'Richard Jewell'

Director Clint Eastwood’s legal drama “Richard Jewell” is, we’ve been told in countless ads for the movie, about the truth — specifically, the truth about the Atlanta security guard wrongly accused of planting a bomb during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

But with Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray, truth appears to be a zero-sum game — because to tell the “truth” about Jewell, these filmmakers smeared the reputation of a dead woman.

Eastwood and Ray do set forth some of the facts in a quick, straight-forward way. They start by showing Jewell (played by Paul Walter Hauser) as a shlub in a government office, delivering office supplies and talking about his goal of working in law enforcement. It’s in this office where he meets a lawyer, Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), who gives him the nickname “Radar” (after Gary Burghoff’s eager-to-please character on “M*A*S*H”).

We then see Jewell working as a security guard at a small Georgia college, until his overbearing police-wannabe behavior gets him fired by the dean (Charles Green). Eventually, Jewell, who lives with his momma (Kathy Bates), bounces back and gets a job working security at the Olympics, specifically in Centennial Park, where crowds gather to celebrate winners and enjoy nightly concerts.

One night, Jewell finds a suspicious package under a park bench, and alerts the cops around him. They find some very big pipe bombs, and Jewell helps the cops push the crowd back before it blows — killing two and injuring 111 people. All agree it would have been worse if not for Jewell’s fast action, and he soon becomes a hero and media sensation.

That good feeling is short-lived, when the FBI office in Atlanta starts investigating — and a profiler suggests Jewell, as a wannabe cop seeking attention, might have planted the bomb himself. That thin thread is then leaked by an FBI agent (Jon Hamm) to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter (Olivia Wilde).

And here’s the moment where Eastwood and Ray do their damage to the reputation of Kathy Scruggs, the real-life reporter who broke the story that the FBI was investigating Jewell as the bomber. As a recent AJC article reports, Scruggs got that scoop because she was a dogged reporter who worked with sources at every level of law enforcement in Atlanta. As the movie tells it, Scruggs got that scoop by screwing the FBI guy. (This happens off-camera, to the disappointment of anyone hoping to see Hamm and Wilde, among our most attractive movie stars, in a bedroom scene together.)

The trope of a female journalist using sex to get a story is an ugly cliche that pops up whenever a filmmaker wants to make the press into a villain. It’s a lie, and Eastwood should apologize for it. Ray should be particularly ashamed — after all, he wrote and directed the 2003 drama “Shattered Glass,” based on the story of the reporter for The New Republic who fabricated articles.

A more interesting story would show Scruggs doing everything a journalist is supposed to do — it’s not a lie that the FBI was investigating Jewell immediately after the bombing — and still the wrong guy gets accused. It also would have been more interesting to show Scruggs, who died in 2001, guilt-ridden by what doing her job did to another human. Both of those things, as the AJC reported, would also have had the benefit of being true. (It’s also true that the guy who did plant the bomb, Eric Rudolph, was a right-wing zealot also bombed a lesbian bar and two abortion clinics — but the rigidly Republican Eastwood omits those facts from his narrative.)

Wilde has taken some criticism for taking this role, especially considering she grew up among journalists — but I only blame her about 10 percent for how Scruggs is portrayed. Wilde, in an interview, said she’s being held to a double standard that her co-star, Hamm, has not faced. True, though Hamm’s character is a fictional composite character, probably because live FBI agents can sue and a dead reporter cannot.

The stick-figure villainy of Hamm and Wilde’s characters, as conceived by Eastwood and Ray, is enough to make a viewer distrust the rest of the movie. That’s unfortunate, because Hauser (who played the knee-breaking accomplice in “I, Tonya”) gives a strong, sympathetic performance as Jewell, finding the self-deprecation of a man constantly undervalued because of his girth. Hauser is nicely matched by Rockwell, whose character reappears as the lawyer Jewell needs to fend off the Feds and the media circus.

In the end, “Richard Jewell” doesn’t even do Jewell any favors. If there’s one thing we take away about Jewell, who died in 2007, is that he believed in being fair and honest. One can only wonder what he would have thought of what Eastwood and Ray have done to Kathy Scruggs’ good name.

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’Richard Jewell’

★★

Opens Friday, December 13, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language including some sexual references, and brief bloody images. Running time: 130 minutes.

'Jumanji: The Next Level'

Hacking through the jungle of overloaded action in “Jumanji: The Next Level,” a sequel to the 2017 action movie about teens trapped in a video game, a viewer has lots of time to think about the lost opportunities the movie passes up.

This haphazardly structured movie, which throws random events up on the screen in no particular order, has some elements that are entertaining. Finding those nuggets takes a lot of sifting through the dirt, though.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Waves'

The tragedy at the heart of filmmaker Trey Edward Shults’ drama “Waves” divides a family, and splits a movie in two — and bringing both together is a perilous journey.

At 18, Tyler Williams (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) would seem to have it made. Growing up in a prosperous family in suburban Miami, Tyler is a star high school wrestler and diligent student, someone being groomed for college and beyond.

But there are cracks in the perfect surface. A nagging shoulder injury is endangering his athletic scholarship, and prompting Tyler to try opioids. His girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie), reports that her period is late. And Tyler is being constantly pushed by his domineering father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown).

The first half of the film details Tyler’s unraveling, which ends tragically. Then the movie pivots to Tyler’s younger sister, Emily (Taylor Russell), who must live in the aftermath of Tyler’s reputation. She eats lunch alone most days, and can’t communicate with her mother, Catharine (Renée Elise Goldsberry), who has become distant from Ronald.

But Emily may find redemption, when she meets Luke (Lucas Hedges), a nice guy who isn’t phased by Emily’s family issues. Turns out Luke has family issues of his own, specifically a father who’s dying in far-off Missouri.

Shults — following up his 2015 debut “Krisha” and the 2017 horror thriller “It Comes at Night” — applies a lot of artifice to the Williams children’s paired stories, like a new generation of Terence Malick’s infuriatingly elliptical storytelling. (One recurring move is placing a camera in the middle of a car’s cabin, then rapidly spinning it to show us where everyone is in the car.) The showing-off is more noticeable in the first half, but maybe that’s because tragic spirals get Shults’ creative energies flowing more than freely than redemption tales.

In a talented ensemble, young Russell (“Escape Room”) is the standout, playing all of Emily’s complicated emotions — grief, survivor’s guilt, helplessness over his brother’s fate, and a determination to make her own life more meaningful. Russell does that with limited screen time, and with an honesty that raises the film’s second half to the lofty heights its self-absorbed beginning can’t reach.

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‘Waves’

★★★

Opened November 15 in select cities; opens Friday, December 6, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language throughout, drug and alcohol use, some sexual content and brief violence - all involving teens. Running time: 135 minutes.

'The Aeronauts'

An odd but mostly satisfying mix of gee-whiz adventure and wrenching drama is the fuel for “The Aeronauts,” a story of science and discovery that stays afloat more steadily than you might guess.

It’s 1862, and aspiring scientist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) is determined to prove his theories about meteorology, that he can find patterns in the weather and use them to predict what weather we will get. To do this, he must go airborne, and his only option is daredevil balloonist Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones), who’s more about show business than science.

The script, by Jack Thorne (who shares story credit with director Tom Harper), paints in broad strokes how mismatched these two characters are. Glaisher disdains Wren’s theatrics, like parachuting her dog down to the cheering crowd, but she knows it’s what pays the bills. Meanwhile, Wren thinks Glaisher is too buried in his measurements and readings to appreciate the glory of flying above everyone and everything on Earth.

The trip is presented practically in real time — the flight almost precisely matches the movie’s running time — though the thrills and spills of the balloon trip are augmented with flashbacks. There, we learn how Glaisher is fighting the entrenched scientific forces, who equate predicting the weather to fortune telling. We also see that Wren is more nervous than she lets on, because of a balloon accident involving her husband, Pierre (Vincent Perez).

Harper — who’s having a good year, between this and the country-music drama “Wild Rose” — deftly juggles the backstory with the ongoing airborne adventure. He also reunites the stars of “The Theory of Everything,” though this time giving Jones the juicier role, one that she leaps into with a rebel’s heart. The narrative ride of “The Aeronauts” is bumpy at times, but Jones is a confident pilot who handles the story’s emotional turbulence with ease.

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‘The Aeronauts’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 6, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), Megaplex Valley Fair (West Valley City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy).and Megaplex at The District (South Jordan); begins streaming on Amazon Prime on December 20. Rated PG-13 for some peril and thematic elements. Running time: 100. minutes.

'Knives and Skin'

Writer-director Jennifer Reeder’s high school noir drama “Knives and Skin” feels like the unwanted love child of David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson — a dozen different stylistic ideas going off in different directions, often canceling each other out.

It starts with two teens at Makeout Point, or whatever kids call it these days. Andy KItzmiller (Ty Olwin) is the star of the football team, and Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) is the nerdy marching-band drummer who will be Andy’s latest conquest. When Carolyn gets scared and repels Andy’s grabby advances, the jock leaves Carolyn on the gravel road.

Carolyn doesn’t come home that night, leaving her single mom, Lisa (Marika Engelhardt), a wreck. The girl’s disappearance also has an effect on the other kids in school — particularly Andy’s sister, Joanna (Grace Smith), who knows something is up with her brother. Joanna is having her own problems, like running scams like selling used underwear belonging to her agoraphobic mom, Lynn (Audrey Francis), to the skeevy principal (Tony Fitzpatrick).

Meanwhile, Joanna and Andy’s dad, Dan (Tim Hopper), is having an affair with Renee Darlington (Kate Arrington), the glitter-obsessed wife of the sheriff, Doug (James Vincent Meredith). And the Darlington’s cheerleader daughter, Laurel (Kayla Carter), is falling in love with Bridey (Genevieve Venjohnson), a classmate in Mrs.Harper’s girls’ choir class.

There are surely some subplots I missed in Reeder’s “Peyton Place” plot. It’s easy to get lost in Reeder’s random flashes of oddness, like the choir’s funereal renditions of ‘80s pop songs (including “I Melt With You” and “Whisper to a Scream”) or the way Carolyn’s corpse becomes a subject of the camera’s fascination, somewhere between “Twin Peaks’” Laura Palmer and “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

Reeder settles down in the second half, letting the angst-filled teen girls of her story wrestle back some emotional honesty from the onslaught of cinematic showboating. But it’s not enough to rescue “Knives and Skin” from its pretensions.

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‘Knives and Skin’

★1/2

Opens Friday, December 6, at the Megaplex at The Gateway (Salt Lake City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan) and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Not rated, but probably R for violence, sexuality and drug use - most of it involving teens. Running time: 112 minutes.

'Marriage Story'

Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” is the filmmaker’s most assured, emotionally mature and heartbreaking work to date, a tender yet lacerating drama of divorce and its aftermath.

At first, it seems like Baumbach is living up to his title, with montages that show Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) in the happy throes of a productive marriage. The images are accompanied with paired voiceovers, in which each describes what they like best about the other — whether it’s Charlie’s ability to remember every name in the New York theater troope he leads or Nicole’s acting talent in that same troupe. Each mentions how competitive the other is, and how well both treat their son, Henry (Azhy Robertson).

The audience soon realizes this cascade of compliments was an assignment by a counselor to help the couple ease into their impending divorce. They have agreed to an amicable parting, without lawyers. The only question is how much time Henry will spend with Charlie in New York, where he’s prepping his troupe’s production of “Elektra” for Broadway, or in Los Angeles, where Nicole — a former teen movie idol — has been cast in a pilot for a science-fiction series.

Once in L.A., though, Nicole has doubts about the lawyer thing. On the advice of a crew member on her TV shoot, Nicole visits a prominent divorce lawyer, Nora (Laura Dern). Their first meeting is a powerful moment of acting, as Dern’s Nora carefully asks the questions that get Johansson’s Nicole to ask, for the first time, what she really wants out of this divorce.

Charlie, feeling blindsided, has to lawyer up quickly. He meets with, and rejects, a suave shark of an attorney, Jay (Ray Liotta), opting instead for the avuncular — and not very effective — Bert (Alan Alda). But when Charlie faces losing custody of Henry, because of Nora’s demands that the boy live in Los Angeles, Charlie reconsiders going cutthroat with Jay.

Baumbach’s riveting screenplay captures the nuances of a couple who may still love each other, but find that’s not enough to sustain their marriage. Issues big and small play out, most intensely in an argument between Charlie and Nicole that lets both actors really tear into their roles and each other.

Baumbach also includes moments of absurdist comedy, like when Nicole asks her suburbanite sister Cassie (Merritt Wever) and their flighty mom (Julie Hagerty) serve divorce papers on a visiting Charlie. Those lighter moments become a necessary balm, to counter the sting of the break-up and the ache the soon-to-be-divorced spouses feel as they figure out their new roles.

Some have argued that Baumbach is too much on Charlie’s side, but I think a repeated viewing — a possibility made easier when the movie debuts on Netflix on Dec. 6 — will reveal that the filmmaker is fairly even-handed. Charlie’s emotional journey is more front-and-center in the narrative, but in a way that’s because Nicole has known longer about the cracks in the relationship, and her epiphany comes  before this movie’s timeline.

Baumbach assembles a stellar ensemble cast for “Marriage Story” — including Dern, Liotta and Alda as three very different types of lawyers, and Hagerty and Wever as Ncole’s family. But it’s the paired leads, Driver and Johansson, whose compelling performances bring the passion as Charlie and Nicole hash out unrealized dreams, obstacles the other set in their way, and how they might be able to survive as co-parents, if not as husband and wife.

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‘Marriage Story’

★★★1/2

Opened November 6 in select cities; opens Wednesday, November 29, at the Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), and Friday, November 29, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City); will debut Friday, December 6, on Netflix. Rated R for language throughout and sexual references. Running time: 136 minutes.

'Honey Boy'

To watch director Alma Har’el’s drama “Honey Boy” is to witness an act of personal redemption by its star and screenwriter, Shia LaBeouf.

The oft-maligned LaBeouf, whose offscreen public acts of self-destruction have frequently overshadowed his onscreen talents, has penned an intensely intimate and semi-autobiographical story of a fractured father-son relationship.

Otis, played as an adult by Lucas Hedges, is a movie star in the middle of a personal meltdown in 2005, which ends with a car crash for which he is arrested and placed in a rehab facility. The psychiatrist there (Laura San Giacomo) gives him an empty journal and a writing assignment, to recall every memory he can think of from his childhood. Otis writes his in screenplay form, a nice bit of meta-storytelling, considering LaBeouf wrote this under similar circumstances.

In flashback, in 1995, we meet 12-year-old Otis (played by Noah Jupe, the little brother in “A Quiet Place”) as a juvenile movie star, during production of a family comedy. Also on the set is his chaperone, his father, James (played by LaBeouf). James is a former rodeo clown who drills young Otis on his comic skills after hours in their dingy motel room. James is also an ex-convict, combat veteran and recovering drug addict with a hair-trigger temper.

That temper springs into action when Otis’ mom, James’ ex-wife (Natasha Lyonne), is on the phone, or whenever Otis mentions Tom (Clifton Collins Jr.), his mentor through the Big Brothers program. Sometimes, most distressingly, that anger comes out against Otis, when the child asserts his authority over the parent because the kid is the meal ticket.

When James isn’t around, Otis is left to his own devices, and he strikes up a tender relationship with Sky Girl (played by the singer FKA Twigs), a young prostitute who lives in the motel.

Har’el, whose resumé includes music videos and the documentary “Bombay Beach,” handles this explosive material — as well as the sometimes comic, sometimes wrenching rehab scenes — with a sensitive yet unflinching eye. She makes room for LaBeouf, in an achingly powerful performance, to delve into the pain James is feeling without dismissing the pain he inflicts on those around him.

Hedges (“Ben Is Back,” “Boy Erased”) once again shows why he’s the go-to guy to play anguished young men. But the standout is young Jupe, who has great chemistry with LaBeouf and FKA Twigs, and seems to possess the same acting chops LaBeouf did when he was a kid. Here’s hoping Jupe’s path through movie stardom is smoother, and here’s hoping “Honey Boy” is a sign that LaBeouf is exorcising his personal demons and can continue to create challenging art.

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‘Honey Boy’

★★★1/2

Opened November 8 in select cities; opens Friday, November 29, at the Broadway Centre Cnemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for pervasive language, some sexual material and drug use. Running time: 94 minutes.

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This review ran on this website on January 31, when the movie premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

'Knives Out'

Writer-director Rian Johnson clearly loves a good whodunnit, as evidenced by the crafty, witty and deliciously devilish murder mystery he concocts in “Knives Out.”

He also really loves actors, as proven by the juicy material he gives to the stellar ensemble cast he has assembled.

The Thrombeys are your typical bickering, back-stabbing rich family, rattling around an old mansion and fretting over what the old man — crime novelist Harlan Thormbey (Christopher Plummer) — will leave them in the will when he finally croaks, Somebody, though, decided not to wait for the answer, because Harlan is discovered in his private study, with his throat cut.

His progeny provides a ready array of suspects. Harlan’s daughter, Linda Drysdale (Jamie Lee Curtis), is a real-estate mogul straight out of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” with a rigidly Republican husband, Richard (Don Johnson). Harlan’s son, Walt Thrombey (Michael Shannon), has run the publishing company that produces Harlan’s books — and fought his father over selling the film rights. Another daughter, Joni Thrombey (Toni Collette), is a lifestyle expert who has relied on her dad to put her social-activist daughter, Meg (Katherine Langford), through school. 

And there’s a late entry in the race: Linda and Richard’s spoiled son Ransom (Chris Evans), who openly despises pretty much all of his relations.

A couple of other characters also merit notice: Walt’s nervous wife, Donna (Riki Lindhome), and their right-wing troll of a son, Jacob (Jean Martell); Greatnana Wanetta (K Callan), Harlan’s not-all-there mother; and Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), Harlan’s nurse and seemingly the only person Harlan actually liked.

It’s a puzzle for Lt. Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield), the police detective assigned to the case, so he brings in some help: Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a renowned private investigator hired by a mystery client to solve the case. “I read a tweet about a New Yorker article about you,” Joni says when she first encounters Blanc. Ransom, on the other hand, is unimpressed with the southern-accented Blanc, asking, “What is this? CSI: KFC?”

Going much further would deprive viewers of the fun of discovering the clues and connections alongside Blanc, and in trying to figure to exactly what Johnson has up his sleeve. The structure isn’t quite the traditional whodunnit, as Johnson in part follows the model of the old “Columbo” TV series,  where the killer was known from the beginning and the mystery was how Columbo would prove it. Emphasis on the “in part,” because Johnson’s script takes some devious twists before the final reel.

And Johnson — making his first movie since wowing the world with “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” — digs deep into the atmosphere of an old-time murder mystery. The Thrombey mansion, thanks to production designer David Crank (“Inherent Vice,” “The Master”), has enough wry details to make any Agatha Christie fan happy — or illustrate a new edition of “Clue.”

Best of all, Johnson’s cast provides surprises at every turn. It’s great to see Curtis as a ball-buster, or Collette as a spoiled brat, or Craig play a cornpone Poirot, or Evans get some tarnish on that Captain America persona. The breakout is the Cuban-born de Armas (“Blade Runner 2049”), who brings wit and fire to the role of Marta, the lamb in the den of vipers, and a character so refreshingly honest that lying makes her puke.

“Knives Out” takes a few swipes at current politics — Richard supports Trump, mostly for the tax cuts, while Meg and Jacob trade insults across the red/blue divide. But the fun in this whodunnit is how wonderfully nasty the members of the Thrombley family are to each other, in completely nonpolitical ways.

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‘Knives Out’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, November 27, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including brief violence, some strong language, sexual references, and drug material. Running time: 130 minutes.