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RSV-P.O.’d

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You’re Cordially Invited

by George Wolf

Can you believe there are some people who don’t think Will Ferrell is funny? That’s crazy to me. And what about the ones who claim they aren’t instantly charmed by Reese Witherspoon?

Okay I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Reese Witherspoon. But the point is, putting Will and Reese together isn’t a bad strategy for getting your Prime Video rom-com a little script insurance.

Writer/director Nicholas Stoller buys in for You’re Cordially Invited, and surrounds his two leads with an equally likable ensemble that delivers some lively smiles even when the antics go a bit overboard.

Will is Jim, a widower whose sweet pumpkin Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan – a delight as usual) just got engaged to Oliver (Stony Blydon)! Reese is Margot, who volunteers to plan her sister Neve’s (Meredith Hagner) wedding to Dixon (Jimmy Tatro). Through a ridiculous mixup that somehow feels like it could happen I suppose, Jim and Margot both end up reserving the very same private wedding venue on the very same weekend.

They reluctantly agree to make the best of it, but it isn’t long before the two wedding planners go “chaos monkey,” and start planning some mischief to each make sure it’s their celebration that gets the upper hand in marriage.

Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek) pits reality TV exec Margot and her bless-your-heart southern family (Leanne Morgan, Rory Scovel, matriarch Celia Weston) against the probably a hairdresser Jim and his daughter’s rowdy bridesmaids (Keyla Monterosso Mejia, Ramona Young, Lauren Holt). Expect drunken toasts, hurt feelings, black eyes, alligator wrestling and some enthusiastic, “Islands in the Stream” karaoke-ing.

For me, the only true LOL moment comes with the late reveal of what Jim really does for living (and Ferrell’s priceless delivery of that information). Still, there are amusements along the way, and some well- meaning lessons about judging people too quickly and feeling lonely around your own family members.

Of course you know where it’s ultimately headed. But with Will & Reese at the top of this engaging guest list, You’re Cordially Invited throws a home steaming party that’s slightly more fun than forgettable.

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A Friend Indeed

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Brave the Dark

by George Wolf

In just four years, Angel Studios has become a leader in the faith-based entertainment market. TV’s The Chosen and the feature films Cabrini and Sound of Freedom were target audience favorites, and garnered at least some critical acclaim.

Angel’s latest production, Brave the Dark, lightens the hands and the editorializing for a generically successful crowd-pleaser about the power of belief for a troubled soul.

Co-written and directed by Damien Harris, the film is based on the life of Nathan Williams, who overcame a traumatic childhood thanks to the mentorship of his teacher, Stan Deen.

In and out of Pennsylvania foster homes after the death of his parents, Williams (Nicholas Hamilton, It, It Chapter Two) robs a store with some friends and is convicted of burglary. He’s saved from jail under the guardianship of Mr. Deen (Jared Harris, Damian’s brother), who is seemingly a favorite of everyone in the community.

But Nate continues to act out at nearly every turn, and the message that he doesn’t believe in his own worth is delivered as clearly as Deen’s need to soothe his loneliness after the painful death of his wife. Hamilton echos the film’s struggles with nuance, while the veteran Harris brings enough endearing authenticity to help smooth the rough edges in their many scenes together.

The film is another blunt, save-the-children instrument for Angel Studios. And it’s needlessly overlong as it slogs through multiple flashbacks on its way to a fairly obvious reveal and an “it’s not your fault” breakthrough that should have tried harder to distance itself from Good Will Hunting.

But there is heart here, and the real Nathan’s closing credits plea to “pay it forward” is sweetly schmalzy. Even better, the sincere attempts at storytelling are just competent enough to reach beyond the choir.

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City Hands

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Into the Deep

by George Wolf

In the category of shark movie stunt casting, Into the Deep may have bagged the great white whale. Because for the first time since Jaws set the standard fifty years ago, Richard Dreyfuss is sharkin’ again (note: piranha movies don’t count).

Well, he’s not actively sharkin’, as Dreyfuss plays Seamus, whom we mainly see schooling his granddaughter Cassidy on how important it is to respect the ocean and everything in it.

“It’s their kingdom. You’re a guest.”

Young Cassidy (Quinn P. Hensley) learns that the hard way when a shark attack kills her father. Years later, adult Cassidy (Scout Taylor-Compton) is an oceanographer still haunted by the nightmares of her father’s death, but willing to put fears aside for a pleasure trip with her new husband, Gregg (Callum McGowan).

Old friend “Benz” (Stuart Townsend) runs a weathered charter boat on the coastline, so Cass and Gregg agree to join another couple for some wreck diving. But before you can bid adieu to some fair Spanish ladies, both sharks and pirates come cruising.

The evil – I mean c’mon, look at the scar on his face! – Jordan Devane (Jon Seda) and his gang of former Navy SEALs hijack Benz’s boat, forcing the tourists to dive the shark-infested waters and retrieve their stash of drugs waiting below.

The movie’s tagline is the shameless “under water no one can hear you scream,” which immediately sets a low bar of expectations that director Christian Sesma manages to hit. Flashbacks are juggled awkwardly enough to kneecap any sort of tension, and while the CGI sharks work well enough in dream sequences, the actual attack set pieces are embarrassingly weak. Screenwriters Chad Law and Josh Ridgeway provide plenty of Scooby-Doo style exposition that anyone not named Richard can’t come close to elevating.

It is, of course, a nostalgic treat to see Dreyfuss at least near troubled waters again, even though you can’t help but wonder why he agreed. The answer comes with the extended message on shark conservation he delivers over the closing credits.

Fair enough. At least no real ones died for this bloody mess.

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By Design

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The Brutalist

by George Wolf

After a series of memorable supporting roles (including Thirteen, Funny Games, and Melancholia), Brady Corbet took a step toward filmmaking in 2012 as co-writer and star of the creepily effective Antonio Campos thriller Simon Killer. He moved behind the camera for The Childhood of a Leader (2015) and Vox Lux (2018), teaming with his co-writer and wife Mona Fastvold for two captivating features anchored in history.

But as impressive as Corbet’s filmography has been so far, the audacious scope (three and a half hours, with an intermission) and ambitious craftsmanship (Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley shoot in 70mm VistaVision – out of date in American since the early 60s) of The Brutalist arrives as an utterly shocking step forward. And even when it teeters on a late, self-indulgent precipice, the film heralds Corbet and Fastvold as filmmakers of impressive vision and skill.

Though their characters are again changed by history, this time they give those characters more of a chance to shape it. We arrive in post-WWII America with László Tóth (an astounding Adrien Brody), a Hungarian who has survived the Nazi concentration camps and come to work with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) in a Pennsylvania furniture store. Corbet’s gorgeous upside-down framing of the Statue of Liberty foreshadows both Tóth’s future in a new land and the nimble camerawork to come, with the memorable scale from Daniel Blumberg’s majestic score signaling the increasing stakes.

László has lost much to wartime trauma, and Brody makes the pain palpable. But as he waits for word as to when his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, never better) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) may join him in America, László holds tight to his pride from working as a celebrated architect in Budapest.

When local tycoon Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce, terrific as the film’s Daniel Day-Lewis) learns of László’s talent, he hires him to design a long desired community center. The project will come to consume László’s very existence.

Corbet assembles the saga in two chapters, and after a fairly straightforward setup in Act One, motives and messaging become more abstract. On the surface is an epic tale of post war America’s give and take relationship with its immigrants, of beauty and art surviving the worst of humanity and of the deep complexities within the American capitalist dream. And if it stopped there, The Brutalist would stand as a grand achievement. But László isn’t the only architect thinking very big here, and Corbet builds up Act Two (and the accompanying epilogue) with grand ideas on personal legacy, Jewish history, sexual repression, power and shame, and ultimately, more questions than he’s intending to answer.

Corbet’s direction also becomes more insistent, adding shots that move away from what his characters would naturally notice to stress elements for audience benefit. The gorgeous photography, muscular framing and powerful performances ensure nothing goes to waste, but a road to a grand and profound statement begins to gather some stones.

While the film does feel overlong, it is never boring, as nearly every frame contains something, or someone, intriguing. Zsófia’s arc – that of a girl rendered mute from wartime trauma who grows to reclaim her destiny – could fuel its own feature film, as could Attila’s path to assimilation, and any number of supporting characters adding memorable moments to the landscape.

And The Brutalist is nothing if not memorable. Though the sheer accomplishment may stand a bit taller than the final statement, it cements Corbet as a voice that cannot be ignored.

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The Agony of Defeat

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September 5

by George Wolf

The crew of a live TV broadcast in the 1970s battles mounting pressure and a ticking clock, tensions rising while a well-known outcome is reimagined.

Saturday Night?

No, you’ll find precious few laughs in September 5. But director/co-writer Tim Fehlman and a terrific cast deliver a taut, precise and impressively constructed look inside the crew that found themselves covering terrorism at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Germany.

Members of the militant group Black September infiltrated the Olympic Village, killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team, and took nine others hostage. You may know how it all ended. And while Spielberg’s 2005 Munich masterfully deconstructed Israel’s plan for revenge, Fehlman (The Colony) puts us beside the souls unexpectedly tasked with broadcasting terrorism to 900 million people.

The news crew was actually from the sports department, and led by legend-in-the-making Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard). After a day covering another Mark Spitz gold medal, gunshots are heard outside. As events quickly grow dire, Arledge rebuffs any requests to step aside for more experienced reporters, leaning on ops director Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) and German translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch) to craft a broadcast plan that won’t impede any rescue effort.

Not one of these 95 minutes feels wasted – a necessity for a film steeped in souls with no time to spare. Fehlman weaves the tech details (Peter Jennings went live via telephone) and real archival footage in an impressively seamless fashion that fuels an authentic urgency that is relentless, apolitical and gripping.

And in a year of some f-ing great ensembles, the one here is right near the top. Sarsgaard, Chaplin and Magaro make an intense triumvirate of smarts, sweat and desperation, while Benesch (The White Ribbon, The Teacher’s Lounge) continues to be a master of understated gravity.

There are so many levels to these tragic hours in history, and Fehlman miraculously packs many of them into close, heartbreaking quarters. A tightly-wound account of one anxious search for the thrill of victory, September 5 is one of the year’s unforgettable thrillers.

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Life of Illusion

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All We Imagine As Light

by George Wolf

“It’s like this place isn’t real. You could just vanish into thin air and no one would ever know.”

“We would know.”

With All We Imagine As Light, writer/director Payal Kapadia creates a triumphant portrait of friendship and Indian womanhood. In her narrative feature debut, Kapadia unveils a wonderful voice, one full of clarity and grace, with an assured command of how to reach us through her characters.

Kani Kusruti is gently spellbinding as Prabha, a nurse in Mumbai who has not heard from her husband in over a year. After their arranged marriage, he has been working extensively in Germany, and when his unexpected gift to Prabha arrives in the mail, it only punctures her guarded routine.

Prabha’s roommate is Anu (Divya Prabha), a younger nurse who is resisting her parents’ desire for an arranged marriage by taking up with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). While the other nurses whisper about her “boy,” Anu and Shiaz look forward to finding a place to become intimate.

While Prabha advises Anu to be more responsible, the lesson is underscored by Prabha’s attempts to help Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who works as a cook in the hospital, stay in her chawl (tenement apartment). Parvaty’s husband has suddenly passed away, and now a developer wants to evict her to make way for a skyscraper.

As the lives of the three women intersect, Kapadia illustrates the struggle of Indian women to balance tradition with the desire to control their own destinies. And whenPrabha and Anu join Parvaty on a trip back to her village, separate events will push all three women closer to changing their lives.

There is a poetic nature to Kapadia’s storytelling. With only the most gentle of nudges, Kapadia speaks for the scores of Indian women who come to Mumbai for the promise of a better life in the city, only to be disillusioned. All We Imagine As Light draws its power from how clearly it sees them, and how real it makes them feel.

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Final Curtain

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The Last Showgirl

by George Wolf

They may be a universe of genres apart, but Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl breathe plenty of the same air, both on the screen and on the red carpet.

Like fellow 90s icon Demi Moore, Pamela Anderson squeezes every dramatic ounce from the role of her lifetime, reigniting her career with a performance steeped in the personal experience of hard truths her character is suddenly forced to confront.

Anderson is Shelly, a longtime showgirl at the Le Razzle Dazzle revue in Las Vegas. Shelly finds purpose in the garish glamour of feathers, sequins and skin, and in her small circle of backstage friends. Dismissing the labels of just another “nudie show,” Shelly will not be denied the dignity she brings to each performance.

But after a three-decade run, the show’s producers announce plans to shut it down, leaving cast and crew to ponder what comes next. The question hits hardest for Shelly, who will soon be left to navigate Las Vegas without the leverage of youthful beauty.

And as the days tick down to that final curtain, Shelly is also juggling a strained relationship with her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), mother figure advances from young cast member Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), and a complicated past with Eddie (Dave Bautista), the show’s stage manager.

In her feature debut, screenwriter Kate Gersten provides important moments of authenticity that are doubtlessly rooted in her research time spent with real showgirls in Vegas. Coppola (Palo Alto, Mainstream) showcases it all with subtlety and respect, letting each character-driven moment (including a priceless cameo from Jamie Lee Curtis) personify a longing to savor something that is already gone.

But like Moore’s desperate Elisabeth in The Substance, it is Anderson herself who provides this film’s most authentic layer. She has lived a life celebrated for her face and body, but often mocked when she tried to offer anything else. That hard-won wisdom grounds Anderson’s performance, and makes Shelly’s steadfast defense of her chosen art form anything but laughable.

Coppola’s camera comes in close, and Anderson does not flinch, letting every line on her face tell a story. She hits enough levels of honesty to prove just as vital to her film as Moore is to hers, bringing a clear-eyed engagement that gives The Last Showgirl its – yes I’ll say it – substance, and her career its own reason to be re-born.

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Battle Scarred

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The Fire Inside

by George Wolf

Like James Mangold and the music biopic, director Rachel Morrison is facing the lure of convention with The Fire Inside. Not only is this a sports drama, but the sport is boxing – perhaps the most easily cliched in the genre.

But Morrison has Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins in her corner as screenwriter, and together they give the true story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields the gritty authenticity she deserves.

Shields rose from a hardscrabble upbringing in Flint, Michigan to twice compete for Olympic gold, but the film earns its spot on the podium from the way it shifts the perspective to opponents she fought outside the ring.

Morrison – making her feature debut after television projects and numerous cinematographer credits on films such as Black Panther and Mudbound – avoids easy button pushing (no training montage!) to mine depth from the relationship between Shields (Ryan Destiny from TV’s Grownish and Star) and her trainer, Jason Crutchfield (the great Brian Tyree Henry).

Both Destiny and Henry and fantastic, and their partnership is rooted in a clash of raw determination and hard-won wisdom that’s inherently easy to root for. Morrison sets us up to sweat right beside them, and to understand the real-life trauma that remains when the sold out crowds head home.

Like any good sports movie, the film gives us plenty to cheer for. But that’s the easy part. It’s a bit more difficult to paint heart, humanity, and the drive to never settle with genuine feeling. But it’s clear that Shields has never backed down from a challenge, and The Fire Inside makes sure we don’t forget that.

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Mystery Tramp

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A Complete Unknown

by George Wolf

James Mangold’s Walk the Line wasn’t a bad movie. But that 2005 Johnny Cash biopic – along with Taylor Hackford’s Ray from one year earlier – relied so heavily on convention that Jake Kasdan’s 2007 comedy Walk Hard found easy marks for spoofing.

A Complete Unknown has Mangold’s biopic sights set on Bob Dylan, where a tighter historical focus helps him craft a more memorable film.

Instead of attempting a complete life arc, Mangold and co-writers Jay Cocks and Elijah Wald wisely choose a four-year whirlwind that changed the course of music and culture. Opening in 1961 as a 19-year-old Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) travels from Minnesota to visit an ailing Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) in a New York hospital, the film follows Dylan’s legendary rise to savior of the folk music scene, through his defiant choice to turn Judas and “go electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Dylan became a pop culture enigma long ago, fueled by his obvious delight in tall tales, an antagonistic stage presence and prickly interactions with the press. He’s cared little for letting us know him, leaving the more avant garde approaches to telling his story (especially Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There) as the most compelling.

It’s hard to imagine a mainstream treatment working better than this one. And it’s one propelled by an absolutely transformative performance from Chalamet. His success at emulating both Dylan’s voice and guitar style is beyond impressive, as is his ease at moving the iconic persona from an ambitious Greenwich Village newbie to the cynical voice of a generation feeling “pulverized by fame.”

And maybe most importantly, he crafts Dylan as a soul bursting with song ideas 24/7. This not only provides an important layer for his sometimes cold social behaviors, but it gives the birth of classic compositions a much more organic, believable feel than the revisionist pandering of biopic films looking to simply pad a soundtrack (cough, cough, Bohemian Rhapsody.)

The supporting ensemble provides terrific backup, especially Edward Norton’s turn as folk hero Pete Seeger. A committed pacifist, Seeger serves as gentle mentor to Dylan early on, then nervously tries to navigate the young man’s ascension once it’s clear that his talent is too great to contain.

That early take-and-give is a subtle step toward the intimate triangle that anchors the film: Dylan’s relationships with girlfriend Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning, perfectly supportive, naive and wounded) and singer/activist Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro, impressively handling her own assignment of embodying a legend). The film doesn’t shy away from the self-centered way Dylan hedged his bets at both women’s expense. And though it’s clear Dylan was following his artistic voice above all, you never get the sense he’s being entirely forgiven, either.

That’s refreshing, especially since Dylan himself was reportedly involved enough in production to provide some dialog and request the “Sylvia Russo” name change from the real-life Suze Rotolo. He also apparently gave his blessing to a major anachronism in the storyline that will seem egregious to longtime fans but ultimately adds dramatic weight to the final fiasco at Newport. (The ill-advised addition of Chalamet’s face into some real archival footage, though, is a curious misstep.)

For all its many strengths, maybe the most impressive aspect of the film is the way it uses that implied mystery of the title to its advantage. Eschewing the standard biography, this time Mangold paints us the time, the place, and a movement that’s content to tread water, then adds the mystery tramp seemingly sent from outer space as a necessary chaos agent.

As I write this review I’m listening to one of the 16 Dylan albums sitting in my playlist. Major fan here, and the closer I got to seeing this film, the more cautiously optimistic I felt. More than happy to report it exceeds expectations.

A Complete Unknown is an intoxicating, engrossing mix, and one of the best films of the year.

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Appointed Rounds

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The Six Triple Eight

by George Wolf

“Where there is no mail there is low morale.”

For a time during the height of WWII, there was no mail. Battalion 6888 – the only all-black outfit in the Women’s Army Corp to see overseas duty – was given six months to sort through a backlog of 17 million letters between soldiers and their loved ones back home.

If they succeeded, the women would restore hope to families and morale to the troops. If they didn’t, bigots throughout the military would use the failure as proof of inferiority.

Netflix’s The Six Triple Eight tells a lesser-known story of unsung heroes who deserve the acclaim, but the best intentions of writer/director Tyler Perry are often hamstrung by his broad brush and heavy-handed approach to telling it.

Our window into history is Lena Derriecott (Emily Obsidian of TV’s Sistas), who enlists after her high school love Abram (Gregg Sulkin) is shot down and killed in action. Captain (later Major) Charity Adams (Kerry Washington) whips Lena and the rest of the women into shape, and longs for marching orders that her superiors have no intention of providing.

But when President Roosevelt (Sam Waterston), First Lady Eleanor (Susan Sarandon) and National Council of Negro Women founder Mary McLeod Bethune (Oprah Winfrey) learn of the interruption of mail service, openly racist officers such as General Halt (Dean Norris) have to begrudgingly deploy the 6888th.

Perry adapts Kevin Hymel’s 2019 article “Fighting a Two-Front War” with a well-deserved respect for the mission, but a lack of depth that often reduces the timelines to little beyond sanitized set pieces and expositionary dialog. The ensemble consistently over-emotes, while even reliable talents such as Washington and Norris seem coached to push the dramatics and facial reactions.

The history lesson here – which includes the Army’s attempt to sabotage the 6888th – doesn’t need that hard sell. What these women accomplished was truly heroic, and Perry works best when he’s letting us in on the meticulous methods they found to connect the more hard-to-decipher addresses with their rightful owners.

Even the finale – when we get the expected (and welcome) archival footage featuring the real women involved – comes equipped with an extended retelling of the plot points we just watched unfold. From start to finish, The Six Triple Eight seems engineered for the distracted attentions of streaming audiences. So while the film’s limited theatrical run is appreciated, it also feels a bit outside the post code.