A lovely, gentle romance between a charming and gorgeous Icelandic man and a lovely and demure Japanese woman, told through flashbacks to 1969 London from a 2020 present. Besides whetting my appetite for Japanese cuisine, the film almost made me nostalgic for the days of Covid lockdown.
If you’re going to have an affair, it’s probably better not to have it with your teenage stepson. That seemed to be the message of this very French film: lots of relatable characters, long takes, sex and bad decisions. It would have been easier to take if Theo, the 16-year-old bundle of animal magnetism, had been either more attractive or more pleasant, but he was a convincingly unhappy, irresponsible teen. The film belongs to Lea Drucker, who wore her emotions on her face a bit too plainly and never quite convinced us of her actions.
A disjointed melange of mostly still photos for a documentary that purported a big story–scandal at the Venice Biennale–that never showed up. What was Leo Castelli’s involvement? Who was Rauschenberg’s competition? Wasn’t he the “best painter” there? What did his later ventures–e.g., ROCI–have to do with anything? Why talking heads who arrived on the scene more than 40 years later, including a young art historian from Tokyo? It was fun to see Rauschenberg’s works, often over and over, but I missed discussion of their artistic merit, or the art of the other impressive American representatives. I felt continually short-changed.
A sober and sobering account of a Syrian refugee family’s attempt to reach Sweden via Belarus and Poland, two countries that kicked them around, and worse, like political footballs. Agnieszka Holland crafts her film, shot in black-and-white after an opening view of, presumably, the green border, in chapters told from the perspectives of 1. the family, 2. humanitarian activists, 3. one member of the border patrol, and 4. an attractive psychologist who responds, and is transformed, by 1, 2 and 3. Every character, and there are many, is compelling. The plight of the refugees is hard to watch but harder to turn away from. While the film’s message is a plea for humanity, you can’t but feel, as with last year’s Io Capitano, that you don’t want to be a refugee.
A movie based on a book of photographs is a novel concept (if you pardon the anti-pun). Accordingly, it describes a place and time and a particular subset of people: bikeriders. Enough happens to keep the story moving, but without the dramatic tension of a plot-driven film. It’s watching people. And what people! Jodi Comer is Oscar-worthy as Kathy: she creates a character you believe in, and with her supple, subtle face nails every emotion, every reaction. Almost as magnetic is Tom Hardy as Johnny, the gang leader, who mumbles to make Marlon Brando proud. Austin Butler falls between Brad Pitt and James Dean but is much better than he was as Elvis. The supporting cast is stellar (who recognized Michael Shannon?) and the soundtrack, led by the Shangri-las, is an evocative joy. And every so often the camera frames a scene that you know must have been a Danny Lyon photo.
Unfortunately, I’m a little Glen Powelled out after Anyone But You, hot on the heels of his flyboy roles in Top Gun: Maverick and Devotion. The various disguises he put on for his hit man job didn’t hide the pretty-boy charm that seemed his main contribution. Adria Arjona was new and good, and the supporting cast was fine. The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction plot was a stretch: even if there were that many losers in one city looking for a hit man to solve their problems, what are the odds they’d all find the cops? And missing the film’s first five minutes, I never understood how Gary Johnson, an intellectual college professor, wound up with this side job.
And one more thing: the plot didn’t lead to a happy ending, but the filmmakers tacked one on, knowing that people aren’t watching movies to get more depressed. This is even truer for The Idea of You, which tacked on an unlikely and gratuitous “five years later” coda to warm our hearts.
A love poem to Anne Hathaway, by Anne Hathaway, but what’s wrong with that? There’s a serious subtext of gender-based hypocrisy: society (i.e., social media) wouldn’t shame a 40-year-old man for an affair with a 24-year-old woman as they attack Hathaway’s character. But if the man has a 16-year-old daughter it gets a little trickier. I liked August Moon.
Huh? Expecting some sly sociopolitical comment, all I got was a cliched shoot-’em-up, battle scenes galore and nothing that made much sense. The super-achieving, premise-defying girl was great, but I had trouble telling one ape from another. The movie moved quickly, though.
Our first two shows on Broadway for the spring 2024 season shared sensational staging. For Enemy of the People, lighting by paraffin lamps, spare furniture and drab black costumes at Circle in the Square let us feel we were back in 19th century Norway. Postwar London for The Who’s Tommy wasn’t so much a location as an electric charge: glowing rectangles for doors and mirrors flew across the stage, setting the scenes without distracting from the energy of the music. Both shows delivered. Tommy is the nonpareil rock opera. What was lost in not having Pete Townshend’s guitar was gained in having Broadway singers inhabiting the various roles. Tommy at three ages added charm to the tough story. The second act suffered in comparison to the first, which has the show-stoppers, and as a plot is harder to follow. The score is great and the production of Pinball Wizard brought tears to my eyes.
Ibsen’s play is didactic, and the message resonates as loudly today as it must have in 1882. The downside is that the supporting cast are positions, not real people. Their performances seemed a bit below par; I couldn’t tell if the fault was the casting–with notably an African-American, Asian-American and dwarf standing in for 19th century rural Norwegians–or the play’s architecture. Regardless, the two leads, played by Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli, held the stage and carried the day.
Lincoln Center Theatre’s production of Uncle Vanya was misconceived, miscast and misdirected. Other than that… Taking the play out of 1890s Russia left it floating in a senseless place, with doctors making month-long house calls, Blacks talking jive and Steve Carrell playing Steve Carrell. Alfred Molina was excellent as the professor, but he made the rest of the cast unconvincing. Carrell’s sarcastic stage-hogging didn’t equate, for me, with a long-suffering estate manager, and none of the personal relationships on display made emotional sense. In contrast to the above shows, the set was minimal, contributing to the placelessness of the production, and the thrust stage meant an actor’s back was in our way much of the time.
We also had a sightline problem at Stereophonic: seated third-row center, with the stage raised above us, we frequently had the two studio engineers blocking our view of the actors in the recording studio behind and above them. Whether our proximity exaggerated the bass guitar volume I don’t know, but the music was unpleasantly loud. We had seen the apparently identical Off-Broadway production at Playwrights’ Horizon last May, so the novelty and excitement of discovery were gone on this viewing. The play itself, however, held up. It’s hard to think of another play where there are seven so well defined characters who each get their due. And in stark comparison to everything else we’ve seen this spring, these were “real” people. Eli Gelb, as the schlumpy engineer Grover, has won awards and should win more, but all the others, led by Sarah Pidgeon and Will Brill, were just as memorable. I understand why the Tonys are treating this as a “play,” not a “musical,” but what you hear of the songs made me want to buy the record.
Speaking of musicals, there are two kinds: one where songs are written for the production and “jukebox” musicals where pre-existing hit songs are cobbled together around a plot. And then there are two kinds of jukebox musicals: one where the songs are presented as the hit songs they are (viz., Jersey Boys, A Beautiful Noise, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg) and the other where they are incorporated into the story, a la the more traditional kind of musical (viz., Mamma Mia, Return to Margaritaville, New York, New York). Hell’s Kitchen, the Alicia Keys story, is the latter, and because I didn’t know any of her hit songs I found myself wondering if the story was taking a direction so a song could be shoehorned in. Not that there was anything terribly unusual, or original, in the mad-at-my-mother, falling-foolishly-in-love teenager who discovers-herself-through-music and makes it story. The generally mellower songs in the second act grabbed me more and the earnest and lively production was engaging throughout (when I could see around the head of the gentleman in front of me). The big letdown was the absence of the star whom we had expressly come to see, Maleah Joi Moon. Her understudy played the part and sang the songs flawlessly, but she didn’t have the personal charm needed to win you over.
Patriots felt more like a history lesson than a play, and a pretty intense one at that. Peter Morgan used his tools for dramatizing the British royal family and applied them to Putin’s rise in Russia, as told through the eyes of oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Michael Stuhlbarg did yeoman’s work in the lead, although his acting tics got on my nerves by the end. Will Keen as Putin was commanding. Luke Thallon played Roman Abramovich as a sweetheart, maybe out of concern for British libel laws, and the supporting cast was flawless. There wasn’t much emotion or character development; what we walked out of the theater with was our thoughts on Russia and Putin.
Cabaret at the August Wilson Theater turned Kit Kat Club put us right back into the political world. The second act, when the Nazis appeared, was half as long and twice as good as the first act, which introduced the characters and gave us a lot of louche that became monotonous. Eddie Redmayne was sensational as the twisting, twisted emcee, while Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell created the only genuinely emotional relationship. Gayle Rankin’s Sallie Bowles made me long for Liza Minelli, and the man playing Clifford Bradshaw made me long for a better actor.
In sum, it was a disappointing Broadway season (and, unusually, we didn’t venture Off-Broadway). The only moment I felt transported was during Tommy’s Pinball Wizard. The only play I would wholeheartedly recommend was Stereophonic, and its second time around wasn’t as good for me due to sight and sound issues. And in most of the productions I saw performances that didn’t measure up. As I waited in line at TKTS for Patriots, I realized that we got to see everything I wanted to.
An old-form Woody Allen short story, set in the streets and party rooms of Paris instead of New York: four characters, lots of talk about marriage and life, and just when you start to care about what happens to the people we get a goofy, comic ending. It’s fun to be back in France and back in ’70s cinema.
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