Review: 'The Boys in the Boat' is a painfully average middle-of-the-road sports drama

Underdog sports movies don’t get more straight-forward than in “The Boys in the Boat,” a true story of strivers battling not only to compete but to beat the many layers of a system stacked against them.

Director George Clooney — who appears in the movie’s ads but not onscreen himself — and screenwriter Mark L. Smith (who wrote Clooney’s “The Midnight Sky”) adapt Daniel James Brown’s book about the real-life 8-man 1936 rowing team of the University of Washington. They were scrappers, battling the rich colleges like Cal and Penn to win the national championship. In 1936, winning the U.S. collegiate title brings a bonus: A chance to compete in the Olympics, in Hitler’s Berlin.

When Joe Rantz (played by Callum Turner) tries out for the junior crew team, he’s not thinking about beating Cal or the Germans. Joe needs a job so he can pay his tuition — and a place to sleep other than an old car in the middle of Seattle’s Hooverville. It’s the middle of the Great Depression, and Joe’s been on his own since was 14. 

It won’t be easy, the crusty coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), tells the young men trying out. There are more than 100 of them, trying for eight slots on the boat, and the training is grueling. Joe gets encouragement from his friends in training — as well the team’s Yoda-like boat builder, George Pocock (Peter Guinness), and a fetching classmate, Joyce Simdars (Hadley Robinson). 

Even if you haven’t read Brown’s book, Smith’s script and Clooney’s direction will make you feel like you have — because every step of the Huskies’ crew journey, and Joe’s path to personal success, feels rote and predictable. There’s even a cameo, during the opening ceremonies of the Berlin Olympics as our boys meet track star Jesse Owens (Jyuddah Jaymes), that plays with a slap-your-forehead level of narrative shamelessness.

Still, Clooney captures the technical aspects of rowing, the difficulty and the exhilaration of it, beautifully. And he has a strong ensemble of young actors to play the Washington team — besides Turner (familiar as Newt Scamander’s brother Theseus in the “Fantastic Beasts” films), the standouts are Jack Mulhern as the shy Don Hume, Sam Strike as Joe’s best friend Roger Morris, and Luke Slattery as the borderline-arrogant coxswain Bobby Moch. 

Let me say that, as a Washington alumnus, it pains me to say “The Boys in the Boat” isn’t as good as it could be. It’s got the muscle in the boat. It just doesn’t have the imagination to move it in the right direction.

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‘The Boys in the Boat’

★★1/2

Opens Monday, December 25, Christmas Day. Rated PG-13 for language and smoking. Running time: 124 minutes.

Review: 'Wonka' captures a surprising amount of the magic of Gene Wilder's 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'

Timothée Chalamet has a big top hat to fill in “Wonka,” an origin story for Roald Dahl’s enigmatic chocolate maker, in which the young star finds the balance between referencing back to the great Gene Wilder’s manic and yearning performance in the 1971 “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and not copying the master too closely.

The movie’s real candy man — the one who mixes it with love and makes the world taste good — is director and screenwriter (with co-writer Simon Farnaby) Paul King, who captures the same smart humor and whimsical world-building he brought to the two “Paddington” movies.

We first see Chalamet’s Willy Wonka arriving by ship to the big city, after sailing the world perfecting his chocolate creations and ready to spend his 12 silver sovereigns establishing himself in the Galerie Gourmet, where all the great chocolatiers go to sell their wares. Alas, on his first night in the city, he is suckered in by two crooks, Mrs. Scrubitt (Olivia Colman) and Mr. Bleacher (Tom Davis), who get Willy to sign a contract for room and board without reading the fine print.

Soon Willy is stuck with a horrendous debt, which he must work off by washing clothes in Scrubitt & Bleacher’s laundry, along with some of their other victims — including an orphaned girl, named Noodle (Calah Lane), who has been trapped in the laundry since she was a baby.

Willy is convinced that his chocolate will make enough money to pay off not only his debts, but those of Noodle and the others serving in the laundry. Noodle helps him sneak out, so he can return to Galerie Gourmet. Once there, though, he discovers that the chocolate cartel – the big candy barons Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Prodnose (Matt Lucas) and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton) — have a death grip on the market, and control the leading cleric, Father Julius (Rowan Atkinson), and the chocoholic chief of police (Keegan-Michael Key). 

Adding to Willy’s problems is the little orange man who’s following him around and trying to steal his chocolates. He’s played, delightfully, by Hugh Grant — and anyone familiar with the Wilder movie knows not only what kind of creature he is, but what song he’s likely to sing.

Yes, there is singing here. “Wonka” is a full-throated musical, with songs written by Neil Hannon (the main creator for the Northern Ireland band The Divine Comedy). Chalamet’s songs are charming, and well-delivered, but the most catchy number comes when the greedy chocolate makers negotiate the price of their bribe to the police chief.

King is clearly inspired by the trippy visuals of Mel Stuart’s 1971 film, but he’s not hemmed in by them. His depiction of the young Wonka’s world is happily energetic, a confection worthy of its main character. He also brings a wry streak of absurd humor, as well as a lot of heart — as Willy thinks back to his mother (Sally Hawkins) and her lessons in the pleasures of chocolate making.

I’ve always thought “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” to be a one-off, a singular pop-art creation that — mainly because of Wilder’s deliriously insane performance — could never be duplicated. But King and Chalet, with “Wonka,” manage toevoke the same sense of playful wonder that its predecessor did. It indeed shines as a good deed in a weary world. 

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‘Wonka’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some violence, mild language and thematic elements. Running time: 116 minutes.

Review: 'Fallen Leaves' is a sparse and biting Finnish romance that earns its emotions

As bracing as a walk outside on a cold Helsinki night — and about as short — Finnish writer-director Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves” is a romantic comedy stripped away of unnecessary moments, pretense and false sentimentality. It earns its flowers, and deserves them.

Like any romance, this is the story of two people. Ansa (Alma Pöysti) works in a supermarket, where the security guard (Sakari Kuosmanen) stares her down when she’s taking expired groceries to the rubbish bin, because she gives an item to a beggar before throwing it away. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) works as a welder on a job site, whose employer provides a bunk in a railway car with three other men.

One night, Ansa and her coworker, Liisa (Nuppu Koivu), go to a bar for karaoke night. One of the singers that night is Huotari (Janne Hyytiäinen), Holappa’s philosophical roommate, and Holappa is along for moral support. Huotari chats up Liisa after his song, but Holappa is too frozen to talk to Ansa, and vice versa.

Eventually, there is a date — the movie Holappa chooses is Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die” (an inside joke between friends; Jarmusch made a cameo in Kaurismäki’s 1989 movie “Leningrad Cowboys Go America,” and Jarmusch used Kaurismäki’s actors in the Helsinki segment of his 1991 movie “Night on Earth”). She gives her his number, but he quickly drops the paper and it blows away.

That’s the first of many obstacles to Ansa and Holappa’s potential happiness, including job losses, financial struggles and Holappa’s frequent drinking — a dealbreaker for Ansa, who says she watched her father and brother die as a result of alcoholism, and won’t put herself through that again.

Kaurismäki is spare with dialogue, and allows his actors only the faintest of expressions. But within that restraint is a wealth of suppressed heartache, longing and a search to make the lonely nights more bearable. Pöysti and Vatanen fit perfectly in this world, taciturn figures who would explode if forced to express the emotions roiling within them. 

One gets the impression that Kaurismäki would have been at home in the silent movie era (there’s a hint of that idea at the very end). “Fallen Leaves” has the deadpan grace of a Buster Keaton film, and ultimately the battered hopefulness of Charlie Chaplin’s best work. 

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‘Fallen Leaves’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 15, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for language. Running time: 82 minutes; in Finnish, with subtitles.

Review: 'The Disappearance of Shere Hite' chronicles the sex researcher's career — and how she fell down the memory hole

How exactly did a controversial, charismatic and best-selling sex expert get shoved down the memory hole, to the point where many people today don’t know who she was? That’s the intriguing question director Nicole Newnham poses in the fascinating documentary “The Disappearance of Shere Hite.” 

(Warning: This review, like the movie, uses language about human sexuality that some may find offensive.)

Hite became famous in the mid-1970s for authoring “The Hite Report,” at the time one of the most thorough studies of how women think about sex. Taking thousands of completed surveys from women around the world, Hite and her research team came up with some jaw-dropping data — with the headline being the news that women were far more likely to achieve an orgasm through masturbation than through being penetrated by a man’s penis.

The news was a bombshell. So was Hite, who had a lithe figure and gorgeous strawberry-blonde hair. She used both to get through college, working as a model for advertising and illustrations (she was the model for the buxom babes flanking Sean Connery in the poster for “Diamonds Are Forever”), as well as some tasteful nudes that would come back to haunt her. 

Hite also was politically active, and signed on early with the National Organization for Women. She enlisted her fellow activists to distribute her survey, which asked open-ended questions detailing one’s sexual experience, feelings and preferences. 

Hite also promoted the heck out of “The Hite Report,” making it a best-seller. That’s in spite of efforts by the publisher, the company’s former editor-in-chief tells the filmmakers, to deep-six the book by printing only 4,000 copies on its initial run and not providing any publicity. But Hite, deploying her striking looks and her command of her subject, made numerous TV appearances to talk up her findings.

The uproar over Hite’s first book was nothing compared to what happened with her second book, a survey asking men to talk about their sexual experiences, as well as their feelings. The biggest finding was that the vast majority of men were unhappy in their relationships — but couldn’t say so out loud because of the pressure on men not to show their feelings.

The release of the second “Hite Report” generated some of the most outlandish footage in Newnham’s film. There’s one clip where talk-show host Mike Douglas is asking Hite about her findings, and actor David Hasselhoff makes the mistake of trying to equate Hite’s thousands of survey responses to the anecdotal evidence of some of Hasselhoff’s pals. (There’s a similar clip that “Buck Rogers” star Gil Gerard won’t be happy to see circulating again.)

Newnham — who co-directed the 2020 Sundance doc “Crip Camp” — recounts, among its many stories, how the survey respondents sometimes recorded their answers on cassette tapes. Her team even found cassette tapes some respondents sent, which are now in the hands of the archives of Harvard. And actor Dakota Johnson is heard, reading from Hite’s memoirs, throughout the film.

So how did Shere Hite — who died in September 2020 — go from the most talked-about author in America to a forgotten figure? Blame the backlash against feminism in the 1980s. Blame her own consternation with the media. Or blame, appropriately, the rise of conservatism in the age of Reagan. “The Disappearance of Shere Hite” is a potent reminder that Hite was revealing truths that some didn’t want to hear then or now, truths that are resurfacing to reach a new generation.

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‘The Disappearance of Shere Hite’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, December 15, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for sexual material, nudity/graphic nudity and some language. Running time: 118 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 23, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'The Boy and the Heron' is Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki at his impassioned, surrealist best

It’s been 10 years since Hayao Miyazaki, who at 82 remains the unparalleled master of Japanese animation, has released a feature film — and if “The Boy and the Heron” is his final masterpiece, we all should be thrilled and awed that we have it in our collective lives, creating marvel and wonder.

From the opening moments, it feels like Miyazaki is pushing himself to invent new ways to use animation. The first scenes, of the boy Mahito racing through his village to get to the hospital where his mother works because it’s on fire, are breathtaking — the images of flames seemingly radiating with their own heat.

The story — an original script written by Miyazaki — picks up a short time later, in the middle of World War II, as Mahito and his father move from Tokyo to the country. Dad is managing a factory (we learn that he’s making plane parts for the Japanese military), which is also near the ancestral home of Mahito’s late mother. Dad has moved on, having married his wife’s sister, Natsuko, who is pregnant. Mahito is still getting used to the idea of his aunt becoming his stepmom.

When he arrives at his new house, Mahito does get an unusual greeting: A friendly fly-by from a gray heron. He’s never flown into the house before, Natsuko tells Mahito.

The heron later taunts Mahito to venture out of the house, and toward a mysterious tower on the grounds nearby. The heron’s appearance subtly changes — first with teeth visible within his beak, then a gargantuan schnozz, then an entire head. 

What happens next I can’t really say — both for spoiler purposes, and because the movie’s imagery becomes so bizarre that descriptions could be chalked up as a matter of interpretation. Generally, the story takes on some of Miyazaki’s favorite themes: The permeable border between the spirit world and this one (as seen in “Spirited Away”), the supernatural forces of nature (shout-out to “Princess Mononoke”) and the possibility of transformation (as seen in “Ponyo,” “Howl’s Moving Castle” and others).

However, just because Miyazaki is exploring familiar themes doesn’t mean he’s skating on his reputation. The animation here is among the best he’s ever produced, as Mahito’s quest to save Natsuko on “the other side” puts the boy on a path where nothing is exactly what it appears, but everything is strange and full of wonder.

(I saw the movie with its original Japanese voice cast and subtitles. There is an English-language version also hitting theaters, with a voice cast that includes Robert Pattinson, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Dave Bautista, Mark Hamill, Florence Pugh and Christian Bale.)

One can read “The Boy and the Heron,” with its themes of coming to terms with death, as Miyazaki’s farewell — and a last chance to show his many fans that he’s still an artist of the finest kind. If this is Miyazaki’s final film, it’s a beautiful way to go out.

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‘The Boy and the Heron’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 8, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for some violent content/bloody images and smoking. Running time: 124 minutes; dubbed in English, or in Japanese with subtitles, depending on the theater.

Review: In 'Maestro,' Bradley Cooper, as director and star, captures the contradictory loves of Leonard Bernstein

The musical biography “Maestro” is a tour de force for its director and star, Bradley Cooper — which one imagines would suit the person he’s playing, composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, down to his socks.

Cooper and his writing partner, Josh Singer (“Spotlight,” “The Post”), take the cradle-to-grave approach with Bernstein — well, nearly — introducing the audience to the young conductor in 1943, living in an apartment with other musicians. Bernstein catches his first break in 1943, as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, when a guest conductor gets the flu and Bernstein, with no rehearsal, is sent in to lead the orchestra at Carnegie Hall, making Bernstein a national sensation.

Some time later, at a party where his friends — the songwriting duo of Betty Comden (Mallory Portnoy) and Adolph Green (Nick Blaemire) — are entertaining, Bernstein meets an actress, Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). There’s a connection and an attraction, based on shared passions for music and art. In short order, they’re in bed together, and not long after they’re married.

Felicia soon realizes, though, that if she’s going to be married to Leonard Bernstein, she will be forced to share him — both with a series of lovers, some women but mostly men, and with the world as his fame continues to grow.

In performance, Cooper captures so much of Bernstein’s charm and stage presence. One of the showstopping moments in the movie comes when Bernstein is conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor in Ely Cathedral in 1976 — a nearly unbroken scene in which cinematographer Matthew Libatique zeroes in on Cooper’s re-creation of Bernstein’s conducting style, capturing the precision, the exuberance and the respect for the music that he brought to every performance.

(Yes, if we must, let’s talk about the nose. Cooper deploys makeup artist Kazu Hiro — who has won Oscars for transforming Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill for “Darkest Hour” and Nicole Kidman into Gretchen Carlson in “Bombshell” — to create prosthetics to give the handsome actor a schnozz like the conductor’s. Though there were initial complaints about the nose, in the context of the movie, it’s unobtrusive and seems to give Cooper something around which to ground his performance.)

For all that, though, the best thing Cooper does in “Maestro” is to make room for Mulligan’s beautiful portrayal of Felicia. It’s a complex role that takes in her shared joy for creativity, her sorrow and acceptance over her husband’s extramarital encounters, and a poignant portrayal of Felicia’s health problems. Mulligan doesn’t just touch all the bases, but she provides an emotional compliment to Cooper’s showier performance. (Kudos to Cooper for graciously giving Mulligan top billing, too.)

The other highlight of “Maestro” is, of course, the music. Except for a few needle drops (including R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine),” which famously name-checks Bernstein), the entire soundtrack is music composed by or conducted by Bernstein himself — including passages from “West Side Story,” “Candide,” his “Mass” and “Kaddish.” The music does as much to make “Maestro” feel like you’re watching the master at work as Cooper’s soulful performance does.

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‘Maestro’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 8, in theaters; starts streaming on Netflix on December 20. Rated R for some language and drug use. Running time: 129 minutes.

Review: 'Eileen' is a noir thriller bolstered by strong performances by Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie

Two powerhouse actresses — Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie — are the reason to watch “Eileen,” a noir drama with a lot of atmosphere and a long fuse.

McKenzie (“Jojo Rabbit,” “Last Night in Soho”) plays Eileen Dunlop, a mousy clerk working in the offices of a Massachusetts prison in the winter of 1964. When she’s not filing papers or overseeing the mothers and girlfriends who come on visiting day, Eileen is caring for and enabling her alcoholic father (Shea Whigham), the retired police chief.

Things get interesting at the prison when the staff psychologist retires and is replaced by Dr. Rebecca St. John (played by Hathaway). Rebecca quickly befriends Eileen, who starts to become quite interested in this glamorous new co-worker. Rebecca and Eileen also share an interest in the fate of one young prisoner, Lee Polk (Sam Nivola), whose mother, Ann (Marin Ireland), reacts harshly to Rebecca’s methods.

The screenplay by Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh, based on Moshfegh’s novel, starts to descend into some dark places — particularly some quick daydream sequences where Eileen imagines herself killing herself or someone else — before a whopper of a twist fairly late in the game.

Director William Oldroyd (“Lady Macbeth”) steeps the story in shadows, like a dark version of a Douglas Sirk melodrama — or, if you want a more recent reference, similar to Todd Haynes’ “Carol.” The treatment gives McKenzie and Hathaway, as the young woman starting to claim her power and the older woman serving as an enigmatic role model, several opportunities to seize the screen.

“Eileen” isn’t perfect — the twist is a knockout, but takes several minutes to recover from, and the ending is a bit abrupt. But for a rare platform for two actresses of equal talent to go head-to-head, this movie is worth the effort.

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‘Eileen’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 8, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for violent content, sexual content and language. Running time: 98 minutes.

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This review originally ran on this site on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'The Oath' is an overwrought melodrama that tries — and fails — to hide its Latter-day Saint roots

The historical drama “The Oath” is quite a mess, a jumble of abbreviated action and stilted storytelling that, I’m guessing, will leave neither the movie’s built-in audience — members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who will recognize the source material — or anyone else satisfied.

As the title cards inform us, the story begins with a grudge, with two groups of people continuing an ancient war that has left one side down to a solitary survivor, called “the hunted one.” The title cards also tell us that it’s the fourth century A.D., in ancient America. And, we are told, the survivor’s name is Moroni.

OK, a quick bit of Latter-day Saint information, because it’s not said outright in the movie: Moroni was a prophet, son of Mormon — for whom the Book of Mormon is named. The movie does mention that this Moroni is named after Captain Moroni, but doesn’t mention the captain’s prominence in the book.

This movie’s Moroni — played by Darin Scott, who’s also the movie’s director and, with his wife, Michelle, the screenwriter — says he was a fearsome military commander for the Nephites, who have battled the Lamanites for centuries. But Moroni is now the last Nephite, trying to stay out of the clutches of the Lamanite leader, King Aaron (played by “Titanic” bad guy Billy Zane).

The bulk of the movie centers on Moroni finding a woman in the woods. She is Bathsheba (Nora Dale), who has recently escaped the Lamanite camp, where she was forced to be one of King Aaron’s concubines. Moroni nurses the battered Bathsheba back to health, and slowly gains her trust. Over time, she falls in love with Moroni for his gentleness, and his promise never to hurt her.

Bathsheba is curious about the strange golden plates Moroni hides in his cave, but he keeps them from her. He does show her a scroll, on which is written a log of Moroni’s ancestors.

Meanwhile, King Aaron has sent his best tracker — Bathsheba’s older sister, Mahigana (played by Karina Lombard, from “Legends of the Fall”) — to bring back the wayward Bathsheba. 

Scott’s direction can be described best as overdramatic, which nearly compensates for how underwhelming he is as an actor. That’s not to say he’s subtle, as every emotional beat is telegraphed well ahead of its landing. That said, the movie looks lush, thanks to cinematographer Brian O’Carroll’s work capturing the beautiful scenery; the movie was filmed in upstate New York, in the vicinity of where this story is said to have happened.

The confounding part of “The Oath” is that the script seems to be written in code. The name of the source material, the Book of Mormon, is referred to as “the fourth most influential book in American history” — but mentioned by name only in small type in the closing credits. It’s like Scott is trying to put something over on his audience, but he doesn’t have the confidence or skill to hide it cleverly. 

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‘The Oath’

★1/2

Opens Friday, December 8, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for violent content. Running time: 104 minutes.