Category Archives: Biography

Judy

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Judy       4 ½ stars

The highly anticipated biopic Judy features Renee Zellweger as the doomed singer-actress Judy Garland in her final months before she died.  This is truly a showcase of Zellweger’s talents as she clearly captures the decline of the health and stature of one of America’s greatest talents.  Those who remember Garland from the sixties will find Zellweger’s approach to the role as remarkable as she is engulfed by the character.  I am so glad that the story was not the usual biopic piece that covers a performer’s entire career, but rather only focuses on a brief period of Garland’s life, that being the London tour she went on in 1969 only six months before she died of a barbiturate overdose.  This allows us to see what feels like a complete story that doesn’t jump over large periods of time.  It also allows the supporting characters to have parts that blend in with the story.  There are flashbacks to Garland’s early years as a child star under the control of the studio headed by Louis B. Mayer.  These scenes are meant to show how she had no childhood as her personal life blends into her onscreen performances including how she was given amphetamines to keep her energy up.  The movie is not all tragedy though as the viewer will be delighted to see her with adoring fans and to see a moving rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow near the end of the movie.  A near certainty is that Renee Zellweger will be expected to take home the Best Actress Academy Award next year.

Colette

Colette                 4 ½ stars

Another movie from last year that I just caught up to is Colette, a film that created a lot of buzz at Sundance in 2018.  This film stars Keira Knightley as Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, the acclaimed female French writer of the early twentieth century.  In the film, the young Colette from rural France marries the successful Parisian writer, known as Willy (Dominic West) and is transported to be among the intellectuals in Paris.  Willy is not really that much of a writer but he has created an industry of creating literary works by having writers ghost-write under his name.  Soon he figures out that Colette has a talent for writing and persuades her to write about her experiences creating the series of novels about “Claudine”.  What follows is a story of redefining gender roles and telling of stories that overcome the societal restraints of the time.  Some of these norms that are overcome even involve women in bisexual or homosexual relationships, quite a break from the traditions of the early 1900’s even in France.  Eventually, the couple reaches a crisis when Colette asks that she be given the rights to her own work.  The film was directed by Wash Westmoreland and was co-written by him and his partner, Richard Glatzer.  Sadly, Glatzer did not live to see his project reach the screen.  But you can have the opportunity to see Keira Knightley’s acting talents in this film based on the true story of one of France’s finest female writers.

Bombshell

Bombshell                           4 stars

My first reaction to Bombshell is that any movie that features Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie deserves some major attention.  And for the most part it delivers.  It tells the story of a small group of women at Fox News endured years of abuse at the hands of the CEO, Roger Ailes and finally banded together to bring him down in 2016. The performances by Theron as Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson and Margot Robbie as a fictional character, Kayla are all first rate.  John Lithgow does a convincing job as Ailes, the perv who controls the lives of these women and treats them like his personal playthings.  The film stops short of indicting the entire network of Fox for its corporate culture that allows this behavior to take place.  You certainly don’t get the feeling that Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm McDowell) really cares about these women.  He is only too eager to put all the blame on Ailes and put his name in all the headlines.  One very memorable part of the movie are the interchanges between Kayla and Kate McKinnon’s character, Jess Karr who is a closeted Democrat and lesbian working at Fox and knows what has been going on for years.  The movie doesn’t tell us much about what happened to these people beyond 2016, but it is certainly worth seeing.  Look for a few Oscar nominations to come from Bombshell.

Hamnet

Hamnet                 5 stars

We start with watching a woman alone in a dense forest who has tamed a falcon that obeys commands. She appears to be completely at home in this natural environment. Then we see a young man who meets the woman and is instantly taken with her. The pair marry and have three children and will suffer the worst nightmare that can be imagined by a parent. The pair is William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes, and this is the movie Hamnet. Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet and directed by Chloé Zhao (The Rider, Nomadland), the movie imagines the married life of Shakespeare and his wife and the raising of their three children while he is embarking on a writing career. There has long been speculation that after the death of their son, Hamnet at 11-years-old, the tragedy was the inspiration of one of Shakespeare’s most loved plays, Hamlet (Hamnet and Hamlet being synonymous). Zhao brings the story to life thanks to her style in displaying the closeness of the characters and their grief when Hamnet is taken from them in the pestilence sweeping the country. Much credit must be given to the two actors, Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose, The Lost Daughter, Women Talking) and Paul Mescal (Aftersun, All of Us Strangers), who make us feel their love for their children and their unimaginable pain when the son is lost. Buckley, who has had a string of successful and quirky roles, especially deserves praise for perhaps the most emotional performance of the year. As if that were not enough, she follows this up with pure wonder, when witnessing the first performance of Will’s play Hamlet where the final scene of Hamlet’s lament and death is played out. The scene, in the setting of the Globe Theater can be described as overwhelming.  Audiences will also be very pleased by the performance of young Jacobi Jupe who plays the playful and mischievous Hamnet. The casting was perfect with this choice. The movie will likely be most remembered for Jessie Buckley’s emotional performance as the young mother, so expect there to be a few awards this season for her plus in a few other categories.

Just Mercy

Just Mercy                          4 stars

Just Mercy, written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton is mainly a legal drama about a young lawyer, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) from the East coast who has taken a case to free a wrongly convicted black man of a brutal murder in rural Alabama in the early nineties.  Walter McMillian (a superb Jamie Foxx) is a private logger who was sentenced to death for the killing of a white teenage girl based solely on the unsubstantiated testimony of a convicted felon who was pressured into identifying McMillian as the killer by a corrupt local sheriff.  There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime.  The film is based on a true story about an attorney who is still active today fighting for unjustly convicted, mostly black prisoners.  It is the type of story we have seen frequently from Hollywood, but is aided by the quiet reflective scenes involving Foxx who just wants his previous life with his family back.  The villains of the story are the usual corrupt district attorney and sheriff who care more about their own records than about justice for the citizens.  The movie is a long one at 136 minutes, but the viewer stays involved due to the performances of the three main actors, Jordan, Foxx and Brie Larson as Bryan’s support advocate.  The movie clearly portrays the prejudices against black men that tear communities apart.  Despite the fact that it has been nearly thirty years since the events in the movie took place, many of these same problems are still with us today.  At the end of the movie, the postscript tells us that prisoners on death row are proved innocent at a rate of one out of nine, clearly an intolerable situation.  Please try to see Just Mercy when you get a chance.

The Irishman

The Irishman                      5 stars

Much has been written about Martin Scorsese’s newest gangster movie, The Irishman, about the relationship between Teamster union president, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) and mobster hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro).  It is quite a masterpiece and at nearly three and a half hours in length, a challenge to last through in a single sitting.  There are plenty of brutal murder scenes as one would expect in a mobster movie and strained relationships between family members especially the women involved.  The special language used by the gangsters is always present as the characters have a certain way with words that sanitizes their true intent.  We hear Frank talk about how he is sorry about his life when we all know he doesn’t really mean it.  The movie was especially expensive to make which is partially due to the special effects used to “deage” the main characters to allow us to see them over a span of fifty plus years.  Never before have we seen what aging mobsters are like. (Since they typically don’t live to see their later years.)  Here we see Frank in a nursing home after all his associates are long gone and his family will no longer see him.  I especially want to take note of the performance of Joe Pesci as Russell Bufalino, the Italian mob boss in an understated role different from how we are accustomed to seeing him.  He deserves his Academy Award nomination.  The film earned ten nominations altogether and deserves its standing as one of the best films of the year.

Where’s My Roy Cohn?

Where’s My Roy Cohn?                                 4 stars

The documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? was on my list to see at Sundance, but I didn’t get the chance to see it then.  Thankfully I found it on cable so just saw it during this time of quarantine.  This film by Matt Tyrnauer tells us about one of the most notorious (and ugliest) figures in the latter twentieth century of American politics.  It covers his career starting with his participating as a prosecutor in the trial of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg resulting in their execution, extending to the Communist hearings with Joseph McCarthy and his connections with New York mobsters as a defense attorney often getting light sentences for them.  The film features many interviews with his various associates and relatives (including Roger Stone), none of whom have a kind thing to say about his character.  However, the point is made that he was a sharp lawyer who was always ready for a fight and would stop at nothing to destroy his enemies.  Through the seventies and eighties Cohn had close contacts with the administrations of Nixon and Reagan playing a role in some of the harshest right wing policies that continue to this day.  The film also goes into Cohn’s gay lifestyle, how it was no real secret that he associated with gay men and frequented gay night clubs.  Yet he always maintained that he was not gay up to his death from AIDs in 1986.  Included is Cohn’s role as mentor to a young New York real estate tycoon named Donald J. Trump.  According to the film Trump learned to never admit being wrong and to never make apologies.  Cohn successfully defended the Trumps in an anti-discrimination lawsuit involving denying housing to African Americans.  Trump even used Cohn’s mob ties to get his Trump Tower built in New York City in the early eighties.  Given how this man is portrayed, one would probably not describe the film as impartial.  It shows how he made a career of using lies and deceit to destroy lives for sake of personal gain throughout his career and how he had no empathy toward fellow humans.  Whether or not you are familiar with Roy Cohn’s career, I recommend you see this movie.

American Symphony

American Symphony                      4 ½ stars

The 2023 film American Symphony by filmmaker Matthew Heineman started as a project to follow musician Jon Batiste as he worked on his classical composition “American Symphony” but turned into a much bigger story about life. In 2021 The band leader of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show had just been nominated for 11 Grammys and granted Heineman access to his life as he worked on this piece. Batiste was writing a classical piece but making it more modern using new styles and musicians from a variety of backgrounds to make it avant-garde compared to traditional classical music. It was quite unusual for a pop musician to enter this genre let alone a black musician, but Batiste gives it all the attention and effort he can. But while this is transpiring on screen, it is discovered that Batiste’s girlfriend/wife Suleika Jaouad has had a recurrence of bone cancer and must undergo lengthy chemotherapy treatments. So, on top of writing the new piece and preparing for the Grammys, Batiste was dealing with the crisis of supporting Suleika through this new crisis. Jaouad is herself a writer and painter producing her own works of art, continuing her efforts through the treatment. The two of them go through tough challenges, encouraging each other, while surprisingly still granting the filmmaker access to their lives. One type of film I especially enjoy is those that show the unfolding creative process of writing music. In American Symphony we see not only Batiste’s struggles with creating his masterpiece, but also the intimate look at a couple going through a difficult time in their lives. The film ends with the finished product being performed for one time only in front of a packed crowd in Carnegie Hall. It is a triumphant finish to a very emotional story. The movie was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song It Never Went Away which is played at the end of the movie.

The Smashing Machine

The Smashing Machine                  4 stars

The Smashing Machine by writer director Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems, Daddy Longlegs) is the recently released biopic about the life of Mark Kerr, the mixed martial arts star of the nineties and early 2000’s. It is not a conventional sports movie where a team or individual overcomes the challenges of their sport and triumphs in the end. Instead, the film focuses mostly on the character of Kerr (played by Dwayne Johnson, the former wrestling star and movie action hero, but forget about Red One) and the struggles he faces in his life within the sport and in his personal life. A few fights are represented, but they only take up a small portion of the total screen time, so don’t expect an MMA version of Rocky. I don’t know much about the sport that became the UFC, but it seems like the objective is to tackle your opponent, hold him on the floor while you beat him in the face turning it into a bloody mess until he gives up. (At least this is what I took from it. The nation will get a first-hand look at UFC next year when it will be featured on the White House lawn on the occasion of President Trump’s eightieth birthday.) Much of the film has the look of being a documentary using long takes, making it seem like you are watching the real Mark Kerr. It shows us the various sides of him. As played by Johnson he is the nicest guy you can imagine while dealing with the public. He is polite in the extreme to the average person, being very humble and restrained. But when he loses a fight for the first time and then only focuses on his next fight he becomes completely absorbed, shutting out those around him. This gets to be a problem for his girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt) as she comes to resent Kerr’s silence at these times. Much of the story is about these two people who can’t understand each other and who question the motives of the other’s decisions. The role of Dawn is a complete change from how we are used to seeing Blunt. Normally, her characters are of women who are adventurous and in complete control of their lives. Here Blunt is not her normal movie star self (think The Fall Guy and Jungle Cruise) but has an understated presence and is subservient to boyfriend Kerr. It is a testament to her acting talents that she can blend into the feel of the movie so effectively. Blunt may be in line for an acting Academy Award nomination for this role. There also seems to be talk of Johnson getting an acting nomination as well. It would be well deserved. The film is recommended, but again you shouldn’t expect a lot of action leading up to a traditional final climactic finish. (I hope I’m not giving too much away, but what kind of sports movie has the winner being awarded the trophy because of a cancelled final match?) You should go to see a person dealing with setbacks in their life and finding a way to get through them.

The Great Hack

The Great Hack                 4 ½ stars

This week I return once again to the Sundance releases to find a compelling documentary in The Great Hack.  The film goes into the details of the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2017 and 2018.  It uses the personal stories of two individuals who got caught up in the scandal involving the Trump campaign, Brexit and many elections around the world.  The British company (named by Steve Bannon of Breitbart) teamed up with Facebook and used the personal data of millions of people to find ways of changing their behavior through the spreading of millions of social network postings to swing elections in favor of their clients.  Their most famous client was of course the Trump Campaign in the election of 2016.  One of their tactics was to get individuals to sign up for an app that provided not only their personal information, but that of their Facebook friends as well.  The film introduces us to David Carroll, a professor who sued Cambridge Analytica to recover his personal data in a case that was heard in the British courts.  The ruling forced the company to comply with Carroll’s wishes which they failed to do, making Cambridge Analylica in effect a criminal enterprise.  The other story told is that of Brittany Kaiser, a one-time director who worked for the company for 3 ½ years in a role that made her very familiar with the practice of data harvesting and using it for the benefit of their clients.  Kaiser became a whistleblower who revealed what she knew in testimonies in Britain and the US.  Cambridge Analytica is now defunct, but the film gives us a stark warning that this practice of gathering our personal data and using it to change our behavior is only going to continue.  The Great Hack makes it clear that it may be a long time before we can have a true free and fair election again.