UNCURED HAMNET

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Hamnet...

...opening Thursday.

A safe and happy Thanksgiving to all!

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE BIRD

Check out my quick column, online at Phoenix Magazine, about the "NOIRvember" film series at Phoenix Art Museum...

...featuring one of the all-time greats--and arguably the "original" film noir, John Huston's 1941 The Maltese Falcon, and also, posting here belatedly, the John Hughes favorite Planes, Trains and Automobiles...

TRIUMPH OF THE BILL

Last March, for my birthday, The Wife gifted me a ticket to William Shatner Live at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Phoenix, preceded by a showing of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Thursday night was the big night!

Great to be at the Orpheum, and among my people: Boomer nerds!

My pal Gayle was there...

Among other friends and costumed fans...

There were many great Star Trek t-shirts, but I also saw one guy wearing a black shirt with "DENNY CRANE" in white letters across the chest. That's a serious Shatner fan, I thought.

Walking up the aisle I saw a woman that I know, who has never struck me as the Star Trek type.

"I never knew you were part of this particular dorkdom," I said.

"It's [my husband's] thing," she quickly assured me. "I told him I wanted to walk around saying 'Nanu, Nanu' to everybody."

Great also to see Wrath of Khan again. I hadn't seen it from beginning to end in some years; it holds up most entertainingly. Not only as a ripping adventure yarn but as a rumination on age and youth and mortality and the needs of the many and of the one, it felt far more meaningful to me now than it did when I was in my twenties.

And then there was the star of the evening. As soon as I entered the Orpheum's lobby, I was urged to get into a second line to sign up for a post-show VIP experience of a meet-and-greet, autograph, picture and access to exclusive merch. I resisted, but hundreds of people (including Gayle) lined up.

After the film, two hosts, local radio morning man John Holmberg and the talented comedian and impressionist Frank Caliendo came out, both doing pretty respectable Shatners. Then the man himself, now 94, came bounding onstage. At very little provocation from the emcees, he started talking...

...and talking and talking...

...and talking. His talk ranged from knock knock jokes ("Who's there?" "KHAAAAN!") and stories of using the men's room at the Denny's in Quartzsite to extended riffs about his conversations with Neil deGrasse Tyson and his (Shatner's) belief that the Universe is sentient, to a strange story about DeForest Kelley's dog, to a stranger story about his own dog, in his barnstorming theatre days in Cape Cod. Among much else. He rambled, losing the track of one story and shifting to another, often searching for words which the audience called out to him.

It was wonderful to be there, because there he was, up on stage: Captain Kirk himself. Of course he isn't Captain Kirk, and never was; by most accounts he was always a hyper, frenetic fellow. Now he seems like a crazy old man, but with the energy and exuberance of a man at least forty years younger.

All of which is well and good and enjoyable, as long as he isn't being exploited by this tour. It was almost 11 p.m. when the main show was over, and as I walked back to my car it occurred to me that he still had those hundreds of VIP fans to work through, after which, he said, they were headed on to Anaheim for a Friday show.

The next day I asked Gayle how the experience was, and she texted back "quick. he didn't say a word. he just smiled when i said he was my first crush...they ran us through there like a streamlined machine."

This was the second time in my life I saw Shatner, by the way. For many decades I have been "collecting" meetings with the original series Star Trek cast: I interviewed DeForest Kelley and Walter Koenig and, by phone on my KTAR radio show, Grace Lee Whitney. And I got an autograph from James Doohan. Alas, I missed Leonard Nimoy, Majel Barrett and my first crush, Nichelle Nichols. And I'd still like to catch up with George Takei.

But I saw Shatner first. In 1973 my Mom took me and my Trek-loving cousin Debbie to the Kenley Playhouse in Warren, Ohio, to see Shatner in Arsenic and Old Lace, supported by Sylvia Sidney as one of the lethal Aunts and by Peter Lupus of Mission: Impossible as Johnny Brewster (I later learned that this role was originally cast with Lon Chaney, Jr., but he died just before the production and was replaced by Lupus at the last minute; I've often thought that if I saw both William Shatner and Lon Chaney Jr. on the same day my head might have exploded).

 

Seeing that show was a big, formative highlight of my childhood. My memory is that Shatner was genuinely first-rate as the panicked hero Mortimer Brewster. As with Wrath of Khan's themes of age and youth, to see Shatner scramble around farcically onstage when I was 11, and then to see him do it again now that I'm 63 certainly gave me a circle-of-life feeling.

WHEN MV MET SALLY

RIP to the glorious, goddessy yet sweetly vulnerable Sally Kirkland, departed at the age of 84.

Your Humble Narrator got to meet her once. Back in '93 or '94, one of the first attempts at a Phoenix film festival was held downtown at the Herberger. Co-sponsored by Hotel San Carlos, it was a pretty scrappy, underfunded affair, but it did have a celebrity guest. As the newish young film critic for the Phoenix New Times, I was greeted effusively by the festival folks and proudly introduced to their guest star: Sally Kirkland.

I meet celebrities quite often, so I'm not usually starstruck, but meeting Sally Kirkland left me stammering more than meeting Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise would have. Nonetheless, I was able to express my worshipful devotion to her, and she seemed to take it rather well; she gripped me by the hand and dragged me into the theater with her.

Sally was there in support of Double Threat, an excruciating "erotic thriller" of the Cinemax-at-three-in-the-morning sort.

She starred as an aging actress, a faded bombshell driven to jealousy by her young body double. The movie itself, which also starred Andrew Stevens, Tony Franciosa, Richard Lynch and Chick Vennera, was a laugh-riot; it played like an SCTV noir spoof. But there in the middle of it was Sally, intensely sexy yet baleful, a true movie star presence in a preposterous vehicle, utterly negating her young supposed rival.

Anyway, I sat through Double Threat in the front row, holding hands with the star. After that evening I thought of getting in touch with her to suggest that I ghostwrite what I suspect could have been quite a juicy, page-turning memoir, but I never worked up the nerve. Shame on me; as far as I can tell she never wrote one.

STALK CHARACTERS

Opening this weekend:

Predator: Badlands--Try to hear the line in Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice: "You're one ugly mother[expletive]!"

This rude remark comes near the end of Predator, John McTiernan's sci-fi action flick of 1987, when Arnie finally gets a look at the face of the title character, an alien trophy hunter. Maned with dreadlocks, it's leathery, reptilian and noseless, with an outer quartet of fangs set in a membrane that bells out impressively when the creature roars.

The original saga has spawned numerous sequels and prequels over nearly four decades, as well as a couple of cross-overs with the Alien franchise. The latest, Predator: Badlands, takes the story from the point of view of one of the "Yautja," those selfsame ugly MFs. Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a smaller-than-average Yautja living on their bleak home planet, is protected by his older brother from their contemptuous father, who wants him destroyed as a runt and a weakling.

Fleeing the planet, Dek travels to Genna, an even deadlier and more dog-eat-dog world, determined to show what a badass he is by hunting down a "Kalisk," a huge spiky monster that even his Dad fears. While he's there, he meets Thia (Elle Fanning), a cheerful, chatty robot from an Earth corporation working to exploit the planet's resources (it's the company from the Alien flicks).

Thia, who has emotions and a moral compass, is currently present only from the waist up; she's been ripped in half by a Kalisk. Dek takes her with him for the help, along with a sort of ape-dog creature she calls Bud; gradually they all begin to bond. They eventually tangle with the Kalisk, and also with more robots from Earth, including Thia's less sweet-natured identical colleague Tessa.

The story, which director Dan Trachtenberg concocted with screenwriter Patrick Aison, is about choosing compassion and empathy within a warrior culture--for Dek--and a corporate culture--for Thia--both of which favor power and ruthlessness. Visually, the movie looks like a string of hard rock album covers from the '70s, but for all its violence and blaring music and blood-and-thunder bombast, it has a heart.

Fanning's Thia helps with this. Her guileless nattering lets enough of the Wagnerian air out of the proceedings to keep things light and amusing. Better still is Schuster-Koloamatangi, a New Zealander who somehow manages to connect with the audience through the makeup. A true soulfulness shines out from his wide, stricken eyes; leaving the theater, a friend of mine said he was reminded of Kash Patel.

As the movie proceeds, Dek starts to seem less like an ugly MF; his big fangy head starts to seem...well, sort of handsome. Silly as Predator: Badlands may be, it demonstrates the power of cinema to place beauty in the eyes of us beholders.

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, KIDNAP

Opening this weekend:

Bugonia--Pharmaceutical exec Michelle is abducted from her driveway, after vigorous resistance. The unimpressive kidnappers, Teddy (Jesse Plemons), a beekeeper and conspiracy theorist, and his affectless cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), shave her head and chain her to a bed in the basement. Teddy believes that Michelle (Emma Stone) is an alien infiltrator from Andromeda, and wants her to arrange a meeting with the Andromedan Emperor during an upcoming lunar eclipse to negotiate a withdrawal from their occupation of Earth.

Michelle stays calm and tries to reason with her captors, explaining that she isn't an alien, but that she is a VIP and the search for her will be relentless. Teddy is having none of it; he's anticipated every argument or play on their sympathies that Michelle can make, and he seethes with barely controlled rage. Gradually, we learn why.

Working from a script by Will Tracy, the mad Greek Yorgos Lanthimos directed this American version of a South Korean satire, Jang Joon-Hwan's Save the Green Planet! It's a bitterly funny, and sad, dramatization of how closed bubbles of belief can shut down the chances for productive human exchange. Michelle and Teddy lash out at each other with confident invective that suggests their positions are unassailable, impregnable.

Stone inevitably evokes sympathy; her eyes seem somehow wider and more plaintive under her shaved scalp, and the lotion smeared on her head gives her the spectral look of a Kabuki character. But she and Lanthimos also make sure we see that Michelle is a passive-aggressive bully, and in the midst of a grapple with Teddy she blurts out her Nietzschean view of their relationship.

Plemons is also superb, and he and Stone volley the dialogue at each other with skill and nuance. Delbis is touching as the apparently neurodivergent Don, who is pushed around by Teddy but at bottom seems to be more openminded and instinctively decent than his mentor.

It becomes clear that Lanthimos, following the Korean film's example, plans to finish Bugonia with a grand satirical topper. The route he takes, though admittedly funny, is heavy-handed, and diffuses the bite of what has gone before. Even so, Bugonia has more than enough brilliance and passion to be worth a look.

THE POD COUPLE

When The Wife--a talented, capable writer--tells me about using AI for her work, I feel like Kevin McCarthy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, when he kisses Dana Wynter and she says "I went to sleep, Miles, and it happened...Stop acting like a fool and accept us..."

Check out my non-AI-generated column, online at Phoenix Magazine, about PoeFest's live, non-AI-generated performance of "The Raven" at Rosson House in downtown Phoenix Halloween night...

BOSS MITIGATION

Opening in the multiplexes this weekend:

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere--Exhausted after the 1982 tour for his album The River, Bruce Springsteen rented a house in Colt's Neck, New Jersey, and tried to figure out what to do next. Unsettled by his rapidly increasing stardom, he started strumming an acoustic guitar and writing downbeat songs about downtrodden, desperate working-class Americans. These would make up his 1982 release Nebraska, as well as his 1984 hit machine Born in the USA.

Scott Cooper's biopic, adapted from a 2023 book by Del Fuegos guitarist Warren Zanes, recounts this chapter from the life of "The Boss" (Jeremy Allen White, as an adult). The focus is narrowly on that brief but critical period in his development, but we also see him haunted by his past; his troubled childhood with his drunken, scary but not unloving Dad (Stephen Graham) and his anxious, loving Mom, played here by Gaby Hoffmann. How upsetting is it that Gaby Hoffmann is now old enough to play Mom roles?

Shot in fine, muted tones by Masanobu Takayanagi, it's a watchable, absorbing movie. Although we're shown Springsteen's wary, commitment-phobic relationship with a lovely (fictional) new girlfriend (Odessa Young), Cooper honestly tries to keep the focus on the vagaries of the creative process; how moping around, reading Flannery O'Connor and repeatedly watching Terrence Malick's Badlands can be essential to finding your voice.

But this behavior, however essential, can be a drag for the people around you, and that includes not only friends and family and lovers and co-workers but also the movie audience watching you. White is first-rate; exploding into life in the scenes in which he sings (blasphemy alert: I'm not sure I don't like White's singing better than Springsteen's), suggesting that performance may have been a form of therapy, even self-medication, for Springsteen. He's moving in his depressive mode, too, but there's no getting around it, the movie becomes a long dark night of the soul in these passages, and they make up a lot of screen time.

The best performance in Deliver Me from Nowhere is by Jeremy Strong as Springsteen manager Jon Landau. His hangdog manner is hilarious; every time his boss The Boss gives Landau more bad news, not only about what kind of album Nebraska is going to be but about how he wants it released--without press, a tour, or even Springsteen's picture on the sleeve--you see it register on Strong's sickened face. Then you see him stoically shake it off.

As depicted here, he's skeptical about the business wisdom of Springsteen's decisions, but he walks the walk when it comes to defending artistic integrity; his loyalty never wavers. He's the hero of the movie.

NO KINGS ROW

This morning The Wife and I participated in No Kings II: The Sequel.

A few images:

Our location was 35th Avenue and Bell in Phoenix; hardly a stronghold of rabid liberalism, but the turnout was excellent, running from the northeast corner of 35th to way past the Arby's, and as with the protest we attended in June--though perhaps more so--the response from passing vehicles was overwhelmingly positive. For every passerby who flipped us the bird, or gave us a thumbs-down, or stopped to rev their engine and blast exhaust at us--and there were a few of each--there were ten or twenty supportive horn honks and thumbs-up.

There was, of course, a big white pickup displaying a variety of pro-Trump flags that roared past us several times, would-be menacingly. And another truck pulled up so that the young men inside could shout at us "get a job!" and "you're all ret*rded!" After hearing this, we all realized the error of ways, dropped our signs and went home.

Since I understand that frogs are currently a symbol of the resistance, I drew my Ed Emberly frog--one of the very few things I know how to draw; I'm not as gifted an artist as Our President--on my sign, but there was a much better frog sign:

My favorite sign, however, read "MY 6x GREAT GRANDFATHER WINTERED AT VALLEY FORGE: NO KINGS THEN...NO KINGS NOW." Near this guy sat his Mom, whose sign was identical, except it said "MY 5x GRANDFATHER...".

Keep resisting!

DYSTOPIA, DAT TOPIA, DE UDDER TOPIA

Check out my preview of Southwest Shakespeare Company's 1984...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

BURDEN OF ROOF

Opening this weekend:

Roofman--The story of Jeff Manchester, known as "Roofman," sounds like a tall tale. After serving in the U.S. Army, the California native robbed dozens of McDonalds restaurants, among other businesses, usually by cutting through the roof before opening time, politely and apologetically sticking up the arriving employees at gunpoint, locking them in the freezer, and looting the registers.

He was caught in North Carolina in 2000 and sentenced to 45 years in prison--his gentleman bandit routine cut no ice with the judge--but escaped in 2004. He then hid out inside a Toys "R" Us in Charlotte, subsisting on Peanut M&Ms and baby food, for around half a year.

But even that isn't the most astounding part of the story. During his Toys "R" Us residency Manchester, calling himself "John Zorn," slipped out into the community. He started attending a Presbyterian Church, dating a local single mother with two daughters, and generally acting like he was putting down roots.

The title role in this new film about Manchester's exploits seems tailor made for Channing Tatum. At one point in this film a cop remarks that Manchester is extremely smart, probably genius level, but "also an idiot." Few contemporary stars seem better equipped to get across that combination of resourceful ingenuity with extravagantly imbecilic recklessness, or of sweet, guileless, well-intentioned decency with dangerous obtuseness.

Most of Tatum's costars seem shrewdly cast to come across as sharp and intelligent by contrast to Manchester: Kirsten Dunst as Leigh, the Toys "R" Us employee to whom he takes a shine; Peter Dinklage as Mitch, the store's snide, toxic manager; LaKeith Stanfield as Manchester's shady old army buddy and Lily Collias as Leigh's elder daughter all seem, if they don't always act, dauntingly smart and perceptive. The faithful, led by Ben Mendelsohn as the pastor and Uzo Aduba as his wife, amusingly show us the seductive aggression with which a new face in church, especially a young single man, may be greeted. 

Directed by Derek Cianfrance from a script he wrote with Kirt Gunn, the movie unfolds in an America in which many of us live--fast food restaurants and chain stores and apartment buildings--but which we only occasionally see convincingly depicted. It's skillfully crafted, but it depends for its light tone on us finding Roofman lovable. Because no irrevocable tragedy resulted from Manchester's crimes, but perhaps even more importantly because he's played by Channing Tatum, we can.

BRIM VIEW

Moon Mammoths update: Long on back order, my Moon Mammoths cap...

...a kind gift from one of my sisters, has finally arrived!

The Erie Seawolves/Moon Mammoths had a fine season, finishing 39-30 and winning their division before losing to the Binghamton Rumble Ponies (AA affiliate of the New York Mets) in the Eastern League finals. If they bring back the Moon Mammoths identity next season--as they most certainly should--I have a modest proposal for their marketing team: How about a Fuzz E. Mammoth bobblehead? I would be proud to have Fuzz E. standing watch on my desk!

HANS ACROSS AMERICA

Friday night Your Humble Narrator had excellent seats to one of the more peculiar orchestral concerts I've ever attended: The World of Hans Zimmer.

(apologies in advance for my atrocious performance photographs)

My pal Kate kindly offered me a ticket to the Arizona stop of the show's current U.S. tour, at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale. I had never heard of it, but it clearly has a following; though not quite a sell-out, the place was full and the crowd screamed and cheered like they would have for Barry Manilow or Kenny G, at least.

At a glance, the audience members looked roughly like the folks you might see at a film festival. Zimmer, as you may know, is a prolific, Oscar-winning German composer of film scores, usually for big Hollywood blockbusters. He wasn't present at the concert, except in video segments during which his giant mug bantered with the maestro, Matt Dunkley, or chatted onscreen with the likes of Jerry Bruckheimer or Guy Ritchie. The show is a multi-media event, with lighting effects and video screens showing expressionistic patterns...

...or clips from the movies.

But the stars were the onstage performers; according to Dunkley, 60 musicians from 18 countries, from Ukraine to Brazil to Lithuania to Turkey to Israel to Kenya to Lebanon to Northern Ireland to the United States, playing and singing lengthy suites from Driving Miss Daisy, The Rock, Gladiator, Interstellar, Dune, Pearl Harbor, The Prince of Egypt, Wonder Woman and others. They made up, quite simply, the most glamorous-looking orchestra I've ever seen.

Kate got her tickets from the solo cellist, Timothée Berte-Renou, seen here, or rather not visible here, behind a column of otherworldly light...

Again, the photo does him zero justice, but the French native's long flowing hair and romance-novel costumes gave him quite the dramatic stage presence as his mournful strings essentially stood in for the voice of Billie Eilish in the Bond movie No Time to Die. He was one of the stars of the evening, but far from the only one.

The show's apparent strategy was to let top-notch classical musicians behave onstage like rock stars, dancing, mugging, emoting, interacting, working the crowd, goofing around. The audience ate it up. 

The finale was from The Lion King...

...and the encore was a rousing suite from Pirates of the Caribbean. 

Genius though Zimmer unquestionably is, after hearing such a generous helping of his music all at once, I must admit that a large percentage of his work seems a little on the unvaried side. Some of his scores are distinctive, like Driving Miss Daisy with its delightful if ear-wormy clarinet theme. But when it comes to his action and superhero movies, I'm not sure I could confidently identify, without the intros and clips, which solemn, brooding, bombastic score went with The Rock or Interstellar or a Batman flick. On their own merits, however, each of them is potent.   

On balance, The World of Hans Zimmer was one of the nerdier shows I've ever been to, and that is surely saying something. I had a blast.

ANEMONE FOR NOTHING

Opening here in the Valley today:

Anemone--As a movie star, Daniel Day-Lewis seems like an old gunfighter in a western; wishing he could hang up his six-shooters but repeatedly pulled back into the game for one more job. And any time he does, allegorically speaking, strap on his holsters, it's probably going to be worth a look.

This new movie, his first since Phantom Thread in 2017, is no exception. It's directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis from a script they wrote together. Day-Lewis pere plays Ray Stoker, a former English soldier who has withdrawn to live in a cabin deep in the woods, chopping firewood and eating sardines and silently exuding bitterness. One day his brother Jem (Sean Bean) shows up, delivering a letter. Jem, who now lives with Ray's wife Nessa (Samantha Morton) and son Brian (Samuel Bottomley), wants Ray to return home with him, to connect with Brian, now brawling and otherwise screwing up.

It's immediately clear that Ray is deeply wounded in multiple ways, related both to his and Jem's Catholic upbringing and to his experiences as an occupier during The Troubles. Very, very gradually the details of the harrowing backstory emerge, and they're more or less what you might expect. Even though the movie's agonies are rooted in two of Britain's primal eldest curses, there's nothing particularly revelatory about them. But they allow Day-Lewis a series of opportunities for increasingly intense showcase acting.

Ray's fury and grief boil up almost into a kind of glee at times; at others he recounts his traumas straightforwardly. Either way, he's riveting. Adding this to his gallery of roles, from the homicidal ire of his Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood to his subtly comic passive aggression as Abraham Lincoln, it's hard not to conclude that Day-Lewis is simply one of the best, most charismatic and most versatile actors in the history of movies.

It should be said that while Sean Bean's role consists mostly of glowering at Day-Lewis while watching him act, he too holds his own with a veteran star's presence. Samantha Morton and the rest of the small cast are entirely convincing as well.

The movie isn't just an acting vehicle, however; despite the bleak story, it's visually sumptuous, almost hallucinatory at times. The verdant forest, seen from above, has a fairy-tale atmosphere, and the thrashing limbs of the trees seem almost to externalize Ray's seething soul. As a director, Day-Lewis fils seems like a potentially talented new gunfighter.

PTA MEETING

Opening this weekend:

One Battle After Another--The erotic power of revolutionary violence is the initial theme of Paul Thomas Anderson's latest. Set in a strife-torn, more or less contemporary U.S., it follows the exploits of "The French 75," an SLA-like cadre who liberate immigrant detainees and blow up communication towers and banks and the like.

A French 75 operative known as Perfidia Beverly Hills (the goddessy, imperious Teyana Taylor), finds political mayhem an aphrodisiac; she's desperately turned on whenever her sheepish explosives expert squeeze "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) is about to blow something sky high. Her seditious salaciousness isn't limited to Calhoun, however, but also to her enemy, the reactionary Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn)--there's a loathing sexual tension between them the second they meet, at gunpoint.

Anderson's strange saga, very loosely derived from Thomas Pynchon's Vineland (much like There Will Be Blood was vaguely inspired by Upton Sinclair's Oil!) soon fast-forwards seventeen years. The theme then shifts from uncontrolled libido to domestic complacency. Perfidia is long out of the picture, and Calhoun, now known as "Bob Ferguson," is living incognito and raising the teenaged Willa (Chase Infiniti) in an A-frame in Colorado.

Bob learns that he, and Willa, are again targets of the forces of Lockjaw, who's trying to gain membership in an order of wealthy old white guy racists, the "Christmas Adventurers." The French 75 start getting the band back together to protect Willa, but after years of sitting on the couch smoking weed, Bob finds his revolutionary chops are rusty. Besides, he's forgotten all the passwords.

A wild and blood-soaked cat-and-mouse game ensues across the west. Bob and Willa's allies range from radical nuns to a native tracker to Sergio, a relaxed but capable martial arts sensei and immigrant underground railroad conductor played by a scene-stealing Benicio del Toro. The action is often laugh out loud funny, and though the comedy is grim and splenetic, these characters are weirdly endearing.

Partly this is because DiCaprio, Penn, del Toro and others are about as good here as they've ever been. But it's also because Anderson puts them through standard action movie paces--gunfights, rooftop scrambles, interrogations, and one of the more original, woozily effective car chases in some time--but they execute them like real human beings, fumbling in uncertainty. "Tom Cruuuuuise!" Sergio crows at one point, trying to encourage Bob to some derring-do, and it's a funny yet rueful reminder of the contrast between what we're capable of and what the movies have taught us we should be capable of.

If there are real-life revolutionary groups in the style of The French 75 of any significance currently active in this country, I haven't heard about them. But One Battle After Another still has the ring of emotional truth. It all may seem crazy, but it sure doesn't seem nearly as outrageous and improbable as it would have, say, ten or twelve years ago.  Like Ari Aster's recent Eddington, this is a flailing, angry satirical portrait of where we are emotionally right now. But unlike Eddington, it gives us characters we can root for rather than just pity.

Eleanor the Great--Like last year's Between the Temples, this one is about an elderly woman connecting with a younger person, and preparing for a very belated Bat Mitzvah. June Squibb the Great plays the title character, a sassy 90-something widow who moves in with her daughter (Jessica Hecht) in New York after many years in Florida when her beloved longtime roommate Bessie (Rita Zohar) passes on. 

Eleanor accidentally wanders into a Survivors Support Group at the Jewish Community Center, and finds herself telling everyone about her experience during the Holocaust. Nina (Erin Kellyman), a young journalism student who's there observing, understandably latches onto it as a great story, and she and Eleanor quickly bond as friends. The trouble is that the story isn't really Eleanor's; it's Bessie's. Eleanor is from Iowa; she converted to Judaism when she married.

It's clear that Eleanor's impulsive act isn't just angling for attention; she's trying to keep Bessie's story, which she never told anyone else, from fading away. Nina is deeply bereaved over the recent death of her mother, and her father (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a famous TV journalist, has been distant from her since the loss. But he takes an interest in the story, and pretty soon poor Eleanor is in over her head.

This peculiar but painfully plausible comedy-drama marks the directorial debut of Scarlett Johansson. Her work is crisp and proficient, but the script, by Tory Kamen, is unsteady; the attempt to pull everything together toward the end doesn't quite come off. None of this, however, is an impediment to the indomitable Squibb, whose fearless, direct performance transcends any shortcomings in the material, as she did in last year's similarly uneven Thelma. And despite the unsavory tension behind the situation, her scenes with the excellent young Kellyman have a sweet hum.

The intriguing film programs at Scottsdale's Western Spirit Museum probably don't get as much notice as they should. The movies are free with museum admission; $10 for just the movie.

The current series is Robert Rodriguez: Sinema Sin Fronteras. The next selection by the Texas auteur, the charming Harryhausen-esque fantasy Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, shows at 2 p.m. this Sunday, September 28. It's followed by Once Upon a Time in Mexico at 6 p.m. Wednesday, October 1; Spy Kids 3: Game Over at 2 p.m. Sunday, October 5; the vampire yarn From Dusk till Dawn at 6 p.m. Wednesday, October 8, and the bloody actioner Machete, starring Danny Trejo, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, October 22.  

The Spy Kids flicks are great for children; the evening Rodriguez movies are decidedly for grown-ups. Go to westernspirit.org for details.