If Terrence Malick and Kelly Reichart had a baby it would be “Train Dreams,” a visually ravishing examination of one human life.
This is only the second directing credit from Clint Bentley (he wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for “Sing Sing”), but it displays an astounding depth of maturity and sensitivity.
In adapting Denis Johnson’s novella (he co-wrote the piece with Greg Kwedar) Bentley has approached this sprawling tale as a sort of visual folk song. There’s only limited dialogue, but since his leading player is the breathtakingly empathetic Joel Edgerton, little is required.
Will Patton’s voiceover narration (a device I generally despise; here it is delivered like a poetry reading) tells us of the origins of Robert Grainier, a foundling who grows up in a small burg in the Pacific Northwest. He comes to maturity in the early 1900s, when the mechanized modern world has not yet intruded on the wilderness.
Poorly educated, Robert excels at manual labor. He helps build a wooden railroad bridge across a forested gulch, and witnesses the murder of a co-worker, a Chinese man (Alfred Hsing) whose ghostly visage will haunt him throughout his long life.
Mostly Robert works for logging crews; his huge axe is practically an extension of his own arm.
He meets and falls for Gladys (Felicity Jones) and together they build a cabin and have a daughter, though Robert’s work requires him to be away for months at a time.
The loggers are a hard-working bunch, a collection of loners who can go all day without saying a word. There is one exception. William H. Macy is terrific as Arn Peeples, a grizzled old codger whose main job seems to be serenading his fellows with nonstop running commentary on anything that comes into his head.
There are on-the-job accidents, some fatal. Robert soldiers on. His goal is to make money, return to his beloved wife and child, and start the process all over again.
Felicity Jones, Joel Edgerton
The scenes of the Grainier’s domestic life are so achingly beautiful that one is tempted to give up on civilization and take up residence in the woods. Adolpho Veloso’s camera seems to caress its subjects; frequently we’re distracted by the waving tufted tips of wild grass, or the grain of a tree trunk. Man and nature in harmony.
These scenes arebolstered by the presence of the uncredited young child who plays Robert and Gladys’ daughter. The kid steals every scene without even trying. We’re as delighted in her as are her parents.
Then cruel fate intervenes. Robert is away on a job when tragedy strikes back home. His cabin lies in ashes; the fate of his wife and daughter unknown.
Ever faithful, Robert is determined to rebuild on his smoldering acreage so that when his family returns, he’ll be ready.
Edgerton is devastatingly effective as the stoic yet forlorn Robert. The sadness in his eyes, the gentleness in his movements, the way his posture changes over more than 60 years of physical labor…all these add up to an unforgettable portrait of a man who, by most standards, is unremarkable.
But then that’s the whole point. “Train Dreams” finds the unexpected nobility in everyday humanity.
“Eddington” is a mess, but at least it’s an ambitious mess.
For his followup to “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” filmmaker Ari Aster has come up with a different sort of horror film in which the threat comes not from the supernatural but from within ourselves.
Unfolding in the sun-baked burg of Eddington, N.M., this drama attempts nothing less than to summarize all the roiling currents of contemporary America. Which is a nice idea, but it devolves into a credulity-crushing melodrama populated less by characters than by various poltical/social points of view.
The time is the early months of the Covid pandemic, and Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) has his hands full on just about every front. At home there’s his childlike and sickly wife Louise (Emma Stone) and her conspiracy-crazed mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell).
On his patrols of the town Joe finds himself refereeing standoffs between pandemic-panicked citizens in government-mandated face masks and those individuals who refuse to muffle up, whether because it’s physically uncomfortable or because they smell the nefarious efforts of Big Brother to smother individual identity.
It’s also election season in Eddington, with mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) running for another term. Ted’s campaign centers on bringing in a high-tech outfit to erect a data farm, or a bitcoin mine, or some other damn electicity-gobbling enterprise. The whole thing smacks of an insider deal.
There are the kids, the teenagers who aren’t content just to smoke grass behind the grocery store. No, they’ve all climbed on a high horse to protest everything they don’t like — which is just about everything from Native America rights to old folks who can’t be bothered with personal pronouns. They’re putty in the hand of the charismatic Vernon (Austin Butler), a rabble rouser who may be a good guy…or maybe a Charles Manson.
And finally there’s Lodge (Clifton Collins Jr.), a hirsute desert rat who wanders through town babbling angrily at demons real and imagined.
Pushed way past exasperation, Joe decides to take matters into his own hands. He’ll run for mayor, too. Except that the key to his campaign is assassinating the opposition.
Once the crime’s been committed “Eddington” becomes a sort of Jim Thompson thriller with Joe working overtime to cover up his crime and blame it on somebody else. Except that there are a couple of armed vigilantes (identified in the credits as Antifa Terrrorists 1 and 2) who begin stalking him in a beautifully staged nighttime action sequence.
By the time “Eddington” wraps up after nearly 2 1/2 hours the patience of most viewers will be worn thin. As a schematic of our current state of affairs the film offers some good nasty fun, but there’s not a character on screen we can actually like.
Tessa Thompson
“HEDDA” My rating: B-(Prime Video)
107 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Hendrick Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” gets a heavy-duty makeover in “Hedda,” in which writer/director Nia DaCosta makes actress Tessa Thompson the scene-stealing centerpiece.
Ibsen’s original was set in the 1890s Norway; DaCosta moves the action to post-war Britain.
The story is pretty much the same with some radical casting changes…new bride Hedda (Thompson) is miserable with her stuffy academic hubby George (Tom Bateman) and uses a big cocktail party attended by his colleagues to do mischief. She’s supposed to be boosting George’s profile for a much sought-after collegiate gig, but Hedda’s personal demons are going strong.
George’s main competition is Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), an openly gay female academic working on what will surely be a best-selling book. Eileen is a recovering alcoholic; she’s also a former lover of Hedda, though she now cohabits with the mousy Thea (Imogen Poots).
In the course of the evening Hedda will sabotage Eileen’s relationship, her husband’s career, and her own life.
“Hedda” has been very well acted, and the updatings made to the original text are intriguing and evocative.
But here’s the thing…when I think of Britain in the 1950s I’m thinking of the rather stiff world of PBS’s “Granchester,” a time when the old social mores were only slowly changing and gasoline was still being rationed.
What we get here, though, is a Bacchanal right out of the 1920s, with stuffy college professors getting blotto and dancing the boogie woogie. The film’s frantic ambience felt forced and overstated.
If you can get past the anachronistic elements, “Hedda” offers some terrific acting. If.
Historical drama gets no better than “Death by Lightning,” a recreation of one of the more obscure but weirdly resonant moments in our national history.
Based on Candice Millard’s superb history Destiny of the Republic, this retelling of the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881 has been spectacularly well acted and produced. It almost perfectly captures the same emotional and intellectual notes that made the book so memorable.
And it does it all in just four one-hour episodes.
It begins with Senator Garfield (Michael Shannon) leaving his Ohio farm for the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago . His hope is to prevent the renomination of incumbent president Ulysses S. Grant, the figurehead of a spectacularly corrupt administration.
In a twist of fate that seems more fairy tale than fact, it is Garfield himself who ends up the party’s nominee. It’s not that he seeks the presidency…but he’s the only candidate the warring anti-Grant delegates all can get behind.
In the process he makes an enemy of Grant supporter Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham), the U.S. senator from New York whose control of that state’s ports holds the American economy in a stranglehold. Conkling is a savvy pol…he’s also willing to employ pure thuggery to get his way. The comically boozy Chester Arthur (Nick Offerman) provides the muscle behind Conkling’s manipulations.
Garfield knows he cannot win without New York. So he does the unthinkable…he chooses as his running mate the hapless Arthur; basically it’s an end run around Conkling’s plan to sit out the election and pick up the pieces later.
The rise of Garfield runs parallel to the story of Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), a failed lawyer and hustler with serious mental issues. Guiteau fantasizes that his support was vital in getting Garfield elected, and now he wants a reward. And when his pathetic entreaties are rejected, he plots to kill the President.
Matthew Macfadyen
As was the case with Millard’s book, this series leaves viewers ruminating over what might have been. In his three months as President, Garfield embraced a progressive agenda. A Civil War veteran, he reached out to African American leaders, especially black soldiers whose sacrifices were overlooked. He laid plans to replace the spoils system with a non-partisan Civil Service.
I doubt we’ll see better acting this year than what’s delivered here by Shannon and Macfadyen.
Shannon probably has the tougher job, given that Garfield was low-keyed, modest and generous. Not exactly a personality to set off dramatic fireworks. Yet the actor finds the heroic in Garfield’s calm reasonableness. Especially telling are the scenes with the Garfield family (Betty Gilpin is terrific as Mrs. Garfield), which bring to mind the domestic image of Abraham Lincoln and his brood.
The upshot is a genuine sense of loss.
Macfadyen, on the other hand, gets to play a crazy man…but with restraint. The key to his Guiteau is the disarming “normalcy” of his presentation. The guys often sounds reasonable but behind the fancy words there’s a crippling desperation at war with rampant narcissism. In any conversation there comes a moment, a tell if you will, that suggests something is seriously wrong with this guy. Maybe you can’t quite put a finger on it, but that creepy feeling on the back of your neck is inescapable.
The fourth and final episode unfolds in the aftermath of the assassination attempt. Garfield lingered in agony for a month while inept physicians tried to locate the bullet for extraction…even calling upon inventor Alexander Graham Bell to employ a primitive metal detector.
Weirdly enough, the reform movement Garfield put into motion survived him, thanks to an unlikely proponent we won’t name here.
Now this is all pretty heavy stuff, but director Matt Ross and writer/creator Mike Makowsky often put a bleakly funny spin on the material. The brutal cronyism of Conkling and Arthur gets the full satiric treatment (the parallels between their machinations and those of our current President are inescapable) and the characters often employ ear-burning language. I doubt that statesmen of the 19th century were that open with their profanity, but in dramatic terms it works…most of the really vile pronouncements come from the show’s heavies.
Even the smallest roles are deftly handled. Among the supporting players are Bradley Whitford, Vonnie Curtis-Hall, Paula Malcomson and Zeljko Ivanek.
When it’s all over, “Death by Lightning” leaves us marveling at the decency of good men and the unpredictability of fate.
Ethan Hawke
“THE LOWDOWN” (Hulu)
I love, love LOVE this show.
Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) is a shabbily-clothed freelance journalist whose search for truth always has him in hot water with Tulsa’s movers and shakers.
In this funny and weirdly moving series from Sterlin Harjo (the man who gave us “Reservation Dogs”) Lee sets out to prove that the suicide of one of the local gentry is actually murder.
He runs up against the dead man’s brother (Kyle Maclachlan), who’s running for governor; the scheming widow (Jeanne Trijpplehorn), a neo-Nazi cult and a whole bunch of corrupt power brokers.
All while trying to keep his struggling used book store afloat and delivering questionable parenting to his teenage daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong).
Plus Lee gets beat up. A lot.
This sprawling noir comedy (think Jim Thompson on laughing gas) is crammed with eccentric and memorable characters, and the players (among them Keith David, Tracy Letts, Tim Blake Nelson, Killer Mike, Tom McCarthy, Peter Dinklage, John Doe and the late Graham Greene) take full advantage of the possibilities. Rarely have so many scene stealers been assembled in one place.
I was borderline bereft when “The Lowdown” reached its eighth and final episode. But I’ll tell you what…I’m gonna plop down and watch it all over again.
For the first hour or so Guillermo del Toro’s new (and let’s face it, ultimate) version of “Frankenstein” left me a bit cold.
It’s been brilliantly designed and photographed but emotionally…kinda meh.
Turns out I just had to show a little patience. For once the Creature comes to life, so does the movie.
Indeed, our sympathies lie with none of the human characters…least of all Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein, the ruthless and ego-driven medical genius bent on reanimating dead corpses.
No, this “Frankenstein” belongs to Jacob Elordi’s Creature…and please note that he will not be described here as “the Monster.” For this stitched-together superman exhibits more pure humanity than any of the “normal” folk around him. It’s a performance that transcends the scars and death-blue pallor of the Creature’s skin to reveal, well, a beautiful soul.
Expect an Oscar nomination for Elordi, a screen heartthrob and sexual icon (“Saltburn,” the Max series “Euphoria”) who here shows unpredictable depths of loneliness, love, rage and compassion.
Del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel begins at the end. The crew of a sailing ship trapped in the Arctic ice take aboard a frostbitten man being pursued by a terrifying giant. This is Victor Frankenstein, and to the Captain (Lars Mikkelsen) he relates his tale.
We see the boy Victor dealing with his icily controlling and intellectually cruel father (Charles Dance); this helps explain why as an adult Victor is a bit of a medical oddball, convinced of his own brilliance and openly contemptuous of his colleagues.
Victor’s ambitions know no bounds, and with the help of a rich benefactor (Christoph Waltz) — who it turns out has his own twisted motives — our man gets to work sorting through the bodies left on a recent battlefield (the setting is 1850s Europe), looking for pieces that can be sewn together and animated with a jolt of lightening.
When not impersonating God, Victor expresses a bad case of the hots for Elizabeth (Mia Goth), the fiancé of his brother (Felix Kammerer). Clearly he observes few moral boundaries.
Oscar Isaac
That becomes even more clear in his relationship with the Creature. He keeps his nearly naked (and weirdly erotic) creation chained in the castle basement, where he berates the poor unfortunate for lacking the mental acuity to match his physical power.
It is Elizabeth who breaks through, treating the Creature with kindness and unlocking his emotions and intellect. But exasperated by what he views as a failed experiment, Victor attempts to destroy his creation in a massive conflagration.
Turns out the Creature cannot die, as much as he might wish for it. The second half of the film finds the Creature joining Victor and the captain aboard the ship to explain why he’s been pursuing the semi-mad doctor over land, sea and ice.
It is in the Creature’s backstory that we find grace notes of beauty and longing. The highlight is his “adoption” of a farm family. Hiding in their idle gristmill he emerges at night to leave presents of dead game and firewood at their door. They call their mysterious and unseen benefactor “the spirit of the woods.”
The Creature’s real education begins when the blind grandfather is left alone and befriends this stranger, teaching him to read (how a blind man teaches someone to read is a poser, but I’m not complaining) and opening up his intellect to literature, history and philosophy.
Maddened by the knowledge of both his “otherness” and his inability to end his miserable existence, the Creature decides on revenge. He’ll pursue Victor halfway around the world for a final confrontation between father and son.
The old “Bride of Frankenstein” attempted to humanize the Monster (the blind hermit had a brief but telling scene), but the dominant themes of that classic were horror and camp. Here del Toro goes for an emotional and spiritual catharsis. That might seem a stretch for what is essentially a horror movie, but damned if he doesn’t pull it off.
In the end we’re left not so much with lingering terror as a disquieting sadness.
Well done.
Julia Garner
“WEAPONS My rating: B (HBO Max)
128 minutes | MPAA rating: R
A long tantalizing tease capped by a what-the-hell ending pretty much describes every horror movie I’ve seen in recent years.
It’s no different with “Weapons,” writer/director Zach Cregger’s followup to his brutally effective creepfest “Barbarian.”
The film opens with spectacular imagery…at exactly the same moment one fall night, nearly two dozen elementary school students rise from their beds and in their pajamas race away from their homes with arms stretched at a weird angle…it’s simultaneously scary and beautiful.
Turns out all the missing children were from the class taught by Justine (Julia Garner). Only one little boy, Alex (Cary Christopher), shows up at school the next day.
The others seem to have vanished without a trace.
The authorities are baffled. The parents frantic…and then vengeful. They turn on Justine, accusing her of being behind the disappearances/abductions. She’s told to go on hiatus until things settle down.
Cregger’s screenplay tells the story from several different perspectives. First there’s Justine, whose long-dormant drinking problem gets kicked back into high gear. There ‘sthe local cop (Alden Ehrenreich) who is part of the search and has a sexual relationship with Justine.
Archer (Josh Brolin) is one of the parents, driven to acts of desperation by the loss of his son.
Marcus (Benedict Wong) is the principal, trying to keep a lid on the town’s boiling emotions.
Austin Abrams is a young drug addict pulled into the mystery.
And finally there’s little Alex, whose home life harbors a dark secret.
Amy Madigan
About two-thirds of the way through the film we meet Alex’s Aunt Gladys (a nearly unrecognizable Amy Madigan), who’s just come to town and wears a gosh-awful orange wig that makes her look like a septagenarian Bette Davis after an all-night rave. Gladys is bleakly funny and not a little creepy — you just know she’s got something to do with the mass vanishing.
With its elements of the Pied Piper legend plopped down in contemporary suburbia, “Weapons” certainly grabs our interest and keeps us guessing as to what’s going on. If the final reveal is a bit underwhelming, Cregger seems to think so, too, because at the last moment “Weapons” shifts from slow-creep dread to over-the-top physical comedy.
Even if the big explanation is a fairy-tale head-slapper, most of “Weapons” is extremely watchable and quite involving.
Butler's Cinema Scene 