End of Year MOVIE JOURNAL

[Chris Knipp]

JOJO RABBIT (Taika Waititi 2019). A surprising comedy, in English, about the last days of Hitler in Germany from the POV of a 9-year-old boy who's an ardent Nazi, which doesn't work out very well for him. The director, Taika Waikiti, aka Taika Cohen, a New Zealander who's half Maori and half Jewish, plays a goofy fantasy--friend Hitler imagined by the protagonist, played by an appealing Roman Griffin Davis. Scarlett Johansson plays his single mother, Sam Rockwell a failure of a German officer who's friendly to the boy. The boy is a softie. His inability to kill a rabbit during a Hitler Youth camp exercise gets him the titular nickname, and also explains why (also because he's lonely and she's cute), when he discovers a Jewish girl hiding in the house (Thomasin McKenzie), he befriends and protects her. The designers of sets and costumes went to town. For a modest production this looks distinctive and great, and it was largely from that point of view that I admired it. A chastening dark realism creeps in more toward the end, but there's not a huge amount of emotional resonance, considering. Watched at Shattuck Cinemas Dec. 15, 2019. Metascore 58%.

[Chris Knipp]

BOMBSHELL (Jay Roach 2019). This movie about a key #MeToo event, the takedown for sexual harassment of Fox News impresario Roger Ailes (and anchorman Bill O'Reilly), despite real footage of then candidate Donald Trump, is hasty-seeming and doesn't pack quite the punch such a hot topic deserves. Numerous shapely ladies shashay round the Fox studios with pancake makeup and bleach-blond hair, including Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly and Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, leading Fox News personalities, and Margot Robbie as new staffer and new object for predator Ailes Kayla Pospisil. These good looking actresses are doing the right thing in depicting something so much a key issue today, but a better film would have earned them more credit. Also involved in good works are Allison Janney as senior staffer Susan Estrich, John Lithgow (fresh from playing Winston Churchill in "The Queen")" heavily inflated via prosthetic makeup, as Roger Ailes. Malcolm McDowell enters late in the action as Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, who takes the reins. I would have had more scenes where Ailes shows his foul behavior toward women. Ultimately the screenplay by The Big Short coauthor Charles Randolph doesn't go quite deep enough. US release Dec. 20. Watched at Hilltop. Metascore 64%.

[Chris Knipp]

STAR WARS: EPISODE IX: THE RISE OF STARWALKER (J.J. Abrams 2019). The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once more in the final chapter of the Skywalker saga - so at least this is meant to be the last Star Wars episode. Duty might have led me to see it anyway - though I've missed a majority of other ones - but I was curious to see Adam Driver, who I've become a fan of for his work over the last decade in "Girls" and with Baumbach, Jarmusch, Scorsese, and a lot of good directors, as Kylo Ren. The production mars his rough beauty by smoothing out its roughness with makeup and hair styling, but a lot of the time he's in a mask anyway. It was nice to see Richard E. Grant, who I'll always think of as Withnail (and so many disreputable cousins), picking up a nice fat paycheck as General Pryde. This episode has s very low critical rating, but some say those can go up substantially later. Only for fans though. There are some strikingly beautiful landscapes, with more use than usual of big objects in the foreground, possibly because they're so effective in 3D. i will now do my duty and watch Driver star in the earnest and significant The Report, out Nov. 15, but who saw it? Watched at Hilltop Dec. 21, 2019. Metascore 54%.

[Chris Knipp]

THE AERONAUTS (Tom Harper 2019). Loosely based on the life of a British weather scientist and his exploits in 1862, this brings back together Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne for the first time since The Theory of Everything. It's about a struggle to survive in a gas balloon with pilot Amelia Wren (Jones) and meteorologist James Glaisher (Redmayne), who barely survive, and almost kiss. The movie is about a great exploit, accomplished by a much older, less dapper man than Eddie, but it's all as light as air, and rather forgettable, because it's so conventional. An entertaining piece of period fluff. Actually seen a week or two back, but I forgot to make a note of it. At Albany Twin, Berkeley. Metascore: 60.


SEE WHAT I MEAN ABOUT DAPPER? HARPER, JONES, & REDMAYNE

[Chris Knipp]

THE REPORT (Scott Z. Burns 2019). Caution: contains disturbing images of torture. Covers zealous Senate staffer Dan Jones (Adam Driver) who works for years doing a report for Sen. Diane Feinstein (Annette Benning) on the CIA's illegal post-9/11 use of torture (aka advanced interrogation techniques aka AIT) on terrorism suspects. Jones's 'relentless pursuit of the truth leads to explosive findings that uncover the lengths to which the nation's top intelligence agency went to destroy evidence, subvert the law, and hide a brutal secret from the American public' - that torture does not gather information, humane and friendly interrogation does. The film is as dry and relentless as Dan Jones, and perhaps naive in thinking the unconverted will be made sophisticated in this matter by such a treatment. "Adam Driver’s gracefully intelligent performance as an investigator never quite zaps this dramatically frozen procedural to life" (Jeannette Catsoullis, New York Times). Shocking details though. Watched (as an alternate to Adam Driver as Kylo Ren in Star Wars) on Amazon Prime Dec. 21, 2019. Limited theatrical release by Amazon. Metascore 66, but the Guardian (Benjamin Lee) gives it 4/5 stars.

[Chris Knipp]

A HIDDEN LIFE (Terrence Malick 2019). Malick departs from his usual themes for a true story of a (now) Christian martyr, Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who in 1943 was put to death for refusing to sign an oath of allegiance to Hitler. This theme involving self-examination and conscience gets the woozy Malick treatment, which doesn't work so well, after three hours, I found the drawn-out action maddening. Some like it though: Metascore 78%. Watched at Albany Twin Dec. 22, 2019.

[Chris Knipp]

CHICHINETTE: THE ACCIDENTAL SPY (Nicola Hens 2019). Is a documentary about Marthe Cohn, née Hoffnung, who is French, Jewish, and 99 years old. She not only served a key function as an informant to the French toward the end of WWII, a function enabled by having grown up fluent in both French and German, but for the last several decades has gone around the world telling her story, accompanied by her American husband, a retired anaesthesiologist. She had been working as a wartime nurse, when the French government discovered her linguistic advantage. Here, she does most of the talking, and she's an impressive old gal. This supplements info found in her 2002 book, coauthored with Wendy Holden, Behind Enemy Lines. Pending release (screener Dec. 2019).