'What They Had'

Old age is out to get all of us eventually, and one hopes our loved ones have the understanding and wit to handle us the way writer-director Elizabeth Chomko does with her debut feature, ‘What They Had.”

Bert (Robert Forster) and Ruth (Blythe Danner) have been married some 60 years, and despite Bert’s protestations that love “isn’t bells and whistles,” their love has been an enduring one. It’s had to endure a lot in the last few years, as Ruth slowly loses her memory and mind to Alzheimer’s. When the movie starts, Ruth wanders out of their Chicago condo in the snow, and it’s only thanks to luck and a kindly train conductor that she didn’t end up freezing to death in a snowbank.

Bert and Ruth’s hotheaded son Nick (Michael Shannon) knows that it’s time for Ruth to be put in a memory-care facility, but Bert refuses to be parted from his wife or to enter an assisted-living apartment to be near her. After this latest wandering, Nick calls in the couple’s older daughter, Bridget (Hilary Swank), from California to convince Dad of what’s best for Mom.

Bridget arrives, with her moody college-student daughter Emma (Taissa Farmiga), and falls into her familiar role as family peacemaker between Nick and their father. Nick is resentful that the parents gave Bridget power of attorney, suggesting they did so because she would never use it. It’s also revealed that Bridget has her own problems, including worries about Emma’s enthusiasm for college and a slow realization that her marriage to boringly reliable Eddie (Josh Lucas) is crumbling.

Chomko, inspired by her own grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, has written a sharply observed look at the family tensions when adult children come to grip with their parents’ mortality. She also delves into Bert’s judgment of his children’s marital choices — Bridget’s obsession with a seemingly “perfect” marriage, and Nick’s fear of commitment to his longtime girlfriend.

The performances are the key here. Swank and Shannon trade some stinging rebukes as the squabbling siblings, both eager to do what’s right for their parents but disagreeing on what that is. Forster, hot off the “Twin Peaks” revival, is touching and aggravating as the siblings’ crotchety dad, and Danner captures with heartbreaking clarity the slow thievery of the mind that Alzheimer’s does on a once-vibrant mind.

It’s possible, in this case, that I’m swayed by my own circumstances. “What They Had” is the first movie I saw after returning from the funeral of my 86-year-old mother, who died last month after a brief illness. While the details are different, the emotions Chomko explores here are many of the ones I’m only beginning to process, both in grieving for my mom and in grasping the demands her death has placed on me and my siblings.

Even so, I think I can say that the family tension and underlying love on display in “What They Had” are sincere and authentic — no matter what one’s family dynamic is.

——

‘What They Had’

★★★1/2

Opened October 19 in select cities; opens Friday, November 9, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex at The District (South Jordan). Rated R for language including a brief sexual reference. Running time: 101 minutes.

'Wildlife'

Considering what we’ve seen of the actor Paul Dano — in “Little Miss Sunshine,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Love & Mercy,” “Swiss Army Man” and other subtle, sensitive performances — it’s no surprise that his debut as a director, “Wildlife,” is a perfectly measured drama boasting some powerhouse acting.

This adaptation of a Richard Ford novel is set in the 1960s, mostly through the eyes of Joe Brinson (Ed Oxenbould), a 14-year-old growing up in a Montana town with his parents, Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Jeanette (Carey Mulligan). The inequities of the marriage are evident, to us if not to Joe: Jeanette is clearly the sharper half of the couple, but that fact doesn’t benefit her in this pre-feminist era.

Jerry works as a golf pro, but when he suddenly loses that job, he flounders in his efforts to provide for his family. Dead-end salesman jobs are no good, and finally Jerry decides the solution is to sign up for a crew fighting a raging wildfire in the nearby mountains — the smoke cloud of which dominates the skyline and becomes a handy metaphor for the roiling tensions in the marriage.

With Jerry gone with no signs of a fast return, Jeanette must fend for herself and for Joe. She takes a secretarial job, but the real benefit comes when she strikes up a relationship — the contours of which are hidden from Joe — with her boss, Mr. Miller (Bill Camp).

Dana and co-screenwriter (and significant other) Zoe Kazan find a rich vein of emotion in Ford’s novel, and their script is precisely calibrated to reveal only so much of that tension to the audience. The result can sometimes be exasperatingly slow, but there are small payoffs throughout the story, including the gorgeous mountain setting.

Best of all, “Wildlife” gives Mulligan a showcase that she seldom gets, and her quietly devastating performance encapsulates Jeanette’s yearning to be taken seriously and her frustration at a society that doesn’t value her beyond her typing and homemaking skills. There’s heartbreak in every slightest movement or line inflection of Mulligan’s performance here, masking her inner passion like the smoke obscuring the fire at its source.

——

‘Wildlife’

★★★

Opened October 19 in select cities; opens Friday, November 9, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated PG-13 for thematic material including a sexual situation, brief strong language, and smoking. Running time: 104 minutes.

'Suspiria'

Putting a label on director Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria,” a singularly disturbing remake of horror master Dario Argento’s 1977 cult classic, seems to be an exercise in futility.

It’s not really a horror movie, though there are scenes of bloody gore. It’s not really a thriller, because thrillers don’t usually move at such a languid pace and clock in at over two-and-a-half hours. It’s got moments of suspense, but as often as not what gets suspended is never allowed to fall to earth.

Maybe “psychological drama” is closest to the mark, but that doesn’t factor in the supernatural elements or the moments of complete weirdness Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich have devised that make this “Suspiria” such an unsettling delight.

It’s 1977 — funnily enough, the year Argento’s movie was released — in the divided city of Berlin. One of the few constants here is the Markos Theatre Company, which survived World War II and continues to draw female dance students from around the world. And if one is to believe Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz), the psychologically damaged dancer visiting her psychologist, Dr. Josef Klemperer, there’s a dark secret lurking within the dance company that needs to be stopped.

Dr. Klemperer is played by Lutz Ebersdorf, according to the credits, but that’s a bit of a lie — because, as was revealed shortly after the movie’s debut at the Venice Film Festival, Ebersdorf is really Tilda Swinton in male drag and old-age make-up. It is, as always with Swinton, an amazing performance to watch, and not the only one she gives here.

Swinton also plays Madame Blanc, the head teacher at the Markos troupe’s academy. Blanc, the audience learns early, is in something of a power struggle with the unseen Madame Markos over the troupe’s direction — with Blanc graciously accepting defeat in a faculty vote.

As this is happening, a new student has arrived amid the imposing Cold War architecture: Susie Bannon (Dakota Johnson), a self-taught dancer from Ohio whose natural instincts intrigue Blanc and fire up her choreographic passion. Blanc and her colleagues also see something else in Susie: A possible vessel to perpetuate Madame Markos’ hold on the troupe.

If that sounds vague, that’s by design. Explaining further would be a bit of a spoiler, but also would make no sense without context — because it barely makes sense with context. Guadagnino, shifting gears radically after his languid sun-dappled films “Call Me By Your Name” and “A Bigger Splash,” is after a darker tone here, a vibe of menace and impenetrable mystery.

It’s also a women’s-only space. Besides Swinton’s Dr. Klemperer, there are only two male speaking roles in “Suspiria,” two police detectives who don’t realize how much they’re in over their heads. The women are in charge, with Swinton’s Blanc serving as the imperious mother hen to them all.

Blanc may be in command, but in performance Swinton shares the crown with Johnson, who takes over the movie by slow seducing the audience. Johnson has been dismissed as an actor because of her involvement in the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy, but those who don’t conjure with her ability to command the screen need to see this and “Bad Times at the El Royale” for a refresher.

From its captivating first moments to its mind-bending conclusion, “Suspiria” shows Guadagnino is deliberate in his desire to unsettle the audience and rewrite the rules of supernatural horror. His movie messes with a viewer’s mind; it just takes its sweet time doing it.

——

‘Suspiria’

★★★1/2

Opened October 26 in select cities; opens Friday, November 2, at the Cinemark Jordan Landing (West Jordan). Rated R for disturbing content involving ritualistic violence, bloody images and graphic nudity, and for some language including sexual references. Running time: 152 minutes.

'The Nutcracker and the Four Realms'

The Halloween hangover has barely begun and Hollywood is thinking about Christmas — with Disney leading the way with the new adventure “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” a colorful and frenetic adaptation of the perennial classic.

The movie starts with the basics of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story and Marius Petipa’s ballet: A girl named Clara (Mackenzie Foy) arrives at a Christmas party thrown by the eccentric inventor Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman), whose gift transports Clara to a magical world of snow and fairies and the menacing Mouse King.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Can You Ever Forgive Me?'

It’s a mind-expanding exercise to watch “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” a fascinating and emotionally direct “based on a true story” drama about somebody who learned how to manipulate true stories and the words of the witty writers who create them.

Director Marielle Heller, who wowed Sundance audiences with her 2015 debut “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” plunges us into the dreary life of Lee Israel (played by Melissa McCarthy), a morose and misanthropic writer who has seen better days. She’s a barely functioning alcoholic, broke and behind on her rent, hasn’t had a hit book in years, and can’t get her agent (Jane Curtin) to return her phone calls.

When Lee stumbles on a never-seen letter from the comedian Fanny Brice, she has what Dr. Seuss would have called “a wonderful awful idea.” After embellishing Brice’s typed words with a jokey fake P.S., Lee decides she can write faked letters from celebrities — and write bon mots from the likes of Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker that are as authentically witty as the real thing.

Lee’s new career as a forger is a lucrative one, but brings her in contact with memorabilia traders who are sometimes sweet — like Anna (Dolly Wells), a bookstore operator who takes a shine to Lee — and sometimes unsavory, like the skeevy guy (played by Ben Falcone, McCarthy’s husband) running a shop in the East Village. Along the way, Lee also befriends Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant), who becomes her enabling drinking buddy and sometime accomplice when the FBI starts sniffing around.

Heller, working off a martini-dry script by Nicole Holofcener (“Enough Said”) and rookie Jeff Whitty, sets a bleak mood that turns out to be completely appropriate to Lee’s self-loathing and her aversion to emotional connection. When her agent tells Lee to write more about herself, it takes a few minutes to realize that she doesn’t because spending time with long-dead writers is preferable to spending it with herself.

McCarthy jumps into Lee’s skin with both feet, again proving herself one of our most fearless actors. McCarthy channels the pugnacious anger of some of her comic characters into Lee, and it turns out to be a perfect fit. She’s particularly good pairing off with Grant, whose scene-stealing turn reveals depths of pain below the cheeky facade.

“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” also speaks volumes about our collective need for connection to famous names, and the lengths people will go to get it or fabricate it. Lee’s writing may have been faked, but her story’s ragged heart is all too real.

——

‘Can You Ever Forgive Me’

★★★1/2

Opened October 19 in select cities; opens Friday, November 2, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language including some sexual references, and brief drug use. Running time: 106 minutes.

'Bohemian Rhapsody'

The first time I saw firsthand how much rock ’n’ roll can scare people in authority was when I was in junior-high school, and Queen’s “We Will Rock You / We Are the Champions” became a staple of every school pep rally. We would act out the stomp-stomp-clap in the bleachers, and the school counselors would become terrified that we would bring the whole gym down around us.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a little of that sense of danger, that reckless abandon in service to the beat, anywhere during the 135 minutes of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a depressingly by-the-numbers biographical drama of Queen and its too-big-for-words lead singer, Freddie Mercury.

There is a bright side, though, and it’s Rami Malek’s transformative portrayal of Mercury. Not only does Malek re-create the strutting peacock stage moves, but he captures the yearning artist that managed and hid behind that persona.

The film — directed by Bryan Singer (“X-Men”) until the studio fired him for his on-set behavior and brought in Dexter Fletcher to mop up the mess — starts with Freddie, birth name Farrokh Bulsara, rebelling against his tradition-bound Parsi Indian parents to fulfill his musical dreams. When he sees his favorite band, Smile, has lost its lead singer, he tells guitarist Bryan May (Gwylim Lee) and drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) that he’d like to audition.

Soon, Mercury, May, Taylor and bassist John Deacon (Joe Mazzello — yes, the kid from “Jurassic Park”) are drawing audiences, selling albums and consternating record executives with their demands to make something bigger and better than before. That turns out to be “A Night at the Opera,” which produced the band’s extravagant six-minute masterpiece “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The song draws the wrath of EMI’s head honcho Ray Foster, who loudly declares that no teen will ever bang his head in the car to that song — a line no doubt written solely because Mike Myers, who plays Foster and famously revived “Bohemian Rhapsody” to head-banging delight in “Wayne’s World,” could utter it.

The script — by Anthony McCarten (who also penned the recent biopics “Darkest Hour” and “The Theory of Everything”), who shares story credit with Peter Morgan (“The Queen,” “Frost/Nixon”) — sets up other Queen hits with similar head-smacking inevitability. One moment, Mercury and Taylor are nearly coming to blows, only to be saved by Deacon’s cool bass riff, which of course sets up the single “Another One Bites the Dust.” 

The movie treads lightly around Mercury’s private life, centering largely on his devotion to girlfriend Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) in the 1970s. They shared a house, and were for a time engaged, but that ended when with Mercury’s growing realization that he was gay — which is handled so gingerly you might almost think the movie skipped over it.

When the movie puts Mercury on the stage, there’s a bit of magic. This is particularly apparent in the finale, a note-perfect re-creation of Queen’s spellbinding 1985 set at the Live Aid benefit concert at Wembley Stadium. In those moments, “Bohemian Rhapsody” finds the spark that its dry recitation of the band’s history is lacking.

——

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 2, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, suggestive material, drug content and language. Running time: 135 minutes.

'Beautiful Boy'

One of my pet peeves in movies is the utter repetition of drug-addiction stories, the lather-rinse-repeat screenwriting rhythm of relapse, recovery and deeper relapse. If I never again see an actor going through the motions of tying off and shooting up, I’ll be a happy man.

(This is not to dismiss real people going through the real pain of drug addiction. This is a complaint about the unimaginative cinematic depiction of those people and that pain.)

A talented cast, highlighted by rising star Timothée Chalamet, goes through this familiar process in “Beautiful Boy,” a well-executed but still predictable trudge through the family pain of addiction.

The movie draws from two memoirs, by magazine reporter David Sheff (played by Steve Carell) and his son Nic (played by Chalamet), about Nick’s long battle with drugs and how it affected David and the rest of the family.

At times, Nic seems to be getting his act together, enrolling in community college, showing signs of life. But eventually, Nic gets high — meth is his drug of choice in the beginning of the film, but heroin makes an appearance soon enough — it all falls apart again, like an endless game of Chutes and Ladders.

Meanwhile, David tries to apply tough love, as well as his journalistic talents, to try and figure this out. He interviews a doctor (Timothy Hutton) about what addiction does to the brain and the body. He goes with Nic to rehab clinics and treatment centers. He even tries snorting a little, just so he can understand the experience.

Mostly, David gets angry — at Nic, at his ex-wife Vicki (Amy Ryan), and at the fates who have dealt his family this blow. He talks things over with his current wife, Karen (Maura Tierney), and works to protect their two young children.

Belgian director Felix van Groeningen (“The Broken Circle Breakdown”) makes his English-language debut here, and he has a gift for capturing family intimacy at its most intense. There are some set pieces here, like when Nic reunites with a high-school classmate (Kaitlyn Dever) and draws her into his spiraling drug habit, that are heartbreakingly intense.

But van Groeningen and co-writer Luke Davies (“Lion”) fall prey to the same story patterns as so many addiction stories, which are as hard to escape, it seems, as the grip of addiction itself. As good as the cast is, particularly Chalamet in his fearless depiction of Nic’s rollercoaster existence, “Beautiful Boy” remains a chore to watch.

——

‘Beautiful Boy’

★★1/2

Opened October 12 in select cities; opens Friday, November 2, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for drug content throughout, language, and brief sexual material. Running time: 120 minutes.

Sundance Short Film Tour 2018

Short-film compilations are always a hit-or-miss proposition, and the 2018 edition of the touring show of short films from the Sundance Film Festival shows that the hits can sometimes be harder to find.

There are still some gems among the seven films — including three winners of jury prizes in Park City last January.

Let’s take them in the order they appear on the program:

• “Maude” is a good laugh at California parenting, about a domestic comedy about a babysitter (Anna Margaret Hollyman, who wrote and directed) who discovers her client is a now-rich former classmate.

• “Baby Brother” is director Kamau Bilal’s verité documentary about his kid brother, Ismaeel, who as an adult has moved back in with their parents. It’s not as revealing as it would like to be, but an interesting character study.

• “The Burden” is an oddity, a surreal animated musical from Swedish filmmaker Niki Lindroth von Bahr that depicts monkey telemarketers, mouse fast-food workers, sardine hotel guests and other denizens of a lonely industrial-park area.

• “Hair Wolf” is a satirical gem by writer-director Mariama Diallo that uses horror-movie tropes to lampoon trendy white women trying to suck the life out of black hair culture. Bonus points for the zombie-like demand for “braaaiiids.”

• “Jeom” is a heartfelt animated tale from Korean director Kangmin Kim, about the shared legacy of a father and son: A birthmark on their butts.

• “Fauve” is a disturbing drama from Quebec, which starts with two boys playing around the industrial wreckage of a strip mine, playing a game that soon turns life-threatening. It’s bleak, but fascinating.

• Lastly, “Matria,” which was this year’s Grand Jury Prize winner, a slice of life from Spain, in which writer-director Álvaro Gago shows a factory worker (played by first-time actor Francisca Iglesias Bouzón) trying to carve out a moment of bliss in a soul-crushing schedule of work and domestic chores.

As with any shorts compilation, the advantage is that the good ones will leave you wanting more, and the not-so-good ones will be over sooner. “Hair Wolf” and “Matria” are worth the ticket price by themselves, but if anyone would like to try to explain “The Burden,” the comments thread is wide open.

——

Sundance Short Film Tour 2018

★★★

Opened July 5 in select cities and is touring the country; opens Friday, November 2, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for thematic elements and some language. Some shorts are in Spanish, Korean and French, with subtitles. Running time: 91 minutes.