Film Review: Fly Me To The Moon

                        Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum
 

Remember those wonderful days back in 1962 when JFK decided America would send a man to the moon? 

That was a fabulous (if maybe lunatic) idea, though he was probably just trying to take our minds off a few less pleasant things that happened that year: the Cuban missile crisis, civil rights activists fighting (and winning a few victories) in the American South, and the U.S. increasing its involvement in Vietnam. 

But consider that in 1962 the pager, cordless phone and computer were invented. Also, the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys released their first records and the Rolling Stones played their first shows.

With that as backdrop, director Greg Berlanti thought a film about sending a manned mission to the moon would be cool. So together with writers Keenan Flynn, Rose Gilroy and Bill Kirstein, the script of “Fly Me To The Moon” was written and produced.

In this rom-com, marketing executive Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) hears of the planned moon shot, and hightails it to Cape Canaveral to sell her skills to Channing Tatum, who plays Cole Davis, picked to prepare the scientists for the space trip.

Davis’ orders are to succeed in the moon landing, or to fake it so it looks as though it happened. Davis, of course, isn’t used to faking anything, but Johansson manages to convince him that what he needs most is to make it *look* like the launch happens.

Getting the idea? Yeah, it’s crazy, but Johansson is convincing enough to make Davis believe that she knows whereof she speaks. She is aided by her loyal assistant Ruby (Anna Garcia), who probably figures a job’s a job.

The plot goes on and on, with help from other characters such as Woody Harrelson, who plays Moe Berkus, described as “a shady, fedora-wearing government operative who recruits her to help NASA persuade people that going to the moon is a good idea.”

If you’re thinking that it gets goofier as it continues, you’re right, and if that’s sufficiently off-putting, don’t see the film. Me, I found Johansson such fun to watch that I didn’t care about the silliness of it.

The whole cast is fun (or horrifying, depending on….you know what), and by the time we saw the “landing” I didn’t even care how phony it looked. Or was.

Make your own decision. 

Film Review: Daddio

There are cabbies, talkative and sometimes even nosy, and there are people who need a ride somewhere. Under no circumstance would I consider a pairing of the two sufficient for a film plot.

I’m happy to admit that I would be wrong.

“Daddio” is a strange, funny, oddly even moving film about an old cabbie named Clark (played by Sean Penn), who picks up a fare in the form of a young, pretty girl called here “Girlie,” brilliantly played by Dakota Johnson.

Clark is from New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Girlie is a computer programmer from Oklahoma and says she lives in a world where “everything is ones and zeroes.”

They’re a strange pair, to say the least. He is talkative in the extreme, and seems to have an answer (or at least a suggestion) for any situation. He just lacks someone to talk to.

Girlie has a half-sister who “used to tie me up and lock me in the bathroom.”

“Did you like being tied up?” he asks.

“I liked the challenge of getting free.”

Girlie is trying to figure out what to do with her situation: she’s been dating a married man. And she gets frequent texts from guys who want, well, you can guess what.

Will she get free? Will Clark keep on driving that cab and helping out the socially lost?

You’ll have to see the film to find out. And I would definitely advise that.

Film Review: Janet Planet

          

                     Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler in "Janet Planet"               

As the show opens, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), the named star of this most unusual film, comes to pick up her 11-year-old daughter Lacy (Zoe Ziegler). It’s 1991 and Lacy has called her mom to rescue her from summer camp, an event apparently not appreciated by the kid.

(This is an understatement. Lacy had actually threatened to “kill myself if you don’t come get me.”) 

Thus begins playwright Annie Baker’s first feature film. In the rest of “Janet Planet,” we will meet an assortment of folks who may or may not remind you of folks you met at camp, if you ever did that sort of thing. This gang is, as one would expect, varied in age, interests and abilities, which will lead to some amusing scenes, but this place in rural Massachusetts looks more like an extended campsite than anybody’s idea of home. Then again, maybe that was the plan.

Janet makes her living as an acupuncturist. When we meet her, she has a much-older boyfriend named Wayne (Will Patton), who doesn’t show up often.

For no apparent reason, this leaves Lacy to fend for herself more often than not, and we see her practicing the piano on an electric keyboard and amusing herself with a homemade puppet theater peopled with tiny homemade figurines.

But as for human relationships, well, this is Another Thing, and the longer the show goes on, the odder it gets. At one point, Lacy asks mom, “Would you be disappointed if I might one day date a girl?

Janet muses that she’s always thought she could make any man fall in love with her.

“Will you stop trying?” asks Lacy.

Then there’s Avi (Elias Koteas), who does theater and likes to discuss the Big Bang when “there was nothing…..there was just God.”

And then Avi disappears.

This is a film like no other I’ve seen. Nominated for the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024, it is peculiar beyond words, but I found it odd but fascinating. See what you think. It’s currently playing at the Reading Cinemas Town Square, 4665 Clairemont Drive. 

Film Review: Last Summer

 

                       Last Summer

There’s passion, unfulfilled desire, sex and lots of lust in Catherine Breillat’s provocative “Last Summer,” opening on July 12 at downtown’s Digital Gym Cinema.

Léa Drucker plays Anne, an attorney married to boring businessman Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin). Anne is definitely bored herself, so much so that she even considers taking up with Pierre’s randy teenager Théo (Samuel Kircher) when he pushes her buttons.

Of course, the setting in la belle France doesn’t hurt, but it’s the shockingly shifting power dynamics and the fine acting that will keep you intrigued and wondering how it will end. 

“Last Summer” opens on Friday, July 12 at downtown’s Digital Gym Cinema (1100 Market Street). Here’s the phone number: (619) 230-1938.

Prices: $12 general, $10 students and seniors, $9 members.

Film Review: Night Swim

 

If you’ve ever pondered the fear of the swimming pool, have I got a film for you.

I once had to be dragged out of one and resuscitated, so pools are on my bad list, though I do still love to be around them.

In “Night Swim,” a nice family with small kids buys a house with a lovely pool in the backyard, figuring this will provide amusement and exercise for the kids as well as a good place to have people over for recreation and barbecues. It will also provide exercise for dad Ray Walter (Wyatt Russell), a former baseball star who had to quit the majors due to injury.

The family loves the new place and the folks who live nearby…until strange things start happening. The pool lights seem unreliable and it even looks like something weird is appearing from the deep water. A ghost? 

But Ray loves the pool and the heavy weights he lifts to keep fit. And the kids Izzy (Amélie Horferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren) love it too, until…..

You can’t guess the rest of the story, but you can safely assume it’ll just get weirder and weirder until something really unpleasant happens.

This is one of those films that doesn’t require cogitation, but a willingness to go along with a goofy plot that may make you rethink some of those things everybody considers desirable.

Director Bryce McGuire co-wrote this water-soaked 98-minute thriller with Rod Blackhurst, and both setting and cast (including Kerry Condon as mom Eve Walter) are excellent.

Film Review: Migration

 

                                    The Mallard family

If you can get your mind around the idea of a flock of ducks deciding they want to spend some quality time on the beaches of Jamaica, the goofy new animated cartoon film “Migration” may be for you.

The creators of “Minions” and “The Secret Life of Pets” invite you to meet the Mallard family and take a flight into the unknown with them in “Migration,” which opens in San Diego on Nov. 22.

Actually, dad Mack was happy paddling around their New England pond, but wife Pam is a bit bored and wants to show the kids – son Dax and daughter Gwen – a bit more of the world. She persuades Mack to take them south – via New York City – to tropical Jamaica. On the way, they’ll meet new folks, see things they never knew about, and learn more about each other than they’d ever imagined.

The screenplay (by Mike White, creator of “The White Lotus” and writer of “School of Rock”) features a terrific cast led by two former Emmy nominees: Kumail Nanjiani as dad Mack and Elizabeth Banks as the intrepid matriarch Pam.

Along the way they’ll run into Awkwafina as the leader of a New York City pigeon gang and Carol Kane as Erin the heron. They’ll also bump into Keegan-Michael Key as a homesick Jamaican parrot locked away in Manhattan restaurant and David Mitchell as the yogic leader a duck farm.

Yeah, it’s goofy, all right, and colorful and fast-moving. I’ll have to admit to being less fascinated watching parrots than people (though they do bump into a few peculiar humans as well), but “Migration,” at only an hour and a half, will give you some much-needed laughs.

Film Review: Freud's Last Session

I must admit that it would never have occurred to me to sit down for a film called “Freud’s Last Session” if I hadn’t been invited to see it as a member of the reviewing press.

After all, Freud is kind of outdated these days, isn’t he? After all, this father of modern psychoanalysis, who died way back on the eve of World War II in 1939, was a morphine user. What could he have to tell us today?

Well, in the new film “Freud’s Last Session,” C.S. Lewis, the famous author who wrote “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” as well as books about divorce, grief and pain, did come to visit Freud. 

We don’t really know why (or even whether he did), but in “Freud’s Last Session” we’ll get to observe them discussing religion, grief, pain, war and all sorts of things.

Freud was a known religious skeptic about religion (non-believer is probably a better word). Lewis was a believer, even an Anglican lay theologian. Did Lewis think he could convert the old skeptic?

You’ll have 75 minutes to observe these two discussing the existence of God along with more normal topics like Freud’s relationship with his lesbian daughter Anna and his more unconventional relationship with his best friend’s mother.

Anthony Hopkins is terrific as Freud, the grumpy old geezer who knows what he believes and is even more convinced about what he does not believe. “I have only two words to offer humanity,” he says. “Grow up.”

Freud says it another way: “Truth is in what you don’t say.”

Matthew Goode plays Lewis with the conviction (and the impatience) of a believer.

So in the end, we have a film based on a play based on a book (Armand Nicholi’s “The Question of God.)” And several fine actors (including the women) to portray them.

I admit that I walked out a bit exhausted. 

Film Review: Cassandro

It’s hard work being a luchador. What’s that? A wrestler.

Imagine what it’s like being a gay luchador in Mexico. No easy task, but then neither is life, right? 

“Cassandro” tells the story of a skinny blond kid named Saúl (played by Gael García Bernal), who sees lucha and decides he wants to do that too. His dad is less than excited at the prospect, but mom Yocasta (played by Perla De La Rosa) is very supportive. 

A female luchadora named Sabrina (who fights under the name Lady Anarquía) sees Cassandro practicing one day and offers to train him. Many practice rounds later, she thinks he’s good enough and thinks he ought to fight as an “exótico." I’m guessing she figured out that he’s gay.

The short form of the rest of the story is that he succeeds as a luchadora, though does have to endure a lot of jeering from audiences at the getups he wears (flashy and some downright, shall I say it, feminine).

The point of the story is that you should pursue your dream, no matter what anyone says.

Gael García Bernal is excellent as the determined Cassandro, who doesn’t take no for an answer, but does learn to endure occasional failure.

Roberta Colindrez is convincing as Cassandro’s teacher, though I must admit it’s difficult for me to imagine women as luchadoras. I guess I’m just old fashioned.

Perla De La Rosa is a gem as Cassandro’s mother, supportive (and proud of her son) to the end.  

Raúl Castillo convinces as Cassandra’s boyfriend Gerardo. And Joaquín Cosio is fine as the shady wrestling promoter Lorenzo.

Director Roger Ross Williams keeps everything moving at a fast pace, and the soundtracks (“Seis Pistoleros”) adds to the emotional level.

I never thought I’d watch, much less write about wrestling, but I’m always up for something new, strange or startling. “Cassandro” qualifies on all counts. 

Film Review: A Haunting in Venice

You can’t get much better than Kenneth Branagh. He’s been one of my favorites as an actor and director for years. But he’s just as good at doing both at once, as he proves in “A Haunting in Venice,” for my money the best film of the year, at least so far.

“A Haunting in Venice” is the first time Agatha Christie’s 1969 novel “Hallowe’en Party” has been adapted for film. I hope it’s never done again. This one is better than any I could even imagine.

Here he plays Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot for the third time, but the first based on a Christie source not previously adapted for film. This script was written by Michael Green.

We meet the retired sleuth tending his garden, well, okay, his spiffy manse, when he reluctantly attends a seance. Among the other guests are some of my favorite actors, Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey and Jamie Dornan among them. (That’s not to slight the rest of the fine cast: Dylan Corbet-Bader, Amir El-Masry, Riccardo Scamarcio and Fernando Piloni. I’m just not as familiar with them.)

But when strange and dark things start happening, Poirot is forced to put on his  sleuth hat and go to work. 

Yeoh plays Mrs. Reynolds, a psychic who quickly grows nervous as she senses evil in the room and sets out to determine what’s up. It’s murder and mayhem, of course, expertly directed and acted thanks to Branagh, and filmed brilliantly enough to scare even people like me, who tend to ho-hum this type of thing.

Tina Fey is wonderful fun as fellow writer Ariadne Oliver, a skeptic who quickly gets scared.

If you know the story, you don’t need me to tell you what happens. And if you don’t, I won’t ruin it for you. Be assured that you’ll be impressed, if not frightened out of your mind.

Don’t miss this cinematic masterpiece.

Film Review: Kelce

 

I haven’t been a football fanatic or even much of a fan since my long-gone college days, but I do recall being in the stands and brought to near-hysteria by a hard-fought game (especially when my team won).

And I’d never heard of Philadelphia Eagles star center Jason Kelce until I saw the surprisingly fascinating and emotional story of his life and his heart-wrenching decision to retire from the life he loved.

“Kelce,” which will premiere on Prime Video on Sept. 12, shows Kelce’s last game, Super Bowl 57 in February 2023 between his Philadelphia Eagles and the hated San Francisco Giants, which pitted Kelce against his younger brother Travis, who played for the Giants. 

You’ll almost understand how Jason came to regard the football stadium as home when you see the joy reflected on his face every time he’s responsible for a score (many instances are shown).

But football isn’t a kind employer. It takes a physical toll every time Jason takes a hit, is thrown to the ground or gets an injury, and we see those as well.

Kelce made a name for himself while playing college ball at the University of Cincinnati, and was drafted by the Eagles in the sixth round of the 2011 pro draft.

He became an instant celebrity, known as a man who could get the job done, highlighted by that history-making Super Bowl appearance which pitted the Kelce boys against each other.

But it’s now eleven years later, and those pro years have taken a physical toll in broken bones and other injuries.

Is it time to hang it up, or does he have another season in him?

“Kelce” tells and shows all, and thanks to Kelce himself does it with grace and intelligence. 

Whether or not you’re a football fan, this film is worth seeing. 

 

Review will be posted Aug. 18.

Film Review: Bobi Wine: The People's President

                         Bobi Wine: The People's President

The next time you’re tempted to complain about the American political process, take a look at “Bobi Wine: The People’s President.”

This epic about the Ugandan opposition leader, activist and musical star of that name who used his music to fight the regime that had been led for 35 years by Yoweri Museveni is at the Digital Gym in downtown San Diego (and available elsewhere on  ???

Museveni took power in 1986 and changed Uganda’s constitution to enable him to run for yet another five-year term. Does that sound familiar?

Bobi Wine, born in 1982 in the Kamwokya slums of Kampala to his mother, a nurse, and father, a veterinarian and farmer, was unhappy with Museveni’s tactics and wanted to improve the lives of his fellow Ugandans. So in 2017 he

enlisted the approval of his wife Barbara Itungo Kyagulanyi (Barbie) and decided to run for a parliamentary seat just vacated.

He campaigned for hospital sanitization, malaria prevention, refugees’ rights and children’s education. His songs focused on the struggles of Uganda’s underprivileged and he called upon the people to get involved and change their country’s destiny.

It was a grueling campaign, and though the people seemed impressed by Bobi, the film is full of grisly actions and awful scenes from the police and the political establishment.

Ultimately, however, Bobi wins his seat.

The film is co-directed by Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo. Sharp, born in Uganda, spent his early working life as a film editor in London. He met Bobi and Barbie in 2017 and was inspired by their courage.

Los Angeles-based filmmaker Bwayo, born in the village of Bududa on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda, was introduced to filmmaking by peeking through cracks in the walls of local bootleg movie theaters housed in wooden shacks. 

The two, having shot hundreds of hours of footage, spent two years in the cutting room.

It’s a remarkable cinematic achievement, both inspirational and horrifying. I recommend it highly.

The details

“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” opens Aug. 4 and plays Aug. 11-17, 2023 at Digital Gym Cinema, 1100 Market St., San Diego.

Prices: $12 regular; $10 students & seniors; $9 members 

 

Film Review: Blackberry

                         Blackberry's inventor and CEO

I’m old, and admit that I didn’t jump on cellular devices when they first appeared. I was busy trying to find information for the students I worked with the hard way, in books.

I didn’t buy a Blackberry when they first came out either, or anytime thereafter. I waited around for iPhones.

So Matt Johnson’s new film “Blackberry” is all news to me, and I found it quite fascinating as it shows the world “the story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world’s first smartphone.”

It does show something that is still pretty common in business, though: the fraud and greed that can make innovators rush perhaps a bit too fast down the information superhighway.

Do geek inventors need a businessman to run the joint? Inventor Mike (Jay Barushel) doesn’t think so, but then again he doesn’t know how to sell stuff, only how to make it.

So along comes a businessman named Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), who will do all the boring stuff but insists on being named CEO.

You can probably imagine the rest, especially if you remember the old Blackberry. And if not, you can be amused by the arguments and glitches along the way to success and then failure for this company. 

It’s a good (or bad) old American story.