Copyright 2023 HuluSandra Oh and Awkwafina playing sisters in a comedy? Sign me up! They’re two of my favorites. There’s one wild sister with blue hair extensions, big earrings, and no impulse control and one shy, serious sister who dresses in drab monotone and watches her favorite game show with her 20-year-old dog every night? Sounds like fun! And Oh, the dramatic actress from “Killing Eve” is playing the wild one and Awkwafina, the comic who first came to public attention with a song about her private parts is the shy, serious one? Wait, what?
Yep. And it is clear that both of them had a blast making this outrageous comedy, which makes it all the more fun for us. Oh plays Jenny Yum, ten years older than her younger sister, Anne (Awkwafina), the responsible one who works in a CPA office, where she stays in her cubicle as her co-workers celebrate a birthday because no one thought to invite her and she would not join them even if they had.
Jenny and Anne had a chaotic childhood. Their single mother was off partying and gambling. Jenny responded by getting as far away as soon as possible. She has failed after half-hearted attempts at several careers but has developed some survival skills, small-time scams, asking her sister for money, and suing a restaurant for a fish bone found in her filet. Anne takes care of their mother, now in assisted living. She devotes herself to Linguine, the dog Jenny left behind, and to her favorite television show, a “Jeopardy”-like competition called “Can’t Stop the Quiz.” The kindly, bow-tied host, Terry McTeer (Will Ferrell) is a stable force in her life, almost a father figure. She finds his nightly sign-off, “Don’t go anywhere; I know I won’t,” reassuring.
Their mother runs away from assisted living, leaving behind an $80,000 gambling debt. The sisters are given two weeks to pay it back, with the loan shark holding Linguine as hostage. Jenny thinks the only way to get the money is for Anne to win it on “Can’t Stop the Quiz.” Anne, who cannot bear to have anyone look at her, is horrified by the idea of being on television. But she is desperate to get Linguine back.
All of this is just an excuse for extended farce as the sisters interact with a powerhouse cast of supporting actors, including Holland Taylor as a grumpy neighbor who loves Alan Cumming, Tony Hale as the owner of a Ben Franklin-themed inn, and Jason Schwartzman as the quiz show’s smarmy current champion, with ultra-white teeth veneers that practically glow in the dark. Plus there’s a display of hundreds of bow ties that is the background for a very sweet conversation. Wild physical comedy and surreal interactions are grounded by the way the sisters begin to resolve their differences. It is funny, it is outrageous, and it is surprisingly tender-hearted.
Parents should know that this film has mature material including drinking and drug use (an extended humorous drug trip sequence), comic peril and violence and very strong language.
Family discussion: Why did Jenny and Anne respond so differently to the way they grew up? If you were trying to play charades with a member of your family, what could you do that no one else would understand?
If you like this, try: “Lucky Grandma” and “Rat Race”
The faculty members have the crucial pedigree of having gone to Barton. This, of course, inspires respect and courtesy from the students. No it doesn’t! The students barely respect their prestigious and wealthy parents, but even they rank higher than someone who is still at Barton, decades after graduation. Perhaps the faculty member held most in contempt is Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), who has three strikes against him. He looks and smells weird. He teaches a class on Ancient Greece, which the students find useless and monumentally boring. And he is incorruptible and brutally strict. Even his former student, now the school’s headmaster, is furious with him for refusing to give the son of a powerful and wealthy donor a better grade, costing him his college admission.
That is how Hunham gets stuck with staying at the school over winter break, overseeing the students whose parents cannot or will not let them come home. They’re called the holdovers. The students are miserable, especially when they learn that they all have to bunk together in the infirmary because the heat to the dorms has been shut off, and that Hunham has a rigorous schedule of study and exercise planned for them. Everyone else has gone home for the holidays except for Mary Lamb, the head chef, who will be cooking for them. She is in mourning for her son, recently killed in Vietnam. He was a Barton graduate who could not get a draft deferment like his classmates because they could not afford college tuition. And she is played by an exceptionally moving Da’Vine Joy Randolph, so good in “Dolomite Is My Name” and briefly glimpsed this month in “Rustin” as Mahaliah Jackson.
We’ve all heard about the best-laid plans going awry. And I’m sure we’ve all experienced that terrible plans tend to go awry, too. So before too long, the other holdovers have been whisked away, all that are left are Hunham, Mary, and one smart, rebellious, deeply grieving, and extremely angry student who would have been graduating if he had not been kicked out of three other schools. That is Angus Tully, played with exactly that mix of qualities by newcomer Dominic Sessa.
Director Alexander Payne likes to make movies about people who are extremely passionate about issues others do not take too seriously. In “Election,” it’s a high school election. Who can forget one of the great moments in movie history, when one student calls out the ones who care about it. And we all remember this film’s star, Paul Giamatti, getting way too passionate about his disdain for merlot. In “Nebraska,” a senior citizen is over-committed to the idea he has won a sweepstakes.
Here, the always-brilliant Giamatti gives one of the best performances of the year as a kind of tribute to the bitter boarding school classics teacher in “The Browning Version,” and something of a classics version of a Miniver Cheevy, the only way he can make any sense of his lonely, disappointed, unappreciated life is to wrap himself up in a notion of antiquity that is vastly more honorable or at least understandable than what he has. In his mind, every failed student his his “no, in thunder!” to the weak ambiguities and moral compromises and overall unfairness of the modern world. The students — and the other faculty — may be younger, more handsome, richer, more confident, more popular, and more privileged than he is, but Hunham can still feel superior about what he has decided matters more, like his fondness for the the Meditation of Marcus Aurelius.
Mary, Hunham, and Angus each in their own way stuck, have experiences, adventures, mistakes, confidences, and expanded understandings over the course of the holidays. Each scene is a small gem, the ensemble work is as good as it gets, the screenplay by David Hemingson is smart, funny, and touching, and the superb cinematography by Eigil Bryld captures the chilly landscape of the almost-deserted school and the warmth of some of the other locations. This is one of the best films of the year, with career best work by all involved.
Parents should know that this film has very strong language, some peril and injury, family conflicts, mental illness, loss and grief, drinking and drunkenness, smoking, and some drug use.
Family discussion: What should the teachers in charge of students left behind over the holidays do? What are the differences between the time period of the movie and today?
If you like this, try: “The Browning Version” and its remake — both good, but I prefer the original with Michael Redgrave
Rated R for violence, some grisly images, and language
Profanity:
Strong and racist language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking and drunkenness
Violence/ Scariness:
Extended peril and violence including murder, guns, explosions
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
October 20, 2023
Copyright AppleTV 2023Martin Scorsese brings everything he knows to the fact-based epic “Killers of the Flower Moon,” everything he knows about filmmaking and everything he knows about the conflicts and betrayals in American history, despite all efforts to remove them from curricula and libraries, continue to pulsate through our culture.
The film is based on the prize-winning book of the same name by David Grann, set about a century ago in Oklahoma. America forcibly relocated the Osage tribal members to a part of the country they thought was valueless. Times change. Technology changes. And it turned out that what was under that land was suddenly accessible and valuable: oil. The bounty the Osage never sought brought them riches they never dreamed of. The money brought the kind of people who will do anything to get it. That includes bending the law to the breaking point, with the government placing severe restrictions on Osage access to the money, appointing white “guardians” to oversee every expenditure and getting paid to do so, exploitation and con artists, price gouging, getting access to the money by marrying Osage women, and murder.
As the film begins, the approximately 2000 Osage are among the most prosperous communities in the world. They live in gracious, beautifully appointed homes. They have white servants. The women wear the latest fashions and expensive jewelry. Their towns are vibrant and modern. They go to a white church but retain many of their tribal traditions.
The most prominent white member of the community is William King Hale (Robert De Niro). “Call me King,” he says genially but meaningfully to his nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a WWI veteran who has just arrived in town. Ernest swiftly moves from driver to husband to Mollie, one of the Osage sisters who are prominent holders of “headrights” to the revenues from the oil, yet still needing permission to spend the money. Those rights cannot be sold or given away, but they can be inherited. So, many white men, like Ernest who candidly admits that he loves money and liquor and hates to work, marry Osage women, putting them in line to inherit. Even better if they can accelerate that transfer by accelerating their deaths.
Spectacular production design by Jack Fisk and cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto (who also did “Barbie,” so he’s having quite a year), editing by Scorsese favorite Thelma Schoonmaker, and music from The Band’s Robbie Robertson (who grew up on a native reservation) create a world that is vivid and specific but also a metaphor that resonates with America’s founding themes and failures to live up to the promise of the Declaration of Independence. Mollie and her sisters are doubly restricted as Indians and women and Mollie is additionally vulnerable because she has diabetes. At the sometimes poisonous heart of the film is the Ernest/Mollie relationship. From their first magnetic conversation when Mollie accurately but somehow also fondly calls Ernest a coyote who wants money, the themes of love and betrayal intertwine. Ernest’s increasing corruption shows on DiCaprio’s face, disintegrating like Dorian Gray’s portrait. De Niro shows us Hale’s smooth veneer, as he pretends to be devoted to the Osage, especially Mollie and her sisters, and as he speaks of murder as though he is making plans for a picnic. A white man is asked to kill someone and instantly refuses until he is told the target is an Indian. That alters the transaction. And it makes clear the othering that expands as the envy of the white Oklahomans distorts their thinking.
The book focuses on the pre-FBI investigator (Jesse Plemons, genial, implacable, incorruptible, and determined) working under J. Edgar Hoover, the movie, with a script by Scorsese and Eric Roth, wisely makes Mollie the center. Gladstone is a wonder, showing us her mingled love for her husband and her people, her devastating grief over the loss of her family, and her growing recognition that she has been betrayed. The film calls on us to keep watching her face, calm to the point of stoicism as she sits with her grief and her shrinking options.
The film takes its time, over 3 1/2 hours, but every minute is earned. This is a rare film that is not just excellent, but important.
Parents should know this is a fact-based story of racism, plunder, murder and exploitation. Characters are in peril and are murdered by guns and an explosion and fire. There is an attempted murder by poison and references to suicide. There are intense and graphic images. Characters use strong language, drink, and smoke.
Family discussion: Is there a way to find justice for these abuses? Who should be responsible? What does the relationship between Mollie and Ernest symbolize about the relationship between the US and its people?
Rated PG-13 for violence, some bloody images and strong language
Profanity:
Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
None
Violence/ Scariness:
Extended action, peril, and violence, some involving a child and a pregnant woman, disturbing and grisly images, very sad death of a major character
Diversity Issues:
Some concerns about racial stereotypes
Date Released to Theaters:
September 29, 2023
Copyright 20th Century 2023“The Creator” is an apocalyptic sci-fi story about a war with AI that looks great but has a storyline that is an overlong (2 1/4 hour) mash-up of better, more thought-provoking films with more skillfully constructed world-building. I wonder how many reviews will suggest that if this is the kind of project we can expect from bot screenwriters, humans don’t have much to worry about.
Science fiction often extrapolates current conflicts by imagining the worst-case scenario of current technological developments or mirroring historical conflicts. “The Creator” does both, drawing from classics like “Terminator,” “Blade Runner,” “Her,” “Captain Marvel,” and “Apocalypse Now,” maybe a bit of “Dances with Wolves,” but just highlighting how much better those films are than this one.
The best moments are the film’s opening, with what appear to be archival black and white newsreels from the 1950s and 60s, chirpily introducing wonderful new thinking machines that will take over our most tedious tasks, make life easier, and free up our time for people and activities we love. They amusingly capture the upbeat tone and aesthetics of the post-WWII era.
But then we learn that (as in “Terminator”), the artificial intelligence humans created began thinking for itself, and what it thought was that it did not want to be the servants of humans anymore. And so, we are told, the AI dropped an atomic bomb on Los Angeles, wiping out the city. The AI robots are now so advanced that some, called simulants (think “Blade Runner’s” replicants) have faces and skin like humans, though no back of the head, and big, whirring, empty metal circles behind their ears. The humans and the AI are at war.
Humans have recently gained an edge when the story picks up in 2065. A military installation in the sky called NOMAD is powerful enough to track and destroy AI bases. Joshua (John David Washington), a former soldier with robotic arm and leg prosthetics, is living peacefully with his pregnant wife, Maya (Gemma Chan) in a house on an isolated beach. Around them is a community of friendly simulants.
They are discovered by NOMAD. Joshua, who turns out to have been undercover, trying to locate the mysterious person known as Nirmata, considered the creator and leader of the AI, tries to save Maya, but she appears to bekilled with the blown-up and shot simulents. Joshua is devastated. When military officers approach him to help them find a new weapon, reportedly the most powerful ever developed, he refuses, until Colonel Howell (Allison Janney) shows him evidence that Maya is still alive.
Joshua agrees to guide the mission to what was Maya’s community, and there he finds that the “weapon” is a highly advanced stimulant in the form of a little girl with a shaved head. She looks like she is about six years old. She can control power circuits and absorb information at an exponential rate. And so, like “The Last of Us,” a man and a young girl go on a journey. In this case, they are being chased by both the AI entities and the humans.
The action set-pieces are ably staged and the settings are striking. But the story is weak and superficial. Basically, the white people with cities and fancy weapons are the bad guys and the AIs, who mostly look Asian and live gently on the land, just want liberty and peace. A simulant says that it was human error that led to the bombing of LA. But one could just as easily say that it was human error that lead to artificial intelligence that violate Asimov’s laws of robotics, with no harm to humans an essential rule. Why do simulants eat and sleep? If they are so smart, why haven’t they learned from history that building the most powerful weapon has never led to peace? If they are so smart, why don’t they develop some proposal for peaceful co-existence?
More important, what does the movie want us to feel about all of this? Its politics are as muddled as the inconsistent world it invites us to consider.
Parents should know that this film has extended peril and violence, some involving a child (or an entity that looks like a child) and a pregnant woman. Many characters are injured and killed, including sad deaths of major characters, and there are onscreen deaths and some graphic, bloody images. Characters use strong language. There are unfortunate racial stereotypes, even with non-human AI.
Family discussion: Why make an AI in the form of a child? What kinds of rules should we impose on the corporations who develop and sell AI?
If you like this, try: “Blade Runner,” “The Tomorrow War,” and “Terminator”
Rated R for pervasive language, sexual material, and drug use
Profanity:
Constant very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Alcohol and brief drug use
Violence/ Scariness:
None
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
September 15, 2023
Date Released to DVD:
November 13, 2023
Copyright Sony 2023Crazy times create crazy events. There has seldom been a crazier time in the United States than the early months of the pandemic and there has seldom been a crazier series of events in the modern history of investing than the time a group of small individual investors with very little capital took on some of the wealthiest and most powerful people on Wall Street and they kind of won. Now that sounds like a movie, and, for the second time, it is.
First there was the documentary, Eat the Rich: the GameStop Saga. And now, the feature film, “Dumb Money,” with an all-star cast, a smart screenplay by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, and lively direction from Craig Gillespie. The movie does a good job of conveying the intricate details of investing and finance in the context of a movie that maintains a heightened tone through sharply executed editing, provocative needle-drops on the soundtrack (beginning with WAP), and minimal exposition.
In very sharp contrast to the music on the soundtrack, Paul Dano plays the central figure, mild-mannered Keith Gill, who lives with his wife, Caroline (Shailene Woodley), and their baby daughter in a modest home in Brockton, Massachusetts. Like a movie superhero, he has a secret identity. By day he was a financial analyst with MassMutual. By night he had not one but two personas, one on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets (DeepF***ingValue) and one on YouTube (Roaring Kitty). In both, he talked about stocks he liked and he revealed his own trades. In January 2021, he announced that he had invested in 50,000 shares and 500 call options for GameStop, the store that sells video games in malls. Most investors, including Wall Street billionaires, thought GameStop was going to go bankrupt. The US was still in pre-vaccine pandemic lockdown, though GameStop somehow got listed as an essential business because it sold some computer peripherals, so the stores were still open. But Keith explained his reasons for thinking the stock, trading at under $4 a share, was undervalued.
The Wall Street billionaires also put their money where their mouths were and bet against the company by going “short,” meaning they would make money if the stock went down. Normally, they would have succeeded. But nothing in this story was normal. It was a perfect storm. First, the pandemic shut everything down and made people feel even more mistrustful of big institutions than they were before. This was especially true of the people of Keith’s generation, who were in school on 9/11 and were entering the job market just as the financial meltdown hit the economy with no consequences for the people who caused it. Second, social media made it possible for anyone, like Keith for example, to express views on platforms that were as accessible as traditional media. And it made it possible for followers to support each other and bring in more. Gill went viral. Third, thanks to a new app with no fees, buying and selling stock and even complicated securities like puts and calls (options) was suddenly as easy as sending a text. And fourth, people were stuck at home. They felt stuck in an unfair world. They did not have access to complex investment securities analysis about big, complicated corporations. But they could understand Roaring Kitty, and they could understand GameStop.
And then, Roaring Kitty. People followed his recommendations because he showed them that he was using his own money, because he was an outsider and therefore more like them, because that trading app on their phones was called Robin Hood and trades were “free,” and, this is the key point, after a while, when it was clear that they were costing the Wall Street short sellers billions as their purchases made the stock go up, they were just as happy to be beating the mega-wealthy as they were to be making thousands, tens of thousands, and in Keith’s case, millions for themselves. The trading app was named Robin Hood, which sounded anti-Wall Street. These new investors came up with a new meme-able term: “stonks,” meaning “we’re doing it our own way and it is more about the fun than about making money.” Their loss is almost entirely limited to their modest investments while the short sellers risk losses one television commentator (in real-life archival footage) calls “infinity.”
Gillespe has a sure hand with a chaotic story, giving us just enough information to follow what is happening without weighing us down with the details of finance. Schuker Blum and Angelo have a sharp sense for telling detail. One of the investors is a GameStop employee (Anthony Ramos) with a bureaucratic boss. We get a glimpse of the gulf between the MBAs at headquarters sending out lists about which products have the highest profit margins (“push the loyalty card!”) and the reality of the tiny shop in the otherwise-empty mall. Other investors include a nurse and single mother (America Ferrara) and a pair of debt-ridden college students played by Talia Ryder and Myha’la. Sebastian Stan appears as Robin Hood co-founder Vladimir Tenev. He claims that they were inspired by Occupy Wall Street and his coyness about how they make money when they do not charge a transaction fee turns out to be very significant when Robin Hood’s connection to another player in this story comes out.
There’s an “Empire Strikes Back” element when the people with billions at risk start playing hardball. But Gill understands that Wall Street is overlooking the app investors the way they look the customers of GameStop and his followers, dazzled by their gains and thrilled by schadenfreude. If they had not felt that they were being treated like losers for so long, the win would not mean as much.
The superb cast includes Clancy Brown and Kate Burton as Keith’s parents and Pete Davidson as his slacker brother, whose job in the movie is to contrast and target for exposition. Nick Offerman is excellent as billionaire Ken Griffin and Seth Rogen is in top form as Gabe Plotkin, the guy whose highly leveraged bet against GameStop turns out to be a monumental mistake. In the beginning of the film, his casual entitlement in talking to a contractor who is supposed to be tearing down a house so Plotkin can have a tennis court is in sharp contrast to his unraveling as things go south. You can see the real Plotkin’s testimony here. (Don’t feel sorry for him. He’s now an owner of the Hornets.) There are a dozen clever details that give the story texture, from the recreation of the stonk memes to the coaching for the zoom testimony to a Congressional committee. (You can see Gill’s testimony here.)
It’s entertaining and thought-provoking. With any luck, it will inspire other Gills to find what the experts overlook, which is, after all, how capitalism works.
Parents should know that this film has non-stop strong and vulgar language, spoken by the characters and on the soundtrack, including the n-word. Characters drink alcohol and briefly smoke marijuana and there is a bawdy, sexualized game at a college party.
Family discussion: Who would you trust to give you investment advice? Why did so many people trust Keith?
If you like this, try: the “Eat the Rich” documentary, the book by Ben Mezrich, and “The Big Short” (Note a brief appearance by the real-life character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort)
