Penelope Cruz, Adam Driver
“FERRARI’ My rating: B- (Hulu)
130 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Great performances from Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz notwithstanding, “Ferrari” is a hard movie to warm up to…because its subject is a hard man to like.
Director Michael Mann’s latest is a character study of sorts, centering on a giant of industry at a pivotal moment in his career. That the career in question is auto racing makes for built-in drama.
In 1957 Enzo Ferrari (Driver) is both at the peak of his powers as a maker of racing cars and on a financial precipice. His obsession with fielding the world’s best race team has left him nearly insolvent and facing the glum prospect of forging a partnership with big money interests who will want a say in running the show.
His domestic life is no less precipitous. Ferrari and his all-but estranged wife Laura (Cruz) are still mourning the death a year before of their only child; Ferrari’s history of infidelity isn’t helping.
In fact, for more than a decade he has kept a former assembly line employee, Lina (Sharlene Woodley, whom I never for a minute bought as Italian), as his mistress. They even have a 10-year-old son, a humiliation Ferrari has managed to keep a secret from Laura, although everybody else seems to know about it.
And now Laura holds the fate of the company…she owns half the stock and her cheating hubby can do nothing without her approval.
meanwhile Ferrari is putting all his chips in on winning the Mila Miglia, a 1000-mile race on public roads so dangerous that drivers joke about dying at the hands of dogs and children. Ironically it will be the last Mila Miglia ever, with a death toll so off the charts the entire event would be permanently cancelled.
Driver’s Ferrari is self-absorbed and always a few chess moves ahead of everybody else. He offers a gentlemanly facade but is ruthless in achieving his goals. He can also be amusingly crotchety.
In one memorable scene he reams a pack of racing journalists: “When we win I can’t see my cars for the shots of starlet’s asses. When we lose you’re a lynch mob. It’s enough to make the Pope weep.”
The real star of the show though, is Cruz. Sans makeup and carrying her load of grief like a manhole cover, she is a modern-day Medea torn between revenge and the need to see the family business succeed. It’s a wow-quality performance.
Pedro Pascal, Nicolas Cage
“THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT” My rating: B (Roku)
107 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Movies don’t get much more meta than “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” in which Nicolas Cage — a sometimes great actor who often seems more interested in the paycheck than the screenplay — plays Nicolas Cage, a sometimes great actor who often seems more interested in the paycheck than the screenplay.
Co-written and directed by Tom Gormican, “Unbearable Weight…” offers self-parody on steroids. Apparently Nicolas Cage is aware of all the weird things people say about him and is more than happy to exploit them.
The premise finds Cage (who often imagines conversations with his younger, more successful self) so desperate for work that he agrees to fly to Spain to be the entertainment at the birthday party of billionaire named Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal). Surprisingly, Javi and Nick hit it off…they appreciate the same old movies and Javi has even written a screenplay he’d love for his guest to consider.
Enter two dodgy CIA types (Tiffany Haddish, Ike Barinholtz) who inform Nicolas that his host is actually an international arms dealer…and convince him to become a spy inside Javi’s sprawling seaside estate.
Part buddy movie, part spy spoof (Nick and Javi end up searching for a politician’s kidnapped daughter), part sendup of Hollywood excess, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” roars along thanks to Cage’s willingness to send up his own oft-overcooked acting style.
One can only imagine that for this actor it offered a decade’s worth of therapy in just one gig.
Brian Jones, Mick Jagger
“THE STONES AND BRIAN JONES *My rating: B (Hulu)
93 minutes | No MPAA rating
Documentarian Nick Broomfield has always had a thing for music subjects — Suge Knight and the murders of Biggie & Tupac, Leonard Cohen, Whitney Houston, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love.
Here he tunes up the way-back machine to explore the life and legacy of the forgotten Rolling Stone, Brian Jones.
It’s a sad tale. Jones was the founder of the Stones, envisioning it as a blues band. He was charismatic and well spoken, and wildly musical (he introduced the sitar to the Stones and played the flute solo on “Ruby Tuesday”).
But he was eclipsed by the songwriting talents of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. At the same time Jones’ emotional/mental issues and substance abuse derailed his career; he became so unreliable that Jagger and Richards fired him. After that it was a quick trip to the boneyard.
For boomers “The Stones and Brian Jones” is a heady trip down Memory Lane. Broomfield has assembled a treasure trove of vintage footage of the Stones.
It’s a tale populated not only by the Stones themselves (bassist Bill Wyman is a valuable talking head here), but by the likes of Eric Burden (of The Animals), Marianne Faithful (the pop songstress who had affairs with three of the band’s members), Jones’ various girlfriends (he left behind a small army of illegitimate children) and Paul McCarthy.
Undergoing particular scrutiny is the late Anita Pallenberg, glamorous girlfriend to the band who comes off as a self-serving succubus.
Curiously, Broomfield has chosen not to say much of anything about Jones 1969 drowning death. Over the years there has been a growing body of evidence to suggest Jones was murdered, probably by a worker with whom he had a pay dispute. But no mention of that here.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 