Chicago Sun-Times: All posts by Richard Roeper

‘The Family Plan’ review: Goofy Apple TV+ movie plays an endangered family for laughs

2023-12-14T19:00:00-06:00

When Dan (Mark Wahlberg) goes grocery shopping, baby in tow, he’s unaware he’s about to be attacked by a knife-wielding assassin.

Apple Original Films

As we’ve learned from substantial fare such as “A History of Violence” (2005) and “Nobody” (2021), even if a former hitman succeeds in disappearing from the grid, changing his identity and forging a new life as a docile husband and father, there will come a time when the past comes crashing through the door.

That scenario is played for laughs in the goofy, occasionally amusing yet tone-deaf and casually violent Apple TV+ film “The Family Plan,” which asks us to buy into the premise that going on the run with your family without telling them why and killing a series of foes along the way is a great way to reignite the sexual flames with your wife and bond with your sullen teenage kids.

Mark Wahlberg’s Dan Morgan is a Buffalo-based used car salesman married to the former decathlete turned physical therapist Jessica (Michelle Monaghan), who loves Dan even though he’s a creature of dull routine, from “Taco Wednesdays” to sex once a week on Thursdays to their 18-year tradition of celebrating their anniversary by riding the Twisted Cyclone at a local amusement park.

‘The Family Plan’

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Apple Original Films presents a film directed by Simon Cellan Jones and written by David Coggeshall. Running time: 118 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sequences of violence and action, sexual material and some strong language). Available Friday on Apple TV+.

The Morgans have three children: Nina (Zoe Colletti), who wants to follow her idiot boyfriend to Iowa State; Kyle (Van Crosby), who is seething with resentment because his father has banned him from playing violent video games, and tag-along baby Max (played by twins Iliana and Vienna Norris).

Dan is a non-confrontational, blend-in kind of guy who has an aversion to all social media — and we learn why after Dan is spotted in the background of an Instagram post. Dan’s former boss, McCaffrey (Ciarán Hinds), who mentored Dan back in the day when Dan was basically Jason Bourne, now wants Dan dead dead dead for abandoning him all those years ago.

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Dan is grocery shopping with little Max snug in one of those front baby carriers when a knife-wielding assassin attacks. They proceed to knock each other all over the store with Max STILL ATTACHED TO HIS DAD. A baby in danger, hilarious!

The jig is up. Dan grabs the obligatory “go bag,” rounds up the family and tells them they’re going on a road trip to Las Vegas. Hey, Dad can be spontaneous after all! Soon they’re on the road, with Dan throwing their phones out the window and insisting they stay off all forms of communication, and how convenient that they’re all fast asleep in the car when he gets the best of a pack of motorcycle-riding would-be killers.

Even after the action moves to Vegas, where Dan intends to meet with a former associate (Saïd Taghmaoui) who will supply him with new identities for the family, Dan refrains from telling his wife and children the truth, which seems, um, wildly irresponsible.

Only after Jessica is nearly killed, and there’s a shootout in a casino, with innocent bystanders panicking and scattering everywhere and this critic wondering how in the world the filmmakers thought this wasn’t a terribly tasteless idea, does Dan’s family learn his real name is Sean and he’s a former killer who has ended the lives of 39 people, plus four more on this little vacation. Dan explains, “We took out the worst of the worst. They were all bad,” so there’s that. Still, the family is kind of upset, what with McCaffrey and his army of killers, including Maggie Q as Dan/Sean’s ex, trying to waste them all.

From the moment of that scene in the grocery store, after which apparently nobody even called the police, “The Family Plan” exists in a world that defies all logic and reality. Granted, this is an over-the-top comedy, and yes, there are a few dark laughs, but this is basically a live-action cartoon with a deadly premise.

‘The Crown’ review: Weird depictions of Diana tarnish final episodes

2023-12-14T07:13:36.234-06:00

Imelda Staunton plays Queen Elizabeth II, with Jonathan Pryce as her husband Prince Philip, in Season 6 of “The Crown.”

Netflix

Raise your hand if you had the Chicago Sun-Times getting name-checked in the final season of the wildly popular Netflix series “The Crown.”

Me neither, but there it is in a Season 6 episode titled “Ruritania,” when Prime Minister Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel) gives a rousing speech in Chicago in April 1999, taking a hawkish stand on Kosovo, and Andrew Havill as the Private Secretary to the Sovereign, Sir Robert Fellowes, reads press reports to Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth II.

“The New York Times says the prime minister has a new nickname. King Tony. The Wall Street Journal has come out in emphatic support … but I think the best summary is from the Chicago Sun-Times. It claims Mr. Blair has beguiled the city with his charms, leaving Americans pining to have him as their president instead.”

“Goodness,” replies the queen.

‘The Crown’ Season 6

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Final six episodes available Thursday on Netflix

For the record: I could find no such excerpt in the Sun-Times’ coverage of Blair’s visit to the Economic Club of Chicago, and for that matter, Fellowes was no longer the queen’s private secretary at that point, having been succeeded by Sir Robin Janvrin in February of 1999. Ah, but even as some critics have decried the series for its factual inaccuracies ever since it debuted in 2016, creator Peter Morgan has (rightfully) countered this is a fictional interpretation of known events, as is virtually every other historical series and/or film ever released.

As such, “The Crown” has been addictive viewing, as a rotating cast of many of Britain’s finest actors have portrayed Queen Elizabeth II et al., in events from 1947 to the mid-2000s, where Season 6 concludes. Alas, the final season of “The Crown” is the most uneven and unsatisfying of the lot, wobbling out of the gate with some horrendous choices in the first few episodes before at least partially regaining its stride down the stretch and bringing things to a close on a graceful note.

Let’s get the worst out of the way. The first four episodes of Season 6 (which premiered Nov. 16) focus on the events leading to the horrific and tragic crash that claimed the life of Princess Diana in August of 1997, an accident that also claimed the lives of Dodi Fayed and the driver of the car, Henri Paul. Despite Elizabeth Debicki’s glowing work as Diana, we’re subjected to one heavy-handed foreshadowing scene after another in the buildup to the accident, to the point where we can practically see a halo forming over Diana’s head.

Elizabeth Debicki plays Diana, Princess of Wales, in Season 6 of “The Crown.”

Netflix

Much more egregious is the disastrous decision to have Diana and Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) appear separately as reassuring ghostly apparitions. In one scene, Prince Charles (Dominic West) sits across from Imaginary Diana after her death and says “Paris. One of the busiest cities in the world, and you brought it to a standstill.”

Diana’s reply: “Ta-da!”

I’m not kidding.

Diana — I guess she’s a figment of Charles’ imagination — then assuages Charles’ feelings of guilt by “telling” him, “Thank you for how you were in the hospital. So raw. Broken. And handsome. I’ll take that with me. You know I loved you so much. So deeply …” How convenient for Charles.

Prince William (Ed McVey) romances Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) on “The Crown.”

Netflix

In the final episodes of the series (premiering Thursday), Princess Margaret (the great Lesley Manville) is given a vibrant and moving sendoff, while the queen’s resentment of Blair’s blazing popularity (which eventually flamed out) makes for a rather tedious subplot. Much time is devoted to the teenage years and early 20s of Prince William (Ed McVey) and Prince Harry (Luther Ford), who often come across as petulant and privileged (word that rhymes with “tankers”) and comport themselves like villains in a 1990s prep school movie. William’s budding romance with Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) is handled like a low-budget made-for-TV movie, with dialogue along the lines of Kate saying, “I’d started to worry that we’d drifted into the dreaded friend zone,” and William responding, “Oh no, I’d hate that.” And when the queen says, “I worry about Harry,” and Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce) responds, “We all do,” one can’t help but laugh and think: You have NO idea what’s ahead.

More in keeping with the series’ overall quality blend of sophistication, dry humor and beautifully rendered drama: the storyline about “Operation London Bridge,” the code name for the queen’s funeral. With Charles about to marry Camilla (an excellent Olivia Williams) and Elizabeth on the brink of turning 80, the queen rather reluctantly agrees to participate in the planning of her memorial service. When it’s pointed out the logistics will of course be more complicated if the queen dies abroad, she quips, “I shall do my best to keep it local.” There’s also an unabashedly sentimental and deeply moving imagination of how the piper’s lament “Sleep Dearie, Sleep” was chosen for the queen’s state funeral. To our good fortune, resonant moments such as that occurred far more often than the missteps over the series’ entirety, and that’s why we’ll always have a fond place in our hearts for “The Crown.”

‘Poor Things’ review: Strikingly original film imagines big things in its twisted but fantastical world

2023-12-13T05:30:00-06:00

Hedonist lawyer Duncan (Mark Ruffalo) falls madly in love with Bella (Emma Stone), a woman created by a mad scientist, in “Poor Things.”

Searchlight Pictures

This movie year we’ve seen a number of entries, some quite wonderful, in various genres from the Superhero Movie (“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” “The Flash,” “The Marvels”) to the Corporate Origins Tale (“Air,” “BlackBerry,” “Tetris,” “Flamin’ Hot”) to the Existential Hit Man Fable (“Killer,” “Fast Charlie,” “John Wick: Chapter 4”) — but there’s always room for wholly original and unique stories, as evidenced by the one-two summer punch of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”

In that latter category, we can now add Yorgos Lanthimos’ beautifully garish, wonderfully twisted, unabashedly raunchy and at times grotesquely striking “Poor Things,” and while it might sound clichéd to say you’ve never seen anything like it, trust me: You’ve never seen anything like it.

Based on the 1992 novel “Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer,” this is a fractured fairy tale version of Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” with a bit of “Candide” and “Through the Looking-Glass” and the films of Terry Gilliam thrown in. Director Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara (Lanthimos’ screenwriter on “The Favourite”) and the behind-the-scenes wizards have teamed up to create a fantastical, demented, sometimes wondrous world filled with some of the most stunning sets, costumes and scenery of any film this year.

‘Poor Things’

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Searchlight Pictures presents a film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Tony McNamara. Running time: 141 minutes. Rated R (for strong and pervasive sexual content, graphic nudity, disturbing material, gore and language). Opens Thursday at local theaters.

With Emma Stone delivering the very definition of an all-in performance and a brilliant supporting cast led by Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo, this is an aggressively weird (sometimes too much so) black comedy and social satire — the kind of movie that will surely make many a “Best of the Year” list but might also have some theatergoers heading for the exits by the halfway point.

With cinematographer Robbie Ryan delivering visuals that veer from black-and-white to screen-popping colors with the occasional use of a fish-eye lens, “Poor Things” is set in a steampunk, exaggerated Victorian-era England, After a prologue in which a woman in a blazing blue dress apparently commits suicide by jumping off the Tower Bridge in London, we’re introduced to Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a mad scientist whose face is terribly scarred and jagged, due to his insane father’s experiments on him when Godwin was a child.

Emma Stone wins best actress award from Chicago critics for ‘Poor Things’

Godwin is a professor and doctor who lectures at university and conducts bizarre experiments on animals and corpses in his home laboratory. His most extraordinary creation, so to speak, is one Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), who has a child’s brain inside a young woman’s body, and we’ll go into no further detail of the circumstances that led to that other than to say: What the actual F.

Initially, Bella has the intelligence and emotions of a toddler; she careens around the cavernous house with a strange gait, she can’t control her bladder, she spits out food and is prone to outbursts. There’s an almost marionette-like quality to Bella, with Godwin (she calls him “God”) pulling the strings.

Willem Dafoe plays a doctor fond of bizarre experiments.

Searchlight Pictures

However, as Bella begins to mature at a rapid rate, learning new words every day, experiencing a voracious sexual awakening (the things she does with an apple!) and becoming ever more curious, Godwin is convinced he needs to bring in an assistant to monitor Bella, and he chooses his promising student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), who quickly falls in love with her. Godwin agrees to a marriage between Max and Bella, but only under certain conditions, so he enlists the services of the rapscallion attorney and hedonist Duncan Wedderburn (a fantastically over-the-top Mark Ruffalo) to handle the pre-nuptial agreement.

Big mistake, Godwin. Huge.

Duncan promises Bella the adventure of a lifetime, which will include seemingly endless bouts of “furious jumping,” as Bella describes sex, which she truly loves and wonders why people don’t do it ALL THE TIME. (The nudity in “Poor Things” is constant and fast and, well, furious.) Journeys to Lisbon, Alexandria and Paris are rendered in stunningly surrealistic fashion and highlighted by set pieces including a loony dance number between Duncan and Bella and some hijinks aboard a uniquely designed cruise ship where Bella befriends an older woman of blunt elegance (Hanna Schygulla) and her younger friend and traveling companion (Jerrod Carmichael), who encourage Bella to become more independent but also cautions her about the ways of the world. The smarter and more enlightened Bella becomes (with her hair growing at an alarming rate, just because), the less she sees in the sputtering, weak-willed Duncan, who has fallen madly in love with Bella just as she’s ready to send him to the trash heap.

Bella’s adventures take her to Paris, where she becomes a sex worker, until some news about Godwin leads her back home. There’s much more to come, including the appearance of a figure from Bella’s past who is a terrible person and meets a fate that perhaps not even a terrible person deserves.

The final moments of “Poor Things” are bizarre, even for a film that prides itself on being outrageous and borderline nutso, but by then we’ve come to expect and appreciate the creativity of the madness.

‘Wonka’ review: Who can measure up to Gene Wilder? This candy man can’t

2023-12-12T05:30:00-06:00

In “Wonka,” the future chocolate factory owner (Timothée Chalamet) is new in town and disrupting the candy-making establishment.

Warner Bros.

One can understand how there was great material to be mined from origin stories of iconic movie characters ranging from Anakin Skywalker to Batman to Hannibal Lecter to Vito Corleone to Cruella de Vil — but Willy Wonka? I’m not so sure there was a steady drumbeat for a prequel about the Roald Dahl character who first appeared in the 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” was memorably portrayed by Gene Wilder in the 1971 film and resurfaced in that bizarre Johnny Depp/Tim Burton movie from 2005.

Where did the smiling but kind of sadistic and creepy and manipulative and exploitative Willy Wonka come from? Do we care?

Maybe there IS a story here, but with “Wonka,” we get an intermittently entertaining but scattershot effort with an underwhelming performance by Timothée Chalamet in the title role, production values that often fail to deliver the appropriate level of “Wow!” and a meandering script that veers between maudlin, cheap and just plain weird for weird’s sake. Despite the best efforts of the talented director/co-writer Paul King (who gifted us with the “Paddington” movies) and the wonderful ensemble cast, “Wonka” is like one of those enticing-looking chocolates with a smooth and silky and delicious coating — but inside, you taste dry coconut instead of caramel or a cherry, what a bummer!

‘Wonka’

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Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Paul King and written by King and Simon Farnaby. Running time: 116 minutes. Rated PG (for some violence, mild language and thematic elements). Opens Thursday at local theaters.

“Wonka” takes place in an undefined time and place that resembles early 20th century England. Chalamet’s Willy, an irrepressible and naïve and exuberant young man who is almost annoyingly upbeat, arrives in town having traveled the world for years, honing his cooking skills and gathering the finest and rarest of ingredients for the most wonderful, amazing, incredible chocolates you’ll ever taste.

Chalamet proves himself to be light afoot and rather thin of voice as Willy dazzles the locals with a demonstration of his affordable and magical creations, much to the harumph-harumph-overacting dismay of three greedy chocolatiers with cartoonish names and a cartoonish level of villainy: Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Fickelgruber (Matthew Baynton) and Prodnose (Matt Lucas).

Paramount Theatre stages fun version of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ but it’s not quite golden

While the evil trio conspires with the corrupt, chocoholic chief of police (Keegan-Michael Key) to prevent Willy from setting up shop, Willy has a whole other set of problems to contend with, courtesy of the monstrous innkeeper Mrs. Scrubit (Olivia Colman) and her equally grotesque henchman, Bleacher (Tom Davis). (We almost expect to hear “Master of the House” from “Les Miserables” when this pair takes center stage.)

You see, on Willy’s first night in town, he was tricked into signing an agreement that effectively imprisons him at the inn as unpaid slave labor for the next 20 years, toiling away in the laundry house alongside a bevy of colorful characters who have also been duped. They include the telephone operator Lottie Bell (Rakhee Thakrar), the plumber Piper Benz (Natasha Rothwell), the terribly unfunny aspiring comedian Larry Chucklesworth (Rich Fulcher), the accountant Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter) — and the plucky young Noodle (Calah Lane), who becomes Willy’s partner as they sneak out of the prison/inn and go on a variety of adventures that include borrowing a giraffe from the zoo to help them break into the villains’ secret lair, which is hidden beneath a cathedral run by a chocoholic priest (Rowan Atkinson).

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Along the way, we learn that Willy doesn’t know how to read, that Willy is haunted by the memories of his dead mom (Sally Hawkins) and that Willy is engaged in an ongoing battle with an Oompa Loompa (a disturbingly miniaturized, orange-faced Hugh Grant) who keeps stealing Willy’s chocolates as a form of revenge. Oh, and that police chief keeps accepting copious amounts of chocolate as bribes, resulting in a steady barrage of borderline tasteless obesity jokes as the chief balloons to the point where it appears he might just burst.

The young Willy (Timothée Chalamet) is tussling with an Oompa-Loompa (Hugh Grant) in “Wonka.”

Warner Bros.

And if we don’t have enough subplots already, there’s a whole thing about Mrs. Scrubit getting tricked into believing the heathen Bleacher is actually of Bavarian aristocracy, resulting in a romantic coupling played for mostly nonexistent laughs.

The good stuff: Chalamet and young Calah Lane have a sweet, older-younger sibling chemistry, and the new musical numbers from Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy are passably pleasant, though none are as memorable as the reprisals of “Pure Imagination” and “Oompa Loompa” from the 1971 film. Still, as the story drags on, “Wonka” gets stuck in its own gooey, convoluted aimlessness. We have, what, seven villains? There’s the trio of chocolatiers, the police chief and the priest, plus Scrubit and Bleacher. At times it feels as if the filmmakers are frantically spinning plates, trying to keep everything in motion, at the expense of warmth, wit and … pure imagination.

‘Immediate Family’ review: 5 top studio musicians detail the making of ’60s, ’70s hits

2023-12-11T13:00:00-06:00

Steve Postell (from left), Leland Sklar, Danny Kortchmar, Waddy Wachtel and Russ Kunkel attend a Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in 2021.

Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images

Unless you’re a hardcore rock ’n’ roll fan who used to love reading the liner notes on classic albums back in the day, you might not know the names of Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Russ Kunkel, Waddy Wachtel and Steve Postell, but you almost certainly recognize the names of the artists with whom they collaborated, including Tracy Chapman, Reba McEntire, Hall & Oates, Rod Stewart, Joni Mitchell, B.B. King, Jackson Browne, The Beach Boys, Bill Withers, Bob Dylan, Richard Marx, Keith Richards, Santana, Neil Diamond, Faith Hill, Carlos Santana, Bee Gees, Jimmy Buffet, Warren Zevon, Tony Bennett, Carly Simon … the list goes on forever.

Some 15 years after director Denny Tedesco gave us “The Wrecking Crew,” a documentary that told the story of the legendary studio musicians (including his father, Tommy) who played on countless hits in the 1950s and 1960s, Tedesco helms a spiritual sequel of sorts with “Immediate Family,” which features shared memories from the aforementioned quintet of greatly talented and innovative musicians, a fantastic array of archival clips, and testimonies from the likes of Phil Collins, Carole King, Don Henley, Keith Richards, the late David Crosby, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young and Jackson Browne.

(The fact so many greats agreed to be interviewed for the project tells you something about the level of respect industry-wide for these guys, who recently toured as the world’s greatest cover band, dubbed “Immediate Family.”)

‘Immediate Family’

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Magnolia Pictures presents a documentary directed by Denny Tedesco. Running timem: 102 minutes. No MPAA rating. Screens at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Landmark at the Glen in Glenview and Gurnee Mills 20 in Gurnee and available Friday on demand.

After a quick recap of the Brill Building era, when anonymous writers cranked out hits for a variety of artists who had little or no say in what material they’d record, we segue into the late 1960s and the early 1970s, and the emergence of the singer-songwriter. One by one, Kortchmar, Kunkel, Sklar et al., made their way to California and the Laurel Canyon era, with one or more of them teaming up with James Taylor, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and others. Director Tedesco employs some clever animation to capture certain moments, and also delivers a bounty of memorable moments when various musicians play a familiar drumbeat or guitar riff or piano intro in present day, e.g., Russ Kunkel playing brushes to hit the tom fills on “Fire and Rain.”

We hear the stories and see footage of Leland Sklar playing bass on Phil Collins’ “Inside Out.” (Says Collins: “I would buy records just because [the Immediate Family] were on it.”) Waddy Wachtel takes us through the memorable opening guitar riff he played on Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen.” Danny Kortchmar recalls playing the guitar solo for Carole King’s “It’s Too Late,” not realizing it would be heard on car radios and home stereos and in grocery stores etc., for decades to come. We hear songs ranging from James Taylor’s “Your Smiling Face” to Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes” to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” to Steve Perry’s “Oh Sherrie” to Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” in a whole new way, knowing the magnitude of these artists’ contributions. They were the Immediate Family to the stars.

Golden Globes take step toward regaining respect with strong 2024 nominations

2023-12-11T09:47:38.722-06:00

Emma Stone is nominated both for film role in “Poor Things” and her TV work on “The Curse.”

Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

HOLLYWOOD — In recent years, the Golden Globes were tarnished to such a dark level it seemed they might go the way of the CableAce Awards and the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, but after some sweeping reforms and a change in ownership, the Globes are making a new bid for respectability.

The nominations for the 2024 Golden Globes were announced pre-dawn at the Beverly Hilton by Cedric the Entertainer and Wilmer Valderrama, and while one can’t argue with the vast majority of selections and there are some particularly strong categories, e.g., all the major acting groups, we still have a few questions.

Will ‘Succession’ stars split the vote?

For best performance by an actor in a television series/drama, the nominees included three cast members from “Succession”: Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin and Brian Cox. How does one choose? Will they split the vote? The surprise in this category is Dominic West, a fine actor who I believe was totally miscast as Prince Charles in “The Crown,” but there he is, and congratulations to Dominic.

James Marsden (right) is an unusual TV comedy nominee for playing a version of himself opposite the unwitting Ronald Gladden on “Jury Duty.”

Amazon Freevee

Could Marsden win for playing himself?

In the category of (deep breath) best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a musical/comedy or drama television series, we have three more “Succession” players — Matthew McFadyen, Alexander Skarsgärd and Alan Ruck — plus Billy Crudup for “The Morning Show” (my personal favorite in this group) and James Marsden for “Jury Duty.”

Wait, I thought “Jury Duty” was a reality/prank show about a guy who thought he had been selected to be a juror in a civil lawsuit, when in fact everyone else in the series was an actor playing a role. James Marsden was great playing an exaggerated version of James Marsden on the show, but it’s kind of odd to see him in this category, given his primary onscreen partner was a regular dude who didn’t know he was participating in dramatic/comedic scenes. Eh, why not. It would be kind of a hoot if Marsden won for essentially having a wonderful time making fun of himself.

Golden Globe nominations: ‘Barbie,’ ‘Oppenheimer’ vie in multiple categories

What makes a film or show a ‘comedy’?

One could also argue “The Morning Show” is more of a drama than a comedy. In that same vein, it was a bit jarring to see “May December” get a nomination for best picture, musical or comedy, and Natalie Portman garner a nod for best actress in a musical or comedy — not because it’s undeserving (I loved the film and the performances). It’s just that while there were a myriad moments of social satire and high camp dark comedy in Todd Haynes’ film, one could also make the case it was more of a cynical and disturbing piece of melancholia than a laugh riot.

Other well-deserved nominations

On the Chicago front, three cheers for the nominations for “The Bear” in the category of best television series, musical or comedy, and cast members Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edibiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Abby Elliott. (Wait, “The Bear” is more comedy than drama? Are we sure about that? All right all right, we’ll just go with it and move on.)

Ayo Edebiri (from left), Abby Elliott and Jeremy Allen White of “The Bear” are all Golden Globe nominees.

Also, it was wonderful to see Greta Gerwig receive her first best director nomination (for “Barbie,” you might have heard of that one) after being snubbed for “Lady Bird” and “Little Women.” Kudos as well to Emma Stone for her well-deserved double nomination, for the film “Poor Things” and the limited series “The Curse.”

This year’s changes and additions

For this year’s ceremony, two new categories have been added. One is Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, with a requirement that the eight nominees must have attained “a box office receipt total/gross of $150 million, of which $100 million must come from the U.S. domestic box office, and/or obtain commensurate digital streaming viewership recognized by trusted industry sources.” As you’d expect, top box office blockbusters such as “Barbie,” “The Super Marios Bros. Move,” “Spider-Man: Across the Spider:Verse” and “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3” made the cut — and the voters also included “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which has performed spectacularly.

The Globes also added a Best Stand-Up Comedian on Television category, with Ricky Gervais, Trevor Noah, Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman and Wanda Sykes gaining nods for their respective specials. (Given there are approximately 8 kabillion stand-up specials on TV these days, it’s an honor just to be nominated.)

As noted, just a few years ago, the Golden Globes and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association were on life support, reeling from a series of scandals, including questionable ethical practices by some members and a lack of diversity within the closed-off ranks of voters. Major stars such as Tom Cruise, Scarlett Johansson, Ava DuVernay, Shonda Rhimes and Mark Ruffalo spoke out against the HFPA, and NBC declined to air the ceremony in 2022.

After the organization expanded its membership by inviting a sizable and diverse group of new members, banned gifts, instituted new rules, changed bylaws and announced the establishment of an oversight committee and a partnership with the NAACP, the 80th annual Golden Globe Awards returned to television.

In June 2023, Dick Clark Productions and its holding company, Penske Media Eldridge, announced they had taken over the awards show from the HFPA. The 81st Golden Globes will air on Jan. 7 on CBS and will stream on Paramount+ directly following an NFL on CBS doubleheader — a smart move designed to capitalize on the slump-proof ratings juggernaut that is the National Football League. (Oooh, what if the second game goes into overtime?) This will mark the first time the Globes have had a home with CBS since the early 1980s.

‘Fast Charlie’: Old pros Brosnan, Caan elevate a darkly funny hitman movie

2023-12-07T10:00:00-06:00

A hitman (Pierce Brosnan) goes to war against a mobster threatening his boss in “Fast Charlie.”

Vertical

Unlike Michael Fassbender’s methodical and fastidious and utterly joyless hit man in “The Killer,” Pierce Brosnan’s fixer and hitman in “Fast Charlie” has a wry sense of humor as he goes about his bloody business and displays a real affinity for the pleasures of life. Charlie’s a gourmet cook who specializes in Italian food (he was stationed as a Marine in Italy) and he dreams of retiring someday soon to a fixer-upper in Tuscany.

Problem is, when we meet Charlie, he’s standing in the middle of a junkyard as a gunman commands him to take off his shirt and drop his pants. This looks like the end for Charlie. Or is it? You tell me.

“Fast Charlie” is a brisk and darkly funny take on the Existential Hit Man genre, with Brosnan turning in one of his signature cool and economically effective performances and the veteran and accomplished director Phillip Noyce (“Dead Calm,” “Patriot Games,” “Salt”) proving he’s still a commanding and sure-handed force behind the camera. Based on the 2001 novel “Gun Monkeys” by Victor Gischler and adapted in sharp fashion by Richard Wenk, this is a slick and violent piece of pulp entertainment, with Brosnan’s Charlie Swift providing the irony-laced narration as the title character.

‘Fast Charlie’

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Vertical presents a film directed by Phillip Noyce and written by Richard Wenk, based on the novel ‘Gun Monkeys’ by Victor Gischler. Running time: 90 minutes. No MPAA rating. Available Friday on demand.

After the time-honored “Begin with the Ending” scene, we flashback to the string of events that placed Charlie in that predicament. For the last 30+ years, Charlie has been working for the crime boss Stan Mullen (James Caan), who is now semi-retired and experiencing early signs of dementia. When Charlie isn’t carrying out hits (or mentoring a younger killer who’s quite the idiot), he’s cooking up tasty dishes in his tastefully appointed home in Biloxi or visiting with his old pal Stan, making sure Stan’s OK.

It’s about as stable and comfortable as life can be for an aging fixer, but Charlie’s world is flipped upside down when a rival mobster named Beggar Mercado (Gbenda Akinnagbe) moves to take over Stan’s territory by having his henchmen gun down most of Stan’s crew. Charlie enlists the help of Marcie Kramer (Morena Baccarin), the ex-wife of a recently whacked low-level mobster who had the goods on Beggar, to travel with Charlie to New Orleans in a quest for the incriminating evidence that can take down Beggar.

In his final role, James Caan plays a crime boss who employs Charlie.

Vertical

About this Marcie, she’s really something. Living in a house on stilts, Marcie works as a taxidermist, crafting animals in a way that they’ll haunt the people who killed them. Quirky! She’s also smart, beautiful and clearly wary of establishing any type of human connection, though from the moment Charlie meets her, the chemistry is obvious. Brosnan and Baccarin are electric together, as Marcie quickly establishes herself as someone who has been victimized in life but doesn’t play the victim. Marcie is fantastic. Charlie would be lucky to have her accompany him to Tuscany, if the two of them avoid getting shot.

“Fast Charlie” also marks the final performance of James Caan, who died in July of 2022. Caan is notably frail in appearance, but he gives a forceful, funny, warm and strong performance in one last tough-guy role. Brosnan is a graceful and generous screen partner. Seeing these two veterans effortlessly nailing their scenes is the best thing about this movie.

Roeper reviews 12/7

More reviews from Roeper

‘Eileen’ — “It feels like we’re watching a Todd Haynes film as filtered through the lens of a Hitchcockian tale,” Roeper writes of the 1964 period piece by director William Oldroyd starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie as unlikely new friends. Read the review.

‘The Boy and the Heron’ — Legendary Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s latest attempt at a swan song is “at times haunting but also inspirational and uplifting and even flat-out funny in parts.” Read the review.

‘Leave the World Behind’ — Julia Roberts is a standout in writer-director Sam Esmail’s “bitingly effective and impressively unnerving” adaptation of the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam. Read the review.

‘Eileen’ review: Two women are not what they appear in wild-ride psychological thriller

2023-12-06T18:15:52.661-06:00

A sophisticated newcomer to town (Anne Hathaway, left) takes a liking to a younger colleague (Thomasin McKenzie) in “Eileen.”

Neon

Director William Oldroyd’s piercingly good, wild-ride psychological thriller “Eileen” is not only set in 1964, but it feels as if it were MADE in that time period, with the production values, costumes, camerawork and even the acting choices made by the leads all feeling authentic to that period. It feels like we’re watching a Todd Haynes film as filtered through the lens of a Hitchcockian tale, with a late-story development that’s bat-bleep crazy but also gripping.

This is not to say Oldroyd, who helmed the Florence Pugh-starring “Lady Macbeth” (2016), doesn’t have a distinct style of his own. This is a well-crafted, tightly spun, finely honed piece of work. Based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s award-winning debut novel from 2015 of the same name (Moshfergh co-wrote the adaptation with Luke Goebel), “Eileen” features the New Zealand actress Thomasin McKenzie (“Jojo Rabbit,” “Last Night in Soho”), continuing to demonstrate her propensity for selecting terrific projects and her chameleon-like abilities to convincingly portray characters from various time periods and different corners of the world.

McKenzie delivers maybe the most compelling work of her career as the 24-year-old Eileen, who lives and works in a bleak, unnamed coastal New England town where if you so much as crack a smile, you’ll be regarded with suspicion. (As Eileen explains to a visitor, “Everybody’s kind of angry here — it’s Massachusetts.”)

‘Eileen’

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Neon presents a film directed by William Oldroyd and written by Ottessa Moshfegh and Luke Goebel, based on Moshfegh’s novel. Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (for violent content, sexual content and language). Opens Thursday at local theaters.

At first she comes across as an unassertive wallflower but trust me when I say Eileen has layers. Initially, though, Eileen seems to be just going through the motions of life, whether she’s giving it about 60% at her clerical job at a local juvenile correctional facility, indulging in rather sad masturbatory fantasies or waiting hand and foot on her bitter and alcoholic and widowed father Jim (a typically great Shea Whigham), a former cop who spends his days and nights drinking himself into a stupor and berating Eileen for doing nothing with her life, even though he’s the reason she had to move back home. Some people are the ones you watch, Jim tells his daughter. Other people, they’re just filling space. That’s you, Eileen.

Eileen’s drab and gray life takes a sudden upturn with the arrival of one Rebecca Saint John (Anne Hathaway), the newly hired psychologist at the prison. Arriving in a red sports car with matching gloves and lipstick, her hair coiffed like a star, her figure encased in pencil skirts, Rebecca looks and sounds like she just walked off the set of a film noir. Rebecca’s accent is New York with just a touch of British, her demeanor is one of almost unnerving confidence, and even the act of smoking a cigarette or ordering a fancy cocktail in the local dive bar seems particularly dangerous and rebellious.

To Eileen’s surprise and delight, Rebecca takes a liking to Eileen, flattering Eileen’s potential, taking her out for drinks and dancing, even kissing. Eileen is a goner, but we’re not sure if Rebecca really has a thing for Eileen, or if she’s just bored to tears in this dull town and regards Eileen as a plaything to keep her amused. (We also begin to wonder: Why did this sophisticated, intelligent, Harvard PhD take a job as a therapist at a boys’ prison in this town? You’d expect her to be in Manhattan, charging exorbitant hourly rates to wealthy clients while living the high life.)

Things take a mad twist after Rebecca probes deeper into the case of inmate Lee Polk (Sam Nivola), a teenager who viciously stabbed his father to death while his father was in bed sleeping and his mother Rita (Marin Ireland) was next to him. What could have prompted Lee to commit such an unspeakable crime? Apparently, Lee has never spoken a word about his motives, and his mother won’t talk either. Rebecca is determined to get at the truth — and she enlists Eileen’s help, and we’ll say no more about what happens next.

Although “Eileen” traffics in entirely different territory than the new Netflix fim “May December,” Hathaway’s character and performance reminded me more than a little of Natalie Portman’s brilliant work in the latter film; in both cases, these Oscar winners are playing beautiful and charismatic and deeply manipulative people who swoop into town and become disruptors of the first order.

Hathaway and McKenzie click so well together, as we learn each is not exactly who we assumed they are. The only reason I’m not giving “Eileen” a higher rating is because there are a couple of cheap and manipulative jump scare moments that only serve to take us out of the story and feel frustrated. Other than those hiccups, this is a first-rate period piece thriller with hauntingly memorable performances.

‘The Boy and the Heron’ review: Miyazaki’s latest uplifts and inspires

2023-12-06T05:30:00-06:00

Young Mahito feels lost at the country estate where he moves after the death of his mother in “The Boy and the Heron.”

GKids/Studio Ghibli

Like many a great artist, the legendary Japanese filmmaker and Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki has retired more than once, only to be drawn back into the game, much to the benefit of legions of fans. The 82-year-old Miyazaki delivered a “final” film multiple times over the years, most recently with the 2013 masterpiece “The Wind Rises,” which seemed like the perfect farewell — but it’s our joy to report Miyazaki has gifted the world with another film, the elegant, beautiful, soaring and deeply personal “The Boy and the Heron.”

While this period piece, existential fantasy adventure doesn’t rank with the absolute finest entries in Miyazaki’s iconic canon, it’s still one of the most inventive and creative films, animated or otherwise, of the year.

Rendered in screen-popping cel animation, with layers of hand-painted images on film atop painted backgrounds, and inspired by elements of Miyazaki’s experiences as a youth growing up in a time of war and fear and great uncertainty, “The Boy and the Heron” is at times haunting but also inspirational and uplifting and even flat-out funny in parts, as writer-director Miyazaki explores grand themes of loss and grief and spiritual growth in a decidedly trippy fashion.

‘The Boy and the Heron’

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GKids and Studio Ghibli present a film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 124 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some violent content/bloody images and smoking). Now showing at local theaters.

It also contains a great deal of Miyazaki’s usual pessimism about certain facets of human nature. (The film’s original title was more blunt and far less innocent sounding. It was called “How Do You Live?” and aren’t we asking ourselves that question in one fashion or another every day?)

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Set against the backdrop of World War II, “The Boy and the Heron” is centered on Mahito Maki, a 12-year-old boy (a rare male protagonist for Miyazaki) who is haunted by the horrific death of his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire, depicted here in a sequence that’s terrifying and yet ultimately spiritually resonant. (Soma Santoki voices Mahito in the subtitled Japanese version I saw; at other screenings, the voices are dubbed in English by Christian Bale, Robert Pattinson, Florence Pugh and other stars.)

Natsuko, left, struggles to connect with her new stepson, Mahito, in “The Boy and the Heron.”

GKids/Studio Ghibli

Some time later, Mahito’s father, Shoichi Maki (Takuya Kimura), who runs an air munitions factory, has married his late wife’s younger sister, Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura). She is pregnant with their child, and the family moves to an estate in the countryside that was owned by Shoichi’s late mother. With Shoichi consumed with keeping the factory up to speed, young Mahito finds himself isolated and bullied at school, and feeling lost on the estate grounds, as Natsuko tries (and largely fails) to connect with him while a gaggle of hilariously drawn, tiny old maids who have worked there forever flutter about.

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Enter the Grey Heron (Masaki Suda), who at first is a persistent irritation taunting Mahito with cryptic statements about his deceased mother, claiming she is waiting for him to rescue her, but is eventually revealed to be a gnarly old man but then becomes the Grey Heron again because this is Miyazaki-land. The Grey Heron becomes Mahito’s guide and protector — though we’re not sure he can be trusted — as Mahito enters a parallel dimension filled with fantastical and visually jarring creatures. They range from the magical and delightful to the downright scary, including giant, man-eating parakeets who march in formation like soldiers in a fascist country and are led by the Parakeet King himself (Jun Kunimura), and flocks of cheerful, chattering white puffballs known as warawara, who can inflate like balloons and float into the sky and transcend into humans in the real world — if they can avoid being consumed by hungry pelicans. (And you think YOUR edibles are powerful.)

More important to Mahito’s journey is Lady Himi (voiced by the J-Pop star Aimyon), a heroic and magical “fire maiden” who bears a strong resemblance to Mahito’s mother. It’s Lady Himi who becomes Mahito’s true guide in more ways than one, helping him navigate the labyrinthine pathways of this underground world and teaching him lessons that will continue to reverberate if and when Mahito can make his way back to his real-world home. The journey eventually brings Mahito into contact with his Grand Uncle (Shohei Hino), who runs this world and tells Mahito only someone with his bloodlines and a lack of malice can take over the reins, and he’s starting to believe that Mahito might be the right person for the job. Mahito has some life-changing, perhaps world-shattering, choices to make, and no matter which course he takes, we know he’ll have a different view of how to live when the odyssey draws to a close.

The animation in “The Boy and the Heron” is amazing, whether it’s an epic set-piece featuring multitudes of magical creatures, or something as simple as Mahito being served a piece of bread ladled with butter and jam. Perhaps this is really and truly the final film for Hayao Miyazaki. If so, it’s a lovely and powerful and graceful end note.

‘John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial’ a solid doc with little new to say

2023-12-05T05:30:00-06:00

John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, arrive at a New York recording studio in 1980, a few months before he was shot to death on Dec. 8.

STEVE SANDS/AP

We’re deep into the third and final episode of the Apple TV+ true crime documentary series “John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial” when one of the detectives who worked the case shares a piece of information he hadn’t previously said in public: that he never read “The Catcher in the Rye,” the book Mark David Chapman had with him on the night Chapman shot and killed John Lennon in front of Lennon’s residence at the Dakota in New York City on Dec. 8, 1980.

All due respect, that’s hardly a bombshell. In fact, even though this well-filmed, journalistically solid and at times moving documentary series includes interviews with witnesses who previously had not spoken on the record and features audio recordings of Chapman we hadn’t heard before, there’s nothing truly earth-shattering here.

In the opening episode, titled, “The Last Day,” narrator Kiefer Sutherland intones, “Incredibly, for a crime of this magnitude, the case never went to trial, so the facts of what happened have never been publicly established. And where there’s darkness, conspiracy theories have grown.” The legendary publicist Elliot Mintz comments on the FBI and CIA putting Lennon under surveillance and claims, “Steps were taken on the highest level to do something about ‘the Lennon problem.’”

It all sounds very juicy and provocative, but we’re never presented with a shred of evidence the government had anything to do with Lennon’s murder, and the “conspiracy theories” Sutherland hints at are essentially reduced to one half-hearted suggestion that Chapman might have been brainwashed by the CIA and was nothing but a patsy who was the victim of mind control.

‘John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial’

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A three-part documentary series available Wednesday on Apple TV+.

As for the fact there was no trial, that’s because Chapman meant to plead not guilty by reason of insanity but had a last-second change of heart after he claimed God visited him in his jail cell and told him to plead guilty. We’re left with the same conclusion we’ve had for more than 40 years now: that Mark David Chapman was a sad, deeply troubled and quite likely mentally ill man who acted alone when he killed the 40-year-old Lennon and didn’t even try to escape, instead taking out his copy of “The Catcher and the Rye” and reading it until the cops showed up to arrest him.

That opening episode features interviews with witnesses including Joe Many, a porter at the Dakota; Jay Hastings, who was on duty as a concierge at the building that night, and Richard Peterson, a New York City cabdriver who was taking a fare to the Dakota that night, pulled up just behind the limo dropping John and Yoko Ono home, and watched in horror as Chapman shot Lennon. Each man, now grizzled, but still clearly shaken by events, gets emotional as he recalls his experience. Says Peterson the cabdriver: “He shot him. I thought they were making a movie … but I didn’t see lights or cameras. … This guy was still standing there with a gun.”

That evening, producer Jack Douglas had been working with Lennon on some new music. “He was back in it, completely,” recalls Douglas. “His confidence level was way off the charts. … Everything was going right. He was on top of the world.” Cut to news footage from later that night, with Douglas and his wife trying to gain access to Roosevelt Hospital to be with their friend Yoko. By that time, John Lennon most likely was already pronounced dead.

Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, appears in a Dec. 9, 1980, police photo.

New York City Police Department

Episode 2, “The Investigation,” and Episode 3, “The Trial,” shift the focus to the aftermath of the murder that stunned the world, with investigators, attorneys and mental health experts weighing in on their experiences on the case. We hear audio recordings of Chapman making delusional statements, e.g., “I killed myself, I’m John Lennon,” and we’re told Chapman also believed the act of murder would literally transform him into Holden Caulfield, the teenage narrator and main character in “The Catcher in the Rye.” Parallels are drawn to John Hinckley Jr., who was also obsessed with Salinger’s book. Dr. Naomi Goldstein, speaking publicly for the first time about her interactions with Chapman, says: “He showed so many different facades. He could be nasty, he could be sweet. He was difficult.”

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Now 68, Mark David Chapman is incarcerated at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York. Every two years since 2000, he has been up for parole. A dozen times, he has been denied. “John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial” ultimately serves as a reminder there was no grand conspiracy behind the murder of John Lennon. One man with a gun, seeking fame and consumed with irrational jealousy, ended the life of one of the most influential artists and activists of the 20th century.

Roeper reviews 12/7