'Echo in the Canyon'

Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday” isn’t the only new movie where great songs are coming out of the mouth of someone who doesn’t do them as well as the original artists. There’s also the documentary “Echo in the Canyon,” in which musician Jakob Dylan covers, with mixed results, songs by The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield and The Mamas and the Papas.

The occasion is a 2015 concert, organized by Dylan (Bob’s son and leader of The Wallflowers) and former record executive Andrew Slater (who also directs the documentary) to pay tribute to the Laurel Canyon era — that supposedly magical period from 1965 to 1967 when those bands flourished and provided much of the soundtrack of the 1960s.

The concert performances are OK, if not particularly memorable, as Dylan teams up with an all-star line-up of musicians including Fiona Apple, Norah Jones, Regina Spektor, Cat Power, Jade and Beck.

Slater also has Dylan interview some of the greats of that era, and he doesn’t draw much out of them that they haven’t said before. (The documentary “David Crosby: Remember My Name” is much more revealing about Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, who all appear in this film but not together.)

The Laurel Canyon scene was named for the semi-rural area in Los Angeles where many of the musicians lived, smoked pot and slept with each other. The bands inspired each other, and competed with each other, to produce the best music they could. 

They also admired and wanted to outdo The Beatles, who were in full flower at the time. Brian Wilson describes how listening to “Rubber Soul” spurred him to record The Beach Boys’ epic “Pet Sounds,” which the Beatles loved — and used as an impetus to record “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” (Ringo Starr, in an interview with Dylan, confirms the across-the-pond respect.)

Dylan interviews musicians who befriended the Laurel Canyon musicians, such as John Sebastian, Eric Clapton and Jackson Browne. Perhaps the most poignant interview is with the late Tom Petty, who talks about being a scrawny kid who left Gainesville, Fla., for Los Angeles just to follow in those musicians’ footsteps.

Slater mixes in enough of the original music, through clips from “American Bandstand” and “The Ed Sullivan Show,” to make the nostalgia trip worthwhile. The problem with “Echo in the Canyon” is that it never shows us any reason why Jakob Dylan’s presence shouldn’t be considered a legacy hire.

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‘Echo in the Canyon’

★★1/2

Opened May 24 in select cities; opens Friday, June 28, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for drug references and some suggestive content. Running time: 82 minutes.

'The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith'

Eighteen years ago, Mitch Davis made “The Other Side of Heaven,” a gentle and moving look at the life of a young missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — a movie that set the box office record, $4.7 million, for a theatrical release of what was called the “Mormon cinema” boom. (Hiring a pre-fame Anne Hathaway as a lead didn’t hurt.)

Turns out 18 years was the right amount of time to wait to return to that story, because “The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith” shows how Davis’ storytelling has matured as he relates a poignant story of faith tested by adversity.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Spider-Man: Far From Home'

Spoiler warning: Do not read this review of “Spider-Man: Far From Home” if you haven’t seen “Avengers: Endgame." But it’s been nearly two months; what’s taking you so long?

The stakes are higher than ever for our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler in the fast-paced and funny “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” with the web-slinging hero battling a new nemesis and facing the responsibility of being a superhero in a post-Tony Stark world.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Pavarotti'

It’s been nearly 12 years since the opera star Luciano Pavarotti died, and a lot longer since he was at the height of his fame, so it’s possible that a generation or two have no idea who he is or why he was such an important and beloved figure in music.

Director Ron Howard attempts to fix that with “Pavarotti,” a meandering but unmistakably fond portrait of the man who went from being perhaps the world’s greatest opera singer to being merely the most famous one.

Because Pavarotti was so big — in terms of his legend, his personality, his appetites and, sorry to say, his weight — it takes Howard a few minutes to start peeling back the layers to get to the singer’s emotional core. Ultimately, Howard finds it in recounting Pavarotti’s early days in his birthplace, Modena, Italy, the son of a baker who taught his child the basics of singing. Pavarotti’s talent took him far, first to Rome to study, and eventually touring as a young tenor with the great Joan Sutherland.

First he wowed the traditional audiences at La Scala in Milan, with roles in “La Bohème” and “La Fille du Régiment” — the latter earning him the nickname “King of the High Cs.” Then he took the world.

How Pavarotti became a star outside opera houses is another story, and Howard dives into the intrigue with gusto. His first manager, Herbert Breslin, convinced him to perform recitals in cities and towns around America. He did, onstage with only an accompanist on piano, clad in a tuxedo. Pavarotti was nervous about what to do with his hands, so Breslin told him to hold his handkerchief — which became a trademark affectation, lampooned by Adam Sandler’s Opera Man (though Howard is too nice to mention that here).

The recitals made him a household name in America, got him on Johnny Carson’s couch and in American Express ads, and led to the famous Three Tenors concert in 1990 with colleagues Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. That event sent Pavarotti’s fame skyrocketing, and soon he was hobnobbing with rock stars (Bono’s interview here is largely responsible for the movie’s PG-13 rating) and royalty; Princess Diana became a good friend, and they appeared at many benefit concerts.

Howard includes some of the criticism leveled against Pavarotti, that his fame and his many benefit concerts had taken him away from serious opera. 

The movie also delves, gingerly, into Pavarotti’s marital troubles: He was married for 34 years to his wife, Adua, but had a relationship with American soprano Madelyn Renée, and later he divorced Adua to marry his assistant, Nicoletta Mantovani, 34 years his junior. (All three women appear in the film, though not together, as do his and Adua’s three daughters. His fourth daughter, Alice, born to Mantovani in 2003, appears only in archival footage as a toddler.)

What’s most compelling in “Pavarotti” isn’t the backstory, but the clips of the singer deploying that amazing voice. The encore of the Three Tenors concert, when they take turns on the fly singing lines from “Nessun Dorma,” is delightful — but when Howard ends with Pavarotti soloing on that same “Turandot” aria, his signature piece, it’s breathtaking.

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‘Pavarotti’

★★★

Opened June 7 in select theaters; opens June 21 at Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and a war-related image. Running time: 114 minutes; in English, and in Italian with subtitles.

'The Last Black Man in San Francisco'

“You can’t hate San Francisco if you don’t love San Francisco,” Jimmie Fails says at a key moment in “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” a captivating love-hate letter to the City by the Bay that comes straight from the heart.

Jimmie Fails is both the actor’s name and the name of his character — and he also shares story credit with the movie’s director and his best friend, Joe Talbot. Jimmie is introduced here as a man lovingly maintaining a three-story townhouse with a view of the Golden Gate. The house, he tells people, was built by his grandfather in 1946, and he is determined to make it look as good as new. The problem is that Jimmie doesn’t live in the house, and the elderly white couple who do would rather he leave them alone.

Jimmie is now sharing a room with his best friend, Montgomery Allen (Jonathan Majors), who spends his nights giving audio descriptions of old movies to his blind grandfather (Danny Glover). Montgomery works as a fishmonger, but in his off hours he sketches and paints in his notebook, collecting material for a play. His current focus is the group of young black men who hang around near his house, talking and razzing each other at all hours, and becoming the movie’s Greek chorus.

Talbot, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rob Richert, finds in Jimmie an Everyman, fearful that the city he loves is becoming, because of gentrification and a pricey housing market, something he doesn’t recognize where he can’t afford to live. But his choices are limited: Staying with his con-man dad (Rob Morgan) in a sketchy part of town; living with his aunt, Wanda (Tichina Arnold), out in the boonies; or, when the elderly couple is forced out in an estate dispute, occupying his granddad’s house as a squatter.

The movie sets up a fascinating assortment of neighbors, from the street preacher (Willie Hen) warning about the evils that attack San Francisco from all sides, to the homeless man (Tim “Opera” Blevins) singing flawless Puccini on the street.

Talbot and Fails deliver a heartfelt appraisal of life in modern San Francisco, complimented by the city sites captured by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra. Through many devices, including a climactic reading of Montgomery’s long-gestating play, the filmmakers show they love their city in spite of — or maybe because of — its many flaws. 

(This review first appeared on this site on Feb. 2, when the movie played at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.)

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‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’

★★★1/2

Opened June 7 in select cities; opens Friday, June 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language, brief nudity and drug use. Running time: 121 minutes.

'Hampstead'

The British-American hybrid “Hampstead” is predictable even by romantic-comedy standards, but the charms of mismatched but oddly compatible stars Diane Keaton and Brendan Gleeson are not to be dismissed.

Keaton plays Emily Walters, an American widow living in London’s well-to-do Hampstead Heath neighborhood, barely staying afloat in the apartment she and her husband Charlie shared. A year after his death, Emily still holds a lot of anger at Charlie, who she learned had run up some serious debuts and was having an affair with a younger woman.

Emily’s busybody neighbor Fiona (a poorly utilized Lesley Manville) tries to set up Emily with her accountant, James (Jason Watkins), an obsequious drip who looks like the love child of Austin Powers and Squidward Tentacles. Emily is happy to accept James’ help sorting out her finances, but is too polite in rebuffing his advances.

One day, rummaging in the attic and finding Charlie’s binoculars, Emily spots a hermit-like man (Gleeson) in a tiny shack in the park across the street. Emily tries to introduce herself to the man, Donald Horner, but finds his manner as prickly as a porcupine. She tries again, and they have a conversation — which leads to something resembling a date.

Donald (who is based, loosely, on a real person) has lived in his Walden-esque shack for 17 years, desiring no more than to be left alone to grow carrots and read books. But when a developer (Brian Protheroe), who’s also Fiona’s husband, makes plans to build luxury apartments on the land where Donald’s shack sits, Emily urges a recalcitrant Donald to go to court to protect his home.

Director Joel Hopkins, who guided Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson through late-stage romance in “Last Chance Harvey,” relies heavily on his stars’ natural screen personas — Keaton’s anxiety-prone chatterbox and Gleeson’s gruff teddy bear. This turns out to be a smart move, since the sweet-and-sour pairing yields humorous and tender moments.

Alas, Robert Festinger’s script runs Keaton and Gleeson through every romantic and courtroom cliche imaginable — though there’s a bit with a surprise witness (Phil Davis) that’s quite funny. “Hampstead” works best when its stars aren’t stuck running through the plot points, and can just relax and let their characters be themselves.

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‘Hampstead’

★★★

Opened June 14 in select cities; opens Friday, June 21, at Megaplex Gateway (Salt Lake City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy) and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Rated PG-13 for some suggestive material and language. Running time: 102 minutes.

'Toy Story 4'

It’s been almost a quarter century since Disney/Pixar introduced the world to a pull-string cowboy named Woody and a plastic winged spaceman named Buzz — and darned if they still, in “Toy Story 4,” can’t make us laugh, smile, and get a little emotional about the inner life of children’s playthings.

“I don’t remember it being this hard,” Woody, again voiced by Tom Hanks, laments about the job of making a small child happy. His current kid, Bonnie, has relegated Woody to the closet while she plays with Buzz (voiced by Tim Allen) and the others. But Woody remains loyal to his kid, even if he’s feeling ignored.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Men in Black: International'

Serious question: Has there ever been a “Men in Black” movie that wasn’t vaguely disappointing?

Not terrible, mind you, just slightly off the mark.It’s now four times — with “Men in Black: International” being the latest — that in its comedy and action didn’t take full advantage of the smartly silly premise Lowell Cunningham introduced in his comic book adventures of a super-secret organization that protects the Earth from intergalactic threats and keeps tabs on the many aliens living quietly among us.

This fourth installment — the first without Will Smith as the star — begins in fits and starts, jumping from location and era erratically. Two events are established in the past. One involves a girl, Molly, seeing the MIB’s wipe her parents’ memory in Brooklyn, 1999. The other, in Paris 2016, shows agents H (Chris Hemsworth) and T (Liam Neeson) battling some malevolent alien from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Cut to today, and Molly (Tessa Thompson) is a genius-level FBI applicant who wants to join the Men in Black. She eventually gets into the MIB’s New York headquarters, and impresses the boss, Agent O (Emma Thompson), to hire her as an agent, probationary, with the new name Agent M. O sends M to London to help deal with a threat.

In London, M is greeted by the bureau chief, T (now called High T, which is the height of the script’s cleverness). She’s paired with H, an assignment she accepts eagerly — even though other agents, like C (Rafe Spall), say he’s not the top agent he used to be.

H and M take an assignment that goes horribly wrong, thanks to two dreadlocked alien villains (played by Laurent and Larry Bourgeois, the French dance duo Les Twins), prompting the suspicion that there’s a mole within MIB.

The script by Matt Holloway and Art Marcum (who worked on the “Iron Man” and “Transformers: The Last Knight” screenplays) globe-hops through London, Paris, New York, Marrakesh and Italy, like a Bond movie without the visceral feel of danger. There are some encounters with characters portrayed by, in order of appearance, Kumail Nanjani and Rebecca Ferguson — but neither play as humorously as they probably should.

Director F. Gary Gray knows action, as “The Italian Job” and “The Fate of the Furious” demonstrate, but it’s been two decades since “Friday,” and Gray’s comedy chops are dated. Many of the jokes don’t land as effectively as they might have on paper. But the jokes aren’t as bland as Charles Wood’s production design, which feels generically futuristic instead of the very specific look of the first movies: The Pan Am terminal at JFK back in the mid-1960s.

There are bright spots in “Men in Black: International,” provided mostly by its leads. We already knew The smartly cool Tessa Thompson and roguish Chris Hemsworth had chemistry, from “Thor: Ragnarok,” but here it’s not lost in superhero frippery. Thompson shines out, in part because her M is the first character in the franchise who feels fully developed. If this installment is a hit, here’s hoping the filmmakers can build on Thompson and Hemsworth’s combined charms.

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‘Men in Black: International’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action, some language and suggestive material. Running time: 114 minutes.