PHILIP'S FLICKS

Elvis (review)

June 24th, 2022

Elvis
159 minutes; PG-13
Critic’s grade: A-
“Elvis is everywhere,” roots-rocking revivalists Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper declare on the 1987 novelty hit of the same name. The video features shots of the duo and Elvis Presley interspersed with images of average folks of every age, race, sex, body type and nationality dressed up like the American icon or showing off their Elvis-inspired products.

“Elvis is everything,” Nixon sings. “Elvis is everybody/ Elvis is still the King/ Man, O, man/ What I want you to see/ Is that the big E’s/ Inside of you and me, yeah.”|

To be sure, Elvis was still everywhere back then, 10 years after his untimely if not altogether unexpected death at age 42. Impersonators of the King flourished at Las Vegas wedding chapels and on stages all over the country. “Elvis has left the building,” fried-peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, and TCB — “taking care of business” — were still touchstones.

Elvis gold chains and license plates continued to pop up all over the place, and Graceland routinely swarmed with tourists (and lent its name to a Paul Simon album released the year prior). Countless folks swore that they had seen Presley’s face in the clouds or on a piece of toast. Some said that they had run into the flesh-and-blood man himself at a gas station, a barbershop, or the mall. Multiple pop stars pointed to Elvis as a musical forebear and major influence.

The subject of ritualistic, near-religious and maybe slightly creepy devotion, Elvis seemed to be more alive during the three decades or so after his death of a cardiac arrest — which occurred on the throne, as the crass joke went (he expired on his bathroom floor) — than he’d been in the last few chapters of his troubled life. He was gone too soon, thanks to a weak heart aggravated by a dependence on drugs and alcohol, probably worsened by a terrible diet and other maladies. Fun fact: his complete autopsy will finally be unsealed in 5 years.

Thirty-five years after “Elvis is Everywhere,” the King no longer holds sway over pop culture to the degree that he once did. But with “Elvis,” filmmaker Baz Luhrmann performs imaginative rites of onscreen zombieism: He practically brings the movie’s title character back from the dead for the viewing and listening pleasure of contemporary audiences, at least a couple of generations of whom weren’t born until after Presley died. That’s no mean feat, and the results are largely a delight to behold.

Luhrmann, the Australian-born director and high-concept movie magician, created an unstoppable audiovisual carnival with 2001’s “Moulin Rouge!,” gave new life to Shakespeare with his refried “Romeo + Juliet” in 1996, and reimagined F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel of the 1920s with “The Great Gatsby,” released in 2013.

“Elvis,” arriving nearly a decade after Luhrmann’s last film, is a sometimes intoxicating mixtape of Elvis-ness, a wannabe cosmic collage of the Saturday night Delta blues, Sunday morning tent-revival gospel, pure charisma & hip-swiveling sexiness that helped transform the Tupelo country kid and devoted Mama’s boy into an enduring global celebrity. It’s mostly big fun, with a whole lotta shakin’ going on.

Is “Elvis” truly greater than the sum of its hyperactive, swirling, in-your-face, time-tripping parts, not all of which match the level of Austin Butler‘s fascinating and gripping impersonation of The King? Not sure yet.

But Luhrmann once again demonstrates his ability to reach out, grab viewers, and hold on to us nearly all the way to the end, when he closes more than two-and-one-half hours of passion, pathos, drama and humor in the life of this Elvis incarnation with footage of the real thing. It’s a coda that, yes, may make some viewers feel a bit of sadness about the loss of an era that — nominally, at least, from the vantage point of 2022’s social, political and economic turmoil — seems less confusing and more innocent.

Austin Butler, left, as Elvis Presley, right.

If the “Elvis” movie were a stage of its subject’s career, it would be the Fat Elvis years, when “Also Sprach Zarathustra” on the sound system announced his arrival on a Vegas stage with an oversized band. His shows were exercises in too-muchness, over the top and proud to be born that way. That’s in contrast to the early years, when he led a rootsy, stripped-down band, recording raw, intimate-feeling tracks like 1954’s “That’s All Right” at Sun Studios in Memphis and then making a splash at local auditoriums.

Likewise, Luhrmann’s extravaganza of a movie is all about the excess, dazzling viewers with a relentless, frenetic assault of sights and sounds bolstering a story that’s probably too large to tell within the confines of a movie of this length.

Luhrmann begins by connecting the dots among the various sounds that influenced Elvis’s approach to music making — in the movie, it’s “I’ll Fly Away” in its bluegrass and black gospel versions, and the blues of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right Mama” and Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog.” Austin blues star Gary Clark Jr. plays Crudup, and the late Shonka Dukureh portrays Thornton.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/JVPXHMc3Q18?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Frequently flashing forward and back, Luhrmann touches on many of the familiar mileposts on Elvis’s road to superstardom. Most chapters are here, if not necessarily presented according to the real-life timeline. After Frank Sinatra’s adulation by the bobby soxers but before crowds went gaga for the Beatles, Elvis makes the girls hyperventilate — on stage at the Louisiana Hayride country music radio show, his first of many appearances there. He signs a lopsided management deal giving half of his earnings to shady Dutch-born promoter “Colonel” Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), a former Tampa dogcatcher who declares that “show business is snow business.”

Then: Elvis leaves Sun for RCA Records, buys the Graceland mansion, goes into the Army, suffers the loss of his beloved mother Gladys (Helen Thomson), and marries Priscilla Parker (Olivia DeJonge); the two met cute — or creepy cute? — in Germany when he was 24 and she was 14 (her age is glossed over).

Along the way — in addition to the above mentioned artists — there are encounters with entertainers B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Little Richard (Alton Mason), Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola), Hank Snow (David Wenham), Jimmie Rodgers (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and of course Sun Studios owner Sam Phillips (Josh McConville).

The cast is well chosen: All turn in galvanizing performances, and Yola, Mason, Clark and Dukureh (who died July 21 at age 44) are straight-up knockouts. The tasty soundtrack is bolstered by vintage and recent material, including some snatches of hip-hop; all work well together to underscore the action.

Parker is the teller of this tale, with some passages deploying his voiceover narration. If “Elvis” is flawed, that positioning could be part of the problem — it frequently feels a bit artificial and contrived. Maybe that’s because of Hanks, who seems to be walking through a role that comes off as corny, and too heavily relies on a goofy, showy accent. Would the performance have been enhanced had it been played by someone less famous than Hanks?

Anyone with at least a passing interest in Elvis, or a thing for the roots of modern pop music and/or that period of history, will want to see Luhrmann’s movie on the big screen, with speakers cranked. The nostalgia buzz at the heart of “Elvis” is real.

And yet Luhrmann’s movie is about more than simply reanimating a cultural corpse. The filmmaker’s apparently genuine affection for everything Elvis has resulted in a blast of giddy Americana that may prove infectious even to those who know The King only as a faded, easily mocked musical curio from the increasingly distant past.

Word is that there also exists a four-hour director’s cut of the movie that includes Elvis’s off-the-rails encounter with President Nixon and pays more attention to Presley’s relationship with his bandmates, guitarist Scotty Moore (Xavier Samuel) and bassist Bill Black (Adam Dunn).

I wouldn’t be surprised if an Elvis series were to be announced for one of the streamers — just speculating here. Stay tuned, and keep your eyes open for a sighting of The King at your local diner. Hey, it could happen.
Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story (review)

June 22nd, 2022

94 minutes; PG-13
Critic’s grade: B-

It’s impossible for me to approach a documentary about Jazz Fest aka the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, with anything like the cool detachment required to give a fair shake to any given piece of film art.

Why? Because I’ve attended the fest, one of the best and most eclectic music gatherings in the world, umpteen times since the late ’80s, including a 5-year stretch of consecutive visits starting in 2006, about 8 months after Hurricane Katrina crippled and remade New Orleans, and ending in 2010. That year, I was treated to an afternoon of unforgettable, rootsy rock, blues and Americana music when the Allman Brothers Band and Levon Helm’s group, with loads of special guests, played back to back on the same stage.

It really did feel like a bit of musical paradise on earth when I experienced world-class performances, by hometown heroes and global superstars alike, at one of the fest’s dozen venues — whether on the giant stages at either end of the sprawling Fair Grounds Race Track, the jazz, blues, or gospel tents, or the other locations. The list of my favorite shows over the decades is long, but here’s the short version: Stevie Wonder, the World Saxophone Quartet with African drummers, James Brown, Galactic, Paul Simon, Mose Allison, Randy Newman, Elvis Costello with Allen Toussaint, Sharon Jones, McCoy Tyner, Astral Project, Terence Blanchard, the Meters, the Neville Brothers, Los Hombres Calientes, Randy Weston, various Marsalis family members.

At its best, Jazz Fest, the nickname for an event that has never strictly focused on jazz, has been enormously influential on my musical tastes as a listener and as a player. During the early days of my long-running band Acme Jazz Garage, we frequently included Meters songs in our sets. And one of my original tunes, “Mr. G.P.,” a Meters salute referencing the band’s bassist George Porter Jr. is on our 2016 debut CD.

So, in short, I’ve come to dearly love Jazz Fest, and the New Orleans musical culture in which the event is enmeshed. Since at least my mid-’20s, I’ve been drawn to the artistic/spiritual vibe of a place that’s unlike anywhere else in America. One year, I attended all 10 days of the fest; at one point, a buddy and I considered moving to the city. I’ve become something of an evangelist for the fest, writing about it for the Tampa Tribune (where I was the pop music critic from 1988 to 1996), the Tampa Bay Times, Billboard, Variety, and jazz magazines. I’ve participated in online and in-person gatherings by the Threadheads, a group of Jazz Fest supporters.

On some occasions, though, I’ve been extremely annoyed by how ginormous the fest has become, in terms of the exploding attendance. Every year, the last weekend of April and the first weekend of May, several hundred thousand music aficionados and partiers now swamp the event. I’ll admit that the intense crowding and heat, and some of the logistical hassles of getting to the Fair Grounds and back, bug me more now than when I was 27.

“Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story,” the first — I think — full-length documentary/concert film on the subject, focuses on the 50th fest in 2019. The nickel review: It isn’t bad, a fun introduction to the fest for those who’ve never attended, even if it’s less than wholly satisfying for longtimers. The movie does a pretty nice job of placing viewers into the midst of the fest, and helps demonstrate why it’s all such an amazing experience for music lovers.

The film does check most of the right boxes regarding the origins of the affair, which was started in 1970 by jazz festival innovator George Wein — Duke Ellington was the only non-Louisiana act at the debut fest, which reportedly attracted about 300 attendees. Wein, mastermind of the Newport Jazz Festival, Newport Folk Festival, Playboy Jazz Festival, Kool and JVC jazz festivals, and many other major music fests, was succeeded by local music aficionado and promoter Quint Davis, who transformed the fest into one of the largest events of its kind in the world. For better and (maybe) worse, its current incarnation is an affair with a budget of $20 million-plus that is said by organizers to have a regional economic impact of $300 million. Making the thing go depends on major corporate funding — the fest is no longer the grass-roots event of its first couple decades or so.

“Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story” offers some great footage from the early years, and devotes at least a little time to the various musical influences — regional Louisiana, gospel, soul, trad jazz, the roots of the music in Congo Square — that have come into play in the fest’s programming. “Jazz Fest” also touches on the impact of Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras Indians traditions, second-line parade rhythms, New Orleans cuisine, and Katrina. And it rightly takes a look at one of the fest’s star offstage attractions — the tangy, savory food offered by about 60 Louisiana-based food vendors offering such treats as jambalaya, red beans and rice, gumbo, and a bazillion crawfish dishes.

There’s a moving sequence on the 2006 fest, with clips of Bruce Springsteen and Co. turning in an emotional “My City of Ruins,” and some talk about what the gathering meant to the sagging spirit and economy of the post-disaster city.

There’s a moving sequence on the 2006 fest, with clips of Bruce Springsteen and Co. turning in an emotional “My City of Rains,” and some talk about what the gathering meant to the sagging spirit and economy of the post-disaster city.

But (and this is a BIG, if somewhat expected, but) screen time unfortunately is dominated by non-New Orleans Big Name Acts, the kind that you could see play any venue in America. Representing the 50th fest are long clips of Rev. Al Green (a highlight), Pitbull, Katy Perry, and Earth, Wind and Fire, among other name entertainers. Sorry to report that Jimmy Buffett‘s version of the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is about as bland and forgettable as you might imagine (surprise: Buffett, of course, is an exec producer, along with Quint).

Oddly, and inexplicably, the film doesn’t offer recent or vintage extended performance clips of the Neville Brothers, the Meters, Dr. John, Galactic, Henry Butler, Astral Project, Kermit Ruffins, the Iguanas, the Radiators, the subdudes or many other of the city’s notable musicians. It’s really a wasted opportunity in that respect, a pretty glaring oversight.

Adding insult to injury, there are simply too many interviews with folks who have little or no connection to New Orleans or Louisiana music. No need to list those names. But those moments contribute to the feeling that the entire movie was intended to be a glorified advertisement for the fest, designed simply to bump up ticket sales rather than meant to capture the heart and the soul of the thing.

As a jazz fan, I’ll add that I really do appreciate the focus on interviews with the late, great Ellis Marsalis — in many respects, a forefather of the city’s modern jazz scene — and his more famous sons Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason, and the footage of their performance at the Jazz Tent during the 2019 fest. THAT’s the kind of performance that makes Jazz Fest distinctive — it was the first time in maybe decades that all five had played together. You couldn’t see that anywhere else. And now, with Ellis’s passing, it’ll never happen again.

And kudos to the producers for including performance clips of such New Orleans stalwarts as soul queen Irma Thomas, the Ben Jaffe-led Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and slide guitarist Sonny Landreth.

Despite my misgivings, recent and veteran Festgoers alike will find a lot to enjoy about the film — it’s a convenient way to share our love for Jazz Fest with those who’ve yet to experience one of the most amazing, most eclectic musical and cultural events in the United States. For maximum audiovisual pleasure, go see it on a big screen with loud speakers.
Florida Film Loops: Cosford Does Cronenberg — Curated Retrospective Plays the Miami Arthouse Theater

June 16th, 2022

Director David Cronenberg, whose latest cinematic provocation “Crimes of the Future” recently opened nationwide, is getting the retrospective treatment with a six-film series playing the Bill Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables over two weekends in July.

The retrospective is curated by former Miami Herald film critic Rene Rodriguez, now manager and programming director for the Cosford, affiliated with the University of Miami School of Communication. The series opens July 15 with “A History of Violence,” and will be followed by “The Fly” (July 16), “Crash” (July 17), “Shivers” (July 22), “Dead Ringers” (July 23) and “Videodrome” (July 24).

Rene will introduce each of the screenings. All are at 7:30 pm except for “Crash” and “Videodrome,” which will play at 7 pm.

New to the movies of the Canadian filmmaker? Prepare for some mind-bending, sometimes squirm-inducing film trips and strikingly original cinematic visions that are unlike those of any other filmmaker. And best not to watch on a full stomach.

For more details on the Cronenberg retrospective, and to buy tickets, click here.

Check out my review of “Crimes of the Future.”
Hemingway’s “Old Man” Goes to the Movies

June 16th, 2022

A personal note: My extended essay on the three film adaptations of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” the novella that finally won Papa his Pulitzer in 1953, is included in a new academic book.

“Critical Insights: The Old Man and the Sea” (Salem Press), edited by Robert C. Evans, is now available to order for your college, school, or public library, or for your own bookshelves.

For the essay, I focus heavily on the 1999 Oscar-winning short directed by Russian filmmaker Alexander Petrov. It’s a gorgeous animated movie, essentially constructed from images hand-painted on glass sheets. You can watch it for free here.

I also discuss the 1958 feature film starring Spencer Tracy, and the subpar 1990 made-for-TV adaptation. The latter was a vehicle for Anthony Quinn, with early-career performances by Gary Cole and Patricia Clarkson as characters not included in Hemingway’s original work.

Fun fact: Hemingway, making his onscreen movie debut, and Mary, his fourth wife, both are seen very briefly in the earlier movie. Can you spot them?

You can order the essay collection here.
Crimes of the Future (review)

June 15th, 2022

Critic’s rating: ★★★★
(107 minutes; R)

David Cronenberg‘s latest head-twisting journey into the universe of the bizarre takes us to a place located in the not-distant future — or simply untethered from time? who can really say? — where the denizens of a mysterious unidentified land certainly appear to look like us.

But these characters behave like a species from another planet, and the trip offers more than a bit of cinematic deja ju for fans of the Canadian filmmaker.

Got body horror, as in fears about an indescribable thing growing inside of you that might kill you or someone else? Check. How about the melding of flesh-and-blood life forms with non-human entities, as a next step in mankind’s evolution? Yep. Sexual desire triggered and fulfilled by pain, or at least, from extreme discomfort? Naturally. Technological advancements as conduits to human salvation? Of course. Unintended consequences of medical manipulation gone wild? Gooey, slimey, oozing objects that may or may not have something to do with body parts? Folks who sometimes move about as if sleepwalking, have dead-eyed stares, and frequently speak in an affectless manner? Check, check, and check.

“Crimes of the Future,” released six years or so after the provocation-minded director, now 79, suggested that he was considering retiring due to the difficulties of obtaining financing for his productions, is perhaps even more grim and gruesome than many of the Cronenberg films it directly references, particularly including “Videodrome,” “eXistenZ,” “Crash,” “Dead Ringers,” “The Fly” and “Scanners.” On the other hand, the new one doesn’t pack nearly the same emotional wallop punch as did some of those movies.

Is that because viewers are less disturbed by these types of images? Or is it because self-consciousness has crept into the approach of a film artist who appears to be recycling his own tried-and-true themes? Is the law of diminishing returns at work here?

Cronenberg, working from his own original screenplay for the first time in more than 20 years, knows how to construct a strikingly original, wildly creative setting that doesn’t remotely resemble anything else that’s likely to flicker across the big screen this year. His new tale, shot in Greece, appears to be set in a vaguely European, oddly underpopulated seaside village, with winding cobblestone streets and ancient buildings, the exteriors of which are defaced with graffiti. Everything in this vacuum-sealed universe is grey and dark, and vast warehouse-size spaces and cramped offices alike look as if they’re located in some isolated, mostly forgotten Eastern Bloc burg. Bright colors are few and far between. Spiritual and emotional oppression seem to reign. What kind of fresh hell is this, anyway?

Cronenberg gives no mercy in the opening act, immediately throwing viewers into a bit of dramatic action that transpires between a boy (Sozos Sotiris), playing at the shore, and a young mother (Lihi Kornowski), calling to him from the balcony of a nearby home. Shortly later, the kid is in a tiny bathroom, furiously chewing up a plastic wastebasket. And then comes a disturbing sequence that won’t be described here (no spoilers). The filmmaker seems to be issuing the first of several similar dares: If you can stomach this, then maybe you’ll hang on for the oddities and horrors to come.

Soon, enough, the protagonist arrives, in the form of Saul Tenser, played by Cronenberg regular Viggo Mortensen (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method). Frequently seen hunched over, writhing in digestive pain — it’s all tense, per his surname — and hiding behind a black hooded cloak, he’s enmeshed in a long-term sexual and business relationship with Caprice (Lea Seydoux), a former trauma surgeon. The two are performance artists whose specialty is live surgery on stage, where she uses a fleshly controller to guide instruments that cut into the torso of her partner, who lays inside a contraption called a Sark (variation on “sarcophagus”?). Nearby, a screen flashes “Body is Reality.” A hush settles over the crowd as the grisly proceedings unfold.

For its audience of entranced cool-kid viewers, some of whom later thrill to the dancing of a man who has sewn — grown? — human ears all over his body, the act is artistic and erotic. “Surgery is the new sex,” exclaims one believer. But for the performers, it’s also pragmatic: Saul inexplicably is regularly growing new organs. Rather than waiting to see what might unfold if a new system of organs were to develop on his insides, he chooses to excise the invader from his body. He simultaneously views himself as simply the nearest available warm body in the duo’s shows and also as a first-born creature, an accidental messianic figure whose biological transformation points to the shape of humans to come: “I’m just a mechanic,” he explains. “I install doors and windows into the future.” Later, he describes his unsolicited gift in terms that a pregnant woman might use: “I do have something cooking (inside), maybe a few things.”

Saul is able to go under the knife, without anesthesia, because humans who occupy this era have lost their capacity to feel pain. For fun, they practice surgery on one another in the open streets. These images suggest nothing as much as glazed-over young people shooting up with heroin or other drugs — surgery may be the new sex on this planet, but it’s also the new high.

And growing organs is the new pregnancy, available to males, females or the sexes in between. As ever, though, the government has a vested interest in all the bodily comings and goings. Thus the existence of the National Organ Registry, located in a dingy office staffed by a couple of maybe loveable oddballs played to near-perfection by Don McKellar and Kristen Stewart. The two, who practically melt in Saul’s organ-star presence, are the source of some of the most lighthearted moments in a film that benefits from some well-measured injections of dark comedy.

The film’s narrative is also driven by the a “New Vice” police detective’s (Welket Bungue) investigation into a cult of plastic purple-bar eaters led by Lang Dotrice (Scott Speedman), the father of the boy seen in the opening sequence.

If “Crimes of the Future” (not to be confused with Cronenberg’s hourlong 1970 movie of the same name) is classified as a genre film, it might best appreciated as a multi-genre effort, a potentially combustible blend of sci-fi and horror, with a crime story and psychological drama tucked into the mix, heavily sprinkled with social commentary about human evolution, sexual variations, and environmental catastrophe.

While neither as accomplished nor as riveting as the filmmaker’s earlier work, and fitted with an abrupt ending that feels as if Cronenberg simply couldn’t settle on a satisfying conclusion, “Crimes” stands as another quite striking vision from a veteran innovator and provocateur whose film art is unlike that of anyone else making theatrically released feature films. That’s no mean feat.

Movies are rated from 0 to 5 stars.
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The Batman (review)

February 28th, 2022

Critic’s rating: ★★★ 1/2
(176 minutes; PG-13)

Would someone please turn up the lights? That was my first, somewhat frustrated response to Matt Reeves‘ much anticipated, much hyped “The Batman,” with former teen idol Robert Pattinson occupying the role played by approximately 150 stars and others — most recently including Ben Affleck — in movies and television over the decades.

Visually, the latest version of the Caped Crusader tale inspired by the beloved DC Comics series, is far, far darker than any of its predecessors. In fact, it’s gloomier than any recent film — of any genre — that comes to mind. Every scene is shot at night or at dusk, or made to look that way, and every interior sequence is murky and extremely underlit. At some of these crime scenes and cop shops, you could cut through the darkness with a bloody knife. The overall look of contemporary New York City, er, Gotham, is sort of 2022 by way of the bad old days of the gritty, crime-laden terrain of ’70s NYC. Everything is drenched in darkness, as if we were permanently trapped in the darkest recesses of the Bat cave. Did the Gotham City cops suddenly stop paying the light bills? Did the sun go on vacation?

The Batman, who carries that “the” around like an appendage meant to convey untold depths of mystery and intrigue, telegraphs what’s to come with some of the first words he delivers. “Two years of nights have turned me into a nocturnal animal,” he says via voiceover, in the kind of raspy delivery that has become de rigeur for contemporary Bat flicks.

Unlike some of his cheerier, funnier, complex predecessors in the Bat costume, Pattinson’s guy is more depressive Gloomy Gus than the split personality man of yore, a dapper billionaire playboy by day and heroic crime stopper by night who likes to lob occasional comic quips. In this film, I could count the lighthearted lines on a finger or two. By now, the campy TV series starring Adam West is nearly 60 years in the rearview mirror, and perhaps it’s even despised by some contemporary Bat fans.

Reeves’ vision, spiritually speaking, is as dark as cinematographer Greig Fraser’s murky if sometimes hypnotic visuals. Philosophically, it’s not as different from Chris Nolan‘s superior Dark Knight trilogy or other recent versions of the story as some might have you believe: Reeves (the last two “Planet of the Apes” movies, vampire shocker remake “Let Me In,” “Cloverfield”) and co-screenwriter Peter Craig (“The Unforgivable,” the forthcoming “Top Gun: Maverick”) simply cranks the nihilism to its logical conclusion.

Emo Batman — raccoon eyeliner, resting dour face, low-energy vibe except when he’s fighting — doesn’t appear to have much to live for, aside from ramping up his plans for retribution against the forces threatening to destroy his once-fair city. He calls himself “Vengeance,” after all. Even his dalliances with a sexy new Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz), who has her claws deep in the Gotham underworld (or is it the other way around?) don’t seem to lift his spirits much, although her bright-eyed charisma helps provide a much-needed lightening of the mood. The inclusion of Nirvana’s spooky, angst-filled “Something in the Way” on the soundtrack is no accident.

What does feel a bit twisty this time out? “The Batman” is on most counts a particularly gritty noir thriller — think “Zodiac” or “7even” — that just happens to have at its center an ace crime-solving sleuth who enjoys playing dress up in a leather costume. And nobody appreciates Batman’s investigative expertise quite as much as does doggedly determined police Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright).

The cop and the cowled one are hot on the trail of those behind the murders of some of the most prominent citizens of a city that has been ruled by graft and corruption for so long that it will take a masked superhero to straighten things out. Gangs of thugs routinely rule the streets, as demonstrated during an early sequence featuring a group of such criminals targeting a bookish man of Asian descent in the subway, referencing recent such real-life attacks in NYC and elsewhere.

Sorry, fanboys and fangirls, but Pattinson’s Grim-Gus Batman, certifiably not much fun at parties — he’d much rather Netflix and brood — appears to be located somewhere around Meh on the spectrum of Batman portrayals on the big screen. That’s no slap at Pattinson, as I thought he gave a picture-perfect performance in the Safdie Brothers’ underappreciated 2017 thriller “Good Time,” among other recent films. It’s the downbeat script, not the actor.

The actual baddies in Reeves’ movie are considerably more provocative than the main attraction, and are brought to life by some galvanizing, genuinely memorable and maybe even subversive performances, some of which clearly point to even larger presences in coming Reeves-helmed Bat pics. As The Riddler, Paul Dano is frighteningly out of his gourd, a psycho meanie with a duct-tape fetish, while Colin Farrell is unrecognizable as powerful, tough-guy crime operative the Penguin (his trademark cigar, sadly, is MIA) and his mobster boss is played by the great John Turturro, who practically cackles in evil delight. All three light up the screen.

“The Batman” suffers a bit from its nearly three-hour running time. It feels overlong, and burdened with too many endings. Still, there are solid suspense, chills, thrills and a few surprises to be had in the course of seeing some nasty criminals get their comeuppance. The dynamic duo — Batman and Gordon — ultimately promise to give Gotham a shot at a brighter, or at least less dim, future, a chance to again be more than a place that’s “eating itself,” as Batman says of the city’s problems.

And any criticisms are probably moot — superhero movies are critic proof, don’t you know? — in the context of what’s sure to be massive box-office returns, a byproduct of a loyal and enthusiastic built-in audience for comic book and superhero movies and an expected post-Covid surge in moviegoing. Burning Bat questions: What’s in store for the sequel? Will Reeves make it a trilogy? Stay tuned: Different time, same Bat channel.

Movies are rated from 0 to 5 stars.
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The Way Back (review)

February 28th, 2022

Critic’s rating: ★★★ 1/2
(108 minutes; R)

Would it be fair to think of “The Way Back” as “Hoosiers” lite?

No, not quite. But “The Way Back” does touch on the misadventures of a high-school hoops team in a small town, alcoholism and gifted coaches struggling with the burden of complicated pasts. And it rather neatly occupies the inspirational/redemption category. If you don’t find yourself getting a little rah-rah about the prospects of great achievement for the kids at the movie’s center … you might be made of stone.

Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck), a man for whom sucking down beer and liquor comes as naturally as breathing oxygen, spends his days as a semi-tanked construction worker. Nerves of steel and sheer good luck, apparently, help him avoid serious accidents while maintaining a steady buzz. After hours, he has a regular roost at the local bar. When Jack finally comes home to his nondescript apartment, his late-night return sometimes abetted by a kindly, less drunk fellow barfly, he finds himself alone with his thoughts and a refrigerator that’s fully stacked with beer cans and little else. He’s the kind of guy who chugs beers even while in the shower, and keeps a mini-cooler in his truck.

Fate intervenes when the priest who runs Jack’s high school, where he once reigned as basketball champ, asks the former star and local hero to come back and lead a ragtag team of kids who have passion and talent but are entirely undisciplined and unfocused. Not unlike their new coach. Yes, I was reminded of “The Bad News Bears” (both versions), too.

In the wrong hands, all those elements could have coagulated into something cliched and decidedly corny. Director Gavin O’Connor, who helmed the 2016 Affleck vehicle “The Accountant” and the 2004 sports drama “Miracle,” doesn’t exactly travel new terrain here. Yet he elicits a fine, nuanced, lived-in performance from Affleck, who understands his character’s struggle with addiction from the inside out — art reflected life, as the star had recently made his way back from the bottle, a publicly dissected journey that included bouts with rehab in 2017 and 2018.

For “The Way Back,” not to be confused with the similarly titled 2013 comic drama “The Way Way Back,” the double Oscar winner turns in one of his best, most convincing performances in years. And the film, scripted by Brad Inglesby (“Our Friend,” TV mini-series “Mare of Easttown”) is among the more engaging sports dramas of recent vintage.

Although imperfect in many ways, it’s a largely winning effort that’s sometimes poignant, and sometimes funny. Thankfully, Affleck left the Batman heroics behind for his role in “The Way Back,” and found a comfortable fit as the protagonist in a film that benefits from its modest budget and limited ambitions. It’s an above-average movie bolstered by a surprisingly gutsy and affecting lead performance. Here’s hoping that it doesn’t fall between the cracks.

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The Quiet Man (vintage review)

February 27th, 2022

Critic’s rating: ★★★★
(129 minutes; G)

It’s all the green, green hills of Ireland, and green practically everything else, in “The Quiet Man.” That is, until Sean Thornton (John Wayne), a tall, rugged American, stumbles onto the red hair, red freckles and red skirt of local lass Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara). She’s the one with the sweet face, attractive curves, quick temper, and tough, disagreeable and easily provoked older brother (Victor McLaglen). The Yank newcomer, friendly enough but unwilling to take guff from anyone, has just returned to Innisfree, the village where he was born, after decades living in Pittsburgh and elsewhere around the United States.

In short order, celebrated Western director John Ford (“Stagecoach,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”) gives us picturesque thatched-roof cottages, a quaint village, quirky locals, hillsides packed with sheep, bicycles built for two, spit handshakes, arguments over land, a horse race, two local holy men (one Catholic, one Protestant), “courtship” customs, and impromptu accordion-backed singalongs down at the pub. Not to mention an occasional burst of dialogue spoken in Gaelic. Did I mention drinking?

Yes, there will be obstacles, including Mary Kate’s set-in-his-ways sibling, and a troubling secret from someone’s past.

Much of the male-female relationship behavior seems hopelessly retrograde, although not necessarily out of step with the values and standards of the times, the early ’50s.

“The Quiet Man” benefits from genuine chemistry between the leads and among the supporting players, gentle old-fashioned humor, evocative cinematography, a literate script and Ford’s sure-handed, smooth direction. The slow-but-not-sluggish pacing, smart editing and sensible scene transitions all contribute to making the whole thing feel easy like a Sunday morning, or a lazy Sunday afternoon on a chilly weekend, which is when we caught Ford’s dated but still entertaining gem.

All in all, “The Quiet Man,” shot in Technicolor on location in Ireland (a rarity on both counts) is a pleasant and frequent funny romcom/drama that’s surprisingly low on blarney.

Movies are rated from 0 to 5 stars.
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Texas Chainsaw Massacre (review)

February 19th, 2022

Critic’s rating: ★
(83 minutes; R)

There’s not much comic relief to be found in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” But it’s hard not to chuckle at least a little bit during one moment of extremely gory carnage, when the title goon, his chainsaw fired up and ready to go, prepares for another round of mindless, bloody slashing.

The 20something hipsters, assuming that the intruder is just part of the night’s entertainment, hold up their phones to live-stream the fun. And their followers start posting comments, naturally: “Who hired this clown?” writes davidbluegarcia. “Where is this, I wanna go?!?” asks ChaseAndersenTX. And, best of all: “THIS LOOKS SO FAKE,” says badhombre6666.

Garcia, of course, is the Texas-based director of the splatter fest (and the above is his actual Twitter handle), and Bad Hombre is one of the three production companies behind the film. What they’ve wrought is a retread that desperately wants to be a franchise reboot: It makes repeated references to Tobe Hooper’s chilling 1974 horror flick, controversial for its time, pretending that the other sequels never existed, but does practically nada to expand or enlarge the story of old Leatherface (Mark Burnham) and his murderous rampaging. Oh, but it does drop the “The” from the title. Presto, change-o!

The setting this time is a remote, abandoned Texas burg called Harlow, where a group of trendy, good-looking young folks have driven seven hours from Austin to party and stake their claims to various pieces of property on the town’s dusty main street. They want to gentrify the place and make it an artsy shopping destination for other hipsters. Could it become the Santa Fe of the Lone Star State? Here’s where the restaurant will go, they say, and over there is where they’ll put the art gallery. Or they just want to get away from the hustle and bustle of big-city life for a more peaceful lifestyle. Or something. It’s not quite clear.

After unintentionally causing the death of an elderly local resident, all hell breaks loose in the little Texas ghost town. The body count mounts, and narrow escapes are followed by brutal killings. Will anyone get out alive?

Garcia and Co. appear to sort of want us to care about some of these potential victims, including chef Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and her little sister Lila (Elsie Fisher, such a find in 2018’s “Eighth Grade.”) The latter is burdened with an extraneous storyline — she’s a victim of a mass shooting at a school with a name resembling that of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, where a real-life attack took place just four years ago. It’s a tacky touch, maybe meant to add some kind of real-life resonance to the thing. And yet we still don’t care.

Garcia nevertheless gifts viewers with one welcome party favor: His “Massacre” clocks in at a mere 83 minutes. Thank goodness for small mercies.

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Kimi (review)

February 18th, 2022

Critic’s rating: ★★★½
(89 minutes; R)

Contemporary tech thrillers don’t come much more fast-moving, compact or of the moment than Steven Soderbergh‘s “Kimi.” Not bad for a filmmaker who in 2013 famously announced that “movies don’t matter anymore” and said that he was retiring from making theatrical releases.

While he’s since reversed course with several big-screen releases, “Kimi” is his third consecutive movie made exclusively for the small screen, on HBO Max. It’s not small in ambition, though, and its impact is suitably large and pleasant: For an evening of HBO-and-thrill, you could do far worse than Soderbergh’s latest, for which he again does triple duty, serving as director, cinematographer and editor.

“Kimi,” built on a script by David Koepp (“Jurassic Park”), with its basic set-up clearly references Hitchcock’s classic “Rear Window.” That’s particularly evident during the first act. Angela (Zoe Kravitz), a bright, attractive young tech worker employed by a company that makes a Siri/Alexa-like device called Kimi, is confined to her sleek Seattle apartment, where she spends a little too much time each day peering out her tall floor-to-ceiling windows at residents of a building across the way. Unlike Jimmy Stewart’s photographer character in the Hitchcock film, stuck at home because of a broken leg, Angela can’t leave her place because of a debilitating case of agoraphobia. Any resemblance to the recent satire “The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window” is purely unintentional, yo.

One day, doing her job monitoring voice streams on Kimi — the better to enhance the device’s ability to communicate with users, you see — Angela overhears what sounds like a violent crime. Playing amateur detective, she pulls her orange hoodie over her blue hair, slides on her protective mask (the film was shot in the Covid era), wills herself to ward off mental demons and heads outdoors to travel to her company’s offices. There, she hopes to enlist the support of an upper-level employee (Rita Wilson), who has said she’ll loop the FBI into the case.

And down the rabbit hole Angela falls, into a conspiracy that some folks from her company go to great lengths to cover up. The surveillance goes deep (“The Conversation,” anyone?). No spoilers, except this: The body count ultimately will be a higher number than 1. Suffice it to say that smarts and luck go a long way in helping our heroine fight her way out of big, scary trouble.

The cleverly plotted cat-and-mouse game offers its share of suspense and surprise reversals, and the story is spiked with a few pleasant detours, including a romantic interlude with one of the guys she likes to observe across the way, an unexpected appearance by a man who’s been crushing on her from a distance, and a few video-chat sequences with a goofy cyber-tracker genius from overseas who always insists on engaging in comic-but-serious flirtation.

But it’s largely a one-woman show for Kravitz, who recently showed off her acting chops to good effect in glossy mini-series “Big Little Lies” and the otherwise undercooked gender-reversed mini-series adaptation of the movie “High Fidelity.” She also co-stars as Catwoman in next month’s new “The Batman” movie. Kravitz makes it all look natural and easy, convincingly portraying a girl power protagonist who’s ultimately likable despite some off putting quirks. No easy feat, that.

Movies are rated from 0 to 5 stars.
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