Review: 'The Last Duel' examines 'truth' three ways, in a medieval tale of power and pride

Two of director Ridley Scott’s trademarks — depicting muscular battles between men, and spotlighting strong female characters — are evident in “The Last Duel,” a surprisingly timely tale of power dynamics in 14th century France.

“Based on true events,” as the opening title card tells us, “The Last Duel” digs into a years-in-the-making feud between a French nobleman, Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) and his squire, Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) — who, Scott shows us at the outset, are about to joust and fight to the death.

The movie then pulls back to tell the history that led to that moment, Actually, three histories, because what we’re shown are three versions of the tale, from three vantage points.

First, the movie shows us de Carrouges’ version of events, in which he’s depicted as a fierce soldier, loyal to young King Charles VI (Alex Lawther) and his local lordship, Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck). De Carrouges needs money to maintain his status, so he does two things: Goes off to fight in King Charles’ wars, and marries Lady Marguerite (Jodie Comer) for her dowry, including a prime piece of land.

That stretch of land becomes the crux of a legal battle, when Marguerite’s father (Nathaniel Parker) is forced to renege on his deal with de Carrouges, and gives it instead to Count Pierre, who then deeds it to Le Gris. Pierre also gives Le Gris a command de Carrouges thought he should get by birthright. And, in a final indignity, Marguerite reports to her husband that while he was away, Le Gris came to the castle and raped her.

The second chapter tells these events from Le Gris’ point of view. There are some differences, such as Le Gris saving de Carrouges’ life in battle, rather than the other way around. We also see Le Gris’ friendship with Pierre, which is largely based on their shared talents for drinking heavily and bedding multiple women.

But Le Gris’ version of the story also includes him raping Marguerite. In his telling, though, it’s because he had fallen hopelessly in love with her — and, according to him, she secretly enjoyed it.

The movie’s third chapter is the most telling viewpoint of all: Lady Marguerite’s.

That third act is largely written by Nicole Holofcener (“Enough Said,” “The Land of Steady Habits”), who was brought aboard by Damon and Affleck (their first shared screenplay since “Good Will Hunting” won them an Oscar) to provide Marguerite’s voice. It’s a strong voice, unwavering when the male powers that be suggest she’s lying about the rape, and incredulous when someone notes that rape then wasn’t a crime against the woman — but a theft of the husband’s property.

Scott has assembled a dynamic cast here. Damon depicts de Carrouges’ inflexible code of honor, and his frustration that being a good soldier isn’t as profitable as Le Gris’ ability to suck up to Pierre. Driver, perhaps the most fascinating movie star of the moment, plays Le Gris as a dashing hero and an abusive cad, depending on whose version of history is being told. In supporting roles, Affleck and Lawther revel in parts that play up the giddy delights of unchecked power. 

It’s not until the back half of “The Last Duel” that the true star emerges, and that’s Comer. She’s already proven her scene-stealing prowess in “Free Guy” and BBC America’s “Killing Eve.” Here, she channels the subsumed rage of a woman who defies convention — and the advice of her mother-in-law (Harriet Walter) — that tells her to shut up and accept her fate, and the courage to speak honestly  no matter the cost.

That cost is shown in the grand finale, the duel between de Carrouges and Le Gris, based on the ancient law of combat as justice — on the theory that God will allow the party who’s telling the truth to win the battle. Scott, who has tackled similar battle sequences in “The Duellists” and “Gladiator,” is in his element here.

But, with Comer’s Lady Marguerite, Scott is also presenting a strong, complex female character — something he’s done with Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in “Alien” as well as Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in “Thelma and Louise.” “The Last Duel” satisfies both dynamics from Scott’s long career, and allows the master to deliver a thrilling late-career masterwork.

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‘The Last Duel’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong violence including sexual assault, sexual content, some graphic nudity, and language. Running time: 152 minutes.

Review: 'Bergman Island' captures with heartbreaking detail the ups and downs of creativity and inspiration

Suffering, of the romantic and artistic varieties, plays out beautifully in Mia Hansen-Løve’s delicately droll “Bergman Island,” set in the perfect place for such painful introspection: Fårö Island.

Fårö is the place that the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman called home, and where he shot some his most famous films. It’s also, as Hansen-Løve depicts it, a tourist haven for introspective cinemaphiles who want to overdose on Bergman’s brand of Scandinavian melancholy. There’s even a “Bergman Week” there every June, where film lovers attend panels and tour the sites where Bergman worked.

Here, it’s where married screenwriters Tony (Tim Roth) and Chris (Vicky Krieps, from “Phantom Thread” and “Old”) have come for a week’s escape from parental duties — their daughter is staying with Chris’ mom — so they can write their next scripts. They are set up in one of Bergman’s former homes, where the caretaker cheerfully tells them the master bedroom is where Bergman filmed “Scenes From a Marriage,” “the film that made thousands of people divorce.” Tony and Chris opt to sleep in the smaller second bedroom.

Tony is a Hollywood director, specializing in dark psychological horror thrillers, one of which is screening during the weeklong Bergman festival. Chris, who is less sure of her writing skills, who remarks that “movies can be terribly sad, tough, violent — but in the end, they do you good,” starts working at a desk in the small windmill near the main house.

As Tony and Chris go looking around the island and encountering other Bergman-heads, Hansen-Løve inserts some subtle commentary about the ups and downs of fandom. Bergman may have been one of the greatest filmmakers to have lived, but his fans are sometimes no better than any other fandoms, Trekkies of the bleak emotional wastelands. Some of the locals, our couple soon learns, resent the foreigners descending on their town, while others — like Hampus (Hampus Nordenson), who shows Chris the Bergman-centric spots the tour buses don’t show — embrace the town’s connection to this legendary filmmaker.

Well into the film, Chris is ready to tell Tony about the story she’s writing. As she does, we see the story play out, with Mia Wasikowska (“Crimson Peak”) and Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie in the lead roles. Chris’ movie, like this one, is set on Fårö Island — and sometimes the line between stories gets a little fuzzy.

Hansen-Løve — known for such films as the ‘90s club-scene drama “Eden” and the dysfunctional family story “Father of My Children” — crystallizes the experience of writing, of taking the material floating around them and assembling that inspiration into something poignant, moving and universal. This would seem to ripe for a dark, brooding film worthy of Bergman himself, but instead Hansen-Løve fashions something light and breezy, while still packing an emotional wallop.

What brings “Bergman Island” into focus are the twinned performances of Krieps and Wasikowska. who only share one brief scene but also share the movie’s beating heart. They embody the storyteller and the story being told, and how the wall between the two is thin and crumbling when the story captures the viewer’s imagination as thoroughly as this one does.

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‘Bergman Island’

★★★★

Opens Friday, October 15, in select theaters. Rated R for some sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: Todd Haynes makes a 'Velvet Underground' documentary as layered and artful as the band's songs — and as hard as to connect with

The director Todd Haynes has made, in “The Velvet Underground,” the most appropriate documentary possible for the influential avant-garde rock band: An eclectic, challenging and artful movie that a lot of people may not get.

There are moments that Haynes, the director of such narrative gems as “Carol” and “Velvet Goldmine,” absolutely floors us with his visual daring. There’s a moment, early in the film, where several people try to describe the Velvet Underground’s front man, Lou Reed — while, in a split screen, an unbroken three-minute take of Reed’s face runs alongside. That’s followed by a similar three-minute image of Reed’s collaborator, the Welsh composer John Cale, while people talk about what he brought to the band.

After that, Haynes sets the scene for the world in which the Velvets were to enter. Starting with the conformity of the 1950s and into the free-spirited ‘60s, Haynes uses archival footage and some dynamic interviews to introduce viewers to the crazy art scene of ‘60s New York. The ringmaster of the biggest gathering spot was Andy Warhol, who opened up The Factory, a combination of art studio and hangout spot. Warhol encouraged Reed and Cale to start performing, and with drummer Maureen Tucker and guitarist Sterling Morrison, they became The Factory’s in-house band.

Cale brought the musicianship, as a classically trained violist who morphed into an experimental composer who once (as it’s described in a clip from the old game show “I’ve Got a Secret”) performed an 18-hour concert. Reed brought the lyrics, dark poetry gleaned from his experiences with heroin and the characters he knew on the New York streets.

When it came time to record an album, though, Warhol decided the band needed something more. That something was a German singer-songwriter with an ethereal voice, who went by the name Nico. Reed and Cale fought over how to incorporate Nico into the band’s musical dynamic — and the result was a now-legendary album, “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” whose banana-peel cover Warhol designed.

More music, and more fights, followed — most of them about who was in control of the band’s direction. Ultimately, Reed won that fight, because Cale was out. The band’s commercial success grew — they had their most recognizable hit, “Sweet Jane,” after Cale’s departure — but the art-rock spark wasn’t as bright and as brash as before.

Haynes’ documentary is lively and thorough, with plenty of interviews from people who were on the scene — including the experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas (who died in 2019) as well as Warhol devotees Mary Woronov (who became an actress, in such cult classics as “Eating Raoul”) and Amy Taubin (who became a prominent film critic, with whom I’ve stood in line at several Sundance Film Festival screenings).

Haynes’ film is also quite dense, visually and sonically, which feels proper when trying to get a viewer close to the sensory experience of the band’s performances. But it’s not the most accessible of films, and a viewer unfamiliar with the Velvet Underground may feel overwhelmed by it all.

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‘The Velvet Underground’

★★★

Available for streaming starting October 15 on Apple TV+. Rated R for language, sexual content, nudity and some drug material. Running time: 121 minutes.

Review: 'Lamb' is a dark, sometimes surreal tale of loneliness and parenthood in the Icelandic hills

Proving that the midnight sun produces some dark thoughts, the Icelandic drama “Lamb” is a consistently absorbing and sometimes disturbing tale of an unsettling family dynamic.

Maria (played beautifully by the Swedish star Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) are a married couple having a largely happy existence running a sheep farm in the remote hills of Iceland. They drive the tractor, check on their herds, and handle the routines of farm life. They have no children, but there’s some sadness in their demeanor that suggests this wasn’t always the case.

One day, while checking on the pregnant ewes in their flock, one of the ewes falls over. Maria and Ingvar help with the birth, and notice something unusual about this particular little lamb. Maria wraps the lamb in her coat, takes it into the house, and sets about trying to feed and care for this baby creature — treating it very much like a human child.

This goes on for some time, until tending to their new lamb — whom they call Ada — becomes one more part of the routine. It only seems strange when Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) makes an unnanounced visit to the farm family.

First-time director Valdimar Jóhannsson sets “Lamb” in a stark landscape, and the bleakness of the environment is a somber backdrop for the serious — one might say “creepy” — events happening before our eyes. There’s an austere beauty in this place, and that beauty helps Rapace (the original “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) and Guðnason bring the humanity to this surreal scenario.

Jóhannsson and his one-named co-screenwriter Sjón — an Icelandic poet and frequent collaborator with Björk — spins this story into directions most viewers won’t see coming. With sparse dialogue and the deceptive simplicity of folk tale, Jóhannsson deftly captures the primal fear of parenthood: The feeling you’re not in control.

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‘Lamb’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 8, in theaters. Rated R for some bloody violent images and sexuality/nudity. Running time: 106 minutes; in Icelandic, with subtitles.

Review: 'I'm Your Man' throws together a woman and a robot for a smartly funny look at algorithmic love

A thoroughly modern romance in every sense, director Maria Schrader’s “I’m Your Man” examines with dry humor and deep insight whether love is biological or programmable.

The nature of romance is what Alma Felsen (Maren Eggert), a Berlin archaeologist who is recruited to be a beta-tester for a tech company’s newest product: A robot romantic partner. Tom — played by Dan Stevens, the English actor who starred on “Downton Abbey” and the live-action “Beauty and the Beast” — is programmed to know all of Alma’s preferences and desires, with a built-in algorithm to adjust his responses and behavior to her tastes. Tom even speaks with a British accent, because Alma prefers foreign men.

For three weeks, Alma is supposed to let Tom into her apartment, and her life, to see whether his pre-set romantic gestures can approximate real love. But Alma’s a tough customer, seemingly immune to scented candles and rose petals in the bath, which Tom says 93% of German women would enjoy.

Slowly, Alma lets Tom in on more of her life — her work studying Sumerian cuneiform, her visits to her dementia-afflicted father (Wolfgang Hübsch), and why she can’t get over her colleague Julian (Hans Löw). But as Alma allows herself to get closer to Tom, she wonders whether this arrangement can ever be real, or just a computer-aided self-delusion.

Eggert, a veteran in German films but relatively unknown abroad, gives a nicely understated performance as a woman teaching this machine about the intricacies of being human. Stevens, who’s so drop-dead handsome you’d be surprised if his cheekbones weren’t made in a factory, brings the right amount of robotic hesitancy to Tom, and finds both humor and romantic charm in the A.I.’s efforts to approximate being a tender boyfriend. There’s also a nifty turn by Sandra Hüller (“Toni Erdmann”) as the tech-company rep who oversees the beta test.

Schrader, who won an Emmy for directing the miniseries “Unorthodox,” doesn’t overwhelm with the science-fiction aspects of the story (though the scene where a nightclub is populated with holograms is cleverly done), instead letting the human elements unfold gracefully and into unexpected directions. Schrader and co-writer Jan Schomburg (adapting a short story by Emma Braslavsky) playfully explore what it means to have a lover who gives a woman everything she desires — and whether that’s a good thing after all.

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‘I’m Your Man’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 8, in theaters. Rated R for some sexual content and language. Running time: 108 minutes; in German, with subtitles.

Review: 'The Addams Family 2' puts the macabre clan on the road, where the laughs are abundant

The animated sequel “The Addams Family 2” improves on its predecessor in much the same way 1993’s “Addams Family Values” did to the 1991 live-action version. Maybe movies about the ghoulish Addams Family work like the old “Star Trek” franchise, where the even-numbered ones were the good ones.

Like “Addams Family Values,” the animated sequel centers on someone trying to exploit a rift within the solid-as-a-gravestone cohesion of the Addams clan. This time, it’s middle-school genius Wednesday (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz), feeling suffocated by the doting attention of her father, Gomez (voiced by Oscar Isaac), as she demonstrates her science-fair project — grafting the intelligence of her pet squid, Socrates, into her none-too-bright Uncle Fester (voiced by Nick Kroll).

The science fair is a disappointment for Wednesday, because Gomez and Morticia (voiced by Charlize Theron) showed up, and because the powers that be declared everyone a winner. Wednesday is assuaged somewhat when Cyrus Strange (voiced by Bill Hader), the tech billionaire who sponsors the science fair, praises her originality and genius.

A fretful Gomez grasps at straws to find a way to bond with his precious daughter, landing on the idea of a cross-country family vacation. Wednesday hates the idea, but is soon swept up in Gomez’ eager efforts to create some bonding time at such tourist havens as Salem, Mass., Niagara Falls and Death Valley. What Wednesday doesn’t know is that Gomez is also hiding something on this trip: The claims of a lawyer (voiced by Wallace Shawn) representing an unknown client, who believes Wednesday was switched for another baby in the maternity ward.

As the family drives their frightful RV across the country, Wednesday comforts herself by torturing her brother, Pugsley (voiced by Javon “Wanna” Walton), while Fester discovers Wednesday’s squid experiment has some unpredicted side effects.

Directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon find lots of good humor in the weirdness of this strange family, and the script (by Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit) mines Wednesday’s alienation angst for some genuinely funny moments. The writers also pepper the narrative with jokes that might sail over the small viewers’ heads, but land appreciatively with the older members of the audience. (Example: The signpost in Death Valley, pointing to such slasher-film locations as Crystal Lake and Elm Street.)

“The Addams Family 2” doesn’t hit the comic heights that Paul Rudnick’s satiric script for “Addams Family Values” did. But it does show sparks of wit and absurdity that the first animated film lacked, and proves that there may be some life in this thought-to-be-undead franchise after all.

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‘The Addams Family 2’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for macabre and rude humor, violence and mild language. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: Second 'Venom' movie is all speed and action, with no time to rest or think about the 'Carnage' on display

There’s no subtlety in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” the second installment in the Spider-Man-adjacent comic-book franchise — there’s just breakneck action and mayhem, loud, fast and barely in control.

Tom Hardy returns as Eddie Brock, the self-destructive San Francisco reporter who was taken over in the 2018 film “Venom” by an alien symbiote with a lot of teeth and an appetite for human brains. Eddie’s still something of a screw-up, but he’s reached a truce of sorts with his alien alter ego, where Venom agrees not to eat people, no matter how much they might deserve it. In exchange, Venom helps Eddie on his news gathering.

Eddie has been handed a big scoop, exclusive access to imprisoned serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), whose crimes are so heinous, we’re told, that the governor of California has lifted the moratorium on the death penalty. Shortly before his execution, though, Eddie gets a little too close to Cletus, who bites Eddie on the hand — and transferring a little bit of Venom’s powers into Cletus’ blood stream. In the death chamber, Cletus’ blood fights back against the lethal injection, and out emerges a bigger, meaner symbiote, which takes the name Carnage.

Carnage tells Cletus that he wants to kill his maker, Venom. Cletus wants Carnage to help find and free his lady love, Frances Barrison (Naomie Harris), who was separated from Cletus in the orphanage, and has been sitting in a top-secret lab ever since. Frances, we learn, has the ability to scream at ear-piercing decibel levels, earning her the supervillain moniker Shriek.

Frances also has someone she wants killed: The cop who shot out her left eye. That cop is now an SFPD detective, Mulligan (Stephen Graham), who suspects Eddie knows more about Cletus’ escape than he’s letting on. When Mulligan takes Eddie in for questioning, Eddie uses his one phone call to call his lawyer ex-girlfriend, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), who’s now engaged to her boyfriend from the first movie, Dr. Dan Lewis (Reid Scott).

Director Andy Serkis has his foot on the accelerator from start to finish, scarcely allowing a moment’s relief from the boom-boom action and computer-animated chaos. That’s probably a wise choice, because the plot — the script is by Kelly Marcel, who co-wrote the first one, and who shares story credit with Hardy — would probably fall apart if one were given 30 seconds to think about it. For starters, it does no good to dwell on how Harrelson’s over-the-top performance, all sneering and snarling and Freddy Krueger-level one-liners, is practically a return to his character from “Natural Born Killers.”

But there is a ruthless efficiency in how Serkis fast-forwards through the action beats. And his expertise on performance-capture acting — he is the guy who portrayed Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings,” and Caesar in the “Planet of the Apes” — is deployed well to help Hardy bring out Venom’s physicality.

Hardy comes close to appearing like he’s actually enjoying himself in this big, loud action movie, which may be all we can hope for from such a “serious” actor. He leans into the humor of Eddie’s love-hate relationship with his alien “roommate,” and in the quirks of this Jekyll/Hyde dynamic. Hardy signals to the audience that we shouldn’t take “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” too seriously, whatever the body count, and just treat it like a very messy video game.

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‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some strong language, disturbing material and suggestive references. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: 'The Many Saints of Newark' veers between 'Sopranos' nostalgia and a fresh view of New Jersey gangsters

On “The Sopranos,” there were classic episodes that set the iconography of creator David Chase’s New Jersey gangster family, and there were the lesser episodes between those classics that moved the chess pieces into position.

The first movie based on Chase’s series, “The Many Saints of Newark,” plays half like a classic and half like a lesser effort.

The movie begins in a cemetery, with the voices of the dead telling their tales. When the camera comes upon the grave marker for the apprentice gangster Christopher Moltisanti, the voice (provided by Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher in the series) tells of two people. One is Tony Soprano, “the man who choked me to death.” The other is Christopher’s father, whom he barely knew in life, Dickie Moltisanti, played by Alessandro Nivola.

It’s 1967, and Dickie is one of the young bucks in the employ of the old guard, represented by Johnny Boy Soprano (Jon Bernthal) and Dickie’s father, “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti (Ray Liotta), who is recently returned from Italy with a lovely new bride, Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi). Dickie bears many of the traits “Sopranos” fans will recognize in Tony Soprano: A gruff charm, a slippery view of morality, appeal to women besides his wife, a quick-triggered temper, and a capacity for rage and violence that results in people dying.

When Johnny Boy ends up going to prison for a short stretch, it’s Dickie who’s entrusted to look over Johnny’s wife, Livia (Vera Farmiga), and their children, Jackie and Tony. 

Four years later, when Johnny’s out of prison, the kids are teens, with Tony smartly portrayed by Michael Gandolfini, the son of James Gandolfini, who so memorably played Tony on the series. The young Tony is at times a bit of a goofball, but he also shows flashes of intelligence. In a key scene, Tony’s principal (Talia Balsam) tells Livia that he has a genius IQ, but gets low grades because he doesn’t apply himself. The principal’s conversation with Tony himself plays like a precursor to the adult Tony’s psychiatric sessions with Dr. Melfi, and hint at the other lives the young Soprano might have had.

Dickie continues to be an outsized influence on Tony, getting him stolen speakers and consoling him at the disturbing number of funerals this family attends. It’s up to Hollywood Dick’s brother, Sal (also played by Liotta), to give Dickie, whose professional and personal lives are spiraling out of control, the necessary advice to stay out of Tony’s life.

While all this happens, hinting at the downward slope of a mob family that Chase’s series depicted, director Alan Taylor and screenwriter Lawrence Konner (both veterans of the series) present a kind of alternate universe to “The Sopranos.” It centers on Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), an up-and-coming Black criminal who starts as a numbers runner for the Italian mobsters, but has the ambition to survive the racial tensions of Newark and build his own enterprise to cater to a changing demographic. These sections of the film suggest a more interesting original story that doesn’t recycle the familiar parts of “The Sopranos.”

Taylor — who directed nine episodes of the series, including the one where Tony killed Christopher — burrows into perfectly creating the period detail of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. He also leans in hard in hiring young actors to play the familiar old characters, including Billy Magnussen as the handsome Paulie Walnuts, John Magaro as the dapper Silvio, and particularly Corey Stoll as Uncle Junior, who captures the menace and petty vindictiveness that the late Dominic Chianese brought to the role on TV.

Best of all in that regard is Farmiga, who — aided by a prosthetic nose to resemble the late Nancy Marchand — neatly re-creates the Soprano matriarch’s coldness and tart-tongued belittling of everyone around her, especially her son.

The best performances are from the new players on the scene. Nivola captures Dickie’s arrogance, and his belief that he can do anything with impunity. Odom makes Harold a fascinating wild card, whose anger prompts him to become calculating, to find the cracks in a racist system that he can work to his advantage.

“The Many Saints of Newark” will give fans of “The Sopranos” a fair amount of the tension and character detail they loved on the series. It also delivers the flashes of unsettling violence that were the show’s trademark — though they don’t surprise us as much, because we see them as part of Dickie’s sadly inevitable cycle. When we see Dickie holding his baby son, Christopher, we already know how this story is going to end.

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‘The Many Saints of Newark’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 1, in theaters everywhere, and streaming on HBO Max. Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content and some nudity. Running time: 120 minutes.