Review: 'Ennio' captures the music and passion of composer Ennio Morricone, through his words, his admirers and his movies

There are few people who have worked in movies who deserved the title “maestro” more fully than the composer Ennio Morricone, who is credited with hundreds of film and TV scores over six decades, right up to his death in 2020 at age 91.

Giuseppe Tornatore — who worked with Morricone on 13 films, starting with “Cinema Paradiso” in 1988 — turns out to be the right person to capture the composer’s exhaustive history and restless musical spirit, as he does in the documentary “Ennio.”

Morricone’s training was as varied as his film scores. His first music teacher was his father, a trumpet player who instilled the lesson that music could put bread on his family’s table. After playing in a military band, Morricone made his way to the academy, where he was considered a lower-class hayseed by the snooty elites. He mentored under the modern classical composer Goffredo Petrassi, though the teacher and the other students looked down their nose at Morricone’s work on film scores, which they considered not “real” music (though Petrassi wrote a few film scores himself). Morricone also was inspired by the avant-garde work of people like John Cage, who famously knocked over radios and did other offbeat things to make music.

With those disparate influences, it’s no surprise that Morricone’s early scores had an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink quality to them. He liked to experiment, sometimes throwing in oddball instrumentation or playing two themes in counterpoint. (I have to admit that I’ve never seen most of the ‘60s Italian movies Tornatore samples here, which makes the movies a great checklist of movies to seek out later.)

His breakthrough was his collaboration with director Sergio Leone on a series of low-budget American-style Westerns, filmed in Italy with a just a few American actors — including one, Clint Eastwood, who became a star because of them. Eastwood is one of dozens of people interviewed here, a mix of filmmakers and musicians who worked with Morricone, as well as a few familiar faces who admired or were inspired by his music. (For example, Bruce Springsteen talks about how he uses one of Morricone’s themes when he and the E Street band take the stage at every concert.)

Tornatore takes us through Morricone’s disappointments, too — like his six Oscar nominations, for which he finally won for his last one, Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” in 2015. Morricone, in an expansive interview, gets a little salty about losing in 1987 for Roland Joffe’s “The Mission,” to Herbie Hancock’s jazz score for “‘Round Midnight,” not because of Hancock’s work, but because many of Dexter Gordon’s solos were of existing jazz numbers. (In an amusing irony, Morricone’s 1987 score for Brian de Palma’s “The Untouchables” lost out to “The Last Emperor,” directed by another Italian director with whom Morricone had worked, Bernardo Bertolucci.)

The most fascinating parts of Tornatore’s interviews with Morricone and the other composers is when they talk about the work of making music. Morricone is self-effacing and analytical about his process and his product, and could hum themes and melodies (though he hated melodies as a concept) that he wrote decades earlier. And the other composers, even the ones who belittled him when they were growing up together, marvel about the depth and breadth of his career, and the endless inventiveness of his scores.

“Ennio” captures Morricone’s wit, his humility, his striving for perfection. Most importantly, though, it captures his music, in the context of some spectacular movies, and allows us to consider a lifetime of music in one engrossing sitting.

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‘Ennio’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 29, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for some scenes of sexuality and nudity, violence and language. Running time: 157 minutes; in English and Italian, with subtitles.

Review: 'Remembering Gene Wilder' is a documentary that's not half as inventive as the man himself

Gene Wilder probably wouldn’t complain about the shabbiness of the documentary made about him, “Remembering Gene Wilder,” because — as everyone in the movie tells us — he was a wonderfully kind and gentle soul. 

But Wilder is also, as the clips director Ron Frank assembles show us, one of the funniest and most manic performers the movies have ever produced — and he deserves a better tribute than this Wikipedia entry of a documentary.

Frank starts with the coincidence that launched his career, when he was, in his words, miscast in a 1963 revival of Bertolt Brecht’s play “Mother Courage and Her Children.” The show’s star was Anne Bancroft, fresh off her Oscar win for “The Miracle Worker” — but that didn’t keep the show from closing within three months of opening. Bancroft liked Wilder, though, and thought he would be perfect for a part in a screenplay her then-boyfriend was writing.

The boyfriend was, and is, Mel Brooks. The screenplay had the working title “Springtime for Hitler,” which was eventually changed to “The Producers.” The part was Leo Bloom, the naive accountant who has the brainstorm that a flop could make more money than a hit play — an idea that inspires the unscrupulous Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) to stage a musical glorifying the Nazis.

The casting was genius — Wilder was a perfect mix of innocence and hysteria — but it didn’t happen right away. Wiider was in another play three years later, when Brooks visited him backstage and said, “You didn’t think I forgot about you, did you?” They started filming “The Producers” a few weeks later, but not before Wilder flew down to Texas to film a small part in what would be his first movie, “Bonnie & Clyde.”

As Wilder himself says (in the audiobook of his 2005 memoir, which is deployed frequently here), director Arthur Penn said he never would have thought of having Wilder’s character, the nervous kidnap victim Eugene, laugh — but Wilder did, adding a layer to a side performance that elevated the movie.

The people interviewed here include Brooks, Carol Kane (the female lead in the Wilder-directed “The World’s Greatest Lover”), Burton Gilliam (who was Slim Pickens’ henchman in “Blazing Saddles”), Peter Ostrom (who played Charlie Bucket in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”), Eric McCormack (recalling Wilder’s guest spot on “Will & Grace”), Rain Pryor (recalling her father Richard Pryor’s partnership with Wilder), as well as friends Harry Connick Jr. and Alan Alda. All give fond remembrances of Wilder, both for his onscreen talents and his offscreen charm.

(My favorite anecdote here, and there are plenty of good ones, is that Wilder was a last-minute replacement to play The Waco Kid, the alcoholic gunslinger in “Blazing Saddles,” after the original choice, Gig Young, dropped out for a pretty tragic reason.)

What’s missing is any serious appraisal of Wilder’s work as a performer, writer and director. The closest thing to a critic here is Ben Mankiewicz, but he’s allowed less time to talk about Wilder than he does introducing a movie on TCM.

There’s lots one could discuss critically about Wilder’s comedy. It would have been fascinating to have someone dissect the balance of quiet and loud Wilder could bring to a character like Victor Frankenstein in “Young Frankenstein,” or the choices he made to bring Willy Wonka to life — or how he could be a part of such a perfect satire of racism in “Blazing Saddles” and, just two years later, perform a blackface scene (alongside Pryor, no less) in “Silver Streak.”

“Remembering Gene Wilder” feels like the sort of safe, sanitized accounting of Wilder’s life and work that one would see playing in a museum exhibit of the man’s work. It leaves the impression that Wilder himself would be a little embarrassed by the adulation, and would want something with a little more edge.

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‘Remembering Gene Wilder’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 29, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for some mature content and language. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: 'Late Night With the Devil' is a '70s horror throwback that shifts from unsettling to disturbing

The horror artifact “Late Night With the Devil” shows the advantages of fully committing to one’s premise — which, in this case, is a faithful re-creation of a ‘70s late-night talk show where, literally, all hell breaks loose.

Australian writing-directing brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes start with some backstory (narrated by Michael Ironside), of how Chicago radio host Jack Delroy (played by David Dastmalchian) was picked in 1971 to host a nationally broadcast late-night talk show meant to challenge the reign of Johnny Carson. 

Try as he might, though, Jack can’t dethrone the king. Changing from celebrity interviews to shock-jock freak show stuff doesn’t move the needle. Not even a 1977 episode featuring Jack’s cancer-stricken wife, Madeleine (Georgina Haig), just two weeks before her death, is enough to overtake Carson’s ratings.

After that prologue, we’re told that we’re going to see the only videotape of the original broadcast of the show, “Night Owls,” when Jack returned to the air shortly after Madeleine’s death. It’s Halloween night, 1977, and Jack and his sleazy producer, Leo (Josh Quong Tart), have booked a Vegas mentalist, Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), and a magician-turned-skeptic, Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), eager to prove that Christou’s a fraud. 

Carmichael is clearly modeled on James “The Amazing” Randi, the illusionist who went on Carson to debunk the claims of mentalist Uri Geller. Carmichael, like Randi, offers a six-figure check to anyone who can show the existence of anything paranormal that Carmichael’s skeptical science can’t prove to be phony. (I tell you, “The Tonight Show” back in the day had some cool guests, not just Jimmy Fallon’s party games.)

The sniping between Christou and Carmichael takes a nasty turn when the mentalist says he senses some unusual psychic energy — and then bad stuff starts happening. By then, though, Jack has moved forward with his big “get”: Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), who brings on the subject of her latest book, Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), the 13-year-old sole survivor of house fire that destroyed a devil-worshipping madman (Steve Mouzakis). 

June — whom, we quickly surmise, Jack has been dating — says she has proof that Lilly is possessed, and Jack wants to see it revealed live on his show. This being a horror movie, one can guess that things go wrong. But how wrong, and with what disturbing results, is where this inventive movie really surprises.

Long before the reveal, the Cairnes brothers show themselves to be masterful stylists. They capture the mood and production design of a ‘70s talk show, from the Naugahyde chairs to the smarmy sidekick (Rhys Auteri). Our attention becomes so fixed on those period details that we forget, momentarily, that we’re in a horror movie — until the blood starts to appear.

Anchoring “Late Night With the Devil” is Dastmalchian, a reliably unsettling supporting player (in the “Ant-Man” movies and “Dune, Part One,” among many films) who really shines in the lead role here. Dastmalchian conveys the creeping unease Jack feels as his TV career is circling the drain, which is nearly as terrifying as the horrors his show is about to unleash on America. 

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‘Late Night With the Devil’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 22, in theaters; starts streaming April 19 on Shudder. Rated R for violent content, some gore, and language including a sexual reference. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: 'Problemista' is loaded with ideas and overstuffed with whimsy, but Tilda Swinton almost saves it

There’s a habit some first-time filmmakers fall into, particularly when they’re not so sure of their talents like director/writer/star Julio Torres is in his comedy “Problemista,” that they cram every idea they ever had into their first movie, because they’re not sure they’re going to get a second one.

Torres, a former writer for “Saturday Night Live,” plays Alejandro, who has come to New York from his home in El Salvador with a dream to make toys for Hasbro. He has a notebook full of offbeat ideas, like creating cellphones for Cabbage Patch Dolls, but can’t get the folks running Hasbro’s internship program to give him a shot. To satisfy his visa requirements, he has a job monitoring the tube holding an artist, Bobby (RZA), frozen in a cryogenic chamber.

When Alejandro innocently, and very briefly, unplugs the chamber, the cryogenic lab fires him. Now, as his immigration caseworker tells him, the clock is ticking — he has 30 days to secure a new job, and find a sponsor who will sign his paperwork, or he will be deported back to El Salvador and his toy-making dreams will end. 

After exploring several options, including the glitter-covered dumpster that is Craigslist, Alejandro comes to believe his only shot at saving his visa is working for Bobby’s wife, Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), a flighty art critic who has a plan to pay the rent on Bobby’s cryogenic chamber by mounting a gallery show of Bobby’s paintings — all beautifully rendered pictures of eggs. It doesn’t take long for Alejandro to see that Elizabeth is demanding to the point of insanity; a former assistant refers to her as the Hydra, because if you solve one of her problems, two more grow in its place.

As a writer, Torres has a dry, absurdist humor, particularly when tackling such topics as the pretensions of the art world and Elizabeth’s refusal to deal maturely with a woman (played by “Past Lives” star Greta Lee) with whom Bobby once had a dalliance. As a director, Torres suggests the whimsical imagery that Wes Anderson would make if he were a gay Salvadoran working with a budget of a buck-fifty. And as an actor, he’s one of the most annoying screen presences I’ve seen in a long time.

Swinton’s fire-and-ice performance nearly rescues the whole enterprise. In a magenta fright wig and a wardrobe that conjures an image of someone walking into a closet and coming out wearing the first six things they touched, Swinton captures Elizabeth’s erratic entitlement perfectly. Torres tries to match Swinton’s mad energy with his whimsical visuals, but he can never keep up.

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‘Problemista’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 22, in theaters. Rated R for some language and sexual content. Running time: 104 minutes.

Review: 'Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire' is all callbacks to the franchise's past glories, with little to make it memorable on its own

There are plenty of movies — “The Sixth Sense” and “The Others” come to mind — where the central figures are ghosts who don’t know that they’re dead, which makes me wonder: Can a movie franchise be like that? 

Based on the evidence of “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” the franchise started 40 years ago by writers Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis and director Ivan Reitman has passed over into the Great Beyond of moviedom and hasn’t figured it out yet.

This new movie picks up shortly after the events of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.” Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon) and her kids — Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), now 18, and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), now 15 — have moved to New York and are living in the old firehouse that was the headquarters of the original Ghostbusters. They share the living quarters with Phoebe’s science teacher, Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), who’s now Callie’s boyfriend and awkwardly auditioning for the role of Phoebe and Trevor’s stepdad.

Early on, we get a chase sequence that sets up the family dynamic: Gary’s driving the Ecto-1 through Manhattan streets, Callie’s navigating in the front seat, Trevor’s in back maneuvering a ghost trap on an RC car, and Phoebe’s again in the side gunner seat, shooting her proton pack at whatever phantom they’re after.

After one such chase causes some damage through the streets, our new Ghostbusters team is accosted by another familiar character: Walter Peck (William Atherton). The movie never explains how a meddling EPA inspector — the one who shut down the OG ‘busters in the first movie — managed to convince a majority of New York’s voters to elect him mayor, especially when he’s the same emasculated jerk he always was.

As a result of Peck’s lecturing — and child labor laws — Phoebe gets benched. She’s bummed about this, and finds consolation when she befriends a teen ghost, Melody (Emily Alyn Lind, from “Doctor Sleep”). Meanwhile, Callie and Gary check in with their benefactor, original Ghostbuster Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) and his assistant, Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts), about the stability of the firehouse’s ghost containment unit, which hasn’t been upgraded since Callie’s dad, the late Egon Spengler (Ramis’ character), built it.

Meanwhile — and there’s a lot of “meanwhile” before the script (by director Gil Kenan and the last movie’s director, Jason Reitman) finally kicks into gear — Ackroyd’s Ray Stantz is making paranormal YouTube content with Phoebe’s pal from Oklahoma, Podcast (Logan Kim). Then a stranger, Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) brings in a mysterious artifact: A brass orb with incredible spectral energy. The orb is taken to Winston’s secret lab, where Trevor’s high-school pal Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) now works.

If it seems like the synopsis above is just a recitation of names of characters from the franchise’s history, you have zeroed in on the movie’s main problem: It’s almost nothing but references. It’s an hour before one major character shows up, and nearly 90 minutes before someone (Patton Oswalt) identifies the movie’s villain.

If one were to strip away the callbacks to Slimer and the walking Statue of Liberty — everything from all the previous films except for the 2016 movie, whose lady Ghostbusters have been memory-holed to appease the “you ruined my childhood” mob — this two-hour movie probably would clock in around 20 minutes.

As happened in “Afterlife,” the most genuine moments of “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” center on Grace’s Phoebe, as she reconciles the perils of adolescence with the responsibility of being heir to her grandfather’s paranormal genius. If this franchise can come back from the dead, it will be because someone lets Phoebe strike out on her own adventures. I know some women Ghostbusters who could give her a hand.

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‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’

★1/2

Opens Friday, March 22, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for supernatural action/violence, language and suggestive references. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Love Lies Bleeding' is a hot-and-heavy noir thriller, with Kristen Stewart and newcomer Katy O'Brian showing steaming chemistry

“Steamy” barely begins to describe the heat on display in “Love Lies Bleeding,” a deliciously devilish slice of lesbian noir from director Rose Glass — that showcases one of our best actors, Kristen Stewart, and an appealing newcomer in Katy O’Brian.

Stewart plays Lou, who’s living her days in 1989 working at a gym in New Mexico, a lonely existence of cleaning out toilets and wiping down barbells. She would love to get out of New Mexico, away from her mobster father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), who owns the gym. But if Lou left, there would be no one to protect her older sister, Beth (Jena Malone), who’s regularly abused by her scum bucket of a husband, JJ (Dave Franco).

Something needs to happen to shake up the status quo, and that something is Jackie (played by O’Brian), who’s hitchhiking across the Southwest to get to Las Vegas — where she plans to compete in a body-building tournament. Jackie is a survivor, which is apparent when we first see her, having sex in a car with JJ, who promises to introduce her to Lou Sr.. Lou Sr. gives Jackie a job as a waitress at the gun range he owns, which injects a whole mess of Chekhov’s guns into the story.

When Jackie enters the gym, the sparks between her and Lou are abundant. Lou becomes smitten enough that she offers Jackie a place to stay and access to some steroids that were left behind by somebody at the gym. An extremely hot romance ensues, and too late Lou discovers that Jackie has a dark side — one that results in a murder that Lou is happy to help cover up, which brings more complications to the couple and to Lou Sr.’s operation.

Glass, who explored body horror and religious obsession in her 2019 debut “Saint Maud,” finds love and pumping iron to be equally powerful obsessions — and a good way to explore more horrors, particularly as Jackie has episodes that bring out the beast in her. Her eye is impeccable, and each frame burns in the retinas with passion and violent beauty.

O’Brian, who’s had recurring roles in “The Mandalorian,” is quite a discovery, capturing a tortured, gentle soul within a sleek, muscular body that could crush bones. Stewart, who seems to be capable of anything, imbues Lou with the battered heart of a woman who’s been singed by love before but is willing to jump into the flames for Jackie. Their scenes together crackle with energy, a meeting not just of bodies but of spirits. And watch for Anna Baryshnikov, who’s delightful and chilling as Daisy, Lou’s mischief-making ex.

The ending of “Love Lies Bleeding” is a strange one, as Glass and her co-writer, Weronika Tofilska, explore mythology and a little fantasy in ways that will divide audiences (as they did at Sundance this year). The ending hit me right in the sweet spot, combining gritty noir with a splash of magical realism for some emotionally raw but stylistically perfect moments. 

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‘Love Lies Bleeding’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence and grisly images, sexual content, nudity, language throughout and drug use. Running time: 104 minutes.

Review: 'Arthur the King' combines Mark Wahlberg's bravado and one dynamic dog in an entertaining adventure package

“Arthur the King” is an entertaining enough adventure yarn about a shaggy, scruffy creature who barks and growls while scrapping through the jungles of the Dominican Republic.

That’s the character played by Mark Wahlberg. The movie is also about a dog.

Wahlberg plays Mikael Lindnord, an adventure racer — one of the best of a particular type of racing, in which teams of four trek through rough terrain to hit a series of checkpoints using bicycles, kayaks and foot power. When the movie introduces us to Mikael, he’s racing through Costa Rica in a 2015 race, where his stubbornness maroons the team on the first day of the five-day event. (It should be noted that, in real life, Lindnord is Swedish — and the film doesn’t even pretend that Wahlberg can play that.)

Cut to three years later, and Mikael is desperate to run the Adventure Racing World Championship one more time, to win the title that has always eluded him. He convinces his wife, Helena (Juliet Rylance), a former racer who retired to raise their daughter, and talks a sponsor into bankrolling him. Now he must assemble his team.

He first enlists his longtime navigator, Chik (Ali Suliman), who agrees even though his knee hasn’t fully healed from a career of racing. He then finds a young climber, Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel, from the “Fast & Furious” series), who is persuaded by her father (Oscar Best), a former racer. And lastly Mikael must cajole his former teammate, Leo (Simu Liu), who’s more interested in entertaining his social-media following than winning races.

While all this is happening, director Simon Cellan Jones (who directed Wahlberg’s Apple TV+ action comedy “The Family Plan”) and screenwriter Michael Brandt (creator of NBC’s “One Chicago” shows) intercut with scenes of a rather bedraggled mutt on the streets of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. How the dog’s story intersects with Mikael’s team doesn’t reveal itself for a little while, and only when the race is well underway.

Jones and Brandt get into some intense detail of how adventure racing works — like stressing how they don’t care how you get from one transition point to the next, allowing teams to find shortcuts that often intensify the race. This leads to the movie’s most spectacular sequence, in which Wahlberg and Emmanuel are shown navigating a rickety zip line while lugging their mountain bikes.

The action sequences are nicely balanced by decent interaction by the actors — particularly with Liu’s arrogant Leo learning humility from the determined dog. It’s an effective enough narrative that by the time we get to the finale, which requires Wahlberg to get emotional with the dog, a viewer may just surrender to the sentimentality. 

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‘Arthur the King’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some strong language. Running time: 105 minutes.

Review: 'Io Capitano' lets viewers see the harrowing journey of African migrants to Europe — and confronts us with their humanity

Roger Ebert’s maxim, that movies are “a machine that creates empathy,” is embodied in its truest sense in “Io Capitano,” director Matteo Garrone’s stunningly realized story of one immigrant’s harrowing journey. (It’s one of the nominees for the Academy Award in the International Film category.)

Seydou (played by newcomer Seydou Sarr) is 16, living with his mom (Khady Sy) and many sisters in Senegal. He sometimes sneaks away from the house to join his cousin, Moussa (Moustapha Fall), to work the occasional construction jobs — and then take the money earned and stash it. 

What they’ve made in six months, Moussa tells Seydou, is enough to pay for their passage from Senegal to Europe, where they believe they will find a better life.  And even though Seydou’s mother forbids Seydou from making the trip, Seydou and Moussa head out anyway, intent on crossing half of Africa to get to the Mediterranean.

The trip starts on a crowded bus, then in the back of a pickup truck bounding over hills so fast that one migrant falls off and is left behind. More are left for dead on the next leg, walking across the dunes of the Sahara. Those who make it this far then run into a new danger: Libyan gangsters holding them for ransom. And so on, to the final part of the journey — crossing the Mediterranean in a broken-down boat with an engine spewing toxic smoke.

The audience, like Seydou, has no idea what’s going to happen next during his journey. We soon feel every bit of the fear he’s feeling, as well as the humility when he meets the occasional friendly person who would rather help than exploit him. And we watch as Seydou figures out that he must grow up in a hurry, because it’s not just his life that’s on the line.

Garrone — familiar to fans of Italian film for his 2008 Mafia epic “Gomorrah” and his 2017 take on “Pinocchio” (with Roberto Benigni as Geppetto) — and his team of writers seep viewers in the tiny details of this tortuous migration (like how most Senegalese teen boys wear very worn European soccer jerseys). Garrone also mixes in moments of magical realism that show us how Seydou try to process the hell he’s enduring.

“Io Capitano” shows us the humanity of those migrants desperate enough, because of oppression or economics, to risk their lives to make such a trip. After too many seasons where the word “immigrant” is a label on undifferentiated figures in a news story or a hate-filled punchline in a political speech, Garrone’s greatest service is the bracing reminder that these are people just like us.

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‘Io Capitano’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 8, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for violence, language and perilous situations. Running time: 122 minutes; in Wolof and French, with subtitles.