Review: 'Blonde' is an artfully done but cruel recounting of the worst parts of Marilyn Monroe's tragic life

In the 60 years since her death at age 36, Marilyn Monroe and her mystique have been analyzed, dissected and commented upon by pretty much everyone who has ever watched a movie — and, as director Andrew Dominik’s fictionalized take, “Blonde,” shows us, we remain no closer to understanding what made her tick.

Dominik’s lushly constructed but cruelly staged biopic is only about a few sides of her life. It’s never about Monroe as human being, or as artist. It’s only about Monroe as object of other people’s desires, and as victim of those people’s whims.

Cribbing from parts of Joyce Carol Oates’ doorstop of a novel, Dominik (who directed and wrote the screenplay) begins with a painful prologue shows Norma Jeane Baker (played as a girl by Lily Fisher) suffering at the hands of her unbalanced mother, Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), who talks about Norma’s never-seen father, someone so famous his name can never be mentioned — and someone, in Gladys’ delusional state, she thinks will someday return. Ultimately, Gladys ends up in a sanitarium and Norma Jeane in an orphanage.

Fast forward, and Norma Jeane — played as an adult by Ana de Armas — launches a modeling career, on shoots mostly for advertising but a few for skin mags. Her agent (Dan Butler) gets her an opportunity for a contract with 20th Century Fox, but she soon learns the price is being raped by the studio chief, Mr. Z (David Warshofsky). (Following Oates’ novel, the main men in Norma Jeane’s life are not identified by name in Dominik’s script — though occasionally, as with Daryl F. Zanuck, he lets a bold-face name slip.)

Norma Jeane’s early career shows promise, but her private life — a three-way relationship with Charlie Chaplin Jr. (Xavier Samuel) and Edward G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams), scions of Hollywood royalty — draws a warning from her agent and Mr. Z., to stay out of the scandal sheets.

Norma Jeane finds a more publicly acceptable romance with the ex-athlete — Bobby Cannavale as the recently retired baseball legend Joe DiMaggio — that seems picture-perfect. She even calls him “Daddy” in private. Dominik depicts the ex-athlete as physically abusive and possessive, particularly showing his rage when Marilyn shoots her iconic scene from “The Seven-Year Itch,” as paparazzi leeringly capture her billowing dress.

As Marilyn tries to show her seriousness, taking acting workshops in New York — which is where she meets “the playwright” (Adrien Brody, channeling Arthur Miller well). Happiness for Marilyn, again, seems just out of reach.

In the later scenes of the film, there’s another man put in the picture, identified as “the president” (played by Caspar Phillipson). This is where Dominik indulges in the most lurid tabloid speculation about Marilyn and JFK. It’s also where the movie — by focusing tightly on de Armas’ face as she simulates oral sex — that the movie earns its NC-17 rating.

Dominik, beloved by cinephiles for his mournful Western “The Assassination of the Outlaw Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” shoots mostly in black-and-white with some passages in color. Much of his technical prowess is deployed in matching de Armas into classic movie scenes (pairing her with George Sanders in “All About Eve” and Tony Curtis in “Some Like It Hot”) or re-enacting famous photos of the star.

For every moment of grace and elegance, there are shots like the one where the point of view is from inside Marilyn’s vagina as a speculum is inserted to begin an abortion procedure. (This happens in two different parts of the film.) Or there’s the shot from inside an airplane toilet, as Marilyn vomits on the lens.

What, exactly, is the point of “Blonde” — besides letting de Armas pull off a fearless, frequently topless performance as the much-tormented Norma Jeane? It’s hard to divine Dominik’s motives. But the end product serves to drag the image, the persona, of Marilyn Monroe, and the person of Norma Jeane Baker, through all the slime and innuendo that dogged her in life. Any moviegoer with a heart will wince throughout “Blonde,” and wonder why we all can’t leave Norma Jeane to rest In peace. 

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‘Blonde’

★★

Starts streaming Wednesday, September 28, on Netflix. Rated NC-17 for some sexual content. Running time: 166 minutes.

Review: 'Railway Children' is a somber children's adventure with lessons about war and racism

The cherished British chsracter trait of the stiff upper lip apparently gets taught early, as evidenced by the characters in “Railway Children,” a plodding child-centered drama from the Homefront of World War II.

It’s 1944, and parents in English cities are putting their children on trains heading to the country, to keep them safe as German bombs are dropped on metropolitan areas. That’s how the Evans children — teen Lily (Beau Gadsdon) and her little siblings Pattie (Eden Hamilton) and Teddy (Zac Cudby) — end up leaving their mother (Jessica Baglow) in Manchester to live in a town in Yorkshire.

The three land with Annie (Sheridan Smith), who’s the principal of the town’s school. Annie has a son, Thomas (Austin Haynes), and her mother, Bobbie (Jenny Agutter), who reassures the Evans children that when she was a girl, she, too, was transported from the city to the country, and ended up making her life there.

There’s more to Bobbie’s statement than most American moviegoers know. It turns out that “Railway Children” is not a remake of the 1970 film “The Railway Children,” but a sequel — because Agutter, when she was 17, played Bobbie as a girl, relocated to Yorkshire in 1905 (which is when Edith Nesbit wrote the children’s book on which both movies are based). Nesbit’s story and the 1970 movie version are, like Cliff Richard and bubble-and-squeak, uniquely British products that are beloved there and largely unfamiliar in the States.

The Evans children, with Thomas as their new companion, try to make the best of the situation, as they play around the train station and dodge the school bullies. Then they find Abe (KJ Aikens), a young Black American soldier who claims he’s hiding because he’s on a secret mission — but Lily soon learns that Abe has deserted his unit because of the racist MPs, and that he’s only 14.

The children are mostly left to their own devices — Annie is preoccupied when she gets a telegram from the British Army about her husband — and become the focus of a plot that’s equal parts children’s adventure and social-studies class in which the English kids learn about the harsh treatment of African Americans in the United States.

Director Morgan Matthews, whose credits are mostly in documentaries, doesn’t let things get too silly. He works with his young actors to impart the gravity of their wartime life, putting a serious edge on the adventure. Matthews benefits from the presence of the veteran actors, including Agutter, Tom Courtenay as a kindly uncle who works for the government, and John Bradley (“Game of Thrones,” “Moonfall”) as a secretive stationmaster.

“Railway Children” is more sober-minded than most American children’s films, as it teaches kids about the horrors of war and racism. Some may find it a little dry, but it has its share of gentle charms.

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‘The Railway Children’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 23, in theaters everywrhere. Rated PG for thematic material, some violence and language. Running time: 95 minutes.

Review: 'The Woman King' is a potent historical epic, carried on the mighty shoulders of Viola Davis

In some ways, director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s war epic “The Woman King” is the sort of movie they used to make in abundance: Strong, hero-driven melodramas set against the backdrop of historic battles. Think “El Cid” or “Braveheart” or even “Henry V,” if you want to get Shakespearean about it.

But in two crucial ways, “The Woman King” is the sort of movie they almost never made, because that strong hero driving the story is a woman and an African — and, as played by the always compelling Viola Davis, fully deserving of the honorific of the title.

Set in the 1820s in the west African kingdom of Dahomey (now known as Benin), the film depicts a prosperous people living a fruitful existence away from European colonization. The young king, Ghezo (John Boyega), maintains peaceful relations with the nearby Oyo warlord, Oda Ade (Jimmy Odukoya), though the Oyo are becoming more belligerent. Fortunately for Ghezo, Dahomey has the protection of the fiercest warriors in the area, the all-woman fighting force called the Agojie.

Much of “The Woman King” focuses on the lives of the Agojie, living away from menfolk under King Ghezo’s protection. The king has also forbidden his subjects from casting their eyes on the Agojie when they return from battle — so the people of Dahomey know little about what goes on within the walls of the king’s compound.

Prince-Bythewood and screenwriter Dana Stevens (who shares story credit with the actress Maria Bello) introduce us to the Agojie by following a young recruit, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), a headstrong teen who is abandoned by her adopted father because she refuses to marry the rich men he selects for her. 

Nawi is rebellious even to the Agojie’s battle-scarred leader, General Nanisca (that’s Viola Davis), who drills into her the message that the Agojie are disciplined, and must work as a unit — not go off alone, as Nawi sometimes does. Through boot-camp sequences, Nawi learns the skills of a fighter, as one of Nanisca’s top lieutenants, Izogie (Lashana Lynch), takes on the teen as a protege.

Meanwhile, Nanisca tries to sidestep the palace intrigue of Ghezo and his many wives — while trying to warn the king that appeasing the nearby European slave traders will not end well. Nanisca also gets a warning from her top aide, Amenza (Sheila Atim), that the signs and omens tell her that something out of Nanisca’s past will return and threaten everything she holds dear.

Prince-Bythewood (“Love and Basketball,” “The Old Guard”) stages some ferocious battle scenes, with the Agojie deploying spears and swords in effectively lethal fashion against Oyo soldiers and European slavers. Even more impressive are the training sequences, which flow with the grace and finesse of good song-and-dance numbers; one scene, where the trainees graduate and take oaths to their sister warriors, is particularly moving.

Lynch, Atim and Mbedu (who appeared in the series “The Underground Railroad”) lead a strong ensemble cast. Of course, the standout is Davis, as the two-time Oscar winner shows why she’s one of the finest actors working today — displaying the iron will that makes Nanisca a fearsome general, and the deep well of pain underneath that propels her to push herself and her troops to the limit. She makes “The Woman King” the powerful, soaring drama that it is.

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‘The Woman King’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 18, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing material, thematic content, brief language and partial nudity. Running time: 126 minutes.

Review: 'Pearl' has its moments of gore, but it's more about the drama that sets up the exploitation of 'X'

Calling director Ti West’s “Pearl” a horror movie is a bit of a misnomer, because though it may have ample bloodshed and gore, they are secondary factors in this prequel to West’s “X.”

If you remember “X” (it was released only six months ago), it depicted a group of young people in 1979, renting space on a remote farm to make a porno film — and, after an hour of set-up, getting killed one by one for running afoul of the old couple who lived on the farm, Howard and Pearl. In “Pearl,” which was shot in secret during the filming of “X,” we get her origin story.

It’s 1918, and teen-age Pearl — played by Mia Goth, who played the wannabe porn star Maxine in “X,” and co-wrote this script with West — dreams of a better life than feeding the farm animals, cleaning up her immobile father (Matthew Sunderland), and enduring the harsh criticisms of her German-speaking mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright). She hasn’t heard from Howard, her husband, who’s away in Europe, fighting in the Great War, but sometimes gets visits from Howard’s perky sister, Misty (Emma Jenkins-Purro). 

Pearl’s dream, paralleling Maxine’s in “X,” is to be a famous star of the screen. When she can slip away from her mother’s gaze, she likes to go into town and watch the pictures and imagine herself as one of the dancing girls. She makes time with the handsome projectionist (David Corenswet), who shows her something they don’t usually play in the theaters: Stag films, where young men and women get naked and have sex with each other.

In the opening of the movie, West shows Pearl being kind to the farm animals — until a goose wanders into the barn, which she skewers with a pitchfork and then feeds to the alligator in the nearby pond. (She later finds alligator eggs, which likely explains why there’s still a hungry alligator in the same pond in “X,” 61 years later.) The goose’s demise hints at Pearl’s dark side, and the gore that West takes his sweet time delivering.

In contrast to “X,” which leaned hard into its exploitation roots, “Pearl” is more about the drama. What is most memorable when it’s all over is Goth’s gonzo yet earnest performance, throwing herself into the role whether Pearl is dry-humping a scarecrow or confessing her wicked ways to a horrified Misty.

Goth isn’t done with this franchise — a teaser after the end credits promises “MaXXXine,” set in Los Angeles in 1985. After giving it her all in “Pearl,” one can only imagine where Goth and West will take the story next, though one presumes it will be bloody.

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‘Pearl’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 18, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some strong violence, gore, strong sexual content and graphic nudity. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: 'See How They Run' is a mystery farce where only Saoirse Ronan is running at the right speed

On paper, the murder-mystery comedy “See How They Run” should work: Clever premise, strong cast, and the juicy target of the grande dame of mysteries, Agatha Christie.

In execution, though, director Tom George — helming his first feature — never sets the proper rhythm for what should be a fast and funny send-up of the mystery genre and Christie’s seemingly indestructible play, “The Mousetrap.”

It’s 1953, and the cast of “The Mousetrap” — led by a young Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson) as Christie’s detective, Sgt. Trotter — is celebrating its 100th performance on London’s West End. But not everyone is celebrating. The movie producer, John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith), would rather see the show’s run end soon, so he can start making the movie, directed by a boorish American filmmaker, Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody).

It’s Kopernick’s voice we hear in the opening narration, as he ticks off everything he hates about mystery stories — from the predictable patter to the fact that the least likable character is the one who gets offed. Sure enough, at the cast party, Leo is particularly obnoxious, and pretty soon he’s found dead on the stage.

Enter Scotland Yard, in the form of the lazy and semi-alcoholic Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and his overly excitable young constable, Officer Stalker (Saoirse Ronan). Stoppard has to temper Stalker’s impulsive desire to declare the last person they’ve interviewed to be the murderer. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Stoppard tells Stalker, who dutifully writes that — along with everything else — in her notebook.

Soon Stoppard and Stalker are confronted with an array of suspects: Woolf, for one, as well as the theater’s profit-minded producer, Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson); Melvyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo), a prim playwright who’s been hired to write the screenplay for “The Mousetrap” and was arguing with Leo about how to do it; or maybe Mervyn’s hot-tempered Italian “roommate,” Rio (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd). 

Throw in Woolf’s jittery wife, Edana (Sian Clifford), and Woolf’s assistant — and hidden lover — Ann Seville (Pippa Bennett-Warner), and you should have the makings of a strong whodunnit.

Screenwriter Mark Chappell, a British TV writer also on his first feature, injects some wry commentary about the mystery genre — and how formulaic Christie’s work sometimes was — in with the densely plotted story.  There’s also a jab at violent and dumbed-down American filmmaking, one that pays off well in the final reel.

The problem is that George’s pacing pokes along when it should gallop. Farces like this need to speed past, so we don’t have time to examine the flaws.

The one performer who understood the assignment is Ronan. Her take on Constable Stalker, as a tightly wound and eager-to-please junior officer who understands the law and can break out a dead-solid Katharine Hepburn impersonation, delivers the screwball energy “See How They Run” could use a lot more of.

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‘See How They Run’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 18, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some violence/bloody images and a sexual reference. Running time: 98 minutes.

Review: 'Barbarian' is an effectively creepy and terrifying addition to the horror canon

With horror movies, we don’t always need genius-level disturbances to our psyche, like in a Jordan Peele movie. Sometimes, a good old-fashioned story that creeps you out and jumps out from behind a bush and yells “boo!” Is enough — and, by that measure, writer-director Zach Cregger’s debut “Barbarian” more than fills the bill.

It all starts on a rainy night in a sketchy neighborhood in Detroit, where a woman, Tess (Georgina Campbell), can’t get into her housing rental for the night. Turns out someone is already there: Keith (Bill Skarsgård) — and after a few minutes of confusion and suspicion (would you want to be alone with the guy who played Pennywise in the “It” movies?), Tess and Keith figure out they’ve been double-booked, and agree to share the house for the night.

Then Tess hears some noises, and … nope, not going to give away anything more.

After a few more reveals, the movie abruptly cuts to the California coast, where self-absorbed actor A.J. (Justin Long) learns in a phone call that his life is about to implode. And just as you’re wondering why we’ve taken this side trip, we soon get our answer: To raise some quick cash, he has to liquidate some  unused assets — including a house in Detroit. After following that thread for a while longer, Cregger diverts us again, to fill in some more pieces of the puzzle.

Cregger, like Jordan Peele, got his start in comedy. He co-directed, co-wrote and co-starred in the 2009 sex comedy “Miss March,” and he’s one of the co-creators of the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U Know. And many of the same rhythms of set-up and pay-off used in comedy also work well in horror.

“Barbarian” delivers some first-rate shocks, and enough bat-crap craziness — mostly delivered by a character played by Matthew Patrick Davis — to keep audiences guessing, cringing and screaming. If you’re looking for an effectively chilling horror movie, you don’t need much more.

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‘Barbarian’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some strong violence and gore, disturbing material, language throughout and nudity. Running time: 102 minutes

Review: Disney's live-action 'Pinocchio' gets tied down by corporate and technological limitations

The wooden almost-boy Pinocchio sings “I got no strings to hold me down” in the 1940 Disney animated classic movie “Pinocchio” — and here, too, in a live-action/computer-animated hybrid that’s tied down, unfortunately, by Disney’s vault-raiding corporate strategy and director Robert Zemeckis’ addiction to technological whiz-bang spectacle over everything else.

The story, based on Carlo Collodi’s classic novel, is familiar to everyone by now, particularly the Disney variation. The kindly woodcarver Geppetto, lonely for companionship, carves a wooden boy that he names Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy hears the wish of Geppetto’s lonely heart, and brings Pinocchio to life — with the advice that if he’s brave, honest and unselfish, he will turn from wood into a real boy. Since Pinocchio doesn’t have a conscience to tell him right from wrong, the fairy assigns him one: Jiminy Cricket, a vagabond insect who becomes Pinocchio’s traveling companion and voice of wisdom.

What do Zemeckis and co-screenwriter Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) add to this mix? A lot of surface details, and some familiar casting. Tom Hanks — Zemeckis’ stalwart collaborator in “Forrest Gump,” “Cast Away” and “The Polar Express” — is cast at Geppetto, apparently continuing the weird-accent run he started in  “Elvis.” Jiminy Cricket is voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who starred in Zemeckis’ “The Walk.” The Blue Fairy is portrayed by Cynthia Erivo, who brings some elegance and hits the high notes on “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

Other than that, the only new wrinkle so far is the winking references to the Disney catalog in Geppetto’s collection of cuckoo clocks — which re-enact such classics as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and Zemeckis’ own “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” among others.

The story continues down the familiar path, as Pinocchio (voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) enters the big world and discovers its dangers. On his way to school, Pinocchio is distracted by Honest John, a fox (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key), and his silent cat companion, Gideon, with promises of fame and fortune — if Pinocchio joins the traveling puppet show put on by the nasty promoter Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston). Pinocchio becomes star of Stromboli’s show, but also Stromboli’s prisoner. From that mess, Pinocchio lands in another, thanks to the Coachman (Luke Evans), on his way to Pleasure Island with a new caravan of wayward boys and girls (yup, Pleasure Island is now an equal-opportunity trap). 

The computer animation that Zemeckis loves to play with (see “The Polar Express,” “Welcome to Marwen” and other motion-capture monstrosities on his filmography) becomes a trap in itself. It produces lifelike visuals that approximate the animated wonders we remember from the 1940 version. But relying on them denies the audience the experience of seeing the happy ending we wait for, to see Pinocchio finally become a real boy — because it’s impossible to hire a young actor who’s going to look enough like the Disney-copyrighted puppet we’ve been watching for the previous 90-plus minutes. 

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‘Pinocchio’

★1/2

Starts streaming Thursday, September 8, on Disney+. Rated PG for peril/scary moments, rude material and some language. Running time: 105 minutes.

Review: 'Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.' takes on evangelical hypocrisy, with strong performances by Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown

The mock-documentary satire “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” — a punctuation-heavy title — takes some hard swings at hypocrisy and selfishness in a Southern Baptist megachurch, and get in a few good licks thanks to their talented stars, Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown.

Brown and Hall portray Lee-Curtis Childs and his wife, Trinitie, the pastor and “first lady” of a prominent Baptist church in a Georgia city. A documentary crew has been hired to chronicle the preparations for the church’s reopening on Easter Sunday, to return to Lee-Curtis’ suave, charismatic sermons extolling the virtues of following Jesus and warning against temptation — mostly against the “sin,” in Lee-Curtis’ view, of homosexuality.

Lee-Curtis and Trinitie don’t want to discuss with the documentarian about the circumstances that prompted their church to close and their flock to abandon them for other preachers, notably the up-and-coming Shakura and Keon Sumpter (played by Nicole Beharie and the one-named actor Conphidance). But a few clues emerge, slowly at first, that Lee-Curtis was involved in a sex scandal involving young men.

As the opening approaches, both pastor and first lady start to unravel, shifting from passive-aggressive — like when Trinitie re-baptizes Lee-Curtis in the church’s baptismal pool and holds him under a few seconds longer than necessary — into just plain aggressive. The documentarian’s camera (as well as some moments that seem like a documentary crew wouldn’t have been privy to) show how Lee-Childs is out to prove all the doubters wrong, while Trinitie is determined to regain the status that her husband’s misbehavior has cost her.

Writer-director Adamma Ebo (her sister, Adenne, is first among the many producers) captures the telling details of the megachurch life — all the conspicuous spending justified in the name of shipping souls to Jesus, the thinly veiled contempt for other pastors, and the quietly accepted misogyny and hypocrisy that undergirds it all. The observations generate laughs, though with a sting to them that occasionally feels a little too much like shooting fish in a barrel.

The actors playing the not-so-holy Childses make the movie work. Brown’s slick portrayal captures the confidence, bordering on arrogance, that Lee-Curtis can reclaim his spot in the pulpit without ever truly facing up to his sins. And Hall goes even further, showing the lengths to which Trinitie will go — the indignities she will endure — for a chance to get back on top. It’s Brown’s and Hall’s perfectly paired instincts to find the humor and heart in this absurd situation that gives “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” Its power.

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‘Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 2, in theaters, and streaming on Peacock. Rated R for language and some sexual content. Running time: 102 minutes.