Review: 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie' is a love-filled LGBTQ musical about a boy who wants to hit the prom in drag.

An exuberant blend of industrial grit and fantasy glitter, the musical “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” is a bouncy, inclusive high school musical loaded with humor and heart.

It’s also a delightful introduction to Max Harwood, a winning young actor in the title role of Jamie New, a 16-year-old gay teen living in Sheffield, England. Jamie’s tough enough to stand up to his class bully, Dean (Samuel Bottomley), but sensitive enough to care that his father (Ralph Ineson) is a no-show at his 16th birthday party. Jamie’s parents have divorced, and Mum (Sarah Lancashire) covers up the fact that Dad, who has remarried, is a homophobe who wants nothing to do with his son.

At his birthday party, Jamie receives the gift he’s been saving up for: A dazzling pair of glittering red heels. Walking in those towering shoes gives Jamie confidence to pursue his dream of being a drag performer — a job that his 11th grade careers teacher, Miss Hedge (Sharon Horgan), dismisses as unrealistic. Jamie tells his only school friend, Pritti (Lauren Patel), a nerdy Muslim girl who gets mocked for her hijab, that he plans to unveil his drag persona at his school’s prom.

Jamie is eager to be a drag queen, but needs to learn how to be one. He finds Sheffield’s most drag-friendly shop, House of Loco — whose proprietor, Hugo Battersby (Richard E. Grant), recounts his days as Miss Loco Chanelle, the toast of Sheffield’s ‘80s club scene. A series of flashbacks, framed as Hugo’s VHS memories, show how the ‘80s queens stood up to police raids and survived the AIDS epidemic. (Young Loco is played by John McCrea, who played Jamie in the original London stage production.)

Jonathan Butterell, who directed the London stage production, proves himself a smart choice to direct the film, his first feature. Butterell captures the gray dinginess of working-class Sheffield, and offsets it with flashes of theatrical sparkle and razzle-dazzle that matches Jamie’s rainbow-hued take on his world. He also balances the comedy of Jamie’s school life with the dramatic arcs of the teen’s relationships with both of his parents.

With powerful supporting work by Patel and Grant, the real find of “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” is Harwood, who makes a stellar debut. Harwood shows Jamie as eternally optimistic, seeking glamour and paternal approval in equal measure, and his winning performance carries the movie on his slender shoulders. 

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‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’

★★★1/2

Available starting Friday, September 17, for streaming on Prime video. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, strong language, and suggestive material. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: Clint Eastwood, at 91, still delivers in "Cry Macho," an odd movie that aims to dismantle movie tropes about masculinity

Confession time: I never saw Clint Eastwood’s 2018 drama “The Mule,” in which Eastwood directed and starred as an elderly man who became a drug-runner for Mexican cartels — and my knowledge of “The Mule” comes solely from the review comedians John Mulaney and Pete Davidson gave it on  “Saturday Night Live,” where they marveled at “the most bananas movie” ever made.

With that much knowledge, I feel fairly safe in declaring Eastwood’s newest movie, “Cry Macho,” a somewhat tamer but still offbeat movie, as something of a spiritual sequel to “The Mule” — in that it’s another story of an old man crossing into Mexico to bring something back and find some personal redemption along the way.

Eastwood plays Mike Milo, who long ago was a rodeo star, until a bronco landed on him and broke his back. Years later — 1979, to be exact — he’s working as a Texas horse trainer, until his boss, Howard (Dwight Yoakam), fires him for drunkenness and unreliability.

A year later, Howard returns to Mike’s life, with a job offer: He wants Mike to cross the border, drive to Mexico City, and retrieve Howard’s 13-year-old son, Rafa (Eduardo Minett), from the clutches of his Howard’s ex-wife, Leta (Fernanda Urrejola), who is abusing Rafa — at least, that’s the way Howard tells it.

When Mike gets to Mexico City, and Leta’s mansion, he finds the situation is more complicated. Leta, who lives in a mansion with his bodyguard, has no idea where Rafa is, but suspects he may be trying to compete in cockfighting. Sure enough, Mike finds Rafa in the poor part of town, preparing to have his rooster — called Macho, which Rafa says means “strength” — battle in a cockfight.

After dodging a police raid, Mike takes the reluctant Rafa under his wing. This is where the bulk of the script — credited by Nick Schenk (who wrote “The Mule”) and N. Richard Nash, on whose 1975 novel the film is based — sets up shop. Mike, Rafa and Macho hit the road toward the Texas border. Sometimes they take the back roads, to avoid Leta’s bodyguards and the Federales she’s called in to find Rafa. For awhile, they hole up in a small town, where Mike teaches Rafa about training horses, and about how the concept of being “macho” is a limited view of masculinity. Also in this town, Mike — whose wife and son died years earlier — kicks up a little romance with Marta (Natalia Traven), a widow who runs the cantina and looks after her four granddaughters.

So the story is a little out there, and some of the plot points make no sense when held up to scrutiny, but there’s something charming and tender in Eastwood’s telling of it. At 91, Eastwood doesn’t have to prove anything to anybody, and he can make any shaggy dog story he wants, and if he wants to direct himself into a romance at his age, who’s going to stop him.

Eastwood’s direction is smooth and economical, almost never a wasted moment or shot — and cinematographer Ben Davis (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” “Captain Marvel”) brings a calm beauty to the film. The weakness may be in the script, which takes a few pedestrian shortcuts as it imparts its lessons about masculinity and its limitations.

Eastwood gives a solid performance in “Cry Macho,” still charismatic even when he’s slightly hunched over by his age. He seems to understand that the myth of the West probably dies with Mike — but until that happens, he’s willing to impart what he knows to future generations.

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‘Cry Macho’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 17, in theaters, and streaming on HBO Max. Rated PG-13 for language and thematic elements. Running time: 104 minutes.

Review: Documentary 'My Name Is Pauli Murray' gives proper credit to an unsung hero of the civil rights movement

Unless you’re well versed in American legal theory or LGBTQ history, you may not know who Pauli Murray — a situation the thoughtful and informative documentary “My Name Is Pauli Murray” works to rectify.

Murray was an activist for civil rights and women’s rights, and an icon for LGBTQ people. At different points in her life, she was a pioneering student, a poet, a lawyer, an unsung legal scholar, an author, a professor and Episcopal minister.

Directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West, who profiled the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “RBG,” chronicle Murray’s birth in Baltimore and upbringing in Durham, N.C., where she felt the sting of racism firsthand. The directors often point out moments in Murray’s life where she fought battles long before others; for example, she and a friend were arrested for sitting in the whites-only section of a segregated bus, in 1940 — 15 years before Rosa Parks famously did the same. (Murray and the friend were outmaneuvered by the prosecution, who dropped the segregation charge that she wanted to fight as unconstitutional, and merely charged her with disturbing the peace.)

In law school, at Howard University in 1942, Murray wrote a paper arguing that segregation violated both the 13th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Though the paper was disputed by some of her professors, it was filed away — and became a core argument when the NAACP’s legal counsel, Thurgood Marshall, argued before the Supreme Court in the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education. But, for years, Murray was not told of her contribution for decades.

Another of Murray’s arguments, this one about discrimination by sex, was taken up by Ginsburg when she worked on the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. (Ginsburg cited Murray by name in her amicus brief in the precedent-setting 1971 case Reed v. Reed.) Cohen and West present an outtake from “RBG,” in which Ginsburg praises the strength of Murray’s legal mind, and the clip takes on the air of a holy relic.

The film also takes pains to document Murray’s sexual identity, something she had to hide from the world. Murray preferred trousers over skirts, and begged doctors to prescribe hormones because she was convinced she was a man born in a woman’s body. She also had a long, loving relationship with Irene Barlow — once an office manager at a law firm where Murray worked — that lasted nearly a quarter-century. By today’s measure, according to her biographers, Murray likely would have identified as transgender.

Cohen and West rely on a wealth of Murray’s writings, including legal briefs, poetry and personal letters that depict her struggles with depression. They also interview a wealth of scholars who detail Murray’s contributions to legal thinking, and provide the context for how those lessons apply today. Those voices turn “My Name Is Pauli Murray” into a dynamic history lesson, and an introduction to a hero for civil rights for whom recognition is long overdue.

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‘My Name Is Pauli Murray’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 17, at Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy) and Megaplex at The District (South Jordan); also streaming on Prime video starting October 1. Rated PG-13 for disturbing/violent images and thematic elements. Running time: 91 minutes.

Review: 'The Card Counter' is a sly and absorbing character study of a gambler on the brink.

Like the diamond-sharp movies he used to write for Martin Scorsese — a Murderer’s Row of films that includes “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” — Paul Schrader creates in his new film, “The Card Counter,” a fascinating study of a loner whose past and present collide.

Oscar Isaac stars as the title character, who has taken the alias William Tell as he travels from casino to casino across the country. He can keep track of what kinds of cards have been played at the blackjack table, which allows him to win consistently. He usually leaves the table before he wins too much, before casino security can get wise and throw him out. Bill, as he sometimes is known, does catch the attention of La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), a pro gamer who keeps a stable of card players, finding them investors who will stake them in big tournaments.

Schrader, who wrote and directed, reveals early on that Bill learned card counting in prison. Soon, Schrader also reveals the prison was in Leavenworth, Kan., and Bill’s crime was his involvement in the torture and humiliation of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The ones in the pictures, Bill remarks in the running narration, got prison time; their superiors, and their superiors’ superiors, did not.

In the convention center of one casino, Bill walks into a law enforcement conference and sits in on a lecture by a Maj. John Gordo (Willem Dafoe). A flashback shows us that Gordo was a civilian contractor in Iraq, who ordered around Bill and other men to commit the atrocities that led to Bill’s incarceration.

Back in the present, Bill also notices a young man looking very intently at Gordo. The man introduces himself as Cirk — “‘Kirk’ with a ‘C’,” he tells Bill. Cirk explains to Bill that Gordo also commanded Cirk’s father during the Iraq War, and that Cirk blames Gordo for his dad’s PTSD and suicide. Cirk tells Bill he has a plan to kidnap, torture and kill Gordo.

Bill then does something uncharacteristic for him: He gets involved. Bill takes Cirk under his wing, bringing him along on the road, as he takes up La Linda’s offer to get into the lucrative World Series of Poker, which could end with a run in Vegas.

As he did in his last film, “First Reformed,” Schrader creates a self-contained little world in which the main character — Isaac’s guilt-stricken gambler here, Ethan Hawke’s haunted priest there — wrestles with ghosts from his past while being prodded to take action in the present. If Bill is a bit enigmatic, that’s to be expected, given the nature of card playing, and of the size of the demons he’s facing.

Isaac leads a solid ensemble cast with under-the-radar intensity, conveying through small gestures and Schrader’s economical dialogue Bill’s desire to live quietly and make small jackpots where he can — while also seeing this kid as a chance to atone for past mistakes. Isaac’s performance is one of the best you’ll see all year, one that will be admired for its honesty and quiet menace.

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‘The Card Counter’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 10, in select theaters. Rated R for some disturbing violence, graphic nudity, language and brief sexuality. Running time: 109 minutes.

Review: 'The Lost Leonardo' is a documentary with a lot to say about art, commerce, love and loss.

The engrossing documentary “The Lost Leonardo” is part art critique, part industry tell-all, with a good amount of crime caper and political intrigue thrown in for good measure.

The story starts with a painting found in New Orleans by Alexander Parish, who is what the art world calls a “sleeper hunter” — someone who finds works that may be more valuable than advertised. Parish talks to an art dealer, Robert Simon, and together they buy the work for $1,175. Simon thinks it may date back to the Renaissance, perhaps to a student of Leonardo da Vinci, or someone who tried to copy the master’s work.

The painting, called “Salvator Mundi” (“Savior of the World”), depicts Jesus, in a Renaissance-era tunic, holiding his right hand up in an apparent sign of blessing. In his left hand, he holds a crystal ball. There’s plenty of damage and past attempts at “restoration,” so they take it to Dianne Modestini, a well-known art restorer.

Modestini starts working on the painting, thinking it’s from someone trying to emulate Leonardo’s style. Then she notices two things. One is that Jesus’ thumb seems to have been painted twice, an indication the artist tried it one way and changed his mind — something someone making a copy wouldn’t do. The other is an almost imperceptible line on Jesus’ lip, a line Modestini has only seen in one other place: On the face of the “Mona Lisa.” 

Modestini is convinced this work is an original work of Leonardo da Vinci. Soon, Leonardo experts are called in, and they seem to agree — though, in interviews now, some are more sure of their opinions than others.

What follows, as Danish documentarian Andreas Koefoed reveals, is a yarn that goes from London’s National Gallery to the shadowy system of so-called “freeport” tax havens, from the world’s most prestigious auction houses to The Louvre. The cast of characters include a profiteering Swiss businessman, an angry Russian oligarch, an FBI agent, and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the value of the painting jumps into the millions, while observers and critics — the most outspoken being Jerry Saltz of New York magazine — decry the whole thing as an expensive hoax.

Koefoed and his co-writers, Andreas Dalsgaard and Christian Kirk Muff, compile a wealth of interviews with several of the principals, as well as investigative journalists across Europe. (Notably, they didn’t get any comment from the National Gallery, The Louvre, the auction houses Sotheby’s or Christie’s, or the Saudi Ministry of Culture — all key players.) They present this information with the pace of a good heist thriller, where what’s being stolen is reputation, credibility and a piece of history.

The lesson of “The Lost Leonardo” is that a painting isn’t just a painting — especially when it is reputedly created by the greatest artist to ever live, and the names and bank accounts of too many people depend on the world believing the story they’ve staked everything on is true.

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‘The Lost Leonardo’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 10, in select theaters. Rated PG-13 for nude art images. Running time: 96 minutes.

Review: Caper comedy 'Queenpins' tries to make a farce out of crime, but can't deliver the laughs

The most criminal thing about the overly manic and oddly humor-free caper comedy “Queenpins” is the way it squanders the comic talents of so many actors with so little payoff.

“inspired by true events,” as the opening title card promises, “Queenpins” starts with two neighbors in a Phoenix, Ariz., suburb. Connie Kaminski (Kristen Bell) is a retired Olympic gold-medal race-walker whose efforts to conceive a child has left her and her husband, IRS auditor Rick (Joel McHale), in debt and barely speaking to each other. JoJo Johnson (Kirby Howell-Baptiste, once Bell’s castmate on “The Good Place”) is a would-be YouTube influencer who has signed up for a multi-level marketing scheme to get over the loss to her credit caused by an identity thief.

Connie’s penchant for clipping coupons proves to be the inspiration for their plan. They figure out that major corporations print their coupons for free stuff in Mexico, just over the border. So they meet a couple who works in the Mexican coupon printing plant, and arrange to have the presses’ overage shipped to them in Phoenix — and they can sell those coupons online to bargain hunters.

A theme in the script — by the husband-and-wife team of Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, who also directed — is that Connie and JoJo don’t immediately realize how much they don’t know about pulling off a fraud scheme like this. They learn fast, thanks largely to a cyber-hacker (played by the pop singer Bebe Rexha) who shows them how to set up dummy corporations and other tricks to hide their ill-gotten cash.

Meanwhile, the excess number of coupons gets the attention of the corporations, who complain to Ken Miller (Paul Walter Hauser, from “I, Tonya” and “Cruella”), the loss prevention officer for a supermarket chain. Ken, who lives in Salt Lake City, tries to get the local FBI field office interested, but the case gets shuffled around the bureaucracy — until it lands with the U.S. Postal Service, who send a dogged postal inspector, Simon Kilmurray (Vince Vaughn), to investigate.

Overplotted and underwritten, “Queenpins” stakes most of its comic hopes on some less-than-funny scenes, like Connie and JoJo figuring out how to spend their money, or watching Ken nearly ruin Simon’s stakeout with excessive bowel movements — a gag from which even Hauser, a reliably funny actor, can’t squeeze any laughs.

The only bright spot is Vaughn, who hits comic beats no one else in the movie seems to hear. Watching Vaughn play Simon as a no-nonsense lawman with a hidden poetic streak suggests the smarter, funnier movie “Queenpins’ could have been.

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‘Queenpins’

★1/2

Opens Friday, September 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout. Running time: 110 minutes.

Review: Documentary 'The Alpinist' is hemmed in by a subject who couldn't care less about being in a movie

It’s weird to watch a documentary whose subject so casually and obliviously undercuts the movie being made about him — which is what climber Marc-André Leclerc does throughout “The Alpinist.”

Leclerc is introduced as a free-spirited rock climber, someone who goes up the sides of seemingly unscalable rock faces for the sheer pleasure of doing it. It speaks volumes that the first voice you hear in the film is Alex Honnold — whose exploits up El Capitan were chronicled in “Free Solo” — admiringly describes Leclerc as “so crazy.”

The reason for Honnold’s admiration and astonishment is that Leclerc doesn’t just climb big rocks. He also likes to get up where it’s cold, and climb both ice formations and snowbanks. Such climbs, the experts in the film tell us, are even trickier than Honnold’s rope-free rock climbing, because rocks don’t go anywhere, and ice and snow often do.

When directors Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen (who are co-founders of the Reel Rock Film Tour, a traveling program beloved by adventure-sports fans) get Leclerc in front of a camera, it’s in Squamish, British Columbia, which has a boisterous climber community that Leclerc joined when he left high school. He’s happy to have the crew follow him as he climbs mountains he’s already climbed,  and hangs out with his girlfriend, climber Brette Harrington. But it’s clear he’s climbing for the adventure and exhilaration, not for fame or sponsorships or less-lofty reasons.

At one point, Leclerc tells the filmmakers his one rule for participating: No film crew allowed when he’s making his first attempt up a rock. He wants the experience of that solo climb to be pure and solitary, and having anybody along for the ride — whether they’re helping him or just watching — distracts from that perfect experience.

That’s great for Leclerc’s sense of adventure, but it’s a death sentence for an interesting, authentic documentary. How interested should we, the audience, be that Mortimer (who narrates the film) and Rosen are left with footage of Leclerc’s second climbs up the rocks, when he re-creates the original moment for the benefit of the cameras?

Mortimer and Rosen also take some liberties with the timeline. The most notable instance is when the filmmakers make Leclerc’s climb up Torre Egger — a spindly tower of rock and ice in Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America — the climax of the film, even though it happened before other climbs depicted earlier in the film.

Even with those faults, “The Alpinist” conveys the joy of undiluted adventure Leclerc would get from tackling an ascent for the first time, while also making quite real the dangers inherent in the sport — no matter what the GoPro-wearing thrill seekers will tell you as they make the videos they hope will go viral. Leclerc, it’s clear, never cared about that, which makes a movie about him more compelling and enigmatic.

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‘The Alpinist’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 10, in select theaters. Rated PG-13 for some strong language and brief drug content. Running time: 92 minutes.

Review: New 'Cinderella,' with Camila Cabello, is a mash-up musical that has its moments and its mouse droppings

The question that writer-director Kay Cannon’s “Cinderella” asks often is “Does the world need another musical version of ‘Cinderella’?,” and the answer, far too often, is “not really, but let’s make the most of what we have.”

No, this musical adaptation of the fairy tale doesn’t have the bounce of the Rodgers and Hammerstein version or the memorable tunes of Disney’s classic. Cannon, who wrote the “Pitch Perfect” trilogy and directed the teen sex romp “Blockers,” combines the jukebox mash-up sensibilities of the first with the playful feminism of both of her previous works. Unfortunately, the parts don’t always combine into a satisfying whole.

Pop singer Camila Cabello makes her movie debut as Ella, the orphaned beauty who cooks and cleans for her imperious stepmother, Vivian (Idina Menzel), and two bratty stepsisters (Maddie Baillio and Charlotte Spencer). Ella, dubbed Cinderella because of the soot that sometimes lands on her pretty face, has a dream — and it’s not to land in the arms of Prince Charming. No, Ella is a dress designer, and wants to make and sell her creations in town.

Unfortunately, the town is in a tradition-laden kingdom, where women aren’t allowed to own businesses or do much of anything other than marry well and be silent. That’s why King Rowan (Pierce Brosnan) ignores the advice of his wife, Queen Beatrice (Minnie Driver), in his zeal to see his playboy son, Prince Robert (Nicholas Galitzine), marry — preferably a princess in a neighboring kingdom, so Rowan can acquire more land. By focusing on Robert, though, the king ignores his daughter, Princess Gwen (Tallulah Greive), who’s actually much smarter and more prepared to rule than Robert is on his best day.

So there’s the set-up, and it’s only a matter of time before Ella and Robert are dancing at the royal ball. That, however, turns out to be the least interesting part of the story — because Ella figures out that being royalty is as much of a cage, gilded though it may be, as Vivian’s basement is.

Except for two original numbers — Ella’s wish song, “Million to One,” which Cabello nails with authority; and Vivian’s sympathy-for-the-villain number “Dream Girl” — the songs are taken from well-known pop tunes. Some of the mash-ups are clever; the opener of the townsfolk performing Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” as Ella sings Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be” is a good start, but the best is at the prince’s ball, when the prowling women sing Salt-n-Pepa’s “Whatta Man” and a nervous Robert counters with the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”

In the numbers that aren’t medleys, the results are erratic. Galitzine does an impressive job on Queen’s “Somebody to Love,” for example. But having Menzel’s Vivian explain the importance of marrying rich by singing Madonna’s “Material Girl” is a misfire — in large part because the song is unworthy of Menzel’s vocal brilliance. (Also, doesn’t Cannon know not to let Pierce Brosnan sing? Didn’t “Mamma Mia!” teach us anything?)

Billy Porter gives a perfectly hilarious take on the fairy godmother character — dubbed Fab G — in a too-brief performance that includes the movie’s funniest line: When Ella asks if Fab G can use magic to make the glass slippers more comfortable, Fab G replies, haughtily, “Women’s shoes are what they are. Even magic has its limits.”

On the opposite end of the humor spectrum is James Corden, dreadfully hammy in comic relief as one of the three mice who are turned into Cinderella’s footmen. The other two are played by comedians James Acaster and Romesh Anganathan, though the odds that you’ll remember them over Corden’s overwrought scenery chewing are highly unlikely.

Even with those flaws, and what seems to be a production budget taken from the change in couch cushions, there are some charms to “Cinderella.” Most of them are provided by Cabello, who has strong pipes and a bubbly personality. She makes you believe this princess has more on her mind than what time she’s going to leave the ball.

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‘Cinderella’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 3, in some theaters, and streaming on Prime video. Rated PG for suggestive material and language. Running time: 115 minutes.