Movie/TV Reviews

Susan Granger’s review of “The Boys in the Boat” (Amazon Studios)

George Clooney helms “The Boys in the Boat” as a classic underdog sports saga set during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Based on Daniel James Brown’s 2013 non-fiction best-seller, it begins with elderly Joe Rantz (Ian McElhinney) watching a young boy rowing a boat in a lake – which reminds him of the challenges of his youth at the University of Washington.

Unlike many of his classmates, young Joe (Callum Turner) didn’t have parents who could pay his tuition. He lives in a dilapidated car and often goes hungry. He’s had to work for every penny – with jobs few and far between.

Then he hears about tryouts for the junior varsity rowing team. If he qualifies, he’ll get three meals a day, lodging and enough of a stipend to pay his tuition bills.

Despite never having lifted an oar, resourceful Joe miraculously makes his way through the selection process, demonstrating strength, stamina and determination – along with his best friend Roger Morris (Sam Strike).

Since their jobs are also at stake, Coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) and his assistant Tom Bowles (James Wolk) are determined to end their losing streak and – finally – beat Cal (University of California at Berkeley).

Eventually, as history notes, they qualified for the Olympic Games in Nazi-held Germany, facing off against the Third Reich’s elite team.

Clooney excels at depicting the grueling training sequences which demand that eight – perfectly matched – men on alternate sides of the boat, holding one oar each, master the demanding rhythm required to propel them across the finish line. Rowing four hours a day, the actors trained for five months, eventually achieving their goal of 46 strokes per minute.

Screenwriter Mark L. Smith utilizes a satisfying ‘bookending’ prologue and conclusion but his cliché-clogged dialogue is far too staid and superficial, eschewing all subtleties.  As a result, many character-revealing nuances are ‘told,’ rather than shown.

FYI: Back in 2017, this saga was featured on an episode of PBS’ “American Experience” titled “The Boys of ’36.”

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Boys in the Boat” is a rousing, inspirational 7, streaming on Amazon Prime.

Susan Granger’s review of “Saltburn” (M.G.M./Amazon)

After “Promising Young Woman” (2022), Emerald Fennell’s auspicious writing/directing debut, her audacious second feature “Saltburn” is a disappointment.

Set in 2006, it’s a twisted, kinky, social-climbing satire revolving around Oliver Quick (Irish actor Barry Keoghan), a guileless ‘scholarship’ Oxford undergrad who cleverly befriends handsome Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), an aristocratic yet surprisingly compassionate classmate.

According to Oliver’s tragic backstory, his parents suffered addiction/mental health problems before his father’s recent death – which is why it’s so important to him to wangle an invitation to spend the summer at Catton’s family’s Baroque country estate called Saltburn.

From the moment this scheming interloper enters the eccentric family’s fabulously elite realm, his devious emotional attachment ignites. That’s the provocative premise.

As Oliver passes through the wrought-iron gates and becomes acquainted with various Catton relatives, he conspires and betrays each of them with ruthless precision.

His victims include Felix’s self-consciously troubled sister, Venetia (Alison Oliver); his droll father, Sir James (Richard E. Grant); and his shallow, glamorous, scene-stealing mother, Elsbeth (Rosamond Pike).

There’s Elsbeth’s fashionable friend, Pamela (Carey Mulligan) and, of course, the loyal, observant, meticulous butler, Duncan (Paul Rhys).

Somewhat reminiscent of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” this psychosexual drama superficially blends class and privilege with Gothic horror – desire with restraint – and – above all – revenge.

Spoiler Alert!

It’s particularly disgusting when libidinous Oliver is glimpsed drinking the draining bathwater into which Felix masturbated and then licking the bottom of the bathtub.

Following that, undoubtedly the most bizarre sequence is the finale, depicting Oliver dancing triumphantly – displaying full-frontal nudity – through the palatial mansion’s halls.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Saltburn” is an exasperating, toxic 3, streaming on Amazon Prime.

Susan Granger’s review of “The Buccaneers” (Apple TV+)

Take a bit of “Downton Abbey,” a touch of “The Gilded Age,” and a whiff of “Bridgerton” and you’ll come up with “The Buccaneers,” Apple TV’s costume drama about wealthy young American women crossing the Atlantic to find titled British husbands.

Based on an unfinished 1938 novel by Edith Wharton, it was obviously inspired by the ‘arranged’ marriage of Consuelo Vanderbilt – heiress to the shipping-and-railroad fortune – to the ninth Duke of Marlborough, becoming the most famous of what were known as “dollar princesses.”

Apparently, the Duke told Consuelo that he was only interested in her huge dowry to “save Blenheim Palace,” his ancestral home. As a result, for much of their loveless 25-year marriage, they lived apart.

This series – set in the 1870s – follows the misadventures of five giddy girls seeking love abroad. Since their parents are considered ‘nouveau riche’ by condescending New York society, they’ve set their sights on acquiring aristocratic titles by marrying some of London’s cash-poor Lords and Dukes.

They’re following in the footsteps of their friend Conchita Closson (Alisha Boe) who married Lord Richard Marable (Josh Dylan); unfortunately, his patrician parents have turned out to be vehemently anti-American snobs.

Pretty Nan St. George (Kristine Froseth) seems to be the most popular, catching the fancy of sensitive, discontented Duke Theo (Guy Remmers) and his impoverished best friend Guy Thwarte (Matthew Broome). But her scheming older sister Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse) beats her to the altar, eloping with a Lord.

After her original acclaim in “Mad Men” and four seasons on the crime caper “Good Girls,” Christina Hendricks plays their mother Patricia St. George, who is keeping a shameful secret and seems to be trapped in a marriage-of-convenience.

Caught in a different dilemma, Mabel (Josie Totah) is torn between a heterosexual marriage of convenience and a lesbian liaison with Conchita’s uptight sister-in-law (Kate Winslet’s real-life daughter Mia Threapleton).

The real Tintagel Castle still stands in Scoland but, unfortunately, it’s in ruins. So exteriors were filmed at Culzean Castle, situated on cliffs high above the sea, while interiors were shot at Drumlanrig Castle in Drumfresshire.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Buccaneers” is an impertinent 7, streaming on Apple TV+ – and it’s already renewed for a second season.

Susan Granger’s review of “The Gilded Age: Season 2” (HBO TV MAX)

 

The second season of Julian Fellowes’ genteel, rococo soap-opera known as “The Gilded Age” finds ambitious 19^th century NYC aristocrats dressed in bustles and top hats. Ambition meets its match as traditional customs collide with innovative schemes, proving that when the old rules don’t bend, something has to break,

And since much of the filming took place in and around New York and Rhode Island, more than 60 of Broadway’s brightest musical stars comprise the cast, giving it a frivolous upstairs/downstairs aura – like ‘Downton Abbey Lite.’

Season 2 begins on Easter morning, 1883, with the news that snobbish Mrs. Caroline Astor (Donna Murphy) has rejected nouveau riche Bertha Russell’s (Carrie Coon) request for a box at the prestigious Academy of Music, despite Bertha’s new champion, busybody Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane).

In retaliation, Bertha ruthlessly challenges Society’s Old Guard by sponsoring the new Metropolitan Opera, while her railroad tycoon husband George (Morgan Spector) tackles the threat of labor unions at his Pittsburgh steel plant. (Although she’s not named, Bertha’s character is obviously based on Alva Vanderbilt.)

Among spectators at Newport’s lawn tennis, Bertha’s Harvard-educated architect son Larry (Harry Richardson) becomes scandalously infatuated with older, widowed Mrs. Susan Blane (Laura Benanti). Returning to New York, he learns who really designed the engineering for the just-opened Brooklyn Bridge.

Across East 61^st Street at the Brook House, acerbic Agnes van Rhijn (Christina Baranski) discovers to her chagrin that her niece Marian (Louisa Jacobson, Meryl Streep’s youngest daughter) is teaching art at a girls’ school and that her sister Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon), aided by Aurora Fane (Kelli O’Hara), may no longer be a lonely spinster.

Meanwhile in Brooklyn, melodrama reigns supreme as grieving Dorothy Scott (Audra McDonald) learns that her intrepid daughter Peggy (Denee Benton) has become an activist/journalist at the Black-owned New York Globe.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Gilded Age: Season 2” is a sumptuous, sudsy 7, streaming on HBO TV MAX.

Susan Granger’s review of “Eileen”

 

Anne Hathaway demonstrates remarkable versatility in this low-budget psychological thriller about a woman who works in a Massachustts juvenile detention facility for boys in the 1960s.

Lonely, bitter, often bullied 24 year-old Eileen Dunlop (Thomasin McKenzie) lives with her often drunk, domineering, widowed father (Shea Whigham), who used to be the town’s Chief of Police. She’s a clerical worker at the detention center and frequently indulges in sexual fantasies that involve a hunky security guard and moving to New York City.

Then, one wintry day, a new psychologist is added to the prison staff: beautiful, platinum blonde Rebecca St. John (Hathaway), a confidant Harvard graduate.

Transfixed by Rebecca’s tawdry, seductive ‘film noir’ glamour, Eileen is thrilled when Rebecca befriends her – since they seem to share a mutual interest in a mysterious young inmate, Lee Polk, who apparently killed his father.

Exuding infatuation, obsession and repressed desire, the unconventional relationship between the two women quickly deepens, leading to some intriguing criminality.

Directed by William Oldroyd from a cryptic, pulpy screenplay by Luke Goebel and his wife Ottesam Moshfeh, based on Moshfeh’s debut 2015 novel, it’s most notable for its jarring, far-fetched, third-act almost-Hitchcockian twist, leading to an unexpected conclusion which – on second viewing – may have been subtly foreshadowed.

Although it looks like grainy film stock – because of the tight budget – cinematographer Ari Wegner used ARRI ALEXA digital cameras with a special Angenieux 25-250 HR zoom lens.

Do you recognize young Thomasin McKenzie from “The Power of the Dog”? This – now-grown – New Zealand actress adroitly captures Eileen’s naïve, multi-layered vulnerability, while Anne Hathaway projects Rebecca’s sophisticated self-importance.

And automotive buffs may spot a ‘goof’ when Eileen explains to a coworker that her “cat in her car” is damaged, causing smoke – referring to her catalytic converter. Oops! The film is set in the 1960s and catalytic converters weren’t routinely installed until 1975.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Eileen is a sinister 6, streaming on Prime Video, Apple TV and Vudu.

Susan Granger’s review of “The Zone of Interest” (A24)

 

How do you choose what movie to watch? Most people want to be entertained. Others want to be educated. British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” – recipient of five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director – falls into the latter category.

Loosely adapted from Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, it follows the seemingly mundane lives of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedl), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller) and their five children who dwell in a comfortable home that’s adjacent to the notorious concentration camp in Western Poland.

Their story begins with a bucolic scene as the Hoss family is enjoying a picnic by the river. Driving home, they seem blissfully unaware of the cruelty and genocide occurring next-door – despite the ambient sound of reverberating gunshots, audible cries, dogs barking and roar of the crematorium fires.

When her husband brings home ‘loot’ confiscated from prisoners delivered regularly by transport trains, Hedwig grabs a fur coat, tries it on and is delighted to find that it fits her perfectly; there’s even a lipstick in the pocket. One of her sons avidly collects gold teeth.

Tending her carefully landscaped fruit trees and gardens, nourished by human ash, Hedwig is so enamored of her residence that – when Rudolf is transferred to another camp – she insists on staying behind.

According to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, S.S. Commandant Hoss masterminded the mass murder of 1.1 million men, women and children, most of them Jews. But that’s never discussed.

Instead, the Hoss family, enjoying their powerful position, embodies Nazi values, emphasizing self-interest as opposed to empathy. They’re inordinately proud of their muti-story villa with its swimming pool and extensive greenhouses.

It’s a chilling depiction of what American historian/political theorist Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.”

Working with Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zal, Glazer chooses to present the horrors occurring over the barbed-wire-topped wall sonically – meaning that he never ‘shows’ familiar images of the atrocities. They’re only heard – which assumes audiences are well aware of what they’re not seeing.

FYI: 1) The titular “Zone of Interest” is what the Nazis called the restricted zone around Auschwitz. 2) Rudolf Hess was hanged in 1947, but his complicit wife Hedwig remarried and lived in the United States until her death in 1989.

In interviews, Jonathan Glazer maintains: “Fascism starts in the family. This is not a film about the past. It’s about now, and about us and our similarity to the perpetrators, not our similarity to the victims.”

Is it a commentary on Trump’s isolationism? Is it about our refusal to acknowledge the desperation of the homeless in our cities and/or refugees on our Southern border? Glazer hopes the audience will appreciate its timely relevance.

In German with English subtitles – on the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Zone of Interest” is an agonizing, excruciating 8, showing in theaters.

Susan Granger’s review of “Society of the Snow” (Netflix)

 

Oscar-nominated “Society of the Snow” is Spain’s entry for Best International Film at this year’s Academy Awards. J.A Bayona’s true-life survival tale centers on the 19 members of a Uruguayan rugby team that set off from Montevideo for Santiago, Chile, and was stranded in the snow-covered Andes for 72 days.

Told primarily from the perspective of rugby player Numa Turcatti (Enzo Vogrincic Roldan), their ordeal begins on October 13, 1972, when poor weather conditions forced Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 to land in Mendoza, Argentina, overnight.

The following morning – about an hour after takeoff – the propeller-driven Fairchild with two engines went into a steep climb in the midst of a blinding blizzard and crashed on a glacier in the Andes mountains.

Of 45 people aboard, 12 died immediately, including the pilot. Eagerly awaiting rescue, survivors create a shelter out of the plane wreckage, scavenging all the food they could find and beginning to ration it out.

But – 10 days later – they hear on the radio that the search-and-rescue mission has concluded. Their reaction is desperate as hopelessness threatens. They felt trapped, abandoned, betrayed and totally isolated in one of the world’s toughest environments..

Their eventual rescue utilized archival photos for authenticity, particularly the famous 60-millieter shot of the fuselage from the hovering helicopter.

Adapting Pablo Vierci’s 2009 book and interviews with survivors, Bayona and screenwriters Nicolas Casariego, Jaime Marque, and Bernat Vilaplana, along with cinematographer Pedro Luque, are perhaps more sensitive, yet brutally honest about the essential humanity and harsh physicality of the situation that led to cannibalism.

If the flesh-eating plot seems familiar, it was previously the basis of Frank Marshall’s “Alive” (1993), starring Ethan Hawke, along with several documentaries and TV series, including “Yellowjackets.”

FYI: Filming took place in Spain’s Sierra Nevada mountains where the crash was authentically recreated.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Society of the Snow” is an intense, survivalist 7, streaming on Netflix.

Susan Granger’s review of “American Fiction” (Orion Pictures/Amazon M.G.M.)

 

Based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasures,” Cord Jefferson’s cagey “American Fiction” has garnered five Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.

The story introduces Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), a serious West Coast university professor/fledgling writer who bristles at the media’s exploitation of Black stereotypes for profit.

After suffering rejection-after-rejection of his new manuscript, a translation of Aeschylus’s The Persians, because it’s deemed inadequately Black literature, misanthropic Monk bitterly cobbles together a book of offensive Black cliches about gangsters and urban suffering and submits it as a joke under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh with the title My Pafology.

After all, if rival novelist, Oberlin-educated former publishing assistant Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) can be acclaimed for her pandering We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, why can’t he?

Indulging in one highly effective scene involving magical realism, Jefferson breaks all audience expectations about what the plot involves and where it’s going.

So instead of another rebuff, Monk, who presents himself as an ex-con, is deluged with whopping publishing offers and catapulted to literary fame, much to the amazement of his agent (John Ortiz) and his successful, upper middle-class physician, elder siblings (Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown).

This financial windfall comes just as the Ellison family is facing a financial crisis as their matriarch, Agnes (Leslie Uggams), who still lives in their childhood home in Boston, is suffering signs of memory loss/dementia/Alzheimer’s.

Written by Jefferson in his directorial debut, “American Fiction” won the prestigious People’s Choice Award at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.

In his acceptance, Jefferson spoke about how films about Black people always seem to focus on tragedy: slavery, civil rights, drug dealers – “Black trauma porn” – excluding the rest of the Black experience. Which is why he created this crowd-pleasing, satirical dramedy that skewers racial politics and representation.

Yet historically, comedies are not good Best Picture bets. Back in 1997, “The Full Monty” lost to “Titanic,” while “Little Miss Sunshine” lost to “The Departed” in 2006.

FYI: There’s no Thelonious Monk music on the soundtrack, just Laura Karpman’s Oscar-nominated score with a variety of tracks, including Cannonball Adderly.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “American Fiction” is an edgy 8, playing in theaters.

Susan Granger’s review of “For All Mankind: Season 4” (Sony/Apple TV+)

Wanna binge on a terrific sci-fi/spy series? An alternate historical take on the international space race, “For All Mankind” has just concluded its fourth season – with season five already on the drawing boards.

Created by Ronald D. Moore, Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, it poses the provocative question: What if the Soviet Union had won the race to the moon?

The first season revolves around US astronauts Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and Gordo Stevens (Michael Dorman) who were ordered not to land on the moon, allowing a cosmonaut to get there first, infuriating then-President Richard Nixon.

Meanwhile at NASA in Houston, rocket engineer Wernher von Braun (Colm Feore) mentors Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt), the first woman at Mission Control, while Gordo’s wife Tracy Stevens (Sarah Jones) becomes the first female astronaut.

Planting a crucial sub-plot, Mexican teenager Aleida (Olivia Trujillo) emigrates to Texas, yearning to join NASA, while Astronaut Ellen Waverly (Jodi Balfour) is a closeted lesbian. Plus, there’s ornery veteran test pilot Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger) and determined Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall), the first black female astronaut.

Skipping ahead 40 years to season 4, set in now-colonized Happy Valley on Mars, the plot pivots around Helios entrepreneur Dev Ayesa’s (Edi Gathegi) determination to mine a metal-rich asteroid – which requires expanding the labor force beyond pilots and engineers, involving workers’ rights, unionization and sabotage.

Recalling their mother/daughter-like relationship, now-grown Aleida (Coral Pena) is reunited with Margo, who fled to the USSR after saving her Russian colleague Sergei (Piotr Adamczyk) from the KGB.

And Ed Baldwin’s adoptive daughter Kelly (Cynthy Wu) arrives on Mars with her young son Alex (Ezrah Lin), leading a Helios search for signs of life in the craters.

What distinguishes this compelling series is how these complicated, conflicted, ‘fictionalized’ characters are deftly delineated against a thriller background of ruthless political turmoil, sexism, prejudice and ‘patriotism.’

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “For All Mankind” is an escapist 8, streaming on Apple TV+.

Susan Granger’s review of “Faraway Downs” (Hulu)

Do you recall a 2008 Baz Luhrmann film called “Australia”? Starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, I found it an exciting, epic adventure but – at the box-office – it went nowhere, perhaps because it touched too superficially on that country’s notorious Aboriginal race issue.

So resourceful Luhrmann recently re-edited it into a six-episode limited series called “Faraway Downs,” telling a compelling tale as viewed through the eyes of Nullah (Brandon Walters), an enchanting half-Aboriginal outcast child – and adding nearly an hour of never-before-seen footage.

Arriving at the inhospitable outpost of Darwin in 1939, just before the outbreak of W.W. II, Lady Sarah Ashley (Kidman) is an arrogant British aristocrat determined to visit her philandering husband’s enormous estate known as Faraway Downs.

Armed with divorce papers, she’s stunned to discover that he’s been killed by his scheming, loathsome property manager (David Wenham) who’s in cahoots with King Carney (Bryan Brown), a ruthlessly malevolent cattle baron.

Sarah’s only hope of saving the ramshackle Outback ranch lies with the Drover (Hugh Jackman), a feisty, restless stockman. And she becomes immediately protective of young Nullah whose mother Daisy (Ursula Yovich) works on the property; he refers to Sarah as ‘Missus Boss’.

Together – with the help of Nullah’s grandfather, King George (David Gulpilil), a mysterious Aboriginal shaman – they drive 1500 head of cattle across the vast Kuraman Desert to market – just as Japanese warplanes are bombing Darwin in 1942 with twice the airfreight they used to attack Pearl Harbor.

Stunning both as a vibrant journey and as fascinating history, it’s awesomely photographed by Mandy Walker (“Elvis”), intensely emotional and creatively challenging, including an effective “Wizard of Oz” motif.

Nicole Kidman conjures up an incandescent image of a powerful, passionate woman shaped by destiny, while Hugh Jackman exudes charismatic intensity.

In tribute to the Stolen Generations, each chapter begins with a tribute to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their children, who were brutally kidnapped by government officials and forced to assimilate.

New opening credits featuring animated kangaroos were designed by Indigenous artists, there’s a new theme from Budjerah and a new song by Anpuru.

If Luhrmann’s experiment works, look for other filmmakers to re-imagine their lengthy, big-budget extravaganzas into episodic segments for the small screen.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Faraway Downs” is an exotic, exhilarating 8, streaming on Hulu/Disney+.