffee, running errands, etc. During the day she becomes suspicious that her unseen boss is having sex with a new hire and she files a complaint with HR. There is no denouement. The film just ends as she goes home at the end of the day. This movie bolsters and encourages the kind of gestapo-type thinking inspired by the #MeToo Movement that threatens to make society unlivable. What it really does is to equate suspicions in there right next to the outrageous actual behavior of people like Harvey Weinstein. By doing so, it diminishes Weinstein-type activity, and enables/encourages things like the appalling, politically motivated unsubstantiated allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.

The Traitor (3/10): 150 minutes. R. Yawn, it’s hard to believe that a film about a Mafioso who turns government informant in Italy could be this slow and uninvolving. But director Marco Bellochio accomplishes this seemingly implausible feat. In Italian.

Recommended Reading: Watching You by Lisa Jewell, a clever murder mystery; Revolutionary Brothers by Tom Chaffin, fascinating story of Jefferson and Lafayette.