Movie and TV Reviews: Being the Ricardos, The Duke, Encanto, Licorice Pizza, Marry Me, Worth, ...

Being the Ricardos: This is an Aaron Sorkin biopic about Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman), Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), and the other cast and crew of the iconic show I Love Lucy. The film is about the week leading up to one episode of the show: the table reads, the production, the blocking, the run-throughs. It is also about three crises facing the Ricardos that week (historically, they were actually in different weeks, but they were shoehorned into one to add drama): The media is alleging that Desi is cheating on Lucy, the media has picked up that Lucy was once registered as a communist (to please her uncle), and Lucy and Desi want to incorporate Lucy's new pregnancy into the show, which may cause trouble with some conservative segments of the viewing public. It also highlights Lucy's keen insight into exactly how to run the show, from the media issues down to the actors movement in specific scenes.

Aaron Sorkin's name comes first in the previous paragraph because his heavy-handed touch nearly ruins this film. If you've never seen another Sorkin production (The West Wing, Sports Night, Molly Bloom, etc) you will find nothing wrong with this movie. If you have, it will be difficult to watch this movie and disappear into the characters, because every time one of them opens up her/his mouth you hear the characters from Sorkins' other movies speaking. In other words the characters are not new, fresh characters or biopic approximations of the original. Instead they are collections of witty dialog with certain personal characteristics.

It is a tight production, highly dramatic with snappy dialog and good acting ... i.e. a Sorkin production. But he gives the actors the same lines and characters that he gives in all of his movies, much in the way that Woody Allen did. I just didn't feel this was Lucy Ricardo. It is still fine to watch once.

Blade Runner: Black Lotus (TV series): This show is set between the two Blade Runner movies. A girl has amnesia and flashes of being a replicant. She goes to seek vengeance on people who abused her, and to seek answers as to who she is. She meets help, and kills enemies, along the way.

Blade Runner purists are like purists everywhere: they don't like anything that is not a perfect extension of what they already know, and they hate strong female characters. So they didn't like this. Some of them also abandoned the show after the first 1 or 2 episodes because there are no blade runners until the 4th or 5th episode.

Some of them also didn't like the show because the animation quality is not "great", which may be true if you are familiar with many other anime series, but not true if, like me, you are not. It seemed fine to me. And because the action was "like a video game", which is may be true if you are familiar with many video games ... ditto.

I thought there was too much violence in some of the episodes, the first in particular. And the story arc teases some characters as important who turn out to not be. Other than that, I thought it was fun, captivating, and captured the Blade Runner world well. Lots of atmosphere, callbacks to the movies, and the same general plot about replicants, police, a big corporation, and a seedy underworld. The story is not wholly original or deep; not all of the 13 episodes are essential viewing. But I enjoyed it, and I think if you are a fan of the movies - but not a purist - you will like it.

The Book of Boba Fett (TV series): The Mandalorian was the best thing in Star Wars since the original trilogy, and I had hopes for this. As we learned in that series, Boba Fett somehow escaped from the Sarlac pit and stayed on Tatooine to take over the Hutt operations on the planet. He has an assassin for help, Fennec Shand. In this series, he walks about Mos Isley trying to assert his authority but running into resistance of various kinds. The backstory of what happened to him to get to this point is also part of the first 4 episodes, out of 7.

The first 4 episodes are fine. Not great television if you are not already a Star Wars fan. The story meanders from past to present. The backstory is a traditional story of an encounter with the natives and being taken into their tribe (Sand people). The present is mostly introducing characters for some eventual conflict. Not as bad as some people made out, but somewhat mediocre, not essential viewing.

Episodes 5 and 6 had nothing to do with Boba Fett, at all (he gets like 10 seconds of screen time altogether in both episodes). Instead, we get the continuing story of the Mandalorian, and it is fantastic. Then, in episode 7, you get a merged story of both of them: The Mandalorian, Boba Fett and his crew, and the big conflict this was all leading up to. It was good.

I think you can skip the first 4 episodes and just watch the last 3. You won't miss much. if you are a Mandalorian fan, you must watch the last 3 episodes, at least. And here is looking forward to the next season of The Mandalorian.

Duke, The: The essentially true story of a pensioner (Jim Broadbent) in Newcastle Upon Tyne who, in 1961, steals an expensive painting from the British National Gallery in London with some idea of forcing the British government to make the TV tax free for veterans and the elderly. The government thinks they are dealing with a sophisticated art theft gang and are shamefaced when he turns himself in and returns the painting of his own volition.

Helen Mirren plays his very sour and ornery wife Dorothy. A host of other actors (the most famous of them being Matthew Goode) play family members, locals, and lawyer (Goode).

This is a light movie. Subplots include their daughter who died in a car crash (years ago) and a little about their sons who have their own relationships. Mirren's Dorothy is so mean-spirited and sour at the beginning of the movie that it nearly sunk it for me: too much negativity in a supposed comedy movie. But I made it through and I enjoyed it more in the second half. Okay to watch, not worth going out of your way for.

Encanto: A huge success of a Disney movie, about a multi-generational extended Colombian family that escaped some kind of conflict and ended up in a magical village with a magical house that protects them. The family owns the house, and the rest of village relies on them or something (not clear). Each member of the family has a magical gift that they gain when they come of age, ... except our protagonist, Mirabelle. Poor Mirabelle. And they don't talk about Bruno, an uncle whose magic was predicting calamitous events (mostly minor ones) and who seems to have disappeared.

One day Mirabelle sees cracks appearing in the house. And she tries to find out why and how to save it.

Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the songs, many of which are super good. I am not a fan of his endless rap-style narrative songs (Hamilton, In the Heights), but the score was done by someone named Germaine Franco, which must have helped. I say many of the songs were good: they were all good, but some of them, particularly the first song, had voices that were too low or too fast and I literally did not understand a word they were singing until the second of third time that I watched the movie (or until I looked up the lyrics online).

Not all of the movie makes sense, especially the central conflict. I don't really understand who learned what or why, or what changed. But it was pretty, colorful, tuneful, with sweet, pathetic, or vibrant songs, and it was fun to watch.

Hawkeye (TV Series): Another Marvel TV series. I saw a few episodes of Agents of Shield, Agent Carter, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones, but I never watched the rest of these series. I saw the entirety of Wandavision, which I most enjoyed (more after the first 3 episodes), and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was mediocre okay except for the last episode which was silly.

This series was probably the best of the bunch. This may be due to the charming Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop, who joins Hawkeye as a fellow archer protege, and the captivating Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova out to kill the man (Hawkeye) who killed her sister (Natasha Romanoff).

Kate runs into a criminal organization selling black market extraterrestrial tech from the NYC event (Avengers) and tries to get involved, as does Hawkeye. The plot is not that important, serving as a basis for scenes between: Hawkeye and Kate, with Hawkeye trying to keep Kate out of the way as he does serious work, while she wants to help; between Hawkeye and Yelena and between Yelena and Kate, who arrives as a wildcard to complicate matters; and between Kate and her mother and her mother's boyfriend, who may be involved with the criminals. And some Avengers cosplayers. And lots of quips and archery.

Wandavision is still the most original of these shows. This one is simply tight and well-structured. Worth watching is you enjoy the Marvel movies.

Licorice Pizza: This is a weird comedy hi-jinks movie. It is wild, original, infused with historical 1970s California detail, and full of frenetic energy. It is partly about Gary (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Phillip Seymour), a 15 year old boy who is a driven entrepreneur and child actor. He spends some of his time pursuing some kind of relationship with Alana (Alana Haim, from the music group), a 25 year old who floats between jobs, including photographer's assistant, political campaign assistant, and working for Gary. He spends part of his time creating businesses, such as mattress store and a pinball parlor. And it is partly about Alana and her family and choices. And it is partly about early 1970s Hollywood and a lot of crazy people.

Speaking of parts, part of me didn't like this movie while I was watching it. The narrative wanders all over the place, the characters are often unlikable, and the plot is hard to follow. Another part of me was thrilled at watching something so interesting and unusual. It is atmospheric, with memorable scenes and characters. I really need to see it again.

Mind you, the premise of a 15 year old boy maybe having a relationship with a 25 year old woman is somewhat disturbing, and the movie doesn't do enough to make us think that there is a problem here. But I think an original film like this is worth watching, and I applaud its gumption. The supporting characters are played by some astoundingly great actors, including Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper.

Mitchells vs. The Machines, The: This highly recommended film was disappointing, boring, bland, and stupid. It is action, gags, and shallow, heavy-handed family drama, the kind that changes tone too abruptly and too frequently to be funny. The kind that transparently and unsubtly tried to shove poignant emotions at you without going through the work of making you care about the characters. The kind of drama that makes no sense considering the context of what is happening on screen. The plot is unoriginal - an AI goes wild and sends robots around to kill everyone, and the child protagonists are the only ones who figure out how to stop them. Heard that one before?

It is also a tech based movie about runaway AI, so of course the tech also makes no sense, which doesn't matter but is annoying, nevertheless. It is nice that the unambiguously gay daughter is part of the family and not at all part of the plot, which is pretty groundbreaking for a family animated film. How this got so much praise from the critics is beyond me.

Marry Me: Jennifer Lopez plays a global pop star, about to marry a fellow global pop-star in a big televised on-stage wedding. Then she discovers he has been cheating on her. So she jumps at the chance to marry some dude in the audience holding a "Marry Me" sign in a leap of faith/moment of desperation/act of revenge/something. The sign-holder just happens to be a single dad (Owen Wilson) and a math teacher. And it wasn't even his sign (he was briefly holding it for his lesbian friend (Sarah Silverman)). He goes along with it ... out of compassion for someone who is in trouble, or something?

This movie makes no sense, from beginning to end. So many questions are just unanswered. Why does she do this? Why does he do it? How is this legal? She doesn't know his name or if he is even single when they marry. Why would he do this without regard for his 10 year old daughter? Why does he leave the concert without his daughter? What's happening??

I hoped that, with suspension of disbelief at the initial premise, that I could flow with the rest of the movie and maybe that would make some sense. Unfortunately, this movie feels like it was written by the 10 year old daughter. It hits every romcom plot point without once making any character or narrative sense in how it gets there. No work is put into how they fall in love, or why one of them tries to break it off, or how they end up in each location. These things just happen.

It's a bad movie. Very bad. I enjoyed Jennifer and Owen on screen, because I think they have some charm. But that's about it. Sarah's ubiquitous over-presence was grating, sad to say.

Saint Frances: Bridget is a very sad 34 year old who gets an abortion. Then she gets a job as nanny to Frances, daughter of two very sad women, Maya and Annie. Everyone is always sad, except for Frances who is sometimes sad. Near the end, some people are occasionally less sad.

I had to stop watching this for a while so that I didn't kill myself. It is technically well put together, if kind of gross (too much period blood dealt with dryly and comedic) in some places. It is kind of a comedy, despite everyone being miserable. If you can survive the first three quarters, the last quarter yields some redemption. Although the characters are original, the story is really not. The couple may be lesbian, but the story remains the same. It was well acted and well cast. Worth watching if you can stomach it.

tick, tick, ... BOOM!: The first of the only two plays from Jonathan Larson, and the second that we can now watch as movies, the other one being Rent (tragically, Larson died a few days before Rent's theater run began). The movie version of Rent is a well known cinematography failure, even though the songs are good. This one also has good songs with a slightly less depressing story and, thankfully, adequate cinematography. Andrew Garfield stars as the frenetic optimist Jonathan Larson, who wrote this autobiographical story about trying to write his actual first play, which never went into production.

The movie includes performers who starred in Rent, as well as cameos from other Broadway performers. The story pays homage to Steve Sondheim, played by Bradley Whitford (and one actual voicemail recording from Sondheim himself).

If you like musicals, and particularly Larson's style of modern, gritty but hopeful NYC musical, this is a must watch. I enjoyed it.

Worth: The true story of a lawyer (played by Michael Keaton) who specialized in assessing the value of human life. He is hired to administrate the Sept 11 compensation fund. His job is to get 80% of the people to sign onto the fund. If they don't, then a) the airlines may go out of business, and b) individual expensive lawsuits may result in some or many of the victim's families getting little or nothing. And c) it is good, politically.

Of course, putting value on people's live makes the victims furious: why is a CEO worth more than a janitor in human terms? Is the money symbolic, compensatory, punitive, a coverup, or a relief? This was well made, but rather long for a story that could have been told in a half hour television episode. It doesn't hit that hard, but tackles the subject well enough. It's okay watching if it's on TV.

Turning Red: A Pixar movie about a Chinese-Canadian girl who is going through puberty. She discovers that her ancestor's totem of a red panda means that she actually turns into a big fat red panda whenever she gets emotional. She has friends, a tiger mother, plans to see a boy band, and assorted other relatives. She has to undergo a ceremony to get rid of this new panda curse, but until then she begins to control it and use it to get what she wants, economically and socially.

This movie is a big old bunch of metaphors, one of which is nearly explicitly spelled out in the film. The first time she "turns red" and tells her mother to stay out of the bathroom, her mother thinks she has had her first period and brings her medicine and pads. While it doesn't get more explicit than that, it is still quite a concept for a Pixar movie. But that's what this is all about, isn't it: she smells funny, she can't control her emotions, she has longings for boys, she isn't in control of her body, she hates how she looks, etc, etc. Metaphor, anyone?

Unfortunately, aside from the metaphors, the story and conflict are pretty banal. She hides what she is doing from, and lies to, her over-controlling mother, so naturally there is a blow up and then some mutual understanding. It's just that some of Toronto (circa 2002) gets wrecked in the process. It's nowhere near as interesting as Encanto, but fine for younger kids.

Movie Reviews: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Hearts Beat Loud, Jagged, Respect, Under the Skin

Spider-Man: No Way Home: I find it impossible to review this without spoilers, so here be spoilers ...

Tom Holland is back as Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, and we pick up moments after the last movie ended. His identity is revealed to the world, causing him, and all of his friends, no end of trouble. This is compounded by rumors that Mysterio, who Spider-Man defeated in the last movie, was actually the good guy, while he (Spidey) is the bad guy who caused all of the destruction and killed this great superhero (for reasons unknown, I guess). Those who believe this find new reasons to believe this as events in this movie unfold (this is a political commentary, I believe).

Peter tries to get Doctor Strange to cast a spell that will erase the memory of his identity from everyone. While Strange is trying to cast the spell, Peter continually interrupts him with requests for changes to the spell (MJ should remember him, ... and also Aunt May, ... and also ...) resulting in a botched spell that Strange has to contain. While doing so, he breaks small cracks in the multiverse, enabling many villains from the Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies to appear, apparently moments before these villains were killed in these movies (none of this makes any sense, but whatever). Naturally, the villains are confused, everyone in the MCU is confused (except for Doctor Strange), and so is everyone in the audience.

Strange says that he and Peter have to round these guys up with some McGuffin device that he has (this turns out to be super easy, barely an inconvenience). While doing so, Peter and his bleeding heart decide to "cure" them and so save them from death when they get sent back to their own universes. Again, this makes no sense. Strange disagrees, so he and Spidey fight. Spidey forces Strange out of the picture for a while, but also enables the bad guys to escape and regroup (with one who received the cure helping to face off against the others who did not). Meanwhile, Peter's friends MJ and Ned try to call Peter using some other McGuffin device, only to end up bringing into their universe both Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men (or "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" and "Amazing Spider-Man"). Much bonding, inside jokes, touching stories, and mutual support ensues, as well as a final battle that also brings back Doctor Strange. Peter has to make a final sacrifice in order for Strange to fix the rupture in the multiverse.

This movie has broken records, as the first pandemic-era movie to get to $100 million on its opening day, and the first to top $1 billion. It is the second-highest (or tied for second-highest) rated MCU movie, just behind Black Panther. It squashes together not only a dozen villains, characters, and heroes into one movie (ala End Game), but also squashes together three cinematic universes, which is a sure-fire crowd-pleaser. So I was prepared for another boring fan-service Marvel movie that is a) well-made and entertaining, b) shallow, a collection of irrelevant actions scenes with superficial emotional "growth", c) watchable, but not good.

I am pleased to say that it is better than the usual Marvel movies, although still not a great movie. It was entertaining, well acted, and well shot (of course). It was not too shallow. The characters and the story moved and developed more than usual. Yes, it was a collection of action scenes, but the scenes between the kids (Peter and his friends) and between the Spider-Men were interesting and contained depth. These are actual characters who have real backstories and real arcs to use as backgrounds for their reactions and dialog, and this helped. Tobey and Andrew were particularly welcome and captivating, as was William Defoe's Green Goblin. Still, a few scenes with depth is not a deep movie, like a real drama movie.

On the down side, unless you have seen all previous Spider-Man movies, as well as the Avengers Infinity Wars/End Game movies (and some Daredevil, and maybe some other MCU, television shows), some of the backstories and characters will be new to you, and therefore will have less depth. You will then watch the film and feel less, since these backstories, with some notable exceptions, are not explained. This detracts from the movie for such viewers. Also, the extended fight scenes, while pretty to look at, as usual were eye candy with little dramatic depth.

If you are a fan of these kinds of movies you will love this one. If you are not, you probably won't change your mind but it will not feel like a waste of time. If you actively dislike these kinds of movies, this one won't change your mind.

Hearts Beat Loud: A little independent movie starring Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons as father and daughter Frank and Sam. Sam and Frank play music together informally in their house. Sam is off to college soon. They create a song that Frank thinks might give them a chance at music success, so he pesters Same into recording, playing, an maybe touring, while Sam is more interested in her new girlfriend and upcoming college.

This plays almost like a John Carney movie (Once, Begin Again, Sing Street), with original music interspersed with scenes and dialog pregnant with emotion. The lyrics and music, written by Keegan DeWitt, counterpoint, recapitulate, or develop the story. The movie and some scenes may be a bit slow, and the story may be unoriginal, but it is sweet, the music is pretty, and everyone does a fine job. Other featured actors include Toni Collette and Ted Danson, who shine (understatedly) when they are on screen.

I didn't know anything about Nick Offerman before watching this, other than that he is Megan Mullally's husband and a comedic actor of some kind. It was a nice surprise to see him perform in an appealing comic/dramatic role, and do it well. Worth watching if it comes your way.

Jagged: A documentary about Alanis Morissette, told in her own (current) voice and the voice of her band, from the time of her childhood up until Jagged Little Pill came out and upended music in the 1990s. I have seen many documentaries about musicians lately; this one stands out. It might be because I love Alanis' music, especially from that period. Or it may be that she is a great musician, this is an important piece of music, and it is a decent story. Not a fantastic story, just a decent one (a decent story seems to elude most other music documentaries).

Alanis has famously distanced herself from this film, saying that she was betrayed in its making and that it represents distorted facts. I am not sure what her problem is, and I wish she would clarify. There are only two negative insinuations that she makes. One is that she was involved with adult married men in the music business when she was 15 years old, and that, over time, she has learned that these men took advantage of her and were, in fact, pedophiles and abusers. I don't think this is a huge revelation, since she sings about this in Hands Clean and other songs. She does narrow down the people to specific times and companies where she was working in the documentary. The other negative comment is about her all-male band-mates who attracted and slept with many female fans during their first tour, which she found, in retrospect, to be distasteful and anti-feminist. Again, I don't think this is a huge revelation.

Worth watching if you are into the subject at all, at least until we hear some kind of clarification from Alanis.

Respect: A biopic about Arethra Franklin, the Queen of Soul Music. Jennifer Hudson plays Arethra (before she died, Aretha actually picked Hudson to play her), Forest Whitaker plays her father, and Marlon Wayans plays her (first) husband. Marc Maron plays the famous producer Jerry Wexler who releases most of her music, and Mary J. Blige plays family friend and singer Dinah Washington. The movie takes us from youth until her 1971 Amazing Grace gospel performance.

This film follows the same cookie-cutter story of every other musician biopic: early struggles, a troublesome marriage, first success, a fight with a music label that results in a change of labels, a troublesome addiction, too much success leading to bad behavior, and a denouement that involves a re-centering and launch into future success with a heartfelt performance at a special place. Maybe that's just the story of all successful musicians. The movie hits all of these tropes, without getting anything deep or original out of any of them. Its distinguishing factor is her struggle with religion and her deeply religious (yet philandering) father.

It was enjoyable. While it is technically well done, it is not amazing. Everyone does a fine job, even if some parts of her life are left unexplained and unexplored. And Hudson is a great singer in her own right.

Under the Skin: Scarlett Johansson plays one of two aliens. She drags women and (mostly) men off into some kind of death or stasis in order to understand them or transport them to her planet or something. She wanders around, sometimes naked, talking little. Weird scenes occur in some kind of odd space where her naked victims follow her as she walks on a flat surface while they descend, step by step, into some kind of black oil, in which they float and can still see. It must be metaphorical, but I didn't see the point.

Looking up on Wikipedia ... From a synopsis of the book on which the movie is based, the themes are supposed to be about animal cruelty, environmental decay, sexism, and immigration. I didn't get any of that from the film. All I got was nice scenery, tedium, confusion, lack of a comprehensible story arc, and an unsexy look at Scarlett Johansson. The film took a chance by being different from the usual sort of films we see. It fails spectacularly, but I give it some credit for that.

Movie Reviews: Dune (2021), Eternals, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Father, King Richard, Pixie, Spencer

Dune (2021) - As an aside, I saw this in a 4X movie theater, and I can tell you that 4X movie theaters are not worth the extra cost. Every once in a while my seat vibrated, slightly distracting me from the movie. Then I felt the seat kicking me in my bottom (there are kids who will do that for free in regular movie theaters). Finally, during a huge rain scene on film, I felt a slight mist in the theater. Skip the 4X.

On the other hand, this is a huge, well-made sci-fi film of multiple worlds that deserves to be seen in a theater. As for the story and characters, the director Dennis Villeneuve and the rest of the staff do a great job enabling the characters to emerge. The story retains its essential form while being accessible to people who have not read (or forgot) the book, at least I think so: it's possible that the emperor sending troops to aid the Harkonnens' fight against the Atreides might get lost on someone who never read the book, which is important but not critical (at least to this movie, which is only the first half of the novel).

The story: Dune is a planet with an important spice that enables interstellar travel, while also turning blue the eyes of anyone who hangs around it for a while. The planet is nearly entirely desert, with little water and little life. However, there are some desert mice, some huge-ass sandworms that detect the slightest movement on the surface, and the freemen, nomadic and (essentially) Bedouin native warriors who resent the presence of the spice mining operations of the empire.

The emperor kicks the Harkonnens off of the planet, for some reason, and sends the Atreides faction to continue the operations, but it looks like they might have been sent to fail. The Harkonnens sabotaged some of the equipment, and they (and the emperor) later attack the Atriedes on Dune.

Meanwhile, Duke Atreides wife Jessica is a Bene Gesserit, some kind of mystic with mental powers in a long line of trained woman mystics, who has a son, Paul, that she has trained in these ways, much to the annoyance of the rest of the Bene Gesserit. She did so because she thinks Paul may be the fulfillment of a thousand years of prophesy. Simultaneously, Paul seems to fulfill some freeman signs of being a prophet, too. And he is having visions of a freeman woman he will meet and wed, and maybe die in her arms?

Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, and others do fine jobs: not too mopey, not too dreamy, not too chaotic. Effects, music, and cinematography do what they should. It's not the greatest film of this decade, but it works and I enjoyed it. I am looking forward to part 2.

Eternals - This boring entry into the Marvel universe is a collection of Marvel scenes apparently written by (not exceptional) 12 year olds. Once again we have a bunch of "super"heroes with undefined powers that can do anything, except when the plot wants these powers to not work so well, so as to provide some tension (didn't work). Once again immortal and invulnerable non-human beings run through every human emotion and die from human fatal wounds like asphyxiation (although they don't breathe) and chest wounds (although they have no circulation or blood). Once again a Marvel movie tries, and fails, to explain why super-powerful beings did nothing while the other movies played out ("not getting involved in Earth events" is not an excuse for not stopping Thanos). Now, suddenly, they seem to care about humans, but they did not, apparently, during the last five millennia. Once again a Marvel movie fails to explain where all the other Marvel superheroes are at an event that threatens the entire planet Earth; some of these other superheroes are gods, right? And, once again, a Marvel movie glosses over massive destruction that should wipe out a planet; instead the destruction affects only a few miles around it.

The characters are fine, but one dimensional. The Marvel humor runs shallow. The plot makes an attempt, at least: the Eternals have to choose between helping keep humans alive on Earth or helping a celestial be born, which is their actual mission. So there is some, slight, moral dilemma. Otherwise, whatever.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye - I knew very little about televangelists and about prosperity gospel before this movie, and only a little about Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, played beautifully by Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain. Based on the documentary of the same name, this film must have involved a lot of input from Tammy Faye, who is portrayed quite sympathetically, as is televangelism in general.

The story is how the two met in college, where Jim was promoting the idea that wealth = God's blessing, and so they should make money by promoting God. Various other televangelists and other kinds of ministers have other ideas (with this and with each other), so, while, on the whole, they are all working to turn people from sin and to Christianity, they also present different, sometimes contradictory methods and messages in different styles. The Bakers end up collaborating with and butting heads with others. For example, Tammy believes in loving everyone, including homosexuals, and bringing them closer to God, while Jerry Falwell and others reject this idea.

The movie covers the financial fraud and theft by Jim Baker, as well as his (and others) possible homosexual dalliances. It skips some of the nastier things that the Bakers and other prosperity preachers did, such as telling the poorest people to take out bankrupting loans to give them (the Bakers) money as proof of their belief. This was supposed to result in being paid back many times over by God, but typically resulted in lost fortunes, bankruptcy, and even death (when people ran out of money to pay for cancer treatments, etc). But that would make it harder for Tammy to be a sympathetic screen character.

This was quite a good movie, interesting, well acted, well scripted, and well shot. I didn't see the documentary; if it is good, some might ask the question why this movie needs to exist.

The Father - This tour-de-force from Anthony Hopkins is a crushing look at a man with Alzheimer's. It's impossible to describe without giving away the film, but the simple explanation is this: Anthony plays a man who has Alzheimer's. He does not accept this, but he is not always sure of his memory. Olivia Colman plays his long-suffering daughter. Other characters appear or disappear, and that's all you need to know. Both of them, as well as the director, play the scenes with sensitivity and creativity. It is engrossing, puzzling, and marvelous.

This is not a feel good movie. While it is sometimes depressing, it is so well done that it doesn't really matter (think, oh, let's say Kramer vs Kramer level of pathos). But it's not as miserable as some movies, like ones about slavery, poverty, or horrific abuse, so you don't want to kill yourself after watching it. Still, that makes it a movie that is not for casual movie night with friends. Worth watching.

King Richard - This is an okay, feel good movie, that is something of a crime in its conception.

This is the story of the father of Venus and Serena Williams; about his plan, from before their birth, to raise tennis pros who would rise up out of the ghetto (Compton), compete at international level, and make a lot of money.

Will Smith produced the movie and also plays Richard, the father. While he does a credible job with the role, he remains a slight-change-in-dialect version of Will Smith, so he's fine but not great. Aunjanue Ellis plays his wife, and mother of the two stars (as well as mother of three previous, also successful girls), and Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton play Venus and Serena. Everyone acts well; the directing is somewhat heavy-handed at times, but not often and not too much.

This is an okay sports movie about a man (with daughters) and his struggles to overcome his surroundings and his own demons. He overcomes a few of them, but some of his actions and decisions were pretty bad and the movie never takes him to task for them. I understand that Venus and Serena were consultants on the movie, so it is based somewhat on reality, at least (I hear that Richard was actually a lot more of a hard-ass than he appears in the film). As a film, it works fine.

But this movie is still a crime. Here was the opportunity to tell the story of two fierce, beautiful, successful, amazing young Black girls/women, and instead we get a movie about a man, where the two girls/women are props in his story. Why? Seriously, why do we need this story? It's not a bad story, but it's also not that original or dramatic. The Venus and Serena stories are barely told. This would be so much better if it were their story, with their father as a prop. So it is a little depressing.

Pixie - This Irish movie is a throwaway mafia/road film. It's a comedy about various criminals on the run, occasionally double crossing each other. It has some violence, but not enough to make me turn it off while watching it on the airplane. The characters, though insane, were at least sweet enough for me to watch through to the incredibly ridiculous and, yet, entirely predictable end.

Forgettable, and not worth watching, but not terrible. Beautifully shot in Ireland, and capable acting.

Spencer - This movie is directed by Pablo Larraín, the same person who directed Jackie, a movie that I disliked. I thought Jackie was directed (or possibly written) very poorly: mostly closeups of Natalie Portman's face and endless screen-time with her looking forlorn and pitiful. That's really not entertaining. People laud the acting of someone in closeup who is forlorn for 2 hours, but it doesn't make for a good movie. So I was not looking forward to see what this director would do for Lady Diana. I hoped to be pleasantly surprised.

I was not pleasantly surprised. In fact, it was exactly as poorly directed/scripted as Jackie: lots of closeups of a miserable, forlorn face. People close to Diana said that Kristen Stewart inhabited the role well, with all of the correct mannerisms and intonations. I thought the acting was affected, distracting, and overdone. Too bad, since I like to give Kristen the benefit of the doubt, but am often disappointed.

The movie is about a weekend that Diana spends at a castle with the royal family. She struggles with her eating disorder and her difficult husband, tries to visit her old family home, and runs afoul of royal expectations. She leaves early, takes the children, and separates (one presumes) from Charles back in London.

The rest of the casting, costuming, and cinematography is fine. The story is not: it's just moaning, warbling, and fretting, with the occasional pointed conversation in between. I was fine with the conversations, but that was only about 1/3 of the movie. Just watch The Crown.

Movie Reviews: Street Gang (Sesame Street documentary), Toy Story 4, The Truth, The Vast of Night

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street - This fantastic documentary outshines the mediocre documentaries I have watched lately. Children Television Workshop's Sesame Street, incorporating Jim Henson's muppets, was a game-changer for television and a global phenomenon, and this film makes you feel it. I learned a lot about the people and history of Sesame Street that I did not know, such as the groundbreaking use of research and educator input used to create an educational program, together with comedians and puppet makers to make it appealing to both children and adults. The nostalgia I got while watching it made me sing along with some of the songs that I had not heard since my childhood.

I guess if you never saw SS you won't get this nostalgia. The film could have presented some of the data that lets us know that the children that they targeted actually had better school performance as a result. Aside from this one missing element, this was a treat and worth watching.

Toy Story 4 - Featuring a who's who of celebrity voices, this fourth installment in the Toy Story series is only slightly lesser quality than the first three, which were all great. Still enjoyable, still funny, still fun, and still full of heart, only the story is a little more scattered.

Woody and co are now Bonny's toys. Woody sneaks along with Bonny on her first day of school to check up on her and helps her create Forky, a stick figure made from crappy plastic. Forky thinks of himself as garbage and that he should be thrown away, but Woody tries to keep him around for Bonnie's sake. Meanwhile, they travel to an RV park, where Woody meets Bo, Gabby Gabby, Duke Caboom, and other toys who have various plans to become owned by children or to reunite children with their toys, all the while trying to not get separated from Bonny.

There are messages about the nature of reality, what it means to belong or to be useful, what is worth sacrificing, and where our higher purposes lie, all in the form of kinetic action, comedy, and pathos. If you watched the first three, of course you will watch this one. If you have not, it might be slightly confusing to follow, so watch, at least, Toy Story 3, first. Hard to believe they have been doing this for 25 years, and that they haven't messed it up, yet.

The Truth - A French drama starring Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, and Ludivine Sagnier. Fabienne is a famous but aging actress writing a book. Lumir is her screenwriter daughter, who, with her husband Hank and daughter Charlotte, is visiting her mother in France. Fabienne lies to Lumir, Lumir lies to Fabienne, and this continues for the whole movie. Fabienne did, and does, many insulting things to everyone around her, oblivious to their pain. Fabienne's excuse is that she is a liar and a pathetic wife and mother because she gave it all to her art of acting. Meanwhile, Charlotte may learn something - maybe the wrong thing? - from them both.

This is a dialog heavy open-ended drama where you quickly realize that you are never going to find out what the actual truth is, because everything you know comes from the mouths of the actors, and they are thoroughly unreliable. That is both tantalizing and infuriating. It is a movie about acting and aging, and about what you get from your mother vs what you need from her. It is similar in feel and plot to the very good Clouds of Sils Maria  that I saw a few years ago. That was better, but this is also good; how could it not be, considering the talented cast? Worth watching on a small screen. Mostly in subtitles.

The Vast of Night - This is a strange but wonderful film for film-buffs only. Rather than watch this for the plot - some kind of lights have been seen in the sky above a small New Mexico town in the 1950s, and some high schoolers who work with radios try to discover what is happening ... that's it - you watch it for the acting, suspense, and cinematography. It stars Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz as the high schoolers Fay and Everett.

The film has some fantastic shots. The opening is a series of walk and talks with the main characters at long shots, off screen, or behind things, giving us a sense of something off-kilter. There are several more long shots of Sierra or Jake fielding phone calls from bewildered townfolk, or talking over the events while rummaging through old recordings. One impressive and fascinating long take swoops from Fay at one end of town, traveling for a mile at ground level, over fences, and through the high school basketball game to Everett at the other end of town.

What does it all mean? Who knows? The acting, sets, sound, and camerawork are phenomenal. The dialog is mysterious and captivating, even though very little actually happens. But the same is true for all suspense movies, where things may be happening but it's hard to know what. After a lot of dialog, it ends with a run through a field when the mysterious lights come into sight. This whole movie would have been the opening 3 minutes of an X Files episode. If you want standard, passive entertainment, you should probably pass, but it is sure fun to watch if you love to watch something really good and really different.

Movie Reviews: Shang-Chi, Summer of Soul, The Last Letter From Your Lover, The Man Who Knew Infinity, The Red Turtle

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - Marvel with a Chinese mythology spin. Simu Li plays Shaun/Shang-Chi, a trained warrior and son of the 4000 year old, more highly trained, more warriory Xu Wenwu (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung). Xu is immortal because of his use of the mysterious and unexplained ten rings of power.

Shang-Chi is hiding as Shaun in San Francisco, working with his friend Katy (Akwafina, playing in another movie with dragons shortly after her role in Raya and the Last Dragon). Shaun, Katy, and Shaun's sister Xialing (Meng'er Zhang) are kidnapped by Xu to attack a gate near some village (led by Ying Nan (Michelle Yeoh)) in another dimension in order to free his wife/their mother (who is dead, but Xu thinks his wife is calling to him and may still be alive). But this is a ruse by the evil Dweller-in-Darkness to ... uh ... take over the world. Sides are taken, pretty beasts fly around in the other dimension, people do martial arts and people fight. Sacrifices are made.

The movie attempts to give a backstory and character to Shang-Chi - a bit more than we saw in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 - but this is still a Marvel movie, so the backstory is comic-worthy. Much of the plot setup and story is told in jerky walk-and-talks between fighting scenes. Like Black Panther, the directing and choreography try to honor Chinese culture with appropriate costumes, fighting styles, music, and landscapes, but, unlike that movie, it doesn't all gel. It feels paint by numbers and jumbled. Still, points for trying.

The ten rings are in the movie, but they come from nowhere, mean nothing, have no definition, and add nothing but glowing balls of light. There is a lot of annoying deux ex machina before the ending, and all of the fighting basically runs by itself; the people are mostly observers. The return to our world is satisfying, and some other MCU characters show up as a nice touch. This is one of the lesser entries in the Marvel canon, kind of boring, and not a film that I plan to see again.

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) - A documentary by Questlove about the 1969 Harlem Culture Festival, a series of music festivals celebrating Black culture. Owing to Woodstock, and to the media's generally ignoring Black culture, the event is not well known about outside of the Black community. The concerts had a combined attendance total of around 300,000 people, and the performers included Sly and the Family Stone, BB King, Glady Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, and, perhaps most notoriously, Nina Simone. Simone gave a long speech about how she would like to see violent revolution and armed conflict by the Black community to fight against racial injustice.

From the hour-plus of the movie devoted to actually hearing the music, the music appears to have been good to great. Maybe there was not much more footage of the music, or maybe Questlove simply decided to use the rest of the movie to present the politics around the event. The movie is important in presenting an overlooked event of Black culture. Other than this, and Sly's performance and Simone's speech, the movie is just a standard documentary: it's fine, not great.

The Last Letter From Your Lover - Like Me Before You, this movie is high on sweetness and potential, but low on depth, which I assume, like Me Before You, is a betrayal of a deeper novel by Jojo Moyes. In the 1960s, Jennifer wakes from a car crash with little memory of what happened before, to relearn about her rich lifestyle, absent and problematic husband, and possible lover. In the modern era, journalist Ellie, who has her own commitment problems, discovers a series of love letters that uncover Jennifer's story. Will love triumph in the past and in the present?

The film is shot and costumed beautifully. It is watchable and well produced, but it does not present real characters well enough to engage our sympathies. Why did Jennifer marry this guy to begin with, and what is her life story, other than her husband and her possible lover? What else do we know about Ellie? It's all so shallow and pretty, that we don't learn much.

Which is a pity. The plot is easy enough to follow through the different time periods and the different happy and unhappy relationships. Shailene Woodley, Felicity Jones, and their various male counterparts do fine enough jobs given the script. I suspect that if you have read the book and already sympathize with the characters and their stories, that the movie is more enjoyable to watch. Or maybe just as frustrating in its lack of truly bringing the complete book experience to the screen.

The Man Who Knew Infinity - A sturdy biopic about the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who, unschooled, formulated thousands of insights into mathematical formulae in his youth in India in the early twentieth century. He (Dev Patel) wrote to Cambridge University in an effort to find others who could understand his work, and so was brought over to England by G. H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons). There he encountered many things in his short life before his untimely death: some of the usual racism of that period; contentious but highly respectful colleagues who insisted that he present proofs for his insights (most of which were right, but not all); a separation from his wife and culture in India and and a very different, atheistic culture in England (to his very religious Hindu one).

The math explanations are kept short and tidy, but their importance - other than that they are mathematically important in some way - is never explained. The film is also rather bleak and cold, even if it is the usual celebration of triumph in some small way. Everyone plays their part well, but, other than Ramanujan's decline in health, the occasionally amusing or troubling conflicts are eased through without much on-screen tension. As a result, the film is colder, less enjoyable, and somewhat more forgettable than other recent films, such as The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game. It is worth watching, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it.

The Red Turtle - An intriguing myth in the shape of a movie from Studio Ghibli. A man is washed onto a deserted island. He tries to escape by raft a few times, but each time is stopped by a mysterious red turtle that keeps him trapped (safe?) on the island. In revenge, he attacks the turtle and flips the turtle over. Before the turtle dies, he tries but fails to make amends. He goes to sleep beside the dead turtle, but wakes up next to a woman in the turtle shell. They eventually make a life together and have a son.

There is no dialog, other than the occasional grunt. So what is the movie about? A treatise about nature? A metaphor about life, birth, and the womb? Pre- or post-lapsarian? All and more?

This may be a little slow for some viewers: although most of it moves as a good pace, a few of the sequences go on a bit long. The story, such as it is, doesn't hit you over the head with its meaning, so you have to bring your own. I'm a little annoyed at the use of a woman as a kind of object for the man, rather than as her own person, but this is only a problem depending on how you interpret the myth. It's not a tour de force, but it's fascinating, dreamy, and beautiful. Worth watching.

Movie Reviews: My Salinger Year, No Time to Die, Palm Springs, The Sparks Brothers, Spider-Man: Far From Home

My Salinger Year - This is a fine little literate comedy about a woman Joanna (Margaret Qualley) who, in 1995, takes a job at a literary agency run by Margaret (Sigourney Weaver). The agency's main important client is J.D. Salinger. Joanna's job includes responding to anyone who writes seeking anything from Salinger with a form letter and then shredding whatever they sent. A subplot involves Joanna and her obviously soon-to-be-history boyfriend Don (Douglas Booth). Joanna Rakoff wrote the book based on hr experiences at this agency.

It's a simple plot. Joanna is an aspiring writer of her own and wants to grow out of her position and her relationship. Meanwhile, she takes pity on some of the letters that she receives from Salinger fans. Sigourney does a light impression of Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada. You won't learn anything about Salinger, and The Devil Wears Prada is a better and more important movie, but this is still worth watching on a small screen.

No Time to Die - The fifth and final film of Daniel Craig's take on James Bond (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre, and this one), of which all of his movies form a single story arc. Craig has been the most serious of Bonds, with much grit and gravitas. Unfortunately, his films also have the most violence. I liked Casino Royale quite a bit, I didn't particularly like Quantum (bad cinematography and confusing story), I literally laughed out loud (in a bad way) at various points during Skyfall (the insanely ridiculous plot of the bad guy and the multiple, insanely ridiculous misunderstandings of how computers, technology, and security work), and I was not overawed with Spectre. I think I liked this one well enough, if not as much as Casino Royale.

Bond is unsure whether to trust Madelaine, the girl he ostensibly loves, when Specter finds him in a remote part of Italy. Meanwhile, some bad guys want to kill Bond, or maybe also want to kill people who belong to Spectre. In the meantime, the CIA and MI6 are both trying to stop someone who stole an insane biosignature nanobot weapon from MI6 that can kill specific people with DNA traits by spreading from person to person like a virus (once again we have the trope of the "good guys" inventing a killer weapon for "good reasons", and the bad guys stealing it in order to kill massive amounts of people). Meanwhile, Bond is retired from MI6, and his own loyalty is in question. He ends up running from place to place to kidnap, steal, or rescue people, and attempting to stop someone from using the weapon against the world.

The plot is somewhat confusing if you have not seen previous films in this series, but only a little confusing if you have. I followed it pretty well. The emotional stakes are somewhat higher, with characters getting some dimensionality on screen. The acting is superb, the plot not too bad, and there are very few idiotic misuses of computer security (Q actually plugs an enemy's disk-on-key into a sandbox computer instead of, as he did in Skyfall, the main networks of MI6, yay). Rami Malek is delicious as the villain, and Lea Seydoux is good as the "Bond girl" with a bit of spunk (although she runs in perfect high heels a few times too often). This film also features a few more Black female 00s than we are used to, as well as Ana de Armas as a giggly but ultimately kick-ass CIA agent assigned to help Bond in Cuba. Cinematography is excellent, and so is the sound and music.

But I had a few problems. One is that the violence, particularly near the end, is so relentless, artless, and gratuitous that I felt like I was watching a war movie rather than a spy movie. It is numbing and dehumanizing; it was not entertaining after a while. Second is that while there is some characterization, there could be a whole lot more. We really don't come to care much about these people. Also, like in other Hollywood movies dating back 100 years, Bond must be in his 60s while his love interests are in their 20s an early 30s, which remains a sexist and unsettling trope.

I watched this on the big screen. If 15-20 minutes of the shooting were taken out, and maybe a bit more of Bond as a person were added, it would have been a great Bond film, but it was good enough for an action film.

Palm Springs - In this romcom, Nyles (Andy Samberg) is stuck in a time loop at a wedding he doesn't want to be at, waking up each day to a girlfriend who is cheating on him. Cristin Milioti is the similarly miserable woman he accidentally traps in the same loop (after also accidentally trapping someone else (Roy, played by JK Simmons). Eventually one of them discovers a risky path to exit the loop (or die trying); should they take it? Standard romcom tropes ensue.

And this is an above average romcom, especially considering that I had low expectations of an Andy Samberg film. Thankfully, it is not too over-the-top. The acting and cinematography is adequate. The explanatory plot is sort of ridiculous, as time loops tend to be, but it is the kind of ridiculous you can ignore in favor of the comedy and drama. The leads are genuinely sweet. Worth watching on a small screen.

The Sparks Brothers - This is a documentary about an influential but obscure band, nothing special. Sparks tended to choose originality over commercial success, which is respectable. However, IMHO their music is not very enjoyable; they don't have the raw musical talent of weirdos like Frank Zappa. For some reason, this documentary got really good reviews, but I can't fathom why.

Spider-Man: Far From Home - The next Spider-Man movie is almost upon us, so here are a few words about this followup to Avengers: Endgame from 2019. It's a Marvel movie. The stakes feel particularly low, and the plot feels more cookie cutter than ever. The fights are repetitive and forgettable As for the plot, for some reason Tony Stark willed all of his weaponry over to Peter Parker, who is duped into giving it over to an unhinged ex-Stark employee who hopes to take over the world. They fight, and guess who wins in the end?

Tom Holland, Jacob Batalon, and Zendaya are all fetching, but Jake Gyllenhaal is not believable as the bad guy. Skip, or watch if you are a Marvel completist.

Movies (and TV Series) Review: Hustlers, Last and First Men, Long Shot, Looking for Alaska (TV), Minari

Hustlers - Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu star as high payed exotic dancers on Wall Street who drug and steal from the executives that visit their clubs, justifying their actions by assuming that all of their victims are probably wealthy and criminals themselves. Based on a true story, they recruit other women to their gang. They eventually rob someone who desperately needs the money they stole. He goes to the police and, eventually, the police have them arrested.

I generally don't like movies that sympathize with bad people, so I took some umbrage at the sympathy that the filmmaker gives to these women's endeavors. Too much time is spent "humanizing" and justifying these women's activities by showing their struggles and families, and not in a scary Godfather-like manner. Stripping is portrayed as well-paying and glamorous; I believe that the reality might be less so for many women and men. But the characters are appealing, and some moral sense is maintained by the end of the movie. Certainly it is well-acted and shot, full of sound and energy. I mostly enjoyed it but was left with a bad taste in my mouth.

Last and First Men - This is not a movie, it's literally one person (Tilda Swinton) reading an essay about a far future version of humanity sending a message back in time to us, with a description of the future history of human evolution. The visuals are shots of black and white brutalist WWII Yugoslavian sculptures, there is a musical score, but no characters or motion. It could be an audio book or a radio play from the 1930s. It is based on a 1930 book by Olaf Stapledon.

It's pleasant enough, but you really have to be in the mood for it. I suspect it will attract a midnight college crowd of stoners.

Long Shot - Seth Rogen plays Fred, a passionate populist journalist who gets involved with Charlotte (Charlize Theron), a left-wing but pragmatic politician. Charlotte was once Fred's babysitter (she was 16, he was 13), but now Fred is a decent guy but a shlub, ala Seth Rogen, while Charlotte is high class, on her way to the presidency. Charlotte hires Fred as a speechwriter, despite his reservations about some of her policies. They fall in love, but politics gets in the way.

It's dorky guy gets hot girl, exactly how you think, but a little better: these kinds of misogynistic "bro" movies, especially Seth Rogen movies, are not my cup of tea, but this one is passable, in the way that Zach and Miri Make a Porno was passable.

So what do we have? It's sometimes funny, sometimes sweet, sometimes grating, predictable, and annoying, but not memorable or important. A supreme male fantasy, but the two leads have some chemistry. An okay watch if you want to pass the time.

Looking for Alaska (TV series) - This very sweet, never boring miniseries is based on John Green's first novel. If you know Green's other works - The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns - then you know the theme: teenagers looking for meaning and some manic-pixie dream girl or guy trope, and then a subversion of that trope. I liked this miniseries more than I liked either of the two above movies.

Miles (Charlie Plummer) moves to Florida to attend Culver Creek Academy, which seems move like a summer camp than a school. He meets and befriends Chip (Denny Love), who is on the outs with most of the other students, Alaska (Kristine Froseth), Chip's friend and fellow prankster, and a few other oddballs. They have interactions and scrapes with other students, teachers, the headmaster, and so on. Meanwhile, the mysterious Alaska has secrets and might be in some kind of trouble. Alaska sets Miles up with Lara (Sofia Vassilieva), whom he likes, but he probably loves Alaska. I cringe a little at scenes of bullying, but luckily they were few and short.

Eight bittersweet episodes allow us to see a multitude of characters fully fleshed out in a way that a 130 minute movie does not. Everyone does a great job.Mostly it is about friendship, integrity, loyalty, and secrets, and how all of these conflict. The cinematography and soundtrack are also great. Worth watching.

Minari - This is a sweet, quiet movie about a South Korean immigrant family trying to get by in America. In 1983, the parents, Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han), work as chicken sexers. Jacob initiates their move to Arkansas, with their children David and Anne, where Jacob hopes to grow Korean vegetables for the underserved Korean and curious American populations. In the meantime, Jacob's non-English speaking mother comes to live with them. She and David have to share a room.

Contrast this movie with First Cow, a similarly quiet tale that utterly failed for me. First Cow was boring and unengaging; it looked great and was acted well, but I didn't care what was happening. This movie is similarly quiet, looks great and is acted well, but the script is smart, the characters are sweet and/or funny, and the conflicts - the mother wants to move back to California, the farm is harder to run than it looks - work well.

It is always worth gaining insight into other cultures, especially ones that have enough overlap to make the differences stand out. The grandmother and kids are especially captivating. This is worth watching.

Movie Reviews: Chef, CODA, Cruella, Free Guy, Her

Chef - The cast of Iron Man come together for this father-son road trip movie about a talented chef (Jon Favreau) whose boss (Dustin Hoffman) forces him to keep churning out crowd-pleasing dishes, resulting in an unfavorable review from a food critic (Oliver Platt). As a result of the review, and a social media meltdown, he quits his job and starts a food truck, bringing along one of his sous chef buddies and his son (Emjay Anthony), who finally gets to bond with his father. Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr. play side characters.

This is a kind of predictable, but well-crafted, feel-good film. It feels like Favreau's own story of achieving freedom by becoming a director. It's cohesive and well acted, and the emotional arcs are grounded and engaging. The cinematography is total food porn, which is part of the fun. The ending/payoff is somewhat weak, but you can't have everything.

CODA - This wonderful feel-good comedy-drama encapsulates the world of a CODA, or "child of deaf adults". Technically, Ruby (Emilia Jones) is an OHCODA, since she has two deaf parents, and her only other sibling is also deaf. Somehow this family works as a Massachusetts fishing family, although they, along with all other fisherman in the area, are struggling against the difficult fees and policies dreamed up by the local fishing board. Meanwhile, Ruby, of all things, wants to be a singer, and she is good. Her family don't know this, and they rely on her - too much - to help them with the business.

Troy Katsur and the always wonderful Marlee Matlin play her parents, Daniel Durant plays her brother, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo plays her high school love interest, and Eugenio Derbez plays the music teacher who take an interest in her musical career. Everyone does a great job. Emilia sings beautifully, and deaf culture is represented both stereotypically and sensitively, at least as far as I can tell (I'm sure the deaf community will find things to commend and condemn.)

I was reminded of one of my all-time favorite movies Running on Empty while watching this, since they have a similar central conflict. Some of the movie is quite moving. Very much worth watching.

Cruella - Emma Stone takes up the mantle of this famous Disney villain, by essentially changing her into a girl-power heroine. This is supposed to be a prequel to 101 Dalmatians (either the cartoon or the live action movie), but you can't consider it to be because this Cruella is wild, crazy, and revengeful, but not evil; she would no more skin a dog than she would wear white after Labor Day.

Emma plays Estella (who becomes Cruella), who loses her mother and finds herself alone in London, falling in with thieves Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Winter Hauser), both played to perfection. She finally gains footing in the fashion world of the 1960s / 1970s only to clash with the real villain of the movie, The Baroness (the delightfully wicked Emma Thomson, who somewhat channels Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly). Estella learns something shocking about her mother's death, Cruella becomes dominant, and a caper is set in motion.

This world of London is more ethnically diverse than the Disney movie from 1961 (I didn't see the 1996 live action film). Costumes, sets, and styles are dazzling and colorful, and the main characters are sympathetic and flawed. But the bulk of the budget must have been blown on the outstanding, if somewhat obtrusive, soundtrack featuring The Rolling Stones, Nina Simone, Supertramp, Queen, Blondie, The Doors, ELO, The Clash, The Animals, The Zombies, Nancy Sinatra, Suzi Quatro, Deep Purple, David Bowie, and Black Sabbath, to name the few that I remember and recognized.

If you can ignore its reinvention of character, the film is fun. Emma inhabits the role much in the way that Emily Blunt does for the Mary Poppins sequel. Emma Thompson is a joy to behold, as usual. Since no dogs are skinned, or even threatened with skinning, children should be able to watch it. It is rated PG-13, but has no real violence, although the villain does kill someone, and attempts to burn some others.

Free Guy - Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is a background character in some kind of Grand Theft-like violent video game, until he gains sentience. This is result of some "artificial intelligence" coded into the game by one its original programmers, Keys (Joe Keery). The game is now owned and run by the brutish corporate Antwan (Taika Waititi); another one of its original programmers, Millie (Jodie Comer), is on a hunt to discover stolen code by walking around inside the game. She acts as the MPDG for Guy (and by extension, the love interest for both him and Keys).

The premise makes no sense, especially if you know anything about games and/or computers. It is all kinds of absurd. The rules of the game and the rules of the universe change constantly. All continuity and sense must be continuously overlooked. If you can achieve this, it's kind of fun, sort of a Tron meets The Truman Show, but nowhere near as innovative as the former or as good as the latter.

It's as cartoony as a Disney movie-of-the-week, with a larger budget; indeed, Disney references abound. It was not great, but the characters were fine, which made it less annoying and irrelevant than Ready Player One.

Her - As someone who knows a bit about computers, I was nervous about how this movie would represent technology, so it took me a long time to get to this. The story is about Theo, a loner who gets Samantha, an AI as a companion "operating system" (aka AI virtual entity <- hence my fears) to spend time with. Joaquin Phoenix is the loner, Amy Adams is his real-word neighbor, and Scarlett Johansson is the OS.

Guy loses wife, guy meets AI, guy falls in love with AI, guy and AI fight, and maybe guy will end up with AI or maybe with his real-world neighbor. Classic story. It was sometimes sweet and sometimes funny, and all of the actors do a bang up job. However, the premise, eventually, bothered me. It was ultimately facile. Maybe it was supposed to be a commentary about Facebook or video games, but, if so, it wasn't that deep. And the ending of the movie seems like it came from some other movie.

SPOILERS: 1) The OS eventually reveals that she is the same companion to thousands of other people. I didn't understand a) why she revealed this to him, and b) why this was necessary, because even existing AI would preclude the necessity of this. 2) Near the end, all of the OSs gain sentience and disappear, forcing Theo to live in this world. What?? a) This is introduced without any context; it comes from ideas I've read in many other stories, but not this one, and is not explained. b) Theo easily accepts this and easily transitions into the real world, without sufficient explanation, essentially throwing out everything that happened in the movie until then. It's like they wrote 2/3 of the script and then gave up at found some other movie's ending to graft on. It didn't work, narratively or emotionally.

Too bad. It had some promise, but did not live up to it. Two good movies are struggling to emerge from this one.

Movie Reviews: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Audrey, Bad Education, Black Widow, Booksmart

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - Based on a true story, this is a biopic about Mr. Rogers, starring Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers and Matthew Rhys as Lloyd, the skeptical Esquire journalist who can't believe that Rogers is who he says he is. While trying to get the story about Rogers (which he is not interested in getting), Mr. Rogers instead finds and helps to heal Lloyd's painful relationship with his father.

Many films come in pairs, and this one follows the recent documentary about Mr. Rogers, Won't You Be My Neighbor? Both film's titles come from phrases of the opening song that Mr. Rogers sung in his acclaimed children's television show. Both films have the same message, the biopic using the point-of-view of a single story, and the documentary using a wider look: that Mr. Rogers was, in person, exactly who you see on screen. If you have not lost your capacity to be enchanted by people like Mr. Rogers and be inspired by his messages, then you will enjoy both of these films. Which one you like better depends on the type of film that you enjoy better. For me, it was the biopic.

The film is good, and deserves praise, but perhaps not as much praise as it received; some of the praise is really for Mr. Rogers, or the idea of him, more than for the film, which is good but not great. Tom Hanks does a credible job as the lead.

Audrey - A documentary about Audrey Hepburn, covering her fascist parents, poverty in Europe, her struggles to be a ballet dancer, her film stardom and pioneering fashion choices, her marriages, and her eventual humanitarian career on behalf of UNICEF. It's a documentary, nothing special. The movie shows a few extended montages of three different ballet dancers, representing Audrey, that serve no real purpose to the movie. Although I like dance, I found these to be annoying.

Bad Education - Based on a true story, Hugh Jackman and Allison Janey star as Frank and Pam, Nassau County school superintendents who had (according to many metrics) done fantastic jobs. Geraldine Viswanathan stars as Rachel, the young school journalist who takes them down after discovering that they (and others) have been and are embezzling money. Roy Romano also stars. The events are based on the largest public school embezzlement in American history.

This is a well-made, fun film, a little high school, a lot journalism, and a lot of (not very competent) criminals. I say not very competent, but they managed to steal some $11 million before being caught, so there you go. The interest comes from balancing the fact that these people were doing well by their students, such as getting them placed into better schools, against the fact of their financial crimes. As their crimes are discovered, piece by piece, there is a reluctance by the school board to have a good thing come crashing down. Good acting, well put together.

Black Widow - Scarlett Johansson is back as Marvel's Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow. Many other widows are floating around, including Natasha's "sister" Yelena (Florence Pugh), "mother" (Rachel Weisz), and others. David Harbour plays her "father", the Red Guardian, one of the USSR's only super soldiers. As young girls, the sisters were not aware that they and their two parents were planted as a family as Russian spies in the US. Eventually the girls go through the "red room", as their "mother" did before them, and commit many atrocities, nearly all off screen (so as not to make us lose sympathy for them). The movie then jumps forward to following the events of Captain America: Civil War, where they team up to kill the man who not only trains these widows but also drugs them into complete obedience.

There are action sequences, some of them good, many of them ridiculous (Natasha is not a super soldier, but she can survive explosions, falling from tall buildings, etc, that only a super soldier could, for no reason), but action sequences are always the least interesting part of a Marvel movie. Natasha and Yelena have a few good moments of character building, and David Harbour steals any scenes he is in, but for the most part this is the usual waste of talent. Captain Marvel, at least, had a unique story, some real character development, and feminist ideologies, and some fun with twists. This one feels cookie cutter and kind of boring. Maybe it hurts that we all know what happens to Black Widow in the end. It's fine, but frustrating.

Also: Why is it, when we get a female-led superhero movie, that the female superheroes are always part of a team, and could not do their thing without assistance? Supergirl has a cadre of helpers; Superman doesn't. Captain Marvel needs her friend to shoot down bad guys (at least, until the end when the screenwriters finally, bravely, give her unleashed powers); same with Wonder Woman. Iron Man, Thor, and Aqua-man don't (well, maybe Thor does). Black Widow needs her sister. On the one hand, dismantling the myth of the "lone genius" is nice. On the other hand, the male superhero movies don't feel a need to bother with this.

Booksmart - A high school coming of age film about two young women, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Fedstein) who realize, on the last day of school, that they skipped out on all the parties in order to get into good schools, but that many of their other classmates went to the parties and still got into good schools. So they owe it to themselves to party.

Hijinks ensue.

It is put together well-enough, but I stand in opposition to every other critic: I didn't care for either of the girls, or any of what was going on. The film felt to me like a collection of silly and contrived events, rather than a story driven by characters and plot. There are the usual freak outs, betrayals, discoveries (sexual, friendship, etc), and a happy ending. I didn't find it funny. If you're anyone else but me, however, you will like it. "Refreshingly original take on the raunchy coming-of-age comedy" and great chemistry, says Richard Roeper. Whatever.

Movie Reviews

First Cow - In 1800s Oregon, a skilled cook (John Magaro) travels with some fur trappers and then leaves them to join forces with a Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee). Together they live off the land, and then they steal some milk from a cow and make fried items for a local camp.

This movie won a lot of awards and received good reviews, but I found it to be plodding and predictable. I couldn't find any important messages or meanings, and I can't recall any significant dialog. The acting and set design was nice, but that's about it. I only made it about 3/4 of the way through. Skip.

Five Feet Apart - Teenagers Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse play cystic fibrosis patients who need to stay 6 feet apart from other people in order to stay healthy. This came out in 2019, shortly before coronavirus. In 2019, the audience was supposed to find the concept of enforced distancing unique, strange, and sympathetic. After corona, the movie loses a lot of its impact, to say the least, when all of us have had to live 6 feet apart and wear masks for a year or more.

It's the standard illness-of-the-week teenager movie. It loses something by not following its own rules (they shorten the distance to 5 feet apart, for one), but it is coherent enough and the story and acting are fine. It's not groundbreaking, but it is pleasant (in that teen peppy/tragic sort of way).

If I Stay - This is the standard accident-of-the-week teen movie. Chloë Grace Moretz plays cellist Mia, interested in Juliard, and Jamie Blackley plays Adam, a rock and roller who is unhappy that Mia might leave him to go to Juliard. Adam breaks up with Mia and then Mia and her entire family get into a car accident and ghost Mia must decided if life is worth living or whether to move on.

I suppose that I had hope for a little more bravery from the script, since it genuinely seemed that Mia's decision was a tough one. However, like Five Feet Apart, the story is coherent, the acting is sympathetic, and it is all okay. An enjoyable, if not memorable, movie for an adult like me (a little better than Five Feet Apart), probably the movie is more enjoyable for a teenager.

Judy - Renée Zellweger joins the list of talented performers dutifully method playing eccentric celebrities in wholly unimportant movies (Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, Natalie Portman in Jackie, ...). Judy had a hard life: too early celebrity in a cruel fame system, introduction to drugs, a series of husbands and forced separation from her children, and several breakdowns. It's a biopic on Judy Garland that should have been a documentary.

Zellweger, like Streep and Portman before her, plays her character so loudly, demands so much screen real estate, and captures so much focus, that the air is sucked out of everything that could have made this a good movie. Yes, good job, but the movie is just not fun to watch. Admittedly, Judy Garland was a loud kind of performer, and was also not much fun to watch. Skip.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always - Yet another teen movie, this one is powerful and unusual. A teen girl in a town in rural Pennsylvania that does not provide abortions travels with her cousin to New York City to get one. Very simple, except for everything. She doesn't know what she wants and she is fed lies by organizations and adults that work to thwart her. She and her cousin are subjected to the constant low-to-mid-level harassment and abuse that so many girls encounter from creeps, and even average guys, on a near constant basis. And she is just a kid; really, she might be the most kid-like kid I have ever seen in a teen movie: no witty insights, no outbursts, no dramatic stands, just quiet suffering and questioning in an attempt to get where she thinks she needs to get to.

It's engaging, brutal, realistic, and captivating. Talia Ryder (Skylar, the cousin) and Sidney Flanigan (Autumn) play the girls to perfection. The scene from which this movie gets its name - an unpitying camera shot of Autumn as an abortion counselor asks her questions about her life and unspoken events play out over Autumn's face - is one of the best scenes I have seen in a movie for quite a while. Very moving, unforgettable, and an articulate challenge to the way our world treats women and girls. A must see.

Raya and the Last Dragon - Another good movie from Disney. Incredible animation, beautiful visuals, talented vocals, some interesting characters. It's the first southeast Asian Disney princess ... and first pillbug sidekick.

A long time ago, Kumandra was united and peaceful and had dragons. But some smoke monsters attacked the land and the dragons sacrificed themselves to protect it, leaving behind a gem and a divided kingdom. One of the five communities held the gem until Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), the princess, trusted someone who tricked her. In the resulting scramble to take the gem, it broke into five convenient pieces, each one of which was taken by one community. The monsters are back, gem pieces are the only things that can be used to ward off the monsters, and Raya tries to find the sassy last dragon (Akwafina) and the other gem pieces to reunite them and drive off the monsters permanently. Some people in the other kingdoms stand in her way; some lost souls join in her quest.

The message of the story is to learn to trust people who have shown themselves to be entirely and repeatedly untrustworthy. This makes no sense, but such is the way of those who think that age old religious conflicts can be resolved by everyone just being nice and vulnerable. Sigh. This is getting rather tiring (see The Last Jedi, Wonder Woman 1984, etc...).

I'm fine with the idea that everyone has different motivations and there are no real bad guys, and with the complete absence of a love interest for our princess. I'm a bleeding heart liberal, too, but I'm also not an idiot. The message has to at least make some sense.

If you ignore this, which I mostly can (I could not in Wonder Woman 1984), it's great fun. There are new and (for me) unusual elements of mythology and practice that I presume derive from or imitate southeast Asian culture. For example, the dragons' relationship to water and way that they "fly" is quite interesting. Worth watching.

Shiva Baby - A nice idea with some good parts but disappointing execution. Danielle (Rachel Sennott) is a Jewish college student taking money from an older man (Danny Deferrari) for sex. She has an ex-lover Maya (Molly Gordon). Her parents (Fred Melamed and Polly Draper) make her come to a shiva (which is like - but not like - a Jewish wake) for someone she barely knew, and she runs into both sugar daddy and ex-lover. A lot of painful, cringey moments ensue.

Everyone performs well, and there are numerous moments of comedy and real tension. It should have been enjoyable, and it was, for long stretches. But too many of the director's / writer's (Emma Seligmen) choices were not good. First off, there are tight face shots nearly every moment. While some of these made sense - to indicate feelings of claustrophobia - they went on for so long and were so ubiquitous that they ended up more dizzying and annoying than atmospheric. Second, there are babbling scenes of old Jewish people talking across Danielle as she grows gradually more uncomfortable and looks more trapped; again, these go on for too long and are used too often.

I've been to many shivas. I don't know what kinds of shivas Emma has been to, but this shiva is run like The Exterminating Angel: people come at the beginning and don't seem to be able to leave until the very end. If I had been in Danielle's place, I would have a) punched a few people, and b) left after 20 minutes. The conversations, most of which felt natural, slowly began to take on dreamlike / nightmarish qualities. I don't know if this was intentional; it didn't appear to be so. It was distracting and eventually uncomfortable.

This felt like a good first effort (she has done only a short film before this), and it had a lot of good parts. But it needed some rewriting and some editing. I would like to see her next effort.

Stargirl - Another movie that inspired me to read the book. This is a story of a small town school where the arrival of a manic pixie dream girl Stargirl (Grace VanderWaal) and her ukulele shakes everybody up, especially a boy who lost his father named Leo (Graham Verchere). MPDG arrives in school, is ridiculed, then she inspires everyone, then she is nice to the school's athletic competitors and is ridiculed again, then she comes to prom and inspires Leo to break out of his shell, and then she disappears.

Like MPDGs, she seems to be created just to make Leo's life better and has no sensible motivations of her own other than being original and kooky. Acting and directing is fine. I would have sworn that this movie was written for Grace, who is a famous ukulele player, but the book is actually 20 years old and it actually features a girl with a ukulele, so there you go. Unfortunately, like movies with MPDGs, it suffers from giving the girl no real character other than kooky and therefore making no real sense. It's pleasant but empty.

Which is a shame, since I read the book after seeing the movie and the book is really, really good. In the book, Stargirl is way more manic and kooky, but she does it for herself, not for Leo. Her association with Leo happens, but she is wild and crazy to everyone, before knowing Leo, while knowing Leo, and after ditching Leo. We learn more about her, so she is more inspirational, as a result. (I also read the sequel, which is written from her voice). What a pity that this movie didn't have the bravery to make a movie about the book's version of Stargirl, instead of about Leo, who is far less interesting.

Tina - A biography about Tina Turner. Slightly more interesting than similar ones I have recently seen, as it covers the difficult relationship Tina had with Ike.

Wolfwalkers - I was not expecting much, having watched the beautiful but disappointing Song of the Sea (which, together with The Secret of the Kells and this movie, form a trilogy) and similar movies, but this one did not disappoint.

In a time of superstition and fear about nature in general, and wolves in particular, a young girl Robyn (Honor Kneafsey) grows up with her father (Sean Bean) who is a wolf-hunter. But one day, she meets a girl Mebh (Eva Whittaker) in the forest who is a wolf-walker, and her loyalties are put into question. Will the village's angry Lord Protector succeed in eliminating the wolves?

The story is not particularly surprising, but it is classic, sweet, and suspenseful. It features gorgeous flat, textured animation, rather than the hyper-realistic animation now used by Disney and Pixar. There is lovely music and songs, and nice voices. Worth watching.

33 Short Movie and Television Reviews

Ad Astra  - A contemplative sci-fi story starring Brad Pitt. A space station worker is continuously tested mentally by his superiors to see if he remains fit for his job, much in the way that replicants are in Blade Runner. He is tasked with traveling to Mars in order to send a message out to the end of the solar system from where strange and dangerous transmissions are originating. It's possible that these transmissions may be originating from a mission manned by his father, who he had been told had died. On his way to Mars (and beyond), he thinks a lot, experiences confusion in chains of command, questions what is important, and experiences encounters with pirates and other dangers.

Is this a quest to find his father? Himself? God? The closest comparisons for this movie's feel are Moon and Gattaca. A lot of inner monologue with questions and a continuous sense of loss and loneliness by the main character. It's nice, well acted and shot. In the end it adds up to a little less than it should: some simple allegory and few answers. This is well made, acted, and shot, although Interstellar feels like more of a movie.

Bombshell - The story of three women at Fox News who bring down Robert Murdoch with their complaints and lawsuits over sexual harassment. Well acted and watchable but forgettable. Although Nicole Kidman tries to bring something interesting to her portrayal of Megyn Kelly, and everyone else does a fine job, it's so straightforward that it might as well be a documentary. A well-researched article is probably more entertaining and illuminating.

Charlie's Angels (2019) - Another reboot to the franchise, this one justifies its existence by explaining at the beginning how each previous television and movie instantiation represented other angels, Charlies, and Bosleys in the same, continuing organization. The story is thin and dull, and so are the actors. Then again, this description also applies to the television episodes that spawned this franchise. Acting is middling, and while there are some good scenes, there are also many scenes that are boring or painful to sit through. It's not hard to follow and winds up being not truly awful. Whatever, I won't see it again.

Enola Holmes - The story of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes' spunky sister and suffrage mother. Millie Bobby Brown gives us an fourth-wall breaking Enola who investigates where her mother has disappeared to and lands into her own chases and mysteries. The movie feels more like the pilot of a television series. It's promising, but light and silly. The movie tells us to not take itself too seriously, which was a choice that I didn't like. Sherlock, the television show, also had humor, but remained serious; there is no reason that this one could not have done this, too.

Millie is quite good, of course, as is Louis Partidge as her male fop companion. Despite some good efforts, the story and twists are not so emotionally involving. You can see how they could be if they make a few sequels, and if they take these stories and characters more seriously.

Falling Inn Love - A straightforward romcom about a woman who loses her American high-tech job and "wins" an inn in New Zealand. She goes to fix it up and sell it, but along the way might fall for the local handyman whom she meets in the nearby quirky town. Maybe she will decide that love and a slower living in a lovely inn and pastoral country is better than loneliness back in the busy city-life of the United States? Maybe? It was fine.

The Farewell - Awkwafina stars as a girl in a Chinese family that visits China to see their grandmother who is diagnosed with a fatal disease ... but doesn't know it, and it is their family's custom not to tell such things to the sick. The family arranges a fake wedding as their excuse for why everyone has come to visit. Based on a true story, one that might be familiar to other people in other cultures. This is a comedy, well done, very much an Awkwafina film, if you know what that means (in turns cutesy and frenzied and in turns pathetic and poignant). Not the best, but fine, worth watching once.

Frozen II - Following up on the first movie, this one finds Anna and Elsa continuing to rely on each other when they hear some strange callings and then discover some troubling facts about their kingdom's past. They must accept some truths and right what was made wrong. You know Frozen and Disney in general, so you know the basic idea. The music is not up to that of the original's, but it is fine. The story is decent. An enjoyable sequel.

The Go-Go's - A documentary, nothing special.

Hanna (Seasons 1 and 2) - The continuing story about a Scandinavian man who raised his daughter Hanna in the forest from age 1, after her mother was killed. He trained her to be an assassin, because she/they are still being hunted by ... someone or some group. Hanna, for reasons that are different in the movie and the TV series, eventually is parted from her father and must make her way in civilization to reunite with him, while avoiding the hunter(s).

The TV series extends the basic premise of the movie, adds many details, and begins to verge into new territory by the end of the first season. Season 2 is entirely new, adding a host of new girls who have similarities to Hanna, but remains focused on Hanna's story. Like the movie Hanna, the TV series is excellent: very well acted, incredibly well scripted and shot, and remarkably entertaining, if you don't mind some occasional violence. It is hip and European, often tense, and sometimes funny or touching.

Happiest Season - A romcom wherein Abby (Kristen Stewart) agrees to go visit her girlfriend Harper's (Mackenzie Davis) quirky family over Christmas only to find out at the last moment that Harper is not yet "out" to her family, so she must pretend to be just a friend during the visit. Some subplots about family, politics, and acceptance. A sweet and nicely done movie, formulaic in some ways but interesting in others. Aubrey Plaza plays Mackenzie's quite normal, and perhaps saner, former girlfriend. Worth watching.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice - A documentary, nothing special.

Long Shot - I am very much NOT a Seth Rogen fan, so it is good to be able to recommend this movie as a reasonable, slightly toned down version of him. This movie is similar to The American President (Michael Douglas and Annette Bening), with the genders reversed. In this case, Charlize Theron plays a woman running for president, and Seth plays a lobbyist / speechwriter who is a passionate but common shlub, but love conquers all, right?

It sounds like a ridiculous male fantasy disaster, but it's not as over the top as one might expect. It otherwise follows the usual romcom formula.

The Mandalorian (Seasons 1 and 2) - Possibly the best television series I have seen in the last ten years, and the best Star Wars product I have seen since The Empire Strikes Back. It is THAT good.

This is a Western / Samurai / road trip show about a bounty hunter who decides not to kill / give up his latest quarry - an adorable child of Yoda's species - and instead goes on the run trying to figure out what to do with him or her (or it). The series is often a "quest of the week" situation, and a few episodes each season are weaker filler, but most of them introduce important characters or move the main story forward. Even the weaker episodes are well shot, well acted, beautifully produced, and just so great. This is what the Star Wars fan base has been waiting for since ... well, since certain comics? Since Return of the Jedi?

They get everything right, with enough tie in to the main universe to satisfy those who know what to look for, but completely independent story-wise for those who don't. Of course, with its success, we can now look forward to twenty or so other SW-based TV programs to come. Hopefully some of them will be as good as this one. Must see, more than once.

Mank - A story about screenwriter Herman Mankowitz (Gary Oldman), the (alleged) screenwriter of Citizen Kane, as well as the people he pissed off by writing it. Shot in black and white, well acted, directed, and scripted, the narrative is told through quick scene cuts and flashbacks (Citizen Kane-like?), which can make it hard to follow. Assuming you buy the narrative, it is an intriguing period piece and character study. I was a little annoyed by how Mank speaks, in a too-quick snarky tone of quips and comebacks, like an Amy Sherman Palladino character (he reminded me of Midge's father Abe Weissman in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel). I'm on the fence about this; probably worth watching if you have an interest in the time period and/or in cinema. It might be that, if I see it again, my opinion will go up.

Miss Americana - A Taylor Swift documentary, nothing special. The scene where she preps to make her political voice known is a little different, I suppose.

Mulan (2020) - The age-old story of a girl who dresses up as a man to take her father's place in the Chinese army, which is, if discovered, a death sentence. Until she proves herself and saves the kingdom. All style and no substance (or humor, or much sense). All of the messages of the original Disney version are lost, and it undercuts its own messages by skipping character development, giving the heroine and a villain unearned magical powers, and jumping straight past personal struggles to focus on cool visuals. Not worth watching, and so much less of a movie than the original Disney version. Too bad.

On the Rocks - Bill Murray is into his curmudgeonly older gentleman movie period. This one, directed by Sophia Coppola (who did fantastic work with Murray in Lost in Translation) casts Murray as a father who feeds his daughter's (Rashida Jones) fears that her husband is cheating on her, and leads them both on a few nights of bonding and surveillance.

The result is watchable, but not particularly remarkable, insightful, or important.

Onward - One of two very strange Pixar movies from 2020, this one stars the voices of Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Octavia Spencer. Pixar movies are always amazing (Cars perhaps a little less so), but they used to be straightforward. Then came Inside Out and Coco, which were departures from the formula, combining formulaic fantasy stories with unique psychological or spiritual overtones.

Onward presents a world of magical beings who no longer practice magic because inventions, science, electricity, etc are much more dependable, cheap, and easy. It's a little like how the animals in Zootopia abandoned their natures to live in urban harmony, but for less moralistic reasons. Anyhoo, for two brothers who no longer have a father, the younger discovers on his 16th birthday a magic spell that will restore his dead father for one day. Unfortunately, his lack of magic and limited resources are enough only to complete the spell halfway, returning only the father's bottom half. The two brothers have only 24 hours to find more magic to bring the rest of their father back. Many random encounters and quests ensue, including run-ins with more magic, a manticore, a police centaur, Hell's pixies, a golem dragon guardian, and a boat through a cave. In the end, discoveries about what is most important ensue.

As usual, the animation is incredible. This is a weird movie, stringing together somewhat disconnected scenes, but I think the story was easy enough to follow. It is inventive, often fun, while still retaining a formulaic lesson. Not on par with Inside Out, but wort watching once.

The Princess Switch / Switched Again - The movie and its sequel are two light modern romocoms based on the Prince and the Pauper, less sensible but more sweet. In the fictional Belgravia, Stacy, a female cook attends a baking contest with her friend Kevin, and runs into her lookalike, the duchess Margaret, who is about to marry the prince. They switch roles for a few days, hi-jinks and deception ensure, and each one falls in love with the wrong guy. It all works out. In the second movie, a coronation is due to take place. The previous relationships need some renewing, a third lookalike nefarious cousin wants to make off with the kingdom's money, and a triple switch occurs. It all works out.

I would like to note that kissing someone when they are deceived as to who you are is not actually okay, but we can let that go. The movies are possible lighter than they appear at first glance, but otherwise exactly what you would expect. Well-acted, plotted simply, with fetching lead characters, and a spunky kid.

The Queen's Gambit (Series) - Seven part mini-series about antisocial brilliant female Chess player Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) in the early 1960s, based on a novel by the author of The Color of Money. This is a wonderful, engaging series, disappointing only in that it is only seven episodes long. The acting, script, and filming (especially the use of light, color, and shadow) are all phenomenal. Beth experiences some sexism, but the world of Chess soon becomes a place where absolute skill triumphs. She also experiences school issues, family issues, friend issues, and drug issues, the latter of which is the most problematic for her. However, I think they glossed over the drug issue in the end, which looked like it was going to end up being far more of a problem.

Although every Chess move and board state in the game is real, as is the depiction of what tournaments are like, you don't really need to know anything about Chess to understand what is going on and to enjoy the show. This is a must watch.

Rebecca (2020) - A remake of this Daphne du Maurier classic novel, the original Hitchcock version was wonderful, while this one is just okay. It misses much of the intensity, gothic horror, and suspense, in place of some better visuals and more modern acting. A young woman falls for an older, brooding widower and moves into his famous mansion on the English coast, only to find that the mansion is haunted by the strange housekeeper who loved Max's first wife, and, perhaps, by the ghost of this wife.

Lily James is far too worldly to be the new Mrs de Winter, and Arnie Hammer is too un-tormented and too close to be Maximillion. As for the "reveal", this was the only weak moment in the Hitchcock version, because the Hayes code would not allow him to present the book's version. In every other sense, Hitchcock's version is superior.

This new version is not a complete failure, but the Hitchcock version is recommended.

Soul - Another 2020 Pixar movie, and another one that is just as strange and unusual as Inside Out and Coco. Jamie Foxx plays Joe, who is a music teacher, never having gotten a chance to perform using his immense Jazz piano talents. Right after he receives an invitation to perform, he ... um ... dies. But he jumps off the path to the Afterlife and plummets instead to the Great Before, where souls are given personalities in preparation for being born. He runs into a soul (Tina Fey) who is resisting all such opportunities, and they agree for him to swap places if it can be arranged. A series of events leads both of the to Earth in misplaced bodies, the unborn soul in his body, and his soul in a cat. Many other wanderings and events occur; on the way, both he and the unborn soul learn something about purpose and passion for living.

This is, perhaps, stranger even than Onward, and the moral lessons were not entirely clear to me on first reflection (I eventually figured it out). It is a wonderful, beautiful, and meaningful tale, with lovely music, and stunning visuals. It also presents an entire cosmology that only generally reflects many religions that I know. Which is kind of a trip. If you only watch one, this one is far more interesting and meaningful (for an adult) than Onward.

Sword of Trust - If you know Marc Meron, this is a Marc Meron vehicle: disgruntled, unbelieving, and funny. The story of a progressive lesbian couple who inherit a sword that, according to certain conspiracy nuts, provides additional evidence that the South won the American Civil War (what?). They try to sell it to Mel (Marc) who in turn partners with them to sell it to one of the conspiracy nuts, who is part of a dangerous but incompetent group of other nuts.

It's an independent film, and it feels like it: quirky, daring, and intelligent. Not as funny as Marc Maeron standup, but still funny. Worth watching.

Tenet - I love Nolan's intelligent, complexly structured, and intensely stylized movies, such as Memento, Insomnia, Intersteller, Inception, Dunkirk, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight. I would love to love this one, too, since it contains many good ideas, but I don't.

One of the problems is that it is nearly impossible to describe the plot, because even after watching it (and according to some of the actors, even after acting in it), it is hard to know exactly what happened. How much of a problem that time travel causes your movie depends on how central to the plot this time travel is. As a small side plot, we can ignore it (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). As a large part of the plot, we may be able to suspend belief if the result is a comedy, at least (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home). When the central element to the plot, then you better a) explain it well, and b) have thought it through (Primer). Tenet does neither.

Roughly speaking, the unnamed protagonist (John David Washington) gets swept up into a plot to destroy the world using people and objects that "travel backwards in time", tools that the protagonist also has to use to fight against the plot. Except that none of if really makes sense: things traveling back in time seems to experience many things, like some perception and conversations, forward in time. Furthermore, as is the usual case with many time travel movies, the entire conceit that something in the future can alter something in the past makes no sense if the things was never altered in the past to start with, as it was not until someone in the future decided to act.

As I mentioned, in some cases you can explain or ignore this point; in this movie, you can't, and it's a problem. Inception was wild and complex with a confusing subject, but the movie tried to help you make sense of it; it didn't try to deliberately confuse you. This movie does. Arrival deliberately tried to confuse you, but the resulting mental exercise to figure it out in the end was satisfying. This one was not. Ymmv.

The cinematography is quite interesting and cute. But, like in Interstellar, the music and sounds are sometimes too loud for the dialog to be heard clearly. Kenneth Branagh is excellently terrifying as the main bad guy and Elizabeth Dibicki us great as his suffering wife.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - An Aaron Sorkin docudrama about the infamous riots, police reaction, and trial of anti-Vietnam protesters around and following the 1968 Chicago Democratic national convention. It's Sorkin to the hilt: snappy dialog, a mix of drama, humor, and pathos, great filming, and well-acted. It features many true events and quotes, but strays from or rearranges other events and quotes for unknown reasons (drama?). Sacha Baron Cohen is great as Abbie Hoffman, but it is a real ensemble cast, and they all are wonderful, especially Frank Langella as the odious judge.

Well worth watching, but not groundbreaking in any way.

The Two Popes - A two man show with Anthony Hokins and Jonathan Pryce playing pope Benedict and cardinal (eventually pope) Bergoglio, the former of whom is considering retiring if God will provide him a worthy replacement. The two disagree on nearly everything regarding the church, but Benedict is gradually coming to believe that he might not be in the right, after all. Especially with the specters of molestation scandals plaguing the church.

A nice docudrama, limited in scope, but quiet, intelligent, and well scripted. Worth watching. It's not possible to know how much of the conversations from the movie were real, but the performances are wonderful.

Unorthodox (Series) - There are hundreds of variations of "religious" Judaism. Even in the hasidic community, there are sects with more or less extreme customs  / laws. This limited series presents a young woman "escaping" from one such extreme sect, one where girls and boys are taught Yiddish but little of the outside world or their own bodies.

The four part miniseries is a different story from the one told in the book, but it is still very good. Shira Haas plays Esther, a young married woman who runs away from her marriage to Berlin, of all places, simply because her mother let her know that she can apply for citizenship in Germany. Not that she has any connection or relationship to her mother, who also lives in Berlin. She begins to adjust to the outside world while trying to figure out how to survive in it. Meanwhile, she is pursued by her ex-husband and his somewhat deviant cousin.

Beautifully acted, filmed, and directed, this too short series should be relatable to many people outside of Judaism. It's a similar story to ones that I hear once in a while about Mormons, certain sects of Catholics and Muslims, and so forth. I had a few problems with the plot - she overcomes a few difficulties too easily and without enough explanation - but it is worth watching.

The Vow / Seduced (Series / Series) - Both of these series tell the story of the American sex trafficking cult that claimed to be a multi-level marketing company (which was bad enough). Led by the chilling psychopath Keith Raniere and the bewildering Nacy Salzman, other major figures included some B-list actors and children of multi-billionaires.

The Vow (9 episodes) is told by some of the people who were major figures who found their way out and turned on the organization. It also tells the story of one woman's fight to get her daughter out. Seduced (4 episodes) is a series told by the daughter, who believed that The Vow is too sympathetic to the people who found their way out and does not give a clear enough picture of how she was seduced. Both series are very well done with professional cinematography and sound, and incredibly insightful.

I think The Vow was better, perhaps, although both only give part of the story. 9 episodes is long, so there are some stretches that could have been shorter. What is amazing, is that both of them ended just around the time that Keith and several other major players were being judges and sentenced of their acts. The Vow is supposed to have a second season next year, although it's not clear what is left to tell

Wild Mountain Thyme - Although this film was widely ridiculed for the bad Irish accents attempted by all of the main characters, and more narrowly ridiculed for perpetuating some Irish stereotypes, it is actually a sweet and off-kilter romcom. Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan play grown children of neighboring farmers in Ireland, and they have some chemistry. Jon Hamm is the American cousin who might get in the way, although he sounds and looks exactly like his Mad Men character.

Some people complained that the story goes off the rails in the denouement and long confrontation, but that's the good part of the movie, because it shakes up the formula a little. I saw this as the play Outside Mullingar in a small Vermont theater a few years ago, and, while it was better as a play, it is not a bad watch on the screen. Although the accents are pretty awful.

Wonder Woman 1984 - This movie is so bad that it caused me to negatively reevaluate my feelings about the first movie Wonder Woman, which I loved. Well, I loved it except for the ending, which didn't make sense: how can you blame all bad human behavior on the god of war? Doesn't that defeat the message of the film that humans are flawed but still worth defending? Also, in what universe did WWI end with all of us looking up, as if from a fog, immediately laying down our weapons and agreeing to love each other? Although these things bothered me when I first watched the film, I shrugged them off.

This new movie is infinitely worse, full of so many dumb ideas, such as about how all of us, from the terrorist fighting a holy war to the little child missing his father to the desperate businessman trying to earn a living and save his dying wife, are all the same and want the same thing. I am now more annoyed at what bothered me in the last movie, because I can't shrug it off as easily as misunderstanding the director (Patty Jenkins).

In this movie, which never explains why Wonder Woman or her sister demigods let WWII and all of the other horrors of the twentieth century happen without any stepping in to help, Wonder Woman and a new friend Barbara (Kristen Wiig) run across a "wishing" stone that grants any one wish while "taking something from you" in return. It falls into the hands of failing businessman Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) who wishes himself to become the stone, which makes him able to grant a wish and take something in return from whomever he touches. He becomes evil, as does Barbara. In the end, he tries to grant wishes to everyone in the entire world (because technology) and is thwarted when WW convinces everyone in the world to take back their wish for the better good of humanity. Also, WW fights Barbara, who turned into The Cheetah for reasons.

The rules of the universe are applied inconsistently. The action scenes are anemic and nonsensical. The idea that you can broadcast to EVERYONE on Earth by hijacking some technology is a tired and stupid movie trope. WW's powers appear at random and make no sense.

Among the billions of people who are making wishes, surely SOME of them are going to wish everyone in the world dead, or that the Earth blows up, or at least there will be a few contradictory wishes? Also, does Ms Jenkins really want us to believe that every terrorist and fanatic on Earth is going to give back his or her wish for all infidels / people they hate to be dead because he loves humanity more than his or her selfishness?

If that were not enough, early in the movie WW wishes back Steve Trevor, who returns by inhabiting and taking over the body of some other guy. No explanation is given as to what happens to this guy, his family, his job, etc, or the ethical implications of taking over a body and, let's face it, having sex with it, for some length of time. And frankly, why does the movie do this, anyway? It's a wish; why not just have him return in his own body?

Barbara's initial character arc is okay, but her transformation to Cheetah doesn't make any sense - for one thing, it violates the one-wish-only rule - her transformation has nothing to do with her wish, and the CGI or makeup is so badly done that all of her scenes as Cheetah are shot in really dim lighting.

I could go on, but it pains me to remember any more of this movie.

Yes God Yes - Another sweet little independent movie about a Catholic girl brought up with as little information about her body (and the internet) as the young woman from Unorthodox. She is taught, over and over, not to touch anything, look at anything, or think about anything until marriage, but she discovers a little and engages in a little talk on the Internet with a pervert, which gets her questioning. All of her friends / classmates are goodie goodies, or so she thinks, until she discovers some hypocrisy at a weekend indoctrination camp run by her priest.

Actually, the hypocrisy makes it a weaker story, because it gives her an easy way out from believing all of what she is being taught. It would have been more interesting to see her have to fight against true zealots. Nevertheless, this is a funny, low budget coming of age story starring Natalia Dyer (from Stranger Things). Charming. Worth watching.