Review: 'Drive My Car' is a beautifully moving story of love, grief, and the creative process

There are moments during the three-hour run of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” — like when the credits start, and it becomes clear the first 40 minutes was a prologue — that a viewer may wonder what they’ve gotten themselves into.

Bear with it, though, and the richness and devastating emotional impact of this breathtakingly human story — about love and grief and guilt and art — becomes apparent.

In that prologue, Hamaguchi introduces Yûsuke Kabuki (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a Tokyo theater director, and his wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima), a writer for television. It’s shown early that Oto gets inspiration for her scripts after having sex with Yûsuke, and it’s later shown that Oto also is having an affair with Kôji Takatsuki (Mask Okada), an actor in one of her TV productions. Before Yûsuke and Oto can talk about this, Oto collapses and suddenly dies. That’s the prologue.

Fast-forward two years, and Yûsuke has gone to Hiroshima to direct an international cast in a production of Anton Chekhov’s classic “Uncle Vanya.” The theater company surprises Yûsuke by presenting him with a driver — a quiet young woman, Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura) — for the duration of the production. This disrupts Yûsuke’s process, which involved listening to cassettes recorded by Oto reading dialogue from the play he’s working on, but he accepts Misaki’s role as chauffeur.

Meanwhile, as auditions begin, Yûsuke gets another surprise: One of the actors trying out for the play is Kôji, the man who was sleeping with Oto.

(Side note: This isn’t part of the plot, but it’s just fascinating that Yûsuke’s production is performed in several languages at once, with actors speaking Japanese, Mandarin, Korean and even in Korean sign language — all together on the same stage, with supertitles in several languages projected above the proscenium.) 

Of course, “Uncle Vanya” is a considered choice for Hamaguchi, who teamed with Takamasa Oe to adapt the story from a Haruki Murakami short story. “Vanya” is a story of love and loss, and it expresses the emotions that Yûsuke cannot about his complicated feelings for his wife. It’s also a tricky play to stage, and Hamaguchi’s stage adaptation captures that beautifully — notably in the final passages, as an actress, Lee Yoon-a (Yoo-rim Park, the movie’s stealth MVP), portraying the kind-hearted Sonya, delivers the closing soliloquy silently through Korean sign language.

Not all of the film’s revelations take place on the stage. There are some tender moments, and one shatteringly emotional one, between Yûsuke and his driver, Tôko, when she finally reveals how she got to Hiroshima.

So “Drive My Car” is great — but is it three-hours great? That’s a decision left for each viewer. But I’ll tell you this: For three hours, I was raptly paying attention, unable to guess where Hamaguchi was taking us next. 

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‘Drive My Car’

★★★★

Opens Friday, January 7, at Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for sexuality, nudity, some violence, and language. Running time: 179 minutes; mostly in Japanese, and other languages, with subtitles.

Review: 'A Hero' is a quietly devastating drama about a good deed and its aftermath

In the last decade, the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has become one of the most reliably brilliant directors working — with two films he made in Iran, “A Separation” in 2011 and “The Salesman” in 2016, winning Academy Awards, and his European-made films, “The Past” (with Bérénice Bejo) and “Everybody Knows” (with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz), winning acclaim.

With his newest film, “A Hero,” Farhadi raises his game again, with a devastatingly human story about the slippery space between doing good and doing what one must to survive.

Rahim (Amir Jadidi) is a sign painter is serving time in debtor’s prison, because a business prospect went bad and he couldn’t replay the print shop owner, Bahram (Mohsen Tanabandeh), who loaned him 150,000 tomans (roughly $5,000 in American currency) and stubbornly refuses to forgive the debt.

When Rahim gets a weekend leave from prison, he hopes to execute a plan to get free. His secret girlfriend, Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust), recently found a handbag at a bus stop — and 17 gold coins inside, valued at about half of what Rahim owes Bahram. Rahim’s plan is to sell that gold, give the proceeds to Bahram, and convince his creditor to drop charges so Rahim can work off his remaining debt outside of prison.

Three things thwart the plan: Behram’s intransigence, the fluctuating value of gold, and Rahim’s conscience. Rahim decides he can’t steal from the woman who lost her handbag, so he puts out a flyer to find the real owner and — with help from Rahim’s sister, Malileh (Maryam Shadaei) — the owner is reunited with her bag and her gold.

The officials at Rahim’s prison tell the media about his good deed, and soon he becomes a media sensation. But holes in his story — most of them because the full truth could bring harm to women in the narrative — send Rahim’s quest for freedom into a tailspin.

Farhadi’s deceptively calm shooting style allows the strong ensemble cast to shine as they move through some quietly intense scenes of confrontations, verbal and physical. Farhadi also allows room to play with the idea that the earnest Rahim isn’t all good and the abrasive Bahram isn’t all bad, with both living in the in-between space all humans inhabit.

Some parts of Farhadi’s screenplay are specific to Iran (debtors’ prisons aren’t much of a thing in the States, unless you count cash bail, and probably we should). What makes the film so resonant are the parts that could be happening anywhere. The idea of barbering the truth for the sake of someone’s reputation, whether that be a frustrated prisoner or a prestigious charity, is not a foreign concept here. Neither is the concept of a single social-media post upending someone’s life.

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‘A Hero’

★★★★

Opens Friday, January 7, at Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and language. Running time: 127 minutes; in Farsi with subtitles.

Review: With 'Torn,' a climbing legend's son explores how his dad's death changed the family

For those familiar with mountain climbing, the story of Alex Lowe and Conrad Anker falls somewhere between legend and soap opera — and Lowe’s oldest son, Max Lowe, does a lot to look behind those facile judgments in his documentary “Torn,” digging deep into his dad’s archives and his family’s still-raw emotional issues.

Lowe was considered one of the best and most enthusiastic climbers in the world. He climbed everything — rocks, glaciers, mountains, anything that went up more than it went down. He was also a rarity in the sport because he was a family man, as he and his wife Jenni raised three boys — Max, Sam and Isaac — in their home in Bozeman, Mont.

It all ended on October 5, 1999, on a mountain in the Tibetan Himalayas called Shishapangma, which Lowe and Anker were climbing so they could ski down the side. Lowe, Anker and cameraman David Bridges got caught in an avalanche — Anker survived, Lowe and Bridges did not.

As Max Lowe, who was 10 at the time, tells it in his film, what happened next was Anker visited the Lowe family in Bozeman, and vowed to Jenni that he would do everything he could to look out for Lowe’s sons. He moved into the Lowes’ house, took the family to Disneyland (something Alex always wanted to do for his kids), and became part of the household. Just over a year after Lowe’s death, Jenni and Anker got married.

Max Lowe’s film examines how the family coped with Alex’s death, then and now. In some of the early interviews, Isaac asks his big brother why he wants to make this movie, and possibly reopen old wounds. What the film reveals — through archival footage, Jenni reading Alex’s letters, and interviews with his mom, his brothers and Anker — is that some wounds never heal until they are opened up and examined.

“Torn” becomes, in the end, less a movie about mountain climbing and more about the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that trauma and grief placed in this family’s path, and what it took to get around them.

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‘Torn’

★★★

Opens Friday, January 7, at Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and mature themes. Running time: 92 minutes.

Director Max Lowe will appear in person for a live Q&A after the 7:10 p.m. screening on Friday, January 7, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas.

Review: 'The Tragedy of Macbeth' strips down Shakespeare's dialogue, but Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand deliver the emotions with passion

’Tis a daunting task to make a movie out of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” if only because so many filmmakers have tested their mettle on it, mostly with powerful results.

Orson Welles did it in 1948. Roman Polanski made a version in 1971, shortly after his wife Sharon Tate’s murder. Akira Kurosawa adapted it into “Throne of Blood” (1957), considered one of the master’s finest. It was turned into black comedy for 2001’s “Scotland, PA,” set in an American fast-food restaurant. And just six years ago, director Justin Kurzel served up a traditional version with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as the murderous seekers of the throne.

With “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” director Joel Coen screws his courage to the sticking-place and delivers — without the aid of his brother, Ethan, for the first time in his career — a movie that is as starkly ambitious and  brutally effective as the title character himself.

Coen and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (who worked with the Coen brothers on “Inside Llewyn Davis”) go for a cool look — black and white, in the old 4:3 screen ratio (as Welles did), with spartan sets that are striking but never get in the way of the show. The overall effect makes a viewer think of ‘40s film noir, ‘50s TV anthology dramas and Ingmar Bergman movies, and raises the stakes for the high-wire acting work. It’s funny to realize the movie was filmed on a soundstage at the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank — because the look is so otherworldly it’s strange to think they could step out the door and go find an In-and-Out Burger. 

Denzel Washington plays Macbeth, the Scottish general who has designs on taking the throne, spurred by a trio of witches who foretell of Macbeth’s glory. Kathryn Hunter, the English stage actor, plays the witches and another character — contorting her body and her voice into an eerie Gollum — and nearly steals the movie.

Macbeth invites the king, Duncan (Brendan Gleeson), for a visit at his castle, to make the act of assassination all the more convenient. And when Macbeth starts to doubt the plan, it’s Lady Macbeth, played by Frances McDormand, who prods him into action and, after the fact, frames Duncan’s servants for the crime. As a neighboring thane, Macduff (Corey Hawkins), arrives to find the king murdered, Macbeth’s newly gained crown becomes a weight on his mind — until the fear of being found out leads him to murder his closest friend, Banquo (Bertie Carvel).

Coen’s script cuts Shakespeare’s text down to what’s absolutely necessary. Some of the flowery poetry is lost, but what’s gained is an intense, and surprisingly quick, rendition that gets to the core of Macbeth’s greed and paranoia and Lady Macbeth’s spiraling madness. What Coen’s trims leave room for are the rich and stirring performances by Washington and McDormand, who make even truncated Shakespeare sing.

“The Tragedy of Macbeth” may rankle the Shakespeare purists, who want every damn line of iambic pentameter left where Will put it. But Coen’s approach gives us some breathtaking visuals – the depiction of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane is worth a standing ovation on its own — and an emotional depth that cuts like a dagger.

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‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 31, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), and Saturday, January 1, at Century 16 (South Salt Lake City); available for streaming, starting January 14, on Apple TV+. Rated R for violence. Running time: 105 minutes.

Review: In 'Licorice Pizza,' rookie performers Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim give this '70s hangout movie its bite

I’m not usually a great fan of hangout movies — meandering stories of offbeat characters, with a plot that doesn’t particularly go anywhere — unless the characters, like those in “Licorice Pizza,” are really compelling and worth spending the time to know.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson introduces his two main characters in this story, set in the San Fernando Valley in 1973, in a charmingly prosaic way: Gary Valentine (played by Cooper Hoffman) is a high-schooler in line to get his school picture taken, and Alana Kane (played by rocker Alana Haim), in her mid-20s, is working as the photographer’s assistant. On little more than a brief meeting, Gary declares to a buddy, “I met the girl I’m going to marry one day.”

Gary, even though he’s only 15, is ridiculously self-confident, maybe because he got an early start as a child actor; there’s a hilarious early scene where Gary tries to upstage the diva star (Christine Ebersole) in a reunion performance of a musical they once did together. This attitude allows him to walk into his favorite restaurant, an old-school Hollywood haunt, and be treated like a regular. It also prompts him to start a business selling waterbeds — which is how he ends up meeting Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper), a tightly wound celebrity hairdresser who never fails to mention that he’s dating Barbra Streisand.

Alana could use a little of Gary’s self-regard in her life. She’s a bit aimless, so becoming Gary’s top saleswoman and marketing consultant seems like a logical step. The question of whether Alana is letting Gary indulge in his fantasies of striking up a romance, or whether she’s secretly attracted to this kid, is one Anderson leaves open-ended for most of the movie’s run. 

Only in the last couple of minutes is the audience forced to consider the unconquerable 10-year age gap. (If the guy was 25 and the girl was 15, we wouldn’t find this nearly so charming, but in fact really creepy.) But Anderson allows us to ignore that disparity by diverting us with other moments — like when Alana becomes the arm candy for an aging action star (Sean Penn) or volunteers for a political campaign and develops a crush on the candidate (Benny Safdie).

Anderson grew up in the San Fernando Valley, and it’s also where he set his late-‘90s masterpieces “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia.” He has a clear nostalgic love for this maligned suburb of Los Angeles, and that rose-colored view permeates “Licorice Pizza,” thanks to Anderson’s precision with period detail and the lush cinematography, credited to Anderson and Michael Bauman. 

In this well-rendered re-creation of a ‘70s suburb, Anderson serves up two of the fiercest, funniest, and most heartbreaking debut roles, and his young stars nail their performances perfectly. Hoffman has the shlubby looks of his late father, and Anderson’s frequent collaborator, Philip Seymour Hoffman — Gary’s waterbed pitches made me, for a moment, flash back to his dad’s “mattress king” character from “Punch-Drunk Love” — but with a sunnier disposition. And Haim, in her first movie role, is a revelation, capturing with sharp intensity the sensation of being on the cusp of maturity but not quite ready to leave childhood behind. (Haim’s real-life sisters, her bandmates in the group Haim, play her sisters here, and their parents portray their parents.)

The narrative wanders frequently in “Licorice Pizza,” but Anderson lets it go to so many interesting places and meet so many interesting people that you don’t mind. “Licorice Pizza” becomes like a long-playing record that you want to listen to again, every track in order.

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‘Licorice Pizza’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 24, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and elsewhere. Rated R for language, sexual material and some drug use. Running time: 133 minutes.

Review: In 'The Lost Daughter,' rookie director Maggie Gyllenhaal and stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley conspire to depict an intriguingly flawed character

Maggie Gyllenhaal makes a shattering debut as a writer and director in “The Lost Daughter,” a quietly intense drama about a woman on vacation who learns the old lesson that no matter where you go, there you are.

Leda (Olivia Colman) is a professor of English from Cambridge, Mass., trying to have a nice, quiet vacation in a seaside town in Greece, reading her books and relaxing. Her calm is broken when a boisterous Italian family takes up residence around her on her favorite beach spot. Despite her annoyance, she makes conversation with a couple of the women, Callie (Dagmara Dominczyk) and her sister Nina (Dakota Johnson), who has a young daughter.

Watching Nina with her little girl sets Leda to thinking about her two now-adult daughters, and soon we’re seeing flashbacks of young Leda (Jessie Buckley) raising those girls, Bianca (Robyn Elwell) and Martha (Ellie Blake). Leda, we see, was uncomfortable in motherhood, sometimes losing her temper at her girls for interrupting her literature studies. The flashbacks also show Leda’s tempestuous relationship with the girls’ father, Joe (Jack Farthing), and an affair with an academic (Peter Sarsgaard) who complimented her work.

While befriending Nina, Leda makes a rash decision — not her first, as the flashbacks show — that has dire consequences.

In adapting Laura Ferrente’s novel, Gyllenhaal creates an emotionally raw portrait of a woman haunted by her past deeds, and facing a choice of running from them or defiantly standing up to what she’s done with her life.

(It’s worth noting that Gyllenhaal’s dad, Stephen, is a movie director, and her mother, Naomi Foner, is a screenwriter with one Oscar nomination.)

It’s difficult to think of anyone other than Colman to tackle such a tricky character, which she does with equal measures of irritation and remorse. If anyone else could, it’s Buckley, whose prickly intelligence sets up the young Leda that Colman’s older Leda must confront. Together, Colman, Buckley and Gyllenhaal create an emotionally raw but tightly contained portrait of a complicated, contradictory woman.

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‘The Lost Daughter’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 24, in theaters; available to stream December 31 on Netflix. Rated R for sexual content/nudity and language. Running time: 121 minutes.

Review: 'American Underdog' is a hokey, yet involving, biography of NFL star Kurt Warner, and the love story behind his improbably rise

Like the NFL Hall of Famer whose unlikely career it chronicles, “American Underdog” on paper shouldn’t work — too hokey, too earnest, too corny, too old-school. Then it starts putting points on the board, and it’s hard to deny the overall effect.

The film introduces us to Kurt Warner as a headstrong college quarterback at the University of Northern Iowa. He’s got a cannon for an arm, but his coach (Adam Baldwin) has to drill him to be more patient and stay in the pocket.

One night at a country bar in Cedar Rapids, he meets Brenda (Anna Paquin), and works up the nerve to ask her out — even learning to like country music, her favorite, so he can line-dance with her. Brenda warns Kurt that she’s a divorced mother of two, whose older son, Zack (Hayden Zaller), is legally blind (the result of the boy’s father dropping him on his head when Zack was 4 months old). Kurt shows hesitation in the face of Brenda’s struggles, and isn’t sure how to pursue the relationship.

Hesitation becomes a pattern in Kurt’s early life. After going undrafted by the NFL, Kurt gets a tryout with the Packers, but a moment of indecision on the field dooms his chances. He returns to Iowa, continues to court Brenda, and tries to figure out a life without football. He even (and this has become part of Warner’s legend) stocks shelves at a supermarket.

Then Kurt gets a visit from Jim Foster (Bruce McGill), a showman and owner of the Iowa Barnstormers, an Arena Football League team. Foster wants Kurt to play for him — but first, Foster must drill Kurt to unlearn what he knows about football, and adopt the fast run-and-gun style of Arena ball. Foster also sweetens the deal, by handing Kurt a $100 bill on the sidelines every time he scores a touchdown. Soon, Kurt has amassed a nice pile of C-notes, which he saves as a nest egg for a home with Brenda and her kids.

An important part of Kurt’s story is that Brenda is a devout Christian and, through his love for her, Kurt becomes one as well. The movie’s directors, brothers Andrew and Jon Erwin (billed collectively as The Erwin Brothers), have made their reputation on Christian-centered dramas — like “I Can Only Imagine” and “I Still Believe” — so the most surprising thing about “American Underdog” is how the Erwins somewhat underplay the Christian message in Kurt and Brenda’s love story.

The last third of the movie retells the part of Kurt’s story that most people already know: His second chance with the NFL, when coach Dick Vermeil (played here by Dennis Quaid) signs him as a backup quarterback for the St. Louis Rams in 1999. When the Rams’ starting QB is injured in a preseason game, Warner takes over — and his impressive rookie season that culminates with a trip to Super Bowl XXXIV.

Levi (“Shazam!”) captures Warner’s on-the-field strengths and his old-fashioned charm, and he’s well-matched with Paquin’s Brenda, a single mom who has learned to guard her heart after having it broken before. Their charm nearly compensates for the narrative imbalance that shortchanges the human story for football action that anybody could look up on YouTube.  

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‘American Underdog’

★★★

Opens Saturday, December 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some language and thematic elements. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: In 'A Journal for Jordan,' an earnest look at a military family's sacrifice gets swallowed up by bland storytelling

Bouncing from romance to parental drama, “A Journal for Jordan” is an earnestly told but sometimes wooden story about the sacrifices that come with a life in the military.

The movie is based on a memoir by former New York Times reporter Dana Canedy, played here by Chanté Adams. Canedy is trying to write down, for her son Jordan, her memories of his father, Army 1st Sgt. Charles Monroe King (Michael B. Jordan).

Thus starts the flashbacks through Dana and Charles’ romance in the 1990s into the 2000s, starting with her meeting him in the living room of her father (Robert Wisdom), an Army veteran who served in the same unit to which Charles is currently assigned. A romance ensues, hampered by distance — she’s in New York, he’s stationed in North Carolina — and by her memories of her father’s infidelity, which she blames in part on his Army influence. Charles assures Dana that he’s not like that, and will be true to her through everything.

Charles is too good to be true, and one of the weaknesses of Virgil Williams’ screenplay is that it depicts Charles as a plaster saint rather than a complex human being. Another weakness is letting Dana regularly whine about the demands of Charles’ military career, as if she didn’t remember that from her father’s Army experience.

When Dana becomes pregnant, and Charles is deployed in Iraq, Dana gives Charles a journal — so he can write to his unborn son, and start planning all the things he will say to the boy later.

Michael B. Jordan is as all-American as an actor can be, and he nearly manages to flesh out the saintly Charles into a fully realized human being. Jordan’s chemistry with Adams is palpable, and it’s too bad they don’t have more time together onscreen to let the sparks fly.

Not that sparks are abundant in director Denzel Washington’s handling of this story. Washington intercuts between different points on Dana and Charles’ timeline, usually to weak effect. It’s a bit of a shock, considering Washington’s track record of directing strong, dynamic stories (“Antwone Fisher,” “The Great Debaters” and, most importantly, “Fences”), that he would make a movie this bland and lifeless.

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‘A Journal for Jordan’

★★

Opens Saturday, December 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content, partial nudity, drug use and language. Running time: 131 minutes.