The Fourth Annual Havasu Film Festival, Remote Edition, Week Three part one

You should start at the beginning. Here's a link to it.  

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©Warner Bros.

Fool's Gold

starring Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland and Kevin Hart

directed by Andy Tennant

 Finn (Matthew McConaughey) and Tess (Kate Hudson) are getting divorced. Finn misses the hearing because he's just sunk his boat while treasure-hunting, and the rapper/entrepreneur/criminal Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart), who fronted him the money for the boat, tried to have him killed. By the time Finn gets to the courthouse, it's too late. He's divorced, and Tess got everything.

 Not one to let things rest, Finn manages to do a favour for the daughter of the billionaire (Donald Sutherland) Tess now works for. In the process, he has to be rescued, and ends up on the billionaire's yacht, where he regales the man with stories of the vast Spanish treasure he is on the verge of locating. The billionaire is interested, and has nothing much to do anyway, so he goes treasure-hunting with Finn. Hey, if you can believe that Tess and Finn can casually walk into the Spanish archives and be allowed to peruse the 17th-Century documents -- which they can read like they were printed in English, with pictures -- unattended, so they can discover the clue that no one else has spotted in nearly 400 years and then make out, then you can believe the rest of this plot. Anyway, it's a frothy little romantic comedy and you don't care about any of that factual stuff. And it's more believable than what you hear at any White House briefing these days. 

 And you really don't care about the many obvious holes in the plot, you just sit back and enjoy letting it roll by. Kevin Hart is a wonderful little villain, and his henchmen (played by Malcolm Jamal Warner and Brian Hooks) are nicely-done comic relief. The entire movie is a farce, and if you like seeing competent fit actors and actresses in skimpy clothes wandering through lush tropical scenery (Australia, standing in for the Caribbean), then this movie's not nearly as bad as you'd expect it to be from the ratings and reviews. 

 

A Foreign Affair

starring Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, and John Lund

directed by Billy Wilder

 If you were alive during World War II and spent much time watching picture shows, you could be forgiven for thinking that everyone in the US Army was from the poor areas of New York and spoke with adenoidal voice in staccato dialect, spouting lines that seem superficially clever. That was the style at the time, and Lord! does it seem tired and dated now. Luckily, in this film, the two female leads are characters from Iowa and Germany, so they sound different.

 Jean Arthur plays Phoebe Frost, a Republican congresswoman from the corniest part of Iowa; she is part of a fact-finding junket to look into the morale of US servicemen occupying Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war. (The film came out in 1948, but hints in the dialogue indicate that it's set in 1946, when things were most desperate for German survivors. A lot of newsreel footage was used to show the extent of destruction, and much of the outdoor filming was done on location in the ruined Nazi capital. It helps provoke understanding, but not sympathy.)

 Ms Frost is determined not to be hornswoggled by the dog-and-pony show the Army routinely trots out for visiting dignitaries. While on a tour of the devastation, she turns her eye to the behaviour she sees from servicemen on the side of the road, and is horrified to find fraternization between soldiers and Germans, especially women. She is shocked. Her conservative morals are outraged. She leaves the congressional group,* disappearing with two soldiers who mistake her for a fraulein, and ends up at a night club where Erika von Schlütow (Marlene Dietrich) performs. Determined to investigate rumours that von Schlütow had dealings with high-level Nazis during the war, she contacts Captain Pringle (John Lund), who is also from Iowa and whom she met when she first arrived. Pringle is a man of ordinary scruples, not averse to trading a birthday cake for a mattress on the black market. Frost enlists Pringle's aid in tracking down von Schlütow, not realizing that Pringle himself is von Schlütow's American lover. He successfully sidetracks Frost, pretending to be romantically interested in her. She is such an empty-headed bimbo that she falls for it completely, and makes a fool of herself.

 Captain Pringle, and his commanding officer, Colonel Plummer (Millard Mitchell) get to make some rousing speeches appealing to patriotism and justifying the Army's approach to the occupation and the tasks it entails. Frost is too doltish to understand the relative importance of things, until she gets swept up in a raid -- provoked by her own criticisms of what goes on in such places -- of the night club where she was getting thoroughly drunk with Captain Pringle until he was summoned back to base. She ends up in von Schlütow's debt for getting her released without publicity. At the end of the movie, Frost seems to have become aware of the limitations of her knee-jerk moral views, though it's not at all clear that she truly understands anything about the motivations of the people around her, either the Germans or the Americans.

 I found this movie interesting mainly for Marlene Dietrich's performance, and for the images of post-war Berlin. When Jean Arthur was on the screen, I was distracted by the slight odd discoloration of her two front teeth; that, and her character's self-righteous lack of empathy made it hard to appreciate her acting skills. 

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* Interestingly, none of the others seem to be at all concerned by her disappearance.

©Sony Pictures Classics

Friends With Money

starring Jennifer Anniston, Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener and Frances McDormand

directed by Nicole Holofcener

 Today is Saturday; I watched this movie on Thursday morning, and have been trying to think of something concise and witty to say about it. As you will soon know, I've given up on that and will instead be garrulous and dull.

 Part of the problem is that this movie stars Jennifer Anniston as one of the four female leads. I have a thing for her (like I'm the only one), and it's hard to see her as anything but Rachel Green on Friends, and to wonder why she will waste her time with that loser Ross. (I was so hoping that she'd take up with "Mark" at Ralph Lauren, but no....) It's not like Anniston has never played anything but weak-willed whiny Princesses who only slowly grow a spine; this might be the only time since Friends ended that she's taken a similar part. But she is so closely identified with the Rachel character in my mind that, no matter what character she plays, it takes me a while to not see Rachel. Anniston is an excellent and accomplished actor, with a range that often surprises fans like me. In this case, though, the character she plays seems like her stepping back into that Rachel role, and in fact into the worst of it, made still worse by her relationship with a male character, Mike (played with oily loucheness by Scott Caan), who makes Ross look good.

 Anniston plays Olivia, one of a group of four women who formed their friendships in school, but are now all grown up and on different trajectories. Olivia, once a teacher, is now cleaning houses while she searches for a vocation. (Spoiler alert: she doesn't find one, she just moves on to another easy option that, had the movie gone on with the story, would almost certainly turn out to be another temporary fix.)

 Frances McDormand plays Jane, a successful (but not famous) fashion designer going through, I guess, pre-menopause? Is that a real thing? Anyway, she's getting bitchy and grumpy and everyone in her life seems to think it's out of character for her. I identify with her, as she and I share a love of complaining about every little thing. Unlike me, though, she has actually arrived at the point of going out in public without attending to basic personal hygiene, whereas I can only fantasize about it.

 Catherine Keener plays Christine, a screenwriter. She and her husband sit at a partner's desk and write together, but lately something has changed between them; the dialogue he suggests has taken on an edge, and finally things blow up between them and he leaves. I don't recall ever having the reason for it explained, but he is clearly reacting to some change in her: he's grown tired of whatever it is, and feels increasingly exasperated. It may be because she only hears what she wants to hear, as when, despite the conversation the couple had with the architect at the start of the movie, she is surprised to find the neighbours are upset about the second floor they're adding to their house because it blocks everyone else's view of the ocean. He is further exasperated by her spur-of-the-moment unilateral decision to suddenly stop the construction and send the work crew away after the damage is done. She, in turn, is angered by his new-found lack of concern for her. When she stubs her toe and the nanny calls out to ask if she's okay -- something her husband failed to do in the middle of a fight -- she believes she's made a right decision in separating. 

 And Joan Cusack plays Franny, a trust-fund baby. She seems content with her life of personal trainers making house calls, and household staff, a happy marriage and no problems to speak of. She's the one who sets Olivia up with the sleazebag Mike. She thinks maybe her husband spends too much but it's not really a problem. She is the least developed of the four main characters, probably because there's nothing wacky about her. Despite her financial comfort, she's just an ordinary person leading a comfortable life.

 The men in this movie are less developed. We never learn what provoked Christine's husband, or why Franny's husband might be spending too much, but we can imagine answers to these things. More interesting is the slightly fuller treatment given to Jane's husband Aaron, whom Simon McBurney deftly plays as one of those Is-He-Or-Isn't-He guys: everyone thinks he might be gay. (I'm resisting the urge to contrast his character with the title role in Frasier.) To me, he points up the difficulty we grown men have in forming friendships that don't depend on support for the local NFL or NBA team, or on an indulgence in huntin' and fishin' between lap dances.

 This is a good film. It entertains while telling an engaging story about people we can care about, to some degree. There is some superficiality about it; maybe if there were only three main characters instead of four, there would be time to explore them more fully. But who to leave out? Olivia is the main focus of the group; Jane is the most interesting; Christine is the one whose life is most affected; and Franny is the catalyst for the group, without whom nothing much, really, would happen. 

 This was writer/director Nicole Holofcener's third feature-length movie. Reading through the list of her films on Wikipedia tells me they all seem to deal with adult relationships, and that Holofcener has excellent rapport with her actors. When respected serious actors sign up to do films with a director over and over, it's a good indication that the resulting film will be worth watching. (Or it means the paycheck is really huge. But Holofcener does independent films.) It makes me wish I didn't live in a cinematic backwater where only franchise blockbusters make it to the theaters; the only other movie on the list that I've seen is Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which Holofcener co-wrote but didn't direct; I saw it in a theater and enjoyed it enough to remember it. I'm thinking I should take that list to the library and see if I can get enough of her work to have a Holofcener Film Festival. What little I've seen so far makes me think it'd be a good way to spend a couple of days, especially if it's rainy and my wife is home.

Furious

starring Ilya Malakov

directed by Dzhanik Fayziev and Ivan Shurkhovetsky 

 You don't see too many Russian films in public library collections in flyover-country. This one may show why; but if you can get past the poor English dubbing, the disruptive Chinese translation audio, the cartoonish characterizations, the odd cinematic palette and the less-than-state-of-the-art special cinematic effects, you might be entertained.

 The film tells a story that would be familiar to most Russian schoolchildren: in the early 13th Century, the Mongol empire is sweeping across an unformed Russian country. From the struggle, a folk hero named Evpaty arises. (According to the film -- I don't know the story otherwise -- he's nicknamed Kolovrat ("spinning wheel") for the way he fights with two swords.) He tries to get the various Russian city-states of the era to unite, and takes on the invading Horde in delaying actions. He does well enough to earn the Mongol Khan's respect. It's a hagiographic national-origin story, and if I'd been raised with Russian cinema I might consider it a good movie; but I wasn't, and so the technical faults I listed above keep it from being much more than an easily-dismissed second-rate martial arts genre film.

 Actually, to be fair, I can -- and did -- overlook the palette, which seems unduly saturated, and the dubbing, which is pretty much unavoidable; people in non-English speaking countries deal with it almost every time they go to a picture show, but we Americans are unused to it. Most of my friends won't even consider watching a movie with subtitles, let alone a film dubbed into English. 

 I can overlook the characters' lack of depth and development, given that this is a dramatization of national legend and it's fair for the filmmakers to be able to assume the audience already has some familiarity with the subject. It'd be like us watching an action movie about the Civil War: we should already know who Grant and Lee are.

 I can overlook the derisive treatment of the Mongols; they are simpletons, and their leader, the Great Khan, seems to have stepped out of a colourful Ridley Scott version of Flash Gordon.

 I can overlook the corner-cutting, as when it becomes clear that a gigantic log used to take out some of the invaders is actually made of papier maché and weighs only a few pounds, like those rocks the aliens throw on the original Star Trek series.

 I can overlook the simplistic treatment of Kolovrat's relationships -- they're only important to the story insofar as they show that he had relationships.

 What I can't overlook, though, is the aggravatingly intrusive AI-generated audio translations of whatever language the Mongol invaders are speaking in the film. The translation is given in a Chinese-accented female voice that sounds like it's running at 150% of normal speed. It is horrible and detracts utterly from the movie, so much that every good thing about the film is ruined. Surely even the Russian market would reject overdubbing of that poor quality.

 

Links to earlier Film Festival reviews:

2025 (the beginning of this series of posts) 

2024 (link to first of seven posts, including a recap)

2023 (link to first of two posts)

2022 (link to the one post that first year)

 

Fourth Annual Havasu Film Festival, Remote Edition, Week Two part three

You should start at the beginning. Here's a link to it.  

And if you're viewing this in an email notification, please click on the link at the bottom and view it on the Web. It doesn't display properly in the email notification.

 

© Focus Features

The American Society of Magical Negroes 

starring Justice Smith, David Alan Grier, An-Li Bogan and Drew Tarver

directed by Kobi Libii

 On the surface, this is a straightforward rom-com: boy meets girl, they fall in love (or are at least headed in that direction), complications prevent the course of true love from running smooth, and there's a happy ending with the whole world being better off for it. On that level, it's a very good movie. It involves a certain amount of magic and questions that go much deeper than a rom-com, but gives no answers; not even opinions. It's like the movie is the Mike Myers character in a Saturday Night Live "Coffee Talk" skit, saying to the audience, "Talk amongst yourselves; I'll give you a topic: race in America."

 Justice Smith plays Aren, a timid young yarn artist whose work is not much in vogue. He comes to the attention of Roger, played by David Alan Grier, the only cast member I'd heard of. Roger is a Magical Negro, a term used by Spike Lee to describe characters like Bagger Vance: black characters whose sole function is to help the white characters grow; except that in Kobi Libii's movie (which he wrote as well as directed), they are actually magical. As Roger tells Aren at one point, "I'm basically a wizard."

 Roger sponsors Aren for membership in the magic society, and Aren quickly becomes one of them. As Roger explains the group's purpose, "When white people are comfortable, more of us survive." Aren's first assignment is some techie bro named Jason (Drew Tarver) who fancies himself a high flyer computer whiz, despite being cinematically blinkered and, frankly, self-centered to the point of being kind of stupid in a real-world way. 

 Aren immediately gains Jason's trust and Jason adopts him as his pet social guru. Aren also meets Lizzie (An-Li Bogan) and finds himself smitten with her. A problem arises because Jason decides to be interested in Lizzie (as he is unable to read social signals, and thinks she's into him -- she's not, really -- and Jason doesn't notice his "friend" Aren's interest in Lizzie), which complicates Aren's job as a Magical Negro. 

 The love story is well done, though the conversation in this film is so woke as to be distracting to old folks like me. (I know people in the big cities actually talk this way these days; they've seen it on TV since the turn of the century and I guess they think it's normal; it's not, it's just fashion.) The question of race is always there, just under the surface, and it makes me wonder if all or almost all black people in America really live their normal day-to-day lives in a tense survival mode, or if that's just a plot-device of the movie. I don't have an answer either.

 

Anne of Green Gables

starring Ella Ballentine, Martin Sheen, and Sara Botsford

directed by John Kent Harrison

 Every female of my acquaintance, I believe, is familiar with the 1908 story of the little orphan girl who accidentally becomes a member of the Cuthbert family. It ranks right up there with Little Women as the literary classic for girls. No male, that I know of, knows much about the story. 

 I knew nothing at all about the story, except the name, until I went to Prince Edward Island in 2013. PEI is a pleasant place, but the people there were all obsessed with Anne of Green Gables. When ever I got into conversation with anyone in Charlottetown, they insisted on telling me where every place associated with the book is located, how to get there, and what its relationship to the story is.* It's like, if I meet somebody from out of town, and I tell them not only where the Alamo is, but everything I know about its history and the people involved in the battle, the building's decline, its saving and restoration, and the current controversies associated with its maintenance. 

 Okay, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but just a little. Anyway, when I saw this DVD on the library shelf, I included it in the Havasu Film Festival just because I was curious what all the fuss was about. Now I know.

 This is a charming story, well-told and thoroughly engaging, although the male characters in the movie are offensive stereotypes. There are two that actually figure in the story: Martin Sheen's Martin Cuthbert, who is the strong silent type ("Why Martin! I believe that's the first opinion you've ever had." "No, but it's the first I've ever had out loud.") and a pre-teen schoolboy who "teases all the girls" but really likes the strong, assertive Anne, who gives a little mug for the camera to signal that she is becoming familiar with her prefeminist wiles and their uses. This version (one of at least a dozen film and TV adaptations of the novel) was originally produced for Canadian television in 2016, and later was shown on PBS in the United States. I understand there are two or three sequels in the same series. I have no idea how closely it follows the book, but I'm sure every woman I know could tell me.

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* It's not the Island's only claim to literary fame. There's a mouse, too, that they are almost as excited about.

 

Alfie

starring Michael Caine, Shelley Winters, Jane Asher, Vivien Merchant, and Julia Foster

directed by Lewis Gilbert

 People see a doormat, they're going to walk on it. Alfie is a 30-something Cockney in 1960s London, and he sees doormats all over the city, and they all seem to say "welcome." 

 It's not possible for me to separate this film from the era is was made in, when the Swinging 60s was well under way, nor from the milieu of Britain's class-based society, which, to an American, is one of the most foreign things about the United Kingdom. We think we understand it, but we don't. I suspect there's some aspect to it that, in the British mind -- at least the British mind of the post-war era, when the late end of rationing and deprivation slid into the strange, upbeat and rapid change of the mid-1960s -- somehow excuses the kind of behaviour we see reflected in this film. 

 Alfie is generally considered a particularly good and important film. It certainly made Michael Caine a major film star, and the movie did very well "all over the globe, except in France, because the French couldn't believe an Englishman could make it with ten women."* I had never seen it, so I included it in this week's DVD haul from the library. 

 It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the general acclaim for this movie has more to do with its artistic departure from established film practice and its somewhat sympathetic depiction of the British working class, and less to do with Alfie's growth as a man. That growth may well be ephemeral: saying you're more mature doesn't actually make you more mature, but the film ends before we can see if there's any actual change in his attitudes and practices. Artistically, that's fine: it lets us as viewers debate what came after the closing credits. Skeptics like me will want to believe Alfie grew up and will go on to a life of stability and contentment with someone who is also stable and contented; but we will think it more likely that he woke up the following day, kicked himself and asked What was I thinking? And he will go looking for another doormat.

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* Sir Michael Caine told this joke on the Graham Norton show in about 2017.

 

 Amazing! The end of Week Two. Look for the first post from Week Three, coming soon.

Links to earlier Film Festival reviews:

2025 (the beginning of this series of posts) 

2024 (link to first of seven posts, including a recap)

2023 (link to first of two posts)

2022 (link to the one post that first year)

Fourth Annual Havasu Film Festival, Remote Edition, Week Two part two

You should start at the beginning. Here's a link to it.  

And if you're viewing this in an email notification, please click on the link at the bottom and view it on the Web. It doesn't display properly in the email notification.

 

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.

The Accountant 2

starring Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal and Cynthia Addai-Robinson

directed by Gavin O'Connor

 This is the sequel to The Accountant, a very good action movie from nine years ago. While you don't have to have seen the first movie, I think it would help if you do see it and remember it, since the main characters in this film make a number of references to events from that film. You don't absolutely have to get the references, but it might make your experience watching this film more enjoyable. 

 I say that because I saw and enjoyed the original movie, twice, but still didn't remember it well enough to get all the references. What I did remember was that the Affleck character, autistic underworld accountant Christian Wolff, had an airstream trailer that was his escape plan and most closely-guarded secret. Nobody knew about it. If things went south, he could drive off with the airstream and just disappear. And that's what he did at the end of the first movie.

 Now, it seems like everybody knows about the airstream trailer. You would think that in the intervening years Wolff could have managed another home base in a nondescript town in a different part of the country. Instead he just parks his Airstream residence in what looks like a vast sea of identical, presumably vacant Airstream trailers. Nothing is said about it, no explanation is offered.

 In this movie, Christian calls on his brother Braxton (Bernthal), a former mercenary who is now a very successful hired killer, to help him and Federal Agent Medina (Addai-Robinson). Her former boss has been murdered, she's trying to find his killer, and she's enlisted Wolff to help; but first they have to find out what he was doing that got him killed. It turns out to involve human trafficking, money laundering, extortion ... all the current buzzword crimes except political corruption, which I suppose we've all just about had enough of since the first movie came out. Anyway, Christian brings his brother in to help. I'm not sure exactly why: Christian is pretty much a one-man army himself, and it really seems like the only advantages gained are that brother Braxton can at least hold an ordinary conversation with ordinary people, and he's a good shot with any weapon (as is Christian, but when you're going up against bunches and bunches of criminals in gangs, well, a second one-man army is helpful). 

 This movie seems consciously to match the pace set by the previous one. Maybe it seems slow if you're not following the moderately complicated trail of clues being laid down; if you are, it is intense; and when there is violent action on the screen it's measured, from an explosive start to a usually rapid and almost surprising end. Christian is deliberate about violence: it's a fact of life, like breathing and fried food; something that must be done. Braxton seems to enjoy it a lot more, but he, too, isn't profligate with it.

 Ben Affleck is excellent as the title character; he really makes the idiosyncratic accountant come alive. The tension between him and his brother is palpable, until they arrive at a working relationship. His more difficult relationship with Addai-Robinson's character takes the opposite track, in that she is left behind when the brothers go off to confront the malefactors. But because Affleck so inhabits the skin of his character, you believe he is that guy.

 There is, though, one thing in the plot of this movie that I can't stop thinking about, so, Spoiler Alert: 

 Near the end, the Wolff brothers are on the way to Juárez, Mexico to stop the murder of a bus-load of children. They have already learned that the bad guys are going to take the kids out in the desert, where a mass grave is being prepared for a particularly reprehensible tying up of loose ends. The good guys arrive just as the bus is setting out for the killing ground, and a firefight ensues, which takes about ten action-packed minutes. Very exciting, and cinematically very well done, but.... 

 The Wolff brothers know the fate of the children if the bus gets away. They have plenty of weapons of every description on hand. They are both outstanding shots. The bus is sitting right there, motionless, a hundred or so yards away, getting ready to leave. Why don't they just shoot the tires? Why doesn't one of them put a bullet through the engine block? Why do they not stop the bus leaving, instead of spending that ten minutes shooting every last bad guy in the gang dead? That, I think, is exceptionally bad plotting, when it would have been so easy to have the Wolff brothers just miss the bus, then at some point during the firefight, they spot it on the road above the camp (or get intel from their high-tech assistants), or see it leaving from the far side of the compound as they arrive so that they have to fight their way through the crowd of bad guys to pursue it.  I mean ... I really did enjoy this movie, but I can't stop thinking about that one massive idiot-plot lapse of quality in the script. 

 

© Universal Pictures

All of Me

starring Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin

directed by Carl Reiner

 This 1984 comedy had a bad reputation back when it was new. I didn't see it then, but not because of the bad word-of-mouth. I was living in a small city deep in the hollers of West Virginia back then, and I don't know if there was a movie theater in that town in 1984. I don't remember ever seeing one. But I was a huge fan of Lily Tomlin then; I knew Steve Martin from Saturday Night Live, and from The Jerk, which in my memory was sort of so-so. I had heard bad things about a couple of his other movies in the intervening years, and so I don't know if I would have gone to see this movie back then.

 Having now seen it, I think it fits right into that category of kinda-funny, kinda-not comedies from that era. It's a cute variation on the body-swap theme -- Tomlin's character, rich-bitch Edwina Cutwater is dying, and has arranged to have her soul go into the body of the much younger, much hotter woman whom Cutwater has named as her heir. (It was California in the 1980s; it could happen.) 

 Martin plays Cobb, a lawyer and jazz musician, who is at the point in life where he feels compelled to make his career his sole focus. (I was following the same trajectory in those days; that's how I came to be in West Virginia in the first place.) Cobb's boss assigns him to deal with Cutwater in her testamentary preparations for this harebrained scheme. They don't hit it off. He stalks angrily out of a meeting while Cutwater, dying, and her spiritual guide prepare for the transfer of her soul. An accident causes the bowl containing Cutwater's soul to fall out the window, where it lands on Cobb's head, and voilà, the two are joined in Cobb's body.

 Martin does as well with the sort of physical comedy that follows as anybody in that decade; it's one of the things that made him so popular at the time. The rest of the story concerns efforts to rectify the placement of Cutwater's soul, after the originally planned avatar, Terry (played by Victoria Tennant) decides that she doesn't want to be one with the universe after all, and would rather just enjoy the millions of dollars Cutwater left to her. 

 There is an innocence to this movie that, in my mind, is down to the influence of Carl Reiner, who directed. He was something of a childhood hero to me, for his work on The Dick Van Dyke Show, which was, I think, my first Favourite Show.* His sensibilities always showed in his work, and this movie is no exception. Even the seduction scene involving light BDSM is playful, brief and trivial. The movie almost apologises for having the scene at all, but it does serve to show attributes of the two characters in a quick way that avoids a lot of turgid explication. If your twenty-first-century kids are watching this movie with you, I don't know if they would feel the need to ask what's going on, though I suppose you might want to have an explanation ready in case they do. That innocent light-heartedness carries through all the way to the end of the film, where everyone gets what they need most. Except the horse. 

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* And he, and his friend and associate Sheldon Leonard, was the first celebrity I ever encountered personally. My godfather used to work for Leonard, and we ran into the two giants of television on a sidewalk in New York City on my first trip there in the 1970s. But all I really remember about the chance meeting was the car they were getting into or out of, a maroon-and-yellow limousine from the 1930s. Might have been a Rolls, but now that I think about it, I think it was a Cadillac. 

 

© Lionsgate

Arthur the King

starring Mark Wahlberg and Simu Liu

directed by Simon Cellan Jones

 So I watched this movie about a dog. I wish I hadn't. 

 Not that it was a bad movie; it wasn't, though it wasn't a particularly good movie either. It involved a sport called "adventure racing" -- I guess it's a real thing, sort of like Iron-Man competitions and those races where you have to swim and run and ride a bike through dramatic scenery in exotic places; in this case, the jungles of the Dominican Republic. But I don't actually care much about the sport, or the race in the movie, because, like I said, the movie's about the dog that joins the team competing in the race. 

 (You might might want to skip to the next movie review.) 

 And even though -- Spoiler alert -- the movie has a happy ending, by then it was too late: I was already crying about every dog I've ever had and lost in my whole life: Shammy, who went to "live on a farm" in 1969; Blinky, her son, hit by a car a few years later, and I still blame my mother for that; Aleta, and watching the light go out of her eyes when we had to put her down, nearly 30 years ago, and yes, it still hurts like it was earlier today; and Homer, the happiest dog that ever lived, who we had to have put down in 2014, and that time I thought I couldn't bear to watch again, so he died alone and I still regret that decision. And now I have Carly, and I know how hard it's going to be, in five or six years, when she comes to the end of her race. 

 I don't often remember dreams. I had two or three as a child that I remembered snippets of, but they have pretty well faded with the many years and they no longer have any emotional strength. But a couple of years ago I had a dream about Homer. I was looking for him in a strange neighbourhood, some unknown mixed residential and light-industrial area like I see on the West Side of San Antonio, and I was calling him. And then I saw him, a couple of blocks away to my right, and he started running to me, getting closer and closer, and when he got close he leapt up for me to catch ... and I woke up. That was it, that was the whole dream, and I cried for days about it, because if I could have just stayed asleep for another few seconds, I would have been able to hold him in my arms again for one last time. 

 I think about that dream every couple of weeks now, and it still brings me to tears every time. And this movie reminded me of that, and all those other losses too. So I really wish I hadn't watched this movie.

 I did warn you. 

 

Aloha, Bobby and Rose

starring Paul le Mat and Dianne Hull

directed by Floyd Mutrux

 There are several things about this story that confuse me.  

 Bobby (Paul le Mat) and Rose (Dianne Hull) are a couple of young people in the San Fernando Valley in the mid-1970s, when this film was made. They share poor judgment and a lack of ambition. Bobby works at a service station; his friend has just been accepted to some kind of auto-mechanics training program that promises to double his future income (from about $3/hr to more than $6/hr). Bobby claims to be uninterested, because the friend will have to be up at six o'clock in the morning, and Bobby would rather lay in bed until noon and "roll in" to work three hours late every day. (I had the impression, watching that scene, that what Bobby really felt was envy, and the recognition that if he had bothered to try, he could probably have gotten into a similar training program.) All Bobby has to his name is a red Camaro and some mechanical skills that he can't be bothered to do much with, beyond souping up his own car.

 Rose had taken her VW Beetle convertible in for repairs at the station where Bobby works. He fixes it and delivers it to her at her workplace. She gives him a ride back to the service station, stopping first at her house, where Bobby meets Rose's mother and young son. Next thing you know, Bobby and Rose are dating. They've gone to a liquor store to get something to drink -- at that time the drinking age almost everywhere was 18, so we know they're at least that old, though neither one of them looks or acts that old. When the clerk turns his back to him, Bobby playfully pokes his back with a Slim Jim, puts on a Clyde Barrow accent (that famous movie had come out a few years before), and pretends he's robbing the store. The store owner, having heard Bobby talking, comes out of the back office with a shotgun, claims to recognize Bobby as the person who robbed the store a week previously, and tells the clerk to call the police. When Rose tries to explain that it's just a joke, the old man tells her to "stay out of this." For some reason she thinks the appropriate response to the situation at this point is to break a bottle over the old man's head, and she proceeds to do so. In falling, he discharges the shotgun, killing his store clerk. Bobby and Rose rush off in a panic because "no twelve people around here are going to believe what really happened back there." 

 As they flee, with Bobby driving Rose's car, she -- if I understood the scene right; I had to watch it twice to figure out what was going on -- seems to decide they should go back. It's hard to make out what she's saying because she's blubbering, and this DVD doesn't offer closed captions. She appears to grab the steering wheel and try to make Bobby turn around, but only succeeds in crashing her little car (which miraculously recovers from a roll of about sixty degrees to right itself; the laws of physics are like everything else in California: a little different). 

 Bobby is going on the lam. He says he has an uncle in San Diego where he can get some cash, and then he's going to Mexico. He puts Rose on what may be a city bus, but from their conversation and the design of the bus stop it seems to be an intercity transit of some kind; I don't know why she would be going anywhere at this point. They haven't left Los Angeles, and she misses her son. Bobby walks away; Rose immediately has a change of heart and gets off the bus to follow Bobby, whom she's known for one day (albeit an impressively full day) into hiding from the law. So much for missing her son.

 In San Diego, Bobby and Rose end up, through a short series of somewhat humorous events, in the company of Buford and his "old lady" Donna Sue. They're from Texas. It's always refreshing when somebody without an accent appears on screen, but they're always portrayed as intellectually deficient, when really all they are is normal folk trying to get by in life.

 Buford is a good ol' boy looking for business opportunities, while Donna Sue seems to just be a good ol' gal with a heart of gold. The four of them go for dinner, at Buford's insistence, in Mexico. Rose again is missing her son, and no wonder: after one evening with Bobby, look at everything that's happened. During their brief acquaintance, Buford manages twice to rile others around him, but he knows when to pull out "Uncle Frank," a revolver he carries, who suggests the opposing party might want to go elsewhere. Buford is comic relief. You may have guessed that already. Like I said, he's from Texas, and this is definitely a California movie in every regard.

 As they're returning to San Diego, the four come across some kind of emergency involving dead bodies on the street; I couldn't tell if there had been an auto accident or a shooting, but whatever it was, it prompts Buford to decide that he and Donna Sue will just "drive straight home" -- from Tijuana to Fort Worth, mind you, and it's already been a late night. He gives Bobby the hotel-room key he had booked for himself and Donna Sue, and just drives away in his heavily modified Lincoln Continental, after insisting Bobby give him a call later on.

 I don't know how Bobby and Rose got from Tijuana back to his Camaro, which he had left somewhere in the vicinity of San Diego. Rose still misses her son; they go back to Los Angeles to get the boy, and Bobby paints his red car black. I don't know why. When they stop for an ice cream cone, a police officer finds the car parked on the curb with the child inside alone. Me being a modern type of guy, I thought the problem was that the child was unattended in the car, but no, apparently the officer recognizes the car as being of interest for some criminal activity. 

 Rose and Bobby, walking back from the ice cream store, see the policemen with the child and the car, and turn back, walk away, and make some plan that involves Bobby calling Buford -- who, after an 18-hour drive accomplished in no more than about fourteen hours, has already found and arranged his business opportunity*, funded by Donna Sue's family, and he promptly offers Bobby a place in it -- while Rose calls her mother to retrieve the child from the police. Instead, Rose calls the police to tell them about "an accident at a liquor store a couple of days ago."

 Next thing you know a police officer sees Bobby walking in the rain from across the street, shouts "He's got a gun!" and shoots Bobby dead. I have no idea why; Bobby didn't have a gun and didn't look like he had a gun, and this was the 1970s; were cops so trigger-happy back then? Now, okay, but not in the '70s. I don't even know why the police seemed to be looking for Bobby, or for Bobby's Camaro, as they were driving Rose's VW when the clerk was shot, and since all this takes place in such a short span of time, there's no way they could have already connected the dots to be looking for the Camaro -- though clearly Bobby thinks they will; why else paint it black? I just don't know. I re-ran parts of this film several times just to try and figure out what was going on, but by the middle of the movie -- about the time Buford was revenge-pissing in the car of a guy who had irritated him in the restaurant -- I had given up on that. 

 Other than the hard-to-follow story that has no respect for real-world time, this isn't a bad movie at all. The acting by the principles overcomes a disjointed script, or maybe it's poor editing; the performances are competent, though I wouldn't say they rise much above the level of journeyman. Maybe the two stars were as confused about what their characters are supposed to be as the characters themselves are. (Or maybe in some kind of meta-way, theirs actually are outstanding performances, but in service of mediocrity.) I thought Tim McIntire as Buford did the best, but then he had more to work with. I also think -- in fact, I'm pretty sure -- that all the failings this little film has happened on the other side of the camera.

 And the best part of this movie was the music. It features several songs by Elton John (uncredited, as far as I could tell), though the chopping up of Tiny Dancer was, to me, unacceptable. Most of the other music heard in the film was from the early '60s; I don't know why.

_________

* Maybe it involves whatever transporter device he used to get home so quickly. 

 

© Universal Pictures

Ambulance

starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Eiza Gonzalez

directed by Michael Bay

 After the catharsis of the dog movie and the confusion of the California movie, it felt good to sit back and be swept along by a plain ol' shoot-'em-up action movie with just the bare bones of a plot. And that's what this is: well-made, to be sure, with lots of shots of the ordinary parts of Los Angeles (freeways, downtown, warehouses and places where normal people live; not a single mansion with a cement pond). The plot only exists to give purpose and structure to two-and-a-quarter hours of, essentially, an extended car chase. It is made appropriately simple by the employment of a few stock characters: the FBI agent who used to be friends with the bank robber; the cocksure police captain who arrives with a huge dog in a tiny car; the police techie with no respect for authority; the ambulance driver who is first-day new to the job; the uncaring insurance-company supervisor. Essentially, anyone who makes an appearance in this movie. 

 Will (Abdul-Mateen) and Danny (Gyllenhaal) are adopted brothers. If there's a plot-related reason why one has to be white and the other black, it's not apparent to me; but neither is there a reason not to. Will is the good brother, the one who joined the Marines and lives life by a code of honour. Danny also has a code, but it's one he sort of adapted from his bank-robber father, who had no code whatsoever.

 Will is driven to desperation by his wife's illness and the American health-insurance industry. He asks his brother for a loan, but his timing is bad. Danny's about to rob a bank, and it seems that one of this crew has called in sick, or something, so Danny ropes Will into filling in. Will had been a medic and driver in the service in Afghanistan, plus he knows his way around L.A. better than anybody. This sets up the heart of the dramatic aspect of the movie: we watch Danny, who starts off tightly-wound, come unhinged, and we watch Will, a man of principled integrity, get drawn into things he could never live with.

 I won't bother you with the details of how Danny's elaborate plan goes wrong; suffice it to say that the two brothers are the sole survivors of what started as a fairly extensive crew, and they end up hijacking an ambulance containing the rookie police officer who unwittingly found himself in the middle of the robbery. The officer is attended by Cam (Gonzalez), who is the Best Damn Emergency Medical Technician in the city, but possibly the worst person. 

 The changes these three characters undergo in this movie keep the film from being banal. Though, with all that goes on, I don't know if anybody would really notice. The action is non-stop, its energy immense, and despite the often-gratuitous violence depicted, it rarely strays from the believable. (The only case I can think of is when a gang Danny has called on to provide a diversion for him sends in a remote-control low-rider Chevy loaded with C-4 explosive and a machine gun mounted discreetly in the front seat, along with enough ammunition to take out the entire police department. And there are a couple of occasions when pursuing cop cars flip for no good reason.)

 It's a fun movie, and if you like this genre, I can recommend it. I know that, if I come across it being shown on television, I'll watch it again, at least until the next commercial break, and I'll probably come back to it when I give up on other shows.

 I do want to mention two particularly good items in this film. One is the comic-relief character, Castro, played by a rapper who goes by one name, Wale. He's the guy who answers the phone at Danny's warehouse (where Danny stores classic cars for customers). The character is played low-key, and his consummate bumbling combines well with lack of comprehension and New-Age health fads.  

  The other thing is the score. Usually it's best if you don't notice the music in a movie, unless it's by John Williams and is performed by orchestras around the country during fund-raising campaigns. The music in this film, by Lorne Balfe -- particularly the long crescendoing theme played near the end of the film as loose ends are tied up -- ought to be performed by those same orchestras. 

 

Once again I think I'm approaching the limits of my readers' attention span. The 4th Annual HFF will pick up again in a few days with another installment. 

  

Links to earlier Film Festival reviews:

2025 (the beginning of this series of posts) 

2024 (link to first of seven posts, including a recap)

2023 (link to first of two posts)

2022 (link to the one post that first year)

 

 

Fourth Annual Havasu Film Festival, Remote Edition, Week Two part one

You should start at the beginning. Here's a link to it.  

And if you're viewing this in an email notification, please click on the link at the bottom and view it on the Web. It doesn't display properly in the email notification.

 

 The shelf at the San Pedro branch library of movies on DVD with titles that start with "A" is at eye level. That is, therefore, where I picked this batch of movies from. It was a short shelf, and so I had to dip into the "B" movies -- I hope that's not foreshadowing -- to get 15 of them, which I calculate is how many I can watch in a week. 

 

© Millennium Films

Angel Has Fallen

starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman

directed by Ric Roman Waugh 

 This is the third film in a series: it was preceded by Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen. Apparently the London iteration was a massive hit, so the people behind it got together and decided a third film was in order. That's usually not a good omen.

 But this actually turned out to be a pretty good action-adventure movie. Gerard Butler, the hero of the series, has gotten older, but the movie uses his hero-emeritus status well, giving him physical deterioration causing aches and pains that an old soldier would naturally endure after an exciting life of evil-thwarting; and, being a hero, he naturally suffers silently through the pain, as I would do, were it not such a good excuse for grousing. Pretty sure, though, that if there's another film in this series, Butler's character will be saving the world from behind a desk, until the last moment, when he comes out from there for one final heroic act of salvation.

  This time, Butler's character, Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, is in charge of the president's security detail. He's been trying to deal with his deteriorating physical condition on his own, even though he knows it's a losing battle. Meanwhile, treasonous and greedy self-serving villains choose that moment to launch a coup, with a drone attack that is meant to kill the president (Morgan Freeman) and frame Banning for the job. They plant a pile of money in an offshore account in Banning's name, and plant his DNA in places that will point the accusatory finger at him. They also arrange for him to be the only member of the security detail to survive.

 The plan seems to be working, except that the prez didn't die; he's in a coma. The bad guys think that's good enough for the moment, and continue their elaborate scheme. They are helped, initially, by an FBI agent (played by Jada Pinkett Smith) who sees only too well only what is put before her; though when she's confronted by clear facts that cannot be explained otherwise, she belatedly does a little What-If scenario in her head and light begins to dawn. (In movies where the law enforcement folks are more imaginative, there would have been a brief "This is all too easy" speech.) Banning takes a bold and unexpected step, which works out well for him and the world (it's a movie, remember), and the denouement is at hand. And a clever denouement it is, with lots of shooting and dying and a building exploding, but the best part of it is the deception practiced by the good guys on the bad guys. 

 My only quibble with this movie's plot -- and it is just a quibble -- concerns the final confrontation with the main bad guy, which takes place on a rooftop. I really would have thought that Mike Banning, if he were a real federal agent, and one banged up as much as he had been by that point in the film, would have just kept an eye on the miscreant, who after all had no way out of his situation at that point except suicide with a jump off the ten-story building; maybe taunting him about how his grand scheme was going to land him in a long, drawn-out and unwinnable prosecution, which would cost him every penny he had and shame him as  pariah among the citizenry: a fate worse than death. Then, of course, the bad guy would attack Banning and we could have had the same result, but without Banning being the instigator. Or the bad guy could be led away by a squadron of police, head hung low or held high, depending on what the producers had planned in the way of sequels.

 All the action movies I've watched so far in this installment of the Havasu Film Festival have been entertaining and well made. I'd also say that this one is a cut above the others. Those special effects shots can be expensive, and this one appears to have had the budget for it. 

 

Anonymous

starring Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, David Thewlis, and Edward Hogg

directed by Roland Emmerich

 If you think this is historically accurate just because the characters were almost all real people, you've spent too much time surfing the Web and not enough doing any real thinking. At the start of this film, a modern-day lecturer (played by Derek Jacobi in a cameo reminiscent of Jackson Hedley, the ham actor he once portrayed on an episode in Season 8 of Frasier) throws out a couple of arguable factoids about the real William Shakespeare. He mentions, for example, the famous bequest in Shakespeare's will about his second-best bed, then wonders why there was no bequest of any of his writings. (I note that Shakespeare also failed to specify who would inherit unsold film rights.)

 That takes us into this imaginary world where all the plays, sonnets and poems attributed to the Bard of Avon were actually written by the Earl of Oxford*, who also slept with the movie version of Queen Elizabeth (Redgrave), and fathered one of her several imaginary bastard children. This version of Oxford (played by Rhys Ifans, best known to me as Hugh Grant's odd roommate in Notting Hill) imagines himself to be a rival of the priggish Puritan William Cecil, Elizabeth's closest advisor. This imaginary Oxford, though, doesn't have the political savvy needed to make that rivalry a serious claim. Instead of spinning nefarious plots, Movie-Oxford spends all his time writing. (The film's version of Cecil -- played by David Thewlis, whom I recognize from his role as a professor in at least one of the Harry Potter movies -- spends all his screen time making and peering through windows into men's souls.) 

 In the political climate of the time, with the self-righteous in the ascendancy, stage plays become dangerous things; so Oxford gets a somewhat-established playwright, Ben Jonson, to put on Oxford's plays as his own. When the audience demands to see the playwright after the first performance of The History of King Henry the Fifth, Jonson starts to reluctantly make his way to the stage, but takes too long; before he can claim his putative authorship, the actor Will Shakespeare (portrayed as an illiterate buffoon by Rafe Spall) sees an opportunity and presents himself to the audience as the playwright. 

 Meanwhile, there is intrigue concerning the succession to the throne. Cecil and his party are for giving it to the king of Scotland, a Catholic named James VI, while the Oxford party want Movie-Elizabeth's bastard son to ascend. They stage a ludicrously half-assed coup attempt, not knowing that their plans were betrayed by Jonson. 

 This film is an elegantly-costumed period piece, something the British seem to do better than anyone. There are very good performances by all, and excellent special effects that make the London of 1600 seem real. The plot's farcical aspects can be suspended while you enjoy the movie, but when it's over, you really need to come back to the real world. 

________

* The real Oxford is most famous for having once farted in the Queen's presence, then taken himself away from Court for seven years. When he came back, the first thing Elizabeth said when she saw him was, "My lord, I had forgot the fart."

 

Anzio

starring Robert Mitchum and Peter Falk

directed by Edward Dmytryk 

 This movie came out in 1968, as the Vietnam War approached its height and the anti-war movement was building across the country. For most people, sides were just starting to be taken, but we hadn't as a nation reached the peak of divisiveness. That's just a little context of the time, and the ongoing debate about the issue is reflected in the film. 

 Many people at the time could remember the battle of Anzio, which had taken place 24 years previously, and was kind of a big deal; and those who didn't probably knew somebody who did. It was not the greatest moment for the Allies in the fight against Germany, though it wasn't a disaster, either.*

 This film tells a small (fictional) part of a much larger story, following a detachment of American soldiers doing a reconnaissance patrol behind German lines soon after the Allied landings at Anzio. Their number includes an omniscient war correspondent, Dick Ennis (Mitchum) and a smart-aleck corporal named Rabinoff (Falk). There's a certain amount of 1940s-style jargon that might have been considered daring in 1968, but now it just makes the film seem quaint and dated. 

 Ennis, as a reporter, refuses to carry a weapon. Attention is called to this refusal a number of times, though interestingly, no one questions it or comments on it, even though they clearly disagree with it. The general attitudes seems to be "It's your funeral." Toward the end of the movie, when the small Allied group (including the Ennis character) are pinned down by a few German snipers and reduced to just three or four survivors, Ennis must consider the decision again. One of the things that most strongly dates this movie to an era now fading from our communal consciousness is the fact that the entire subject is dealt with throughout the film without a single word being spoken. 

 Everything about this movie feels dated. The acting is kind of stilted, unrealistic; the special effects are, of necessity, a little unsophisticated; the Technicolor palette of the film looks old-fashioned; the jargon, as I said before, is quaint. But at least this movie assumes its audience can figure out what the hell is going on, without feeling the need to hash out everybody's point of view or demand any explanation for the choices they make. 

__________

* My understanding of the actual events was that the Allied advance up the Italian peninsula had stalled at the German defensive "Cassiano" line, and the Anzio landing was meant to attack that line from the rear. The Germans, having too much coastline to defend, had wisely prepared a sort of rapid-response defense, ready to go to any point in their rear where the Allies might attempt a flanking maneuver. The landings at Anzio, just south of Rome, were therefore unopposed. The Allies' commanding officer, interpreting his orders cautiously but arguably correctly, concentrated on building up his beachhead for several days instead of immediately attacking the German forces to the south. This delay in attack allowed the Germans time to put their rapid-response defense into motion  -- the movie makes it seem like an almost fortuitous development by the Germans instead of the carefully-planned movement of forces that it was -- and so come very close to driving the Allies out of their position at Anzio. The Allied commander was of course handicapped by not having seen this movie before the battle. He was not the moron this film makes him out to be. 

 

© Lionsgate

About My Father

starring Robert deNiro, Sebastian Maniscalco, and Leslie Bibb

directed by Laura Terruso

 Sebastian Maniscalco is a successful stand-up comedian who co-wrote this film (with Austen Earl), loosely based on his own life. In it he plays the manager of a boutique Chicago hotel who has been dating Ellie, the artist daughter of a wealthy family that operates a competing chain of hotels. He wants to propose to her, and when her parents invite them to spend a holiday in their Virginia vacation home, he decides that will likely present the "right" intimate moment for a proposal. He goes to his father (deNiro) to get his grandmother's ring, but Dad refuses to give it to him until he's had a chance to evaluate the girl's family himself, face-to-face. As a result, they invite him along for the holiday.

 Sebastian is repeatedly embarrassed by his father's ways (which notably include making a delicious meal out of a family pet), and finally snaps, telling the old man everything he's ever done to embarrass his son. Saddened, the father leaves the heirloom ring for his son with a note saying goodbye. 

 At the same time, Ellie finds out that, not only was it her parents (played by David Rasche and Kim Cattrall) who bought out all her artworks at her first solo gallery opening some time previously, but also that Sebastian knew about the deception, having recognized her work in photographs of the family's hotel lobbies, and said nothing. Incensed, she goes to her Special Place, a sort of treehouse fort she used to play in as a child. Sebastian goes there to apologise and propose, but in conversation with her, he realizes how important his father (and late mother) have been in making him into the man Ellie loves. He rushes to the airport to stop his father from leaving.

 This is a cute little movie about family relationships. Sebastian's prospective in-laws are a quirky blinkered bunch beset by all the First-World problems that the excessively rich moan about, including Ellie's brothers (played by Anders Holm and Brett Dier), the spoiled overgrown frat-boy and the New-Age hippie-wannabe. There are plenty of sight gags and word-play, some of which actually made me laugh out loud (the first time thus far in this Fourth Annual Havasu Film Festival), and I appreciated the (mild) character growth of the principals (except deNiro's character, who merely demonstrates why he is already what all the others aspire to be). 

 Of course, it may also be that I liked this movie because I got to hear a couple of Italian words that I haven't heard said out loud in, oh, sixty years, most notably mannaggia, which my mother always translated as "by damn." Gives me a warm feeling of nostalgia to hear somebody cuss that way. Good times. Good times.

  

Anyone But You

starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell

directed by Will Gluck

 My first clue that this was a re-telling, or perhaps a re-imagining of Much Ado About Nothing came when I noticed a second quote from Shakespeare appearing in a sort of random place, and stopped the DVD so I could look it up. (The quote was, "I will assume thy part in some disguise" written on a signboard on a dock.) Up until then I thought I was just watching a cute little rom-com; I hadn't realized it had a pedigree.

 Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell) meet by accident at a coffee shop. He is plainly taken by her ditziness, and I guess she's taken by his quick-thinking white-knight performance. They spend the day and night together, obviously much enjoying each other's company; then she leaves before he wakes up. He takes greater offense at that than it warrants (insufficient motivation is the hallmark of Idiot Plot, but yet again, we overlook that because the movie is enjoyable). After a very short time she realizes leaving like that was a dumb thing to do, and goes back, just in time to overhear Ben telling a friend that "she was nothing" and other put-downs. She takes umbrage. (At this point I thought Ben was dissing her because it was all none of the friend's business, and while I thought the comments he made were a little too snarky, they were at least justified, and she had no business eavesdropping, beyond the fact that the script required that she jump to conclusions.)

 Fast-forward some unspecified amount of time, and Bea and Ben meet again, this time at a bar where they are introduced to each other by Bea's sister Halle (played by Hadley Robinson) and Halle's fiancée Claudia (Alexandra Shipp), who also -- small world! -- happens to be the sister of Ben's nosy friend. The wedding is to be in Australia, because there are significant tax breaks for filmmakers there. Bea, naturally, is invited because one of the brides is her sister; I'm not sure why Ben is invited, as he is just a friend of the brother of the other bride, and all the people in the wedding part who know Ben or Bea know, too, that they seem to hate each other. But these people are full of poor excuses for why they had to do one stupid, tactless thing after another, and we go along with it all because, well, it's kind of funny. 

 The plot, from this point on, is too complicated to describe briefly, so I'll just summarize it as "Are they or aren't they?" and refer you to the Shakespeare play, which no doubt you've all seen and remember perfectly well. (If not, you can find a synopsis of the plot on the Internet, probably on Wikipedia. Or you could just not worry about it and go with the flow.)

 There are a couple of plot points that made my eyes start to roll -- the worst being the idea that Sydney Harbour is too shallow to turn a medium-sized cabin cruiser around in to rescue those who fell overboard (even though the boat is plowing along through those waters at what looks like a pretty good clip). When that line* was delivered, my left eye (which, you'll remember, has already rolled completely out of my head once within the past week) started to quiver and jump around a little, but I managed to hold it in. For the most part, though, the quality of the storytelling overcame the few idiotic bits of plotting. And there were a few particularly nice touches -- the line that the dog was "the only member of the family that's trained," (true dat) and the entire Sydney Harbour scene other than that one clanger just mentioned; and the ending, which, I'm sorry, is just perfect.

 A couple of points: First, I didn't know who Sydney Sweeney was before seeing this, though I have heard her name a number of times all of a sudden in the past year or so. She's been in a number of big productions that I've not seen: The Handmaid's Tale and White Lotus, both of which are big on the internet-conversation meter but not of interest to me. I don't have whatever pay-to-watch service they're available on.  She was also in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which I did see; in that, she played one of the younger Manson Family members; and having read that in her bio, I find I do actually remember her performance. In this film, though, I was fairly comprehensively nonplussed by her delivery, and her facial expressions seemed slightly forced even before her character started having to pretend everything about her relationship with Ben. So I'm not sure what the fuss is all about where she's concerned.

  Second, the closing credits. In them, the entire cast sings Unwritten, an excellent song by Natasha Bedingfield that is particularly appropriate to the Bea character, in out-takes made throughout the shooting of this movie. Great foresight, really enjoyable result. It's a shame that when this movie is eventually shown on cable television, the credits will be compressed into a tiny little box and the audio will be lost to a promo for the next broadcast. 

__________

* I know, the plot needed to have the people in the water rescued by others. I just think the excuse was utterly lame.  

 

© Warner Bros Entertainment

Blue Beetle

starring Xolo Maridueña, Bruna Marquezine, Belissa Escobedo and Susan Sarandon

directed by Angel Manuel Soto

 Susan Sarandon first came to my post-pubescent attention when she stood on a small stage with a boa and a bustier, put her hands to her head and was turned to stone by the evil Dr Frankenfurter. That was in the 1970s. Surprisingly, and unlike every other star of that era who's had "work done," Sarandon doesn't seem to have aged very many days. She either lives in a cryogenic chamber when not filming, or she has the world's most accomplished cosmetic surgeon. Either way ... damn!

 The special effects are well done but look cartoonish rather than realistic, emphasizing the comic-book origin of the film. That may please people who actually read the comic books, but for us grown-ups it makes the look of the film seems childish and poorly designed. Every aspect of the plot is as hackneyed as they come. People who haven't seen a decade or more of films may not realize that; it may actually seem fresh to a complete neophyte. 

 Other than Sarandon, there's not much in this movie to hold an adult's attention. Well, I suppose I should qualify that: not much to hold a mature adult's attention. I've done some doomscrolling and realize there is an entire subset of humanity that has attained the age of majority without attaining maturity, and those people might think this movie is, I don't know, cool? It has kind of a gamer-vibe to it, so it might appeal to incels and other people with gamer-quality computers who have never lived on their own: people for whom ordering delivery pizza counts as social interaction. But I really think this movie is aimed at 'tweeners and other people not legally able to drive yet. 

 That may change.* There's a scene in the middle of the closing credits clearly meant to set up a possible sequel, so there may be more of these Blue Beetle movies in our already dismal future. We shall see. If there are, they may follow the course plotted by the movies in the Marvel Universe: start with low-budget crappy films with lots of action and minimal plot complexity; don't bother developing the characters into anything with a third dimension. Just like this movie, where the characterizations are cardboard cutouts of stereotypical Mexican-Americans, with a few short conversations in Spanish and some tropes like Liberation Catholicism and revolución thrown in with ethnic music and working-class poverty. 

 Then if the film makes enough of a profit, spend more on sequels to get better writers who'll create more complex plots and more rounded characters, and make better movies for the franchise. Keep adult-appropriate themes, including romance, in a closet off-set with any nuanced layers of metaphor. You can have some cleavage on the chicks -- and keep testing that limit -- but there should be not a hint of a bulge in a male crotch; that's too suggestive. What's the phrase? "Smooth as a Ken doll." 

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* Probably not. According to Wikipedia, this movie "underperformed at the box office."   "Its box office performance was attributed to factors such as the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes, the franchise's imminent reboot with the DC Universe (DCU), and Hurricane Hilary." It seems nobody thought it might be because it's kind of a crappy movie.

 

 I think that's about as much as the modern reader can take at one sitting. Look for part two of Week Two of the Fourth Annual Havasu Film Festival, Remote Edition in a few days! 

  

Links to earlier Film Festival reviews:

2025 (the beginning of this series of posts) 

2024 (link to first of seven posts, including a recap)

2023 (link to first of two posts)

2022 (link to the one post that first year)