DVD: Divine Viewing Diversions
Here are three credentialed movies that took home Academy Awards in February. All three are highly recommendable.
A Star Is Born (R)
Gaga.
It’s the one word that sums up a suitable response to the latest version of “A Star Is Born,” a remarkably rich remake in which an actress is born, a director is born, and a very old, challengingly familiar movie plot is reborn.
“A Star Is Born” was born in 1937, when William Wellman directed Janet Gaynor and Fredric March.
It was first reborn in 1954, when George Cukor directed Judy Garland and James Mason.
In 1976, it was born again, with Frank Pierson directing Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.
All were acknowledged, one way or another, at Oscar time.
Now it’s here again, in 2019, with debuting Bradley Cooper directing Lady Gaga and himself.
And if the fourth outing isn’t the most accomplished and endearing of the quartet, it sure is close.
Even if the only Academy Award it carted home, after nabbing eight nominations, was for Best Song (“Shallow).”
It’s simultaneously intimate and majestic, which is already an accomplishment of note. But its core can probably be most aptly captured by answering three questions:
Can Lady Gaga act? Can Bradley Cooper sing? Can any contemporary juice be squeezed out of this narrative?
An emphatic yes on all three counts.
The romantic musical drama looks in on Cooper’s iconic Jackson Maine, a hard-drinking country singer and movie star, and Gaga’s Ally, the aspiring and delivering singer and actress whom he meets, mentors, and marries.
You know the drill: She enters as he exits, she rehearses while he drinks, she resounds as he resents, she soars while he falters.
We’ve been here before, to be sure, but in a remarkably assured debut in the director’s chair, Cooper breathes new life into a Hollywood staple, makes it feel freshly observed, working from a thoughtful, don’t-reinvent-the-wheel script about fame and ambition that Cooper co-wrote with Eric Roth and Will Fetters.
Which is not to overlook Cooper’s self-directed performance – no easy task under any circumstances – as a Maine attraction on the way down from the mountaintop, battling demons and self-destructiveness with decided downheartedness.
It’s at the very least a reminder that three of Cooper’s previous four Oscar nominations have been for acting, although it’s certainly not his only prodigious skill.
The intensity he maintains and the revealing closeups he highlights in mid-performance are just two of the weapons in the actor-director’s arsenal that will make it easy for him to recruit cast members down the line.
As for first-time leading lady Lady, she of the golden pipes who, like her character, hijacks the spotlight, she somehow manages to fit smoothly into the ensemble and yet stays anchored in reality at the same time that she brings that astounding, larger-than-life voice of hers into the spotlight as if the role had been waiting for, and fitted to, her since birth.
So, yes, both individually and together, the co-leads ace their chemistry exam.
The musical numbers, which the co-leads contributed to and recorded, pack a punch and linger in the memory, disarming viewers inclined to dismiss this as the proverbial showbiz weepie.
An absorbing and affecting musical melodrama and one rousing reboot, “A Star Is Born” lives. Again. And ain’t we the better for it.
Mary Poppins Returns (Pg)
Yes, we realize that the original was made more than half a century ago, insist the makers of “Mary Poppins Returns,” but this follow-up is not a remake; it’s a sequel.
OK, we respond, have it your way. But it’s still a steep hill this movie has to climb, given the existence of the successful, memorable, beloved original.
And while audiences will find much to enjoy in this friendly-family fantasy, that overall feeling of “many happy returns” may still prove elusive.
Adapted from the book series by P.L. Travers, “Mary Poppins” emerged in 1964, receiving 13 Oscar nominations and winning five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Music, and Best Actress – Julie Andrews.
The sequel is certainly entertaining and there is plenty of craftsmanship and craftswomanship on display: thus four Oscar nominations (but no victories).
But it remains somewhat of a no-win game for director Rob Marshall (“Chicago,” “Into the Woods”) and screenwriter David Magee. That is, if they chose to stick slavishly close to the original, they knew they’d be accused of lacking creativity. But had they swum too far away from the side of the pool, they could well have disappointed loyal fans of their film’s predecessor.
Remember, the moviegoing audience has already been offered a terrific movie about the making of “Mary Poppins,” 2013’s “Saving Mr. Banks.”
Marshall and Magee’s approach is to check off pretty much all the boxes recalling the 1964 classic, but to find variations of scenes and songs and moments so that it never seems that they’re simply rehashing or replicating.
Emily Blunt replaces Julie Andrews in the title role, and Lin-Manuel Miranda (of “Hamilton” fame) does a variation of Dick Van Dyke’s Bert the chimney sweep (Van Dyke contributes a cameo), this time as Jack the Lamplighter.
Once again, a tough stretch in the lives of the Banks family in London during the Depression serves as an invitation for a magical, practically perfect nanny to come in for a landing and help the Banks children – the kids of widower Michael, who was a child during Mary’s first visit, and whose house on Cherry Tree Lane is now under foreclosure – rediscover the childhood joy that has disappeared of late.
The kids whom Mary rescued 54 years ago are now grownups, and both generations need her special kind of help.
The original conjured charm, wit and magic in an uncannily natural way, and its lasting appeal probably serves to undermine the follow-up and make it appear to come up short.
But “Mary Poppins Returns” serves up to its young audience too many unexpected moments and satisfying flourishes – in the set pieces, the dance numbers, the special effects, and the deft music of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman – to be so easily dismissed, even if the film lacks the snap, crackle and pop of “Mary Poppins.”
And while the mass audience’s affection for the timeless contributions of Andrews and Van Dyke isn’t likely to diminish anytime soon, the impressive talent of Blunt and Miranda does register and impress.
So is this “something quite atrocious”? Not even close.
This is one of those sequels that’s not quite the equal of its predecessor. Consider “Mary Poppins Returns” another spoonful of sugar, but on a much more modest spoon.
Bohemian Rhapsody (Pg-13)
There can be only one word that captures the superlative portrayal that Rami Malek turns in as Queen’s lead singer, Freddie Mercury, in the musical biodrama, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Mercurial.
Malek, best known for his Emmy-winning performance in the television series, “Mr. Robot,” struggles a bit early on with the prosthetic overbite – and it is an early, temporary distraction. But he soon settles in and inhabits the role so completely and overwhelmingly, it’s downright spooky.
Which is why he took home the Best Actor Oscar and the film won the Best Film Editing, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing Oscars while garnering five nominations (beaten out only for Best Picture).
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is a somewhat sanitized chronicle – not quite up close and impersonal, but close – of the years before and during operatic British rock band Queen’s triumphant reunion and legendary performance at the Live Aid concert in 1985, an event viewed by nearly 2 billion people that bookends the narrative.
The turbulent production was directed by Bryan Singer (“X-Men,” “The Usual Suspects,” “Superman Returns,”), who was fired several weeks before the shoot ended, when he was replaced by the uncredited (as director, anyway) Dexter Fletcher (“Eddie the Eagle,” “Wild Bill,” “Sunshine on Leith”). This, long after Sacha Baron Cohen was replaced in the lead role by Malek, whose uncanny impersonation makes this seem a role he was born to play.
Anthony McCarten’s screenplay documenting Queen’s meteoric rise takes a few liberties with the actual timeline, which should leave it time to explore the characters a bit. But that’s not the case, and we don’t really get to know any of them very well.
Still, character delineation is at least serviceable in what is, after all, an “And then they wrote” chronology.
Freddie’s family relationships, sexual identity, and medical history are, if not truly explored, at least acknowledged.
And, more important, both viewers unfamiliar with Queen’s iconic sound and songs as well as die-hard fans should find this celebration of its music foot-stompingly satisfying.
But it’s Malek who runs off with the movie and its driving energy, seemingly confident that we’ll follow his beloved, flamboyant international superstar vocalist anywhere.
That this is hardly a warts-and-all portrait of the group and its experience might be explained by the large number of producers – a dozen – some of whom were in the band and/or in the cast. But, then, this is a film much more focused on showing off the group’s assets than on spilling their secrets.
The songs, then, are the highlights, as they should be in a movie that, like its protagonist, is an unapologetic showoff. And whatever combination of Mercury’s and Malek’s voices, and perhaps a third participant’s, that the film uses – and is cagey about – that phenomenal and familiar singing voice comes through loud and clear.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” has limitations, to be sure. But Malek is a revelation and it will, it will rock you.
