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ALICE, DARLING (2022)
Starring Anna Kendrick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Wunmi Mosaku, Charlie Carrick, Mark Winnick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Daniel Stolfi, Susan Applewhaite, Mairi Babb, Sara Bradeen, Toni Ellwand, Carolyn Fe, Deborah Grover, Gordon Harper, James M Jenkinson, Lindsay Leese, Farah Merani, Ethan Mitchell, Viviana Zarrillo and Elena Khan.
Screenplay by Alanna Francis.
Directed by Mary Nighy.
Distributed by Lionsgate. 89 minutes. Rated R.
Screened at the 2022 Philadelphia Film Festival.
Abuse takes many forms. Take Alice, the heroine of Alice, Darling. Her boyfriend has never laid a hand on her. He never yells at her. Yet, she is being psychologically battered to the point that she is losing her best friends, literally pulling out her hair, has an apparent eating disorder, has lost all confidence and is a complete mess.
Playing Alice a surprising turn for actress Anna Kendrick, who has done a good amount of drama over the years but is best known for comic-leaning performances like the Pitch Perfect movies, Up in the Air, A Simple Favor and Into the Woods.
It’s something of an eye-opening experience. We always knew that Kendrick had the talent, but Alice, Darling shows her acting skills to be much deeper and more complex than she is often given the opportunity to show. It’s a brave and disturbing performance, and yet Kendrick does find places for her trademark levity as well.
Playing the younger lover of an older, handsome, controlling and extremely passive-aggressive snob named Simon (Charlie Carrick), Kendrick has a brittle fragility which is hard to shake. As stated earlier, Simon is not outwardly hostile – he’s never hit her and constantly proclaims his love – and yet he uses pointed “observations” to exercise his will on her. He has her uncertain of herself, afraid to cross him, unwilling to see what she is becoming.
It all comes to a head one weekend when Alice’s two long-time best friends Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku) and Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn) invite her to spend a week at Sophie’s grandparents’ lakefront cabin to celebrate Tess’ 30th birthday.
Alice has been growing a bit distant to them anyway – apparently Simon does not like them or the fact that they distract Alice from him, although he would not acknowledge that. Sure that Simon would not approve, she lies to him and tells him that she is going on a business trip. However, she can’t relax, is constantly glued to the cell phone as Simon texts her regularly.
There is also a side story of a local girl who has gone missing, and almost as a way to avoid her friends, Alice gets involved in the search party.
When Simon finds out that she is with her friends and not working, he blows up her phone trying to get her to come home. Finally the friends simply hide the phone. And then, when freed of outside complications – off the grid, so to speak – she is able to finally be herself and heal her relationships with her friends and figure out who she is again.
And then when things are starting to come together, Simon shows up and throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing.
Alice, Darling is a stark and wrenching film, with wonderful performances not just by Kendrick, but also by Mosaku (who is also currently very memorable in Call Jane) and Horn as two women desperately worried about their friend and at the same time trying to deal with growing apart. Also, Carrick is chilling as the manipulative lover.
It is not an upbeat movie, but in the end, it is rather hopeful. To paraphrase the old song: “Ain’t it good to know that you’ve got friends.”
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 29, 2022.
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Rian Johnson
Peeling A Glass Onion
by Jay S. Jacobs
The new face of modern mystery may very well be Rian Johnson. The writer director is releasing Glass Onion the second film of a planned series of Knives Out mysteries which will be filmed for Netflix. The first Knives Out film was a huge hit with a more-traditional theatrical release a few years ago, leading the streaming giant to contract Johnson to create a whole series of Benoit Blanc mysteries, which has only the brilliant detective played by Daniel Craig in common. (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery also had a brief theatrical run last month.
So, why does Johnson think that people enjoy old-fashioned parlor mysteries?
“I’m a puzzle nut myself,” Johnson explained to me recently on the red carpet at the Philadelphia Film Festival. “I love solving puzzles. There's always that element of our brains. The other thing about them – and this is why I love the genre – you think about [the story].”
They don’t call them brain teasers for nothing…
“You get a good mystery,” Johnson continued. “You get a rogue's gallery of interesting characters, all trying to kill each other. You get a charismatic detective at the center of it. What's not what's not to love? It's the most fun you can have [while] telling a story.”
Johnson feels this is why the genre has such a resounding history and popularity.
“[The mystery] seems to always come back around, right?” he says, brightly.
As a longtime mystery fan, it seems only natural that Johnson has toyed with the genre for years. Even before hitting paydirt with his popular comic mystery Knives Out, the writer/director has always toyed with the conventions of mysteries on such earlier films as Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper, and even to a slight extent in his blockbuster Star Wars: The Last Jedi. He also has a new TV series coming on Peacock called Poker Face with Natasha Lyonne, which is said to be similar to the old Columbo mystery movies.
However, it was Knives Out that brought Johnson’s love of old-fashioned parlor mysteries into sharp relief. A classic locked-door mystery – with a wicked sense of humor and style – and an all-star cast including Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon and Christopher Plummer. It tells the story of a famous mystery novelist who dies mysteriously in his spooky mansion. Of course, his extended family are all sniping over his fortune as the body still hasn’t gotten cold. And Detective Benoit is always around, capturing clues and surreptitious conversations as he endeavors to find the killer.
Knives Out took the old-fashioned mystery films and added a wonderfully modern, comic aspect which only added to the film’s popularity. The follow-up, Glass Onion, has Detective Blanc in the middle of a COVID-era murder party at the grand private island mansion of a tech billionaire (Ed Norton) which leads to real death. The suspects here are a group of college friends – all of which have become somewhat successful, but all of whom are having behind-the-scenes problems, played by Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom Jr., Kathryn Hahn and Janelle Monae.
What were some of the classic mysteries that inspired Johnson to make the films?
“[Mystery] series in general,” Johnson said. “I was thinking about the Agatha Christie movies that were coming out back in the 70s – and her books. [One was] Death on the Nile with Peter Ustinov. On this movie, a huge influence is Evil Under the Sun with Ustinov as Poirot. It was a glamorous European vacation movie.”
It’s not all Christie films though, Johnson acknowledges.
“Also The Last of Sheila, which was so good. I keep trying to mention that because more people have to see that movie.”
I noted to Johnson that, by total coincidence, that film was the first PG-rated movie I ever saw in a theater and has long been a favorite of mine. The 1973 mystery – written by the odd-couple screenwriting team of actor Anthony Perkins (Psycho) and musical theater icon Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd) – was also about a murder mystery game in a yacht on the French Riviera which leads to a murder. It had a Nixon-era superstar cast of James Coburn, Richard Benjamin, James Mason, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon and a young, mostly unknown Ian McShane. It’s fun seeing the sly nods Johnson made to The Last of Sheila in Glass Onion, particularly during the early scenes.
Knives Out was a passion project in which Johnson had been working on the script for about a decade. After the popularity of that film, he has to come up with and film the follow-up in just a couple of years – mostly during the pandemic.
“That just was no pressure. No pressure,” Johnson laughed.
Hey, Agatha Christie wrote like 80 books, plays, poetry books, autobiographies and short-story collections in less than 60 years….
“Yeah, that's true. So, I'm slacking,” Johnson laughed again.
Well, maybe not quite slacking. But it was quite an experience to suddenly have to come up with a whole new mystery scenario, with only the Detective character in common with Knives Out.
“I came up with this one from scratch,” Johnson continued. “I started writing it after the first one came out and people liked it. It was a little scary at first, but you dive in, start working and then you're just doing your job and don't have time to think about it.”
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 23, 2022.
Photo #1 © 2022 Deborah Wagner. All rights reserved.
All other photos © 2022. Courtesy of Netflix. All rights reserved.
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#9 – GLASS ONION: A Knives Out Mystery | Netflix | Writer/Director Rian Johnson - As a filmmaker how coveted would it be to discover you’ve created a franchise? I suppose it would depend on how much you love the world you’ve built. Well, Rian Johnson is more than fond of his knives out mystery verse and lead character Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) and if Glass Onion does half as well as 2019’s Knives Out (PhilaFCC Best Picture winner) then they’re both happy to keep the franchise going.When it comes to movies and COVID what I’ve mainly seen so far is either the movie is steeped in it or ignores it all together. Johnson decided to address it as the elephant in the room for a beat at the beginning and then cleverly shoots the elephant and rids the rest of the movie of this actuality. We are introduced to the cast or rather soon to be suspects: Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) a vacuous, self-centered music legend, with a fabulous wardrobe.
Her assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick), has the difficult job of keeping Birdie from being cancelled again on Twitter. Kathryn Hahn, whose career is super hot these days, plays Claire, a democratic politician. Duke Cody (Dave Bautista) is a Joe Rogan type influencer. Cody’s girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline) seems to be just a pretty face who looks hot in a bikini, but she’s much smarter than she looks (this is not a clue). Lionel (Leslie Odom, Jr) is a brilliant scientist. Andie Brand is a corporate CEO (Janelle Monáe) who steals the movie, she’s so watchable. And all of them revolve around Miles Bron (Edward Norton) a compilation of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and any other billionaire with too much excess and no sense of reality.We’re introduced to them individually in their own worlds, but soon we have them all on Bron’s island for a little reunion, as all these characters know one another from their early days before their careers took off.
I won’t tell you why or how Benoit Blanc is on the island, but I do like that we get to see a bit of his home life too before going.For me, Rian Johnson has done it again! I enjoyed it almost as much as Knives Out, although it’s impossible to recapture the element of surprise I felt back then, realizing Johnson had modernized the Whodunit to so much good effect. For Glass Onion my expectations were already set. Knives Out was also a darker comedy; the mood and location for this one is much lighter with less layers, which is ironic that it doesn’t have as much to peel. But in terms of staging, pacing, engagement it’s right up there with the original.Got a chance to interview Rian Johnson during PFF31 in a roundtable with PFCC Members – LISTEN HERE
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Leeds United: Assistant coach Raynor pulls no punches #LeedsUnited http://dlvr.it/PFf31S
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GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (2022)
Starring Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Ethan Hawke, Dallas Roberts, Jackie Hoffman, Noah Segan, Angela Lansbury, Stephen Sondheim, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Natasha Lyonne, Hugh Grant, Serena Williams, Yo-Yo Ma and the voice of Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Screenplay by Rian Johnson.
Directed by Rian Johnson.
Distributed by Netflix. 139 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Screened at the 2022 Philadelphia Film Festival.
Let’s take the Knives Out back out. Writer/director Rian Johnson’s 2019 all-star mystery comedy was a surprise smash when it was released to theaters a few years ago. A mixture of old-fashioned parlor mystery and supremely black farce, the movie was one of the best of the year.
Glass Onion is the second of the Knives Out comic mysteries – although technically from a storyline point, it has little in common with the first film other than the presence of Daniel Craig’s “gentleman sleuth” Benoit Blanc. However, if has a similar feel and vibe to the first one, so the latest film is welcome.
In fact, writer/director Johnson has signed a deal with Netflix to make a whole series of Blanc whodunits, much like Johnson’s inspiration Agatha Christie did with her fictional novels revolving around a single detective character like Hercule Poirot. In fact, Netflix has broken with their own precedent with Glass Onion, making it the first made-for-Netflix film which will have a short (week-long) theatrical run before debuting on the streaming channel.
Glass Onion is even bigger, broader and wilder than the first film – and nearly as good. When you consider how good the first film is, that is not a bad thing. Glass Onion doesn’t quite have the freshness of the first film and occasionally seems to be trying a bit too hard, but it’s still very good. We’ll settle.
And bonus points for Glass Onion purloining its opening from the fantastic nearly forgotten 1973 whodunit film The Last of Sheila. (On the red carpet of the Philadelphia Film Festival before the screening, director Johnson told me that film is one of his favorites.) It’s also very much inspired by the Agatha Christie book (and movie) Evil Under the Sun.
Glass Onion is a modernized variation on the old standby plot of a small group of diverse people – all with some potentially sinister motives – who are stranded together when a body suddenly appears. They have no way to get away and nothing else to do but to try to find the killer.
The setting is at a huge mansion on the private island of billionaire tech tycoon Miles Bron (Edward Norton). His guests are all friends from college who have each gone on to some fame or infamy – disgraced fashion designer Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), Connecticut governor Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), scientist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom, Jr.), macho social media influencer Duke Cody (Dave Bautista) and Miles’ estranged business partner Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe).
Also invited is detective Blanc, although how exactly he was invited is just one of the many riddles which pop up.
What begins as a murder mystery game party quickly becomes an actual murder mystery.
The puzzle itself doesn’t always totally make sense, but it’s fast and funny and allows you to overlook the periodic plot holes. The film has as many layers as a… well glass onion… which is a huge, intricate sculpture in the mansion which keeps exposing little quirks as you look at it from different angles.
As any good mystery should.
Johnson is already at work on a third film in the series, and Netflix has said they are open to as many films as can be put together. (And since his inspiration Agatha Christie wrote 80 books in about 40-50 years, as Johnson told me on the red carpet, “I'm slacking.”)
Here’s looking forward to seeing what he comes up with as he tries to catch up.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 22, 2022.
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SHE SAID (2022)
Starring Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton, Ashley Judd, Sean Cullen, Angela Yeoh, Tom Pelphrey, Adam Shapiro, Anastasia Barzee, Mike Houston, Sarah Ann Masse, Hilary Greer, Tina WongLu, Nancy Ellen Shore, Sujata Eyrick and the voices of James Austin Johnson and Kelly McQuail.
Screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
Directed by Maria Schrader.
Distributed by Universal Pictures. 129 minutes. Rated R.
With journalism in general in a rather bad place, it’s always nice to find a quality movie that celebrates the hard work and determination of investigative journalism. There have been some classics over the years – All the President’s Men, Spotlight, The Post, The Insider, Zodiac, Good Night and Good Luck and many others.
As I noted years ago in my review of Spotlight: “While the newspaper business has taken a huge hit in the internet age, true investigative journalism is more important than ever – if much harder to find. Everyone on the internet thinks they can write, and they are an expert – and this is coming from someone who writes on the internet – but real reporting is hard to find in a world where TMZ and Fox ‘News’ pass as legitimate media.”
We can now add another winner to list of investigative journalism films with She Said. The film looks at the two New York Times investigative reporters -- Megan Twohey (played by Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) – who helped to expose the entire Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal which was a huge building block in the #MeToo movement. (In fairness, at about the same time reporter Ronan Farrow also shone a light on the Weinstein situation in his story for The New Yorker, a fact which is mostly but not completely acknowledged in She Said. They pointed out that Farrow was working on it at the same time as the Times reporters, but do not discuss whether his story ever eventually came out.)
And it was a big story, one that was overlooked and covered up for decades. As the world has learned, greatly through the efforts of these reporters, Harvey Weinstein, co-owner with his brother of the popular art-house film studio Miramax Studios, and later of The Weinstein Company, was a serial sexual predator. He used his money and power to sexually extort many women he had dealings with – from stars like Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan and Gwyneth Paltrow to employees of his studio. He was a rich, powerful, vindictive man who could destroy a woman who did not succumb to his demands.
However, while Weinstein has a huge presence in this film, he is rarely seen or heard – just a few audio calls and a brief scene where an actor playing the exec is only seen from the back. The film tries to scrupulous with its accuracy, getting actress/victim Ashley Judd to portray herself and often using actual audio of depositions and discussions with Weinstein instead of using an imitation. (The film does use voice actors to portray actress Rose McGowan and fellow alleged sex offender Donald Trump, however.)
Instead the film focuses on the dogged determination of the reporters to track down this story despite near constant roadblocks. It also looks deeply at the bravery and devastation of the victims. However, since many of the victims have been paid off and forced to sign nondisclosure agreements, one of the hardest parts of the reporters’ work is to find someone who is willing to go on the record about the abuse. For a long, long time, no one will.
However, there is a natural sense of drama and suspense as we see the reporters putting together the pieces of a story which is much bigger than they had ever imagined, while at the same time having to balance out their lives and their families.
She Said is a terrific reminder of how important serious investigative journalism is, particularly in a world where every criminal or charlatan is ever ready to toss out the bullshit term “fake news.” It is a celebration of the news and everything it can and should be (and has been) in a world where it is quickly being left behind.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 17, 2022.
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PAMFIR (2022)
Starring Oleksandr Yatsentyuk, Miroslav Makoviychuk, Olena Khokhlatkina, Ivan Sharan, Solomiya Kyrylova and Stanislav Potiak.
Screenplay by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk.
Directed by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk.
Distributed by Indie Sales. 106 minutes. Not Rated.
Screened at the 2022 Philadelphia Film Festival.
Ukraine is of course on everyone’s mind these days, however even under brutal attack, the country has been thriving and surviving. This is not just for the citizens and army; it also goes for the country’s film industry.
Now, Pamfir was probably mostly filmed before the Russian attack on Ukraine. Also, while thematically it does somewhat mirror the situation, it is not specifically discussing the Russian aggression into the country, which had been going for years even before Vladimir Putin decided to annex the former USSR territory.
However, Pamfir is about the strength and resilience of ordinary Ukrainian citizens in the face of massive corruption and violence which is constantly beating them down.
Specifically, it is about how one man, who has to return to crime to feed his family, is used as a pawn by much bigger political forces than him and is nearly destroyed by the situation.
This man is Leonid (Oleksandr Yatsentyuk), derisively known as “Pamfir” (which is Ukrainian for “stone”) by the underworld and the political bosses of his little village in the border region of Chernivtsi. Years earlier, Leonid had been part of his family’s traditional “business” of smuggling items into neighboring Romania.
He had given that up years earlier, when he was witness to his father being maimed for his crimes. Leonid’s wife Olena (Solomiya Kyrylova) had begged him to go straight, which he had, working out of the country for months on end and not quite making enough to make ends meet. However, he loved his wife and son Nazar (Stanislav Potyak) and wanted a better life for them.
Therefore when home briefly to take his son to the local carnival, he agreed to do one last illegal job, putting him in the crosshairs of the local mob boss – who also happened to be a high-level government agent. This puts the man in physical and mental hazard, and also puts Nazar in danger.
Pamfir is sumptuously shot with long, stately shots and an imaginative palette of dirty colors and symbols. It takes on a tenuous and sense of suspense as Leonid descends increasingly deeply into a labyrinth he has little chance of navigating, and as we learn the depths of the rot in the town.
Pamfir has a fractured fairytale logic – if you are looking at the original, violent endings of most traditional fairytales – that is fascinating and devastating.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 30, 2022.
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THE WHALE (2022)
Starring Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan and Jacey Sink.
Screenplay by Samuel D. Hunter.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky.
Distributed by A24. 117 minutes. Rated R.
Sometimes the lead performance in a film is just so good, so brave and so selfless that you are willing to overlook the flaws in the film. Well, Brendan Fraser is worthy of Oscar buzz for his performance as Charlie, a morbidly obese man who is trying to hide from the world and his own mortality in his tiny two-bedroom apartment. However, despite its obvious awards-season aspirations, the rest of The Whale does not quite live up to its central performance.
Director Darren Aronofsky has a history of taking actors who are a bit past their prime and giving them amazing showcases to remind people of their talents – see also: Jennifer Connelly’s drug-addled stripper in Requiem for a Dream and Mickey Rourke’s down and out palooka in The Wrestler.
Fraser has been slowly regaining some of the buzz he once had in the last few years, and The Whale will only help – showing him to be willing to do most anything for a role (he’s wearing a huge amount of prosthetics and padding to add hundreds of pounds to his frame) and also remind up of the actor’s sweet amiability which does shine through all of the makeup.
You can truly believe that Fraser is trying to understand and have sympathy for his extremely flawed character. Sadly, you don’t always get that feeling from the film itself. In fact, The Whale often seems to be judging Charlie’s unwise life decisions. And perhaps Charlie even needs some judging, but that doesn’t make it any easier to sit through.
Just take the title – The Whale. Now, okay, there is a recurring theme where Charlie – who is an English professor who teaches virtually (with his camera off) – discusses Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the whale, and the film seems to be suggesting that is the reason for the title. However no one really will think of Moby Dick when they hear the name.
The Whale is based upon a play and to a large extent you can feel it. The film all takes place in Charlie’s apartment (except for a couple of scenes which take place on the porch of the place and a few short flashbacks). There are essentially six characters in the whole film (not counting Charlie’s students who only appear on a Zoom screen and add little to the storyline).
This makes the performances of great importance, and for the most part they are up to the need, nearly matching Fraser’s searing performance. Particularly good is Hong Chau (who was also just very good in a very different type of role in The Menu) as Charlie’s only friend. She is a nurse who knows that he is dying (due to his weight he has congestive heart failure) and tries to get him to go to the hospital and to care for himself – and yet she also enables him by constantly bringing him food.
Sadie Sink (of Stranger Things) is also very good as his estranged daughter, who is carrying the anger of Charlie leaving her and her mother eight years earlier for a male lover to an almost pathological extent.
However, for however good that Fraser is in the role, watching The Whale is essentially watching a man committing suicide – he’s literally eating himself to death. While he may have had a tragic life – his one true love died, being estranged from his ex-wife and daughter – the audience still wants to shake the guy and make him go to the damned hospital.
No one will ever mistake The Whale for an enjoyable experience. It is horribly melancholy and heartbreaking. However, Fraser does give the film the kind of humanity that it doesn’t always achieve otherwise. It’s worth seeing if only for that incredible performance.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 9, 2022.
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WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY (2022)
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Rainn Wilson, Toby Huss, Julianne Nicholson, Quinta Brunson, David Bloom, Spencer Treat Clark, Dot-Marie Jones, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Will Forte, Scott Aukerman, James Preston Rogers, Tommy O'Brien, Nina West, Arturo Castro, Conan O'Brien, Jack Black, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer, Demetri Martin, Paul F. Tompkins, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Patton Oswalt, Thomas Lennon and Nat Faxon.
Screenplay by “Weird Al” Yankovic and Eric Appel.
Directed by Eric Appel.
Distributed by Roku Originals. 108 minutes. Not Rated.
Screened at the 2022 Philadelphia Film Festival.
I’m not big on superlatives and I find it hard to believe I’m about to write this, but Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is the funniest film comedy I’ve seen all year. By a long shot.
Now I know that sounds strange. And before you ask, no I’m not a Weird Al superfan, although I like him well enough. (Who doesn’t?) I’ve never seen (or had much urge to see) his previous attempt at film stardom with UHF, although I have heard relatively good things about it over the years.
And yet, I say it again – Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is absolutely hysterical.
As you may get from the title, it is a takeoff on the traditional rock and roll bio pics, although it is very, very loosely based on the life of Yankovic. Or, as it is described online: “The unexaggerated true story about the greatest musician of our time. From a conventional upbringing where playing the accordion was a sin, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic rebels and makes his dream of changing the words to world-renowned songs come true. An instant success and sex symbol, Al lives an excessive lifestyle and pursues an infamous romance that nearly destroys him.”
This deviation from pure fact is what makes it so funny. Imagining the goofy, good-natured, teetotaling novelty singer Yankovic as a surly drunken rock star is comedy gold. And imagining a world where a man can conquer the rock charts with a Hawaiian shirt, an accordion and a dream – to make up funny words to other people’s songs – is just so weird that it can only be true. Or true-ish.
I mean come on, just the idea alone of Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) playing Weird Al is meta enough to blow your mind. And he does a damned good job of it, too.
And I haven’t even mentioned the Pablo Escobar and Madonna connections, nor when (according to Weird), Michael Jackson plagiarized Al’s magnum opus.
It’s silly, it’s stupid and it’s undeniably funny.
Weird Al himself even has a bit part as one of the Scotti Brothers, the record label owners who signed him and released his early records. (Other Scotti Bros. acts which became marginal stars included Survivor, John Paul Young, John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band and Leif Garrett.)
One slight caveat... Weird: The Al Yankovic story was made as an original production for the new streaming machine Roku, which very few people have, so it may take some work to track the movie down. You can stream it on Roku’s website as well. More to the point, having seen it on a big screen at the Philadelphia Film Festival with a hysterical crowd (and Weird Al in the house), I realize that a theater is the way that it should be seen. (With or without Weird Al.) Weird is a film that works a lot better as a community experience than it would sitting alone watching it at home. They really should have given it a brief theatrical release.
But see it any way that you can. It’s that funny.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 28, 2022.
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CALL JANE (2022)
Starring Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Chris Messina, Kate Mara, Wunmi Mosaku, Cory Michael Smith, Grace Edwards, John Magaro, Aida Turturro, Bianca D’Ambrosio, Bruce MacVittie, Rebecca Henderson, Maia Scalia, Sean King and Alison Jaye.
Screenplay by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi.
Directed by Phyllis Nagy.
Distributed by Roadside Attractions. 121 minutes. Rated R.
Screened at the 2022 Philadelphia Film Festival.
For better or worse, Call Jane is one of the timeliest films to come out in recent months. In fact, it is even more vital than it was even when it was conceived. In a new United States where Roe vs. Wade has been struck down by the Supreme Court, Call Jane is a stark reminder of where we were before that ruling was made and what has been lost.
It takes us back to a world in which back-alley abortions and even more desperate measures were used to terminate an unwanted or medically unsafe pregnancy.
“Just throw yourself down the stairs, that’s what I did,” is one of the pieces of advice offered to Joy (Elizabeth Banks), an aging middle-class suburban housewife who was actually thrilled to find of her pregnancy, at least until her doctor explained to her that she probably would not survive the childbirth. Then she entered a morass of red tape, bureaucracy and dead ends trying to save her own life in a world where the laws counted the baby’s life above her own.
Unlike so many women of the time, Joy actually found a safe space – well, relatively safe – in the work of the Janes, a covert group of women had bonded together to provide safe abortions. (Well, again, relatively safe.) After having the procedure, Joy finds herself surprisingly becoming more and more involved in the group and the pro-choice movement.
It’s a very politically fraught subject, and Call Jane tackles the controversial story with tact and restraint. In a recent interview I did with director Phyllis Nagy, she said it was important to her “to make a film about something very serious with a light touch.”
Call Jane is not necessarily pro-abortion – it acknowledges anti-abortion positions as well – however it is pro-safe-abortions and pro women’s rights.
In a world where that is once again becoming rarer, it is important that we remember where we were before Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land. There are a whole series of draconian laws being suggested where older white guys decide what a woman can do with her body.
Dr. Mehmet Oz said just the other night in a Pennsylvania Senatorial Debate that the decision whether to terminate a pregnancy should be made by “women, doctors, local political leaders.” Of course, many of those same people can afford to get the abortions that they are denying the average woman. (We’re looking at you, Herschel Walker.)
Call Jane reminds us that the cold hard fact is that no one wants to get an abortion. It is a traumatic decision for anyone involved. However, sometimes it is necessary, and in those cases, it should be as safe as possible.
Sometimes we have to look back at the past to see the future. Call Jane does a very nice job of showing us where we have been – where we may be again very soon – and why we all have to get out and vote.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 27, 2022.
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ARMAGEDDON TIME (2022)
Starring Banks Repeta, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Anthony Hopkins, Jaylin Webb, Ryan Sell, Tovah Feldshuh, Dane West, Landon James Forlenza, Andrew Polk, Richard Bekins, Jacob MacKinnon, Domenick Lombardozzi, John Diehl, Jeb Kreager, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Lauren Sharpe, John Dinello, Griffin Wallace Henkel, Jen Weissenberg and Jessica Chastain.
Screenplay by James Gray.
Directed by James Gray.
Distributed by Focus Features. 115 minutes. Rated R.
Screened at the 2022 Philadelphia Film Festival.
Sometimes you see a movie which is so obviously a labor of love, a story in which an artist is allowing some personal glimpse into their own past, that it’s sort of strange to acknowledge that the story is nowhere near as important to you as to the person who made it.
In theory, Armageddon Time should resonate for me. It’s about growing up an artistic Jewish outcast with a big, eccentric family on the outskirts of a big city (in this case, in Queens, New York), in the early 1980s. I know kids like Paul Graff (Banks Repeta). In many ways, I was a kid like Paul Graff.
So why doesn’t Armageddon Time really work for me?
I’m not sure exactly. Perhaps it is the fact that the film is very oddly paced. Perhaps it is because much of the acting is mannered and a bit over the top. Perhaps it is because the story doesn’t really have enough meat on the bones to intrigue. Perhaps it is because the lead character does some really stupid things. Perhaps it is because its moral is heavy-handed and not particularly surprising or insightful.
Perhaps it is because despite the fact that they did a good job with era-appropriate props and wardrobe, it never really feels like it is taking place in 1980. Perhaps it is because there is absolutely no reason for this story to be called Armageddon Time other than the fact that the filmmakers wanted to use the Clash song of essentially the same title (“Armagideon Time”) in the soundtrack – which I suppose may be a good enough reason. Perhaps it is because there are two unnecessary cameo appearances by actors playing members of the Trump family. (More on that later.)
Whatever it is, I wanted to like Armageddon Time much more than I did.
The movie was written and directed by James Gray (whose last film was the similarly underwhelming sci-fi drama Ad Astra) and is apparently loosely based on his life.
It is a story of racism, anti-Semitism and white privilege in a highly WASPy section of Queens at the literal birth of Reaganomics. (The 1980 presidential election is a constant backdrop for the action and a late scene has the Graff family mournfully watching Reagan sweep into the White House with a landslide victory.)
Paul is one of the few Jewish kids in his school. His best friend Johnny (Jalyn Webb) is one of the few Black people. Both deal with discrimination throughout, and yet in the long run Paul is at least partially shielded by his white privilege to the point that he mostly gets away with things that Johnny often gets blamed for. This is doubly concerning because often Paul is the instigator of the trouble, but Johnny seems to be the one always getting punished.
Not that he is completely blameless either. In the early 1980s if some student told his teacher to fuck himself – twice – in the course of a class like Johnny does here, he would at the very least be suspended. However, in Paul’s constant attempts to escape his family life – a life that is mostly pretty cushy, to be honest – Paul keeps coming up with wild schemes and Johnny is the one who inevitably pays.
Yes, Paul stands out in his horribly white bread neighborhood, a haven of class and snootiness, but he can basically blend in. Johnny has no such option.
Of course, Gray has found an odd way of demonstrating the small-mindedness of the neighborhood, arguably the best-known inhabitants of the borough, the Trumps.
Strangely, they found it important enough to get an A-list actress like Jessica Chastain to do a single cameo scene – playing former judge Maryanne Trump, of all people. Adding to the craziness, Chastain was a replacement, apparently Cate Blanchett was originally tapped for the role but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. That’s two Oscar-caliber actors who were going to be brought in for a single speech – a nice enough speech, I guess, but still…
Not only that, but John Diehl also has a few scenes as family patriarch Fred Trump, oozing unctuousness and malice. Luckily, son Donnie was nowhere to be found. However, even if Gray did grow up amongst Trumps, which I assume is the point of this little side venture, it leaves an oily sheen on the film.
It’s just one of many misfires which makes Armageddon Time a disappointing indulgence.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 3, 2022.
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NEXT EXIT (2022)
Starring Katie Parker, Rahul Kohli, Rose McIver, Karen Gillan, Tongayi Chirisa, Diva Zappa, Tim Griffin, Jim Ortlieb, Nico Evers-Swindell, Gavin Powers, Joe Powers, Ty Molbak, Michael May, Tessa Hersh, Jim Ortlieb, Angel Murphy, Eric Hoff, Nerea Duhart, Sally Levi, Drew Brandon Jones, Lisa K. Wyatt, Joel Nevells, Ryan Patrick McGuffey and John Bishop.
Screenplay by Mali Elfman.
Directed by Mali Elfman.
Distributed by Magnet Releasing. 106 minutes. Not Rated.
Screened at the 2022 Philadelphia Film Festival.
Next Exit is an odd mix of science fiction, the supernatural, philosophy, romance, psychological study, family dynamics, suicide and old-fashioned road trip movie. Surprisingly with all those different fragments of stories pulling it in different directions, it nearly works.
But not quite.
Still, you have to give credit to first time feature film writer-director Mali Elfman. (She had previously directed several short films, extensively worked as a producer and actor and is the daughter of musician and film scorer Danny Elfman.) She certainly was not going timidly into her dream project. It’s an adventurous idea, and if in the end it kind of gets away from her, still kudos for trying.
Next Exit takes place in a vague near future in which mankind seems to have discovered a way to communicate with the spirits of the dead. This news leads many of the people of the world to lose their fear of death. This leads to a world-wide movement where some people sign up with a shadowy collective run by a famous doctor to give their lives and test the boundaries of this connection – stopping living so that they can visit (or haunt) their friends, loved ones (or enemies).
This seems a long way to go for the furtherance of pop science, in fact the whole project has a strong feel of the Heaven’s Gate cult. (Which was, no doubt, Elfman’s intention.) Needless to say it tends to attract some very fragile, confused and disturbed people.
Next Exit is the story of two of the “explorers” of this brave new world.
Rose (Katie Parker) and Teddy (Rahul Kohli) are two strangers who are accepted as “subjects” of the “testing” and must travel cross-country together to get to the headquarters of the Life Beyond program. (She has the rental car; he has the money.)
In typical road trip fashion, they despise each other at first, working on each other’s last nerves. (She’s dark, antisocial and cynical, he’s basically upbeat and friendly.) However, on the long trip in this strange new world they open up to each other, learn each other’s stories and actually come to care for each other.
We see where this is going, right?
We do, but Next Exit does take some interesting byways, side trips and offramps to get us to the eventual destination.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 23, 2022.
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THE BANSHEES OF INISHERAN (2022)
Starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Pat Shortt, Jon Kenny, Bríd Ní Neachtain, Lasairfhíona, Gary Lydon, Aaron Monaghan, Sheila Flitton and David Pearse.
Screenplay by Martin McDonagh.
Directed by Martin McDonagh.
Distributed by Searchlight Pictures. 114 minutes. Rated R.
Screened at the 2022 Philadelphia Film Festival.
A few years after breaking out internationally with his multi-Oscar-winning film Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri, Irish playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh has returned to his roots. Not only has he come back to his homeland of Ireland for his latest fable, McDonagh also reteamed with the two leads of his first film In Bruges, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. (That film was made in Belgium, but it was about Irish characters visiting.)
As often in his films, the story is deceptively simple on the surface, but then takes on often shocking twists. It is a tale of a small two life-long friends in a small Irish island village in 1923 (Inisheran is a fictional town loosely based on Inishmore) who reach loggerheads when Colm (Gleeson) suddenly decides he no longer wants to be friends with Pádraic (Farrell).
This ignites a feud between the two and sets in motion waves of circumstances which not only throw their lives into havoc, but also cause mayhem for the whole town.
If you take the story at face value, then undoubtedly what the two of them do – particularly Colm – makes little or no sense. However, The Banshees of Inisheran is not supposed to be taken literally. It is an allegory of the Irish Civil War which was raging at the same time. War does not make sense – it makes men do stupid, self-destructive things.
Particularly in closed quarters – a pub, a small village, even an island nation – the fallout of these self-destructive things is going to be intense, on all that live there, not just the combatants.
Colm’s self-harm is physically damaging, but it is also symbolic, as is Pádraic’s stubbornness and inability to let well enough alone.
Which perhaps may make The Banshees of Inisheran sound a little bit pretentious and difficult to unpack. However, that could not be farther from the truth. It’s just that the film works on multiple levels.
Even if you were to take the story completely at face value, it is a smart, funny, dark, entertaining, exasperating experience. However, there is more to it than appears at the surface, and a final explosion is always potentially just a moment away.
Much like most friendships. And most wars.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2022 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 21, 2022.
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