Movie Reviews 1

 

Movie Reviews 1

From time to time, UT will provide movie reviews, mostly of small movies that might get overlooked. Here are some worthy of your attention.

“Jules” (2023) stars Ben Kingsley as retiree Howard who has nothing better to do than attend town council meetings and suggest changes in the town’s motto or make requests for crosswalks at busy intersections. There are two elderly ladies (one played by Jane Curtin of SNL fame) who also attend the meetings, make similar harmless suggestions, and keep a sharp and not entirely disinterested eye on Howard. One night a flying saucer crash lands in Howard’s backyard. From it emerges an injured alien. At first Howard’s caution prevails and he keeps his distance. But then his natural compassion gets the better of him, and he takes care of the alien, installs it as a houseguest, and names it Jules (presupposing its gender, which is indeterminate because it has no visible genitals, easily verified because it is stark naked until the ladies enter the fray; see below). Howard and Jules can’t communicate by speech, but they manage by signs and gestures, and Jules proves to be a model boarder. Howard makes no secret of this astounding development, mentioning it at the grocery store and the next council meeting, but everyone thinks he is losing his marbles. (That includes his daughter who tries to trick him into an assisted living arrangement. Any oldster with a caring offspring who occasionally creeps right up to the very border of unwanted interference will appreciate the father-daughter dynamic in this film.) The secret of Jules’s existence is maintained by various directorial contrivances until both of the elderly ladies mentioned above glom onto it by nosiness and persistence, whereupon they demand to be in on the action. The triumvirate decide that Jules must now be kept a strict secret because we all know what happens to aliens when the authorities find out about them. And the authorities are sniffing around. Will Jules, with the help of his friends, be able to repair his ship and leave before the baddies get him? Genre: Warm-hearted geriatric fantasy comedy. Kingsley’s performance is spot-on.

“Wildcat,” (2023) written and directed by Ethan Hawke and starring his daughter Maya, is a totally different animal. It chronicles the difficult life of the writer Flannery O’ Connor by dramatizing her short stories as she writes them. In between, it explores her relations with her mother and aunt and a few other significant people in her life. O’ Connor would nowadays be diagnosed as neurodivergent, characterized mainly by a tendency toward brutal honesty and an inability to suffer fools gladly. She also suffered from Lupus disease which eventually took her life. As her self-reflections make clear, O’Connor was an old-style southern Catholic who believed that virtue is attained only through personal suffering, and she had her share of that. Absolutely nothing happens in this movie, so if you demand lots of action, forget this one. But if you enjoy a good character study, this is an excellent example.

“The Old Oak” (2024) is the name of the last pub operating in a one-time mining village in northern England that is now destitute and pretty much hopeless. The pub’s owner, TJ, keeps it going mostly so there will be a gathering place for old timers. A group of Syrian refugees move into the village, triggering an outbreak of ethnic prejudice toward the newcomers. The formation of a friendship between TJ and a young Syrian woman named Yara opens up an avenue for familiarization between the two groups. It all sounds pretty ho-hum, and the morale is transparent: When you get to know someone person-to-person, ethnic stereotypes and prejudices tend to dissipate. What makes the movie effective is that the familiarization process is delivered in a series of deeply moving episodes that go straight for the emotional jugular. So, keep your box of Kleenex handy.