It Ain't Over (2022) and Eephus (2024)

Jack and I loved both of these very different baseball movies: It Ain't Over is a documentary about superstar Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra and Eephus is fiction about a ragtag group of adult recreational players in New England.

It Ain't Over starts with Yogi's granddaughter Lindsay Berra talking about going to games with Yogi (1925-2015) and then features interviews with his sons Dale, Tim, and Larry, his wife Carmen (1925-2014), dozens of admiring celebrities and ballplayers such as Billy Crystal, Derek Jeter, Nick Swisher, Bob Costas, and so many more, skillfully edited with archival footage.

Director/writer Sean Mullin and his editor Julian Robinson have put together a wonderful movie with music by Jacques Brautbar and John Forest. When the song Bronx Bombers came on I turned to Jack and said, "Why have I never heard this song before now??" because I am a lifelong Yankee fan. Turns out Forest wrote the song specifically for this movie. You can hear the ditty on soundcloud.

"It ain't over" is one of many so-called Yogisms--things he famously said--the full expression is "It ain't over til it's over." During the course of the movie it's explained that early in his career, Berra sat on the ground with his knees out and feet crossed, like a person practicing yoga would do, and the nickname stuck.

Most of the baseball fans among my friends and family have already seen it and loved it, too, regardless of their feelings about the Yankees.

Brautbar was last blogged for Bob Trevino Likes It. Mullin, one of the producers of Bob Trevino Likes It, has directed and written two other features and written one more. Forest has scored one feature before this and Robinson has cut a few dozen TV series and one of Mullins' movies. One of the producers of this and Bob Trevino told me it took almost five years to make this doc with full support of the Berra family.

It's far from over with Rotten Tomatoes' critics averaging 98% and its audiences 96. We rented it on August 13. There is bonus footage at the end so don't turn it off right away.

Eephus, set in the 1990s, takes place all in one day, when two teams are playing their last game before the field is demolished to build a public school. Arguably the most famous actors in it are not actors at all: 95 year old documentarian Frederick Wiseman provides the voice of radio announcer Branch Moreland (an homage, no doubt, to baseball player, manager, and owner, the late Branch Rickey) and 78 year old former Red Sox and Expo player Bill "The Spaceman" Lee plays a character named Lee. The large cast rehearsed on the ball field and they have a wide variety of skill levels.

Director/co-writer Carson Lund and co-writers Michael Basta and Nate Fisher all make their feature debuts. Eephus is a kind of pitch, a very slow one that often is a success for the pitcher, as explained by a character played by Fisher. And that can describe the movie, too. Apparently Lee used a version of the eephus pitch so many times in his career that it was occasionally called a Leephus.

I see no composer nor soundtrack listing on imdb and elsewhere, other than a mention of the Tom Waits track Ol' 55 from the closing credits. The movie is supposed to be set in New Hampshire, but the shooting location Soldiers Field is in Douglas in central Massachusetts.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics give it a grand slam with a 100% average, but its audiences not so much at 64. We rented it on July 22.

Milestone alert! This marks 1600 movies summarized on babetteflix. 23 of them I saw before I began writing it on September 3, 2008, so the math makes it 1577 that I've seen for the first time since then (actually, at this moment I have two more in draft form and will get to writing about them soon). For the full alphabetized list, see my index. No, I do not have a favorite!

The Wedding Banquet (2025)

We quite liked this updated remake of the 1993 Ang Lee movie, which I saw when it was new. In both versions, a gay couple (Chris and Min played here by Bowen Yang and Han-Gi Chan, respectively) plan a wedding of one of them to a woman to satisfy his traditional parents. In this version, Chris and Min's best friends are a lesbian couple played by Lily Gladstone as Lee and Kelly Marie Tran as Angela, who need money for IVF and Chris and Min agree to pay for it. Youn Yu-jung is Min's mother and Joan Chen is Angela's. In the original, the woman is a single straight woman needing a green card.

Director Andrew Ahn co-wrote the script with James Schamus, who co-wrote the original screenplay with Lee and another writer.

The soundtrack by Jay Wadley doesn't seem to be available online, but there's a long list of songs, some of which are in this playlist.

Interesting trivia: Chen was considered to play the woman needing a green card in the original.

Yang and Ahn were last blogged for Fire Island, Gladstone for her Oscar-winning performance in Killers of the Flower Moon, Tran for Raya and the Last Dragon, Youn for her Oscar-winning turn in Minari, Chen for Didi, Schamus for Indignation, and Wadley for We Grown Now (he also scored Fire Island). This is Chan's second feature after a few TV series.

 

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are united in their appreciation, averaging 86 and 84%. We rented it on June 24.

Ex-Husbands (2023)

I've long been a fan of Griffin Dunne, which led us to this dramedy about a man, mourning the end of his marriage, who crashes his son's bachelor party in Mexico. I think Jack and I liked it? WE saw it over a month ago. Rosanna Arquette, James Norton, Miles Heizer, and Richard Benjamin are among the cast.

Noah Pritzker directs from his own script. I did jot down that women are given short shrift. The soundtrack by Robin Coudert, a French man apparently also known as ROB, is not available online.

After I profiled Dunne in The Great Buck Howard, he's been in over a hundred projects, notably eight episodes of House of Lies, eight of I Love Dick, and 47 of This Is Us. Arquette has even more credits than Dunne, particularly starring in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), appearing with Dunne in After Hours the same year, Pulp Fiction (1994), and The Whole Nine Yards (2000). Norton, a Brit who here uses a very good American accent was in Little Women, though I didn't write that in these pages. Heizer is best known to me as Drew in 103 episodes of Parenthood. The reliable Benjamin is perhaps best known for Goodbye Columbus (1970) Diary of a Mad Housewife (1971), the title role in Portnoy's Complaint (1972), The Sunshine Boys (1975), and Deconstructing Harry (1997). This is Pritzker's second feature and Coudert has dozens of credits.

Rotten Tomatoes's critics aren't in love with this, averaging 78%, but its audiences are happier at 86. We rented it on July 20.

Sacramento (2024)

Jack and I liked this indie story of two man-boys on a road trip from LA to the title city. It has some laughs and a lot of cringe (we do like cringe) as Michael Cera's Glenn gets more and anxious dealing with his free-spirited pushy friend Rickey, played by director/co-writer Michael Angarano. Kristen Stewart is Glenn's pregnant but patient wife Rosie and Maya Erskine is Rickey's hookup in the first act.

Trivia: Stewart dated Angarano briefly, years before she married her current wife, and Erskine is now married to him since 2023. Watch for brief shots of their actual kids in act three. A yellow 1966 Mustang makes more than a cameo.

Angarano's co-writer is Christopher Nicholas Smith, credited here as Chris Smith, and the composer is Erskine's father Peter Erskine. The soundtrack isn't streaming but I'm enjoying one of his jazz albums on Apple Music as I type.

Angarano, last blogged for acting in Haywire, was also in Lords of Dogtown (2005), Oppenheimer, and seven episodes of This Is Us (Emmy nominated), among his many credits. He directed one other feature, which he starred in and wrote solo. Cera was most recently in these pages for Barbie and Stewart for Spencer. Maya Erskine was wonderful in all 25 episodes of Mr & Mrs Smith. This is Chris Smith's feature debut after working as a staff writer on eight episodes of Friends from College (I liked that series on Netflix), and it's Peter Erskine's first feature as a composer, though he's recorded dozens of albums as a drummer.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics have driven their average up to 84%, while its audiences stayed at the rest stop with only 61. We rented it on June 20.

Bob Trevino Likes It (2024)

Jack and I loved this story about a young woman who befriends on social media someone with the same name as her narcissistic father. Director Tracie Laymon based her screenplay on her own experience. 

Barbie Ferreira is wonderful as Lily, French Stewart is so good that I absolutely hated him as her dad, and John Leguizamo is warm as the other Bob Trevino. Strong support comes from Lauren 'Lolo' Spencer, who is in a wheelchair with ALS, as Lily's employer.

Some of the score by Jacques Brautbar is on his site, and Apple Music has a playlist of songs featured in the movie.

This got on my radar because I met two of its 35 producers last year at a baseball game. One of them said, "You'll laugh, you'll cry," and he was right! The other explained to me today that Laymon's mentor is special effects manager Bob Trevino, and she decided to name the character after him, rather than her own father Bob Laymon.

35 producers ties the movie for ninth on the Producers Plethora Prize list. All the filmmakers have earned many wins and nominations, including the Grand Jury and Audience awards from the SXSW Film Festival.

Leguizamo was last blogged for The Menu. This is Laymon's feature debut after a handful of shorts and TV series. Ferreira has been in three other features and more. I know Stewart best for 139 episodes of 3rd Rock from the Sun and 37 of Mom, among his dozens and dozens of credits. I didn't see Spencer's other movie but I did see her in 15 episodes of The Sex Lives of College Girls. Brautbar is new to me, despite his 73 credits as composer.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences heart <3 it, averaging 94 and 98%, respectively. We rented it on June 15.

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

We liked the other Deadpool movies a lot as well as others in the Marvel Comics Universe and this was fine, as far as I can recall after almost two months. Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool is his typically talky and snarky self and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine is grumpy, as usual. Some highlights of the large cast include Emma Corrin, Chris Evans, Matthew Macfadyen, Morena Baccarin, Dafne Keen, Jon Favreau, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, and voices provided by Matthew McConaughey as Cowboypool and Reynolds' real-life wife Blake Lively as Ladypool.

Shawn Levy directs from a script by him, Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells. I did jot down at the time that the movie is about 50% fighting. Which inspires me to quote once again the brilliant cartoonist Nicole Hollander, who wrote in her comic strip Sylvia that a chick flick (which this definitely isn't) has "too much talking and not enough hitting." Note that the link takes you to what looks like daily new strips, but they are archival.

Rob Simonsen's original score can be streamed on Apple Music, as well as this playlist of many pop songs featured.

During one of those battles, a poster on the side of the bus pays the anticipated homage to Stan Lee (1922-2018), who created many of the Marvel characters. Viewers will also be rewarded with the customary post-credits scene.

Reynolds, Reese, and Wernick were last blogged for Deadpool 2, Corrin and Simonsen for Good Grief, Evans for Knives Out, Macfadyen for The Assistant, Baccarin for Millers in Marriage, Keen for Logan, Favreau for Elf, Delaney for Love at First Sight, Uggams for American Fiction, McConaughey for Interstellar, Lively for A Simple Favor, and Levy for This Is Where I Leave You. Wells has co-written one other feature and several other things.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics aren't fighting too hard, with an average of 78%, while its audiences are ready for battle at 95%. We streamed it May 30 with our subscription to Disney+.

Nonnas (2025)

Jack and I quite enjoyed this movie which is based on the true story of an Italian-American man who creates a Staten Island restaurant in honor of his late mother and grandmother, hiring a quartet of random grandmothers (nonna means grandma in Italian) to cook. Vince Vaughn is the restaurateur, and the nonnas are Brenda Vaccaro, Talia Shire, Susan Sarandon, and Lorraine Bracco. Because I care, I have sorted the actresses by age above, respectively 85, 81, 78, and 70. I think Bracco makes a remark about 70 being old (I can't find it now) but I do remember our laughing out loud at it, considering that we're a bit older than that and she is the baby of the group!

Also supporting are Linda Cardellini, Joe Manganiello, Drea de Matteo, and Michael Rispoli. And the real Joe (Jody) Scaravella, whose story this is, has an uncredited cameo as the guy with the cloud of chin length curly gray hair.

Steven Chbosky directs from the script by his wife Liz Maccie and Scaravella has story credit. Everyone named above, except Chbosky, has some Italian blood. 

I'm streaming Marcelo Zarvos's score on Apple Music and the movie has plenty of other music, especially Italian. 

The real restaurant, Enoteca Maria, has this story on its website. And, presumably because Enoteca Maria is still up and running, the movie was shot at Spirito's in Elizabeth New Jersey, which apparently was famous before it closed.

Vaughn was last blogged for Hacksaw Ridge, Sarandon for another movie about four boomer women: The Fabulous Four (this is better), Shire for Megalopolis (this is better), Cardellini for Green Book, de Matteo for New York, I Love You, Rispoli for The Rum Diary (this is better), Chbosky for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Zarvos for May December.

Vaccaro is best known for Midnight Cowboy (1969) and dozens of credits in TV and film and Bracco for Goodfellas (1990) and 71 episodes of The Sopranos. I wasn't familiar with Manganiello, despite his long resume. And this is Maccie's third screenplay.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are mostly savoring this one with an average of 83%, while its critics, at 71, are pushing it around their plates. We watched it on Netflix on May 26.

This will be #34 on my list of food movies.

Sinners (2025), The Substance (2024), and Death Becomes Her (1992)

I don't like horror but we saw these due to critical acclaim and more. Because I'm so far behind in blogging, I'm combining them. Read on...

I didn't really know what we were getting into with Sinners. We liked it a lot in the beginning. It started with identical twins Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan, returning home to 1932 Mississippi to start a juke joint. Good story of Black people getting by in the racist pre-WWII south, with wonderful music. Jordan does a great job, though the only way I could tell apart the two characters was by their hats. Kudos also to actor Delroy Lindo, actor-singers Miles Caton, Jayme Lawson, Hailee Steinfeld, Lola Kirke, and more.

About halfway through, it turns extremely gory and my enjoyment waned. Jack was eagerly waiting for bluesman Buddy Guy to appear, which he does after the two hour mark (the movie is 2:17 long) in a pivotal role. And Jack liked the whole thing better than I did.

Ryan Coogler directs from his original screenplay.

I'm currently streaming Ludwig Göransson's instrumental score on Apple Music, which is terrific, as is the playlist of songs. We also greatly appreciated the cinematography by Autumn Durald Arkapaw as well as the special effects throughout. Isn't it a miracle that one actor can play identical twins in the same scenes?

After we watched it, Amy and Travis did, too. They like horror movies a lot but proclaimed this the worst movie they ever saw! Later she said it "didn't go off the rails enough."

Jordan was last blogged for Just Mercy, Lindo for Da 5 Bloods, Steinfeld for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Kirke for the TV series Mozart in the Jungle, which I wrote about in two posts (one, two), Coogler and Arkapaw for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Göransson for Oppenheimer. This is Caton's screen debut and Lawson's first mention in these pages, though she was in The Woman King, among others in her brief resume.

Speaking of acclaim, Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are blessing it with averages of 97 and 96%, respectively. We rented it on June 8.

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After Amy repeatedly urged us to watch The Substance, we did. She loved it and said it's funny. We did have some laughs at the ridiculous exploitation of it all: Demi Moore plays an aging TV aerobics star who uses a drug to create a younger version of herself played by Margaret Qualley. Dennis Quaid is the over-the-top producer of the TV show. 

With so many close-ups of tits and ass (sorry, did I offend you there?), I assumed the director and/or writer to be a man. I was wrong. The movie was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and Coralie Fargeat was nominated both for Directing and Original Screenplay.

The score by Raffertie is available to stream on Apple Music and is putting me in the mood to write about the parts I liked. Like Sinners, I was with it until one particularly violent scene in act three and it did, indeed, go off the rails after that. Just not my cup of tea (remember Get Out? That cup of tea was just fine).

Moore was last blogged for Another Happy Day, Qualley for Kinds of Kindness, and Quaid for Truth. Fargeat has directed one other feature and Raffertie has scored four.

Not quite as hooked as the Oscar voters, Rotten Tomatoes' critics are averaging 89% and its audiences 75. We rented it on July 8

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In the spring, after buying tickets to see the Broadway musical adaptation of Death Becomes Her, we rented the movie on May 10 and enjoyed it. It's a slapstick tale of a narcissistic actress and her envious writer friend, and their ingesting a drug to halt their aging. Uh-huh. This is another reason I was inspired to pack these three movies into one post. 

Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn are the combatants, with Streep hamming it up to the max as the actress, and Bruce Willis as the man they both want.

Robert Zemeckis directs from a screenplay by Martin Donovan and David Koepp. Unlike The Substance, there's no blood--it's all very cartoonish, with heads turning backwards and holes in torsos (as shown in one poster). Alan Silvestri's soundtrack is available on Apple Music.

Streep was last blogged for Don't Look Up, Hawn for Snatched, Willis for Rock the Kasbah, Zemeckis and Silvestri for Welcome to Marwen, and Koepp for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Donovan wrote or co-wrote six other features and a bunch of TV episodes.

The musical stage show, which we saw in June, is good fun, with at least one stunt double getting her own curtain call after a priceless interpretive dance of falling down the stairs. The show won the Tony for Costume Design and was nominated for seven more.

Despite being somewhat of a cult favorite, the movie did not do well in theatres, dying at Rotten Tomatoes' critics' 58% average and only slightly breathing with audiences' 62.

The Penguin Lessons (2024)

Jack and I are Steve Coogan fans and this based-on-a-true story of Tom Michell, a disaffected, cynical English teacher in 1976 Argentina who adopts a Penguin, checks many boxes with its humor, heart, and history. Good support comes from Jonathan Pryce as the strict headmaster, Vivian El Jaber as the sweet housekeeper Maria, and Alfonsina Carrocio as Maria's grown granddaughter Sofia, among others.

Director Peter Cattaneo works from a script that Jeff Pope adapted from the 2015 memoir of the same name by the real Michell (Michell was in his 20s when the events happened and Coogan is almost 60 so it's far from a documentary). I don't think it's a spoiler to say that the middle act had me thinking of the lyrics to the nursery song Mary Had a Little Lamb. And here's a fun bit of trivia: the penguin is named Juan Salvador Gaviota, which is the Spanish translation of the 1970 novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Federico Jusid is listed as the composer but I found only this short suite of his score on YouTube (sorry about the ad). There are a lot of songs in the movie, though, compiled in this playlist on Apple Music.

This YouTube video (with multiple ads) is fascinating and I recommend it for after you watch the movie. I learned from it (not a spoiler) that there were two penguin actors, who are mated in real life, plus one animatronic penguin and one puppet penguin.

With 31 producers, this movie earns a spot about halfway down my Producers Plethora Prize list.

Coogan was last blogged for two pictures in my list of Random food movies plus Stan & Ollie the following year, Pryce for The Two Popes, Pope for Stan & Ollie, and Jusid for The Last Suit. El Jaber and Carrocio are new to me. Cattaneo has worked a lot since he was much lauded for The Full Monty (1997) but I haven't seen any.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics give it only a C+ with their 78% average, while we and its viewers award it a solid A at 95. On Kathleen's hearty recommendation we rented it on Apple TV on May 21.

Sea Lions of the Galapagos (2025)

Jack and I always love the Disneynature animal documentaries and this year's Earth Day release is no exception. The magnificent pictures and the writing that typically anthropomorphizes the creatures overcome Brendan Fraser's less-than-lively narration.

Add to our delight the fact that we visited Galapagos (we were taught not to say "the Galapagos," unless saying "the Galapagos Islands," but I guess the Disney folks didn't get that memo) in 2022.

Co-directors Keith Scholey and Hugh Wilson work from the work by co-writers David Fowler (narration), Richard Wollocombe, Wilson, and Scholey (those three are credited with the original story).

I'm streaming composer Raphaelle Thibaut's lovely soundtrack on Apple Music and remembering the beautiful work by cinematographers Paul Stewart and Wollocombe.

As far as I know this is the 18th Disneynature documentary. We have seen almost all and I've listed them in this post.

Fraser was last blogged for his Oscar-winning performance in The Whale and Scholey and Fowler for Dolphin Reef and Diving with Dolphins. This is Wilson's directorial and writing debut but he has worked as producer on a few other nature documentaries. Wollocombe has shot a number of nature documentaries and Thibaut has over two dozen credits. Stewart also has over two dozen credits, including the Disneynature Born in China.

This movie (actually listed on imdb as a TV Special) has no Rotten Tomatoes averages, although four out of the five reviewers listed liked it and the single audience member who weighed in gave it 5/5 stars. At the moment, it's available to stream on on Disney+ with a subscription, which we did on May 2.

The Room Next Door (2024)

This moving story stars Tilda Swinton as Martha and Julianne Moore as Ingrid, two writers who knew each other long ago but had drifted apart when Martha, looking for someone to help her euthanize herself, contacts Ingrid. It's not as sad as it sounds and the actresses are terrific. John Turturro and Alessandro Nivola also appear, but it's the women's story.

Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar directs his first English language movie and adapted the screenplay from the 2020 novel What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez.

Composer Alberto Iglesias' lovely score can be streamed on Apple Music and Eduard Grau's photography of the beautiful sets and locations is stunning.

Swinton was last blogged for Asteroid City, Moore for May December, Turturro for Licorice Pizza, Nivola for The Brutalist, Almadóvar and Iglesias for Parallel Mothers, and Grau for Passing.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are staying in the house with averages of 81 and 76%, respectively. Jack and I rented it from Apple TV/iTunes on April 12, but it's now also available on Netflix.

Maria (2024)

We think Angelina Jolie is good in the title role of this biopic about the last years of renowned opera singer Maria Callas. The actors familiar to me in the supporting cast are Kodi Smit-McPhee as her interviewer Mandrax and Valeria Golino as her sister Yakinthi.

Pablo Larraín directs from the script by Steven Knight. This is the third and final movie in Larraín's "Ladies with Heels" trilogy, after Jackie and Spencer, which are about, if you didn't know, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and Diana, Princess of Wales, respectively. Jolie did not get an Oscar nomination for this role, although Natalie Portman did for Jackie and Kristen Stewart did for Spencer.

The soundtrack is comprised of various opera recordings, mostly performed by Callas herself, and the closing credits has a song by Brian Eno. Jolie sings for the older, failing Callas, and the first two items in this list of the movie's trivia tell us a bit about how that came to be. Danish actor Caspar Phillipson plays JFK in this movie, as he did in Jackie and Blonde (the Marilyn Monroe biopic--not directed by Larraín).

Although the movie's pace is on the slow side, I, for one, was captivated by the magnificent cinematography by Edward Lachman and the opulent wardrobe by Massimo Cantini Parrini. Details on their work are in this article.

If you would like to watch this movie, I recommend waiting to read this spoiler-laden article until afterwards.

One of the running lists on my blog is of tropes that I call rules. Here's the complete list. Maria observes Rule #2 by showing the Eiffel Tower in so many scenes of Paris.

Jolie was last blogged for Salt, Smit-McPhee for The Power of the Dog, Golino for Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Larraín and Knight for Spencer, Lachman for Wonderstruck, and Parrini for Cyrano.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are a bit pitchy, averaging 75 and 76%. Jack and I watched it on Netflix on March 23.

Flow (2024)

Jack and I loved this Oscar-winning (Best Animated Feature), wordless, magical fairy tale from Latvia about a cat banding together with a disparate group of animals to survive an apocalyptic flood. Gints Zilbalodis served as director, co-writer, one of only four producers, co-composer, cinematographer, editor, and art director. The other writers were Matiss Kaza and Ron Dyens (also among the producers) and the other composer was Rihards Zalupe.

The entire movie was made with the free open-source software Blender, which is one of the fascinating trivia items on imdb. Read that link to find out how the cat's sounds were recorded, as well as the other animals'.

Do not turn it off before the credits have finished. There's a bonus, which we appreciated!

Every person named above is new to me and to this blog.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences loved it, too, averaging 97 and 98%, respectively. We watched it April 4 on Max with our subscription. It's also available to rent everywhere for about $4.

I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui - 2024)

Amy and I really liked this intense, Oscar-winning (Best International Feature) movie about a woman whose family is torn apart in the 1970s Brazilian military dictatorship. Fernanda Torres, nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, gives us love and determination as the young matriarch, and everyone else, including the actors playing her children, is terrific. In all, this has 50 awards and 63 other nominations, including the Best Picture Oscar nomination, which is rare for a foreign film.

Walter Salles directs from the screenplay adapted by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega from the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva (one of the children). We commented at the time how sweet the first act is, showing happy times.

Here's where I usually talk about the music, but Warren Ellis' score is not available anywhere, even though I jotted down that I liked it. If they had asked me, I would've told them to post it!

 

I was also a fan of the cinematography by Adrian Teijido and the period wardrobe by Cláudia Kopke.

Salles was last blogged for On the Road and Ellis, a musical partner of Nick Cave, for Blonde.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are very much present, both averaging 97%. We rented it on Apple TV on March 16 and it's still available to rent there and elsewhere.

The Last Showgirl (2024)

Jack and I found Pamela Anderson to be very good as a woman whose long-running job in Las Vegas is coming to an end. Her naturally breathy voice fits the character of Shelly, who is determined but not realistic about life. Strong support in this R rated movie comes from, among others, Jamie Lee Curtis (in makeup that made me laugh), Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, Dave Bautista, and Billie Lourd, who is Carrie Fisher's daughter in real life and plays Shelly's daughter Hannah.

Gia Coppola (Francis' granddaughter) directs with a firm hand from the script by Kate Gersten. Watch for the cameo by Coppola's cousin Jason Schwartzman.

Andrew Wyatt's score, ranging from jaunty to thoughful, can be streamed on Apple Music and elsewhere. The movie has seven wins and 25 other nominations, nine of which are for the closing song Beautiful That Way by Miley Cyrus, Wyatt, and Lykke Li. It's the last track on the soundtrack album.

It won't take you too long to read the fun trivia, including the fact that the showgirls' headdresses, designed by Jacqueline Getty and Rainy Jacobs, were so heavy that the actresses needed massages! We also liked all the Vegas locations.

Curtis was last blogged for Everything Everywhere All at Once, Song for Brave though she has many other credits, Bautista for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Lourd for Ticket to Paradise

Coppola for Palo Alto, Schwartzman for Megalopolis, and Wyatt for Barbie.

I wasn't among Baywatch's billion+ weekly viewers, so didn't know much about Anderson, but she has been in many other movies, videos, and TV series besides her 100 episodes of Baywatch, and there's a documentary out about her, not to mention (oops, I just did) the infamous sex tape with her then-husband Tommy Lee (didn't see that either).

Shipka, now 25 years old, is best known for 89 episodes of Mad Men (2007-2015) as young Sally Draper but has dozens of other roles to her credit, including Twisters. This is Gersten's first produced screenplay, but she was executive story editor and writer on two wonderful serieses: Mozart in the Jungle and The Good Place.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics, averaging 83%, are betting more on this picture than its audiences at 72. We rented it on Apple TV on March 19 and it's still widely available as a rental.

September 5 (2024) and The Teachers' Lounge (Das Lehrerzimmer - 2023)

It's been almost two months since I watched September 5, but I remember I liked a lot this tense retelling of the 1972 hostage crisis at the Munich Olympic Games, told from the perspective of the ABC-TV Sports crew. Peter Sarsgaard stars as ABC Sports President Roone Arledge, John Magaro is control room head Geoffrey Mason, Ben Chaplin is operations head Marvin Bader, and Leonie Benesch is their German translator. They're all terrific and the movie is a true-to-life thriller under the direction of Tim Fehlbaum. The Oscar-nominated script was co-written by Fehlbaum, Moritz Binder, and Alex David. As it happens, Fehlbaum is Swiss, Binder is German, and David is American. The movie is primarily in English. Here's some history from britannica.com on the actual events.

Composer Lorenz Dangel's exciting score can be streamed on Apple Music and probably elsewhere.

After seeing it I made a note about enjoying the old technology in the TV studio, e.g. turning videotape by hand for slow motion and manually placing letters on a board for on-screen captions.

Sarsgaard was last blogged for The Lost Daughter, Magaro for Past Lives, and Chaplin for Me and Orson Welles. 

Benesch starred in The Teachers' Lounge (Das Lehrerzimmer - 2023), a German movie which I did see and loved and forgot to write about at the time. Because I'm so far behind in blogging, I'll summarize it right now. In that one, directed and co-written by Ilker Çatak and co-written by Johannes Duncker, Benesch plays a first year high school teacher trying to solve a theft at her school. It has a number of twists and was nominated for the Best International Feature Film Oscar. Rated 96% by critics and 90 by audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, it can be streamed now on Netflix. Benesch was also in dozens of other movies, including The White Ribbon, and TV series, including three of The Crown.  

September 5 is the fourth feature directed and co-written by Fehlbaum, the third co-written by Binder, and the writing debut of David. Dangel has composed 22 other features, including two of Fehlbaum's previous three.

I saw it March 11 on an airplane with a download from Paramount+. Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences give it gold medals, with scores of 93 and 90%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Millers in Marriage (2024)

I loved director/writer/star Edward Burns' latest, about three 50-something siblings dealing with relationships and careers. Jack enjoyed it but not as much as I––he said, "Are we supposed to like any of these people?" Burns assembled a star-studded cast: Morena Baccarin, Benjamin Bratt, Brian d’Arcy James, Minnie Driver, Julianna Margulies (who plays one sister of Burns' character), Gretchen Mol (the other sister), Campbell Scott, and Patrick Wilson.

The words "champagne problems" are uttered in the movie, and the characters are certainly well-off, which may repel some viewers, but I enjoyed the sumptuous sets by production designer Jason Singleton and the locations in New Jersey.

This is where I would write about the music, but there's nothing online––no composer, no list of songs, only two crew members who worked on music clearance. And because we streamed it over three months ago with membership in the Independent Feature Project, I can't remember the music.

Burns was last blogged for The Fitzgerald Family Christmas, Baccarin for Deadpool 2, Bratt for Coco, d'Arcy James for Sisters, Driver for Beyond the Lights, Margulies for City Island, and Wilson for The Founder.

Mol had some buzz in Manchester by the Sea (2016) and was terrific in 53 episodes of Boardwalk Empire (2010-14) and eight of Mozart in the Jungle (2015). Her long resume also includes Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and the title role in The Notorious Bettie Page (2005). Scott is best known for Big Night (1996), Roger Dodger (2002), and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and I recall liking him in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) and The Spanish Prisoner (1997). He's currently more active than that list would imply. Singleton is new to me.

November 22, 2024 is when we watched it. I jotted a few notes at the time but waited to finish until the rest of you could see it, and it can now be purchased ($9.99 on Apple, 19.99 on the others). Maybe after a while it'll be rentable. Rotten Tomatoes' critics are heading for a separation with a 58% average, but its audiences want to renew their vows at 98.

Nickel Boys (2024)

Jack and I both really appreciated (it's difficult to say we "liked" it) this nominated movie about a young Black man in 1960s Florida whose promising future comes to a halt when he's sent to a brutal, racist reform school. The main cast is Ethan Herisse as Elwood, Brandon Wilson as his friend Turner, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Elwood's grandmother (in real life she is 31 years older than he), Hamish Linklater as a nasty "teacher" at the Nickel Academy, and Luke Tennie as another inmate, Griff. Daveed Diggs makes a cameo as the adult Elwood.

RaMell Ross directs and co-wrote the script with Joslyn Barnes, based on the 2019 book by Colson Whitehead. Whitehead based his book on a true, cruel and abusive reform school, The Florida School for Boys, also known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, in the Florida panhandle from 1900-2011. The book won a Pulitzer the following year. The Oscar nominations are for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, among its 38 wins and 170 other nominations so far. 

While watching I made a note it has "weird music" by Alex Somers and Scott Alario, which I'm now streaming on Apple Music. Some of the tracks are intentionally staticky.

Director of Photography Jomo Fray is nominated by his peers in the American Society of Cinematographers for a Spotlight Award, as well as eight wins and 33 other nominations, all for this movie. I had read in advance that the movie was shot from Elwood's point of view (so audiences see his face only in reflections), but after about an hour of the 2:20 running time, the POV changes to more typical views.

Ellis-Taylor was last blogged (as Aunjanue Ellis) for King Richard, Linklater for Magic in the Moonlight, and Somers for Causeway. Herisse has been in three other movies and a handful of shorts and TV episodes. Wilson was in The Way Back as one of the basketball players, among his credits, and Tennie's resume includes 22 episodes of the series Shrinking in the role of Sean. This is Ross's second feature and the first was a documentary. Barnes has written or co-written two other features (scripted), and Alario scored Ross's documentary. This is Fray's seventh feature.

Rotten Tomatoes' audiences are happy to pay dollars with an average of 90% while its audiences are keeping their change at 75. We watched it on a streamer from the Independent Feature Project on January 8. It is currently still in live theatres and is supposed to stream in the spring on MGM+ and Prime. 

Sing Sing (2023)

Jack and I loved this movie, based on a true story, about inmates at the titular New York prison who find joy in a theatre group. The reliable Colman Domingo shines as John "Divine G" Whitfield as does Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin playing himself. Paul Raci plays Brent Buell, the kind director of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program, and most of the other cast are literally ex-convicts playing versions of themselves, except for Sean San Jose (he plays Mike Mike), who is Domingo's real life friend. In an early scene, the actor asking for Divine G's autograph is the real John "Divine G" Whitfield.

Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley, filmmaking partners, wrote the script for Kwedar to direct (apparently the partners alternate who gets directing credit), based on John H. Richardson 2005 Esquire article The Sing Sing Follies (you can read the article here, but wait until after you watch the movie) and Buell's prison play Breakin' the Mummy's Code. Story credit goes to Bentley, Kwedar, Maclin, and Whitfield.

Bryce Dessner's score can be streamed on Apple Music, as can the Oscar-nominated song Like a Bird. Oscar has also nominated Domingo and the screenplay story writers. As of today, the movie has 57 wins and 178 other nominations.

Domingo was last blogged for Drive-Away Dolls, Raci for his Oscar-nominated role of the kindly therapist in The Sound of Metal, and Dessner for A Good Person. Maclin and Whitfield make their feature debuts and San Jose has been in a handful of other projects. Kwedar and Bentley have written and directed two other features with another scheduled to open this year.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are averaging a liberated 97%. We watched it on a streamer from the Independent Feature Project Spirit Awards (anyone can join and I am a member) on January 18 but now it's available to rent. Everyone who worked on the movie received the same pay and was offered ownership depending on which phases they participated in: development, pre-production, production, post-production, and promotion. So when you rent it, you will be helping to pay the actual independent filmmakers.

A Real Pain (2024)

Jack and I liked a lot this story of adult American cousins of very different personalities traveling to Poland to research their family history, including a trip to a Lublin concentration camp. Jesse Eisenberg directs, wrote the screenplay, and stars as the organized, anxious Benji, a role he fills beautifully. Kieran Culkin was born to play spontaneous, pushy, relentless cousin Benji, who embodies one interpretation of the movie's title. It's not for everyone. In fact our friend Cathy cringed so much she had to turn it off and told me "maybe" she'll get back to it. There are plenty of laughs, though, between the cringes and tears.

The small ensemble includes Jennifer Grey as one of the tour guests, Will Sharpe as the tour guide, and eight year old Banner Eisenberg making his debut playing his real life father's son. 

So far the movie has 52 wins and 90 other nominations, including Oscar prospects for Eisenberg's script and Culkin's Benji. Jack wonders how much acting Culkin had to do to portray that character. He heard an interview in which Eisenberg said that Culkin did not even read the script before showing up for shooting, but obviously it paid off, because Culkin alone has so far, by my count, 34 wins and 26 other nominations for the role.

The story has many themes mashed up: the odd couple's relationship, the caretaking required, the foreign tour, the history, the holocaust, and grief in general.

No composer is named and most of the music is piano solos composed by Frederic Chopin, who was Polish (I had assumed he was French – the Warsaw airport is named for him), and performed by Tzvi Erez.

Eisenberg was last blogged for acting in Zombieland: Double Tap after which I liked his annoying title character in all eight episodes of Fleishman Is in Trouble. He has directed one other feature which I haven't seen. Culkin was most recently in these pages for the COVID lockdown short Father of the Bride 3 which was shot on hiatus from his 39 Succession episodes. Grey is best known for starring in Dirty Dancing (1987) but she took no time off and has dozens of other credits, including all 26 episodes of It's Like, You Know... in which she played a version of herself named Jennifer Grey. Sharpe's credits include seven episodes of The White Lotus season two as Aubrey Plaza's character's husband.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are quite comfortable, averaging 96%, while its critics may have a little ache at 81. We watched it on a streamer from the Independent Feature Project on January 14 but it's now available to stream on Hulu or Disney+ with a subscription and to rent everywhere else.

Wicked (2024)

Loved it! Nominated for ten Oscars, dozens of wins and hundreds of other nominations, this extravaganza delivers. I don't think I have to tell you the story is about the early years of Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) becoming besties with Glinda (the Good Witch of the North) in school--okay, I just did. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are delightful in those roles with their amazing vocals, supported by Jeff Goldblum as the wry Wizard, Michelle Yeoh as stern Madame Morrible, Jonathan Bailey as dancing Fiyero, and cameos by Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth (original to the roles on Broadway). Listen for the voice of Peter Dinklage as the voice of the professor-goat, Dr. Dillamond.

My only quibble is it's overlong at 2:40. That's not a big problem for home viewers like us. The other reason I didn't want to see it in the theatre (in addition to my usual reasons) is that I heard many stories of audience members singing along or causing other disruptions.

Director Jon M. Chu keeps all the balls in the air--wait 'til you see the Dancing Through Life scene––from the script by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox. Holzman also wrote the book for the Broadway musical, which as based on Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel and premiered in 2003. Amy, Emily, Marilyn, and I saw it in New York in 2006.

Stephen Schwartz's Broadway songs are available on on Apple Music and are supplemented by John Powell's instrumentals, also on Apple Music. Speaking of Dancing Through Life, watch this YouTube video about the making of the scene.

Also recognized by Oscar are production designer Nathan Crowley and costume designer Paul Tazewell.

Erivo was last blogged for Respect, Goldblum for Le Week-End, Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All at Once, Menzel for You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, Dinklage for Cyrano, Chu for In the Heights, Fox for Cruella, Powell for Don't Worry Darling, and Tazewell for West Side Story.

Grande (birth name Grande-Butera) has done some acting, notably Penny Pingleton in the TV movie Hairspray Live! and a small part in Don't Look Up, but is best known as a pop music singer with a four octave range. Bailey has dozens of credits, but, to me, he's the sexy Lord Anthony Bridgerton in nineteen episodes of Bridgerton. Chenoweth, also with a remarkable vocal range, has nominations (including for Wicked) and wins from the Tonys and Emmys (including for Pushing Daisies and Glee).

Holzman wrote ten episodes of Thirtysomething, 19 of My So-Called Life, and 13 of Once and Again, as well as Executive Producing the latter two. Schwartz, Oscar-nominated with Powell for this score, shared two Oscar wins with Alan Menken for the score and Colors of the Wind in Pocahontas (1995), and was nominated for three songs in Enchanted, which is one of the five movies I wrote about on my very first day of blogging, September 3, 2008. This is Crowley's seventh Oscar nomination and we've seen them all, The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight, Interstellar, Dunkirk, First Man, and Tenet.

Rotten Tomatoes' audiences and critics are kind, averaging 88 and 95%.

We intended to rent it days after it dropped for streaming, but paid more to buy it on January 5 because of the extras (including a sing-along version to share with my chorus buddies), and today it's available to buy on the major streamers for what was then the rental price of $19.99. 55 trivia items give even more depth to my enjoyment. Read them if you like!

Emilia Pérez (2024)

Amy called this movie "fearlessly weird" and we both loved it, a crazy Spanish language musical about a lawyer who is hired to facilitate the disappearance and gender reassignment of a Mexican cartel leader; and then more stuff happens. It has 69 wins and 187 nominations as of this writing, including many for Zoe Saldana as the lawyer Rita, Karla Sofía Gascón as the crime boss/Emilia, Selena Gomez as the boss's wife Jessi, and director/writer Jacques Audiard. Other notable cast members are Adriana Paz as Epifania, Mark Ivanir as Wasserman, and Edgar Ramirez as Gustavo. Amy, who is fluent in Spanish, noticed that Gomez's accent and delivery are not great. Gomez admitted this and that's why it was decided to make Jessi's character American instead of Mexican.

Audiard, who is French, speaks no Spanish, and had apparently spent no time in Mexico, had originally loosely adapted Boris Razon's 2018 novel Écoute (it's French for the word listen) into an opera. For this movie he shares writing credits with Thomas Bidegain for scenario collaboration and Léa Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi for [plain] collaboration.

Not everyone loved this by any means.. I'll quote one item of the plentiful imdb trivia: "The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) called the film a 'profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman' that 'recycles the trans stereotypes, tropes, and clichés of the not-so-distant past.' The Latino community, especially Mexicans, also expressed their discontent over the film's stereotypical portrayal of Mexico and its people and for romanticizing the cartel and disrespecting its victims." However, see above for the awards and nominations. 

The songs, including the catchy tune La Vaginoplastia, are written by Camille and/or Clément Ducol and/or Audiard.

Saldana was last blogged for Amsterdam, Gomez for A Rainy Day in New York, Audiard for Rust and Bone, and Ivanir for A Late Quartet. Before her real life transition, Gascón had an acting career from 1995-2016 under the names of Juan Carlos Gascón and Carlos Gascón. Since then she has acted in two TV series and this is her first feature as a woman. Paz has acted in many projects––I haven't seen any––but Ramirez is quite familiar because of his work on Joy and the season of American Crime Story in which he played Gianni Versace.

Bidegain has dozens of credits, including Rust and Bone, others directed by Audiard, and the movie on which CODA was based. Mysius is new to me and Livecchi collaborated with Audiard on another feature. This is Camille's sixth time scoring a feature and Ducol's ninth.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are somewhat neutral, averaging 76%, while its audiences are downright opposed at 38. We watched it on Netflix on December 29.

Anora (2024)

Amy, Jack, and I really liked this frenetic story of a New York stripper/sex worker who impulsively marries the immature son of a Russian crime family. X rated with lots of nudity, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, this Palme d'Or winner is no Pretty Woman. Mikey Madison and her luminous smile shine as the street smart title character nicknamed Ani and Mark Eydelshteyn is her hapless prince who looks younger than his age of 22. Lindsey Normington, who plays Ani's strip club nemesis Diamond, has worked as an exotic dancer and was a big help in the production.

Director/writer/editor Sean Baker keeps the energy high throughout the 139 minute run time. Amy commented that the story is good but the last scene is sad. The soundtrack consists of 59 (!) songs listed on imdb. 

The movie has earned 83 wins and 172 nominations so far, up from when I checked even yesterday, and is the first American Palme d'Or winner in thirteen years.

After I wrote about Madison in Nostalgia (when I mentioned her 52 episodes in the wonderful FX series Better Things), she was in the huge cast of Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. Baker was last blogged for Red Rocket and this is Normington's second feature.

Because I was so eager to see this acclaimed title, we went ahead and bought it to stream on Apple TV since it can't yet be rented, to fulfill our 19 year family tradition of watching a movie on Christmas day.