Dogs Bark

Going Home Again - - Will and Harper (2024, USA, Color, 114 min)

Strongly recommended. Gender dysphoria is a bitch. Just ask Lana Wachowski (The Matrix) . . . or Eliot Page (Juno) . . . or Harper Steele (Saturday Night Live) screenwriter and co-star, with Will Farrell (Anchorman), of Netflix documentary, Will And Harper. Steele is the latest entertainer to come out as transgender and is a long-time colleague and friend of Farrell, and dozens of SNL cast members. The documentary literally follows Steele and Farrell on a cross-country road trip to redefine and re-cement their friendship. Along the way, it uses Steele’s attempt to reconnect his relationship to the America he loved as a man but now explores as a woman. Steele’s new and uneasy self-image makes this a challenge as the film explores - - with grace, humor, and some pain - - the many issues faced by gender reassignment and the test of a post-transition friendship. Director Josh Greenbaum (Strays) sweetly sincere documentary has a lock on an Oscar.

I Can Get It for you Wholesale - - The Substance (2024, UK/France, Color, 141 min) - - 28 September 2024

Not recommended. The Substance starts with a good premise, develops nicely, but ends in the most revolting 20 minutes since the bathtub scene in Saltburn. Who knows why the Cannes jury awarded the Best Screenplay trophy to this unfunny disappointment? The movie threatens Gran Guignol with an early-on close-up of TV exec Dennis Quaid (Great Balls Of Fire) slobbering down shrimp while horrified actress Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore, Ghost) looks on. It’s Sparkle’s 50^th birthday, and she’s too old to keep her job. She turns to a shadowy wonder drug, The Substance, to create a new “her.” A younger girl emerges . . . literally (Margaret Qualley, Poor Things). At this point, an intelligent take on youth and drugs - - read Ozempic - - seems possible; Moore’s poignant enactment of a woman endlessly reconceiving her make-up for a date is promising. But soon after, special effects took the wheel, and the movie degenerated into stupidity.

Gaw! - - Pygmalion (1938, GB, B/W, 89 min) - - 25 September 2024

Strongly recommended. If you are still smarting over the choice of Audrey Hepburn over Julie Andrews to play Miss Eliza Doolittle, you may be a Sicilian. And if it matters that much to you, you deserve to see the original celluloid performer, Dame Wendy Hiller (Murder On The Orient Express).  This role was the source of her first Oscar nomination, losing to Bette Davis in Jezebel. George Bernard Shaw received his only Academy Award for the script, in which he was deeply involved, even insisting on Ms. Hiller’s selection. So, you might say Wendy was the REAL guttersnipe. Leslie Howard (The Petrified Forest) directed himself as Henry Higgins and may be a better one than Rex Harrison in closeness of age. The most amusing bit of casting trivia is Cathleen Nesbit (An Affair To Remember)  as “A Lady,” eventually playing Mrs. Higgins in the Broadway version of My Fair Lady.

Who Are We To Disagree? - - Kinds Of Kindness (2024, USA, Color, 164 min) - - 4 September 2024

Recommended. But barely, because Kinds Of Kindness is a strange and challenging movie, or actually, three short - - but subtly interconnected - - challenging movies. Yorgos Lanthimos’s (The Favourite) masterful Poor Things, set him up for an easy A, but Kinds Of Kindness is much harder to like.  The opening music sets up the theme: The Eurythmics, Sweet Dreams, which most reviewers assign to dominance and control. But it’s the dream - - specifically, the American one - - that Lanthimos and co-writer Efthimis Filippou (The Lobster) are playing with herein. It’s just that control is crucial to the dream. The cast is wonderful, with the Lanthimos regular Emma Stone (Poor Things) once again nailing down strangeness, backed up by the luminous Margaret Qualley (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood), Willam Defoe (Poor Things) and non-regular, but Cannes-be-knighted, Jessie Plemons (The Irishman), who adapts perfectly. It’s gruesome and bleak, so beware . . . Kinds Of Kindness is never kind.

Behind Every Unsuccessful Man - - The Country Girl - - (1954, USA, B/W, 104 min)

Recommended. I started this collection of short reviews because so many of my close friends asked me for my opinions on movies. It’s grown into over 800 strong, 120,000 words. I mention this because I was recently asked about this movie; as a totally enthralled Grace Kelly (Rear Window) acolyte, one would expect I had seen her only Oscar^©-winning performance. I now have and The Country Girl is a very good movie, a refined take on alcoholism, addiction, and fame . . . more A Star Is Born than Lost Weekend. Bing Crosby (Going My Way) gives a reasonable interpretation, perhaps reflecting his youthful drinking. Kelly, as Crosby’s wife, deserved her 1955 Academy Award, beating out Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina. Rarely has the co-dependency question been more thoughtfully raised, although cf, The Days Of Wine And Roses. But William Holden (Sabrina) - - who suffered and died of alcoholism - - provides the saddest irony.

Swallowing Your Emotions - - Tuesday (2023, UK/USA, Color, 111 min) - - 15 June 2024

Recommended. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said) was on the Colbert show last week promoting Tuesday, describing it as a woman facing the death of her teenage daughter . . . arriving as a giant talking parrot. This seemed so absurd that Tuesday could've been the worst - - or the most innovative - - movie of the year. It’s far from the first.  Louis-Dreyfus’s dramatic chops are well-used, but the part wouldn’t have worked without a twinkle of Elaine Benes. Croatian director/writer Daina Oniunas-Pusic understands the comedy of death - - even the death of a child - - and Louis-Dreyfus meets this challenge head-on. We’re distracted at first by the English accent of her daughter, Tuesday, played by Lola Petticrew (She Said), but Petticrew’s talent suspends disbelief. Death is wonderfully voiced by Afro-Brit Arinzé Kene (The Pass). The magical plot is too strange to describe, minus spoilers, but I liked it, especially the ending, which might really put some off.

The Topless Towers Of Troy - - Rome Adventure (1962, USA, Color, 119 min) - - 9 June 2024

Recommended. Please don’t compare Rome Adventure to the earlier Hepburn/Peck masterpiece; I don’t think that was meant by director Delmer Daves (3:10 To Yuma). Rome Adventure is just a simple story of an American woman (Suzanne Pleshette, The Birds) learning about love in Europe, an early 60’s trope (Three Coins In The Fountain, Summertime). Max Steiner’s (Casablanca) score everywhere intercalates the contemporary Italian love song, “Al di là.” Pleshette’s rival for heartthrob Troy Donohue (A Summer Place) is the more love-learned Angie Dickenson (Rio Bravo). Hollywood’s favorite Latin, Rossano Brazzi (The Barefoot Contessa) is included . . . so there’s eye-candy for everyone. The real star is the numerous scenes in and beyond Rome, including Verona, Florence, and the Dolomites. It’s a nice, unpretentious movie. This was Pleshette’s first starring role, and her smolder is used to good effect . . . apparently off-set, too, as she married Troy immediately after the wrap.

This One Has All Her Teeth! - - Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024, Australia/US, Color, 148 min) - - 1 June 2024

Recommended. As a prequel to Mad Max-Fury Road, I had to watch the older movie to check the continuity, and Furiosa is as obsessive as I should've known. There may be a few hiccups . . . but that would have added more to an already overlong film. One discontinuity is the quirky humor and romance of Fury Road. War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult, Renfield) was missed, although Chris Helmsworth (Thor), as Dementus, added ironic fun to the company. The newer film lost some of the anti-patriarchy of Fury Road. That might lie at the feet of the titular persona. Charlize Theron (Monster) did such a spectacular job establishing Furiosa’s feminist chops that Ana Joy-Taylor (The Witch) started with one prosthesis tied down. Was she cast just for her exotic beauty? The special effects and battle sequences (Andy Williams, Fury Road) don’t disappoint; more of the same . . . but it’s such a spectacular same!  

Just As Odd If Not Odder - - Wildcat (2023, USA, Color, 103 min) - - 26 May 2024

Recommended. Many writing instructors teach a straightforward process to build a story. This process is designed to write books that people want to buy. It's similar to the system proposed by her editor, John Selby (Alessandro Nivola, American Hustle), to Flannery O'Connor (Maya Hawke, Little Women), but so alien to her vision that she risks his abandonment. She says, "I am amenable to criticism but only within the sphere of what I am trying to do; I will not be persuaded to do otherwise." Selby's criticism could be turned back on Ethan Hawke, writer/director of Wildcat. Hawke uses his daughter's splendid rendering of O'Connor and Laura Linney (The Truman Show) as her mother. He creates a unique "sphere of doing O'Connor," intercutting sketches from her short stories, using Maya, Linney, and the cast in multiple roles. Wildcat isn't always an easy movie to follow . . . some audience assembly is required.

A Majors Disaster - - The Fall Guy (2024, USA, Color, 126 min) - - 13 May 2024

Not recommended. I don’t know why I have to explain this, but here’s how to make an action/adventure romantic comedy (e.g., the first two Indiana Jones pictures). Hot leading actors with chemistry and popularity.  Don’t get in their way with complicated plots, childish fourth-wall cuteness, Taylor Swift jokes, a lousy supporting cast and . . . karaoke. To its dismal failure, The Fall Guy only follows the first rule. Can you believe this is just the first pairing of Ryan Gosling (Barbie) and Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer)? Hopefully, they will find a script worthy of their thermodynamics. This one is packed with a completely injudicious number of car crashes, explosions, defenestrations, and testicular dog bites, which the stunt man/director, (David Leitch, Atomic Blonde), seems to believe tribute the importance of his former craft. But good gags need a good movie. In Atomic Blonde, the punches served the characters; here, it’s the other way round.