Monday, March 24, 2025

A Complete Unknown (2024)

Jack and I really liked this slightly fictionalized retelling of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's early career. It's a musical, with Timothée Chalamet performing lots of Dylan's work (and Monica Barbaro giving us a little of Joan Baez's). Elle Fanning is delightful as Dylan's sweet girlfriend Sylvie and Edward Norton is strong as Dylan's champion, folksinger Pete Seeger. Apparently Sylvie was based on Dylan's activist girlfriend Suze Rotolo (1943-2011) but Dylan asked that Rotolo's real name not be used.

James Mangold directs from a screenplay by him and rock writer Jay Cocks, adapted from Elijah Wald's 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric.

Chalamet is fine at channeling Dylan musically as well as dramatically and does not lip-sync his songs. Barbaro has a pretty voice but no one can match Baez's throaty sound. The soundtrack album is credited only to Chalamet, but, in the movie, there are lots of other songs by other artists, also including Norton singing as Seeger and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash.

This movie has 24 wins and 126 other nominations, including Oscar nominations for Chalamet, Barbaro, Norton, Mangold (directing), Mangold and Cocks (adapted screenplay), best costume design (Arianne Phillips), and best sound, I made a note after watching it that I loved the sets and picture cars. 

The title of the movie comes from his 1965 single Like a Rolling Stone from the album Highway 61 Revisited

If you have read this far, you might be interested in a short article about this movie and a responding letter to the editor from The New Yorker, pasted below*.

Chalamet and Fanning were last blogged for A Rainy Day in New York, Norton for Asteroid City, Mangold for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Cocks for Silence, Holbrook for Vengeance, and Phillips for Don't Worry Darling.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics know a little less than its audiences, averaging 82 and 95%, respectively. We watched it for a fee on March 6 on Apple TV, but on March 27 it will begin streaming on Hulu.

*From The New Yorker Talk of the Town on January 13:
At the stroke of noon one frigid weekday, the actress Monica Barbaro peered through the door to Chelsea Guitars, the hole-in-the-wall vintage-guitar shop on the ground floor of the Chelsea Hotel. No one. “I kept coming here on Sundays, and it’s not open on Sundays,” she said, referring to her time shooting the Bob Dylan bio-pic “A Complete Unknown,” in which she plays Joan Baez, opposite Timothée Chalamet. She asked a hotel doorman if the place ever opens, and he said that it’s sometimes more of a “soft open.” “A creative open,” she countered, and waited in the lobby.

Barbaro, a dark-eyed thirty-five-year-old, wore a blue peacoat and jeans. The hotel, where Dylan lived in the early sixties, is also where she spent her first day of shooting, for a scene in which Baez runs outside to hail a taxi during the Cuban missile crisis. This attempted escape was somewhat out of character, she had worried, since at seventeen Baez had protested an atomic-bomb drill for giving a false sense of safety, but the director, James Mangold, assured her, “When the shit really hits the fan, you would want to be with your family.”

Barbaro, who trained as a ballerina, got the role after playing a fighter pilot in “Top Gun: Maverick,” and she threw herself into Baez research. “I was listening to the music that she listened to, like Odetta, and Harry Belafonte,” she said. Barbaro had no guitar experience, but the actors’ strike meant that she had longer to practice her fingerpicking, and she studied Baez’s high, ringing vibrato.

By the time Dylan arrived on the New York music scene, a complete unknown, Baez was a known. In 1962, she was on the cover of Time, the young face of the folk-music revival. “Her relationship with fame was a deeply conflicted one,” Barbaro said.

Her relationship with Dylan was conflicted, too. They met at Gerde’s Folk City, in Greenwich Village, in 1961, and struck up a fraught musical romance. “In the film, he’s very interesting to her, because she’s receiving all kinds of praise, and he’s willing to boldly and kind of rudely cut her down to size,” Barbaro said. “He’s also supremely talented, and she sees that immediately.” Baez recorded Dylan’s songs and brought him onstage at her shows. Within four years, Dylan eclipsed her in fame, went electric, and broke her heart.

By half past twelve, the guitar shop was open. “Do you have any Martins, by chance?” Barbaro asked the scruffy guy behind the counter, who introduced himself as Coby.

“Sure do,” he said. “I got a 1949 D-28, at seventeen thousand five hundred bucks.” He took it down for her and asked, “Do you play?”

“Now I do.” She whispered, “I shouldn’t admit this publicly, but I really want to get an electric guitar. I’ve been carrying these finger picks that I used for the movie in my pocket ever since we filmed. It’s like a totem to prove that it happened.” In the film, she plays a 1929 Martin 0-45. “Ed Norton”—who portrays Pete Seeger—“kept stealing it from me. He was telling me stories about how to keep props. I was, like, ‘Ed, I’m not stealing this guitar!’ ” She played a few bars of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” which Baez recorded live in 1963, and which Barbaro and Chalamet both sing in the movie.

“It’s a very special song,” Coby said.

“It is,” Barbaro agreed. “ ‘Farewell, Angelina,’ too, just crushes me.” She tried out a jauntier tune, “Mama, You Been on My Mind.” “Joan sings ‘Daddy, you been on my mind,’ and it throws Dylan off. You can hear it in a recording. I love it.”

She thanked Coby and went back to the hotel lobby. While Barbaro was working on “A Complete Unknown,” Baez, at eighty-two, released a book of drawings, rendered upside-down, some with her nondominant hand. Barbaro took up drawing, too; she made a picture of Chalamet and Mangold watching a playback. “You see the world differently when you draw,” Barbaro said, then took out a pad and sketched a pair of hotel guests with their suitcases.

During filming, she had arranged a phone call with Baez. When they were connected, Barbaro nervously gushed that Baez deserved her own movie. Baez, as if to wave away her concern, said, “I’m just in the garden, watching the birds!” Barbaro had questions: how Baez had learned guitar, how she came up with her arrangement for “House of the Rising Sun.” “She said, ‘Sometimes I would fall asleep with my guitar in my bed and wake up in the morning and keep playing.’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve done that!’ ” Afterward, Baez texted her a drawing of some lavender cufflinks she had given Dylan. Barbaro had been having dreams about Baez, and the phone call settled them. “In one, we were in a vintage convertible, driving around the highway,” Barbaro recalled. “She’s laughing, and I’m, like, This is great! My subconscious was definitely trying to tell me that everything is going to be O.K.”

Letter to The New Yorker on February 10:
In Michael Schulman’s account of meeting up with the actor Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown,” the recent Bob Dylan bio-pic, there is some discussion about the guitar that she uses in the movie, the very same guitar that we, at Lark Street Music, in Teaneck, New Jersey, agreed to rent—it was a 1923, not a 1929, Martin 0-45—when the movie’s props department came knocking (The Talk of the Town, January 13th). We were assured that, when Barbaro was not using the instrument, it would be guarded like a nuclear football. What a shock, then, to read that Edward Norton—who plays Pete Seeger, once the moral conscience of American music—frequently grabbed the guitar from Barbaro on the set, and even intimated that she might just hold on to the Martin after filming, as, he supposedly said, he does with props all the time. We are glad to have the guitar back.

Sunday, March 9, 2025

The Brutalist (2024)

Jack and I loved this story about a Hungarian architect and holocaust survivor making his way in 1940s and 50s Philadelphia, although we commented on several places to trim its overlong 3:34 run time. Adrien Brody chews the scenery in the leading role of László and is supported by Felicity Jones as his wife Erzsébet, Alessandro Nivola as his brother Attila, Isaach De Bankolé as his friend Gordon, Raffey Cassidy as his niece Zsófia (plus a dual role at the very end), and Guy Pearce and Joe Alwyn as wealthy employers.

This movie has earned 136 wins and 340 other nominations as of this posting. The ten Oscar honors include Best Picture nominee, Best Director nominee Brady Corbet, Best Original Screenplay nominees Corbet and his life partner Mona Fastvold, Best Actor winner Brody (his second after winning for The Pianist (2002), about another Holocaust survivor), Best Supporting Actress nominee Jones, and Best Supporting Actor nominee Pearce. 

Brutalism is a form of minimalist architecture which began in Sweden in the 1950s. Corbet and Fastvold have long been fascinated with architecture, and the inspiration for the grand project in the second half is St. John's Abbey Church in Collegeville, Minnesota.

I'm streaming Daniel Blumberg's Oscar-winning original score on Apple Music with our subscription and it covers many genres. There are also tracks by Dinah Shore, Eddy Arnold, Spike Jones (our parents' generation), and more. We're are both quite fond of the music of Spike Jones (1911-1965), not to be confused with the filmmaker Spike Jonze, born in 1969. Jones' parody of the William Tell Overture (originally by Gioachino Rossini) plays in one scene while Lazlo is shaving and practicing his English (the captions call it "cartoon music"). Jack pointed out that Rossini's intro, which runs from the nine second mark to the 25th in this video of Jones' parody, is frequently used in cartoons for placid scenes.

Lol Crawley won the cinematography Oscar for his gorgeous photography––the sequence in the Carrara, Italy, marble site is a sight to behold––and the rest was shot in Hungary, except for the epilogue in Venice, The other two Oscar nominations were for production design (Judy Becker, production designer, and Patricia Cuccia, set decorator) and editing (Dávid Jancsó).

There are many fascinating trivia items on imdb, if you're inclined to click through. One more trivia item not expressly noted in the aforementioned list is that Brody's mother was born in Hungary. My babetteflix trivia is that, with 43 producers, this movie is tied for third in the Producers Plethora Prize.

Brody was last blogged for Asteroid City, Jones for The Midnight Sky, Nivola and Becker for Amsterdam, De Bankolé for The People We Hate at the Wedding, Cassidy for Tomorrowland, Pearce for Mary Queen of Scots, Alwyn for Catherine Called Birdy, and Crawley for 45 Years (after which he shot The Humans and White Noise but I didn't mention him, perhaps because I wasn't a fan of the former and disliked the latter). Cassidy as in nine episodes of Mr. Selfridge

Corbet turned 13 while acting in Thirteen (2003) but gave it up as he preferred writing (co-wrote four other features) and directing (two of those). Fastvold co-wrote both of the other features Corbet directed and co-wrote and she directed one of the two he didn't. The couple has a project in post production that they co-wrote and she directs.

This is Blumberg's second feature (the first was directed by Fastvold) and he is the composer on the upcoming project by Corbet and her. Some of Cuccia's credit include Mean Girls (2004), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Talk to Me (2007), and she worked with Becker on Amsterdam. Jancsó worked in his native Hungary and his work here includes Pieces of a Woman.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are definitely not brutal, averaging 93 and 80%, respectively. It's not available to rent yet, just to buy, coming off of its Oscar success, so we bought it and streamed it it on March 4. One advantage of buying, as I've mentioned before, is that there are extras, which I look forward to watching.

Kinda Pregnant (2025)

We like Amy Schumer and didn't hate this mostly slapstick movie about a single 30-something New York woman who pretends to be pregnant to get positive attention, and then hijinks ensue. Jillian Bell, Will Forte, Chris Geere, and Damon Wayans Jr., are among the large cast, with cameos by Adam Sandler's wife Jackie as the yoga teacher, his daughter Sunny Sandler as the teenager on the subway (Adam Sandler is one of the producers), Laura Benanti as the teenager's mother, and Schumer's father, wheelchair-bound Gordon Schumer, as the guy in the wheelchair who shouts, "Mazel!" on the street.

Tyler Spindel directs from a script by Schumer and Julie Paiva. There are serious pacing issues but we laughed from time to time.

Rupert Gregson-Williams is credited as composer and I found this nice suite of music from the movie on YouTube, but what I remember are the songs.

Schumer was last blogged for acting in Unfrosted and for writing (and acting) in Trainwreck, Bell for Sword of Trust, Forte for Good Boys, Geere for You're the Worst, which was a TV series, Wayans for The Other Guys, Jackie and Sunny Sandler for You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, Benanti for No Hard Feelings, and Gregson-Williams for Wonder Woman.

Spindel, Sandler's nephew, has directed four other features and this is Paiva's feature debut after co-writing one short.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are kinda not fans with averages of 29 and 27%. We watched it on Netflix on March 1.

Friday, March 7, 2025

Ghostlight (2023)

Jack and I both loved this moving story of a taciturn construction worker reeling from a tragedy and joining a community theatre group. Keith Kupferer is joined by his real life wife Tara Mallen and their daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer, playing his wife and daughter, and all are terrific, as are Dolly De Leon as a petite hot-tempered actress and the rest of the cast of the play within the movie.

Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson co-direct from a script by O'Sullivan. The details of the tragedy are doled out very slowly and carefully. In an interview O'Sullivan called Tara and Keith "Chicago theatre legends."

Composer Quinn Tsan's twenty tracks can be streamed on Apple Music and probably elsewhere, and is accompanied in the movie by these songs.

This sleeper has six wins and nineteen other nominations, both here and abroad. Apparently the term ghostlight refers to a light left on in an empty theatre, but I didn't hear it uttered in the movie.

O'Sullivan (as screenwriter), Thompson, and Tsan were last blogged for Saint Francis–this is O'Sullivan's feature directing debut. The Mallen-Kupferer family is new to me but not to the craft: Keith has been acting for thirty years, Tara fifteen, and Katherine eight (her age is not published anywhere but I'd guess she's about high school age now). De Leon's dozens of credits include Jackpot! but I didn't recognize her.
 
Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are all lit up, averaging 99 and 92%, respectively. On February 4 we took advantage of our Independent Feature Project streaming privileges (this had two Spirit Award nominations), but it's now available for rent and on Hulu and Disney+ with a subscription.

The Fabulous Four (2024)

Though it's not very good, I downloaded this fluffy chick flick about female boomers gathering for one of their weddings, and enjoyed it on a long airplane ride last month. It has some laughs, lots of star power with Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Megan Mullally, and Sheryl Lee Ralph, and great production values and wardrobe. Bruce Greenwood makes an appearance in the second act. I see in the credits that Midler's daughter Sophie von Haselberg plays Amanda but I don't remember her character and I don't plan to watch it again to check who she was. In her smiling headshot, though, she looks just like her mama.

Jocelyn Moorhouse directs, from a script by Ann Marie Allison and Jenna Milly, and cast Midler as her usual brash narcissistic character, but Mullally's character is way more unhinged and, surprisingly, she is the singer in the group, not Midler, though Midler sings for a minute in one number. Singer Michael Bolton has a cameo as himself in act three.

I'm streaming the lighthearted score by David Hirschfelder with my subscription to Apple Music (his son Sam is credited on the musics apps but not on imdb). With 45 producers, this movie is in second place in my Producers Plethora Prize. And since I mentioned production values, shout out to production designer Catherine Smith and costume designer Marie Schley.

Midler was last blogged for Coastal Elites, Sarandon for 3 Generations, Mullally for Smashed, Greenwood for The Post, and Moorhouse and David Hirschfelder for The Dressmaker. Ralph is best known to me for 65 episodes of Abbott Elementary (with an Emmy) but she has been working steadily since the mid 1970s, including on Sister Act 2 (1993). She can sing too, but she didn't in this movie. This is Smith's first time heading her department on a feature, though she has some TV on her resume, including 41 episodes of Transparent and all eight of Lessons in Chemistry. Schley worked on four other features and has plenty of TV costume experience, including 42 of Transparent.

The far-from-fabulous 25% average from critics on Rotten Tomatoes kept me from watching this when it first came out, but now I'll go along with its audiences' 71%. I downloaded it for that plane ride on February 11 from Paramount+ with our subscription, but it's also now available for rent.

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Hard Truths (2024)

Marianne Jean-Baptiste's character Pansy, a relentlessly argumentative Englishwoman of Jamaican heritage, may send some viewers screaming from the room, but Jack and I liked the latest from notable director/writer Mike Leigh and actually laughed at some of her antics. Jean-Baptiste is ably supported by Michele Austin as Pansy's sister, David Webber and Tuwaine Barrett as Pansy's long-suffering husband and son, and more.

The movie has 26 wins and 56 other nominations (none from Oscar) as of this writing. Nineteen of the wins are for Jean-Baptiste's performance and the rest are for Leigh's screenplay and Austin's performance.

I am streaming Gary Yershon's lovely (albeit brief) score on Spotify since it isn't available with our subscription to Apple Music. Oh, and after the movie I craved chicken, rice, and plantains. 

Leigh and Yershon were last blogged for Mr. Turner. Early in her career, Jean-Baptiste made a splash in Leigh's Secrets & Lies (1996) and I have seen and enjoyed her in a number of other projects. Austin was in Secrets & Lies and Leigh's Another Year, among others. I didn't recognize Webber, but his credits include a role in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. Barrett is new to me.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics did not run screaming from the room (a line I once heard attributed to Frank Zappa's music, of which I'm a big fan) with their 95% average, and its audiences stayed in their seats as well, averaging 81. We streamed it on January 29 with our Independent Feature Project privileges but it's now available to rent on the major platforms.

Babygirl (2024)

Jack and I liked this explicit movie about a successful woman executive with a sex addiction. Nicole Kidman can choose any role she wants and she goes all out in this one. Conan O'Brien called it his favorite of the year at the Oscars the other night (it had no nominations there but plenty elsewhere) and made a funny joke about Antonio Banderas playing the husband. Harris Dickinson plays the sexy intern at her company.

Director/writer Halina Reijn keeps the pace up and the moody music by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, supplemented by plenty of songs, uses heavy breathing as percussion from time to time and is streamable on Apple Music.

Kidman was last blogged for Being the Ricardos and Banderas for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Dickinson, a former model, has experience as an actor. His malleable face––the contrast between serious and smiling is remarkable––is evident in a short TikTok video with other models (I don't have a TikTok account but was able to watch it from this link).

This is Reijn's third feature after dozens of credits as an actress, with wins and nominations for both. De Veer scored fourteen episodes of The White Lotus and more.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are smiling weakly with a 76% average but its critics are not at 48. We rented it on January 31 and you can, too.