Review: 'Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down' is a warm-hearted portrait of a political fighter and a survivor of gun violence

The documentary directing team of Julie Cohen and Betsy West have created a strong niche for themselves, profiling strong, smart, determined women — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (“RBG”), legal thinker Pauli Murray (“My Name Is Pauli Murray”), celebrity chef Julia Child (“Julia”), and now former congresswoman and advocate Gabby Giffords, the subject of the inspiring “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down.”

In the latter half of the aughts, Giffords was known in her home state of Arizona, and maybe a few policy wonks and Democratic Party leaders (such as President Barack Obama, who’s interviewed here) as an up-and-coming young member of Congress. If she had a national profile, it was because she married an astronaut, Mark Kelly.

Giffords was considered a moderate in her conservative Tucson district; she even touted that she owned firearms and knew how to use them for hunting and target-shooting. Only the most wingnut of Republicans really loathed her, or thought she was dangerous.

Everything changed on Jan. 8, 2011, when Giffords was appearing at a “meet your congressperson” event outside a supermarket in her district. A gunman with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, equipped with a 33-round magazine, started shooting. Nineteen people were hit, and six died — including a federal judge, a 9-year-old girl, and one of Giffords’ senior staffers. Giffords was shot, at close range, in the forehead; the bullet went through the left side of her brain, and exited through the back of her skull.

Much of what Cohen and West employ to tell the story of Giffords’ recovery stems from a decision her husband, Kelly, made in the hospital: To document the long, painful therapy and rehabilitation process, so Giffords could watch it when she was better. 

Giffords suffered partial paralysis from the brain damage, and still walks with a cane. She also was unable to speak — a condition called aphasia, caused when the bullet damaged the language centers of her brain. Even today, as the movie shows, she has difficulty expressing some words and concepts, and often will prepare days in advance for interviews (including the ones in the film).

The shooting may have slowed Giffords, but it didn’t stop her. The movie captures her on the move today, advocating for gun safety, campaigning against the National Rifle Association (remember to hiss when Wayne LaPierre appears on the screen), and hitting the trail in support of Kelly, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020.

It’s unlikely that “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” will win over any Republicans who stereotype her as another lefty Democrat. But for people on the Democratic side of the political tug-of-war, Giffords is a hero and a survivor, and the movie gives that audience plenty of reasons to cheer.

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‘Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 15, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City); will air later this year on CNN. Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving gun violence and some disturbing images. Running time: 95 minutes.

Review: 'Paws of Fury' is a fast and furry comedy about cats and dogs — and old-timers won't believe the source material

Mel Brooks’ 1974 Western send-up “Blazing Saddles” is one of the funniest movies ever made — so a movie that borrows from that one, it stands to reason, can’t help but be funny, right? 

The animated “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” — which takes from the plot of “Blazing Saddles” enough that the original screenwriters (Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor and Alan User) get credit here — manages to be quite funny, and only old movie lovers who remember a 48-year-old movie will notice what’s missing.

Instead of the Old West, the story is transferred to feudal Japan, though a Japan where everyone is a cat. The greedy warlord Ika Chu (voiced by Ricky Gervais) is fulfilling his plans of an opulent castle where he can wield power snd impress the Shogun (voiced by Brooks, of course). Ika Chu has one last step in his plan: Getting rid of the podunk town of Kakamucho. He’s been sending in bandits to terrorize the townsfolk and scare off the town’s samurai protector.

The Shogun tells Ika Chu that the town must have a samurai, so Ika Chu sends one he knows the town will never accept: A dog, Hank, voiced by Michael Cera. Sure enough, the townsfolk hate Hank, who has to retreat to the town jail — which is where Hank meets Jimbo (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson), a washed-up former samurai who’s been hitting the catnip a little too hard. 

Can Hank learn from Jimbo about how to be a samurai? Can he win over the people of Kakamucho by defeating the giant-sized cat Sumo (voiced by Djimon Hounsou)? Anyone who saw “Blazing Saddles,” or understands how movies generally work, can answer those questions.

For old-timers like me, it’s fun to see how some jokes — like when the bad guys eat beans — still provoke laughs. It’s also fun to watch how directors Rob Minkoff, Chris Bailey and Mark Koetsier can take some of the ideas from the old movie, such as the breaking-the-fourth-wall references to how this is all a movie, and spruce them up for a new audience, who won’t know “Blazing Saddles” but might confuse this with a “Kung Fu Panda” entry.

Of course, since this is a kid-friendly movie, some of the saltier parts of “Blazing Saddles” don’t make the cut — such as any character to approximate the double entendres Madeline Kahn brought to Lilly von Schtupp. But the ragged, laugh-seeking spirit of the original is alive and well, and gives “Paws of Fury” more than enough laughs to make the effort worth it.

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‘Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank’

★★★

Opens Friday, July 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action, violence, rude and suggestive humor, and some language. Running time: 97 minutes.

Review: 'Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris' is a sweet, light French bonbon, and a showcase for the great Lesley Manville

A working-class Englishwoman has a French adventure in “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” a whimsical confection of cross-cultural disagreements that would fly off into a hundred directions if not for the justly acclaimed actor Lesley Manville keeping it all together.

Manville plays Ada Harris, a war widow who cleans other people’s homes in London, circa 1957. One day, she sees something in a wardrobe of one of her clients: A beautiful gown, designed by Christian Dior. The client tells Mrs. Harris the dress cost 500 pounds — and even though it’s a pipe dream for a woman of Mrs. Harris’ social standing, it becomes her dream to go to Paris and buy a dress at the House of Dior.

A few lucky coincidences later, and Mrs. Harris has the money to travel to Paris and buy a Dior dress. She arrives just as Monsieur Dior is about to show his newest line, for the company’s 10th anniversary. The house’s imperious director, Mme. Colbert (Isabelle Huppert), wants to throw Mrs. Harris — but she’s stopped by André Fauvel (Lucas Bravo), the studio’s accountant, who notices Mrs. Harris has something the upper-crust clients almost never have: Wads of cash, a commentary on the super-rich’s ability to get away without paying for things.

A kind nobleman, Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson, from the “Matrix” franchise), escorts Mrs. Harris into the exhibition. There, she becomes enraptured by the dozens of gorgeous gowns Monsieur Dior has designed. She picks her dream dress, then finds out that a snooty rich woman, Mme Avallon (Guilaine Londez), has snapped up exclusive rights to it. Undaunted, Mrs. Harris selects her second favorite — then is surprised to learn she can’t just buy a Dior off the rack, but must stay in Paris a week for fittings.

Extending her visit, Mrs. Harris finds that Paris is for lovers. For starters, that Marquis keeps buying her roses. To distract herself from that, Mrs. Harris works to pair up André with Natasha (Alba Baptista), Dior’s top model and, like Andre, a reader of Jean-Paul Sartre. 

Unlike Sartre, though, there’s nothing in director Anthony Fabian’s frothy confection to be taken too seriously. With three co-writers working with him on the screenplay, adapting Paul Gallico’s novel, Fabian presents a luminous fantasy version of Paris of a certain time, when a woman with enough pluck could cut through the class and national barriers that are keeping her from following her dreams.

The story has all the earmarks of a silly made-for-TV movie — and, in fact, it was that on CBS in 1992, as a vehicle for Angela Lansbury, cashing in her “Murder, She Wrote” chip with the network.

The casting is what puts this movie into more refined territory. Huppert is perfectly imperious as Mme. Colbert, the last bastion of Dior’s tradition of elegance. And Mrs. Harris has a strong supporting section back in London, led by Jason Isaacs as a kind-hearted bookie.

In the end, though, “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” is a showcase for Manville, who has earned a shot at being a leading lady after years of great supporting performances in Mike Leigh movies, as well as Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread.” Manville radiates all the late-in-life hopes and dreams of this no-nonsense cleaning lady, turning an “invisible” person into someone everyone has to stop to admire.

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‘Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris’

★★★

Opens Friday, July 15, in several theaters. Rated PG for suggestive material, language and smoking. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Thor: Love and Thunder' plays up the comedy of the Norse god — but why can't Marvel's standalone movies stand alone more?

In the fourth movie where the Norse god Thor is the title superhero, “Thor: Love and Thunder,” director Taika Waititi has found the genre most appropriate for our muscular hammer-thrower: A sitcom.

More overtly comical than Chris Hemsworth’s eight past appearances as Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this installment lets our thunder god get introspective, considering where he fits in a universe where his father Odin and brother Loki are dead, his Asgard has relocated to Earth and is ruled benevolently by his friend Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and he’s currently helping out beleaguered planets alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy. (The whole crew — Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Sean Gunn, and the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel — are on hand for brand maintenance more than actual story.)

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Thor’s ex-girlfriend, Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), feels the urge to visit New Asgard. The urge is coming from the shattered remnants of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir — which rebuilds itself and imprints on Jane. When Thor returns to New Asgard, which is under attack, he’s surprised to find Jane has taken on the powers of Mjolnir, along with a new working name: Mighty Thor.

Thor doesn’t have much time to take in his ex’s new situation — or learn what the audience knows about a secret Jane is holding — because of what’s attacking New Asgard. That would be a new villain, Gorr the God-Butcher (Christian Bale), who’s on a mission to destroy all gods. Gorr kidnaps the children of New Asgard, and Thor, Jane, Valkyrie and Asgard’s resident rock creature, Korg (voiced by Waititi) go in hot pursuit.

First, though, they head to the planet where all the different gods live, a side trip for comic relief purposes that culminates in an audience with the big kahuna of godhood, Zeus (played by Russell Crowe, who deploys an accent that’s aiming for Greek and lands near Mario and Luigi. 

And therein lies the major problem with this new “Thor” adventure: It doesn’t feel like there are any real stakes — even with the kidnapped children, or major characters facing the prospect of death in different ways. But when you’ve got a director like Waititi, who finds a humorous way to depict Hitler (as he did in “Jojo Rabbit,” for which he won a screenwriting Oscar), why should you expect a serious approach to comic-book godhood?

The movie also shows the pitfalls of relying too much on the MCU canon, or trying to pull more characters from Marvel’s deep comic-book library. There’s enough in the script, by Waititi and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, to keep us invested in Thor’s post-Thanos spirit journey, his rekindled relationship with Jane, and his recurring dilemma of being his conflicted feelings for Mjolnir and his current axe, Stormbreaker. 

Some have complained about Marvel characters crossing over without purpose before, but “Thor: Love and Thunder” is the most clearcut case of Marvel bloat. If Thor can lose the dad bod he gained in “Avengers: Endgame,” the Marvel franchise can trim down the excess from movie to movie.

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‘Thor: Love and Thunder’

★★★

Opens Friday, July 8, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language, some suggestive material and partial nudity. Running time: 119 minutes.

Review: 'Mr. Malcolm's List' puts pretty people into a pleasant trip through an Austen-like comedy of manners

Because Jane Austen only wrote six novels, and somebody has to feed the insatiable appetite of viewers of early 19th-century comedies of manners, we get movies like “Mr. Malcolm’s List,” a trifle of knee britches and empire-waist dresses enlivened by an engaging and ludicrously good-looking cast.

Miss Julia Thistlewaite (Zawe Ashton) is lovely, charming, and rather witty — though maybe not as smart as she thinks she is. During conversation, when someone refers to septuagenarians, she replies, “Oh, I despise foreigners.” It’s this deficit in cleverness that prompts Mr. Jeremy Malcolm (Sopé Dìrísù), the independently wealthy and most desired young bachelor in London, to pass her over after accompanying her to the opera. This slight gets noticed by the gossips around the city, and Julia feels her reputation is ruined.

Julia learns from her friend, Lord Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), that Malcolm keeps a list of the traits he desires in a prospective wife. Julia then concocts a plot, to get her revenge on Malcolm for rejecting her: Julia will set Malcolm up with the perfect partner, and at the right moment, have her give him a list of her ideal qualities in a mate.

The key to Julia’s plot is to find someone to pretend to fall for Malcolm. Julia has a candidate in Selina Dalton (Freida Pinto), her girlhood boarding school friend, who recently has been orphaned in Kent. Julia invites Selina to stay with her in London, and enlists her in her plot, which Selina does reluctantly and out of loyalty to Julia. The wrinkle comes early, when Selina meets Malcolm before realizing who he is — and, from then on, starts falling for him for real, and he with her.

Julia keeps the pressure on Selina to stick to the plan, but Julia finds herself being distracted by Malcolm’s military friend, Capt. Henry Ossory (Theo James). Julia and the Captain have a bickering banter, the sort that anyone familiar with such period romances — or, for that matter, any romantic movies at all — will recognize as cover for feelings of true love.

Ashton (“Velvet Buzzsaw”) is delightful as the petulant Julia, justifying her actions in a steady stream of banter aimed at Cassidy, Selina and, at times, the audience. Pinto, Dìrísù and James are all lovely — but the scene-stealer is Ashley Park (“Emily in Paris,” “Girls5Eva”) as Selina’s bubble-headed acquaintance, giggling through every socially awkward encounter.

Director Emma Holly Jones deploys the multi-ethnic casting that fans of “Bridgerton” will recognize — though it could be said that Jones did it first, since she also directed the 2019 proof-of-concept short that got this movie greenlit, with Pinto, Dìrísù and Jackson-Cohen in the same roles, and Gemma Chan (“Crazy Rich Asians”) as Julia. 

Suzanne Allain, who wrote the screenplay based on her own novel, isn’t reinventing the Regency-era wheel here. The characters go through their paces — check all the boxes, as it were — and end up by and large where the viewer expects them to land. In this case, it’s the journey that’s important, with the script producing wry laughs and few surprises.

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‘Mr.Malcolm’s List’

★★★

Opens Friday, July 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some smoking and mild language. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Minions: The Rise of Gru' is an empty space where they didn't put in jokes

There are only so many jokes one can wring out of tiny yellow blobs who talk gibberish — and that point was reached well before the new “Minions: The Rise of Gru” was a twinkle in Illumination Entertainment’s greedy little eyes.

As the second movie in which the Minions are in the titular role (not counting the three “Despicable Me” movies), “Minions: The Rise of Gru” is the bridge movie that shows how the little yellow rascals helped the budding supervillain (again voiced by Steve Carell) in his pre-teen days.There’s probably potential for solid laughs from this idea, but the directing team of Kyle Balda, Brad Ableson and Jonathan del Val, and screenwriter Matthew Vogel, can’t find them.

Instead, the movie plops into 1976, and a whole lot of elbow-in-the-ribs references to disco and tacky fashion. It also introduces us to the Vicious 6, a squad of supervillains led by the Pam Grier-like Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson) and aging bad guy Wild Knuckles (voiced by Alan Arkin). The rest of the squad is quickly name-checked, though except for Nun-Chuck (a nun who uses nunchucks, get it?), they’re pretty forgettable. (They’re voiced by a gaggle of action stars — Lucy Lawless, Danny Trejo, Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme — who maybe get a line each, making you wonder why they bothered.)

When the gang tosses Wild Knuckles out of the squad while heisting the rare and mystical Zodiac Stone, Gru joins the line of would-be replacements. Belle Bottom & Co. laugh at the kid Gru, but he’s determined to prove himself — which he does by stealing the just-stolen Zodiac Stone, with help and some hindrance from his Minions. 

Wild chases ensue, but hilarity does not. What the movie serves up are references to things that were funny in past installments, such as Gru’s mom (voiced by Julie Andrews) belittling him, or Dr. Nefario (voiced by Russell Brand) talking about his love of gadgets. These moments do not offer actual jokes, just placeholders and reminders of jokes from earlier movies.

The closest thing “Minions: The Rise of Gru” offers to fresh humor is a bit where three of the Minions (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) meet a retired kung-fu master (voiced by Michelle Yeoh) who is now an acupuncturist — and can manipulate her customer’s muscles just by adjusting her needles. That’s one minute out of 87 where this rehash of a movie served something new.

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‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’

★

Opens Friday, July 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some action/violence and rude humor. Running time: 87 minutes.

Review: 'Official Competition' savagely skewers moviemaking pretensions, with Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas at their unhinged best

Mocking the act of making movies is a universal language, one that Argentine directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat speak hilariously in the made-in-Spain comedy “Official Competition.”

Pharmaceutical tycoon Humberto Suárez (José Luis Gómez) turns 80, and he wonders what his legacy will be other than a pile of money he will have to bequeath to his heirs, sooner rather than later. Maybe he can bankroll a new bridge, he tells his assistant — or, better yet, he’ll bankroll a movie. (Yes, Mr. Burns did this in “The Simpsons” ages ago, but it’s still a funny idea.)

Suárez buys the film rights to an impressive novel — one he hasn’t read — about two brothers: One who drives drunk and causes a crash that kills their parents, the other the cop who arrests him. Suárez then hires the most prestigious director he can find, the experimental filmmaker Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz), who plans to hire the best actors for the job.

Those actors are Ivan Torres (Argentine actor Oscar Martinez), a critically acclaimed thespian, and Hollywood star Felix Romero (played by Hollywood star Antonio Banderas). The two are as different as can be, the controlled stage actor who internalizes his performance vs. the status-obsessed movie star who keeps his acting all at the surface.

In Suárez’s cavernous ultra-modern mansion, Lola runs Ivan and Félix through a series of exercises that are meant to break down their performing styles but have the added effect of stressing the two actors to the breaking point. In one scene, Lola has a crane suspend a five-ton boulder over a bench, which she makes the actors sit on while rehearsing. (The payoff to this scene had me laughing a ridiculously long time.)

Cohn and Duprat, along with co-writer Andrés Duprat (Gastón’s brother), capture the pretentious atmosphere surrounding many artistic endeavors, and the wild storms that develop when titanic egos clash. Banderas is sharp as the shallow lothario, while Martinez matches with a contrasting character, the pretentious theater snob. Cruz is the woman in the middle, and with her eccentric directing and flaming red hair, she neatly skewers the mindset of director-as-god.

“Official Competition” becomes, in its twisty plotting and the three-way dynamic of its stars, a lacerating — yet, oddly, still loving — satire of how movies are made. Still, I’d be curious to see the movie Lola had in her mind’s eye as she made the movie-within-a-movie here.  

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’Official Competition’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 1, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language and some nudity. Running time: 114 minutes; in Spanish, with subtitles.

Review: 'The Princess' is a fun mix of medieval armor and martial arts, with Joey King as a feisty young fighter

The damsel in the tower of “The Princess” isn’t as distressed as is traditionally depicted, but is a feisty and fleet-footed fighter in this intermittently satisfying mix of medieval hierarchy and bloody martial arts.

Joey King plays the title character, who wakes up in a white satin wedding dress, shackles binding her wrists, and locked in the top of a tall tower. She’s also nursing a hangover, from whatever drug the deranged nobleman Julius (Dominic Cooper) forced down her throat when she refused to participate in the wedding her father, the king (Ed Stoppard), arranged so the kingdom would have a male heir.

While the princess is piecing together what happened, she also sees Julius is holding the king, the queen (Alex Reid) and the younger princess, Violet (Katelyn Rose Downey), hostage until the princess agrees to the marriage.

The princess, however, chooses to fight. First she has to get of her handcuffs and kill her guards, in methods that are surprisingly bloody and make clear why this R-rated movie is debuting on Hulu and not Disney+. From there, the princess (we never hear her name spoken) has to get down the many levels of the tower, fighting more guards as she goes — sort of like the Indonesian martial-arts masterpiece “The Raid,” except we’re going down the building, not up.

The fighting sequences aren’t nearly as imaginative as “The Raid,” either. There’s a sameness to the fight scenes, though King (who has graduated from “Ramona & Beezus” to Netflix’s “The Kissing Booth” movies) shows she’s game to learn her fight choreography and wield a medium-weight sword. The movie also has some interesting fight moments from the princess’ longtime friend and trainer, Linh (Veronica Ngo), and Julius’ nasty henchman, the whip-cracking Moira (Olga Kurylenko, from “Black Widow”).

“The Princess” isn’t a great action movie, but it’s sometimes a fun one. Besides, any medieval action movie where the princess is smashing the patriarchy along with guards’ skulls is worth a look.

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‘The Princess’

★★★

Streaming, starting Friday, July 1, on Hulu. Rated R for strong/bloody violence and some language. Running time: 94 minutes.