Weekend Watch-List: Do's and Don't's
Reviews of "The Wonder," "She Said," "The Menu," and one absolute must-avoid.
Airborne Toxic Event Warning of the Week [insert klaxon sirens here]: When I started the Watch List last year, my tender hope was that this newsletter would A) lead you to a few profound or entertaining or profoundly entertaining viewing experiences and B) serve as a canary in the coal mine of video on demand, warning you when a movie came along that was the cinematic equivalent of carbon monoxide. Dear reader, the canary has died: I have seen âThe People We Hate at the Weddingâ (1/2 â, debuting today on Amazon Prime) and have gone belly-up in that little cage they hang above the pit. Putatively a comedy, âPeopleâ concerns an American sister (Kirsten Bell, above right) and brother (Ben Platt, above left) attending the nuptials of their British half-sister (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) in London; the âjokeâ is that the Yanks are whiny, self-absorbed jerks with whom weâre somehow meant to sympathize. Bell made loathsomeness entertaining and even touching on her series âThe Good Placeâ â no such luck here. The culprit is a shrill, unfunny embarrassment of a script and slapstick situations that humiliate a lot of fine actors; thereâs a dressing room scene early on for which Allison Janney really needs to fire her agent. The one saving grace is Dustin Milligan as Bellâs inexplicable love interest; presumably, he learned how to make terrible people enjoyable to watch over six seasons of âSchittâs Creek.â âThe People We Hate at the Weddingâ will be all over your Prime Video home screen for the next few weeks â consider it not an invitation but hazardous waste signage.
Instead, hereâs an actual weekend pick: âThe Wonderâ (â â â, streaming on Netflix), a richly atmospheric drama of science versus superstition set in rural 1860s Ireland. Among other things, itâs a movie that puts Florence Pugh (above) back in period dress, where the actress often seems most comfortable. The âwonderâ of the title is a teenage village girl, Anna OâDonnell (Kila Lord Cassidy), who appears to never eat food; she claims to be subsisting on âmanna from Heaven.â Her deeply pious parents and a constant stream of visitors are sure that this is one of Godâs miracles, but a council of local elders (all of them men) require proof and hire an English nurse, Lib Wright (Pugh), to keep vigil over the girl. The nurse is newly returned from the Crimean War and has other traumas in her past, and she is a steadfast believer in medical science, sharing her skepticism and an exhausted kind of romance with a journalist (Tom Burke) covering the story for a London newspaper. A struggle between faith and fact ensues, with the nurse increasingly isolated as she pursues the truth of the matter. One of the more educated elders hazards a guess that Anna is somehow converting sunlight into sustenance, photosynthesizing her way to sainthood.
The director, SebastiĂĄn Lelio, is a gifted Chilean filmmaker (âGloria,â âA Fantastic Womanâ) who lately has turned to English-language projects (âDisobedience,â âGloria Bellâ); in âThe Wonder,â he creates an utterly believable lamp-lit society still perched on the edge of the Dark Ages. Pugh has one of her most complex and appealing roles in Lib, who in many ways is a modern woman, flawed, assured, and well ahead of her era. You may find yourself arguing with some of her decisions as the movie hastens to a close, but her essential sanity is never in question. Beneath its satisfying surface mystery, âThe Wonderâ levels a steady gaze at a faith-ruled culture where the miracles of women are sometimes the only way to cope with the sins of men. Recommended.
âShe Saidâ (â â â, in theaters) doesnât bother to hint about the sins of men â it slams its fist on the table.
Itâs the tale of how reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor broke the story of Harvey Weinsteinâs decades of rape and predation in the pages of the New York Times in 2017, kicking off the reckonings of the #MeToo era that have gone some way (but not as nearly far as they could) in baring the systematic harassment of women in the entertainment industry and elsewhere. (The Times investigation paralleled Ronan Farrowâs reporting in The New Yorker, which is referenced but not dramatized in the new movie.) Two excellent actresses star, Carey Mulligan as Twohey and Zoe Kazan as Kantor, with Patricia Clarkson as Times editor Rebecca Corbett, Rebecca Lenkiewicz writing the script, and Maria Schrader (TVâs âUnorthodoxâ) directing.
âShe Saidâ is built on the sturdy bones of âAll The Presidentâs Menâ and it doesnât deviate from the formula; it relies on our outrage and faith in the hard work of investigative journalism to keep the dramatic momentum rolling. Perhaps Iâve been spoiled by âSpotlightâ (2015), a movie I can hardly be objective about (Iâm friends with some of the characters portrayed in it) but still admire for its refusal to melodramatize the process of reporting the news, but in âShe Said,â one often feels the heavy hand of the filmmakers urging us this way and that, telling us what to feel rather than allowing us to feel it for ourselves. (Nicholas Britellâs musical score is lovely but tends to underline the drama like a Sharpie.) At the same time, Schrader and her cast take us deep into the lives of journalists who are also wives and mothers, observing the stresses and sacrifices and tactics employed by many working women to keep their infinite plates spinning in the air. Which is another way of saying that Woodward and Bernstein never had to deal with postpartum depression on their way to the deadline. The screening of âShe Saidâ I attended was packed with young women; when Harvey went down, they stood up and cheered.
âThe Menuâ (â â â) , in theaters) has three things going for it: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, and a series of haute-gourmand dishes that are ridiculously funny parodies of extreme dining. Mark Mylodâs satire takes place over the course of one night at The Hawthorne, an exclusive restaurant on an isolated island in the Pacific Northwest. The eveningâs clientele is a mix of swaggering Silicon Valley tech bros, fading movie stars (John Leguizamo), jaded power couples, a restaurant critic (Janet McTeer), and one hard-core foodie (Nicholas Hoult) and his date (Taylor-Joy). The chef is played with rising venom by Fiennes, and heâs just about had it; what starts as an evening of catering to the rich becomes a revengerâs comedy with echoes of Peter Greenawayâs âThe Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover,â but, more pertinently, BuĂąuel, BuĂąuel, BuĂąuel. (See âThe Exterminating Angel,â 1962.) The diners find they cannot leave; the dishes (a bread plate without bread, a single scallop perched atop a rock) become more pointedly surreal; violence, class fury, and retribution suddenly appear on the menu. Halfway through the film I realized I was watching âCharlie and the Chocolate Factoryâ with Willy Wonka as a psychopath and Charlie as a professional escort.
The director and writers of âThe Menuâ have worked on HBOâs âSuccession,â and they bring the same cold-eyed amusement to the proceedings; the movie backs into absurdity even as we latch onto Taylor-Joyâs Margot as our representative at the feast. The actress has had a fascinating journey in the past few years, from the preadolescent chill of âThe Witchâ to the breakthrough of âThe Queenâs Gambitâ to the harsh doubling down of âThe Northman.â She is growing up in public in a way that has warped young women and men before her, but on the evidence of âThe Menuâ she is holding her own. The chief weapons in Taylor-Joyâs arsenal are her eyes, which may be the largest in the history of the cinema; they back into the uncanny valley even as they pin the fops and fools of âThe Menuâ to their own pretensions. She and Fiennes share a delirious dance to the death in âThe Menu,â but, for all that, the film itself never amounts to more than a scintillating amuse-bouche.
Tivo Alert of the week: 1959âs âRio Bravoâ (â â â â) on Turner Classics, Saturday at 5:30 p.m. The first in Howard Hawksâ series of autumnal Western picaresques, this is the John Wayne movie for people who donât like John Wayne, in part because the focus is equally spread around to Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Angie Dickinson, the tempest in the movieâs teapot. âRio Bravoâ is long and leisurely, the genreâs equivalent of late-inning Shakespeare, and the plot doesnât matter so much as the charactersâ attitude toward it. As I once wrote: âTremendous old-school fun and probably the most relaxed western ever made, even with all those guns going off at the end. And, as advertised, itâs the answer film to âHigh Noon,â made because Wayne and Hawks were offended by the idea of a lawman who has to beg for help. (It should be noted that the Duke once admitted âNoonââs Will Kane was a hell of a part and that he wouldnât have turned it down himself -- but he was handing Gary Cooper a best actor Oscar at the time, so a little jealousy is understandable.)âŚ
And thereâs the sublime moment in the jail, just before the storm breaks, where everyone just sits down and sings. Until then, youâve almost forgotten youâve got both a Rat Pack member and one of the better early rock ânâ rollers in the cast. If the scene is a contractual obligation for Dino and Ricky Nelson, it works in context as an unforced statement of calm and solidarity. Even Walter Brennan joins in, quavery and enthusiastic. (But Wayne doesnât, since singing is what the troops do when the generalâs waiting for action and, anyway, thereâs a chance his singing voice would spook the horses. He smiles, though, and thatâs something to see.) One of the songs in this sudden hootenanny is called âMy Rifle, My Pony, and Me,â and we are invited to compare these sentiments with the Oscar-winning tune from High Noon, âDo Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling.â Even a kid canât miss whatâs going on here. Community rises from individual responsibility, not the other way around.â
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