The Room Next Door (2024): Just Being There

The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature film in English. It also may be his simplest film in terms of plot, with very few characters, and thus very little of the interweaving of individual histories and personal crises that characterize most of his recent movies. More traditionally for him, it’s about two women, starring Oscar-winners Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore as close friends from way back, reconnecting for an epic personal journey. Moore plays Ingrid, a successful autofiction novelist; Swinton is Martha, a renowned war reporter for the NY Times. 

Those who’ve followed my writing here in Notes on Films know my reverence for Almodóvar, one of the greatest filmmakers of our time. While The Room Next Door  is not your typical Almodóvar story, there’s no mistaking his imprint when it comes to the stunning look of this film. The colors and color combinations - the women’s clothing, the art on the walls, the furniture, even the actresses’ lipstick choices all earn an impressive WOW!  It is a resplendent visual mis en scene typical of Almodóvar’s recent work and clearly  attributable to the auteur himself, as neither his cinematographer, Eduard Grau, nor his art director, Gabriel Liste. had ever worked with him before. 

Ingrid and Martha haven’t seen one another for several years and have lost touch during that time.  When Ingrid hears from a mutual friend that Martha is been ill and is in hospital with cancer, she rushes to the hospital to see her. Martha is happy to see her old friend, and the two easily renew their old friendship. Martha explains that her cancer is inoperable, but there’s a new experimental treatment that her physician believes to be quite promising. Initially, she’s cautiously hopeful, but it’s a hope tempered with skepticism.  

Not long after, it turns out her skepticism was warranted. Martha desperately fears what comes next: not
death itself; she has prepared herself for that working in war zones throughout her career. It is the forfeit of personal integrity, the loss of agency over her body that terrifies her, becoming subject to a system dedicated to keeping her alive for as long as possible, despite what she expects will be an increasingly degrading physical and mental degeneration, and regardless of her wishes. 

Martha cannot and will not tolerate that. Instead, she has an alternative plan: to end her life on her own terms. While she has an adult daughter, they’ve been estranged for years. She has no husband, no other family. But making the arrangements is not a problem, she tells Ingrid; she can do that herself, she’s already started.  Where she needs help is that she doesn’t want to die alone; she wants a friend to be with her. Not to administer the lethal drug, nor to sit at her bedside holding her hand. But to accompany her in her last days, to ease her soul, so to speak (not that she speaks in those terms). As she explains to Ingrid, whom she asks to be that someone, she would just like to know there’s someone in the room next door.

Even so, what a thing to ask! As the first portion of the film comes to a close, Ingrid – who has a just written a book about her own fear of death - struggles to decide if she can agree. Eventually (as you’d suppose - there would not be a movie otherwise), she does. 

Martha has rented a beautiful, luxurious, isolated home in the woods near Woodstock, NY.  where the rest of the story plays out. Ingrid accompanies her there.  The second act of the movie is about that how that experience works out for both. It’s a time of long conversations, during which the two women discuss everything under the sun – homing in on their personal histories and in Martha’s case her regrets. A couple of subsidiary plots are introduced, although they don’t amount to much.  

One relates to Martha’s daughter, Michelle. Martha acknowledges being an emotionally distant mother during Michelle’s youth; as well as physically distant much of the time, due to her frequent and often extended, work-related travels. Despite Michelle’s persistent questioning, Martha never told her about her father, and this withholding became a major issue leading to her alienation. She does, however, relate the story to Ingrid, which Almodovar presents as a sort-of flashback.  

Another subsidiary plot is a source of amusement to the two women: back when both were working for the same magazine, Martha and Ingrid each had affairs with the same guy, Damian (John Turturro), although not at the same time. Ingrid is still friends with Damian, though they have not been lovers for ages. Whatever Damian used to do for a living, nowadays he seems to be some sort of public intellectual. Why is he in the film? Because Damian holds such a despairingly gloomy, unshakably critical view of humanity. He is one of those folks who would never bring a child into the world because people have fucked it up so irretrievably, what with environmental degradation and climate change. Almodóvar, despite making a film about facing death, presents a more optimistic view - represented by Ingrid’s compassion and humanity.

A key theme of The Room Next Door is the human capacity for empathy and compassion toward others. Almodóvar extolls this:  “Providing company …  simply being there, in pain and in pleasure … is a quality superior to the great feelings such as love, friendship, or brotherhood. Being there, with silent, supportive, human understanding, is at times the most we can do for other people. … The Room Next Door shows a character, Ingrid, who learns to fully be alongside Martha.” 

Ingrid’s determination to be there with Martha is not easy, nor is it a mere favor or a simple act of fellowship. It is a mitzvah – allowing Martha to face death not alone but with a companion who cares, is a comfort and a witness, a friend who honors her choice and her humanity.  Like other acts of compassion, this has its rewards for Ingrid as well. She learns more about herself than she might have expected - about courage, fidelity, character, and the beauty of life.  For Ingrid, the way Martha approaches her mortality becomes a life affirming experience.   

So, a related motif in The Room Next Door is an exploration of true friendship.  Says Almodóvar, “This is the process about which the film talks, the friendship regained by the two women, which is sublimated into an emotion similar to love, but without love’s inconveniences, during the weeks they share in the House in the Woods - a place, like a limbo, that lies between real existence and the beyond.”

 These meditations on the right to die, the value of empathy and the special qualities of friendship are part of what makes The Room Next Door interesting and worth visiting. But unfortunately, the single-mindedness of his pedagogic approach to the material also lessens the movie’s appeal. Much of Martha’s story is told to us by Martha herself via long soliloquies about her relationship with Michelle, about the path of her medical treatment, about her reasons for preferring suicide to the alternatives, and so on. This is, of course,  a violation of a prime rule of fiction, most particularly in theater and cinema: Show us, don’t tell us. A related problem is the way that Martha tells us her story, the language that she uses. While straightforward, her speeches are unduly prosaic, lifeless, inelegant. Swinton is a fabulous actress and surely does her best, but more often than not can’t find the life in the words she has been given. Moore fares better, because her role is more reactive – listening, asking questions, and responding – often non-verbally.

It's hard know to what degree Almodóvar’s script, an adaptation of the novel What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, suffered from the fact that it’s his first in English, but I suspect that’s a big part of the problem. The bottom line is that The Room Next Door is not one the maestro’s best pictures.  In fact, looking back at the thirteen  feature films Almodóvar has written and directed over the past thirty years, I’d have to rate it near the bottom, certainly deeper and prettier than I’m So Excited (2013), but no more entertaining. One must keep in mind, that I’m comparing The Room Next Door to other  Almodóvar films, most of which are quite exceptional.  This one is certainly worth watching, for it’s delving into interesting themes, for its stunning visual beauty, and for the chance to see two great actresses at work – especially Julianne Moore in this case.

1 hour 47 minutes

Grade B / B-

Beginning a rolling theatrical release over the next several weeks.  In the SF Bay Area, opening today January 10 at The Realto Elmwood (Berkeley), Smith Rafael Film Center (San Rafael), and Alamo Drafthouse (San Francisco); opening January 17 in numerous Northern California theaters, including AMC Metreon in SF and also in Orinda, Emeryville, Pleasant hill, Daly City, Redwood City, Santa Rosa, Davis and Sacramento. Click HERE to find a theater near you.

A Complete Unknown (2024): Look Out Kid, It's Something You Did

                         by Len Weiler                       

A Complete Unknown is the eagerly awaited biopic about Bob Dylan and the incredible creative arc of his first years in New York City and his early rise to fame. The movie is by turns informative, evocative, dramatic and musically dazzling, featuring a fabulous performance by Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan. Definitely worth seeing.

First, an apology. When I started on this project, I intended to write a fairly shorty, capsule review. I failed. Instead, what follows is on the long-ish side. Hopefully you will find it interesting.  

I’ve been a Dylan fan since sometime in late 1963, when I was 14. On a day trip with my family to New Hope, Pennsylvania – then something of an artists’ colony – we stopped at a coffee house where a folk  trio (very hip, I thought) was singing one of his early songs.  I think it was Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, or maybe A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall. They introduced the song with some superlatives about this absolutely amazing musician/songwriter called Bob Dylan.  I was already taken with Blowin’ in the Wind - a huge hit for Peter, Paul and Mary that summer, and I probably had heard their version of Don’t Think Twice, too. But I had never heard about Dylan before. Shortly thereafter I bought The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album and was totally sold. 

I became more intrigued reading the exuberant liner notes on the Freewheelin’ album, written by the already legendary record producer John Hammond – legendary because of his discovery and/or promotion of esteemed musical artists such as Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Pete Seeger, Big Joe Turner, the previously neglected delta blues great Robert Johnson and later on Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen and more. Here is how those notes began:

        Of all the emergent singers of folk songs in the continuing renascence of that self-assertive tradition, none has equaled Bob Dylan’s singularity of impact. As Harry Jackson, a cowboy singer and a painter, has exclaimed: "He's so goddamned real it's unbelievable!" The irrepressible reality of Bob Dylan is a compound of spontaneity, candor, slicing wit and an uncommonly perceptive eye and ear for the way many of us constrict our capacity for living while a few of us don't.

        Not yet twenty-two at the time of this album’s release, Dylan is growing at a swift, experience-hungry rate. In these performances, there is already a marked change from his first album, and there will surely be many further dimensions of Dylan to come. What makes this collection particularly arresting that it consists in large part of Dylan's own compositions The resurgence of topical folk songs has become a pervasive part of the folk movement among city singers, but few of the young bards so far have demonstrated a knowledge of the difference between well-intentioned pamphleteering and the creation of a valid musical experience. Dylan has. As the highly critical editors of "Little Sandy Review" have noted, "...right now, he is certainly our finest contemporary folk song writer. Nobody else really even comes close."

        The details of Dylan's biography [are] he was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. His experience with adjusting himself to new sights and sounds started early. During his first nineteen years, he lived in Gallup, New Mexico: Cheyenne, South Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Phillipsburg, Kansas; Hibbing, Minnesota (where he was graduated from high school), and Minneapolis (where he spent a restless six months at the University of Minnesota).

As A Complete Unknown points out, Hammond and many others were taken in by the romantic, yet bogus backstory young Bob was spreading about himself as an itinerant musician soaking up influences by hoboing around the country. This myth making was an early example of his gushing imagination and fervid aspiration. The accurate part is that he was rapidly soaking up musical influences and styles like a sponge.

When Dylan first started out singing in the coffee houses and clubs of Greenwich Village in 1961, as a complete unknown not yet twenty years old, he – like most folksingers then – sung mostly traditional songs, what we might now call Americana. On his self-titled first album, recorded in 1961 and released in March 1962, only two of the 13 songs were penned by Dylan. The rest were folk standards like Man of Constant Sorrow, Baby Let Me Follow You Down, and House Of The Rising Sun. Of the two originals, only Song to Woody is featured in A Complete Unknown, near the outset as Dylan sits by the bedside of his ailing idol, Woody Guthrie [Scoot McNairy], who’s slowly dying with Huntington’s Disease.

Around this time, Dylan began writing his own songs; in fact, he soon was writing at an astounding pace.  Not just a lot of songs, but a lot of GREAT ones. Some say he was touched by God or some other cosmic energy source. The immensity and quality of his output amazed his peers and is still remarkable in retrospect. A Complete Unknown shows us this fervid period in Dylan’s life but doesn’t try to explain it. It’s probably inexplicable. Let me illustrate what we’re talking about.

Starting with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (his second album) from May1963 through his 6th album Highway 61 Revisited in August 1965 – that's five albums in less than two and a half years - Dylan  recorded and released 54 original songs, between 20 and 30 of which are now generally considered to be classics – depending on your definition of the term and your taste.  This amazing period forms a major part of the story arc covered in A Complete Unknown. Among those classics are these (those in bold are sung by Chalamet as Dylan in the movie):

Blowing In The Wind, Girl From The North Country, Masters Of War,  A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall, Don't Think Twice It's All Right, The Times They Are a-Changing, With God On Our Side, Only A Pawn In Their Game, Boots Of Spanish Leather, All I Really Want To Do, Chimes Of Freedom, My Back Pages, It Ain’t Me Babe, Subterranean Homesick Blues, She Belongs to Me,  Maggie’s Farm, Love Minus Zero/No Limit,  Mr Tambourine Man, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Like A Rolling Stone, Ballad Of A Thin Man, Highway 61 Revisited, Desolation Row.

So yeah, if you are a fan of Dylan’s early songs or are curious about what the fuss was/is all about, you’ll get a terrific sampling in A Complete Unknown. The movie’s climax comes at 1965's Newport Folk Festival – when Dylan sent shockwaves through the purist folk music world by appearing with an electric guitar and a blues-rock band, singing Maggie’s Farm and Like a Rolling Stone (see below). But his story certainly did not end there. The following year, he released the double album Blonde On Blonde, with songs like Rainy Day Women, Visions of Johanna, Just Like A Woman, and Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands; then the year after that, 1967, came John Wesley Harding (which some have argued is his best album) featuring stuff like I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine, Dear Landlord, I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, and a little thing called All Along the Watchtower. I could go on, but I think you get my gist.

Apart from the focus on early Dylan, one of the things A Complete Unknown does well is to provide a credible illustration of sort-of what Greenwich Village and it’s folk music scene looked and felt like in that distinctly different era sixty years gone. The Cold War. The JFK assassination. The flowering of the civil rights movement. MLK’s “I have a dream” speech.  

And the movie gives us a chance also to meet some of the folks that Dylan was hanging with back in the day. Like Pete Seeger, superbly played by Edward Norton. A prominent figure in and promoter of the folk music scene and a storied musician in his own right, Seeger was one of several influential figures enthralled with the increasingly charismatic young Bob Dylan, and he played a significant role in promoting him as a talent to watch. This included first inviting him to perform at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. Norton captures Seeger’s singing style and mannerisms perfectly, as well as his great chagrin when Dylan famously “goes electric” at the 1965 festival.

Or like Dylan’s girlfriend Suze Rotolo. Curiously (to me at least), Suze is renamed Sylvie Russo in the movie supposedly because Dylan himself insisted that the character not be named Suze Rotolo, out of respect for the fact that Ms. Rotolo  was not a “public person’ – even though she died in 2011 and everyone knows who ‘Sylvie’ is supposed to be. Suze/Sylvie is played by Elle Fanning, who doesn’t look at all like Suze Rotolo or even Italian, but she does a nice job nonetheless.  Suze was featured on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, walking down a Village street arm-in-arm with Bob. She was also a political activist, considered a major influence on Dylan’s turn toward political and socially conscious songs. As he became more and more famous, Dylan began hanging out with other women too, which eventually led to Suze/Sylvie breaking up with him.

One of these other women was Joan Baez – already a successful folk music artist and performer – labeled "The Queen of Folk". She was important to Dylan romantically, but not just that. Baez promoted his songs, including several on her albums and in concert performances.  In July 1963, when both were  performers at the Newport Folk Festival, Baez invited Dylan onstage to sing his With God on Our Side with her. She soon invited him to join her tour, introducing Dylan to her vast audience.  Baez is played in A Complete Unknown by Monica Barbaro. Here may be a good place to note that all of the actors with singing parts in the film do their own vocals. Barbaro is a good actress and did a fine job as Baez; and, while she doesn’t have the high, crystalline soprano of Baez, she has a lovely singing voice. 

Dylan’s relationship with the women in his life, as depicted in this biopic, establishes pretty clearly that despite (or maybe because of) his incredible talent, he could be – at least at the time of his meteoric rise to fame – not only extremely self-centered but inconsiderate to those around him and a jerk as a boyfriend.

[Interestingly, one woman we do not meet in A Complete Unknown is Sara Lownds, with whom Dylan was involved by the time of the film's climax and who became his wife not long after.  But leaving her out makes cinematic sense. A romantic triangle is one thing, a quadrangle is an angle too far.  Lownds was a big part of Dylan’s life going forward and would have to be a central character in any sequel (unlikely).]

As I’ve mentioned, the culminating moment in A Complete Unknown occurs on the final night of the1965 Newport Folk Festival. That’s when Bob Dylan – by then the most prominent, creative “folk singer” of the day and the  headliner who will close the show – took the stage at the world’s most important folk music festival and played an electric guitar, fronting a band with electrified instruments: electric lead guitar, electric bass, electric organ, etc.  OMG! they are not playing acoustic!    

It was dramatic in real life and made doubly so in the movie, which goes a bit overboard in fictionalizing what happened and how.  For example, when Dylan and his band launch into I Ain’t Gonna Work On Maggie’s Farm the crowd goes wild with anger, dismay, and astonishment – loudly booing, even throwing things at Dylan on stage. Backstage, the festival bigwigs are acting just as surprised and going nuts too.  Did they not notice that the stage was clearly and purposefully set up for a band with electric instruments?  At the actual 1965 event, there was some booing for sure, but also applause - with several fans shouting for Dylan to play the rock hit Like A Rolling Stone.  

Despite these quibbles, as a dramatic conclusion to a strong biopic about the early years of one of the greatest popular musicians and poets of the age, the scene works just fine. And it makes for a good story that captures the impact of the moment. So, I have no issue with director James Mangold’s exercise of poetic license. 

The real problem in 1965 wasn’t that Dylan had changed, of course. The problem was that the folk movement had painted itself into a corner with its insistence on only acoustic music.  Dylan had already largely quit writing so-called protest songs in favor of a wider, often satirical social commentary, as well as love songs, poetic reflections, and a variety of other, far less constraining topics. Take, for example, my favorite lines from Mr. Tambourine Man, written in early 1964, and recorded with him accompanying himself with acoustic guitar and harmonica:

Take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind 
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves 
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach 
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

 
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves 

Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Protest? No.    Political? No.   Topical? No.         Personal, poetical, and universal? Absolutely!  Did Tambourine Man also make a damn good rock song? The Byrds successfully thought so.

Complete Unknown is a wonderful movie. It’s a joy. And it’s a time capsule. For those relatively unfamiliar with Bob Dylan’s music or, for that matter, with his origin story, it’s an education, and it may be a revelation. It’s got to be a high point in Timothee Chalamet’s already distinguished acting career.  Unless you have to, don’t wait for the streaming release, which may be months away and likely to be an inferior experience compared to the big screen; this one is worth a trip to your local cinema [assuming it’s equipped with decent sound].  

[Also, if you’ve seen A Complete Unknown already and/or are interested in seeing more about Dylan’s life or seeing a film containing all of Dylan’s performances (complete) at the 1963, 1964, and 1965 Newport Folk Festivals, drop me a line and I’ll help you do just that.]  

2 hours 20 minutes                        Rated R - for language

Grade: A

In wide theatrical release.   

Nightbitch (2024): Amy Adams Struggles To Hold It Together

Since her break-out supporting role as Ashley in 2005’s Junebug and her leading role in 2007’s Disney hit Enchanted, Amy Adams has been an actress worth watching.  From Sunshine Cleaning and Doubt in 2008 through The Fighter (2010), Her and American Hustle in 2013, Arrival (2016) and even Vice (2018) and Hillbilly Elegy (2020) she enlivens every character she takes on, whether it’s a leading role or a supporting one. She’s the lead in the new picture, Nightbitch, and the best thing about it. 

An adaptation of the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch is written and directed by Marielle Heller,  Heller has previously directed three excellent feature films: The Diary of A Teenage Girl (2015), which she co-wrote; Can You Ever Forgive Me (2018); and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019). She also filmed the live Broadway production of Heidi Shreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me for Amazon Prime Video (where it’s still available).

Nightbitch concerns an artist [Adams] who has suspended her career to devote herself to motherhood.  This is not exactly working out for her.  While there is some sweetness to her relationship with her toddler son, the job is tedious and often deadly boring, messy, frustrating, isolating, and never-ending, plus (for the most part) thankless. Emphasizing the dehumanizing effect of her new role, the character is nameless – listed in the credits simply as “Mother”. Her little boy is referred to as “Son’. Her husband [“Husband”], played by Scoot McNairy, is of no help at all - well-meaning but self-absorbed and largely unaware of all the above adjectives describing Mother’s stay-at home life.  In stereotypical fashion, Husband assumes all is just fine at home and sees his contribution to the family’s happiness entirely in his role as the breadwinner.

If you’ve heard anything about Nightbitch, it’s surely that Adam’s character – unable to express her primal needs during the long imprisonment in dull motherhood - turns into a dog at night, running around the neighborhood with canine abandonment.  The film does provide us ample visual evidence of this, but is this body-horror truly happening? Many reviewers report her transformation as real, but I very much doubt that it’s intended to be taken literally. It’s not realism, but Mother’s magical thinking, a visualization of her desperation – and a sign of how Mother’s situation may be threatening her sanity. These scenes are analogous to several other moments in the film  where someone – Husband in one example, a lady at the supermarket in another - makes an inane comment, and Mother brazenly, angrily reacts as she’d really like to, before the movie abruptly flashes back to the polite socially acceptable  response she actually gives.  If you have seen the movie, or plan to, you can judge for yourself.

From the double entendre title to the scenes of Mother’s seeming transformations, there is a certain weirdness to Nightbitch, to be sure. But it’s done with panache and humor.  More than anything, it is designed as comedic – and it is often very funny.   Adams carries the film on her shoulders and she’s excellent. But without a lot of support from the screenplay, it’s a heavy lift. 

Generally, the production takes itself too seriously, harping on a message that is worthwhile to remember,  but hardly new or surprising.  The intended point of the picture’s dramatically negative, if often amusing, depictions of the everyday difficulties faced by stay-at home moms like Mother, is to prompt more discussion about the burdens and sacrifices involved. This theme – and the promotion of the film as an “important” provocative touchstone – reminds me of the 2018 film Tully, with Charlize Theron as a mom at her wits end with a new baby and two other young children, who hires a mysterious night nanny to help her cope. [Read our review of Tully.]  The problem with both of these pictures is that their concentration on the import of their stories takes precedence over the rendering of their stories.  This is a departure from Heller's more successful approach in her earlier features.

One important example of this in Nightbitch is the absence of real characters. Aside from the bona fide hardships and frustrations she experiences as the mother of a toddler, Mother herself is largely unknown to us. She seems to have no actual friends. The other toddler moms she occasionally meets, her former art gallery colleagues, and even Husband – all are hollow stereotypes. Her connection with Husband – whether pre-natal or post-natal - is not fleshed out at all; so even that relationship has no depth. Literally all we know about them is what I’ve already described. He doesn’t seem to take much notice of her angst or increasingly odd behavior, being too wrapped up in whatever he does in his work life. And she says nothing to him about the weirdness she’s going through (or anything else, really) - which only serves to provide some defense to the charge that he is clueless. 

With a little more attention to the basics, Nightbitch could have been a much stronger movie. Still, as I’ve said, Amy Adams is always worth watching – and it’s interesting to see her in a very different manifestation than we are used to. Despite my complaints, the movie IS, as noted, entertaining and often quite amusing. 

1 hour 39 minutes Rated R

Grade: B

In wide theatrical release. Streaming date currently unknown.

Some Worthwhile 2024 Movies For Home Viewing

 By Len Weiler

We are charging into holiday season. Whether this means a bit of extra free time or a need for relief from seasonal tensions, we at Notes on Films are here to help with a list of nine worthy films now available for home viewing. These include two pictures not previously reviewed here,  along with some we wrote about at a point when they were available only in theaters. Even if you’ve seen one or more of these pictures in theaters, you are likely to find them just as enjoyable a second time around, perhaps sharing the joy with friends or family members.

So here goes (with newer movies listed first):

1. The Piano Lesson (2024) Only released theatrically about three weeks ago, we awarded this movie, about an African-American family in 1930s Pittsburgh, with an A rating in our November 11th review. It’s an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play by August Wilson.  Our review concluded with a strong recommendation: “Great writing. Great performances. A boldly dramatic story. Strong direction. It’s just a very solid, absorbing, intelligent and entertaining picture.”  Available on Netflix.  Link to our REVIEW.

2. Blitz  (2024) It’s September 1940, and the Nazi Luftwafe is bombing the hell out of London and other British cities. This picture, by acclaimed filmmaker Steve McQueen, is about what it was like for the people living through what became known as “The Blitz”, told through the experiences of a young mother (Saoirse Ronan) and her nine-year-old son. A third character is the heroism of the British people who nobly faced up to the raining conflagration with heart and determination. Available on Apple TV+.   Link to our 10/28/24 REVIEW.

3. The Wild Robot (2024)      Want something to watch with the kids (or not)? This is a highly lauded animated feature from DreamWorks and director Chris Sanders (The Croods, How to Train Your Dragon) based on the best-selling trilogy of Wild Robot novels for young people by Peter Brown.  Rated PG, it’s the epic adventure of a robot called Roz, shipwrecked on an island inhabited only by animals, who must learn to adapt and survive in the harsh environment, building relationships with the critters there and even becoming the adoptive parent to an orphaned gosling. The Wild Robot has an IMDB rating from viewers of 8.3 and a Metascore (from critics) of 85, both very favorable.  Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com wrote: “One could watch The Wild Robot with sound off entirely and still have a rewarding experience – turn it on and you have one of the best animated film of the decade.”      Available to rent on AppleTV, Amazon and other platforms at the premium price of $19.99 [as it is still showing in theaters].  Not previously reviewed on Notes on Films.

4. Emilia Perez (2024)    Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Best Actress award (for its ensemble of four leading actresses) at Cannes and the Outstanding Ensemble Performance award at Mill Valley FF, where it was the talk of the festival, this remarkably original movie was released theatrically in the US for only two weeks before it began streaming.  And it is like nothing else you’ve ever seen. It’s an operatic drama/melodrama/musical/thriller. The songs are not rendered in classically operatic voices, but neither are they show-stopping standout set pieces like in most American musicals.  Rather they emerge from and further the plot, voicing the thoughts and emotional responses of the characters to the twists and turns of the story. The plot concerns Manitas [Karla Sofia Gascon], a Mexican drug lord who, at the peak of his power (and wealth) decides it’s time to act on his secret, but long-held sense that he is a woman. He enlists Rita [Zoe Zaldana] a bright, young attorney to make all the arrangements – legal, medical and financial – to make this happen. This includes faking Manitas’ death, moving his wife Jessi [Selena Gomez] and kids out of the country to a secret place in Europe without their knowing why, setting up the transition surgery in Switzerland, changing his name and identity to “Emelia Perez” and so forth.  Don’t worry, though; all that is just the set-up for a complicated rest-of-the-story. While not deeply insightful, it is a super-engaging, creatively realized, wonderfully acted story.  Available exclusively on Netflix.   Not previously reviewed on Notes on Films.

5. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)     This is the sequel, 35 years later, to the original Beetlejuice from 1988.  In our September 20th review of both movies, this update did not measure up to the original, but it was still fun – especially the big production number finale. And it has been quite popular with the ticket-buying crowd, pulling in nearly a half billion dollars (gross receipts) worldwide to date – and the fourth most popular movie of the year so far, in the US, based on ticket sales. So, if not exactly great, it is clearly entertaining.  

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice [aka Beetlejuice 2] is available to rent on AppleTV, Amazon and other platforms (about $10).   Beetlejuice 1 is available free on Max, and to rent on most streaming platforms (for around $4)   Link to our 9/20/24 REVIEW of both movies.  

6. The Outrun (2024)      The Outrun is Saoirse Ronan’s other feature film released this fall.  It’s a real showcase of her talent, possibly her best ever screen performance. It’s a close-up drama in which she plays a young woman trying to overcome an untethered alcoholic past and find a new life in sobriety by moving back to her home in the sparsely populated Orkney Islands. It’s based on a true story and it’s a must-see movie for fans of Ronan. Non-fans may become fans after seeing it. Notes on Films gave this picture an A grade.   Available to rent on most platforms at the premium price (as of 11/25/24) of $19.99 Link to our October REVIEW. 

7. Thelma (2024) This light, fun movie stars 94 -year-old June Squibb – in her first starring film role in a long acting career - as an elderly lady who gets defrauded via a phone call from a guy claiming to be her adult grandson in trouble. When she realizes her mistake, and after the police say there’s nothing they can do without more information than she has to offer, she decides to take matters into her own hands, with the reluctant help of another old-timer, played by Richard Roundtree in his final role. As our July 2024 review concluded, this film “is not a classic, but nonetheless is a well-played, well made, sweet motion picture and quite an enjoyable way to spend an evening, especially if you are in the mood for a smile.”       Available free on Hulu and for a modest rental fee on AppleTV, Amazon and many other platforms.    Link to our REVIEW. 

8. Daddio (2024) Daddio, one of my favorite movies at the Tribeca Film Festival last June,  is a two-hander starring Sean Penn as a taxi driver and Dakota Johnson as his fare.  It tells its story, which is primarily about Johnson’s character (called “Girlie” in the credits) but also, somewhat more obliquely,  about Penn’s character, Clark, through the conversation that gradually emerges between them on the long, late night trip from JFK airport to midtown Manhattan. It works because the two actors are so terrific. Penn, in particular, with a gravelly voice and a knowing, world weary attitude, is a revelation – maybe because we haven’t seem much of him over the last many years.  Daddio earned a Notes On Films grade of A- .       Available on Netflix, or for a modestly priced rental on many streaming platforms.    Link to our REVIEW.

9. Wicked Little Letters (2024) “What a treat it is to watch two of our best actresses, Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley, do battle in this new British comedy-drama.” So began our March 2024 review.  The film is based on an incredible but true story about a scandal that rocked a little British seaside town a century ago.  It concerns a series of very vulgar (and damn funny) poison pen letters that began mysteriously showing up in the proper, working-class town.  Coleman’s prim, religious spinster is the shocked recipient. Buckley’s coarse, young single mother neighbor is the suspect.  The film also features the talents of Timothy Spall as Coleman’s strict father and Anjana Vasan as the (very) junior woman constable, trying to crack the case. It’s a fun and funny, charming movie with heart.    Available on Netflix, or for a modestly priced rental on many streaming platforms.  Link to our REVIEW. 

The Piano Lesson (2024): It’s a Family Affair

by Len Weiler

The new movie, The Piano Lesson, is a film adaptation of the playwright August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning stage drama of the same name, which originally premiered in 1987. The play is amazing and the new movie is damn good as well. Taking us into the heart of a 1930s African-American family as it  struggles with past demons and future aspirations, it is gripping, emotionally charged and thrillingly dramatic - while also nuanced, empathetic and sweet.   The Piano Lesson just opened in theaters and will soon be available for home viewing as well (see below). 

August Wilson dropped out of high school when he was sixteen. Nothing was handed to him. As a playwright, he was self-taught. And still, he produced some of the strongest, most enthralling, literate plays produced by any American in the twentieth century. All of his work contains echos of the racism that has always been part of the African American experience. But it encompasses so much more as well.    

Wilson wrote The Piano Lesson as part of a series of ten plays set in Wilson’s hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, which have become known his Pittsburgh Cycle – a.k.a. the Century Cycle, as each play has been set in a different decade of the 20th century - starting with the 1900s [i.e. the “oughts”] through the 1990s. The Piano Lesson is the fifth of these plays that Wilson wrote, but the fourth chronologically in the cycle, taking place in 1936. 

It is also the third picture in the cycle to be produced by Denzel Washington, following Fences (2016), in which Denzel also starred, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020). He plans to produce films based on each of the remaining seven plays in the cycle as well. Denzel does not appear in The Piano Lesson, but it is executive produced by his daughter Katia; directed by his youngest son Malcolm, who also co-wrote the screenplay; and stars his oldest son John David Washington [Tenet (2020), BlacKkKlansman (2018)]. So it is quite a family affair.  The Piano Lesson also stars Danielle Deadwyler [Station Eleven (2011-12), Till (2022)], Samuel L. Jackson [Pulp Fiction (1994), The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2022)] and Ray Fisher [Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)]. 

The story takes place in a house owned by Doaker Charles (Jackson). His brother’s daughter Berniece Charles (Deadwyler) also resides there along with her eleven-year-old daughter Maretha [Skylar Aleece Smith], having moved to Pittsburgh from Mississippi a few years ago. In the parlor of the Doaker house is an old piano, also from Mississippi, which has been bound up tragically with the history of the Charles family since their ancestors were slaves there. 

Out of the blue one day, Berniece’s brother Boy Willie (J.D.Washington) and his friend Lymon (Fisher) show up unannounced at the Doaker house, with a truckload of watermelons they plan to sell in the city to get some cash. The other reason for their visit is the piano. 

Boy Willie, a cocksure motormouth if ever there was one, sees himself as practical and ambitious. He says he has an opportunity to buy what remains of the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved. Wouldn’t that be something? He’s just a sharecropper now, but as a landowner he’d be somebody.  And the land is just a start: with it, he can prosper, build-up some wealth and be his own man, self-sufficient. The thing is - Boy Willie needs to sell the piano to get the money. 

Berniece doesn’t see it that way. The piano is our heritage and our legacy, she says, a manifest connection to our past, defining who we are and will be. The Sutters - the Charles family's white enslavers back in the day, acquired that piano by selling off Berniece and Boy Willie’s grandparents. Sometime later, their great-grandfather carved images of his enslaved wife and family onto the piano as a remembrance. Later still, their father was murdered for stealing it from the Sutters. As the film’s promo declares: “Blood is a chord that resonates through time.” Keeping the piano in the family is more important than a pie in the sky scheme to buy some land in the racist South, Berniece says.  And she will not consent to sell it, no matter what Willie Boy thinks he can do with the money.  

Key historical events from 1911 Mississippi, which in the play are revealed exclusively via “present day” dialogue, are rendered via flashbacks in the movie, and there are a couple of scenes in a nightclub. But most of the action in The Piano Lesson takes place in Doaker’s house, mostly in the front parlor (where the piano resides), with a few scenes in the kitchen or  upstairs rooms; and there’s no mistaking that we're seeing a cinematic rendering of a play. So yes, it is “stagey” – but in a good way. Like having the best seats in the house at a theatrical production – one with terrific actors giving awesome performances. 

The consensus, with which I fully agree, is that Deadwyler’s is the most magnetic and brilliant, the emotional center of the film.  Whenever she’s around – which is most of the time - she is riveting.  I'm anticipating numerous nominations for best actress awards.  J.D. Washington is also great, but his character is difficult to like, so it takes awhile to appreciate what a good job the actor is doing. Fisher’s Lymon is a bit comical and also sweetly naïve. The other supporting players are solid as well.   

Denzel Washington has said of Wilson:  “His stories are specifically African American stories, But the themes are universal. Families, love, betrayal, whatever the theme is. [All] people relate to this.”  And he is right. While this is a movie with an exclusively Black ensemble – other than briefly in the 1911 segment, I can’t recall a single white face – it’s a movie for everyone. 

Wilson, looking back on his accomplishments, noted that hardship (which we all face one way or another) is the essence of all human drama. I especially like this quote: I once wrote this short story called ‘The Best Blues Singer In The World’, and it went like this – "The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, And Balboa was drowning". End of story. That says it all. I've been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story. 

There is no body of water in The Piano Lesson (other than the truckload of melons), but there is the sense that drowning is a real possibility. Berniece is still grieving her dead husband. She recalls her mother grieving the brutal murder of her husband (Berniece and Boy Willie’s dad). Lyman really wants to connect with a good woman, but he doesn’t know how. He and Boy Willie only recently got out of the clink and both their future prospects are uncertain, to say the least.  The great depression has eased, but not by a lot. Life is tough.

And I haven’t even mentioned the ghosts. 

I strongly recommend The Piano Lesson. Great writing. Great performances. A boldly dramatic story. Strong direction. It’s just a very solid, absorbing, intelligent and entertaining picture.  

2 hours 5 minutes PG-13

Grade: A

Currently in select theaters nationwide. Begins streaming on Netflix on November 22, 2024.

Blitz (2024): Hope in a Hellish Situation

    by Len Weiler

Blitz was an intense bombing campaign by the Nazi Luftwaffe over roughly seven months between early September 1940 and mid-May 1941. Although industrial plants and port facilities were targeted, the majority of bombs were dropped indiscriminately on civilian areas most particularly in London, the British capital. More than a million houses were destroyed or damaged there, and tens of thousands were killed. It was not only deadly and destructive, but terrifying – particularly as the majority of bombing raids were conducted at night. The aim of these attacks was to demoralize the British people and their will to resist, hopefully taking the U.K. out of the war. This it failed to do. 

Far from cowing the Brits into submission and surrender, The Blitz accomplished the opposite: it inspired a widely felt, resolute attitude of perseverance and resistance. Broadly speaking this is what the new film Blitz is about. It’s not literally a true story, but it truthfully shows what living through the Blitz was like: how the lives of ordinary people in London were affected by the bombing, what it felt like for them, how they coped with the fear, the devastation and the uncertainty. Even without hearing Churchill’s powerful, patriotic speeches about defending to the death their native soil, fighting on the beaches, in the fields and the hills, in the streets, and never surrendering – we can see and feel the indomitable heart, fortitude and spirit of a people united. 

Blitz is a big budget production, with no scrimping on its depiction of the scope and horror of the bombings and the awful destruction it wrought; reproducing the scenes of thousands of citizens sheltering overnight every night on the platforms and even on the tracks of London’s deep Tube stations to escape the bombings; while also portraying the remarkable wartime camaraderie with which so many besieged Londoners endured what became their finest hour.

The picture works by focusing on a few characters with which we viewers can relate. The big-name star of Blitz is Saoirse Ronan, whose other 2024 film, The Outrun, is currently in theaters. See my recent review of that film HERE. In Blitz, Ronan plays Rita, a young mother of a 9-year-old son, George [Elliot Heffernan]. Rita and George live in London with Rita’s father/George’s grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller – the rock star singer-songwriter-musician). To protect her son from the manifest dangers of the Blitz, Rita – like hundreds of thousands of other parents of young children – reluctantly decides, over George’s strenuous objections, to send him off to the countryside under the evacuation program known as Operation Pied Piper. 

Their parting at a train station is strained, to say the least, with George outspokenly expressing his anger, as he runs away from her. Taunted by some other boys on the train because of his mixed heritage, he decides to jump ship and head back home, which – when the train slows down a bit – is just what he does. And just like that, we have a split narrative – one about Rita’s life in London under the Blitz, and one about George’s attempt to find his way back to London and his family. 

Rita’s experience is a mixed bag, reflecting how young folks coped with the war generally –  working at the factory, drinking and dancing (and even singing) at various waterholes in the evening, huddling in makeshift shelters during bombing raids, helping, if she can, at bombsites afterwards. Trying to keep her chin up … until she learns that her son did not arrive at his rural destination, having apparently jumped off the train along the way. Now she is frantic with worry and spends all her free time searching for him.       

Initially, young George does the most sensible thing. Knowing no other way to find his way back into London, he just follows the train track back the way it came. While the train had not travelled all that far by the time he chose to leave it, but it is already a completely unknown rural landscape he must initially navigate. In his favor, George is enterprising. Along the way, he meets several adults who offer assistance, the problem being that some turn out to be Dickensian characters, interested only in using him to help themselves – think Fagin’s evil gang in Oliver Twist - while, luckily, others really do want to help – among them the ARP officer Ife (Benjamin Clémentine). George’s journey home is by far the more compelling of the two strands of narrative. It’s like a well-done child’s adventure story. In fact, that’s just what it is, helped considerably by 11-year old Heffernan’s terrific debut performance. 

As Rita, Ronan does the best she can, but she has the tougher job. Although Rita serves as our guide to how Londoners are faring through the Blitz, Ronan is given neither the time nor the dramatic opportunity to really fill in her character.  Even Rita’s final scene of the film, which should have been especially evocative, comes across a bit flat and too rushed to properly register – as if Blitz had a two-hour time limit and the director, Steve McQueen, was afraid he’d run over.  (In fact, the stated run-time of the film is exactly 120 minutes.)

Nonetheless, Ronan's performance is solid and heartfelt, and so is the film itself.  One gets the sense that McQueen was aiming to make something great, however, and in that sense Blitz falls a little short. The individual stories are not uninteresting – my interest in the proceedings never waned as I was watching - but they’re not as fascinating or as compelling as they sought to be or ought to be.   

Blitz is McQueen’s sixth feature film, the first five being Hunger (2008) about IRA activist/martyr Bobby Sands, starring Michael Fassbender; Shame (2011) about a sex-addicted young man (Fassbender again), whose life tilts when his wayward sister (Carey Mulligan) decides to move in; 12 Years A Slave (2013) an adaptation of the slave narrative [memoir] by Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was abducted and sold into slavery – nominated for nine Oscars and winner of three including Best Picture of the Year; Widows (2018) a revenge film about a heist, starring Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez Elizabeth Debecki, Cynthia Erivo, and Liam Neeson; and Occupied City (2023), an epic documentary about the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam in WW2 and the manifestation of the holocaust there. Then there is the award-winning anthology, Small Axe (2020), an anthology of five films – seven hours all-told – reflecting the real-life experiences of people in London’s West Indian community between 1969 and 1982. [Read my 2021 review.] All of these projects were well received critically, and all were profitable.

My point is that McQueen is an accomplished director, arguably a great one, with a remarkably varied filmography. It's almost always worthwhile to watch movies by good directors, and such is the case here. While Blitz may not be McQueen's absolute best movie, it is a darned good one and has plenty to offer: high production values, fascinating history, adventure, heroism, and solid entertainment. 

2 hours                                                    Rated PG-13 

Grade: B+

In theaters beginning Friday November 1, 2024. Streaming release date: November 22 on Apple TV+.

Conclave (2024): Holy(?) Fathers

by Len Weiler

This is the second of two movie reviews I’m publishing today about upcoming feature films that I was able to catch at last week’s Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF). This one is about Conclave, the previous one is a review of the new Sean Baker picture, Anora, which you can check out via the link HERE. These two movies were among my favorites at the festival, although they couldn’t be more different. I expect to review a few more favorites over the next two or three weeks.  

Conclave was the opening night film at MVFF. It’s directed by Edgar Berger, and stars a magnetic Ralph Fiennes. As the title suggests, it’s about a Roman Catholic conclave – the secretive, dramatic tradition-bound gathering of the world’s cardinals at the Vatican following the death of a pope, whose task it is to select his successor. The film is based on the 2016 novel by best-selling author Robert Harris [Fatherland (1992), Archangel (1998), Munich (2017)]. As an opening night film, it was wildly successful – everyone I spoke to at the festival quite liked it. As it turned out, Conclave won the MVFF Audience Favorite award. It’s opening in theaters soon (see below)

Berger is best known for having directed [and cowritten] 2022’s All Quiet On the Western Front, winner of four Oscars including Best International Film. [Read my February 2023 review HERE.]  In some ways the new film could not be more different than that one. 

All Quiet is a war movie and, more than most war pictures, spends much of its time depicting large scale battles and the nasty, fraught life of foot soldiers in the trenches - which is to say in the wide, war-torn outdoors. The film’s terrific cinematography is depressingly bleak – which (aside from the horrific subject matter) is largely due to its reliance on desaturated colors – pale grays, blues, and greens, chalky skin tones, and so forth.

By contrast, Conclave is mostly set in the sumptuous inner sanctum of the Vatican - every detail of the extravagant interior rich and extravagant. Over a hundred cardinals are gathered, dressed in gold brocaded cassocks of cardinal red or the occasional deep blue or purest white, with red zucchetti or white peaked mitres on their heads, and large bejeweled crosses hanging from their necks. They convene in a magnificent chamber with a high, elaborately frescoed ceilings, marbled walls, ruby or gold draperies, ornate furnishings,  and  ...  well, everything you’d expect of the Vatican.

The cardinals’ voting is by secret ballot. Until there is a super majority they must keep voting until they get one. Several cardinals – representing disparate ecclesiastic philosophies, nationalities  and temperaments – are ambitious for the job and the immense power over the world’s 1.3 billion adherents  that comes with it.  But none starts out with anything close to the votes needed. 

Fiennes is Cardinal Lawrence, dean of the cardinals. His job - to preside over and manage the conclave – is one he didn’t want and doesn’t like. As open senatorial style debate is not permitted, the fraught, high-pressure maneuvering between the various aspirants and their factions is pursued only when the group is not in session, in the shadows so to speak. There are intense rivalries, intrigues,  scandalous secrets or rumors of secrets, good guys and bad guys - depending on your point of view.  

The dour Lawrence finds himself, reluctantly, at the epicenter of all this.  His fortitude is tested as are his personal friendships and loyalties. The tightly woven plot quickly thickens, enriched with unexpected twists and turns and increasingly high tension and emotion. 

A completely engrossing and highly entertaining dramatic thriller, Conclave is well worth your time -beautiful, mysterious, thrilling, dark, quite surprising (even shocking) at times and a lot of fun. The movie features numerous excellent performances, not the least from Fiennes, who is superb. Also featured are Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini (as Sister Agnes, leader of the Vatican nuns). Lesser known in this country, but also excellent in key roles are Sergio Castellito,  Lucian Msamati, and Carlos Diehz, as a mysterious cardinal, largely unknown to the rest of the gathering.  

Conclave is likely to be nominated for bunches of awards come January. It is one of the richest and most satisfying movies of the year so far.  

2 hours Rated PG

Grade: A-

In theaters beginning 10/25/2024