Film

“No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Lord Darlington in Act III of Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play “Lady Windermere’s Fan (A Play About A Good Woman)”

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” — Portia in Act 5 of William Shakespeare’s 1596-97 (circa) play “The Merchant of Venice”

No deep dive into the quotes above – just know the cinematic story of British folk hero Maurice Flitcroft in Sony Pictures Classic’s “The Phantom of the Open” borrows directly and indirectly from those words.

Flitcroft (played with his usual still-waters-run-deep brilliance by Oscar-winner Mark Rylance)  is a crane operator in England’s industrial north (Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, to be exact) who earnestly believes in not only looking at but shooting for the stars. That’s the message he’s preached for years to twin sons Gene and James (the exuberant Christian and Jonah Lees), who regularly distinguish themselves on the dance floor, and to stepson Michael (a well-measured performance by Jake Davies), now a college grad and part of management at Maurice’s employer.

And good deeds? When Maurice (sounds like “Morris”) met Jean (another in a long line of strong showings by Oscar-nominee Sally Hawkins), she was a single mother. It wasn’t long after WWII, when such a situation was usually scandalous in the misnomer that was “polite society.” Maurice didn’t judge — he accepted Jean and Michael with open arms.

What turned Flitcroft from a good-hearted anonymous guy to national folk hero? In 1976 the 46-year-old decided to enter The Open Championship. So what, you say? What if I was to tell you he did so without ever playing a single round of golf before he entered qualifying, and set a record by scoring 121 for 18 holes? Okay, given the fact he’d never played that’s easy to believe. What’s not so easy, and what added greatly to his life (and the movie) is what followed that unforgettable moment in golf history.

Yes, there were those in the golf establishment that weren’t pleased at all, as typified by pompous Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews official Keith Mackenzie (played to fuming comic perfection by Rhys Ifans). But Brits love their eccentric sportsmen (like Eddie the Eagle, to name just one). And so, it turns out, did some folks in the United States. But for that and more, you’ll need to watch the film.

The movie is a good deed in itself during our current era of upheaval. No, it’s not some heavyweight “Why didn’t they wait until awards season to release this?” movie, though I wish the British and American film academies cared more about such feel-good films than they do.

“The Phantom of the Open” has good acting, a well-paced, warm and funny script by actor/writer Simon Farnaby (who has a golfing cameo in the feature) based on the 2010 book he wrote with sports journalist Scott Murray on Flitcroft, and vivid directing flourishes from Welsh actor-turned-director Craig Roberts. Kudos also go to Kit Fraser’s often-inventive cinematography, Jonathan Amos’ crisp editing and period-perfect contributions from production designer Sarah Finlay, Isobel Waller-Bridge’s music (with musical supervision by Phil Canning), Sian Jenkins’ costumes and Tara McDonald’s hair and makeup.

Its release in our area is quite limited; hopefully one can see it at a theater, but if not, watch/stream/rent it when it appears in home-friendly formats. One doesn’t have to care about golf (or any sports) to root for Flitcroft and feel quite happy after this 106-minute love letter to dreamers is over.

“The Phantom of the Open” continues this week in Franklin at AMC Thoroughbred 20 and in Murfreesboro at AMC Murfreesboro 16. It’s rated PG-13 for “some strong language and smoking” by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Click here for more info and tickets to showings at those theaters and others elsewhere.

For decades the Brits have seemingly cornered the market on films about eccentrics. real and imagined; they typically produce entertaining cinema around such unconventional folks with equal parts humor and poignancy. With Kempton Bunton, the Don Quixote of 1961 Newcastle, “The Duke” adds another entertaining movie to that character-fueled canon.

Bunton (Jim Broadbent) is the voice crying in the wilderness of post-World War II Britain for better treatment of pensioners and war veterans. His perpetual campaign for the downtrodden and forgotten is, at the time the film is set, centered on the mandatory television license fee required of anyone owning a TV set in the United Kingdom (a practice that still funds the BBC).

His activism has resulted more than once in incarceration, and between his protests and prolific (but commercially unsuccessful) playwrighting his long suffering wife Dorothy (Helen Mirren) has basically reached breaking point. Her husband promises to change his ways, but that promise seems broken quite soon when Kempton finds himself at the center of a headline-screaming story about the theft of Francisco Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery (so far the only time that august place has had a painting stolen since it opened in 1824).

Richard Bean and Clive Coleman’s sweet-natured and nimble script largely encompasses the true story that followed, including Bunton’s trial and its aftermath. That doesn’t mean it’s historically accurate in all respects, of course: the real story, should you choose to look for it, is readily available in various online articles. But in just 96 minutes we get a vivid portrait of the social divisions and personal conflicts – such as a family tragedy that drives much of Kempton’s thoughts and feelings – that led to a case which ultimately changed British law.

Roger Michel’s direction makes the most of location and the script’s fast pacing, but it’s the performances of the cast that make this more than a celluloid anecdote. Broadbent, Mirren, Fionn Whitehead as Kempton and Dorothy’s son Jackie, Anna Maxwell Martin as Dorothy’s employer and Matthew Goode as Kempton’s defense barrister are all very believable and likeable. They ennoble “The Duke” with their work, and make the film more pleasing than it might otherwise have been.

“The Duke” opens Friday (May 6) in Nashville at Regal Green Hills Stadium 16 and in Franklin at AMC Thoroughbred 20. It’s rated R for language and brief sexuality by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Click here for more info and tickets to showings at those theaters and others elsewhere.

“I’ve always taken ‘The Wizard of Oz’ very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I’ve spent my entire life trying to get over it.” – Judy Garland

Sing Hallelujah, c’mon get happy! Renée Zellweger breathtakingly captures Judy Garland’s beautiful and vulnerable essence in the new film “Judy.”

The tragedies in Garland’s whirlwind life have been well documented. “Judy” certainly reminds us of her lifelong struggles through flashbacks and a look at what sadly became some of her final public appearances before her death in 1969. But Zellweger also conveys what Mickey Rooney said about his sometime co-star and longtime friend many years ago: “Judy Garland was a different type of entertainer. She was a dancer, a singer, and an incurable romantic.”

After a flashback to the not-so-dreamy days of “The Wizard of Oz” when a decidedly creepy Louis B. Mayer (rendered quite calmly and menacingly by Richard Cordery) inappropriately interacts with a teenage Judy (deftly played with a mix of girlish joy and sorrow by Darci Shaw), we see the middle-aged Garland and her two children by ex-husband Sid Luft getting coldly evicted from a Los Angeles hotel; the bills are on the rise and Garland’s earning power is on the wane.

She gets an apparent but heart-searing lifeline: leave her youngest children with Luft (Rufus Sewell, who’s made a career of making unlikable characters very compelling) while jetting to London for a five-week sell-out run at the Talk of the Town nightclub run by legendary London impresario Bernard (later Baron of Stepney) Delfont (the great Michael Gambon making the most of a sadly underwritten role).

The gig seems promising, and the smart, sensible but sensitive Rosalyn Wilder (a solid performance from Jessie Buckley) is assigned by Delfont to insure that Garland doesn’t go too far astray during the run. This professional upswing is coupled with another chance at love courtesy of Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock, a strong presence despite a role that’s written basically as a rogue-on-the-make caricature), who’s destined to become her fifth husband. But the challenges that have hounded her life and show business career (45 of her 47 years, incidentally) are never far from the spotlight (and sometimes in it)…

Perhaps screenwriter Tom Edge (basing his work on the stage play “End of the Rainbow” by Peter Quilter) and director Rupert Goold felt the ’30s flashbacks were essential exposition for the ’60s sequences; not everyone who comes to see “Judy” will know that backstory. But those flashbacks aren’t necessary given the words and actions of Garland and others in the 1968-69 scenes, resulting in a film where the pacing drags when we return to the MGM sound-stages of yesteryear. The film really moves, in pacing and emotion, when we see Zellweger struggling not just to perform but to survive; her poignant interaction with two super-fans (Dan and Stan, unfortunately named in rhyming fashion but sweetly played by Andy Nyman and Daniel Cerqueira) is quite touching.

The musical numbers (no prize for guessing which one comes as the film concludes, but music director and arranger Matt Dunkley deserves a warm smile for his work throughout) are where Zellweger ultimately shines brightest. That’s not surprising when one recalls her Best Actress nomination for playing Roxie Hart in 2002’s “Chicago,” though here she has to pull off playing a still-consummate performer who was far from her vocal best by that time (for an example of that, watch and listen to this video of Garland on “The Mike Douglas Show” in 1968.) For a taste of how Zellweger sounds, the film’s soundtrack is out on Friday as well.

(Zellweger’s transformation into Garland isn’t just about her acting and singing chops, though. Kudos should definitely go to hair and makeup designer Jeremy Woodhead and costume designer Jany Temime for their wonderful assists to her and other actors in this picture.) 

My not-so-bold prediction is that Zellweger will get an Academy Award for Best Actress at the 92nd Academy Awards on Feb. 9 to go with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar she won as Ruby Thewes in 2003’s “Cold Mountain.” I realize much may happen to sway Oscar voters in another direction between now and then, as Garland herself learned when she lost to Grace Kelly (an in-depth look at that here), but biopic star turns (especially for Best Actor) are certainly regular grist for the Academy’s mill.

“My mother was a phoenix who always expected to rise from the ashes of her latest disaster,” her daughter Lorna Luft once said. “She loved being Judy Garland.” Luft won’t be watching it, as she told “Good Morning Britain” in a TV interview, and apparently neither will Liza Minnelli (Goold gave his response to Minnelli’s statements about the movie in a recent interview). That’s certainly understandable – they, along with Joey Luft, love and protect the memory of their mother, which is of course to their credit.

“Judy” is an uneven effort, but we can savor a beautiful homage to Garland from Zellweger. Despite her tragic death at age 47, the ultimate, positive legacy of Garland’s great artistry and humanity inspires us to think the rainbow is never completely out of reach while our hearts have hope.

“Judy” opens in Nashville on Friday (Sept. 27) at Regal Green Hills Stadium 16 and Franklin’s AMC Dine-In Thoroughbred 20. It’s rated PG-13 by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) for substance abuse, thematic content, some strong language, and smoking. Click here for more info and tickets to showings at those theaters and others elsewhere.

At the 2014 Nashville Film Festival I had the pleasure of seeing the Tennessee premiere of “As It Is In Heaven,” the feature-directing debut of Joshua Overbay. In my review I called the picture a “fine example of strong contemporary cinema from truly independent American filmmakers.” Overbay and his colleagues in “Luke and Jo,” his third feature, have a similar success.

This modestly budgeted drama, shot in and around a wintry Asheville, N.C. and making film festival rounds this past year before relases today on Amazon Prime and Vimeo, may stir viewer memories of such films as Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” or Sofia Coppola’s “Lost In Translation“; “Luke and Jo” revolves around the profound connection two strangers can make when circumstance throws them together. But it would be unfairly reductive to say this film merely plays a riff on that well-known tune; the truism that’s it often easier to open up to a stranger than to a friend, lover or family member was mined for story-telling gold long before the advent of movies, and those two previous films (among many others) have no monopoly on that kernel of truth.

The Luke of the title (played with still-waters-run-deep intensity by Erik Odom) is a struggling but apparently still idealistic screenwriter whose wife (Mary Katherine O’Donnell) desperately wants to trade her husband’s dreams for bill-paying realities in their young family. But Luke’s not giving up just yet – he pins his hopes on finding someone to buy his script at a film festival. While there, he runs into Andie Morgenlander‘s Jo (well, she almost quite literally runs into him). Jo is a gifted singer with her own troubles, and their meeting gives us pause to wonder whether their encounter will offer saving grace or seal their mutual self-destruction.

Overbay and the actors had a script (penned by Overbay, whose own experiences as a budding filmmaker included a finalist nod for the 2009 Student Academy Awards, and Morgenlander, who was also costumer and an executive producer for the production) that painted “Luke and Jo” in structured strokes but left room for improvisation with dialogue, movement and gestures. That improvisation, coupled with Lauren Argo‘s satisfyingly straight-forward production design, some go-with-the-flow camera work by cinematographer/producer Nathaniel Glass and camera operator Aaron Holmes as well as drama editing with a documentary touch by Sam Webb, gives this contemporary fiction a bracing dose of realism.

Morgenlander’s Jo is more demonstrative than Odom’s Luke, but she’s as adept an actor at subtle shadings and non-verbal intensity as Odom. The supporting players (including Shannon Walsh as Jo’s sad-eyed aunt and Michael MacCauley as every aspiring screenwriter’s worst Hollywood nightmare) all fit well into their roles, as if Overbay just found the right people on the street and promptly brought them into the scene – no artifice desired or transpired.

Enhancing but thankfully never intruding on this believable snapshot of souls is the beautiful ebb and flow of John Thomas‘ pulsating score. And kudos also go to Robert Gowan, who did some first-rate sound design/editing work.

“Luke and Jo” mirrors life’s messiness and uncertainty as these two broken angels seek to repair their wings. Do they succeed? I won’t answer that and spoil the experience. But Overbay and his ensemble, in front of and behind the cameras, take us on a 90-minute journey through the pain and peace of human connection that’s worth the trip.

In addition to today’s (June 14) releases on Amazon Prime and Vimeo “Luke and Jo” plays today at the Northeast Mountain Film Festival in Dillard, Ga. and on Sunday at the Row House Cinema in Pittsburgh, Pa. For more information on screenings and release info stay updated by liking the film’s Facebook page.