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I've been traveling and so you'll find only three of the week's new movies here, and one isn't even a movie, it's a series. It is about the people who make them, though. Hollywood types who get a very funny lampooning, and by two Canadians yet.
I don't cover Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip though it looks potentially interesting because it's a follow-up to a terrific children's book and the movie that was made of it 11 years ago. Also not here are Bob Trevino Likes It, a tale of an on-line friendship which I've heard good things about, or a film I've not heard praised: Death of a Unicorn, in which a father and daughter accidentally run over and kill a unicorn.
The three I do write about are …
The Penguin Lessons: 3 ½ out of 5
The Studio: various out of 5
Holland: 2 ½ out of 5
THE PENGUIN LESSONS: It’s always welcome to take in the dry wit of Steve Coogan and here he’s directed by another favored English film guy, Peter Cattaneo, who’s best known for The Full Monty. They go the heart-warming route here but in a contrasting situation: Argentina’s political violence of 1976. A right-wing coup is starting up when Tom Michell (Coogan) arrives to teach English in a boy’s school. The film is inspired by a book the real Michell wrote about his experiences and concentrates far more on a nice story about him and a penguin that attached itself to him like a pet, than politics. It’s been criticized for that but I didn’t mind. The film has very droll humor, a Coogan specialty, and the political turmoil does make its way in. It’s ever looming and threatening and that may even be more effective than total focus. He alludes to it with the poetry he teaches.
Michell gets a clear view right away. The school is where the rich send their boys. The headmaster (Jonathan Pryce) says don’t get involved with politics. Forget that people are being “disappeared” and just carry on. He learns about what’s really going on from a woman and her granddaughter who work as cleaners where he lives and from a fishmonger under attack for his left-wing sympathies.
A walk on the beach with a woman he wants to bed changes everything. They find a penguin stuck in an oil slick. To impress the woman, he saves the bird and it follows him home. No pets allowed but he can’t get rid of it, carries it in a tote bag and furtively hides it or, if found, stretches to explain why he has it. He takes it to class and that manages to inspire his bored students and gets them to appreciate what poets have written about freedom. Pretty whimsical but enjoyable. And it makes him ponder the idea of doing good, how effective it is even in small measure. A bit corny but it goes along with his regrets over doing nothing when he saw an incident on the street. The darkness in the background, the light up front make this a feel-good movie with some substance. (Theaters) 3½ out of 5
THE STUDIO: Seth Rogen and his producing pal Evan Goldberg have done a slick job of biting off the pretentions of the hands that feeds them. And they've done it under the name of their production company, Point Grey, which is named after the Vancouver high school they attended. They share directing duties and Rogen stars in this funny satire of Hollywood moviemakers. Rogen plays the newly-appointed head of a studio who has to oversee the clashes, the insecurities and the egotism of the people around him—and of himself. Insecurity is a major driver in their psyches and it plays out in comical ways, with an amazing line up of name guests in the cast.
In episode one (of the eventual 10) Rogen has got orders from above to make a movie based on The Kool Aid Man. Similar oddities do happen in Hollywood. He's approached by Martin Scorsese (yes, the real guy) who wants to make a film about the Jonestown massacre. Kool Aid, right? They have fun bantering that about, as Rogen tries to combine the two.
In Episode two Rogen is a bumbling pest visiting a film shoot directed by Sarah Polley. It's repetitive and quite annoying but Episode 3 picks up again. Rogen and his staff, Catherine O’Hara, Ike Barinholtz and Kathryn Hahn, screen a new movie by Ron Howard and then agonize over how to tell him the long final scene is boring and has to be cut. Howard says in his mind it's the heart of the film. So who's going to tell him? There's a lot of cowardice in their grandiosity and it's fun to see it detailed.
You might even wonder how good movies ever get made in LaLa Land, or see reasons why so many aren't good. Rogen's character says the job is a meat grinder but he is committed to making art as well as commercial hits. High ideals but then he also says “We don't make films. We make movies.” Zac Efron and Olivia Wilde are in episode four and more are coming. Will the satire continue, or just settle into a sit-com? TBD, as they say. (The first two episodes started on Apple TV March 26. Two-a-week follow). For the ones I've seen so far, I give 3½, 2½, 3½, 3, 3 out of 5.
HOLLAND: This mildly engrossing film is tepid as a thriller but intriguing because of the many contrasts it’s built on. It’s set in Holland, which we immediately see is not the country but a town in Michigan. Immigrants built it and we see windmills, Dutch houses and people dressed and dancing Dutch-like at an annual tulip parade. Just the kind of place where people live ordinary lives peacefully, like Nancy Vandergroot played by Nicole Kidman. She’s a teacher, home economics, how mainstream. Her husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) is an optometrist and when at home happily builds an elaborate toy train set with his son. How normal.
It takes a long time to establish this ambiance and that alone should alert you that something is coming, again in contrast.
Nancy, already wondering about the many business trips Fred takes, becomes suspicious when she finds a ticket to an unrelated place and boxes of Polaroid pictures. That’s when the film finally grabs on and we join in with her search, along with a shop teacher at her school (Gael García Bernal). She sneaks into Fred’s office one night and very narrowly misses being caught. She finds some terrible stories in old newspaper files on the internet and suspects Fred even more. She has brief sex with the shop teacher but wonders if she can trust him. Or is she delusional? Director Mimi Cave keeps all these questions floating nicely to raise the subject of women’s fears. And bring us several twists. Too bad that the energy is low and the film needs a bloody ending to snap us back. It’s OK as an easy-to-take, non-threatening mystery. (An Amazon MGM Studios release streaming on Prime) 2 ½ out of 5
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