'On the Basis of Sex'

In a season of biographical dramas about real 20th century figures, “On the Basis of Sex” has one advantage over the competition: It seems to have been made by people who actually like and appreciate the person being profiled.

Considering we’ve had biopics that were dominated by survivor score-settling (“Bohemian Rhapsody”), atrocious white-washing (“Green Book”) and outright hatred of the subject (“Vice”), seeing a straightforward and hero-building movie about a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg is something of a relief.

Like “Green Book,” “On the Basis of Sex” is filtered through the memories of a screenwriting relative, in this case Bader Ginsburg’s nephew, Daniel Stiepleman. His script focuses on Bader Ginsburg’s life at two crucial junctures: Her law school days in the late 1950s, and the early 1970s, when she was a law professor and litigator for the ACLU.

In the early section, we see Ruth (played by Felicity Jones) entering Harvard as an eager first-year law student. As a woman, she is ignored by professors or dismissed by them; at a dinner party, the dean, Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston), has each female student stand and explain “why they are taking a space that could have been given to a man.”

At home, Ruth is shown as a young mother, and a loving wife to Martin Ginsburg (Armie Hammer), who is a year ahead of her in school. When Marty is diagnosed with testicular cancer, Ruth also becomes his at-home caregiver and transcribes his law homework alongside her own. When Marty gets a job with a New York law firm, Ruth must transfer to Columbia when Griswold refuses to let her finish her Harvard studies remotely.

Cut to the 1970s, after Ruth has tried and failed to land a job at a New York firm. She finds work teaching law at Rutgers, across the river in New Jersey. She launches a class about gender discrimination in the law, teaching young women who are fighting the same battles against sexism that she did.

The drama in Stiepleman’s script comes when Ruth teams up with Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux), an old friend who’s a lawyer for the ACLU. Ruth pushes Mel to take on a gender-discrimination case, where a man (Chris Mulkey) was denied a tax break for becoming a caregiver for his ailing mother — a tax break then reserved only for women. 

Ruth’s plan is to show the appeals court judges in Denver that gender discrimination can negatively affect men, too. The government’s team arguing against her is led by the solicitor general: None other than her old Harvard dean, Griswold. (Griswold actually served both roles in his life, though he comes off feeling like a composite character in this story.)

Director Mimi Leder (“Deep Impact,” “Pay It Forward” and a ton of TV) focuses on Ruth’s tentative demeanor preparing for her big moment before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. She frequently is subjected to blowhard males — Griswold and Wulf, primarily — and is shown as wavering and vulnerable, nearly ready to throw in the towel, before steeling herself for the battle.

Such a depiction may be at odds with the iron disposition we’ve come to know from Ruth Bader Ginsburg — notably in last year’s documentary “RBG” — but it gives actors like Jones and Hammer more to work with. They give solid performances, and have a tender chemistry together, but nothing so spectacular that they transcend the contours of a standard-issue biography. (True to biopic form, Hammer is infinitely better looking, and possesses a better head of hair, than the real Marty Ginsburg, as anyone who saw “RBG” can attest.)

At the screening I attended, it was quite telling that the only time the audience came close to cheering wasn’t when Jones’ Ruth finished her case, but when the real Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared onscreen for about five seconds. “On the Basis of Sex” has the feel of a crowd-pleaser, though it relies heavily on the goodwill fans already share for RBG’s tenacity and genius.

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‘On the Basis of Sex’

★★★

Opened December 25 in select cities; opens Friday, January 11, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some language and suggestive content. Running time: 120 minutes.

'If Beale Street Could Talk'

Tish and Fonny are young and in love, and there are parts of “If Beale Street Could Talk” where writer-director Barry Jenkins renders that love beautifully, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

But Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) are black and living in 20th century America, so there’s nothing simple about their relationship — or how they and their families are treated by society — in this adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel that captures the poetry and urgency of Baldwin’s writing.

Fonny and Tish have known each other since childhood, but as young adults that bond of friendship has grown into something more. They are recently engaged, and Tish has just learned that she is carrying Fonny’s child. This news is welcomed by Tish’s parents, Sharon (Regina King) and Joseph (Colman Domingo), but less so by Fonny’s rigidly Christian mother, Mrs. Hunt (Aunjanue Ellis). A gathering of the two families moves swiftly from comedy to high drama, and an ultimatum from Sharon that the baby is a gift from God, no matter what Mrs. Hunt thinks of how it was conceived.

As Fonny and Tish seek a place to call home, they encounter the polite racism of landlords who suddenly announce the apartment listed in the classifieds has already been rented. But then a less-subtle form of racism surfaces, when a racist cop (Ed Skrein) accuses Fonny of a rape that he did not  commit.

While Fonny sits in a cell awaiting trial, Tish marshals every resource to find a lawyer to clear Fonny of the crime. Sharon also takes action, and in one heartbreaking scene confronts the rape victim to see if she will recant her testimony.

Jenkins, fresh off the artistic wonder of “Moonlight,” captures with radiant images the feel of 1970s Harlem, and the hopes and fears of the African-American families making their lives there. He puts Baldwin’s soaring words into his characters’ mouths, where they feel as natural as everyday conversation.

Two behind-the-scenes players, both collaborators on “Moonlight,” add to Jenkins’ emotionally resonant telling of this story. One is cinematographer James Laxton, who creates luminous images of young lovers. The other is Nicholas Britell, whose jazz-infused score adds depth to the Harlem setting.

The ensemble cast, which includes Teyonah Parris as Tish’s militant sister and Bryan Tyree Henry as a recently paroled friend of Fonny, is strong from top to bottom. The standout, though, is King, who displays a wealth of emotions — joy, despair, resolution and a fierce maternal protectiveness — with just the smallest gestures. Among the many voices in “If Beale Street Could Talk,” King’s makes itself felt whether shouting or whispering.

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‘If Beale Street Could Talk’

★★★1/2

Opened Dec. 14 in select markets; opens Friday, January 4, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Century 16 (South Salt Lake). Rated R for language and some sexual content. Running time: 119 minutes.

'Shoplifters'

Calling Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Palme D’Or winning film “Shoplifters” a family drama is at the same time true and misleading — because the family depicted here isn’t your typical household unit, but the feelings are still there.

Kore-Eda — who wrote, directed and edited — starts with a 12-year-old boy, Shota (Jyo Kairi), and an adult, Osamu (Lily Franky), entering a grocery store. They have a routine that they perform like clockwork: Osamu carries a basket with goods, and stands in an aisle between Shota and the store detective. Shota drops a bowl of instant ramen in his backpack, and the two slip unnoticed out of the store. 

The ramen becomes dinner for the two of them, as well as Osamu’s wife Nobuyo (Andô Sakura), another adult, Aki (Matsuoka Mayu), and the grandmotherly Hatsue (Kiki Kirin). The five all live in Hatsue’s small house, living off her late husband’s pension and their various odd jobs. Osamu works at a construction site, until a foot injury hobbles him. Nobuyo presses pants in a laundry firm. And Aki works in a “hostess club,” looking seductive for male clients in the peepshow window.

One winter night, Osamu and Nobuyo walk past a neighbor’s house, and find Yuri (Sasaki Miyu), a 5-year-old girl freezing on a porch. The couple invites the girl to share their dinner at their house. When they take Yuri home, they overhear her parents yelling, with the mother saying she wishes the girl was never born. Nobuyo decides to “adopt” Yuri, over Osamu’s protests that it’s kidnapping. “It’s not kidnapping if we don’t ask for ransom,” Nobuyo replies, inaccurately.

Soon Yuri is given a new name, Lin, and picks up the tricks Shota teaches her about the fine art of thievery. Shota likes his new “sister,” though he also feels her presence is messing up the smooth operation he and Osamu have going.

The script unfolds gracefully, while also building tension like a good psychological thriller. He gradually reveals how every member of this household engages in one scam or another, though mostly sticking to a moral code that “if it’s still in the store, it doesn’t belong to anyone yet,” as long as the store isn’t likely to go bankrupt. None of this feels sustainable, and a viewer suspects that Yuri/Lin’s arrival is the trigger that will bring the whole thing crashing down.

Along the way, as the viewer’s dread grows, Kore-Eda subtly delivers a message about the power of families — a topic he explored in a different way in his baby-swap drama “Like Father, Like Son.” Here, Kore-Eda creates a scenario where a found family, despite the external forces pulling them apart, can be just as supportive as families connected by DNA. But then the other shoe, or shoes, drop, and the viewer questions every assumption made up to that point. 

It would be trite to say “Shoplifters” steals the audience’s heart. It’s also inaccurate, because Kore-Eda and his charming ensemble cast of rogues put in the hard work to earn the audience’s respect and affection. For a story about con artists and thieves, there are a lot of honest emotions at play.

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‘Shoplifters’

★★★1/2

Opened Nov. 23 in select markets; opens Friday, January 4, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for some sexual content and nudity. Running time: 121 minutes. In Japanese with subtitles.

'Aquaman'

Jason Momoa may be a giant hunk of muscular manhood, but he can’t carry a giant action movie all by himself, and the DC Comics franchise piece “Aquaman” sinks because of it.

Director James Wan, who graduated from horror (“Saw,” “Insidious,” “The Conjuring”) to action (“Furious 7”), aims to give the battle over Atlantis and the ocean realms the look of a full-scale epic on the order of “The Lord of the Rings.” Visually, he nearly succeeds, with scads of sea creatures and humanoids battling in hyper-colorful glory.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'BumbleBee'

“BumbleBee” marks a lot of firsts for the “Transformers” franchise: It’s the first to have a female protagonist, it’s the first not to be directed by Michael Bay, it’s the first not to put at least one female character in a push-up bra, and it’s the first not to make this critic’s eyes roll out of his head and into the theater lobby.

Director Travis Knight (“Kubo and the Two Strings”) dispenses with the ponderous “Transformers” mythology that Bay usually bores everyone with, and drops the audience into the middle of a battle on the Transformers’ home planet of Cybertron. The nasty Decepticons are winning against the Autobot resistance, led by the formidable Optimus Prime (voiced, as always, by Peter Cullen). Optimus orders his Autobots to the escape pods, each going to a different planet to regroup and defend against the Decepticons.

Optimus’ most loyal junior soldier, B-127, lands on an out-of-the-way place called Earth, in 1987. First he draws the wrath of an angry Army special-ops officer, Agent Burns (John Cena). Then two Decepticons attack and nearly destroy the little Autobot. B-127 survives, though his speech circuits and memory have been damaged.

Cut to Charlie Watson (Hailie Steinfeld), an 18-year-old in a California coastal town and adrift in her life. Mourning the recent death of her father, Charlie has dropped out of the diving team (she was once state champ), and spends most of the time scavenging parts from gruff old Hank (Len Cariou) for the Corvette she and her dad could never get working.

On her birthday, Charlie finds a dust-covered old yellow Volkswagen Beetle on Hank’s lot, and cajoles the old man into letting her have it. She drives it home, and soon discovers her car isn’t German engineering but an alien robot from space. Charlie names the robot BumbleBee, and works to keep it hidden from her mom (Pamela Adlon).

Meanwhile, others are seeking BumbleBee, too. Two Decepticons get a greeting from Agent Burns, who would rather blow them to kingdom come, but is cajoled by an eager scientist (John Ortiz) to cooperate with the visiting robots and allow them to access U.S. satellite technology. Burns’ reaction — “They’re literally called Decepticons. Does that not raise red flags?” — is priceless, and oddly self-aware for a “Transformers” movie.

Screenwriter Christina Hodson (who’s very hot right now, with the new Harley Quinn movie “Birds of Prey” on deck) lifts a little — OK, a lot — from “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “The Iron Giant” to create Charlie’s relationship with BumbleBee. It’s still a more coherent plot than any of the macho metal-bangers Bay has made.

Knight keeps the action closer to a human scale, and gives the non-robot characters — particularly Steinfeld’s strong portrayal of the awkwardly grieving Charlie — a chance to display real emotions in ways “Transformers” movies have never seen.

Add one more “first” to the list for “BumbleBee”: It’s the first “Transformers” movie that lives up to the franchise’s mantra, that it’s “more than meets the eye.”

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‘BumbleBee’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 21, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action violence. Running time: 113 minutes.

'Mary Queen of Scots'

At first, stage director Josie Rourke’s movie debut “Mary Queen of Scots” feels like the sort of dry monarchy drama that “The Favourite” rightly taught us to despise.

Give it time — about long enough to realize you’ll never remember everybody’s name, and don’t really need to — and this costume drama finds its groove in its bold contrasts of the two queens at its center.

Up north is Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan), who lays her claim to the Scottish throne in the early 16th century, in spite of resistance because she’s a woman and a Catholic in a patriarchal Protestant country. Down in London is Queen Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie), who fears a civil war will brew if she lets Mary amass too much power.

Mary makes an offer to Elizabeth: She will acknowledge Elizabeth as sovereign over Scotland as well as England, if Elizabeth repays that loyalty by naming Mary her successor to the throne. Elizabeth rejects the idea, and makes a counter-proposal: An arranged marriage between Mary and the English nobleman Robert Dudley (Joe Alwyn), who is also Elizabeth’s lover. 

When Dudley refuses to play along, Mary decides to wed someone else in the nobility, the rakish Henry Darnley (Jack Lowden). Mary’s marriage, and her subsequent pregnancy, enrage Elizabeth, because it means Mary has the one thing Elizabeth has been unable to provide: An heir.

The script by Beau Willimon, who created the American “House of Cards,” provides the expected dialogue of royal counsels and dissenters, which gives the likes of Guy Pearce and a heavily bearded David Tennant some scenery to chew. But it’s Ronan as the headstrong Mary and Robbie as the fragile Elizabeth who take command as the movie progresses, twinned performances that run parallel tracks toward a powerful collision.

Rourke, who has been artistic director at London’s Donmar Warehouse theater since 2012, applies that stage knowhow to some striking set pieces. The best of all that meeting between Mary and Elizabeth, in which both queens recognize the formidable presence of the other, even when they’re not supposed to be seeing each other. Ultimately, Ronan prevails in the battle of screen dominance — it’s her character’s name in the title, after all — but Robbie gives as good as she gets.

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‘Mary Queen of Scots’

★★★

Opened December 7 in select cities; opens Friday, December 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy) and Megaplex at The District (South Jordan). Rated R for some violence and sexuality. Running time: 124 minutes.

'Ben Is Back'

Drug addiction has been done in films so often it’s difficult to find a fresh approach, but Peter Hedges’ “Ben Is Back” does it by focusing not on the addict but his mother — and giving Julia Roberts a meaty, meaningful role.

Ben Burns — played by the director’s son, the suddenly ubiquitous Lucas Hedges (“Boy Erased”) — shows up on Christmas Eve at his family home in upstate New York. He’s there just as his mom, Holly (played by Roberts), is driving home from choir practice with teen daughter Ivy (Kathryn Newton) and younger half-siblings Lacey (Mia Fowler) and Liam (Jakari Fraser). Holly welcomes Ben back with a hug in the driveway, while Ivy is more wary, staying in the car to text her stepdad, Neal (Courtney B. Vance).

Hedges, who wrote the screenplay, drops tiny hints about why Ben was gone, and why his sister isn’t too keen about seeing Mom being so accepting of his return. Holly isn’t entirely naive, hiding the prescription bottles before Ben’s in the house more than a minute. But Holly wants to believe Ben when he says the rehab facility let him come home for the holidays.

Most of the movie centers on Ben and Holly on Christmas Eve. Holly accompanies Ben to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, where the talk gets pretty raw. They run into Beth (Rachel Bay Jones), a neighbor whose presence makes Ben uneasy, for reasons discovered later. They go to the mall, where Ben is spotted by Spider (David Zaldivar), a former junkie acquaintance who’s connected to a drug lord to whom Ben owes a lot of money.

Hedges’ script dives into the seedier side of suburbia, as Ben’s return brings out all kinds of score-settling. But the prime focus is on Holly, and the measures she will take to protect Ben from external harm while also staying tough on him to stay clean and contemplate the people he’s hurt.

Roberts is terrific, toggling from fiercely protective to angrily scolding and finding the level of pain and anguish in both roles. The scene where Holly drives Ben out to the cemetery, and tells him to pick the spot where she’ll bury him, is moving because Roberts puts so much conviction into it — a conviction that makes “Ben Is Back” a step above the average addiction story.

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‘Ben Is Back’

★★★

Opened December 7 in select cities; opens Friday, December 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language throughout and some drug use.  Running time: 103 minutes.

'Welcome to Marwen'

The 2010 documentary “Marwencol” was a story about imagination triumphing over adversity — so what does Hollywood do in its flashy but empty adaptation, “Welcome to Marwen,” but strip away the imagination element?

“Welcome to Marwen” tells a dumbed-down, heavy-handed version of the story filmmaker Jeff Malmberg told in the documentary. It’s the story of Mark Hogancamp, an artist in upstate New York who has created a miniature model of a World War II Belgium town in his yard. In that town, he creates a series of tableaux using action figures and Barbie-like dolls of a heroic U.S. Army officer, Col. Hogie, and the buxom women who continually rescue him from the evil Nazis.

What “Marwencol” reveals gradually, and “Welcome to Marwen” dumps in your lap, is the fact that Hogancamp uses these stories of Col. Hogie to cope with and act out the great tragedy in his life: When, in 2000, he was attacked outside a bar and beaten almost to death. After nine days in a coma and 40 days in a hospital, Hogancamp, a former illustrator, had lost the ability to draw — along with most of his memory of life before the attack.

In the fictionalized version, directed by Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump”) and written by Zemeckis and Caroline Thompson (“Edward Scissorhands”), Hogancamp is portrayed by Steve Carell, an actor who provokes empathy while lacking subtlety. That’s fitting for a movie where Zemeckis connects the dots by showing how his Russian caregiver Anna (Gwendoline Christie), former therapist Julie (Janelle Monae), Latina barmaid Carla (Eiza Gonzalez), and Roberta (Merritt Wever), the model-shop owner who’s sweet on him, have been transformed into doll characters in Marwen.

A wild card is thrown into Hogancamp’s well-ordered world when Nicol (Leslie Mann) moves in across the street. A single woman who shows kindness to Hogancamp, it’s only a matter of time that he incorporates a doll Nicol into the story. When Nicol’s surly ex, Kurt (Neil Jackson), comes around, Hogancamp casts him as a Nazi.

Hogancamp faces a crisis when he’s urged to attend the sentencing of the men who beat him, people he fears to see again. That fear, and something else, manifests itself in “the Belgian witch of Marwen,” the villainess Deja Thoris (performed by Diane Kruger), whose whispers exacerbate Hogancamp’s anxieties. (Deja is also used to allow Zemeckis to make a thudding reference to his greatest hit, “Back to the Future.”)

Zemeckis, always one to let technology overwhelm his storytelling, depicts the Marwen storyline through motion-capture animation that make the dolls come to “life.” Alas, the animation is less life-like than the still images of Hogancamp’s creation (the script has Hogancamp photographing his dolls, writing out of the story the photographer who discovered Marwencol) because it puts the action on the screen rather than in the viewer’s heads. Hogancamp and “Marwencol” trusted the viewer to see the story in still images; “Welcome to Marwen” doesn’t believe the audience can make the same leap.

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‘Welcome to Marwen’

★★

Opens Friday, December 21, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence, some disturbing images, brief suggestive content, thematic material and language. Running time: 116 minutes.