Review: 'The Traitor' finds a morality tale in the bloody world of Sicilian gangsters

Director Marco Bellocchio’s “The Traitor” takes a deep dive into the blood-drenched world of the Sicilian Mafia of the 1980s, when talk of honor among the “soldiers” of Cosa Nostra dissolved into battles for power and money.

In 1980, the opening title cards tell us, Palermo is “the world capital of heroin,” and being fought over by two factions: The old guard of Palermo and the new clan in nearby Corleone. (Yes, the town that gave Mario Puzo’s crime family in “The Godfather” its name.) Trying to stay out of the fray is the fugitive Tommaso Buscetta (played by Pierfrancesco Favino), a “soldier” with some influence on the Palermo boss Stefano Bontade (Goffredo Maria Bruno).

Buscetta tries to escape to Rio de Janeiro, where his third wife, Cristina (Maria Fernanda Cândido), was born. The civil war in Sicily rages, with some of Buscetta’s relations killed. Then Brazilian officials arrest Buscetta and deport him back to Italy — where he meets Judge Giovanni Falcone (Fauston Russo Alesi), who is determined to bring down the Mafia, and wants Buscetta to become the first member of Cosa Nostra to become an informant.

Bellocchio — who told the story of Mussolini’s mistress in 2009’s “Vincere” — and his three co-screenwriters overwhelm the viewer, particularly the non-Italian interloper, with mounds of names, dates and places. Once things settle, or the viewer decides not to worry about the historical details and strap in for the ride, the film reveals itself to be a high-stakes courtroom drama tinged with a bit of farce, as the unwieldy legal proceedings become shouting matches between Buscetta and his indicted former colleagues.

For a good stretch, “The Traitor” is a fascinating meeting of minds between the recalcitrant mafioso Buscetta and the thoughtful jurist Falcone, as each one comes to understand and even admire their adversary. For the most part, though, the film is a showcase for Favino (“World War Z,” “Angels & Demons”), who looks like the Italian version of Tom Selleck, ruggedly handsome and beefy, but also carrying an air of nobility as Buscetta reconciles his childhood code of honor with the realities of the modern Mafia.

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‘The Traitor’

★★★

Opened January 31 in select cities; opens Friday, March 13, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy) and Megaplex at The Junction (Ogden). Rated R for violence, sexual content, language and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 150 minutes; in Italian, with subtitles.

Review: 'Big Time Adolescence' is a coming-of-age comedy that gives us too much Pete Davidson

I enjoy Pete Davidson on “Saturday Night Live” as much as the next person, but the coarse coming-of-age comedy “Big Time Adolescence” is proof that Davidson’s abrasive stoner persona is best consumed in small doses.

Writer-director Jason Orley structures his story around the oft-repeated device: The wacky bad influence. That’s Davidson’s character, Zeke, a 23-year-old slacker who is the best friend of the movie’s protagonist, 16-year-old Monroe Harris (Griffin Gluck, the kid brother from “Why Him?”). The movie starts with the “You’re probably wondering how I got here…” framing device, in which Monroe is being taken out of school by a police escort.

Monroe, who goes by Mo, doesn’t hang out much with his peers, preferring to hang out at Zeke’s rundown house to play video games, drink beer and learn pearls of wisdom from Zeke, his pals (one of them played by the rapper Machine Gun Kelly), and his girlfriend Holly (Sydney Sweeney). Mo’s parents (Jon Cryer and Julia Murney) can’t understand why Mo hangs out with the ex-boyfriend of Mo’s older sister Kate (Emily Arlook), but don’t do much to rein him in.

One example of Zeke’s questionable help: When Mo develops a crush on classmate Sophie (Oona Lawrence), Zeke delivers advice on how to woo her and then “ghost” her. And another: When school pal Will (Thomas Barbusca) asks Mo for help acquiring booze so they can get into senior-class parties, Mo goes to Zeke for help — and Zeke does one better, providing marijuana to sell to the suburban kids.

Orley makes space for some funny moments, particularly by Davidson and Barbusca. But the script travels down all the awkward and irresponsible directions you would expect, once the premise is established and plays out to its foreshadowed conclusion — by which time, Davidson’s stoner mannerisms have grown stale. (I would, however, love to hear Davidson and John Mullaney review the movie, the way they did “The Mule.”)

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‘Big Time Adolescence’

★★

Opens Friday, March 13, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City); begins streaming March 20 on Hulu. Rated R for drug content, alcohol use, pervasive language, and sexual references - all involving teens. Running time: 91 minutes.

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This review first appeared on this website on January 28, 2019, when the movie premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'The Times of Bill Cunningham' chronicles the photographer's history but doesn't capture his spirit

If you know Bill Cunningham, it’s likely from his decades of photographing two wildly divergent scenes for The New York Times: The whirl of society galas, and the kaleidoscope of street fashion. You may also know him from the 2010 documentary, sanctioned by The Times, “Bill Cunningham: New York.” 

Those who saw that film may find director Mark Bozek’s new documentary, “The Times of Bill Cunningham,” somewhat redundant. Those who didn’t may find it incomplete.

The heart of the film is an interview a young Bozek conducted with Cunningham in 1994 for a career retrospective at Carnegie Hall. It was supposed to be a 10-minute interview, but Bozek got Cunningham talking for far longer.

Cunningham, who died in 2016 at the age of 87, certainly had an interesting life. As a young man, he worked at Bonwit Teller, the famed fashion retailer, but had a side business designing hats for society ladies and movie stars — even Marilyn Monroe – under the name William J. He lived in the studio apartments at Carnegie Hall in the 1950s, with such neighbors as Marlon Brando, Leonard Bernstein and Paddy Chayevsky. He worked as an assistant to designers Sophie Shonnard and Noni Park, founders of the exclusive fashion house Chez Ninon, whose most famous client was Jacqueline Kennedy.

It was Shonnard and Park who first gave Cunningham a camera, which launched the career that defined him. He shot everything he could, but was particularly fascinated with the goings-on of the New York elite and the fashion choices on Manhattan’s streets. He eventually worked both gigs into two pages every Sunday in the Times, “Society Hours” and “On the Street,” with rich photo collages that showed his view of the city. Vogue editor Anna Wintour once quipped, “We all get dressed for Bill.”

Bozek augments the interview footage with the garrulous, slightly embarrassed Cunningham with a wealth of photos from the late photographer’s private files. There are images of every celebrity you can think of from those decades; he even got a shot in 1978 of the reclusive Greta Garbo, walking along in a nutria coat.

What’s missing, in Bozek’s construction and perfunctory narration (nicely delivered by Sarah Jessica Parker), is a lot of context for how Cunningham’s predilections for fashion translated into his work. The photos make for an interesting slide show, but one wishes for a little more about the man behind the camera.

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‘The Times of Bill Cunningham’

★★1/2

Opened February 14 in select cities; opens Friday, March 13, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for mild language and mature themes. Running time: 74 minutes. 

Review: Satirical 'Greed' is part farce, part Greek tragedy, part political lecture

In the satire “Greed,” writer-director Michael Winterbottom has a lot to say about the inequality of wealth in the world — but his story works better when he shows instead of tells.

At the center of the story is Sir Richard McCreadie (Steve Coogan), aka “Greedy” McCreadie, a British billionaire at the head of a major retail conglomerate. Having just given his top executive and ex-wife Samantha (Isla Fisher) a $1.2 billion dividend on the business — borrowed from the bank, and stashed in a tax haven in Monaco — Sir Richard and his trophy wife Naomi (played by Victoria’s Secret model Shanina Shaik) plan a lavish 60th birthday party on his Greek isle.

The theme of the party is ancient Rome, though Sir Richard’s only familiarity with the era is repeated viewings of “Gladiator.” That doesn’t keep him from commissioning a plywood arena, and the rental of a lion.

While the party planning goes on, with Sir Richard’s assistant Amanda (Dinita Gohil) trying to prod a group of Syrian refugees off the nearby beach, other dramas play out. Daughter Lily (Sophie Cookson) brings her boyfriend Fabian (Ollie Locke), to live out their relationship for a reality-TV crew (directed by former “Doctor Who” companion Pearl Mackie). Younger son Finn (Asa Butterfield) broods in the background, making arch references to Oedipus — the king who murdered his father — to Sir Richard’s unctuous biographer, Nick (David Mitchell). 

Winterbottom — who has worked with Coogan on such varied movies as “The Trip” and its sequels, “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story” and “24 Hour Party People” — has crafted a script that’s as much policy-paper data as jokes. We are told about legal tax evasion, shady bankruptcy dodges, and the average daily wages of a Sri Lankan garment worker (about £4), but without the finesse with which “The Big Short” put across similar information.

“Greed” works, to pinch a phrase from “Wall Street’s” Gordon Gekko, when Winterbottom deftly skewers the childish antics of the McCreadie family, revealing how little they notice the damage they do to the less-wealthy around them. In this way, Coogan is particularly well deployed, his talent for playing arrogant gits taken to its apex.

There’s more than a little of a certain American billionaire (or so he claims) in Coogan’s portrayal of McCreadie. He’s a fake-tanned man obsessed with appearances and ignorant of culture, who knows how to make deals and run up bills but not how to build anything of value. Coogan’s satirical performance is sometimes sharp but often a meat-axe — but, either way, they get the job done.

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‘Greed’

★★★

Opened February 28 in select cities; opens Friday, March 6, at six theaters in Utah: Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan), Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi), Cinemark Jordan Landing (West Jordan), Cinemark Provo 16 and AMC Provo 12. Rated R for pervasive language and brief drug use. Running time: 104 minutes.

Review: 'Ordinary Love' is a marriage story that relies on extraordinary acting

The drama “Ordinary Love” bears, in many ways, the most accurate movie title of all time — because it gently and precisely chronicles a year of crisis in the life of a most ordinary married couple.

Joan (Lesley Manville) and Tom (Liam Neeson) live near Belfast, and have what appears to be be a long and mostly happy marriage. They take walks together to keep fit, they go shopping, and they banter teasingly about who gets to take down the Christmas decorations. There is sadness in their relationship — a daughter, Debbie, who died young, is mentioned throughout the movie, though without much detail.

Then, one night, Joan takes a shower and notices a lump near her left breast. Thus begins an odyssey of doctors and tests, from mammogram to MRI, through surgery and chemotherapy. Joan copes with nausea, fatigue, pain and hair loss — using Tom as her emotional punching bag when her suffering is too great. Tom tries to stay strong for her sake, but sometimes loses his temper over how ineffectual he is in the face of Joan’s cancer.

Playwright Owen McCafferty, making his screenwriting debut, based the story on the experiences he and his wife, Peggy, endured when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The result is painstaking detail, presented with care and empathy by husband-and-wife directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn. 

If there’s a weakness in “Ordinary Love,” it’s that there’s little defining Tom and Joan’s life apart from their cancer fight. It’s up to Neeson and Manville to fill in those blanks through their tender, lived-in performances. Manville, especially, gives a flinty, empathetic performance, finding Joan’s breaking point and the resilience to push past it.

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‘Ordinary Love’

★★★

Opened February 14 in select cities; opens Friday, March 6, at Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for some sexuality/nudity. Running time: 92 minutes.

Review: New take on 'Invisible Man' is a scary, tense thriller with a message for the current moment

An enduring science-fiction classic gets repurposed brilliantly in “The Invisible Man,” an effectively chilling horror movie with a timely theme.

The classic version, first written by H.G. Wells more than a century ago, follows an inventor who develops a way to become invisible — but then goes mad because of it. In this new version, director and screenwriter Leigh Whannell transfers the apparent madness part to another character: Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss), the psychologically abused wife of Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a scientist whose specialty is optics.

The movie begins with Cecilia carrying out a plot to escape from Adrian’s high-security house overlooking the Pacific. She drugs Adrian, then slips away to a road where her sister, Alice (Harriet Dyer), picks her up — but not without Adrian nearly catching her.

Cut ahead two weeks, and Cecelia is still a paranoid wreck, afraid to step on the porch of the house where she’s staying — where her cop friend James (Aldis Hodge) and his daughter, Sydney (Storm Reid), live. Then Harriet returns with the news that Adrian apparently committed suicide. The news is confirmed by Adrian’s brother, and his lawyer, Tom (Michael Dorman), who tells Cecelia she’s inherited a $5 million trust fund from Adrian.

Cecelia, though, still isn’t convinced Adrian is dead — and a series of incidents, small at first but growing in severity, lead her to believe that Adrian is alive, and has mastered a way to make himself invisible. Of course, everyone around her starts to believe she’s gone crazy. Thus does Wells’ classic tale transform into a gripping story that illustrates the importance of believing women.

(Anyone accusing the movie of being “woke” to score brownie points should remember that horror has tackled big issues for decades: The pitfalls of scientific arrogance in “Frankenstein,” nuclear destruction in “Godzilla,” racism in “Get Out,” and so on.)

Whannell has launched two horror franchises, writing the screenplays for “Saw” (2004) and “Insidious” (2011), and making his directing debut on “Insidious: Chapter 3” (2015). He may have a third on his hands here, a better handling of Universal’s famous monsters than the bloated “Dark Universe” series the studio planned, but pulled the plug on after the Tom Cruise vehicle “The Mummy.”

Here, Whannell starts with the nail-biter of an opening of Cecelia’s escape, then performs a slow burn as incidents start happening to Cecelia — and she must fight to keep her sanity when everyone else is doubting it. Sometimes the effects are small and subtle, but they build to some striking set pieces. (Once again, the trailer gives away more than it should.)

None of Whannell’s clever moves would hold together, though, without Moss at the center. It becomes almost repetitive to talk about how good an actor Moss is — examples like “Mad Men” and “Her Smell” are everywhere — but it’s undeniable. Moss finds in Cecelia both a vulnerable victim and a fed-up fighter who can outfight and outthink her unseen tormentor, and her performance turns “The Invisible Man” into something deeper than a standard horror movie.

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‘The Invisible Man’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some strong blood violence, and language. Running time: 124 minutes.

Review: 'Once Were Brothers' gives Robbie Robertson the final word on the history of The Band

The documentary “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band” is the story of a rock ’n’ roll survivor — quite literally, because Robertson is still around when most of the rest of his landmark ‘60s-‘70s rock group, The Band, is gone, and therefore Robertson gets the last word.

It’s a rollicking story, stretching from Robertson’s Canadian and First Nations roots to the early days of rockabilly, from a landmark gig backing Bob Dylan to creating one of the most beloved music groups — the pioneers of what now we call Americana rock.

Robertson is a major part of that story, as lead guitarist and principal songwriter. The fact that bandmates Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Levon Helm are dead — and keyboardist Garth Hudson, living his old age in Woodstock, N.Y., isn’t interviewed here — means Robertson, by default, tells the story his way.

As a guitar-loving teen in Toronto, Robertson’s band got a chance to open for Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, the most amazing rockabilly band Robertson had ever heard of. Robertson says he was most impressed with the Hawks’ rapid-fire drummer, Levon Helm. When Robertson got a chance to audition for Hawkins’ band, he high-tailed it to Arkansas and got the job. Robertson and Helm became instant best friends, handling arrangements for Hawkins’ songs and ultimately filling the band with Robertson’s Canadian friends: Hudson, Danko and Manuel.

That backup band became a band of their own, and on an early recording session ran into Bob Dylan. They seemed like an odd pairing — the folksinger and the rockabilly kids — but they recognized great talent in each other. When Dylan decided to “go electric,” and cross over from folk to rock, the quintet became his backup band, taking the boos and thrown bottles at every tour stop.

Finally, these five friends started recording in their own right, in a homemade studio in an ugly pink house they bought in Woodstock, N.Y., at the urging of Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman. Those sessions formed the backbone of “Music From Big Pink,” The Band’s landmark first album.

Director Daniel Roher collects new interviews from Robertson as well as a lot of friends — among them Hawkins, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Taj Mahal, Peter Gabriel, Jann Wenner, David Geffen and Martin Scorsese (who directed The Band’s famous 1978 concert film “The Last Waltz,” and is executive producer here). Roher also collects a wealth of archival film and photos, as well as old interviews from the now-deceased bandmates and George Harrison.

Still, it feels like something’s missing, and that’s any rebuttal to Robertson’s version of the history of The Band. Robertson talks briefly about the animosity Helm harbored for Robertson after the band’s demise, which the film argues was largely attributable to heroin use by Helm, Manuel and Danko — who aren’t able to defend themselves or talk about their lives after “The Last Waltz.” (For example, Helm had a successful movie career, debuting as Loretta Lynn’s father in “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”)

For all its flaws, though, “Once Were Brothers” transports the viewer back to the days of rock’s beginnings, with a band that had a ringside seat for so much of the genre’s history — as well as creating bits of that history, with songs like “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” songs that feel fresh and ancient every time you hear them.

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‘Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band’

★★★

Opened Friday, February 21, in select cities; opens Friday, February 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some language and drug references. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: Kristen Stewart shines in 'Seberg,' a biography that soft-pedals the FBI's harassment of the '60s star

It makes perfect sense that Kristen Stewart would be drawn to a project like “Seberg,” a look at the most tumultuous years of actress Jean Seberg’s career — and Stewart is by far the best thing in this luxuriously shot and deeply flawed biography.

Stewart and Seberg have a lot in common: Two American starlets known for short hair, gamine beauty, a rebellious streak, and splitting time between making Hollywood pabulum and artistically challenging French films. And Stewart channels her own mystique into Seberg’s, capturing the soul of a fellow actor wanting to use her fame to make a statement.

The movie begins in 1968, when Seberg — world famous as “the girl in the International Herald Tribune shirt” in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” — leaves Paris to audition in Hollywood for a big-budget musical. (The title isn’t spoken, but it’s “Paint Your Wagon,” in which Seberg starred with Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood.) She leaves behind her husband, the filmmaker Romain Gary (Yvan Attal), and their son.

On the plane, Seberg encounters a black activist, Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie), who’s associated with the Black Panther Party. On the tarmac in Los Angeles, Seberg joins an impromptu Black Panther rally, raising her fist in solidarity in front of newspaper photographers. There’s someone else at the airport with a camera: Jack Solomon (played by Jack O’Connell), a rookie FBI agent performing surveillance on the Panthers.

Solomon’s boss in the FBI’s L.A. office, Frank Ellroy (Colm Meaney), gets orders all the way from J. Edgar Hoover to make Seberg a target of investigation. Solomon and a veteran agent (Vince Vaughn) stake out her house, and eventually plant microphones in every room — particularly the bedroom. (“Hoover likes to hear the bedsprings,” another agent says.) The goal is to “neutralize” Seberg as a symbol, so she can’t use her fame and wealth to further political causes Hoover doesn’t like.

The FBI’s abhorrent tactics to silence American citizens are well documented (type “COINTELPRO” into your favorite search engine, if you trust it), and screenwriters Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, if anything, underplay the horrors Seberg and others suffered. What’s infuriating here is that Solomon, a composite character, is depicted as a reluctant smear artist, wrestling with his conscience — and prodded by his wife, Linette (Margaret Qualley) — to feel guilty about what the FBI did to her. The script, and director Benedict Andrews, is letting the FBI off too easily.

When the movie works, it’s because of Stewart’s fearless, flawless performance. (Also give credit to cinematographer Rachel Morrison, who captures the ‘60s Hollywood setting gorgeously.)

Stewart channels Seberg’s potent mix of naivety, stubbornness and what these days we would call white-girl privilege as she defiantly backs Jamal’s causes — and, for a time, shares his bed — in the face of warnings that her reputation and career will be ruined. Stewart also has a handle on the sensitive soul, the one scarred physically and emotionally by Otto Preminger (her director on “Joan of Arc”) and other men, that Seberg was. It’s a powerful portrayal trapped in an unworthy movie.

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‘Seberg’

★★1/2

Opened December 13, 2019, in select cities; opens Friday, February 28, at several theaters in Utah. Rated R for language, sexual content/nudity and some drug use. Running time: 102 minutes.