Hidden Figures (2016)

Like I suspect most people before seeing previews for this film I was unaware of the efforts of the black female math experts at NASA in the early 1960's. What they accomplished is admirable, this film is admirable, but I must confess I found it slow (even for me) and sometimes boring. I feel like this is a movie that should have been made 20 years ago, and I felt bad that I couldn't help thinking about the superior Apollo 13 almost the whole time. Mea culpa, mea cupla. Still late is better then never I suppose, it's a story worth know and everyone does a good job in it, but I just couldn't muster loving it. ***

The Shape of Water (2017)

Guillermo del Toro presents a cold war parable, Beauty and the Beast by way of Creature from the Black Lagoon. While figuratively this is a movie about social outcasts who find each other, literally it is a film about crypto zoological bestially. So....

Set in Baltimore in 1962 Sally Hawkins plays a mute janitor at a government research facility who falls in love with a fishman (Doug Jones) a government agent (Michael Shannon, playing the kind of tightly wound bureaucrat he excels at) brought in from South America. With the help of her friend from work (Octavia Spencer), her gay neighbor (Richard Jenkins) and a scientist of questionable motives (Michael Stuhlbarg) Hawkins' Elisa Esposito helps the creature escape with the intent of hiding him until they can release him safely into the sea.

With an excellent cast and beautifully evocative sets, love the apartments above the old theater, The Shape of Water is an expertly made film, which by its very nature you still have question a bit. The film has a fanciful air about it even among its gritty surroundings, you can almost feel the layer of slime on things, and I'm not just talking about the creature. It's almost unexpectedly punctuated by sequences of extreme violence, even torture, and has nudity in it which I was not expecting. The film has all the markings of a labor of love for its director, and the performances, particularly Jenkins are impressive. Certainly not for all tastes, what its attempting seems admirable, and sometimes it succeeds, though its lessons and its politics are often muddled and simplistic, in both good and bad ways. ***1/2

Tony Rome (1967)

Tony Rome is the first in a trilogy of neo-noir detective films Frank Sinatra stared in during the late 1960's, followed by Lady in Cement (1968) in which he also played the detective Tony Rome, and The Detective (also 1968) in which he played a New York City cop named Joe Leland. Tony Rome is a Florida based beach bum P.I. who lives on a boat, as such he is much like the character of Travis McGee in the John D. MacDonald novels of the 1960's through 80's. Tony is hired by his ex partner, now the house detective at a local hotel, to make sure the inebriated daughter of a wealthy local (Sue Lyon of Lolita fame) makes it home safely after a binge, this proves his doorway into various shady goings on and the main plot. Plot however is not the central concern here, the movie is more then happy to take side trips and feature little vignette of eccentric local characters ala Dragnet. While not really challenging material Sinatra does seem to be giving it a decent effort and the movie is an enjoyable through back to the kind of film Humphrey Bogart excelled at. Nancy Sinatra sings the theme song. ***

The Wicker Tree (2012)

Nearly four decades after making the landmark and wonderfully innovative folk horror masterpiece The Wicker Man, writer/director Robin Hardy, then in his 80's, made The Wicker Tree based on his 2006 novel Cowboys for Christ. A kinda, sorta sequel to The Wicker Man, only a single performer from the original film, Christopher Lee, returns in this one, and only briefly in flashback and its not even clear if he's supposed to be the same character he played in the first film. So this is really more of a rumination on similar themes to The Wicker Man. The Wicker Tree isn't good, but its honestly not as bad as I thought it would be, when I begin watching I didn't necessarily plan on finishing, but it was intriguing enough to sustain one viewing. The film hits a lot of the same notes as the first movie, though nowhere near as well. Both films are about Christian outsiders unknowingly making their way into stealthily pagan communities in Scotland, in the first film the outsider was a dowdy and pious English cop played by Edward Woodward, in this movie its a once sultry country singer remaking herself as a Christian recording artiest (Brittania Nicol), and her cowboy fiancé (Henry Garrett). The fact that the Christians in this film are more surfaceie and hollow then the one in the original is probably the closest this movie comes to having something to see about contemporary faith dynamics. I wish they had cast a more impressive singer and a better actress though, Brittania is simply servable at best. The whole cast in fact is unimpressive, other then Lee the biggest 'get'  here is probably British TV star Honeysuckle Weeks, whose name is more memorable then her performance. For such a blatant and flat re rendering of the original film I'm surprised I didn't hate this more, but Hardy still has a flair for a subtly creepy air which makes the movie work better then it should. *1/2.

Small Town Crime (2017)

An alcoholic and disgraced former cop (John Hawkes) stumbles upon a severely beaten girl in her early 20's, and takes her to the hospital where she dies a short time later. Seeing a chance for redemption and possible re-admittance to the force the man decides he is going to solve what happened to girl, which of course takes him into the seamy underbelly of his seemingly benign small town. A conventional and even done to death story line, but its well handled and gets better as it goes along. The cast is made up largely of no names, with Robert Forster, Anthony Anderson, and Octavia Spencer (who also executive produces) being probably the most recognizable names on the screen, though Blake Lively's older sister Robyn has a small part as well. Though set in the Whittier area of California the movie was actually shot here in Utah, in fact there is a scene shot in The Belgian Waffle and Omelet Inn, an favorite local eatery of mine here in Midvale. Pretty good for a movie of its type I liked that the nefarious plot, once we figure out what is, seems like the kind of stupid scheme some not particularly bright people might actually try to pull off. **1/2

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

One of my favorite movies is Night Train to Munich (1940) a WWII espionage film with a very dry sense of humor, I've probably seen it dozens of times, yet it wasn't until this last week that I saw it's kind of prequel. The characters of Charters and Caldicott played by Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford respectively, made their film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes in 1938, and would show up in an additional three films, by various directors played by the same two performers. Wayne and Basil are so good together that they would be teamed up as other characters in an additional eight movies, and the Caldicott and Charters characters would be resurrected by other actors multiple times including in the short lived BBC series Charters and Caldicott in 1985. The characters are two cricket obsessed upper class Brits, often depicted as delightfully aloof from weighty matters going on around them. They are fun to watch and I was looking forward to seeing them again.

Caldicott and Charters are not quite as funny in The Lady Vanishes as they are in Night Train, though they have their moments. Margret Lockwood who would be the female lead in Night Train is also the female lead here, and much of the movie of course takes place on a passenger train traveling through central Europe in the late 1930's. Despite these similarities I was ultimately disappointed with Lady, which I have to regard as one of Hitchcock's more blaw and least distinctively Hitchcokian films. The plot is like a cross between Murder on the Orient Express and So Long at the Fair, and is principally built around a case of gaslighting. Where Night Train was very packed and lively, Lady plays rather slow and relatively little really happens in it. Not even the presence of Michael Redgrave and May Whittey, who I'm usually big fans of could save this film for me. The movie is not horrible, but I think a good re-write could have made it more engaging. **

Padmaavat (2018)

Since moving down to the Salt Lake area about 2 1/2 years ago I've been intrigued by the number of Indian films released here. Most weeks there is at least one showing in a local theater or two and I've been meaning to go and take a look. Last week I finally did so for Padmaavat, a film that has attracted a great deal of controversy on the subcontinent including riots in the city of Gujarat, an attack on a school bus in Haryana, and women threating to kill themselves in protest. The story is based on events that may or may not have happened in the Rajput kingdoms of Northern India in the 13th century. May or may not have happened in that some of the figures involved in the story are historically verified, and some, principally the Queen Padmaavat, are not and may have been added to the story later.

First a little about my experience of going to see an Indian film. I went last weekend, it was a 3D showing, and almost sold out even in matinee so I had to sit very close to the screen. I was the only white guy in the audience, which contained many families, some in traditional dress. The previews were a mix of western releases, Peter Rabbit, Black Panther, and Indian films, including one about a woman with turrets syndrome who teaches a class of unruly students (I kind of want to see that one). The film starts with some disclaimers about cultural sensitivities, and a statement that the film does not endorse the practice of Jauhar.

The story of course concerns Padmaavat (Deepika Padukone, gorgeous and one of India's biggest stars) a woman famed for her beauty and wife of the Rajput ruler Ratan Singh (Shahid Kapoor), both of these characters are Hindu's. Padmaavat's reported beauty attracts the interest of the Sultan of Delhi a Muslim played by Ranveer Singh (Padukone's real life boyfriend). In short Ranveer goes to war with Ratan to get Padmaavat, the Hindus manage to outsmart the Muslims a few times but in the end they lay waste to the city and kill Ratan, so Padmaavat and her ladies court commit mass suicide by burning, the practice of Jauhar, to avoid being captured. Add the controversy of this unpleasant practice along with the fact that the Muslim leader Ranveer is arguably depicted as bisexual and you have a recipe for unrest in India. As is customary with Indian films there are several musical numbers and the thing is really long, almost three hours, and there is not really three hours worth of story here. The scale of the thing is mighty impressive though, and the 3D's kind of interesting, especially the cinders that fall on the audience at the end. Padmaavat is a reasonabley good movie and I'm curious to see more Indian films theatrically in the future. **1/2

Downsizing (2017)

I saw an interview where Matt Damon said that when director Alexander Payne first told him the plot to Downsizing he thought it was a joke. It's understandable that he would think that, the plot is pretty ridicules, a Norwegian scientist develops a process that can safely shrink people to around five inches in height, the scientists altruistic motives for developing this procedure is to ease mankind's stress on the environment, but most of the people who chose to undergo it do so that they may consume conspicuously at a reduced cost in specially built miniaturized retirement communities. It's the kind of film idea that one might expect to see Jack Black or Will Ferrell in, but Payne's film is not (largely) the domain of obvious jokes and gross out humor. In fact the implications of Downsizing are remarkable well thought out, such as most people requiring extensive dental work just before and just after downsizing, otherwise someone's crown could make their head explode as the procedure only works on organic material.

Long stuck in a midlevel position as an in-house occupational therapist for the Omaha Steak Company, Damon's Paul Safranek thinks 'downsizing' will be the solution to all his life's problems, but when his wife (Kristien Wiig) chickens out last minute after Paul has already undergone the procedure, it leads to divorce, Paul's working at a call center (a perfect job for shrunken people), and his questioning the very meaning of life. Payne has carved out a reliable niche for himself with often satirical films focusing on human weakness, but still evidencing an unusually strong sense of empathy for his characters, warts and all. Paul will come to meet a exiled Vietnamese activist forcibly shrunken by her government (Hong Chau) and a miniaturized Serbian playboy (Christoph Waltz) who will change the course of his life, and make him confront his place in the world. This is a movie that it is best to go into with some idea of the type of film your going to get, while its mostly traditional comedy for the first half, the second half gets kind of deep and a little brooding, which isn't for all audiences. I thought this movie really worked and looking forward to seeing it again in the future both for the things I'm sure I missed, as well as the movies small pleasures. Not quite on the level of Payne's great movies like About Schmidt, The Descendants and Nebraska, but close. ***1/2

Confirmation (2016)

Straight forward HBO film about Anita Hill and the controversy at the heart of Clarence Thomas's senate confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. Kerry Washington plays Hill, Wendell Pierce plays Thomas. Various recognizable character actors in kind of hooky makeup to look like prominent senators of the early 1990's, well that's its own reword. I tend to believe Hill because she did not seek out attention on this matter but was approached by senate investigators, and had told other people about the harassment she experienced when it was going on a decade earlier. ***

Charles III (2017)

Television adaptation (shown on Masterpiece Theater) of Mike Bartlett's 2014 play about the ascension of Prince Charles to the British throne and a self inflicted crises that puts his Kingship in jeopardy. The story is similar to the principle narrative of the second series of the British version of  House of Cards titled To Play The King, where a Charles like monarch gets too overtly involved in U.K. politics resulting in a kind of standoff with the British prime minister. Bartlett's play is done in imitation of Shakespeare's history plays, and while it does not go all Elizabethan in its language the dialogue is formal and stylized. The portrayals of the various royals family members are pretty pointed and not flattering. A strange curio and the last film role of the actor who plays Charles III, Tim Pigott-Smith. ***

The Greatest Showman (2017)

Opening to middling reviews The Greatest Showman has done incredibly good word of mouth business, with over a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office so far. I initially had no great desire to see it but multiple people kept telling me I should, so I did. Based loosely on the life of circus impresario P.T. Barnum (1810-1891), The Greatest Showman is a written for the screen musical with songs by the Oscar and Tony winning team of Pasek and Paul. Greatly condensed, the main body of the film makes events that took place between the 1830's and 1870's look like they happened over the course of just a few years. The first half of the film is a rags to riches tale, while the second half a redemption story. Fairly conventional in narrative the film has catchy music and an engaging cast who make it play, with Hugh Jackman in the lead really putting in the work of selling the thing, both on the screen and in an advertising campaign that some times directly begs you to see the movie. It is certainly designed for the big screen and as a movie about a circus it seemed appropriate to see it with a large audience, and I saw it in a nearly packed Saturday matinee more then a month after its initial release. Whether or not it was intentional the film felt rather political, with its message about "the freaks and outcastes" demanding their place in a conservative society that rejects them. Is it just me or is Paul Sparks in everything now.  Ironically Barnum's circus closed up shop the middle of last year after 146 continuous years of operation. **1/2