Gideon58's Reviews

Mystic Pizza
A 1988 coming of age drama called Mystic Pizza doesn't offer anything unconventional in terms of storytelling or film technique, but it is the film that made moviegoers sit up and take notice of an actress named Julia Roberts and her performance alone makes this one worth a look.

This is the story of three female besties who grew up together in the tiny hamlet of Mystic, Connecticut (I google it, it's a real place) and now all work together in the same pizza parlor.
The bookish and virginal Kat (Annabeth Gish) has recently accepted a job as babysitter to a cute kid and finds herself crushing on the girl's hunky single dad (Billy Moses); Daisy (Roberts) is a sexual free spirit who finds herself drawn to wealthy college student (Adam Storke); JoJo (Lilli Taylor) is trying to repair her relationship with her fiancee, Bill (Vincent D'Onofrio) after passing out at the altar at the beginning of their wedding.

I was a little surprised that it took three screenwriters to come up with this paper thin story, that is about as predictable as they come. We have the three girls stuck in dead end jobs that they all hate; however, none of them are really doing anything about it. They seem more concerned about getting laid than getting ahead and their constant whining about it makes you want to do a Loretta in Moonstruck and tell them to "snap out of it!" We've seen a million movies with stories like this where the main characters are guys, but for some reason, having the same kind of characters female, makes them seem a little more pathetic and unsympathetic.

But the problems with the film seem to fall to the wayside whenever Julia Roberts is center stage, luminous in only her third feature film appearance. Her Daisy is a fiercely sexual creation of the actress and director that rings true every time the camera comes her way. I was also impressed that Daisy uses sex as a weapon and admits it free and openly,. The chemistry she creates with Storke is pretty strong, It was a little sad to learn, via IMDB, that Storke hasn't worked since 2018 in the television series Westworld.

The direction by Donald Petrie (Miss Congeniality) is static and makes the film seem longer than it really is. Lilli Taylor provides her accustomed charismatic turn as the hot mess JoJo and I was shocked by the sex on legs performance by D'Onofrio as Bill...yes, Vincent D'Onofrio, sexy as hell looking like a young Tim Robbins, but this is Roberts' movie and hardcore fans will not be disappointed.

The Apprentice (2024)
Despite some melodramatic and difficult to swallow plotting and storyline moves (a real issue with a docudrama), the 2024 film The Apprentice remains watchable thanks to the Oscar-nominated performances from the two leads.

This is a look at President Donald Trump back when he was a Manhattan real estate mogul, who was actually in a lot of legal trouble at the time and found almost magical assistance and a role model in infamous attorney Roy Cohn, known best for his roles in the McCarthy Hearings and in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. We watch as Cohn magically gets Trump out of his legal hassles and is then tossed aside by Trump utilizing everything he learned from Cohn, even his romancing of high fashion model Ivana, who he threw enough money at that he eventually did marry her.

This reviewer had definite issues with the screenplay where, like Best Picture nominee Emilia Perez, initially attempts to paint Trump in a sympathetic light, which was futile. Luckily around a third of the way through the film, the story forgets all of that and begins to show Trump for the sexist, lying, egotistical, hypocritical, bigot that he is who is so quick here to announce that everything he is doing is for the good of the country. All this Trump cares about is power and keeping his own pockets lined. The film actually opens with Trump entering one of his buildings and knocking on apartment doors, personally collecting the rent. I can't picture Trump actually doing that, but I can see him having anyone late or short with the rent evicted without blinking an eye.

Not really down with the presentation of Donald's relationship with Ivana either. The relationship begins with Donald throwing his money at her, which I do believe. What I don't believe is the way the film tries to perpetrate Ivana having no interest in Trump's money, but then it gets real during the best scene in the film where Trump has proposed to Ivana and he and Cohn meet with Ivana to have her sign the prenup. I also totally believe the scene after they're married when Ivana tells him he's fat and bald and what it leads to.

Director Ali Abbasi displays some skill here and makes the most of his big budget. Sebastian Stan, who I loved in I Tonya completely invests in this unflattering portrait of Trump, making the guy really hard to like. I definitely understand the nomination. Jeremy Strong is absolutely bone-chilling as Roy Cohn, a performance that would have nailed him the statuette in another season, but I still think Supporting Actor is going to Strong's Succession co-star, Kieran Culkin. Also have to give a shout out to Maria Bakalova, who received a Supporting Actress nomination for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, who is surprisingly effective as Ivana. Stan and Strong do make this film worth sitting through, despite slight overlength.

Conclave
Men and women of great religious faith are often forgotten to be flawed and human and feel emotions like jealousy, resentment, ambition, and inadequacy. For this reviewer, these are the underlying themes of 2024's Conclave, a biting and intense experience of political-like mystery of such anger and sincerity that has captivated audiences and reviewers alike, earning eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture.

The story opens at the deathbed of the current Holy Father, where we meet the Dean of Cardinals, Father Lawrence (Ralph Feinnes), who is expected to become the new pope; however, Lawrence is having a crisis of faith and is really not interested in becoming the new pope. Father Bellini (Stanley Tucci), who was closer to the Holy Father than anyone, is very interested in the position, but has no support behind. Father Tremblay (John Lithgow) has as much interest in the position than Bellini, but possesses a lot more ambition. It's also revealed that one of the Cardinals in contention for the position is black, which would, of course, be historical, and that's the just the beginning of the cinematic onion that gets peeled here.

The brilliant screenplay by Peter Straughan and Robert Harris have constructed a screenplay rich with characters of great faith, but also people with great ambition, resentment, and unworthy of where they are now. The treatment of the election of a new pope, which is called a conclave, makes up the meat of this story as we watch fear, jealousy, ambition raise their collective heads and enter the souls of all of the characters.

I began to see what was going on with the introduction of Father Tremblay, a character whose stench came right through the screen where we first begin to suspect that nothing is as it seems and watch the story get uglier and uglier. We are totally thrown with the actual introduction of a sex scandal is thrown in and completely knocks the story off its feet.

Director Edward Berger, who received an Oscar nomination for co-writing 2023's All Quiet On the Western Front, has mounted this story on a gorgeous canvas, utilizing first rate production values. I think the screenplay is a dead lock for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar and I think it has a shot at Best Picture as well. Ralph Feinnes, Stanley Tucci, and John Lithgow deliver powerhouse performances that drive the narrative and I also loved Volker Bertelmann's music, also Oscar nominated. A gripping story that takes a moment to get going but then offers constant surprises once it does.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN
A dazzling performance by Timothee Chalamet that has earned him a second Oscar nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor is at the center of a unique and riveting musical biopic of musical icon Bob Dylan called a Complete Unknown that doesn't travel the typical biopic route because Dylan was not your typical musician.

The 2024 film opens in the 1960's where we see Dylan travel to a hospital to visit his musical idol, Woody Guthrie, who is now bedridden and unable to speak. He also meets Pete Seegar there who becomes his musical mentor and leading him to an eventual level of superstardom as a singer and songwriter that I don't think Dylan was actually interested in.

Director and co-screenwriter James Mangold, who directed Reese Witherspoon to an Oscar in Walk the Line gets a lot of credit for a screenplay that doesn't follow the typical biopic path, providing varied surprises along the cinematic journey. The Dylan presented in this story is a guy who is passionate about his music, but had very little interest in the glamorous trappings that accompany success in show business. There's a scene where he opens up a royalty check for $10,000 and doesn't bat an eye. We never see big changes in his lifestyle and unlike a lot of movie musicians, his guitar is not an appendage that never leaves his chest. There are no scenes of him getting hooked on drugs and alcohol or passing out onstage. His reaction to being expected to sing at a fundraiser where he didn't even bring his guitar or a theater full of people who demand he sing "Blowin with the Wind" when it wasn't on his play list ring totally true. He loves music but we never really see it consume him or he get consumed by the business. He also never forgets Pete Seegar and Woody Guthrie and the impact they made on his music.

As for his personal life, romance is implied between Dylan and a young hippie named Sylvia Russo, but a romantic tension is also presented between Dylan and Joan Baez that isn't directly addressed until the final third of the film and when it is, it seems that Dylan is completely unaware of what Baez means to him. But romance is not what this movie is about. It's about a musician who, according to this screenplay, cared about his music and nothing else...not really.

The film has received 8 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor for Chalamet, who once again effortlessly disappears inside a character and could finally earn him the Oscar he's been chasing. Edward Norton has received a Supporting Actor nomination for his Pete Seegar, and Monica Barbaro as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Joan Baez that provides quiet chills and some lovely vocals. Fans of Dylan and Chalamet will have a ball here.

Lady Be Good
When I sit down to watch a classic movie musical and I see the names Eleanor Powell and Busby Berkley in the credits, I have certain immediate expectations. They were not met with a 1941 MGM musical called Lady Be Good, but I did get a surprisingly entertaining movie musical.

This is the story of a composer named Eddie Donegan (Robert Young) who writes Broadway music while his wife, Dixie (Ann Southern) writes the lyrics. They do achieve a modicum of success, but they find that working together puts a strain on their marriage leading to, not one, but two, divorces. After the first divorce, they get together and write a smash hit song that sends their careers soaring again and Eddie wants to give their marriage a second try, but Dixie has decided that she likes things the way they are.

The screenplay for this film is rather clever, with the film opening up with the Donegans in divorce court and the majority of the story unfolding in flashback. It's a little corny the ay Eddie sits at the piano and plays music and then Dixie just tells him to stop for a minute she instantly comes up with words for the last 16 bars that he played, but we accept it because we are supposed to understand that Eddie and Dixie belong together and we are willing to accept the slightly longer than necessary journey to their reconciliation.

What surprised me here was the thankless role assigned to Eleanor Powell, who plays a Broadway dancer who starred in several of the shows that the Donegans wrote and even appears on the stand during the opening courtroom scenes. For some reason, Powell's role as Dixie's best friend is rather thankless, playing Dixie's wisecracking best friend, the kind of role you would expect Eve Arden, Mary Wickes, or Thelma Ritter to play, but this was definitely not Powell's forte. She doesn't dance until the final third of a film and in only two numbers: She does a compact number in her apartment with a dog as a partner and, then with the aide of Busby Berkley, provides a sparkling finale with "Fascinating Rhythm", a number that was featured at the opening of That's Entertainment III.

Young and Southern make a smooth musical couple (Young actually does some pretty convincing faking at the keyboard) and the film also features an appearance by the Berry Brothers, a dance specialty trio who were just as talented as the Nicholas Brothers but never quite achieved the fame than Harold and Fayard did. The film features some terrific songs, especially the title tune and "The Last Tim I Saw Paris", which won the Oscar for Best Song of 1941. It's not top tier MGM, but it certainly held my attention.

Anora
Sean Baker, the creative force behind films I really liked such as Red Rocket and The Florida Project, has triumphed with a blazing and ferocious black comedy called Anora that often strains credibility and features some outrageous characters doing ridiculous things, but kept this reviewer glued to the screen with a story that recalls some of the finest work of Quentin Tarantino, and has received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

The 2024 film centers on a sex worker named Anora, who prefers to be called Ani, who works out of a Los Angeles strip club. One night she connects with a young man named Ivan who speaks broken English, but whose first language is Russian, who spends a whole lot of money on her. With dollar signs in her eyes, Ani gently begins pushing Ivan into a relationship and after a week or so, he suggests they fly to Vegas and get married. The honeymoon is over pretty quickly though when it's revealed that Ivan is the son of some sort of Russian mobster and that his parents are on their way to the states to have this marriage annulled.

To reveal anymore of the story would ruin it, but Baker's screenplay is richly complex and requires complete attention as well as closed-captioning. Closed captioning isn't an initial issue because Ivan does speak some English and Ani conveniently understands Russian, but as more characters arrive on the canvas, most of them do speak Russian, and unlike Parasite where the fact that it is in Korean becomes a non-issue, it is not here and if I hadn't turned on the closed captioning there was a whole lot that I would have not understood here, especially where certain characters' loyalties lied.

There were certain elements of this over the top story that were a bit hard to swallow. It was hard to believe that Ani actually thought this kid Ivan owned that house and that all that money was his. It was also hard to believe that after everything about Ivan and his family put her through, Ani fought so hard to stay married to the guy. There were plot moves I loved though like upon his family's arrival, the first thing they did was obtain a copy of the marriage license. I also loved that we don't meet Ivan's parents until the final third of the film and that Mom apparently wears the pants in the family. I was also impressed with a sexual dance that develops near the finale that reminded me of the sexual dance at the finale of the 2016 Best Picture Moonlight.

Baker's direction is raw and unapologetic in its concepts of sex and violence, and though it runs a little longer than necessary, never felt the need to check my watch. The screenplay is absolutely Oscar-worthy. Mikey Madison has earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her bad-ass title character who fights everything that happens to her here with an intensity I couldn't believe. Yuri Borisov has earned a supporting actor nomination for his smoldering performance as Igor and Mark Eydelshteyn stole every scene he was in as the pathetically childish Ivan. A nightmarish comic thriller that will stay with you long after the credits roll.

Flow
A 2025 Oscar nominee for Outstanding Animated Feature and Outstanding International Feature, Flow is a haunting and harrowing post Apocalyptic animated adventure that I didn't completely understand, but found myself riveted to the screen for the economic running time.

As the film opens, we find a cat in the wilderness trying to avoid a pack of dogs and an avalanche of deer when a flood hits the forest carrying the cat onto a ragged abandoned boat where the cat finds temporary safety along with one of the dogs who was chasing him, a lemur, a capybara, and a large white bird who, as the water continues to rise, indicating nothing but a possible end to the world, this disparate group of animals must work together to survive, despite the fact that none of the animals take charge of the situation.

A product of Latvia, Belgium, and France, this beautifully unique story contains no dialogue, no actors, and no human characters. The only time in the movie that a human body is observed is at one point when the boat passes by a submerged body where all we see is the head and one of his hands. It begins rather innocently as the dogs start chasing the cat, as nature intended, but an eventual challenge of all of these animals' place in the balance of nature begins to float to the surface as the water rises.

There was one moment that I definitely didn't see coming where the boat actually encounters another boat which has nothing but lemurs on it. They briefly inspect their fellow travelers and then re-board their own vessel shooting daggers at our animal friends. It reminded me of that brief moment in The Poseidon Adventure where the survivors briefly encounter a group of passengers who are going the opposite way they are. We expect the lemurs on the second boat to help or join our heroes but they just go on their merry way, which I found to be very strange. Loved when the cat dove in the water to catch fish to eat and shared them with his fellow travelers.

The animation here is computer-generated but not in the pursuit of realistic animals, but in the pursuit of a dream like state in which this kind of story could be legitimized. If director and co-screenwriter Gints Zilbalodis were looking for realism in terms of the look of the film, it wouldn't look the way it did. The film is gorgeous to look at, but not in a realistic vein. Yet, only genuine animal sounds were used for the animals. I loved the way the cat meow always sounded a million miles away. The moment where the cat gets snatched by the bird is being transported mid-air is genuinely terrifying. Won't be seeing anything like this anytime soon.

The Brutalist
The screenplay definitely could have used some tightening, but 2024's The Brutalist is a sweeping and disturbing epic that initially appears to be one man's pursuit of the American Dream but takes the viewer on a journey that leads to an ugly and disturbing climax that galvanizes the viewer, but it shouldn't have taken as long as it did to get where it went.

The story introduces the viewer to Lazlo Toth, a Jewish immigrant who escapes post war Europe in the 1940's looking to begin a new life with the help of his brother. Though he initially finds work in construction/contracting, he is eventually revealed to be a brilliant architect through his work on the remodeling of a library of a wealthy industrialist named Harrison Van Buren who has the power and influence of a mob boss and who is so impressed with Toth's work that he enlists his skills in building his own empire in 1947 Philadelphia. The bond between Toth and Van Buren appears to be unbreakable until the arrival of Toth's wife and niece.

Director and co-screenwriter Brady Corbet deserves major kudos for the scope and power they have brought to this story of one man's pursuit of a new life that, I'm not sure why, had me flashing back to films like Citizen Kane and There Will Be Blood as we watch a central character initially bathed in penniless obscurity but revealed to be man with his own vision and a passion for what he does and not willing to compromise said passion, even for this guy Van Buren. And it's a little jarring when Van Buren respects Toth's vision and is shockingly protective of the guy, even when Toth pisses off business associates. Something is off about his blind loyalty to Toth until Toth is behind a tragedy that is a PR nightmare for Van Burnett which we think is going to spell the end of their relationship but it definitely sends it in an ugly direction we don't see coming.

The story takes a little too long to kick into gear, spending almost a half hour showing Toth's journey to America in the hull of a ship, with nothing to his name until he manages to unite with his brother Atilla, who gives him a job in his furniture store. But it's after Van Buren hires and fires Toth and discovers his past in Europe as an architect and that the film really begins to engage the viewer. Those opening scenes might have been better spent exploring Toth's backstory as an architect. Also loved the hate/hate relationship that develops between Toth and Van Buren's son, Harry, one of the slimiest characters I have seen in a movie in a long time. Harry's place in the finale is crucial to its power, though I did find the epilogue a little longer than necessary.

The film has been nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Corbet, and Best Actor for Adrien Brody's riveting performance as Lazlo, that could definitely land this richly talented actor a second Best Actor Oscar. The incredibly versatile Guy Pearce has landed his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor as did Felicity Jones for her performance as Lazlo's sickly wife, Erzebet. I would love to see this one win the cinematography Oscar it has been nominated for. The images of storm clouds about to burst but never doing so perpetuate a lot of scenes and stayed with this reviewer. The ugliness of the climax could keep this film from winning Best Picture, not to mention the fact that it had no business being three hours and 21 minutes long, but this is still one journey worth taking.

The Wild Robot
The creative force behind Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon has come up with an engaging and slightly zany look at nature Vs technology called The Wild Robot that has earned three Oscar nominations including Outstanding Animated Feature.

This is the story of a robot who is being delivered somewhere by boat, but the boat is thrown off course and the robot, whose name is Rozzlun 7134, ends up stranded on a deserted island. Rozzlun manages to break out of his box and begins looking for the person who ordered him. He meets nothing but fear and terror as the animals on the island either fear or terrorize Rozzlun offering no help, except for a fox, who befriends Roz, when he finds himself the unwilling guarding of a baby gosling.

Director and screenwriter Chris Sanders has concocted an initially engaging film that starts off as a look at science VS nature centered around a central character who kind of reminded me of Robin Williams' Mork...an invention who soaks up everything he learns about real life like a sponge, but his literal interpretation of creatures and events often comes up as callous and unfeeling, but Rozz has no emotions, he operates by mechanical commands, complicated by the fact that he has no one to command him. The closest display to emotion we get from Roz is the varied colors that light up in his exterior wiring during varied situations. This is why he spends the first twenty minutes of the film trying to locate who ordered him, but to no avail. Rozz' initial battle with a fox over the gosling doesn't have any emotional basis, but he fights with every circuit within him.

The story takes a different direction as the gosling, who has been named Brightbill, grows up and is surprised to find hostility from other geese, who reject him because he was raised by Roz. While Brightbill deals with racism from his own people, Rozz may have located who ordered him but cannot completely extricate himself from Brightbill's life.

The film features crisp and colorful animation and a first rate voice cast led by Oscar winner Lupia Nyongo as Rozzand Kit Conner as Brightbill. Catherine O'Hara, Bill Nighy, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill and especially Pedro Pascal offer solid support in other roles, but it's the two central characters in this very offbeat story that makes this one sparkle and dance.

The Last Showgirl
Despite an eye-opening performance by Pamela Anderson in the title role, 2024's The Last Showgirl never really tugs heartstrings or ignites tear ducts as I think was intended, making for a slightly labored movie experience.

Anderson plays Shelley, a Las Vegas chorus girl who has been dancing in the same show for about 30 years. At the beginning of the film, we learn that the show is being closed in two weeks forever and being turned into a circus.

Screenwriter Karen Gersten makes her full length feature debut as a screenwriter, having written for television shows like The Good Place and Mozart in the Jungle, but she may have bitten off a little more than she could chew with a story centered around the business of show business that features some interesting characters but featured a lot of stuff that was really hard to swallow.

I was a little troubled by the fact that a 42-year old Las Vegas showgirl who is going to be unemployed in two weeks never consider another kind of work. Though in the final 15 minutes, she does say she might consider becoming a cocktail waitress like her BFF Annette (Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis) who got aged out of dancing in Vegas years ago.

Don't get me wrong, Anderson works very hard to make the character of Shelley viable and she is likable, even though she might be in denial about the bubble she's been in living in and doesn't realize that the business has changed a lot in the thirty years she's been dancing in the back of a Vegas chorus line.

The subplot of Shelley's reunion with her daughter, Hannah, did ring true for the most part. Hannah's hostility and apparent embarrassment about her mother is instant and jarring and my jaw dropped when it was revealed that, in the last 30 years, she has never seen her mother's show. It feels like Anderson is depending a little too much on her lack of eye makeup to carry her performance. She still looks great though and there's a bravery in this performance. Curtis too, especially a scene where she dances on top of a casino table that never would have gone on that long in a real Vegas casino. It also bothered me that Shelley is made to look ridiculous in her audition at the climax of the film...everything that choreographer said to her was absolutely correct.

Anderson is surprisingly effective in a performance that actually earned her a Golden Globe nomination. Shout-outs to Dave Baustista as the show's stage manager and Keirnan Shipka, who played Sally Draper on Mad Men a much younger girl on Shelley's chorus line. The movie is a nice idea and there are solid performances, but I don't think it accomplishes what it was intended to accomplish.

Misunderstood
Another great performance by the late Gene Hackman raises the bar on a soapy 1984 melodrama called Misunderstood, which might try to cover a little too much territory in its exploration of topics like grief and the art of single parenting, but the story scatters in too many different to sustain viewer interest.

Hackman plays Ned, a wealthy American businessman who works in North Africa and has spent a lot of time away from his family, but is forced to step up when his wife dies and he must take care o his two sons, Andrew and Miles. He gets off to a very shaky start by being honest with Andrew about what happened to his mother,but deciding that Miles is too young to handle it, telling him that mom is "away."

The screenplay is kind of all over the place as it pretty much skips over Ned's grieving process and watches him trying to be the father to his sons that he needs to be. Sadly, Ned is rather clueless about what he's doing because he treats Andrew a lot older than he really is and treats Miles a lot younger than he really is. This has such a severe effect on the brothers that they find themselves drifting away from their father. He is especially rough on Andrew as he lays a lot of responsibility on Andrew regarding Miles that Andrew is just not up to. It's sad watching Andrew doing anything he can think of to get his father's attention while Miles does anything he can think of to get his brother's attention and we sadly watch this grieving family falling apart.

It's a little confusing because we watch Ned being completely devoted to his late wife (played in flashbacks by the late Sunsan Anspach) but there's little difference between the way he is observed with her and the way he is observed with his sons and we never really see the absentee father that he's supposed to be. We only get one scene early on in the film where Ned tries to talk about he's going through with his brother-in-law (Rip Torn), who is also have issues with the loss.

However, Gene Hackman always had the ability to carry a film past its imperfections and Hackman does that in spades here. He brings a sensitivity to this performance that I hadn't seen since Twice in a Lifetime. Director Jerry Schatzberg, who directed Hackman in Scarecrow gets a beautifully understated performance from the actor that almost makes the film seem better than it is. Henry Thomas (ET) and Huckleberry Fox (Terms of Endearment are lovely as the young brothers trying to deal with the loss of their mother and the battle for their father's affection. Appointment viewing for Hackman fans.