Maestro (2023)

For our Christmas day viewing pleasure, Jack, Amy, and I enjoyed this interpretation of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein. Bradley Cooper, who stars, co-wrote, and directs, portrays the musician as driven, narcissistic, and flamboyantly romantic, from his central relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre to his male side pieces (closeted, as one had to be in the 1940s and beyond). Carey Mulligan gives us a multi-layered Montealegre heading up the enormous cast, which also includes Sarah Silverman as Bernstein's sister Shirley. As pointed out by several reviewers, some supporting characters' names are said so quickly that you might not know to whom they're referring, for example, composer Aaron Copland, choreographer Jerome Robbins, and comedic musical duo Betty Comden and Adolph Green. 

Josh Singer co-wrote the screenplay with Cooper, the latter of whom has been working on this project for years, including developing a love of conducting at a young age.

I'm streaming the soundtrack, released on the venerable classical record label Deutsche Grammophon, on Apple Music. All of the music is written by Bernstein. The scene in the church with the chorus is one of many breathtaking interludes. One seven minute track of Bernstein's Mass takes me back to college when I sang in a performance of it. I would have liked to have heard more of West Side Story, though.

Matthew Libatique's beautiful cinematography suggests the eras: black and white 4:3 (like an old school television) slowly turning to color and the screen becoming wider as time and technology march on.

With Bernstein's long and accomplished life, it's impossible (and preferable not) to put in every detail, and I must compliment film editor Michelle Tesoro for the blending of eras. She has quite a few nominations for this work already.

Some haters have criticized Cooper's large nose prosthesis. Bernstein's real-life children have no problem with it, and one analyst suggests that it is the same size as Bernstein's nose, but on Cooper's face it looks much bigger. Speaking of the Bernstein progeny, each is played as an adult by a relative of another star: Maya Hawke (daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke) as daughter Jamie Bernstein, Sam Nivola (son of Alessandro) as Alexander Bernstein, and Alexa Swinton (distant cousin of Tilda) as Nina Bernstein.

Cooper was last blogged for his directing and co-writing debut A Star Is Born and for acting in Licorice Pizza, Mulligan for Saltburn, Silverman for Battle of the Sexes, Singer for First Man, Libatique for Don't Worry Darling, and Hawke for Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. I don't remember Nivola in White Noise but I did watch Swinton's 17 episodes of And Just Like That as Rose/Rock Goldenblatt. Tesoro's credits include On The Basis of Sex and seven episodes of The Queen's Gambit, all of which included some flashbacks and -forwards.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are in tune with a 79% average but its audiences are about to walk out at 62. We watched it on Netflix as our annual Christmas day movie.

Saltburn (2023)

This psychological thriller about Oliver, a 2006 scholarship student at Oxford, befriending the wealthy Felix, held our attention as it got more and more intense. I don't think Amy would recommend it, but Jack and I have more of a taste for sick and twisted, which can make us laugh. Barry Keoghan is already racking up nominations as Oliver, as is Rosamund Pike as Felix's over-the-top mother. Jacob Elordi is the handsome Felix, Alison Oliver is his sister Venetia, and Richard E. Grant is their patient father. Carey Mulligan makes a cameo as "Poor Dear Pamela."

This is the second feature directed and written by Emerald Fennell and it is powerful. 

Apple Music has the score by Anthony Willis with the London Contemporary Orchestra. It also has a playlist of songs aired during the movie. The letterboxed, richly saturated, beautiful cinematography is thanks to Linus Sandgren.

Keoghan was last blogged for The Banshees of Inisherin for which he was Oscar-nominated, Pike for I Care a Lot, Grant for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Mulligan for She Said, Fennell and Willis for Promising Young Woman (which starred Mulligan), and Sandgren for La La Land for which he won his Oscar. Elordi is new to me but I am compelled to mention that he plays Elvis in the movie Priscilla, which is on my watch list. Alison Oliver makes her feature debut after twelve episodes of Conversations with Friends and a couple of other credits.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences aren't scalding, with averages of 71 and 79%. We watched it on Prime on December 23.

Somewhere in Queens (2022)

We loved Ray Romano's directing debut, a dramedy in which he plays a man whose son's basketball achievements are more important to the father than to the son. With Laurie Metcalf as the wife/mother, Jennifer Esposito as a sexy neighbor, Jacob Ward as the son, and what rogerebert.com calls a stacked cast of East Coast character actors (the one most familiar to me was Jon Manfrellotti who plays Petey).

Romano co-wrote the layered script with Mark Stegemann and they elicit plenty of laughs, some cringes, and some sweet and sad moments. The Italian heritage of the family is central and the big family scenes provide both humor and pathos. The basketball games are fun, too.

I'm streaming Mark Orton's lovely soundtrack on Apple Music and here's a list of the songs played in the movie.

Romano was last mentioned in these pages for Bad Education, and blogged more fully in The Big Sick, Metcalf for Lady Bird, and Orton for The Holdovers. This is Ward's feature debut. Manfrellotti was in Romano's serieses Everybody Loves Raymond and Men of a Certain Age, among others. Stegemann's credits include writing jobs, including executive story editor, on 54 episodes of Scrubs, and four each of Men of a Certain Age and Raising Hope, to mention a few.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences have found themselves averaging 90 and 92%. Jack and I watched it December 15 on Hulu.

May December (2023)

Jack and I liked this cringey story of a woman raising a family with the man she raped when he was in middle school and the actress shadowing her to prepare for playing her in a movie. With terrific performances by the three leads, many uncomfortable laughs, and an occasionally overwrought score, it is a critic's darling, with 30 wins and 136 other nominations as of today.

 

Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman are wonderful in the roles of the housewife Gracie and the actress Elizabeth, and Charles Melton is no slouch as the husband Joe. All of his 18 wins and all but one of his 39 nominations are for that role.

Todd Haynes directs from a screenplay by Samy Burch with the story by her and Alex Mechanik. Apparently Portman first brought the script to Haynes, and all of her fourteen nominations for this movie are for the leading role, while Moore is nominated (28 times, plus one win) for supporting.

It's loosely based on the 1990s tabloid headlines of Mary Kay Letourneau, a Seattle teacher who had an affair with student Vili Fualaau, and had his child when he was 13 and she was 35. Here's a thorough description of the actual Letourneau case. Like Letourneau, Gracie went to jail, and she and Joe married as soon as possible to raise their children together. Gracie and Joe are shown to be a boring suburban couple who barely acknowledge their horrifying past, and the laughs often come from the incongruity of the two.

The soundtrack, available on Apple Music and elsewhere, combines original tracks by Marcelo Zarvos with tunes by Michel Legrand written for The Go Between (1971), and its intensity belying the mundane action on screen is one thing that had us and many audiences laughing.

Portman was last blogged for narrating Dolphin Reef and for acting in Annihilation, Moore for Suburbicon, Haynes for Wonderstruck, Zarvos for The Best of Enemies, and Legrand for The Guardians. Melton is new to me and this is the feature debut for Burch and Mechanik.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics' and audiences' gap of averages 90 and 68% mirror the 22 age gap between the characters. It's definitely worth seeing. We streamed it on Netflix on December 12.

Bottoms (2023)

Amy, Jack, and I enjoyed this slapstick story of two high school girls, each other's only friend, who, with no training, form a self-defense club to try to lose their virginity to other girls--hopefully their popular crushes. We agreed that it's cartoon crazy with just the right amount of insanity.

Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri star as PJ and Josie, Kaia Gerber plays PJ's crush Brittany, Havana Rose Liu is Josie's crush Isabel, and Ruby Cruz is Hazel, another outsider trying to get in. Punkie Johnson has a cameo as a former babysitter and former NFL player Marshawn Lynch is funny as a teacher, apparently improvising most of his lines.

It's directed by Emma Seligman from a script by her and Sennott. Sennott and Edebiri were NYU roommates (class of 2017) and Seligman was a classmate and good friend.

As I write I'm listening to the exciting soundtrack by Leo Birenberg and Charlie XCX on Apple Music. Only a few songs are on this list.

Sennott and Seligman were last blogged for Shiva Baby. Edebiri, best known for her award-winning 18 episodes of The Bear, has also been in six episodes of Dickinson, two of Abbott Elementary, and the movies How It Ends and Theater Camp, though I failed to mention her. Kaia Gerber, who looks a lot like her mother Cindy Crawford, played a starlet in Babylon, and I didn't blog about her either. Liu is new to me, Cruz was in six episodes of Mare of Easttown, and Johnson is best known for 43 episodes of Saturday Night Live, but has dozens of other credits. Lynch has just a few other acting credits but has two nominations so far for this one.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are putting this one at the top with averages of 90 and 89%. We rented it December 24 on Apple TV/iTunes.

Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2022)

Jack and I were captivated. This is based on the true story of Roger Sharpe, a young writer who loves the game. Set in the mid 1970s, Mike Faist plays him in his twenties doing the work to end a New York City ban on the machines and Dennis Boutsikaris narrates as Sharpe in the future. Crystal Reed plays the love interest.

Directed and written by brothers Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg in their feature debut, it mixes time periods, the history of pinball, and the personal story of the guy with the big mustache. Not sure whether to credit the mustache to the makeup department head Doria Riker or the hair department head Aaron Saucier so I'll shout out to them both.

Rob Barbato is credited with the soundtrack, which has not been released, as far as I can tell. Six other songs of the era are played.

Barbato was last blogged for The Eyes of Tammy Faye (speaking of makeup). We saw Faist on Broadway playing Connor in Dear Evan Hansen and then he co-starred as Riff in the newest reboot of West Side Story, though I failed to mention him. Some highlights of Boutsikaris' fifty year career (he's 71) include *batteries not included (1987), Money Monster, and fifteen episodes of Better Call Saul. Reed was apparently in Crazy, Stupid Love, though I don't remember her, and I've seen none of her other credits, nor have I seen any of Riker's. Saucier has worked on dozens of features and TV episodes.

This movie hit the jackpot with Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences, averaging 95 and 92%. We rented it on iTunes/Apple TV on November 28 but it's now streaming on Hulu with a subscription.

*Fooled ya. The title of the movie has an asterisk in it.

Milestone alert! Technically, I missed the exact milestone when I got behind in my posting. American Fiction was the 1500th movie to be summarized on the blog since September 3, 2008 and this is 1502. There are currently five in draft mode and we're going to spend three hours watching Oppenheimer today.

American Fiction (2023)

Jack, Amy, and I loved this dramedy about an erudite and prickly Black novelist/professor who, frustrated with racism in the publishing world, picks a corny pen name, writes an absurd book entirely made up of Black stereotypes, and is horrified that it is widely praised. We laughed, we cringed, and I even shed a tear or two at some family and interpersonal drama. 

Jeffrey Wright is perfectly cast as Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, smart and angry. In fact, every actor is fantastic, including Tracee Ellis Ross as his hilarious sister, Sterling K. Brown as their brother, Leslie Uggams as their mother, John Ortiz as Monk's agent, Issa Rae as another writer, and Erika Alexander as a neighbor.

Cord Jefferson makes his directing debut and feature screenwriting debut, based on Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure. The movie strays from typical A-Z narrative from time to time.

All aspects of the movie are on many short lists for Oscars this year (29 wins and 104 other nominations so far), including its soundtrack by Laura Karpman, with help from Patrice Rushen on piano and Elena Pinderhughes singing one track. I'm streaming it now on Apple Music. Here's a list of other songs played during the movie.

Wright was last blogged for The Public, Ross for The High Note, Brown for Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul, Uggams for Deadpool 2, Ortiz for Nostalgia, Rae for Barbie, and Karpman for The Beguiled. Jefferson has written or co-written 196 episodes of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (no stranger to satirizing Black stereotypes and racism), twelve of The Good Place, and more. Rushen is a Grammy-nominated jazz pianist and vocalist.

This is a best seller for Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences, averaging 92 and 97%, respectively. As a voting member of the Film Independent Spirit Awards, I have permission to stream the nominees, so we watched it December 30. As far as I know, that's the only way to stream it for now but it's expected to be available in a month or two. I'm posting about it today (before movies I watched between November and now) because those of you who do go to bricks and mortar movie theatres can see it right now. Definitely do see it!

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Jack and I enjoyed the action, special effects, photography locations, and Harrison Ford's charisma in this last  installment of Professor Jones' adventures. If you've seen none of the prequels some of it may go over your head, but it's pretty good fun for fans of the genre. 

The cast of hundreds includes Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, Toby Jones, Mads Mikkelsen, John Rhys-Davies, and Karen Allen.

This is the first one not directed by Steven Spielberg. James Mangold helms this time, from a script co-written by him, David Koepp, and brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth. The story begins in the 1930s with effects magically transforming Ford to a 40-something man; then it moves to 1969 so he can look his age, although he's in great shape for 81!

John Williams' orchestral soundtrack, on Apple Music and, no doubt, elsewhere, occasionally harks back to his original Indiana Jones themes. The luscious cinematography is thanks to Phedon Papamichael.

Ford was last blogged for Blade Runner 2049, Waller-Bridge for Solo: A Star Wars Story in which she voiced a robot (she plays a human in this one), Banderas for Official Competition, Jones for Empire of Light, Mikkelsen for Another Round, Koepp for Premium Rush (he wrote the previous Indiana Jones movie), Williams for The Fabelmans, and Mangold, the Butterworths, and Papamichael for Ford v Ferrari.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics were not destined to love this one, averaging a scant 70%, while its audiences are more dialed in at 88. We rented it on November 22 on iTunes/Apple TV but it can now also be streamed on Disney+ if you have that subscription.