The best of 2023 lists are coming out now, lots of them. The National Board of Review, which sounds like an official body but is a group of critics and fans in New York, named Killers of the Flower Moon as the best. Los Angeles critics named The Zone of Interest, which I'll review next week when it arrives here. The Golden Globe nominations were biggest for Barbie and Oppenheimer, thereby continuing the linking of those two films that started back in July. Oddly they snubbed the superb scriptwriting in The Holdovers, while giving the film other nods.
More to come ... but first, these:
Wonka: 2 ½ stars
Chicken Run Dawn of the Nugget: 3
Eileen: 4
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood: 4
Immediate Family: 3 ½
WONKA: Perfect for the holidays this is, despite some shortcomings that might be a bit of a bother for adults. Mind you it's their children it is aimed at, and anybody who fondly remembers Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory from back in 1971 and DVD views ever since. And it stars Timothée Chalamet with a top cast of British actors in support (Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant, Sally Hawkins, Jim Carter, Rowan Atkinson, to name a few) and it is made by the team behind the two Paddington movies. The director, Paul King, wrote the new story (it wasn't in Roald Dahl's original novel) about how Wonka came to be a chocolatier. And how he came to meet the Oompa-Loompas, the chief one played by Hugh Grant.
The shortcomings, you ask? The film tries too hard to please. You're not drawn into the story because it feels deliberately manufactured and oh so sweet. You should care more that when Willy sets up a chocolate shop he gets opposition from three big competitors. They were mentioned in the novel and here bribe a police chief (Keegan-Michael Key) to stop Wonka. Other characters, like the laundry owner played by Olivia Colman, feel like Dickens exaggerations and somewhat silly. Willy has to take a job at her business and on the side find a giraffe and sneak into a bad-guys den under a cathedral. Too diffuse. Also Chalamet isn't much of a singer, but neither is Grant, and the songs aren't memorable. Despite all that, the film is big and colorful and even fun. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5
CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET: The original, now 23 years old, is much loved and holds the distinction of being the highest-grossing stop motion animated film ever. So of course there's a sequel, not as good as the first, but still an exciting entertainment. The characters are weaker, the film as a whole more of an adventure. The colorful visual style and the clever British humor survive, though. They're key to the appeal of England's Aardman Productions, which made its name with Wallace and Gromit.
If you remember, the first Chicken Run was an escape from a chicken farm because, well you know, what happens to chickens. Rocky and Ginger are now living on a remote island. They have a teenage daughter, Molly, and she wonders what is out there over the water. She and a pal named Frizzle investigate, find Fun Land Farms, where chickens play and frolic like at a resort.
The parents who escaped from there, now have to go back and rescue them. That turns into a real Mission Impossible adventure, even with a brief bit of that theme music. The target is high-tech industrial farming. There's retina-identifting technology, an escalator that raises the birds to an intake hatch and video monitors watching everything. The despotic Mrs Tweedy is in charge, still voiced by Miranda Richardson. A few other actors also repeat but among the new ones, Bella Ramsey shines as Molly. She's known from the series The Last of Us. (Netflix) 3 out of 5
EILEEN: A repressed, mousy young woman falls under the spell of a new arrival who is blonde and sexy and supremely self-confident. You can imagine what will happen in this Sundance favorite. Well, not really. Sure they go have drinks together, even dance together, but the film pulls a switch on you. It breaks from the usual and goes for something darker. I can't tell you how. That would be a huge spoiler.
Eileen played by Thomasin McKenzie works at a prison in Massachusetts. She's a lowly secretary, nobody pays any attention to her and she still lives at home with an alcoholic dad. A new psychologist is hired at the prison and is introduced as "easy on the eyes" but very smart. She's played by Anne Hathaway, all blonde and brassy and, surprisingly, willing to talk to Eileen and get her take on things. Romance? Maybe but an inmate's case takes their attention. He's a young man who killed his father. The psychologist does something most never do. She asks him why he did it? Eileen develops daydreams about her own father. And then there's a major switch in the story. Trust me, it'll be a jolt. Director William Oldroyd, working from a novel by Ottessa Moshfegh, who also co-wrote the screenplay, grabs you with the grim turns. And the two women stars are marvelous. (In a few theaters across Canada) 4 out of 5
SMOKE SAUNA SISTERHOOD: Watch out for this film. It's only in two theaters so far, the VIFF Centre in Vancouver now, Cinéma Moderne in Montreal starting tomorrow. But it's already drawn accolades. It won an award at Sundance, was named Best Documentary this week at the European Film Awards and is Estonia's submission to the Academy Awards.
Women will find it particularly moving because it deals with many of their issues. Relations with their mothers. Life with violent men. There's a dramatic description of a rape. And a most emotional recollection of a still birth that required the woman to push and deliver anyway, as if the baby was alive.
Those stories are told as five women sit in a sauna, sometimes wash their hair, one time run outside in the snow and jump into an icy pond. It's much like the film Women Talking but without a debate and a decision to make. Just thoughts and observations. One woman felt she was ugly as a young girl because she was fat. “The main thing as a woman is to attract a man,” she was told. One talks about “all this pain, this fear” and that she wants to protect her daughter from it. Very affecting comments. The smoke sauna, by the way is a Unesco-recognized part of Estonia's “intangible cultural heritage of humanity.” (2 theaters) 4 out of 5
IMMEDIATE FAMILY: Pull out an LP by Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Phil Collins, James Taylor, Neil Young and many others, look at the names of the musicians playing on it and you're likely to find some, maybe all, of these: Russ Kunkel, Waddy Watchel, Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Steve Postell. They were top studio musicians in Los Angeles in the 1970s and added vibrant life to dozens of records that went on to sell by the millions. And remain classics today. This film honors their work and listens to what they, and several big names in music, have to say about it.
You don't get a lot of gossip, maybe a few stories of how somebody got some job or how a particular sound came about (like on one Don Henley record or on Bette Davis Eyes). You do get a great deal about the craft, and what made their work special. They thought like producers, not just hired musicians. They came up with ideas that improved the songs as they played backup. And they developed a camaraderie that one describes as “magic.” They kept it going outside the studio when they played gigs as a band named Immediate Family. The film by Denny Tedesco, himself the son of a session musician, is a follow up to The Wrecking Crew in which he showed us players from the 1960s. It is also a revelation and a celebration, but best for people into the art of making records. (FYI: Russ Kunkel now lives on Vancouver Island and he'll be at the VIFF Centre at two afternoon screenings tomorrow for a Q&A). 3 ½ out of 5
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