Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023.

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Patricia Markert

with Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, William Dafoe, Ramy Youssef.

A girl named Bella is living with a man she refers to as God. God is a scientist who found Bella washed up on the shore with other dead things, and decided to perform an experiment on her, replacing Bella’s brain with the brain of a living infant. As a result of the infant’s immaturity, Bella matures the way a baby would, in fits and starts, taking uncertain steps, expressing herself with no self control, acting out, screaming, throwing things around. God, played by Willem Dafoe, decides to hire Max (Youssef), a medical student, as his assistant to monitor Bella’s progress, to keep data on her every day. As Bella grows up, even though she started with the body of a mature woman, she begins to enjoy herself especially in a sexual way.

Mark Ruffalo is Duncan, a lawyer who falls in love with Bella

This leads to men learning to enjoy her as well. As Bella breaks free of God’s extremely confining quarters, and is taken away by a caddish lover, Duncan (Ruffalo), to Lisbon, she learns not only how to behave more politely, but how to think. She develops a conscience and feels pity for the poor. She reads Emerson. When the money she thinks she is giving to charity is all gone, she earns her living as a prostitute and joins a socialist movement. 

Eventually she returns to God when he really needs her more than she needs him. The full circle of her life has twists and turns, but is centered on God (I just learned by reading about the author of the novel on which the film is based that God is short for Godwin, not a term of homage to a superior creature).

Emma Stone must act first as a know nothing baby, eventually becoming a full scale adult capable of managing her own life, her own sexuality, escaping the control of men. Her development from all id to superego must have been fun to perform. The screenplay, based on a fantastic novel, which has as its inspiration Frankenstein, asks if it is possible to create a human from another human, transplanting another person’s brain, combining elements of scientific and emotional knowledge.

The makeup of Dafoe shows how scarred he is from the beginning.

The costuming is extreme. Bella is made to wear giant puffy sleeves, or mini skirts (this during the Victorian era). The sets and costumes and make up let you know that this is science fiction, not historical drama. Photography often centers from a fish eye lens, forcing the audience to see things up close, and in a distorted way with the sides curved. It exaggerates the imaginary lives we are watching.

I wondered about certain things that did not add up, even though the whole premise was fantasy. Why does Bella explain that the reason Victoria killed herself was that the baby was a monster. If she was reincarnated from Victoria with the baby’s brain, how could she have known what Victoria was thinking if she was no longer Victoria?

There were also some holes in the plot. Where did Max, Bella’s betrothed, find Duncan, after the excursion on the boat was aborted? Was he in an insane asylum?

Stone wearing one of the extreme costumes

Nineteenth century philosophy asked questions about the meaning of being human, what responsibility humans have for other humans. How these questions relate to Bella’s development makes the movie have a philosophical layer. The feminist viewpoint makes perfect sense, and has a victory lap at the end.

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Derry Girls (2018-2022)

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Patricia Markert

on Netflix

I know it is not new, but in the absence of good tv with a humorous bent, we have been rewatching this hilarious show set in Londonderry, Ireland, during the troubles (1990s). Maybe it’s because I attended a Catholic school in an Irish Catholic neighborhood myself, and was not always loved by the nuns. I related heartily to a three-generation family crowded into the house, and cousins constantly showing up, and a cranky ma who would rather not pay for your birthday bash.

The five youths going to the all girls school make up the main cast:

Erin (Saorise-Monica Jackson), who thinks she is more brilliant than she is, and wants to be a writer

Orla (Louisa Harland), Erin’s cousin, a bit on the spectrum, and happy to be there

Claire (Nichola Coughlan), a brainy plump friend, whose anxiety is always showing

Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), a horny girl who just wants a ride, and I don’t mean on a horse

James (Dylan Llewellyn), Michelle’s cousin, an outsider in every way, not only that he is a boy going to an all girls school, but the fact that he is British, and Protestant

The show features excellent ensemble acting with the older generation, including a very cranky grandfather who is mean at all times to his son in law, two sisters one of whom might generously be labeled a bimbo (all she thinks about is how she looks), a mysterious baby who must be Erin’s sister but is never mentioned, or looked at by the teens in the film. The Troubles crop up at odd moments as they must have for the writer of the show (Lisa McGee) and lend a serious air so that you know the girls are not just mindless idiots. They have to navigate bomb laden streets at times.

You might fault the casting of the teens with much older actors, but this did not bother me because the acting worked so well. And there are key moments with the older folk, including a very boring uncle named Colm (Kevin McLeer). Who does not have one of these relatives in their family? The guy who you pray you are not seated next to at dinner, because you will have to listen to endless tales about nothing you are remotely interested in.

Adults in the family: Aunt Kathy, parents Mary (Kathy’s sister) and Gerry, and Joe (Mary and Kathy’s father

Here is Colm going on about something boring.

Another great treat throughout the series is the depiction of the no nonsense nun, sister Michael (Siobhan McSweeney).

By the third season, you know things have changed. By that time, President Clinton has visited to move the peace talks along, and hopes abound that the Troubles may end.  Early episodes hobble a bit, but at the conclusion, I am moved to tears at how things get wrapped up. I think we have watched the series three times now. I never grow tired of it. 

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Artie Shaw: Time is all you’ve got, directed by Brigitte Berman, 1985.

Posted on January 14, 2024 by Patricia Markert

seen at the Film Forum, in a remastered version

The movie begins with this quote from Emily Dickinson:

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog – 
To tell one’s name – the livelong June – 
To an admiring Bog!

And so we learn of Artie Shaw’s relationship with his celebrity, he who taught himself first the saxophone, then the clarinet. After dropping out of school, he made his living up to 1929, when he was 19 years old, writing commercial music to promote products. Bored with this work, he began playing with real musicians, and became a famous band leader, with great hits– the first being his recording of the Cole Porter classic, Begin the Beguine, which led to his celebrity. The swing era was kind to Artie. Jitterbug dancing craze made him extremely popular, which led to his ditching the whole thing. He did not like being surrounded by morons including dancers who rushed the stage and nearly knocked out his teeth with their vigorous kicking.

For Artie Shaw was first and foremost an intellectually curious man who had no truck with those lesser mortals interested only in losing their minds over their dance partners. He could be difficult. Ask one of his eight wives, most of whom were actresses, including Evelyn Keyes, who spoke candidly of Shaw’s overbearing personality, but who obviously still held some affection for him. Mel Torme looked up to him but knew better than to cross him.

Holiday with Shaw and other band members

Shaw was credited with hiring Billie Holliday, breaking a color barrier, in the 1930s, to sing in his band, when they were both very young, and not used to navigating the deep south with its segregation policies. 

Shaw’s ambition was to be a writer. Whenever he could he would quit music, and move to a rural location, where he would be surrounded by books, and write. His first book, The Trouble with Cinderella, was an autobiography. He wrote several novels as well.

The movie gives a chronology of Shaw’s life up through the 1980s, when Brigitte Berman originally made it, and afterward received an Oscar for Best Documentary Film in 1985. Early years get the most detailed treatment, up to and including the war years, when Shaw enlisted in the navy. His heavy schedule, and questioning mind, brought on a nervous breakdown, and subsequent psychoanalysis to understand what made him want to continue living.

Always restless, when he came back to the United States from his station in the Pacific, he took up music again, and had a bit of a resurgence until he wanted to include a string quartet in his swing orchestras. This did not always work with audiences who longed for the old pop hits of his youth. By the 1950s when he was interrogated at the House on Un-American Activities, he had grown so disillusioned with his country that he moved to Spain, and built a house on a cliff overlooking the sea. 

He never seemed to suffer poverty. From one beautiful farm house to a house on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, to a calm country manor in Connecticut, Shaw’s restlessness shows itself in his constantly starting, and then dismissing bands, moving from one coast to another, marrying one woman after another. The one constant in Shaw’s life, besides his pronounced talent to play the clarinet, was his curiosity about everything. His houses always contained huge libraries of books that he had read. When he took up fishing in Spain, he built a special room that contained not only his fishing gear, but his library of books about fishing. Evelyn Keyes, his last wife, explained how you could ask him anything about fish, and he could tell you. She also remarked how fish were located in beautiful places, explaining how Shaw’s restlessness and love of fishing went hand in hand.

I wanted to see this movie because I love the recordings I have of Shaw’s music, especially his clarinet playing. As one of his band mates described it, it had a fatter tone than Benny Goodman, with whom he had a brief rivalry during the swing era. Watching the crazed jitterbugger, I wondered what propelled them to such speedy moves, and thought it must have had to do with getting out of the Depression. Dancing your way to great music thanks to Artie Shaw must have been extremely satisfying.

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Anatomy of a Fall, directed by Justine Tries, 2023.

Posted on December 29, 2023 by Patricia Markert

with Sandra Huller, Milo Machado Graner

 The title describes this movie, since dissecting each situation leading up to a man fatally falling informs every scene.  Samuel (Samuel Theis) falls to his death in a French chalet near the Alps. His wife, Sandra (Huller), had just dismissed a student who had come to interview her at her home. The reason: Samuel, upstairs, was playing music so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think. Samuel was also tending to some renovations with power tools, so that added noise did not help.

At the same time, their son, Daniel (Garner), age eleven, and visually impaired, goes for a walk with his dog, Snoop. They travel across rough terrain, up and down hills, and some of the early suspense comes from worrying that the boy might fall. But no, the person who falls is his father, and the question becomes how did it come to pass? Was he pushed by his angry wife? Did he commit suicide because of his frustration with his own life? 

Milo Machado Garner plays Daniel

As Samuel’s body is hauled away, and investigators come to examine the scene, a lawyer, Vincent (Swann Arlaud) )and friend of the family, arrives to advise Sandra on how to respond to the French legal team assigned to the case.

There are many reasons to admire this movie. Its complexity of thought, allowing the viewer to decide who if anyone is responsible, is rare in movies devoted to mysterious deaths. Hercule Poirot, no matter how many little grey cells he used, could not solve this case. The three characters at the center: the wife, who has reason to be frustrated with her husband; the husband, who has reason to be disgruntled; and the child, caught in the middle, all have carefully written dialogue so that we feel as if we are slowly getting to know them. The legal teams, on both sides, have the opportunity to present well reasoned if prejudiced arguments for their side. If I were on the jury, it would be difficult for me to decide.

Sandra Huller plays Sandra

Daniel, who discovers his father’s corpse, and watches his mother be accused of murder, is remarkable in his poise and ability to reason. Even though the lion’s share of the plot centers on Sandra, who is defending herself throughout, Daniel’s role determines the outcome in the end.

But I found the whole business rather sordid to watch, especially considering how the child is forced to play such a central role in what could have been the murder of his beloved father. The actress who plays Sandra could not be more perfect in the part. How I longed for the movie to be over so that I would not have to look at her any more. An intelligent movie, sure, but extremely distasteful. The pacing, very slow and pretentious, seemed to take a long time to get to the end, at which point the outcome was not very satisfying, and left me cold.  I confess I am more fond of the whodunnit, with the detective who comes up with the answer. I realize that this is not how things in real life usually come out, but still, Anatomy of a Fall reminded me all too well how ugly life can be, and unpleasant.

The one redeeming part : the dog, Snoop whose character is always loving, eager, and kind. This review lets you know how much of a sap I really am.

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American Fiction, directed by Cord Jefferson, 2023.

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Patricia Markert

based on the novel, Erasure,

with Jeffrey Wright, Tracy Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown.

in theaters

Thelonious Ellison, known as Monk (Jeffrey Wright), an intellectual black professor of English, is put on involuntary leave because of his eagerness to study Flannery O’Connor’s story with the N word which makes his students distinctly uncomfortable especially the white ones. Meanwhile, at the Massachusetts Book Festival, an author named Sintara (Issa Rae) has written a book “We’s Lives in the Ghetto” in ghetto-speak even though Sintara was educated at Oberlin and does not talk like her fictional characters.

Ellison loves ancient Greek civilization, and has written several books about it, which get shelved in African American literature because he is black.  This infuriates him. He sees hypocrisy everywhere, and when his family goes through some expensive turmoil, he dashes off a novel with his take on the trend, which his agent at first scoffs at, and asks if it is a joke. But when the book is snatched up and offered a fat advance, author and agent are all too happy to cash in.

Monk attempts to relocate his books from the African American section of the book store to Mythology

I enjoyed every minute of this movie, as did the audience in the theater with me who were laughing loudly throughout at the currency of the humor, how whites try to blend in with black culture, how black intellectuals are not taken seriously, how the distinctly white publishing establishment is trying to incorporate a culture alien to them.  The dialogue is perfectly written and acted.

Jeffrey Wright plays his part with subtlety and intelligence. The rest of the cast — Issa Rae, Tracy Ellis Ross, Sterling Brown, Leslie Uggams, have some heavy lifting to do in this largely satirical but very accurate portrayal of current treatment of race in American literature. 

Tracy Ellis Ross and Leslie Uggams play daughter and mother

Since Monk is just past middle age, he faces not only his career crisis, but also what to do when you find out your parents are horrible people, what happens when late in life they get dementia. There is also a sudden death in the family, and a brother having a nervous breakdown. As many personal crises occur at the same time, how do you possibly react when money is needed except by selling out? There is a muchness to the plot which bogs it down a bit three quarters of the way through, and I kept asking myself what do I actually know about the main character’s personal life while learning way more about his siblings and parents.

When the movie business gets to adapt the by now vastly successful novel, American Fiction goes haywire, and everything becomes meta as scenes are acted out. The story explodes in a very dramatic way. This movie is of the moment right now, and I welcome it with open arms.

Monk with his brother and girlfriend

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The Other Shore, directed by Timothy Wheeler, 2013.

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Patricia Markert

Documentary available on Amazon Prime.

Since watching the feature film with Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, I became curious about the documentary made by Diana Nyad’s nephew, Timothy Wheeler, ten years earlier, just after the swim was completed. Wheeler had access to the team behind the swim Nyad set as her late in life goal, from Cuba to Florida. I found the documentary riveting with Nyad herself saying why she wanted to perform what seemed a foolhardy feat.

The Other Shore made more clear the context, with videos of other swims Nyad had completed, and the media broadcasts of them, her disappointment at not being able to finish the Cuban swim. Instead of dramatizing the abuse Nyad endured as a child, in the documentary she spoke of it first hand. Footage of Nyad working as a sport broadcaster, her career for thirty years between her epic swims, filled in an important aspect of her working life. Her team’s reactions, and the actual care they gave her, came through quite strongly. Bonnie, her coach, reacted to some of Nyad’s fierce hanging on at all costs as a death wish. She also explained, “Once any human being has been abused in any way, they put armor on.”

Nyad was fed at regular intervals by her team

When the jellyfish stung her, one of the divers jumped in to treat her, and got stung himself. His response to the excruciating pain said more than Diana’s screaming in the water. He described it as he was being treated for it.

By the time Wheeler got to the end of his film, speeding past the final swim, he had given a complex portrait of his subject, complete with the insanity of her desire. As a result, the closing credits with success at such a price brought me to tears. As in the feature film, Bonnie shone through as a true heroine, with her loyalty and love for her friend.

I did not feel this strongly when I watched the new movie with actors playing the roles. What is it about documentary film, with good photography, editing, and sequencing to tell the story, that outdoes the drama of a feature film based on true events?

A layer of artifice is removed. We feel as if the truth were revealed before our eyes. A great movie can yield the same sensation, but I prefer movies to be made up out of whole cloth. Casablanca is pure fiction, but delivers emotions without artifice. Bogart and Bergman feel as real as my father and mother might have been in their youth.

Lately there are so many dramatic features based on real people– Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Nyad, that in their attempts to recreate what happened in real life, it makes me hungry for more releases from documentary filmmakers.

Master documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s latest, Le Menu Plaisir: Les Troisgros, is playing at the Film Forum. Wiseman rarely picks a subject as innately dramatic as Nyad. He prefers a deep dive into institutions and how they work, with attention to detail that can seem infuriatingly boring at first until you see what he is up to: revealing the structure of how things function that are based on decisions made by people with superior knowledge. He loves nothing more than being a fly on the wall of a bureaucratic meeting with local councilmen, or as in his latest movie, a bunch of goat herders describing in innate detail how cheese ripens.

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The Holdovers, directed by Alexander Payne, 2023.

Posted on November 23, 2023 by Patricia Markert

with Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph

In this movie, a Grinch -like teacher gets stuck with his most challenging student over the Christmas holiday. Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa deliver their testy lines with relish. It is a pleasure to hear them for which I credit the screenwriter David Hemingson. The story takes place over two weeks of a winter break, the last days of the year 1969, each day checked off like the sentence of someone in prison. Photography emphasizes the season with lots of snow being shoveled, nary a snow blower in sight.

Paul Hunham (Giamatti) is a strict classics teacher given to dropping remarks in Greek to his resentful students. The Barton boarding school, located in rural Massachusetts, has a long tradition of coddling its legacy students whose parents expect good grades for their largesse.

Hanham in his office grading papers.

Hunham does not honor this custom so is stuck with the onerous chore of babysitting students left behind during the Christmas holidays, a task originally slotted to someone else. The politics of school life are well established. The headmaster exerts his power haphazardly. Athlete stars are given a wide berth. Cranky teachers get stuck with the worst duties.

Dominic Sessa plays Angus Tully

Angus Tully (Sessa) is a smart angry student abandoned by his mother recently remarried and eager for a honeymoon. Angus resents the other students left behind who at least have a semblance of a family life. After a few days in the emptied buildings, they are almost miraculously whisked off by helicopter by one of the richer students who gets permission to take the rest of the hapless holdovers on a skiing holiday. All it takes is permission, obtained by phone call, from their parents. That is all that is missing from Angus’ life, parents who pick up the phone.

The other adult on the scene is the head of the cafeteria, Mary, who is grieving the recent death of her son, Curtis, killed in Vietnam. Mary brings pathos to the screen and demonstrates what genuine love of a parent for her child looks like. Angus seems not to have parents who can make him feel loved. Paul is a surly beast with an allegiance to Marcus Aurelius, and a dependence on alcohol. “I find the world a bitter and complicated place. A nd it seems to feel the same way about me. I think you and I have this in common, ” Paul says to Angus.

These three holdovers find in each other a makeshift family over Christmas. When Angus convinces Hunham to take a trip to Boston, Mary comes along and stays in Roxbury with her sister who is expecting a child. These scenes, of the sisters, add poignancy to the feeling of children and parents, those we can’t have, those we wish for.

Randolph, Giamatti, and Sessa.

Paul and Angus share several common traits, among them, depression that depends on librium prescriptions, but also a remarkable ability to lie effectively. Some lies result in great sacrifice in the service of rescue. The screenplay with its fine tuned dialog, makes you happy to be in the theater.

Randolph’s acting as Mary shines brightly. The relationship between the two men develops in a natural way, and feels full of genuine emotion. The two men find in each other a companion, a kind of peer, someone you don’t look down on, but genuinely want to help. There is not a drop of kitsch or sappiness. The time period, with 1970 being rung in as the winter break ends, comes through in the music, with many Christmas carols being sung by the local choir, making this movie a suitable holiday choice.

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Nyad, directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhalyi and Jimmy Chin, 2023.

Posted on November 18, 2023 by Patricia Markert

with Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, Rhys Ifans.

If you know anything about Diana Nyad, there is no suspense about how her quest to swim from Cuba to Florida turns out. That event took place almost ten years ago. The movie documents– no — narrates — in sequential order with flashbacks to her childhood and its traumas–the many attempts she made to reach her goal. Having stopped swimming 30 years prior to her 60th birthday, she wakes up one day and decides to finish the task she set for herself when she was 28,and got only so far, having been attacked by sharks, stung by jellyfish, and turned around by surly weather.

Nyad at 28 when she first attempted the swim from Cuba to Florida

The movie not only shows dramatic if repetitive footage of how she trained and raised money and gathered an essential team to get her to her destination. It proves how essential friendship is for women as they age, grow old, and wonder what they’ve made of their lives.

Bonnie Stoll is Diana’s best friend, and as played by Jodie Foster, a terrific foil. She stands up to the domineering, egotistical demands of her friend. But as her coach, she is the wind in her sails.

Another important member of the team is the navigator. You need to know which way the wind is blowing, the currents, and the weather, to be sure you will not get stuck. Rhys Ifans plays the part of John Bartlett, as sure of himself as Diana is of herself. The two come to loggerheads at first, but after four tries, they finally see eye to eye.

Jodie Foster is Bonnie Still,Nyad’s coach, and Rhys Ifan is John Bartlett, navigator

The editing, especially at the beginning of the tale, is excellent, folding in episodes from Nyad’s childhood.

The underwater filming of shark avoidance is genuinely thrilling. How fortunate that she did not have to use a shark cage, but a technology advance that repels the hunters with an electronic charge. But I found the difficult photography of night scenes on the open ocean, lit by red lights, confusing.

Bening is convincing as this dynamo whose dogged determination makes her achieve her mission. The filmmakers put the over 60 women at the center of their frame to tell a compelling tale. In the end, the great swim that Nyad achieves is just part of her quest to determine who she really is, she with a name out of Greek mythology that means water nymph.

I can’t help but wonder why the documentary filmmakers who made the brilliant movie, Free Solo, chose to cast actors in the parts of the real figures. I wonder why so many of our new dramatic movies, like Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, and others, are not documentary series. Is it necessary to cast A list actors to bring in a large audience?

A documentary about Nyad’s swim was made soon after she did it, The Other Shore, directed by Timothy Wheeler, in 2013. I was curious how it differed from this movie, so made an effort to watch it. My review is now posted.

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Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese, 2023.

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Patricia Markert

with Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons

Scorsese introduces his movie as an important testament to a grave injustice. He acknowledges the assistance of the Osage nation who helped him make the movie as authentic as possible. The story is about a conspiracy to rob the Osage of their money through strategic marriages and murders.

Ernest gets to know his future wife Mollie by driving her places

The movie starts in the early part of the 20th century with a burial, of a pipe, that signifies the Osage way of life, and mourns the replacement by white people customs. Soon the Osage are drenched in oil, and become rich from their joint agreements with oil companies. Driving fancy cars, sending their children to private school, going to clubs demonstrate how money makes the sad pronouncement at the pipe burial come true. The locations in Oklahoma where the Osage live range from a town that could have been recreated from the old Hollywood westerns to vast tracts of prairie, now suddenly dotted with oil wells. Osage murder victims show up in odd places, with no investigation.

Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo Di Caprio), still wearing his army uniform from serving in World War I, arrives in the town where his uncle Bill Hale (Robert De Niro) lives large on his cattle ranch. Bill, nicknamed King, claims the Osage as his friends, some of the greatest people on earth. To call Ernest dull would be an understatement. His uncle drills him on his habits as if he were being interviewed for a job, which he is, sort of. King wants his simple minded nephew to marry one of the wealthy Osage women, Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Later, King would like to arrange for Mollie and her sisters to meet a premature end so that the money they had reaped from their oil rights will go to their white husbands.

Robert De Niro is in fine form as a godfather type uncle

Ernest is well named, at first. He seems smitten with Mollie, and their relationship is one of the puzzles of the story, that it could continue in the face of the damage the white Hale clan is doing to her family. Mollie is in love with her husband. She knows he is under the influence of his corrupt uncle. She is a complicated intelligent character and Lily Gladstone performs the part with subtlety and grace. All of the women Osage characters are perfectly acted. De Niro’s mastery is in evidence. Only DiCaprio seems miscast. His constant frown does not reflect enough range. To focus on this character, a dull witted corrupt man in love with a decent very ill woman, is challenging.

DiCaprio’s constant frown is not enough to portray his dim witted character

Mollie catches on to what is happening and once she is saved from the poison her husband is obediently administering, per the instructions of his uncle, she travels to Washington DC and implores President Calvin Coolidge directly to investigate the mysterious and continuous murders of her people. As a result, the Bureau of Investigation visits the Osage territory and gets Ernest to tell all.

Jesse Plemons plays Tom White who works for the Bureau of Investigation, a precursor to the FBI

As the federal investigator, Tom White, Jesse Plemons’ acting is as subtle as the character he plays. John Lithgow and Brendan Fraser play lawyers assigned to the case. The movie has a high level of talent, production values, costumes. But the casting of Di Caprio, who is just too old to be playing this part (as is De Niro but it doesn’t matter as much because he is supposed to be a bit older), and who dominates the story, seems wrong. The scenes of many characters double crossing or getting double crossed start and stall the rhythm that make you wonder when the movie will finally be over. A scene where King spanks Ernest does not add anything to the story.

What does work are the rituals surrounding Osage deaths. Their knowledge of what was happening to steal their oil rights, but inability to do anything about it because of their being Indians depicts a tragedy embedded in American history, much like the Tulsa massacre that took place nearby. The owl visiting the Osage to signal they were going to die is vividly photographed.

With the attempts to emphasize authenticity, De Niro’s character seemed fluent in Osage language, but why the subtitles appeared sporadically is a mystery. Did the movie makers think we would figure out what was being said? The movie, three and a half hours long, drags. Or should it have been a documentary series on television? There are so many vivid characters I would have liked to get to know better, such as John Ramsey, played by Ty Mitchell with unforgettable complexity.

Ty Mitchell plays John Ramsey, one of the hired assassins

Still, I admire Scorsese for making this movie, with his opening statement crediting the Osage for contributing to the picture, and his customary excellence in production.

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Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, 2023.

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Patricia Markert

with Abby Ryder Fortson, Benny Safdie, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates

Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) is the only child of a Jewish dad and a Christian mom. At least that is how her parents started out, in a religious culture. Since Margaret was born, they have not followed any structured faith, and since Margaret’s mother’s very Christian parents have cast her off because of her marriage to a Jew, she has been told it is up to her to decide her own faith.

Margaret sort of goes faith-shopping. She tries out a temple with her grandmother Sylvia, who dotes on her. She goes to a Christmas service with her so called friend, who is more concerned about getting a bra and acting like a teen ready to get felt up than anybody seeking a spiritual life.

But what makes the movie worth watching, and what has held up beautifully 50 years after the book was published by Judy Blume, its author, are the earnest pleas to God by the girl in the title role. She really wants help, and doesn’t see why if there is a god there should not be some coming her way from up there.

Adolescence as an American girl is fraught. There is the mean girl tribe. There is the anxiety surrounding puberty. There are strange crushes unbidden on boys completely wrong for you. Margaret experiences all of these, and lucky for her, she has kind, understanding parents, and grandparents even who wish her well. She may even find a new friend after being led astray by some false ones.

Growing into a bra is a quest

Rachel McAdams plays the mother who doesn’t fit into her new suburban neighborhood. She has just moved from the upper west side of Manhattan because her husband’s promotion enables them to live a bit larger than before. Barbara is an artist, used to having her time be her own, not playing to conventions of dressing just so by 9 AM. The other mothers in the neighborhood press her to participate in typical parent activities, like making stars for a mural. At first she plays along but like her daughter, Margaret, she realizes that she doesn’t want to conform. The movie, like the book, takes place in the 1960s and the costumes and production design reflect that period when women stayed at home to take care of the kids. Their biggest challenge might be picking the right furniture for the living room to match the rest of the modern decor.

The acting especially by the girls is spot on. Kathy Bates as Sylvia, Margaret’s father’s mother, is always welcome. Camera work accentuates the restricted feelings of both daughter and mother as they navigate the suburbs. Even though the movie is set several decades ago, like the book, its tone feels contemporary, its story timeless.

Kathy Bates plays Margaret’s grandmother

What makes this novel, and now the movie, classic, is the way it combines issues of spirituality with dilemmas of physical growth, cultural conformity, family conflicts, all in a seamless story about a girl moving away from her comfort zone just as she is entering middle school. The director’s screenplay hits every nail on the head. Any mother who has raised a teenage girl will find scenes harrowing and recognizable as we suffered through the “talk.” Sex, menstruation, body care. Kathy Bates gets the enviable role of the loving Jewish grandmother. Not so lucky are those who play Barbara’s parents, evangelical Christians, especially when they show up unexpectedly and we hope for the unreasonable reconciliation to take place over dinner.

We must! we must! We must increase our bust! Do girls still do this?

But the movie is about the eleven year old growing up. It honors her every struggle in a way that is rare in movies intended for that audience.

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