romethesecondti

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

To appreciate all its pleasures--this is the rare film that should be seen more than once. Director Quentin Tarantino, the ultimate rule-breaker, is at it again in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” A kinder, gentler Tarantino? Yes and no. While the main arc of the film features two mellow buddies driving around Los Angeles, most of this bad-boy director’s trademark violence and revenge is left for the end. The buddies are TV – and wannabe movie – actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). DiCaprio and Pitt together are as fine as you can imagine they would be. Pitt is surprisingly willing to play second-fiddle (or so it seems) to DiCaprio. Good as it is, that buddy bit, male bonding and all, is secondary to the film’s themes. One is the built-in anxiety of the B actor, or of anyone who feels his or her career may be heading south (does that include Tarantino?). Another is the role of the Charles Manson murders in the American psyche. Stitching these two ideas together is another demonstration of Tarantino’s talent. The heart of the film’s plot is cross-cutting between Dalton in his film-within-a-film; Sharon Tate in the audience of a Westwood theater, watching herself in “The Wrecking Ball,” with Dean Martin; and Booth’s surreal experience at the Spahn Ranch where the Manson cult figures are chillingly menacing (Margaret Qualley [as enticing jail-bait], Lena Dunham and Dakota Fanning play three of the “Manson girls” – and watch for Bruce Dern as ranch owner George Spahn). It takes time for this intersection to develop, and when it does, it’s powerful. The date on the screen is August 8, 1969. “Once Upon a Time …” is also an ode to Los Angeles, albeit a very different one from 2016’s “La La Land.” There are no loving long-shots of LA, but many close-in, insider references – even to Tarantino’s own 35 mm theater, now known as “The New Beverly,” described here as a porn theater (and perhaps it was in the 1960s). The Spahn Ranch, a movie setting and ranch, where the Manson gang hangs out, was real, as was the movie Tate watches on her last day on earth.

“Can you ever forgive me?” the title asks, repeating one of the lines Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) created for a forged Dorothy Parker letter. What’s to forgive? Crime pays! However well done, the emotional valence of this film is ancillary to the key element of the plot: Lee’s venture into white-collar crime, specifically the creating and forging of letters written by deceased sharp-tongued celebrities—Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward among them — and the sale of those letters to unsuspecting dealers. Welcome to the caper film. There’s tension here — will she get caught? — but also repetition (writing, forging, selling, repeat). Because the film is “based on a true story,” one can assume that most of this illicit activity really happened, that Lee Israel forged and sold some 400 letters. That’s a lot of crime, presumably with real economic consequences for the victims. Except there appear to be no consequences of note, and we’re shown no one being damaged. The implication is that those who were scammed were elites who could bear the cost of the fraud, as well as professionals who should have known better. The most profound result of Lee’s tenure as a forger is that she discovers her “voice.” There’s a tragic element to this discovery. The voice she finds is less than original, associated with Parker and Coward and that earlier generation of writers. But there is also, for Lee, exhilaration. Her forgery career was “the best time of my life,” she explains to the judge, a time that allowed her to understand that she could use her essence—the same foul-mouthed, barbed wit that got her fired — to make money in the literary marketplace. There are signs, too — a cloying touch, perhaps—that the experience has given Lee a new emotional maturity: tears with an ailing (from AIDS) Jack Hock (wonderfully portrayed by Richard E. Grant) in the bar, a renewed interest in reading the bookseller’s short-story manuscript. As unlikely as it is that extrovert Jack can help introvert Lee, their story is the emotional heart of the film, raising the issue of whether Lee is capable of caring about or opening up to the people around her, whoever they might be. Although a quick take on Lee is that she’s an incorrigible misanthrope, she’s actually neither unlikeable nor insensitive. In a speech she makes at the end of the film to the judge who will sentence her, she reveals herself to be quite self-aware. Lee may not have a heart of gold (thank goodness), but she does have a heart. McCarthy is at her best in this speech, and her acting is solid throughout the film, capturing Lee’s neurotic interiority. McCarthy has been talked about for a possible Oscar nomination, and, while she’s very good here, perhaps it’s the conversion of a superb comic into a serious actor that’s drawing that level of attention.

Like most Westerns, “The Sisters Brothers” requires a willing suspension of disbelief; our heroes (or anti-heroes) too often miraculously survive hails of bullets rivaling the Great War’s Western Front. The film’s implication that Warm’s gold alchemy may actually work strains credulity while avoiding the recriminations and conflicts that would inevitably arise when the participants discover that their faith has been misplaced. And John Morris’s accent is, let’s say, a bit odd. Like John Huston’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948), another mining film grounded in psychology, “The Sisters Brothers” is underlaid with issues of fathers and sons. All four protagonists struggle to distance themselves from difficult or abusive fathers, in one case leading to patricide, in another to the rejection of an inheritance. The Sisters Brothers” is a male film. It’s about brothers, about male bonding, about all-male mining and killing activities and, of course, about fathers and sons. The one woman who appears by name in the film is the detested boss of a newly-created town, as well as the madam of the ****. She’s referred to only by her last name, “Mayfield,” is referenced with male pronouns by Charlie and Eli (“glad to meet the man of the house”), and is played by transgender actress Rebecca Root. As in the two Westerns that were among the best films of 2015, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “The Revenant” and Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” this film too readily taps into modern audiences’ desire for blood and gore. These weaknesses aside, this is solid, even inspiring film-making. “The Sisters Brothers” is both a compelling adventure and a taut psychological drama. The acting is impressive throughout the ensemble, and Reilly’s sensitive, nuanced performance as Eli may be enough to elevate him into the current ranks of our best actors.

The premise of "Yesterday," a feel good movie from that master of melodrama, Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire") is that only one person in the world remembers The Beatles and their songs. Boyle hauls out the Hollywood meme that one person has knowledge that others don't, and we know that kind of knowledge is power (not to mention fun). There's "Back to the Future" (1985) and "Groundhog Day" (1993). "Yesterday" won't achieve the iconic status of these two films, but it's clever and charming and, through most of its run time, carefully assembled. It's light stuff, rading on nostalgia, and it works. The tension of whether he'll be found out, an understated but compelling performance by Patel, along with the sheer joy of hearing (and watching) the music being re-created and presented to adoring audiences, are the strengths of "Yesterday." Yet it's not a film without flaws. The music, played by a B-list musician, doesn't rise to the level of other recent music-nostalgia films ("Bohemian Rhapsody," "Rocketman"). And the secondary characters are all one-dimensional. Still, it works.

There is reason to believe that “Bad Times” could have been a very good film. The contained, isolated setting (think “The Shining”) is worthy: a stylish mid-century motel, once a haven for gamblers and the Rat Pack, and the site, as it turns out, of perverse activity. The motel is empty as the film opens, its gambling license gone, its only employee the meek Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman). “Bad Times” has other virtues. Like Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 “Pulp Fiction,” it employs time as a creative device, moving between past and present in clever and revealing ways. “Bad Times” even has a theme, an idea that runs through it from beginning to end. That theme is choice, and it’s introduced early on, when Miles explains to the new arrivals that the El Royale sits on the border between California and Nevada, and that the guests can choose a room in either state—“hope and opportunity to the East, warmth and sunshine to the West”–descriptions that seem to reverse the state stereotypes and ironize the idea of informed choice. There's mayhem at the end. Not everyone dies, but there’s enough killing to vitiate the strengths and subtleties of “Bad Times”—that is, to damage what could have been a very good film.

“They Shall Not Grow Old” – most of the men we see in the film in fact did not – is an anti-war film, “celebrating” the end of what was then called The Great War. The final result, Director Peter Jackson has said, “is that we see the war the way they saw it.” Of course, Jackson has chosen the arc of his film – from joy to ennui to disillusionment at best, death at worst. And he has chosen the voices we hear. We see combat the way the director wants us to see it. The film is a technological wonder. Jackson slowed down the 100 hours of silient, jerky film he got from the Imperial War Museum to life-like speeds. He employed lip-readers to determine what the soldiers were saying and supplied those voices. Then he added voice-overs from interviews with more than 120 surviving war veterans whose recollections were recorded in the 1960s and 1970s. His film, though arguably one-sided and focusing on trench warfare, is a tender paean to the men who sacrificed their lives, limbs—and sometimes, faces—for what others thought was the greater good. When you are faced with death, a veteran says, “They say your past comes up in front of your eyes. I was only 19. I hadn’t had any past.”

Toy Story 4 is a feminist rom/com—a romantic comedy in the classic mold with a feminist twist. Indeed, the film “makes the couple” a whopping 3 times: Woody (the reluctant male who needs to be persuaded to take the plunge) and Bo Peep; Forky and (for a better word) Knifey, the “trash” twosome whose coming together as the credits roll is both unexpected and delightful, a moment of sheer cinematic bliss; and Gabby Gabby and the “lost girl.” Even though Woody is the primary protagonist, and several new male toys are introduced, “Toy Story 4” goes beyond the addition of a female toy here and there (e.g. cowgirl Jessie in “Toy Story 2”); this is the franchise’s feminist film. Woody is fond of Bo Beep and she of him. But Bo’s strengths are many and threaten to overwhelm and displace Woody’s desire. She’s a fiercely independent feminist, having been “on her own,” beyond the security of a child’s bedroom, for 7 years. She’s an athlete and a warrior, using her hook as a both a weapon and climbing device. Bo and other independent toys travel around in a mechanical skunk. These “Independent Toys,” which exist somewhere between “Lost Toys” and “Toys who have a Kid,” are a new category for the franchise. Duke Caboom, Ducky and Bunny are solid and funny additions to the “Toy Story” crew, but on the whole the cast is too large and dispenses with too many familiar characters to achieve the kind of focus that shaped previous editions. These caveats aside, “Toy Story 4” is almost as good as its predecessors - and that's saying something.