'Downton Abbey'

Confession time: I have never watched the PBS series “Downton Abbey.” So for the movie version of “Downton Abbey,” I went in with a translator: Scott D. Pierce, television critic for The Salt Lake Tribune and my good friend and cubicle neighbor. He’s mildly obsessed with the goings-on of the noble Crawley family and their many servants, but was dubious that the show could transfer to the big screen.

Scott and I tag-teamed a review of “Downton Abbey,” which appears here on sltrib.com for your enjoyment.

'Out of Liberty'

It takes some skill to find a new angle to one of the most well-known lessons in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — but director/co-writer Garrett Batty exercises that ability well in the compelling Western drama “Out of Liberty.”

Those who remember their church talks know about Liberty Jail, where church founder Joseph Smith (played here by Brandon Ray Olive) and five other leaders were imprisoned from Dec. 1, 1938, to April 6, 1839, facing charges of treason and an extermination order from Gov. Lilburn W. Boggs.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Hustlers'

Writer-director Lorene Scafaria asks a timely question in “Hustlers”: Why should the guys always get to make the movies, like “The Wolf of Wall Street,” that take a true crime story to indict the cesspool that is Wall Street.

The women take command here, though in a setting usually depicted as a man-boy’s playground: A Manhattan strip club. It’s where Dorothy, professional name Destiny (played by Constance Wu), is the new girl, getting meager tips while other dancers get the big bucks separating Wall Street traders from their money in the rah-rah financial boom of 2007.

Destiny sees the club’s top earner, Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), and quickly becomes an eager student. Soon Destiny is also bringing in the dollar-dollar bills, as the most predatory traders come in and drop $10,000 or more in the champagne room. Then the financial crash of 2008 happens, and the well runs dry.

Flash-forward to 2011, as Destiny recounts in 2014 to a magazine writer (Julia Stiles), and Destiny is mother to a two-year-old, caring for her grandmother (Wai Ching Ho), and trying to make money again. One night, she runs into Ramona, who has an idea for a new scam: Pick up rich guys, ply them with drink and drugs, and get them to the club — where the women can run up their credit cards for a few thousand, but not so much as the men will notice.

Teaming with two friends from the club, Mercedes (Kiki Palmer) and Annabelle (Lili Reinhardt), Ramona and Destiny run the scam to great success. But greed, along with Ramona’s ambitions and knack for taking in strays — like the coked-out Dawn (Madeline Brewer) — threaten to bring the whole enterprise crashing down.

Scafaria (“Seeking a Friend at the End of the World”) has studied the Martin Scorsese playbook perfectly, and there’s a distinct “Wolf of Wall Street”/“GoodFellas” vibe to the accumulation of money, furs and Louis Vuitton bags. (The use of Lorde’s “Royals” at one point seems a bit on the nose.) It’s exhilarating, though, to watch as these women use their wits, their guile, and their bodies to take back a piece of the Wall Streeters’ ill-gotten gains, and using the men’s arrogance as a weapon against them.

It’s also exciting to see Lopez take a role like Ramona and run with it. Besides doing her own stripper-pole acrobatics, Lopez digs into the character’s greed, revenge and heartbreak to give perhaps the performance of her career. “Hustlers” may build up a false facade of wealth and power dynamics, but Lopez proves she’s the genuine article.

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‘Hustlers’

★★★

Opens, Friday, Sept. 13, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for pervasive sexual material, drug content, language and nudity. Running time: 109 minutes.

'The Goldfinch'

The movie adaptation of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-winning novel “The Goldfinch” could be the best-pedigreed train wreck in years. How does a movie based on such a well-regarded work, with such a stellar cast and talented crew, go so wrong?

We could start with the structure of the script by Peter Straughan, who also adapted “The Snowman” into such an ungodly mess. The story follows Theodore Decker both as a 10-year-old boy (played by Oakes Fegley, from “Wonderstruck” and “Pete’s Dragon”) and as an adult (played by Ansel Elgort) — and suffering greatly in both timelines.

At age 10, we learn in excruciating flashbacks, that Theo was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother when a terrorist bombing took place, killing his mother. Theo goes to live with a rich family, the Barbours, looked after mostly by the patrician Mrs. Barbour (Nicole Kidman). He seems to be settling in, becoming a protege to Hobie (Jeffrey Wright), an antiques dealer and restorer — until Theo’s alcoholic dad (Luke Wilson) shows up from Las Vegas with a floozie girlfriend, Xandra “with an X” (Sarah Paulson).

Thus is Theo whisked to Nevada, living a lonely life in a mostly foreclosed suburban development. He befriends Boris (Finn Wolfhard), a Russian emigre living with his abusive father. The boys, left to their own devices, embark on wild nights of booze and drugs, until another tragedy strikes.

Director John Crowley (“Brooklyn”) frequently jolts the story ahead, to find Elgort’s Theo in his life. He’s become Hobie’s business partner, selling the antiques Hobie restores, sometimes with less-than-honest techniques. And some people reenter Theo’s life: The Barbours; Pippa (Ashleigh Cummings), an unrequited love who as a little girl (Aimee Lawrence) also survived the museum blast; and Boris (Aneurin Barnard).

Adult Theo also must deal with Mr. Reeve (Denis O’Hare), a collector of art and antiques. Reeve seems to have latched onto Theo’s big secret — something to do with a 17th century Dutch painting, “The Goldfinch,” that disappeared in the museum bombing.

Straughan’s overwrought (and, according to those who have read it, too faithful) adaptation may only explains some of the problem. There’s also Crowley’s overly genteel treatment, which focuses on the artiface of Theo’s worlds — in the Barbours’ opulent home, the tacky confines of Vegas suburbia, or the clutter of Hobie’s store — more than the people. (The upside is that such an approach highlights  Roger Deakins’ lavish cinematography.)

Then there’s the miscasting of so many key roles, from Paulson’s gum-chomping stepmom to Wilson’s caricature of a desperate addict. Worst of all may be a tie between Wolfhard and Barnard as Boris, sharing custody of an accent that sounds like they’re going to make beeg trouble for moose und squirrel.

Or there’s the finale, which forces Wright to deliver the thuddingly obvious message — about how life’s too short but art lasts forever — before throwing adult Theo into Eurotrash gunplay and a resolution that isn’t shown but merely recapped after the fact. Art may last forever, but “The Goldfinch” only feels like it will last forever.

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‘The Goldfinch’

★1/2

Opens Friday, Sept. 13, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for drug use and language. Running time: 149 minutes.

'Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice'

When someone says they like Linda Ronstadt, the first question could be: Which one?

The folk singer? The country crooner? The rocker chick? The soprano performing Gilbert & Sullivan? The chanteuse backed by Nelson Riddle arrangements? The artist doing traditional Mexican songs?

All those facets of Ronstadt’s prolific career are explored in “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice,” an exhaustive and exuberant telling of the singer’s tumultuous and pioneering career.

Directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (“The Times of Harvey Milk”) start chronologically, with Ronstadt’s parents, an engineering student at the University of Arizona who fell for a Mexican baritone who serenaded his way into her heart. Ronstadt started a band with two guy friends in high school, and as The Stone Ponies moved to Los Angeles — right at the heart of the folk movement begun by The Byrds and similar bands. The Stone Ponies made one album, had a hit with “Different Drum,” and when they returned from touring, the label wanted to dump the band and promote Ronstadt as a solo artist.

The early days were heady ones, and talent was everywhere, says Ronstadt, who serves as the mostly off-screen narrator. (She has largely retired from the spotlight, last performing live in 2009, because Parkinson’s disease has dimmed that once-magnificent voice.)

On her first tour, she hired as her drummer Don Henley. Her then-boyfriend, the musician J.D. Souther (one of many people interviewed on camera) suggested she get his writing partner as a guitarist. The guitarist, Glenn Frey, roomed with Henley, and they wrote songs during the down time — which is how The Eagles was born. Ronstadt gave that band a boost by recording Henley and Frey’s then-unknown song, “Desperado.”

Most everyone interviewed talks about Ronstadt’s kindness, and her ability to stay relatively grounded even as the whirlwind of fame rose up around her. One of the most touching stories comes from Emmylou Harris, who befriended Ronstadt early — and, when Harris’s mentor and duet partner Gram Parsons died of a heroin overdose while on tour, Ronstadt put Harris up in her house while she grieved.

Ronstadt didn’t write her own songs, and most of her hits were covers of other artists’ songs. Her first No. 1 album, “Heart Like a Wheel” (1974), charted three singles: “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You)” (a Hank Williams song), “You’re No Good” (first sung by Betty Everett), and the Everly Brothers’ classic “When Will I Be Loved?” The Williams tune put her on the country charts, while “You’re No Good” topped both the pop and R&B charts.

After becoming the highest-paid woman in rock in the ‘70s, Ronstadt experimented with genres in the ‘80s. She went on Broadway in “The Pirates of Penzance,” tackling Gilbert & Sullivan (her mother’s favorite), silencing the naysayers and scoring a Tony nomination. (Her co-star on Broadway and the 1983 movie, Kevin Kline, tells the filmmakers he was skeptical, but blown away by her voice and her determination.) She hired Nelson Riddle to arrange tunes from the Great American Songbook for three albums. She partnered with Harris and their mutual hero, Dolly Parton, for the “Trio” albums. And she collected the Mexican folk songs her father love, and tackled some difficult traditional arrangements, for “Canciónes de Mi Padre” (1987).

Epstein and Friedman touch lightly on Ronstadt’s personal life, such as her short romance with then-Gov. Jerry Brown, and the fact that she never married. But the focus is on her music, her versatility, and her devotion both to her two families — her biological one, and the musicians who she knew, performed with and influenced. (The movie ends with her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, with Carrie Underwood, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Sheryl Crow and Harris performing “When Will I Be Loved?” Ronstadt did not attend, because of her Parkinson’s.)

“Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice” is a happy reminder, to those of us who were there, of Ronstadt’s way with a song — and a lesson in musical endurance for those just learning about this amazing talent.

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‘Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice’

★★★1/2

Opened September 6 in select markets; opens Friday, September 13, at Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and other theaters. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and drug material. Running time: 95 minutes.

'Brittany Runs a Marathon'

The comedy “Brittany Runs a Marathon” deals with a lot of weighty subjects — about self-worth, body shaming and accepting friendship — but writer-director Paul Downs Colaizzo and star Jillian Bell carry it effortlessly.

Bell, best known for comic turns in “22 Jump Street” and “Rough Night,” plays Brittany, who’s nearing 30 in New York without a lot to show for it. She barely holds down a job as a theater ticket-taker, and she spends too much time partying and making bad choices with her YouTube-obsessed roommate Gretchen (Alice Lee). A trip to a doctor (Patch Darragh) gives her the information she’s been denying: She’s borderline-obese, and needs to lose 55 pounds. “That’s a Siberian husky! That’s a medium-sized working dog you want me to pull out of my butt,” Brittany replies, falling back on using jokes to deflect from her problems.

She sees their rich neighbor Catherine (Michaela Watkins) jogging, so she decides to try it, but the effort to just get around the block is exhausting and soul-crushing. Catherine takes Brittany under her wing, explaining that everyone has problems — Catherine’s involved “needle stuff” — and offers to bring Brittany to her running club. She does, and forms a small team with Catherine and Seth (Micah Stock) who make a pact that they will each complete the New York City Marathon, 11 months away.

As Brittany gets serious about running, she also starts cleaning up other parts of her life. One of those parts is finding a new job as a housesitter, which is how she meets Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar), a “man boy” who is living in the townhouse in which he’s housesitting.

Colaizzo’s script, inspired by a friend who ran the New York City Marathon, smartly progresses through Brittany’s struggle to lose weight, embrace her inner runner, and toss aside the negative influences in her life. There are setbacks, of course, but Brittany’s growth and her determination are authentic and inspiring.

In a cast full of funny people — including Lil Rey Howery (“Uncle Drew”) as Brittany’s brother-in-law and surrogate stepfather — Bell’s funny and warm-hearted performance reigns. She cracks jokes that most stand-ups would sell their mothers to land, and her blossoming from supporting player to movie star is delightful to see.

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‘Brittany Runs a Marathon’

★★★1/2

Opened August 23 in select cities; opens Friday, Sept. 13, at Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), Century 16 (South Salt Lake City), and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language throughout, sexuality and some drug material. Running time: 104 minutes.

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This review ran on this site on January 28, when the movie premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

'Official Secrets'

As based-on-a-true-story movies go, “Official Secrets” feels more real than most, a credit to the British penchant against hyperbole and the understated performances of its cast — particularly its star, Keira Knightley.

Knightley plays Katherine Gun, who in early 2003 — on the eve of the invasion of Iraq — was a signals analyst for GCHQ, the British government’s intelligence-gathering agency. In short, as a character notes later, she’s a spy, charged with gathering, processing and analyzing data for Her Majesty’s government.

One morning, everyone in Katherine’s office receives a memo from GCHQ’s American counterpart, the National Security Administration. It’s a general call for intel that can be used toward — or, more accurately, against — countries sitting on the United Nations Security Council. The intent is clear: The Bush administration is looking for dirt that can be used to blackmail countries into approving a UN resolution supporting an invasion of Iraq.

Katherine has been discussing the run-up to war with her husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Kurdish Iraqi who emigrated to the UK from Turkey, and how Tony Blair and his cabinet were lying their way into a war. When the memo arrives, Katherine feels compelled to do something, so she makes a copy, which she mails to an anti-war activist friend (MyAnna Buring).

The memo makes its way, eventually, to Martin Bright (played by Matt Smith), a reporter at The Observer, which has already declared an editorial position in favor of going to war. He and the paper’s DC correspondent (Rhys Ifans) try to nail down the veracity of the memo, and when they do, the paper publishes their story. But the American media thinks it’s a fake — for reasons both of politics and, as one editor (“Game of Thrones’” Conleth Hill) bellows, someone being “colossally stupid” — and the march to war continues.

Within GCHQ, an investigation into the leak begins, and Katherine, sickened that her coworkers may suffer under suspicion, confesses. Thus begins her ordeal for violating the Official Secrets Act, as the government holds charges over her head, spies on her, and threatens Yasar’s immigration status. When she goes to a civil-rights law firm, the lead barrister, Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes), suggests a novel defense — but Katherine is warned that saying anything, even to her lawyer, about the memo would also violate the Official Secrets Act.

Director Gavin Hood has explored similar issues before, in “Rendition” (2007) and “Eye in the Sky” (2015), and here — as co-screenwriter with married scribes Gregory and Sara Bernstein — he sets an unfussy, just-the-facts tone, a police procedural of the security state. (Spoiler: The American government comes off looking quite badly, not that Blair is let off the hook.) The story has an offbeat structure, following the memo’s journey before settling on Katherine’s legal problems.

The strong ensemble cast also includes Matthew Goode as Bright’s fellow journalist, Indira Varma and John Heffernan as Emmerson’s colleagues, and such old-school British actors as Kenneth Cranham and Clive Francis in small roles.

But Knightley holds our attention throughout “Official Secrets,” capturing Katherine’s optimism that she can stop the war, her anger that she was naive for thinking she could, and her resolution to reveal the truth no matter the cost. It’s a sharp reminder of what lies a government will tell to get what it wants, and how some individuals find the strength to speak the truth.

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‘Official Secrets’

★★★1/2

Opened August 30 in select cities; opens Friday, September 13, in more theaters nationwide. Rated R for language. Running time: 112 minutes.

'Freaks'

The dark “Freaks” is a welcome surprise, a blend of paranoid thriller and superhero excitement, all delivered with sharp writing and directing rather than expensive special effects,

In a Los Angeles feeling the reverberations of a terror not immediately explained to audiences, 7-year-old Chloe (Lexy Kolker) lives an isolated life with her father (Emile Hirsch) in a house where the doors are tightly locked and the windows covered in newspaper and duct tape. “The bad guys” are outside, Dad explains to Chloe, and they can’t let them in or they’ll take Chloe away — just like they did her mother (Amanda Crew). Dad drills Chloe in assuming another child’s identity, though why she’s doing this isn’t immediately clear, either.

Chloe seems to have a rich imagination, conjuring up a protective older sister, Harper (Ava Telek), and sometimes seeing an imprisoned woman who just might be Chloe’s missing and presumed-dead mother.

And what to make of the old man (played by Bruce Dern) who parks his ice-cream truck near Chloe’s window. Is he just a creepy old man? Or is there something going on that he, or Chloe’s dad, isn’t telling?

Actually, there’s plenty not visible at first in this highly imaginative and compelling script, written by the film’s directors, Adam Stein and Zack Lipovsky. (The pair also collaborated on the live-action “Kim Possible” TV movie for Disney Channel earlier this year.) They capture fear of the unknown, through the allegory of super-powered people, more succinctly and effectively than most of the “X-Men” franchise ever could. And they do it with an economy of scale in the effects, which work as well as any blockbuster’s expensive CGI, and a surplus of emotional weight.

Hirsch is compelling as the fear-driven father trying to protect his girl from monsters real and imagined, and Dern, who at 83 still can find new ways to surprise us. But young Kolker — whose biggest role to date was a recurring appearance as a future-seeing girl on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” — gives the performance that audiences will remember best, as she finds the balance between childhood innocence and steely resolve when the twisty plot unfolds all of its delicious secrets. 

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‘Freaks’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 13, in select theaters, including Megaplex at The District. Rated R for violence and some language. Running time: 105 minutes.