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Film Reviews: New Releases for Jan. 17

Wolf Man, The Brutalist, Hard Truths, Nickel Boys, September 5 and more

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Julia Garner, Matilda Firth and Christopher Abbott in Wolf Man - UNIVERSAL PICTURES
  • Universal Pictures
  • Julia Garner, Matilda Firth and Christopher Abbott in Wolf Man
Back in Action **
The problem with co-writer/director Seth Gordon’s action-comedy isn’t that it’s just the latest iteration on a seemingly endless string of movies with the basic premise “person living as a mild-mannered suburbanite is secretly a current spy/former spy/professional killer/other form of badass;” it’s that the movie does absolutely nothing with that concept that isn’t boring. In this case, the mild-mannered suburbanites are Matt (Jamie Foxx) and Emily (Cameron Diaz), raising their adolescent kids Alice (McKenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson) 15 years after fleeing their jobs as CIA operatives when they were presumed dead during a mission. Naturally, footage of them doing badass things turns up online, and bad guys come calling, leading to several chases on various forms of transportation and hand-to-hand combat set to theoretically amusing songs like “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.” The screenplay tries to shoehorn in some stuff about the eternal conflict between mothers and their teen daughters—also involving Emily’s own ex-spy mom (Glenn Close)—but nobody involved actually seems to believe that the emotional material matters amidst the perfunctory action beats. Thank heaven for Jamie Demetriou’s charming supporting performance as a not-particularly-sharp wannabe agent, or else the ending—setting up the prospect for a sequel, and yet another iteration on this concept—would feel like even more of a threat than it already does. Available Jan. 17 via Netflix. (PG-13)

The Brutalist ***1/2
If director Brady Corbet and his writing collaborator Mona Fastvold are serving up their historical drama as a single 215-minute sitting, they’re going to face the question: Why? In a story about the post-World War II Jewish immigrant experience in America—one where the first half focuses on architect, Hungarian-born Jew and Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody) as he settles in Philadelphia circa 1947, still separated from his wife Erszébet (Felicity Jones)—the film’s 15-minute intermission takes place as a single photo fills the screen, showing the wedding day of László and Erszébet in front of a synagogue. And being forced to stare at what that photo represents for several minutes ends up having a devastating impact. Of course, there’s plenty more that takes place before and after that point, much of it surrounding László finding a patron in wealthy businessman Harrison Van Buren (a phenomenal Guy Pearce), who commissions László to design and oversee the construction of a massive community center honoring Van Buren’s beloved late mother. But this is largely a story of how assimilation in America does and doesn’t work, both in terms of the barriers erected by those who decide they know what a “real” American is, and the histories those new immigrants bring with them. The result is a stunning epic that asks you to stare the fulness of those lives in the face. Available Jan. 17 in theaters. (R)

Hard Truths - BLEECKER STREET FILMS
  • Bleecker Street Films
  • Hard Truths
Hard Truths ***1/2
You know that old saying about how “if you encounter one asshole, you’ve encountered one asshole, but if you encounter assholes all day long, you’re the asshole?” Well, meet that asshole: Pansy Deacon (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a Londoner whose entire life seems to consist of finding fault and verbally attacking others, including her husband Curtley (David Webber) and 22-year-old son, deeply-introverted son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). Writer/director Mike Leigh and Jean-Baptiste create an indelible character in the profoundly unhappy Pansy, juxtaposing her psychological damage with the considerably more upbeat worldview of her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) and Chantelle’s two daughters (Sophia Brown and Ani Nelson), so that the answer to Pansy’s miserable personality isn’t as simple as “traumatic childhood.” Instead, it turns into a surprisingly sympathetic look at how the burdens of an unspecified, undiagnosed mental illness can crush the joy from someone’s life, and from the lives of those around that person. Leigh’s shaggy, semi-improvisational structure can lead to some unnecessary diversions—like looking in on the professional lives of Chantelle’s daughters—distracting from the central characters. But by the time Hard Truths reaches a climax at a Mother’s Day gathering, where the full brunt of Pansy’s unhappiness finally hits her, you might find a surprising degree of sympathy for that asshole. Available Jan. 17 in theaters. (NR)

Nickel Boys ***
For his adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel, director RaMell Ross has come up with an approach that’s conceptually audacious and aesthetically dazzling—and I can’t help wishing it were emotionally affecting a bit more often. That audacious concept is placing the camera almost entirely in the first-person perspective of its two main characters: first Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), a Black 16-year-old living in 1960s Florida who winds up sentenced to the corrupt Nickel Academy reform school, and eventually also Turner (Brandon Wilson), one of the few fellow Nickel “students” to befriend Elwood. The story contains powerful material about the racist institutions of the time, and gifted cinematographer Jomo Fray captures some remarkable individual images, like the reflection of young Elwood captured in the iron of his caretaker grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). Yet it’s also true that placing us visually in the shoes of the protagonists—while theoretically a notion that might inspire more direct viewer identification—also denies us the opportunity to see situations play out in the actors’ physical performances. It’s a thoughtful way to work around some of the narrative’s turns, and it works well at times to add tension to some of <em>Nickel Boys</em>’ roughest scenes. Personally, staring institutional racism in the face feels more powerful when you can also stare into the faces that it affects. Available Jan. 17 in theaters. (R)

The Room Next Door **
It’s nothing new for a movie to exist primarily as an acting showcase—but what if it’s also a showcase for how wrong a particular filmmaker seems to be for the story he’s telling? That feels like the case for Pedro Almodóvar’s adaptation of a Sigrid Nunez novel, following a pair of longtime friends—novelist Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and journalist Martha (Tilda Swinton)—who reconnect just as Martha is being treated for late-stage cancer, and asks Ingrid to be her companion in the days leading up to a planned use of a euthanasia drug. The narrative consists mostly of the two women talking, whether catching up on the events of years past or talking about mortality, with Moore and Swinton doing perfectly solid jobs of capturing the complexities of their friendship. But Almodóvar is at heart a melodramatist rather than a dramatist, and nearly every choice—particularly the intrusively urgent score by Alberto Iglesias—feels intended to amplify the emotions in a way that makes them feel less human. And somehow, the fact that this is a story in which almost nothing of consequence actually happens feels more frustrating when the direction and the music keep trying to insist to you OH MY GOD SOMETHING IS HAPPENING. What might have been a low-key meditation on regret and the important things in life instead feels like someone treating My Dinner With Andre as though it were an episode of One Life to Live. Available Jan. 17 in theaters. (PG-13)

September 5 ***
The sweaty, low-tech aesthetic of director Tim Fehlbaum’s drama rarely underlines the “issues” percolating beneath the surface of a real-world tragedy, allowing them to become insinuating rather than overbearing. It’s the tale of the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, told entirely from the perspective of those working in the broadcast control room—ABC Sports president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard); inexperienced director Geoff Mason (John Magaro); operations producer Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin); German translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonine Benesch)—trying to decide how to cover a horrific event in real time. Fehlbaum and the screenwriting team effectively set up the background of the dawn of “live via satellite” broadcasting, and the pre-digital minutiae of having to develop 16mm film or create a caption with a physical letter board. But it’s also about how even the most high-stakes moments aren’t free of petty turf wars—like Arledge refusing to turn over decision-making to the ABC News team—or questionable ethical calls based on not wanting to get “scooped.” The emphasis on procedural detail tends to give short shrift to character development, though the performances remain intensely watchable as they improvise their coverage, and it doesn’t always work to shoehorn in the context of Germany trying to burnish its image on the post-WWII international stage. Mostly, it’s a fascinating procedural in which we watch people making history while not fully realizing what kind of history they might be making. Available Jan. 17 in theaters. (PG-13)

Wolf Man **1/2
Writer/director Leigh Whannell’s 2020 take on The Invisible Man found a perfect sweet spot applying 21st-century social consciousness to effective genre chops; his latest stab at a classic “Universal monster” hits the genre stuff, but kinda fumbles its central metaphor. He focuses on a single family—on-the-verge-of-estranged married couple Blake (Christopher Abbott) and Charlotte (Julia Garner), and their young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth)—who travel from San Francisco to rural Oregon to settle the estate of Blake’s father, only to face a threat that lives in the nearby woods. Whannell and co-writer Corbett Tuck use the film’s prologue to set up a solid enough concept—that of parental protectiveness potentially causing psychological harm just as dangerous as the physical harm they might encounter—though they can’t resist basically spelling it out in so many words. But the main story that follows flits around the edges of what it means when someone you trust becomes a threat in a more concrete way, or where Charlotte’s anxieties about her lack of maternal instinct fit into the mix. Whannell certainly understands how to set up a solid set piece, and when to let silence and pure filmmaking generate tension. It’s just kind of a bummer, given the ready-made subtext of lycanthropy as releasing the potential monster inside us all, that Wolf Man rarely manages to be as thoughtful as it is scary. Available Jan. 17 in theaters. (R)