Like Martin Scorsese loves making movies about gangsters and Christopher Nolan loves making music about time, Irish writer/director John Carney loves making movies about music and relationships. Once, Begin Again, and Sing Street all explore how people connect through a shared love of music. Carney’s newest film, Flora and Son, is no exception. This story of a mom trying to get through to her troubled son while also challenging herself to rise above her own lot through the power of music is as charming and heartfelt as those previous films.
Apparently in the investing world, “dumb money” refers to the money the common man invests. The idea is that these “retail investors” don’t have the knowledge or resources to fully understand the complex world of high finance and thus don’t make wise investment decisions. Thus, hedge funds, investment banks, etc., can exploit these investors to make a profit by betting against the dumb money. And that’s how it typically goes. But not always. In 2020, the dumb money struck back in support of GameStop, sparking a revolution of sorts against the allegedly smart money. It is this story that Dumb Money, a fun, sharp, and yes, smart comedy about the whole affair.
Two auteurs return to the big screen this fall after too many years away, including our greatest living animator. My fifth day at the Mill Valley Film Festival featured two of the most anticipated movies of the week. And they did not disappoint:
The First Main Feature: The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki hung up his pens and brushes after 2013’s The Wind Rises. Retirement lasted a decade, but now he has returned with a flourish. The Boy and the Heron plays like a greatest hits collection. The story and characters are new, but the film hits many beats from Miyazaki’s impressive filmography–the wartime realism of The Wind Rises, the young hero’s journey of Princess Mononoke, and the merging of the real into the world of the spiritual of Spirited Away.
The story starts in Japan in 1943, as young Hisako loses his mother in a fire at the hospital. His father, who owns a factory making planes for the military, soon marries Hisako’s younger sister, and the family relocates to her ancestral home. There, Hisako finds a old tower that is deemed off-limits and an mysterious heron which goads him towards it. Soon, Hisako is on a trek into the tower to save his aunt/stepmother, which is (of course) not a mere tower, but the spiritual center of not only their whole family, but possibly the entire universe. As to be expected from a Miyazaki film, all sorts of fantastical creatures provide help or obstacles as Hisako seeks to make the world right again.
The artist is at the top of his game–the art is breathtaking, the world-building is highly imaginative, and the narrative is heroic (if a bit overlong). Long-time collaborator Joe Hisaishi adds a beautiful piano-and-string score that compliments both the pastoral first half and the mystical second. If The Boy and the Heron is Miyazaki’s last film (he says he’s started on another), it’s a fitting finale.
The Second Main Feature: The Holdovers
Speaking of returns, Alexander Payne hasn’t had a film out since 2017’s Downsizing and hasn’t had an acclaimed one since 2013’s Nebraska. That’s about to change. He reteams with Sideways star Paul Giamatti to tell the story of an gruff teacher at a New England prep school charged with taking care of the “holdovers,” the boys who do not go home to their families over the winter break. This includes newcomer Dominic Sessa’s Angus, a smart-mouthed disaffected teen (is there any other kind) dealing with the death of his father and his mother leaving him at school while she goes off with her new husband for the break.
The beats of the movie are pretty recognizable from a lot of the trope of the school teacher learning from his student as his student learns from him. But it’s still pretty great. Payne has often had a cynical tone to this movies, but this one trades much of the that for a more heartfelt approach. It never gets sappy, though, thanks to a smart script, excellent performances, and a cool early ’70s vibe that starts with the rating card at the very beginning of the film. I’ll have more to say in a full review when it comes out in theaters, but make plans now to prioritize The Holdovers in your fall moviegoing.
The Boy and the Heron releases in theaters and on IMAX on December 8. The Holdovers releases in theaters on October 27.
As the folksy saying goes, “Now we’re cooking with gas!” The bigger titles by more acclaimed directors of the festival are starting to roll out. And, for at least one day, they did not disappoint. Let’s get to them!
In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a fire-breathing monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon. The term has become shorthand for any creature that is made up of the parts of different animals as well as a term referring to something hoped for that can never be obtained. While writer/director Alice Rohrwacher’s new film, La Chimera, was probably going for that latter meaning, its the former that seems more The apropos. At times it’s a character study, a crime caper, a romance, a comedy, an argument for feminist collectivism, and a mediation on life and love. In trying to be too many things, however, La Chimera fails to be effective at almost all of them.
Massive traffic on the bridge leading from Marin County to Berkeley kept me from seeing my second film of the day, so I only saw one. It was a marquee title, though. Anatomy of a Fall won the Palme d’Or (the top award) at the Cannes Film Festival this year, so anticipation was high and the theater was packed. While I think it the Palme d’Or was a little bit of a reach, it was a satisfying courtroom drama about peering into the the darkest corners of a relationship.
Hey, everyone! I’m out in sunny northern California (emphasis on sunny–it’s almost 90 degrees…in October) for Marin County’s Mill Valley Film Festival! The 46th annual festival plays a large number of highly anticipated award-season films as well as fascinating films from up-and-coming filmmakers, foreign and domestic. I’m set to see 13 films over the next seven days; my plan is to tell you a little about all of them. The cream of the crop will get their own reviews. While the festival officially started on Thursday, yesterday was my first day. With that intro out of the way, here we go!
One of the big changes in the film world has been the apparent disappearance of what is called the “mid-budget drama.” Especially in the 80s and 90s, there were lots of smaller movies made–by the big movie studios, not indie films–in genres like family drama, romantic comedy, and suspense thriller that didn’t cost too much to make and were targeted at adults. 1993 is a great example of a year that had lots of these kinds of movies: Sleepless in Seattle, Philadelphia, In the Line of Fire, Rudy, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, In the Name of the Father, What’s Love Got to Do With It?, Falling Down…okay, you get the point. Heck, even the wildly popular summer release The Fugitive only had a $44 million budget. A combination of increased filmmaking costs, consolidation of venues into large national chains like AMC, shorter theatrical windows, the rise of prestige TV, and, finally, the advent of the streaming revolution all but dried up the supply for these types of movies as studios put all of their resources into big box office draws aimed at the teenage/young adult audience. What thoughtful, less expensive, and adult-driven fare is out there is typically an HBO series, and Apple TV+ movie, or an A24 indie release.
Yet, the occasional mid-budget, studio-backed release for grown-ups makes it out into the multiplexes. One stream of those has been a series of earnest collaborations between 20th Century (formerly Fox) Studios, actor/director Kenneth Branagh, and the works of Agatha Christie. 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express was a surprise hit for star/director and studio, grossing seven times its thrifty $55 million budget. 2022’s follow-up, Death on the Nile, was a victim of COVID-delays and an bloated $90 million dollar budget. The newest in the series, A Haunting in Venice, goes for a less star-filled cast to control cost and make Branagh’s Hercule Poirot the center of the story. The film, which adapts Christie’s “The Hallowe’en Party,” goes for a darker tone with a supernatural angle that’s new to the series. And, at least in my opinion, it’s the best yet in the series–by a lot.
Now that we are into September, we have officially passed the end of the summer movie season. From here on out–for the most part–the movies get more serious and arty as the studios and indie distributors unleash their prestige movies for end-of-the-year critic lists and award consideration. And this the start of my favorite part of the movie year. You know me, serious and arty. But before we plunge into the Oscar bait, let’s take a look back at a darn good summer movie season as we look at my Top 5 Summer Blockbusters of 2023.
As expected, Barbie won the box office battle between these two juggernauts. It helps that Barbie is an hour shorter and is, well, Barbie. But Oppenheimer, who I now think of as Barbie’s more serious older brother, is doing just fine, raking in over a quarter of a billion dollars in the U.S. and $649M worldwide. Critically, Oppenheimer has been a little better than Barbie, with Rotten Tomatoes showing that 94% of its reviews are positive. So Christopher Nolan and Universal have done pretty great with making a summer blockbuster out of a three-hour movie that’s mostly just men sitting in rooms talking about science.
Living at the Gates 