Movie review by Greg Carlson

Compared to the Betsy West and Julie Cohen documentary “RBG,” Mimi Leder’s period biographical slice “On the Basis of Sex” is nowhere near as notorious as one might hope, but the hagiographic reverence for Ruth Bader Ginsburg is tempered by enough heart and humor to overcome some of the film’s more predictable adherence to its genre. Like a good law student, Leder focuses on a presentation of the factual and procedural. That choice, similar to Reginald Hudlin’s time- and case-specific look at a pre-icon status Thurgood Marshall in 2017’s “Marshall,” sacrifices some elements of richer and deeper characterization — including the flaws that help us recognize heroes as humans.  

Felicity Jones, trying a slightly odd facsimile of RBG’s Brooklyn accent, handles all the condescension, sexism, and dismissiveness that can be dished out by the likes of white Harvard men in suits, nevertheless persisting when faced with the insufferable bullshit of Sam Waterston’s dean and Stephen Root’s professor. The screenplay, by Ginsburg’s nephew Daniel Stiepleman, makes hay with a few choice shots at the storied Ivy League institution. The chauvinist Crimson jerks are expectedly hissable, which makes Leder’s more subtle and complex take on the ACLU’s Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux, doing a little Alan Alda) one of the film’s strengths.   

In a bit of movie magic that would have delighted RBG’s husband, Martin D. Ginsburg is played by Armie Hammer. Hammer’s recent and somewhat unexpected turns in “Call Me by Your Name” and “Sorry to Bother You” suggest fairly gutsy instincts by the usually safe matinee idol standards of big-budget players. Hammer’s “On the Basis of Sex” part is far from risky, but as A. O. Scott has pointed out, the actor “has never looked happier,” taking on a supporting role in every sense of the word. Viewed as a portrait of the progressive and, for its era, unorthodox marriage enjoyed by the Ginsburgs — which was delightfully highlighted in “RBG” — “On the Basis of Sex” is catnip. One of the best moments in the film is a touching scene in which Martin comforts daughter Jane after a mother-daughter disagreement.   

While Jones and Hammer remain impossibly gorgeous throughout the years covered in the narrative, Leder maintains an awareness of time not only through the costumes and cars, but by commenting directly on both opportunities and obstacles experienced by women of different ages. In one sequence, Bader Ginsburg and Jane pay a visit to the office of the legendary judge/activist/feminist Dorothy Kenyon (Kathy Bates), whose thoughts are as eye-opening to RBG as Jane’s assertive handling of unwelcome street harassment. Later, in the movie’s closing arguments, RBG will speak to the “radical social change” marked so noticeably by the passing of time.

The biopic-wary should applaud “On the Basis of Sex” for its avoidance of the temptation to cover a longer chronology of Bader Ginsburg’s life and career. In comments to the Hollywood Reporter following the film’s New York premiere, Stiepleman stated that he selected the Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue appeal because it “was the only one” that had husband and wife “fighting in court for what [the Ginsburgs] also created at home, which was real equality.” That parallelism works nicely, and it is just as nice to have Mimi Leder back in the director’s chair. Hopefully we will not have to wait as long for her next feature.         

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The sensational Claire Denis adds another wonderful work to her impressive filmography with “Let the Sunshine In.” An ode to many things, including restless hearts, the frustrations of romantic freedom versus security, the impossibility and ridiculousness of the fantasy sold by the Hollywood romantic comedy, the anxieties of middle age, and several more, “Let the Sunshine In” is foremost a showcase for radiant superstar Juliette Binoche. As the unlucky-in-love Isabelle, a Paris painter who drifts from liaison to liaison with a questionable parade of partners unwilling or unable to make the kind of connection that Isabelle imagines will satiate her, Binoche is fearless.

Instead of manufacturing sympathetic markers to anoint and glorify her protagonist, Denis insists on portraying the self-doubt and insecurities that vex Isabelle. To that end, the presence of Binoche is a bit of brilliance that taunts and challenges the viewer; if Isabelle can’t find lasting, fulfilling tenderness and companionship, what chance do the rest of us have? Denis eviscerates the old adage “if you can’t handle or love me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best,” collapsing or inverting the very notion of what constitutes a woman at her “best” or “worst.” Denis’ clinical detachment somehow makes the “unlikable” Isabelle more accessible and alive.

The men who most certainly play well below Isabelle’s league are a comic bunch of narcissistic assholes and navel-gazers. Denis opens with a sweaty, heaving Vincent (Xavier Beauvois), a piggish and married banker, struggling to climax on top of Isabelle and follows shortly with an actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle) who spends more time discussing why he and Isabelle shouldn’t have sex than actually, inevitably, having sex. At the end, Denis sticks the landing with yet another interrogation of amour fou, inserting a just jilted Gerard Depardieu as a quack psychic. The majority of his one scene with Binoche unfolds while the end credits roll.  

Much earlier, following a deeply unsatisfying encounter with piggish, married banker Vincent (Xavier Beauvois), Isabelle returns home alone, struggling to remove the black, over-the-knee stiletto boots that she so often wears like sexual armor. Tearfully soliloquizing an “Am I with him? Or not?” conundrum awash in self-pity, we glimpse an Etta James sleeve decorating the wall behind Isabelle. Later, Ms. James’ transcendent “At Last” will factor on the “Let the Sunshine In” soundtrack in the film’s most referenced scene, but for now, we are reminded of the stark and ironic contrast between the pain, abuse, and addiction suffered by James and the angelic ballads given flight by her voice.           

Isabelle’s privileged existence doesn’t match James’ suffering, but Denis moves to reclaim “At Last” from its cultural dilution in advertisements for products as unlikely as State Farm insurance and Hoover vacuum cleaners, and in films as far flung as “American Pie” and “Inland Empire.” Isabelle dances with a seductive stranger (Paul Blain, looking all Robert Mapplethorpe) to the song in an encounter immediately following a blown-gasket tirade during an artist retreat (one of the movie’s most hilarious scenes), but we know the fantasy lasts only as long as the three minutes it takes James to sing it. Her lonely days far from over, Isabelle’s love has not, at last, come along.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Helming her feature film debut, veteran theatre director Josie Rourke mounts a handsome but forgettable “Mary Queen of Scots” (no comma) with Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie. Like so many fictions rooted in the political intrigue of royalty, this latest model quickly reveals the same old preoccupation with matters of religious affiliation, sex for pleasure versus sex for the production of an heir, and marriage arranged for advantage. That narrative orientation is a bummer, since this oft-told tale becomes the very thing it aspires to criticize. Even with Ronan’s commanding presence, Robbie’s commitment to prosthetic-assisted physical transformation, and the costume and production design, Rourke’s middlebrow edition is bound for the same dusty shelf where the 1936, 1971, and 2013 versions reside.     

Rourke arguably favors character over the bullet points of key dramatic events, but neither category fruits. Instead of gripping drama, the film sketches a series of decisions, usually ill-advised and often taken following the pressure of petulant narcissists like Mary’s brother, her later pair of husbands, and counselors like John Knox (David Tennant in weird beard) and William Cecil (Guy Pearce also in weird beard). The movie tries out a particularly decadent interpretation of Mary’s first cousin and second spouse Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden), as skillful a practitioner of cunnilingus as he is a brutal rapist. Lowden, wearing a well-groomed Van Dyke, registers above the other onscreen fellows until his (un)timely demise.

Period costume drama can be most entertaining when examined through the lens of contemporary concerns. In one sense, who cares whether Mary and Elizabeth didn’t really meet face to face in real life? Could Rourke have made her version of the conflict work without that scene? Dramatic license is so much a given that discussions of authenticity are as damned as they are damning. Instead, we have a Mary whose Catholicism never appears to conflict with her anachronistically progressive attitudes regarding gender fluidity, homosexuality, and religious tolerance.       

Additionally, a full-length report could be written on the film’s muscular and misleading marketing campaign. The trailer suggests a kind of fantasized two-hander, but Robbie’s weirdly insecure Elizabeth factors far less, and enjoys scant screen time relative to Ronan, than what is suggested by the coming attractions preview. Long before the film was released to the public, writers of both the earnest and clickbait varieties were consulting with academics and historians regarding the inaccuracies baked into Beau Willimon’s screenplay, which is very loosely based on published work by John Guy.

Both the trailer and the posters invite a kind of expected and unsubtle compare/contrast simplification of the two women that steers away from nuance. Back in July, Nate Jones pointed out in “Vulture” that the taglines used by Focus Features in the striking character portraits — “Born to Fight” for Mary and “Born to Power” for Elizabeth — should be reversed. If one of the movie’s thematic concerns addresses the zero-sum realities of claims to the throne, that same set of disadvantages extends to the imagined “friendship” of Mary and Elizabeth. The film steers toward a reading of female leadership inside the patriarchy that says the queens, as fellow female monarchs, could have been allies instead of enemies, but Rourke never quite gets there.  

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Based on the 1956 novel by Antonio di Benedetto, Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel’s “Zama” invites the viewer to experience the humiliations of the title character, a doomed late 18th century Americano colonizer desperate for a transfer that we know immediately will never be authorized. Perfectly captured in a performance by Daniel Gimenez Cacho that balances the deadpan and the dignified, Don Diego de Zama may or may not be as clueless as he so often appears. His fate, however, is as certain as the moral corruption of the slavery that surrounds him.

In a series of deliberately staged scenes of ravishing visual and auditory design, Martel observes the folly with calculated detachment. Resisting any and all temptations to explain, the filmmaker speaks through images that explore a series of tensions: male/female, inside/outside, water/land, day/night, real/imagined and a number of other dualities. Some viewers will likely experience some frustration and disequilibrium in the presentation, but anyone who appreciates the observational poetry of filmmakers like Terrence Malick will be thrilled by pictures that can morph from dream to nightmare with each new sunrise and sunset.

Liminality is the coin of Martel’s realm in “Zama,” and she manages to make the excruciating uncertainty of the long pause an engrossing experience for the audience, both in terms of what unfolds onscreen and in the lengthy span since “The Headless Woman” came out. As Guy Lodge wrote, “The frustrating nine-year wait for new material from Martel has done nothing to blunt her exquisite, inventive command of sound and image, nor her knack for subtly violent exposure of social and racial prejudice on the upper rungs of the class ladder.” All the better to take in Zama’s monumental sense of privilege and entitlement en route to some bitter cosmic comeuppance.   

In one of Martel’s masterstrokes, Zama eventually joins a posse to pursue an enigmatic outlaw known as Vicuna Porto (an excellent Matheus Nachtergaele, equally funny and scary). Is Vicuna Porto real or imagined? Or could the name be traded, transferred, and imbued with power like the Dread Pirate Roberts? A late encounter between Zama and Porto contains a moment of searing clarity that summarizes the absurdity of laboring and striving so mightily for something that may be, like life itself, fleeting and ungraspable — or not there at all.  

Martel revels in the languid pace that juxtaposes the Spanish intruders in their stifling coats and wigs against the more breezily attired natives. The ill-fitting hairpieces become one of the movie’s tremendous running gags, as wearers are constantly rearranging the greasy weaves atop sweaty pates. You can practically smell them. Like so many other displays that Martel capably shows without needing to tell, the impractical fashions of the Spaniards are as wrong as the treatment of the indigenous people. The bankruptcy of the conquerors is telegraphed in the lazy downward spiral of Zama’s prospects, as his series of setbacks points toward the kind of object-lesson culture clash outcomes explored cinematically in Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” Roland Joffe’s “The Mission,” Bruce Beresford’s “Black Robe,” Ciro Guerra’s “Embrace of the Serpent,” Martin Scorsese’s “Silence,” and many others.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Veteran filmmaker Jennifer Fox’s “The Tale” addresses child rape in as straightforward and clear-eyed a manner as any film ever made on the painful subject. Fox’s background in nonfiction storytelling informs the movie’s magnetic investigative structure, which arranges and rearranges details both large and small as the adult Jennifer Fox (played brilliantly by Laura Dern) rethinks a sexual “relationship” she shared with two grown-ups when she was only thirteen years old. The original story referred to in the title was written by Fox at the time of the abuse, and remarkably, she directly quotes it in the retelling we see unfold. It doesn’t feel quite right to call “The Tale” fiction, and its presentation falls well outside what most would define as documentary.

Memoir might be a better descriptor to effectively encapsulate some dimension of the film’s substance, and like most features based on some “real life” set of facts, a disclaimer warns that certain details were changed. A pre-show trigger warning and an end title explanation that an adult body double was used for all depictions of sexual acts bookend the movie.

What is most impressive about “The Tale” is the confident way in which Fox depicts her own evolving uncertainty. Drawing the audience into highly subjective recollections, Fox uses a variety of bold cinematic choices to show the fragility and mutability of memory. Most of these devices are simple and direct. For example, Fox’s belief that she was older at the time of her interactions with Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki) and Bill Allens (Jason Ritter) loops in a pair of flashbacks that replace the fifteen-year-old Jenny (Jessica Sarah Flaum) with the thirteen-year-old Jenny (Isabelle Nelisse). Dern navigates the complex series of emotional reckonings with a tremendously sympathetic understanding of Fox’s reluctance to identify as a victim.    

“The Tale” unfolds as a procedural, alternating between Fox’s pursuit of information that will help her fill in missing experiences and the harrowing, real-time scenes of Ritter’s predatory pedophile engaging in a virtually textbook pattern of sexual grooming. Fox attacks the nightmarish hallmarks with a clinical eye: the gaining of trust with praise and flattery, the normalization of frank sexual talk, opportunistic sleepover invitations, the bestowing of gifts, the perpetuation of increasingly intimate physical contact, and the carefully calculated opportunities for private/isolated one-on-one time. Those scenes are disturbing and difficult to watch.  

Even as the memories begin to sharpen back into focus, Dern’s Fox requires space to sort out the stubborn range of conflicted emotions that accompany the revelations and filmmaker Fox smartly insists on seeing that whole process unfold. “The Tale” is Fox’s first fiction feature, but she brings to bear much from documentary storytelling, including the development of an outreach campaign that she describes in detail in her May 26, 2018 “Deadline” guest column on the film. In that piece, Fox says, “There was no evidence of what happened to me, except in my mind” in response to why she opted to make the film with actors rather than create a documentary. The resulting work, which Fox calls “issue-based fiction,” resonates as both art and vehicle for change.    

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“The Diary of a Teenage Girl” director Marielle Heller beautifully translates another personal autobiography to excellent results. “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” is based on the confessional 2008 memoir of literary forger Lee Israel, and Heller’s movie pulls off the impressive feat of bringing visual urgency to the typically uncinematic process of writing. Heller’s cast is uniformly excellent, but her collaboration with central pair Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant will continue to attract attention throughout the remaining weeks of the award season. “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” is simultaneously suspenseful and laidback.    

In her review, Katie Rife articulates the movie’s most impressive achievement. Rife says, “Maintaining an audience’s sympathy for a character through their most fumbling, frustrating lows requires compassion and clarity of purpose, both of which McCarthy amply demonstrates here.” The sentiment could just as easily extend to Heller’s deft handling, Grant’s irresponsible and tragic Jack Hock (who is by turns infuriating and vulnerable), and the sharp screenplay credited to Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty. Holofcener was originally set to direct Julianne Moore in the principal role before personnel shifts rearranged the ultimate fate of the film.

Moore would most likely have turned in another customarily terrific performance, but McCarthy is just dynamite as the bitter, alcoholic Israel. For the dazzlingly funny actor, Israel is McCarthy’s high point to date, a role perfectly suited to the quicksilver insults she has so effortlessly conjured in the past (her unchained, foul-mouthed, improvisational prowess on display during the credit scene outtakes of “This Is 40” comes to mind). McCarthy, with very few exceptions, has been trapped by the phenomenal work/execrable film conundrum. Several examples, like “Tammy,” “The Boss,” and this year’s “Life of the Party” were directed by spouse/partner Ben Falcone.

Falcone’s broad brush is set aside for Heller’s finer strokes, and a substantial amount of pleasure can be derived from the subtleties and restraint of Heller’s impressionistic eye. The filmmaker consciously addresses themes of homosexuality with an awareness of the period setting. Israel keeps romantically-inclined bookshop owner Anna (an excellent Dolly Wells) at a distance, and later shares a pivotal scene of emotional reckoning with ex Elaine (Anna Deavere Smith). Peter Debruge questioned the trailer’s apparent muting of the gay themes, but many others have praised the end result, including Grant’s final interaction with McCarthy. Touching without wallowing in self-pity, the moment is capped with a fantastic farewell in which the friends say “I love you” to each other in a profoundly profane and unsentimental fashion befitting their acerbic personalities.

That flourish serves as a strangely wistful reminder of the exhilarating aspects of the criminal misadventures that came before. Israel’s guilt and shame over fraudulent transactions involved the names of witty, sharp-tongued bright lights like Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, Louise Brooks, and several others for whom Israel developed a kind of parasocial masquerade. Heller and McCarthy take us into their confidence, making the case for both the awful, clammy anxieties associated with physical and intellectual property theft/deception and the pride at conjuring convincing intimacies that were valued as the real thing.   

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Based on the subject’s candid memoir, “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood” pulls back the curtain on the sexual escapades of Scotty Bowers, longtime bartender, World War 2 Marine Corps veteran, and pimp/arranger on behalf of movie stars seeking carnal pleasure in a time when anything outside the heterosexual binary could torpedo a career or invite a bust from the vice squad. Director Matt Tyrnauer dutifully follows the nonagenarian through the smoggy streets and up into the hills overlooking Los Angeles, while the loquacious Bowers putters around the several cluttered homes he either owns or looks after. In between book signings, bartending gigs, and scavenger hunts for more junk to hoard, Bowers matter-of-factly describes the proclivities of Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Charles Laughton, Cole Porter, and many other idols.

Tyrnauer’s portraiture probes to a point, but the filmmaker deliberately allows Scotty to do most of the speaking for himself (a number of other corroborating witnesses are on hand, at least implying a level of cross-checking). The inquisitiveness stops short of the outrageousness often trumpeted in Nick Broomfield’s entertainment-focused pieces, a double-edged sword that will rile viewers hoping for sharper critique. Largely, the documentary presents Bowers as a credible authority, but the breadth and depth of the anecdotes — which include a menage a trois involving Scotty, Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, as well as eyebrow-raising requests from the visiting Duke and Duchess of Windsor — leaves it all up to the viewer to accept or reject.

Bowers often provides lurid, profanity-laced descriptions that could make a square faint dead away, and Tyrnauer indulges in some degree of mythmaking for a pre-AIDS utopia of omnisexual freedoms championed by an apple pie on the Fourth of July Iwo Jima survivor. In one vignette, Scotty contributes the introduction for Taschen’s Dian Hanson-edited collection of Allied homoerotica “My Buddy,” and the movie flirts with a psychoanalytical assessment of how Bowers may have been partially shaped by his wartime relationships.

Just as important to Scotty’s biography, however, are the revelations of preadolescent sexual abuse by an adult acquaintance and then a priest, which Bowers is quick to dismiss and wave off. Scotty insists that all his tricking and hustling was undertaken happily, even as a minor, but one gets the sense that Tyrnauer would like to imply that some trauma is linked to Scotty’s vocation, even if Bowers presents a happy-go-lucky face to the world. Along with the unglamorous foraging through mountains of garbage threatening to overtake every square inch of Scotty’s day-to-day world, Tyrnauer coaxes Scotty to open up a bit about his daughter (who we learn died from complications following an abortion when she was in her early 20s) and his longtime wife, whose vivacious presence in photographs hints at yet another fascinating tale.

Early in the film, Tyrnauer includes a clip from “The View” in which the panelists debate the ethics of Scotty’s decision to make the change, so late in life, from absolute discretion to kissing and telling. Tyrnauer, for his part, argues that the movie functions at least on one level as a corrective to the hypocrisy of golden age Hollywood and the damage done to the many actors who unfairly lived in fear of being exposed. It certainly isn’t hard to imagine Scotty’s confessions as a twilight bid for some kind of closure if not recognition. The Richfield Oil gas station at 5777 Hollywood Boulevard where Scotty began pimping has disappeared, and someday in the not too distant future, Scotty will also be gone. His stories, and our fascination with the private lives of the rich and famous, aren’t going anywhere.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Were it not for Steve McQueen’s professed admiration of the 1980s television series upon which his new movie is based, “Widows” might seem an unusual choice for the prestige filmmaker of “12 Years a Slave,” “Shame,” and “Hunger.” An often ridiculous Chicago-set heist movie with thematic interests in race, politics, gender, and power, McQueen’s film is easily better than utterly forgettable junk like “Triple 9” and “Den of Thieves.” McQueen shares screenplay credit with Gillian Flynn, but the two never completely move beyond the episodic structure beholden to the juggling of a huge ensemble cast. The result plays out very much like an episodic pilot.

Still, “Widows” has plenty to recommend it, starting with the central performance of Viola Davis as Veronica Rawlings, a teacher’s union representative married to the very well-connected professional criminal Harry (Liam Neeson). Following an introductory scene in which McQueen puts the viewer in bed with the couple for a lusty morning make-out session, a smash cut rudely kicks us to the in medias res action of Harry and his gang attempting to escape an armed robbery gone wrong. Bullets fly, a van explodes into flames, and Veronica instantly joins the title club. Facing terrifying pressure from a crooked candidate running for office — as if there is any other kind — to whom Harry owes two million bucks, Veronica reaches out to the other bereaved wives of the men killed alongside her husband.

Her plan? Use the instructions and contents of Harry’s secret notebook to commit a spectacular burglary. Mastermind Veronica convinces two widows to join up, and McQueen efficiently communicates plausible reasons for taking on such life-threatening risk. Michelle Rodriguez’s Linda is on the verge of losing her dress shop. Elizabeth Debicki’s Alice, a victim of abuse by her dominant mother (Jacki Weaver), sees little to lose and much to gain. A fourth widow, Carrie Coon’s Amanda, opts out, raising a very red flag for the sharp-eyed viewer.

As Veronica prepares to pick up where Harry left off, McQueen fills out the story with a nearly unwieldy number of important players. Power-broker Tom Mulligan (Robert Duvall) and his son Jack (Colin Farrell) engineer a campaign to retain a long-held south side alderman seat. Jack’s opponent is Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), whose brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya) is a violent sociopath/enforcer who carries out the dirty work with cold calculation. Linda’s babysitter Belle (Cynthia Erivo) joins the widows as a wheelwoman. David (Lukas Haas), a wealthy businessman in real estate, pays for the company of Alice when her mom pushes her into escort work.

Even in this pulpier terrain, McQueen’s direction is skillful and visceral. In one artsy scene, he keeps the camera outside a moving car for the duration of the conversation taking place within. He prioritizes the desperation of the women, and finds some remarkable places to take Alice (Debicki almost walks off with the movie). Whether intimate and quiet or dynamic and deafening, scenes are staged with precision and vitality. For many, McQueen’s stylishness will help excuse the rubbery plot holes, lapses in logic, and farfetched surprises that might lead some to wonder how the movie might have unfolded as a leaner, tighter operation.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

For my money, David Lowery has been as much fun to watch as any filmmaker of his generation. He’s a veteran editor, and it shows in the sensibilities, qualities, and pacing of his previous trio of features, the curious line-up of “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” “Pete’s Dragon,” and “A Ghost Story.” Lowery has also directed episodic television, a whole bunch of short subjects, the 2009 feature “St. Nick,” and shares directorial credit with three others on the 2005 “Deadroom.” His newest, “The Old Man & the Gun,” starring the eternal Robert Redford, has received much attention for the claim that the Sundance Kid is hanging up his spurs as an actor, for good, with this movie.

Redford may be receiving the lion’s share of attention for his easy-does-it portrayal of serial bank robber/jailbreak artist Forrest Tucker (a real-life true crime figure who died in 2004 at the age of 83), but Lowery takes his own impressive turn, simultaneously polishing the mythic status of Redford by giving the actor all the room he needs to roam and applying enough individual storytelling quirks to set the movie apart. The tale is set in the early 1980s, and the vintage mood is significantly enhanced by the use of Joe Anderson’s pretty 16mm photography.  

Even a cursory glance through the reviews of “The Old Man & the Gun” will turn up multiple instances of the word charming as descriptive of Redford, the film, or both. To that end, Lowery and his leading man delight in withholding much from the audience, leaving room for the kind of ambiguity that makes for open-ended interpretations of the motivations of a lifelong criminal with a gentlemanly sense of craft when it comes to separating banks from cash. Both Sissy Spacek’s Jewel, the woman Forrest courts, and Casey Affleck’s John Hunt, a weary cop tracking Forrest, probe their skepticism and contemplate the robber’s mysteries.

Jewel adds the romance, Hunt adds the cops-and-robbers pursuit. Hunt’s daughter notes at one point, in words written by Lowery, that catching Forrest would mean an end to the quest. We can picture Lowery smirking behind the camera during the shooting of that scene. We also imagine Lowery taking just as much delight in presenting a wide range of appreciative tributes, nods, and homages to Redford’s past, from vintage photos and a clip from “The Chase” (beautifully repurposed in an escape montage) to a cameo appearance of the nose-swipe secret code gesture from “The Sting” and the opening title’s recollection of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” right down to the choice of typeface.

Redford, Spacek, and Affleck command so much of our attention, it sometimes feels like the rest of the cast members — including Danny Glover, Tom Waits, Tika Sumpter, and Elisabeth Moss — are a little bit shortchanged. But I like to imagine they are all having a grand experience. And it’s a testament to Lowery’s skills that complex and fully realized lives are being lived. No matter the screen time, their contributions are meaningful. Lowery’s vibe throughout is so mellow — oh, that perfect soundtrack placement of Jackson C. Frank’s “Blues Run the Game”! — philosophers can mine the subtext at their own peril.   

Movie review by Greg Carlson

WARNING: The following review reveals plot information. Read only if you have seen “Suspiria”

Luca Guadagnino’s ambitious reimagining of Dario Argento’s “Suspiria,” the first installment of the cult director’s Three Mothers trilogy, honors its inspiration with shocking spasms of gore and mind-bending phantasmagoria. Expectedly, Guadagnino also approaches the remake with carefully considered storytelling, stretching the 1977 film’s 98-minute running time to a near miniseries length of just over two and a half hours. Argento’s version, based in part on Thomas De Quincey’s 1845 essay “Suspiria de Profundis,” stirs together Jungian symbolism and Grimm fairytale to create something original. The 2018 model, in its own way, is just as unique.

Dakota Johnson takes on the Jessica Harper role of Susie Bannion, an American dancer thrilled to join the prestigious Markos Academy in West Germany. Susie’s seeming naivete will yield to unexpected perceptions, and as “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” portended, our youthful innocent will travel a road of excess all the way to the palace of wisdom. Or is it the audience navigating that rough terrain? Guadagnino, working from David Kajganich’s script (their previous collaboration, “A Bigger Splash,” was also an update: Jacque Deray’s “La Piscine”), radically reworks the central character, luxuriating in a series of climactic shocks that some fans of the original will dismiss and others will applaud.

Johnson, who appeared in “A Bigger Splash,” has more to do in “Suspiria,” but the film’s workhorse is Guadagnino favorite Tilda Swinton. Matching Peter Sellers’ “Dr. Strangelove” hat-trick, Swinton takes on reserved choreographer/master manipulator Madame Blanc, the physically decaying Mother Markos, and — under another heavy layer of mostly convincing prosthetic makeup — Dr. Josef Klemperer, the movie’s other (actual?) protagonist. Klemperer, the psychoanalyst who investigates the troupe following the disappearance of a dancer in his care, is certainly the most pronounced departure from Argento’s tale. Swinton as an elderly gentleman fits the warped vibe of sharp silver hooks and secret passageways; it’s the straightforward use of the Holocaust as narrative shorthand that doesn’t fully connect.       

And how could Guadagnino possibly hope to compete with Goblin’s score? Thom Yorke, naturally, whose melancholy contributions to the new “Suspiria” are a perfectly haunting complement to Guadagnino’s gray-skies vision of chilly, rainy, Cold War Berlin. Goblin’s sounds, as Philip Sherburne recently noted, “Shovel[ed] all manner of seemingly incompatible ideas into the blender — Baroque harpsichords, synthesizers, tabla, splatter funk, even intimations of death metal.” Yorke, subdued, minimal, and ghostly, proves one of Guadagnino’s most fortuitous additions without sounding anything like Goblin, even though, as Sherburne points out, the influence of their central theme is respectfully quoted.

Like Manohla Dargis, I questioned the value of what she describes as the “ostentatious chapter breaks and narrative padding, including some dead-end references both to 1970s German politics (cue the tear gas, riots and Baader-Meinhof mentions) and, more egregiously, to the Holocaust.” The supernatural, notwithstanding some broad-brush aspects of gender thematizing that Dargis dismissively pegs as “the old vagina dentata scare show,” worked much better. As black sabbaths go, the competitive coven members in the new “Suspiria” put every move of their dance school disguises to potent use. Patient blood aficianados who stick with the filmmaker to the final reel will most certainly receive their crimson reward.