The Movie Cricket

Movie reviews by Sean P. Means.

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Agnes (Kelly Macdonald) takes in the grandeur of Grand Central Station, in the drama "Puzzle." (Photo by Linda Kallerus, courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)

Agnes (Kelly Macdonald) takes in the grandeur of Grand Central Station, in the drama "Puzzle." (Photo by Linda Kallerus, courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)

'Puzzle'

August 22, 2018 by Sean P. Means

With notable roles in “Trainspotting,” “Gosford Park,” “Nanny McPhee,” “No Country For Old Men” and “Brave” — as the voice of Merida, the feisty Scottish princess — it’s rather strange that Kelly Macdonald isn’t better known and respected as one of the strongest actors working.

“Puzzle,” a slight but thoughtful drama, gives Macdonald a more prominent role than she usually gets, and she makes the most of it.

Macdonald plays Agnes, a Connecticut homemaker who does everything for her husband, Louie (David Denham), and their two teen sons, Gabe (Austin Abrams) and Ziggy (Bubba Weiler). She’s so subservient, we see in the opening moments, that she does all the work arranging, cooking for and cleaning up after her own birthday party.

On this birthday, someone gives her an odd present for a 40ish woman: A jigsaw puzzle. The next morning, instead of her usual list of chores, she stops and assembles the puzzle, and realizes she’s actually really good at it. She recognizes the patterns quickly, knows intuitively what fits with what, and sees the whole picture long before it’s done.

Soon she decides she wants more. She takes the train into New York, and finds a puzzle shop. There, she learns that someone is looking for a jigsaw-savvy partner for competitive puzzle solving. On an impulse, she texts the number, and soon meets its owner, Robert (played by the great Indian actor Irrfan Khan), an inventor who uses puzzles to shut out the depressing drone of the daily news.

Without telling Louie, the good Catholic Agnes starts making regular trips into the city to practice with Robert for an upcoming national tournament. But the cascade effect of Agnes lying to her husband collides with the joy and excitement she feels — possibly for the first time in her life — when she puts together a jigsaw puzzle.

Director Marc Turteltaub captures Agnes’ dour, drab existence, and how it gradually brightens as her puzzle skills, and Robert’s encouragement, propel her toward standing up for herself in ways she never could before. The schematics of this change — as assisted by writers Oren Moverman (“Love & Mercy”) and Polly Mann, remaking Natalia Smirnoff’s 2009 Argentine film of the same name — are a bit predictable and plodding, but the payoff rather muted because of it.

Macdonald is a joy to watch, as she modulates Agnes’ emotional awakening with pinpoint precision. She finds the specific gravity of this character, so dedicated to her husband’s and her sons’ wellbeing that it takes time for her to accept the idea that there’s something she can do solely for her own pleasure. It’s a performance so good that all Turteltaub has to do is not get in the way.

——

‘Puzzle’

★★★

Opened July 27 in select cities; opens Friday, August 24, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language. Running time: 103 minutes.

August 22, 2018 /Sean P. Means
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Bubbles (Maya Rudolph) is the loyal secretary to Phil Philips (performed by puppeteer Bill Barretta), a private eye in the raunchy puppet-based comedy "The Happytime Murders." (Photo by Hopper Stone, courtesy STX Films)

Bubbles (Maya Rudolph) is the loyal secretary to Phil Philips (performed by puppeteer Bill Barretta), a private eye in the raunchy puppet-based comedy "The Happytime Murders." (Photo by Hopper Stone, courtesy STX Films)

'The Happytime Murders'

August 22, 2018 by Sean P. Means

There’s a kernel of a good idea rattling around “The Happytime Murders,” a foul-mouthed and underwritten mash-up of “Avenue Q” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” that seems to have only one purpose: To reclaim puppetry from the precincts of the family-friendly.

Director Brian Henson, son of Muppets founder Jim Henson and himself director of “A Muppet Christmas Carol” and “Muppet Treasure Island,” isn’t exactly breaking new ground with this notion. After all, his father created raunchy Muppet sketches for the first season of “Saturday Night Live,” way back in 1975. 

But here, in a story set in a Los Angeles where puppets are an oppressed minority, they’re decidedly not playing it safe. Scenes of puppet-centric porn, puppet prostitutes serving up a little “rotten cotton,” puppets snorting sugar like it’s cocaine, and a puppet ejaculating silly string are par for the course — but there’s more shock value than genuine laughs. (It doesn’t help that most of the scenes mentioned were in the movie’s red-band trailer.)

The setting is a modern Los Angeles where puppets live alongside humans — though they are an oppressed minority, frequently maligned and teased for being short and made of felt and foam. Our hero is Phil Philips (performed by Bill Barretta), a private eye who was the first puppet on the LAPD — until, as the inevitable newspaper-clipping backstory montage tells us, he was drummed out of the force, in a hostage situation gone wrong involving his partner. That partner, Det. Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy), now hates Phil’s fluffy guts, and vice versa.

So, equally inevitably, they get assigned by Connie’s boss, Lt. Banning (“The Office’s” Leslie David Baker), to work together to solve a series of crimes. Someone is killing puppets across Los Angeles — all stars of a beloved ‘80s TV series, “The HappyTime Gang,” the first regular puppet-filled show on network TV. And each time one of them (including Phil’s brother, Larry) has died, Phil was in the vicinity.

Can Connie and Phil get over their animosity to solve the case? Can Connie prove Phil’s innocence to an obnoxious FBI agent (Joel McHale)? Can Phil also sort out the blackmail case of the seductive puppet Sandra? And can Phil overcome his heartbreak for the only human member of the HappyTime Gang, Jenny (Elizabeth Banks), and keep her from being the next one killed?

After watching “The Happytime Murders,” the answer to all of the above is “Who cares?” Henson focuses on the puppetry, and bringing the puppet and human worlds together on a technical level, that he fails to notice how weak Todd Berger’s script is. The script feels like an early first draft, one where nobody came through later to write any real jokes.

The most genuine laughs come from scenes that feel ad-libbed by McCarthy, especially when she’s paired with her old “Bridesmaids” co-star Maya Rudolph, who plays Phil’s forever-loyal secretary. Their moments have a breezy humor of which the rest of “The Happytime Murders” should have been stuffed full.

——

‘The Happytime Murders’

★1/2

Opens Friday, August 24, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong crude and sexual content and language throughout, and some drug material. Running time: 91 minutes.

August 22, 2018 /Sean P. Means
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Leah Smith and Joe Stramondo, two of the subjects in Rachel Dretzin's documentary "Far From the Tree." (Photo courtesy Sundance Selects)

Leah Smith and Joe Stramondo, two of the subjects in Rachel Dretzin's documentary "Far From the Tree." (Photo courtesy Sundance Selects)

'Far From the Tree'

August 22, 2018 by Sean P. Means

In the thoughtful but somewhat disjointed documentary “Far From the Tree,” director Rachel Dretzin explores the bond between parents and children — and whether that bond is strengthened or stretched thin when the children are markedly different from their parents.

Dretzin begins this documentary with her source material, the 2012 book by Andrew Solomon. Solomon spent 10 years interviewing families of all stripes, after dealing with his own difference from his parents: He is gay, and his discovery of this fact of his life was not immediately welcomed by his patrician parents. 

This set Solomon, now 54, on a quest to understand other children who were different than their parents — a quest that Dretzin takes up in the film.

Dretzin introduces us to Jason, a 41-year-old with Down syndrome, living semi-independently with two roommates who are also adults with Down syndrome. Then there’s Jack, 13, who has severe autism and can communicate via a keyboard he taps. Or there’s Loini, 22, a little person who is thrilled with her first visit to the Little People of America’s convention, where she gets to meet others with dwarfism and, for the first time, realize she’s not alone.

The LPA convention yields two of the most fascinating subjects in Dretzin’s film: Leah and Joe, a fun and feisty couple who talk most passionately (and eloquently, since Joe is a philosophy professor) about why they’re happy being the size they are — and are eager to bring their own child into the world.

The one story that feels the most jarring involves Trevor, who as a 16-year-old in Louisiana ambushed an 8-year-old boy on a forest trail and slit his throat. Trevor’s parents talk about the anguished questions they asked after their son’s crime, and the battery of psych tests that only revealed the vague answer that “our son is broken.”

That story feels out of place with the rest because Trevor isn’t interviewed, since he’s serving a life sentence in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He’s the only child whose viewpoint is kept from us.

Dretzin gathers these stories with care and sensitivity, intercutting them with Solomon’s journey toward accepting himself as gay and, ultimately, being accepted by his father. 

Together, the stories in “Far From the Tree” illustrate Solomon’s conclusion from his book research, that life is actually the opposite of Leo Tolstoy’s observation that “happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Solomon found that unhappy families tend to be the same, and what’s remarkable — and what the movie demonstrates — is “all the different ways people find to be happy.”

——

‘Far From the Tree’

★★★

Opened July 20 in select cities; opens Friday, August 24, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for descriptions of violence and sexual material. Running time; 93 minutes.

August 22, 2018 /Sean P. Means
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Chloë Grace Moretz plays a teen in 1993 Montana who is forced to enroll in a Christian summer camp to "cure" her homosexuality, in the drama "The Miseducation of Cameron Post." (Photo courtesy FilmRise)

Chloë Grace Moretz plays a teen in 1993 Montana who is forced to enroll in a Christian summer camp to "cure" her homosexuality, in the drama "The Miseducation of Cameron Post." (Photo courtesy FilmRise)

'The Miseducation of Cameron Post'

August 16, 2018 by Sean P. Means

When Desiree Akhavan’s teen gay drama “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, it took a few festival attendees by surprise.

This sensitively rendered drama, adapted from Emily M. Danforth’s groundbreaking novel about a teen lesbian sent off to a “pray away the gay” Christian camp, didn’t have the grab-you-by-the-lapels forcefulness of some of the Sundance entries. Its charms were quieter, but no less emotionally intense.

Chloë Grace Moretz, a child star all grown up into a confident and mature actor, plays Cameron Post, who is sent to God’s Promise in 1993 Montana after she’s caught making out with the prom queen, Coley (Quinn Shepherd).

Cameron is welcomed to the camp by Reverend Rick (John R. Gallagher), a pastor who says he is an “ex-gay,” having battled same-sex attraction (he never dares call it homosexuality) and, he claims, defeated it. Leading the therapy sessions is Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle), who believes homosexuality — er, same-sex attraction — is a sin, and that owning up to that is the only road to being “cured.”

In scenes that veer from wry comedy to deeply felt drama, Cameron befriends two other campers — Jane (Sasha Lane), who lived in a commune, and Adam (Forrest Goodluck), a Native American boy with a politically ambitious father — who teach her the tricks of faking answers to Reverend Rick and Dr. Marsh. They also have a spot in the forest where Jane grows pot.

Akhavan and co-screenwriter Cecilia Frugiuele (who produced Akhavan’s semi-biographical debut feature, “Appropriate Behavior”) run Cameron through a series of vignettes, both funny and harrowing. The scenes build steadily, as Cameron goes from questioning her own sexuality to questioning the right of others — especially Rick and Dr. Marsh — of telling her what “normal” is.

Moretz, who has been growing up in front of us in “Kick Ass” and “The Equalizer” among others, turns “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” into her valedictory. She takes this fragile, confused girl and transforms her into a determined young woman, fighting for her self-identity. It’s a performance as graceful and surprising as the film that carries it.

——

‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’

★★★1/2

Opened August 3 in select cities; opens Friday, August 17, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for sexual content and language. Running time: 91 minutes.

August 16, 2018 /Sean P. Means
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Mark Wahlberg plays James Silva, leader of an elite and secret commando unit, in the action drma "Mile 22." (Photo courtesy STX Films)

Mark Wahlberg plays James Silva, leader of an elite and secret commando unit, in the action drma "Mile 22." (Photo courtesy STX Films)

'Mile 22'

August 16, 2018 by Sean P. Means

No matter how cynical you think a moviemaker can get, director Peter Berg will outdo it, and his new special-ops action mess “Mile 22” manages to be even more opportunistically dismissive of its audience than “Patriots’ Day” — and I didn’t think such a thing was possible.

Like that movie and “Lone Survivor,” this one reteams Berg with actor Mark Wahlberg in tough-talking supercop mode. Here, Wahlberg plays James “Jimmy” Silva, the on-the-ground leader of an elite and super-secret commando team called Overwatch — though it’s so super-secret, most people don’t call it anything, because they don’t know it exists. If that sounds pedantic and repetitive, it’s a close approximation of most of the dialogue in Lea Carpenter’s overly talky script.

Berg shows Overwatch’s standard operating procedure in the prologue, as Silva and his crew try to take down a Russian terrorist cell in an American suburb. Silva’s team is wired to a remote squad watching satellite and drone surveillance, all under the command of a boss code-named Mother (John Malkovich, in scenes he probably shot in a single day). Even so, the mission ends up with one of his crew dead, and the house blowing up. So much for stealth.

Fast-forward 16 months to another mission in a southeast Asian country. (Like the old “Mission: Impossible” TV series, geography is intentionally vague.) Overwatch is searching for some missing cesium, which if let loose on a city could cause Hiroshima-level damage. One of Silva’s team, Alice Kerr (Lauren Cohan), has a source with the required information: A former local police officer, Li Noor, who walks into the U.S. Embassy with an encrypted disc that will electronically evaporate in 8 hours unless he gives the code — which he won’t do until he’s on a plane out of the country.

Li Noor is played by Iko Uwais, the dynamically athletic Indonesian martial-arts star who burst into global attention in “The Raid” and “The Raid 2: Redemption.” Uwais, who was one of the film’s fight choreographers, takes over the movie with his ferocious action scenes, like an early bit where he fends off two assassins while handcuffed to a hospital bed. Alas, Berg has no clue how to film Uwais’ fast moves, and chops his scenes into an incoherent bloodbath.

The bulk of the movie is a ticking-clock scenario where Silva, Alice and their colleagues (including MMA star-turned-actor Ronda Rousey) must drive Li Noor through 22 miles of city streets to an airstrip where an American military aircraft will take him to safety. Of course, there are ambushes at every turn, orchestrated by a corrupt local government operative (Sam Medina). 

The action, sliced and diced as it is, is interrupted further by Silva’s post-mission debriefing, where he waxes philosophical about Overwatch’s place in the sloppy world of real politics. Berg thinks he’s being topical by putting words like “collusion” in Wahlberg’s mouth, or tossing an image of Donald Trump shaking hands with Kim Jong Un in the opening-credits montage, but such additions just muddy a storyline that was pretty confused already.

Wahlberg, as usual, is portrayed as an indestructible know-it-all who sees all the angles, right up to the idiotic twist ending. Thankfully, even his ego isn’t big enough to have Wahlberg and Uwais battle mano-a-mano, which would have been a comical mismatch — like the time on the ‘60s “Batman” when Bruce Lee (as The Green Hornet’s aide Kato) fought Burt Ward’s Robin to a draw. Uwais deserves a better Hollywood introduction than “Mile 22,” and audiences deserve a less pummeling action experience.

——

‘Mile 22’

★

Opens Friday, August 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong violence and language throughout. Running time: 94 minutes.

August 16, 2018 /Sean P. Means
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Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a young hunter in prehistoric Europe, befriends a wolf in the adventure drama "Alpha." (Photo courtesy Columbia Pictures)

Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a young hunter in prehistoric Europe, befriends a wolf in the adventure drama "Alpha." (Photo courtesy Columbia Pictures)

'Alpha'

August 16, 2018 by Sean P. Means

“Alpha” isn’t just a shaggy dog story, but the first shaggy dog story — about the domestication of dogs in prehistoric Europe — so it’s too bad it doesn’t have a little more bite.

Some 20,000 years ago, the movie says, a tribe of hunters is preparing for the annual trek to bring down The Great Beast, a giant horned bison. It’s the first time Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee), the son of the tribe’s chief (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), is joining the men on the hunt, and he’s determined to make his father proud.

Keda’s first steps are faltering ones. For example, he can’t muster the courage to finish off a wounded boar. The chief is stern with his son, but is sure he will show he’s got the strength to hunt and eventually lead.

When the big day comes to hunt the Great Beast, Keda is thrown over a cliff by the bison. He falls halfway down, landing on a thin ledge, and the chief and his men reluctantly give him up for dead. Once they head for home, though, Keda awakens, and finds himself alone, away from home, and with a broken ankle.

Early on, Keda must scramble up a tree to avoid being devoured by a pack of wolves. He slashes one wolf with his stone dagger, and the others run away. Keda takes the injured wolf to a cave to nurse its wounds. He gives the animal water, and shares his campfire and what small prey he can catch. The relationship is uneasy at first, with the wolf growling when Keda gets too close, but soon a familiarity develops. Keda even gives the wolf a name: Alpha.

Director Albert Hughes, directing for the first time without his twin Allen (together they made “Menace II Society,” “Dead Presidents” and “The Book of Eli,” among others), creates stunning visuals of Keda and Alpha traversing the wilderness. He also takes a stylistic risk by having the characters speak not in English but a prehistoric indo-European language, with subtitles for the audience to read.

The weakness in “Alpha” comes from the script, by rookie writer Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt (adapting a story by Hughes), which is too thin and repetitive to stretch to feature length. There is a nice surprise at the end, but it’s a long slog to get there.

——

‘Alpha’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some intense peril. Running time: 96 minutes.

August 16, 2018 /Sean P. Means
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Scotty Bowers (top row, in dark suit) poses with some of the hustlers he worked with in servicing Hollywood stars, as described in the documentary "Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood." (Photo courtesy Greenwich Entertainment)

Scotty Bowers (top row, in dark suit) poses with some of the hustlers he worked with in servicing Hollywood stars, as described in the documentary "Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood." (Photo courtesy Greenwich Entertainment)

'Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood'

August 16, 2018 by Sean P. Means

As one-time pimp to the stars, Scotty Bowers has lived a fascinating life, which he talks about candidly in Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood” — which is as entertaining for its look at Bowers’ present as it is of his past.

After World War II, Bowers came home from the Pacific Theater, where he served as a Marine and survived Guadalcanal and other battles, and settled in Los Angeles. He got a job running a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard, a location that he soon transformed into a hotspot for illicit sexual encounters.

Bowers, who turned 91 during the course of filming (he’s 95 now), enthusiastically recalls the action he oversaw at the Richfield station, and later as a private bartender to the stars. He had a stable of young hustlers ready to perform oral sex for $20. He had a trailer behind the station, split into two makeshift bedrooms, for fast and anonymous encounters — as well as a bathroom with a peephole for those with voyeuristic tendencies.

But what Bowers loves to talk about, first in his tell-all memoir “Full Service” and to Tyrnauer’s camera, are the boldface names who were his friends and clients. He found guys to perform oral sex on Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, who were roommates. He delivered young men to Rock Hudson, Cole Porter and director George Cukor, and simultaneously brought men to Spencer Tracy and women to Katharine Hepburn.

Bowers also claims to have bedded Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Ava Gardner and Lana Turner (at the same time), and J. Edgar Hoover, and had a long loving relationship with B-movie actor Beech Dickerson, who left him three houses when he died. Bowers’ sexual proclivity was so numerous that he was a major subject, and provider of interviewees, for sex researcher Alfred Kinsey’s famous studies.

Some devotees of old Hollywood criticized Bowers for betraying confidences of these stars (all conveniently deceased and unable to sue). But others Tyrnauer interviews — former Variety editor Peter Bart and British actor/writer Stephen Fry among them — champion Bowers as a hero for Hollywood’s deeply closeted gay community, giving gay and lesbian stars a few stolen moments where they could be their honest selves, away from their studio-controlled images of middle-American moral rectitude.

Those halcyon memories are a marked contrast to Bowers’ life now, living with his wife Lois, whom he met when his gigolo days were done in the early ‘80s. (AIDS is mentioned, briefly and a bit conveniently, as the reason for that career’s end.) The houses Bowers inherited from Dickerson are filling with papers, memories and junk, with Bowers now something of a hoarder.

Tyrnauer — whose past documentaries include profiles of the fashion designer Valentino and urban activist Jane Jacobs — seems to have checked over Bowers’ tall tales, and seems to have omitted the ones that he couldn’t corroborate. He also tries, in vain, to get Bowers to psychoanalyze himself — he was sexually abused as a child, but claims he wanted it to happen — and find a deeper context for Bowers’ long sexual track record.

Coming away from “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood,” a viewer may feel there are a lot of stories left to be told. But the ones Bowers tell her, to borrow a word Tracy used to describe Hepburn, are cherce.

——

‘Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood’

★★★

Opened July 27 in select cities; opens Friday, August 17, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for images of full male nudity and sexual descriptions. Running time: 98 minutes.

August 16, 2018 /Sean P. Means
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Fashion designer Alexander McQueen (left) examines the dress worn by model Shalom Harlow before a show, in a moment from the documentary "McQueen." (Photo by Ann Ray, courtesy Bleecker Street Films)

Fashion designer Alexander McQueen (left) examines the dress worn by model Shalom Harlow before a show, in a moment from the documentary "McQueen." (Photo by Ann Ray, courtesy Bleecker Street Films)

'McQueen'

August 16, 2018 by Sean P. Means

Alexander McQueen, the bad boy of British fashion through the ‘90s until his death in 2010, gets the documentary treatment he deserves in “McQueen”: A bit shocking in parts, rather pompous in others, and thoroughly well-tailored.

Director Ian Bonhôte and co-director/writer Peter Ettedgui take a generally chronological approach to McQueen’s life, starting as an upstart from London’s East End who briefly apprenticed as a tailor and showed a skill for sewing a perfectly fitted suit in short order. He then jumped to fashion school at St. Martins College of Art and Design. His first student fashion show was inspired by Jack the Ripper, the first of many controversial subjects he tackled.

Bonhôte and Ettedgui structure the movie in chapters, each around a notable fashion show. McQueen excelled in turning his haute couture shows into events and installation artworks, not just showing a line of frocks but creating a story and, with his infamous “Highland Rape” show in 2004, a sensation.

In 1996, McQueen’s “enfant terrible” reputation was put to the test, when he was hired as chief designer of the Paris fashion house Givenchy. Melding his crazy esthetic to the elegance of a prime French label was difficult, but he found ways to inject his wildness, like when he put model Shalom Harlow on a turntable in a strapless white dress and had robotic arms with spray paint covering her in graffiti.

Much of “McQueen” is centered on his fractured personal relations. First, there’s the style icon Isabella Blow, who was McQueen’s mentor and early champion, until McQueen cast her aside when he felt she received too much credit for his success. The movie shows many of McQueen’s personal relationships follow similar trajectories, as the designer finds the pressures of fame and fortune to be devastating.

With archival footage and a wealth of interviews with McQueen’s friends, colleagues and contemporaries, “McQueen” paints a fairly standard rags-to-riches-to-unhappiness portrait. Where the movie is most engrossing is showing how McQueen’s demons and inspirations played out on the catwalk, as he turned the commercial exercise of a runway show into gale-force artistic expression.

——

‘McQueen’

★★★

Opened July 20 in select cities; opens Friday, August 17, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language and nudity. Running time: 111 minutes.

August 16, 2018 /Sean P. Means
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