Critic's Notebook

Suffering Succotash

Universal Pictures

MOVIE REVIEW
Cats (2019)

By MARTIN TSAI

There is nothing wrong per se with musicals, but Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh have been rubbish. With that out of the way, any big-screen adaptions of their work can be afforded some leeway to be judged independently of flaws inherent in the source materials. Regardless of what one thinks of Mr. Webber’s 1981 West End production, “Cats,” Tom Hooper’s expensive version feels like belling the cat. A musical of course necessitates the suspension of disbelief, but Mr. Hooper seems never to have quite made up his mind on whether to approach the material with theatrics or realism and winds up with something the cat dragged in.

Hang 'Em High

Claire Folger/Warner Brothers Pictures

MOVIE REVIEW
Richard Jewell (2019)

By MARTIN TSAI

There are at least three aspiring heroes in Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell”: Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser), the security guard turned suspect at the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing in Atlanta; Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm), an F.B.I. agent investigating; and Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter covering the story. How the three disparate attempts at heroism parallel and intersect might have made an interesting movie in expert hands, but "Richard Jewell” isn’t it. The film focuses on the demonization of Jewell by law enforcement and media, while itself hypocritically vilifying Shaw and Scruggs in the exact same fashion.

The Hosts

Claire Folger/Lionsgate

MOVIE REVIEW
Knives Out (2019)

By MARTIN TSAI

As one would expect from a whodunit, “Knives Out” is rife with false leads and misdirection. But it’s not so slick as to warrant or withstand repeat viewings. Without spoiling who did it here, the film's big reveal replays a couple of clues, in case you miss them early on, and intersperses those with previously unseen footage and information withheld from the characters and the viewers. The film never shrewdly pulls the wool over our eyes, because its ending isn’t so much a twist as it is context to facts we’ve already gathered.

Relatively Distant

Bruno Machado/BFI London Film Festival 2019

MOVIE REVIEW
Invisible Life (2019)

By SARAH MANVEL

Teenage Eurídice (Carol Duarte) has a slightly older sister called Guida (Julia Stockler). They live a precarious middle-class existence in 1950s Rio de Janeiro, under the thumb of their unkind father Manuel (António Fonseca). Guida plans to escape via her Greek sailor boyfriend. Eurídice escapes via her world-class piano playing. Life being what it is, things don’t work out the way the sisters planned. Manuel being who he is, things are much, much worse than they need to be. The title implies something hidden would be made visible, but the movie delivers a very different story.

Parts Unknown

Trigon-film

MOVIE REVIEW
To the Ends of the Earth (2019)

By SARAH MANVEL

“Lost in Translation” remains a deeply wonderful and deeply problematic movie about two Americans at loose ends in Japan, a strange and alien culture for them that reflects their own confusion and discomfort. Being isolated and scared in their own separate ways brought the hero and heroine together. The Japanese heroine of “To the Ends of the Earth” has no such human companion on her journey in a wild and strange place – in her case, Uzbekistan – which means the emotional impact is very different. This is not necessarily wrong, especially in comparison, but the movie’s own mistakes are what lessen its power.

Unsealed With a Kiss

Shayne Laverdière/Diaphana

MOVIE REVIEW
Matthias & Maxime (2019)

By SARAH MANVEL

Matthias (Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas) is a good-looking trainee lawyer whose career is on the rise. Maxime (Xavier Dolan) is leaving behind his alcoholic mother to tend bar in Australia. Before he goes, their gang of friends – who are fully aware their group dynamic is about to end – head off to Rivette’s (Pier-Luc Funk) summer house for a final holiday. While there, Rivette’s annoying younger sister Erika (Camille Felton) announces she is making a short movie. Max volunteers his participation, but Matthias agrees to help only after losing a bet. And only then do they learn Erika wants them to kiss on camera.

The Struggle Is Thrill

Neon; top right, Focus Features; bottom left, Jaap Buitendijk/Focus Features

MOVIE REVIEW
Parasite/Downton Abbey (2019)

By MARTIN TSAI

With “Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho gives the “Upstairs, Downstairs” premise a long-overdue update. Although the film is unmistakably current and relevant, the myriad uncanny parallels between it and the contemporaneous big-screen installment of “Downton Abbey” are impossible to ignore. So glaring are their similarities, the fact that no one has pointed them out already must have something to do with the racial cognitive dissonance of the critical mass failing to see Asians in this context.

Sex Abuse, Lies and Videotape

BFI London Film Festival 2019

MOVIE REVIEW
Rewind (2019)

By SARAH MANVEL

It’s a fascinating fact of human nature that people need to document their lives, the good parts and the awful. It’s even more fascinating that the urge to document can surmount almost anything – such as, for example, how the father of director Sasha Joseph Neulinger missed his son’s birth because he was out buying a video camera. That video camera is the key to “Rewind,” because the family dynamic it captured are absolutely crucial to the story that it tells.

He Sad, She Sad

Wilson Webb/Netflix

MOVIE REVIEW
Marriage Story (2019)

By SARAH MANVEL

For starters, the title is wrong. It’s a divorce story, specifically that of teen-sensation-actress-turned-arthouse-draw Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and self-made-theater-director Charlie (Adam Driver). The plot resembles so closely the outline of writer-director Noah Baumbach’s real-life marriage to his first wife that the gender of their actual child – onscreen, his name is Henry (Azhy Robertson) – hasn’t even been changed. As an audience, we are meant to be enthralled by this inside portrait of an artistic family’s disintegration. As people, watching this airing of some downright cruel dirty laundry, we really ought to look away.

When the Rainbow's Over

David Hindley/Roadside Attractions

MOVIE REVIEW
Judy (2019)

By ALAN DIMENT

No amount of yellow bricks can hide the fact that we are on a familiar road with “Judy.” The film has a similar look and feel to 2018’s “Stan & Ollie,” with both movies following Hollywood legends experiencing hard times during the twilight of their careers. Where Laurel and Hardy battled changing audience tastes and deteriorating health, the trials faced by the late Judy Garland were partially self-inflicted. Where love and affection were absent in her life, the actress would often fill the void with pills and booze.