The Media Tourist

Angelina Jolie is magnificent as the late, great grand dame of opera in her faltering later years

Maria
Starring Angelina Jolie
Directed by Pablo LarraÍn
Rated PG-13

In theaters Wednesday, Nov. 27 (and on Netflix Dec. 8)

Angelina Jolie gives a committed, center-stage, Oscar-bait performance as temperamental diva Maria Callas, a 20^th century singing superstar who thrilled audiences all over the world. But by the 1970s, Callas’ voice and body were fading and faltering, and the distant applause of the opera houses—and the adulation in which she once basked—were becoming lost in a swirl of hallucinatory memories.

Jolie, whose multi-faceted career includes playing a rock-em, sock-em spy (Salt), a slam-bang videogame heroine (Lara Croft) and a regal Disney villainess (Maleficent), adds another bright plume to her cap as the once-heralded soprano, basking in glorious fantasy in the final weeks of her life in the 1970s. In the kind of sympathetic, deep-dish performance that tends to get awards attention, Jolie—as gorgeous as ever—reportedly prepared for the role for more than six months, learning the physicality and bold body mechanics of singing opera to realistically lip-sync to Callas’ actual vocals throughout the film. She gets a big bravo from me.

Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog, Let Me In) has a recurring role as a filmmaker—a figment of her imagination—interviewing Callas for a documentary about her. (Tellingly, the filmmaker’s name, Mandrax, comes from the sedative Callas has squirrelled away through her ornate Paris apartment.) The dreamscape documentary becomes central to the film, as it allows for numerous flashbacks illuminating Callas’ tumultuous life, including the traumas of her childhood (her mom, who told her she was “fat and unlovable,” and pimped her and her sister out to Nazis), her highly publicized affair with gazillionaire Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis (Turkish actor Haluk Bilginer), and her encounters in the 1960s with a handsome young JFK (Caspar Phillipson). And how Callas found herself in the middle of a scandal when Onassis began having extramarital affairs with both Callas and JFK’s wife, Jackie; yes, he was a lecherous filthy-rich asshole who loved ancient art, his luxury yacht and leggy brunettes.

Callas’ housekeeper (Alba Rohrwacher) and manservant (Pierfrancesco Favino) are big parts of the story, trying to keep their boss grounded, anchored and safe as she drifts off, in more ways than one. “What’s real and unreal,” Callas says at one point, “is my business.”

Director Pablo LarraÍn utilizes a variety of techniques—mimicking cinéma verité, old newsreels and flights of sprawling psychological fantasy—to bring the story to immersive, vibrant life. Maria nowcompletes the Chilean director’s masterful trilogy of biopics about famous females, including Jackie (with Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy) and Spencer (Kristin Stewart played Princess Diana).  

It’s all a mad, magnificent swirl, with Jolie in the middle as the tragic diva whose escape—from harsh reality and the woes of her world—was her voice, her music…and then, her inner space. In a subtle grace-note touch, the film depicts Callas’ expired body, on the floor of her apartment filled with sculpted relics and fine art…where the whelps, whimpering and howls of her two little poodles become a sort of eulogy for the sublime high notes of her now-silent voice.

Fitting, that even dogs would want to continue her song, for a woman who once filled the cavernous spaces of the world with music. And Maria picks up her songful story again, hopefully for a new generation to discover one of the greatest, most acclaimed and sublimely troubled vocalists to ever grace an opera stage.

—Neil Pond

Biopic about German minister who openly opposed Hitler reverberates anew today

Bonhoeffer
Starring Jonas Dassler, August Diehl and Flula Borg
Directed by Todd Komarnicki
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, Nov. 22

It’s impossible to miss the parallels to today’s fractured politics in the new biopic about the German theologian who stridently opposed the Nazi takeover of his country. The film’s warnings about fascism, dictatorship, authoritarianism, Christian nationalism and antisemitism are at the heart of the story, then, as now.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor and author whose “radical” interpretations of Christianity became theological building blocks for generations to come. But his outspokenness about Hitler—and his association with a failed attempt on Dur Fuhrer’s life—sealed his fate.

There have been almost 10 movies already about Bonhoeffer, and this one mostly soft-pedals through its story about the firebrand man of the cloth who infiltrated the Nazis as a spy, became implicated in an assassination attempt, and spent the last days of his life as a prisoner of war. Bonhoeffer believed that his faith obligated him to take decisive action against Hitler and his genocidal movement against Jews, in the same way that he’d feel obligated to stop a madman driver intentionally trying to kill other motorists on the road. There’s a lot of “action” around the movie’s edges, but onscreen it’s largely a lot of talking—about what’s happening, what happened, what might happen, and what should happen as Germany slides into the dark abyss of the Third Reich. I wish the filmmakers had taken a cue from Elvis for “A Little Less Conversation” (and “a little more action, please.”)

It’s a modest production with no recognizable names attached, at least for American audiences.  Jonas Dassler, who plays Bonhoeffer as an adult, is a young German actor likely a bit better known in Deutschland, and maybe—maybe—you’ll recognize another German actor, August Diehl, from his role in Inglourious Basterds, as the Gestapo officer who horns himself into a tavern guessing game. Germany’s Fuela Borg was Javelin in The Suicide Squad, had a small role in one of the Pitch Perfect movies and appeared in an episode of TV’s Ghosts. Irish actor Muiris Crowley, who plays a sneering Nazi, popped up (as the “Third Saxon noble”) in a couple of episodes of Vikings.

The film shows Bonhoffer as a young lad frolicking in lederhosen, spending time in seminary, getting exposure to Black church services, jazz music and stinging American racism, and finally enduring his incarceration (where he serves communion to his fellow inmates—12 of them—in a scene obviously modeled on The Last Supper.) Winston Churchill (Tim Hudson) and Louis Armstrong (John Akunmu) get cameos. But I kept thinking the movie’s roving eye, hop-skipping across time and place and people, should settle down and sharpen its focus.

But it’s certainly a movie for thinkers, as well as doers, and it offers a lot to think about.

You might recall that a certain 2024 presidential candidate—now the president-elect—made no secret of his admiration for dictators and Hitler’s military prowess, and was supported by white nationalist extremists waving Nazi swastikas. Well, you don’t have to squint to see the movie’s connective tissue between past and present. (Not to mention the film’s pointed reference to Hitler replacing Holy Bibles in German churches with his own version, along with a copy of Mein Kompf—shades of the so-called Trump Bible, which contained copies of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights…and a snippet of Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the U.S.A.”) The movie’s an echo from the past with a resounding relevance today, about a man with bedrock beliefs remembered for taking on Nazi Germany, for confronting the menace and calling out its evil—and warning about the dangers of dragging the church into a political fray, kowtowing to government and getting trampled by jackboots. His life, and his words, ring true anew.

—Neil Pond

This screeching Christmas turkey is a bombastic holiday-flick misfire

Red One
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans & J.K. Simmons
Directed by Jake Kasden
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, Nov. 15

Ah, the heartwarming glow of classic Christmas movies! Jimmy Stewart hugging his family and thankful for his friends as Clarence the angel gets his wings… Buddy the Elf convincing New Yorkers to believe as Santa’s sleigh zooms over Central Park… The awesomeness of Miracle on 34^th Street.

And then there’s this, the muck-fest that is Red One, a bombastic holiday-flick misfire that looks like the big-screen equivalent of an especially hideous ugly Christmas sweater, garishly pieced together with a barrage of CGI, forced “buddy comedy” banter and a bizarro collection of frightening sights. It’s a big ho-ho-ho no thanks, a grossly overstuffed Christmas stocking of charmless Yule-adjacent mayhem with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson fighting a giant hag, slamming around hulking snowmen brutes, and getting into a slapping contest with a sneering, goat-faced Nordic Krampus. Oh yeah, and there’s also Santa, ripped from pumping iron, counting carbs, hydrating and running the North Pole like a five-star-general and superstar CEO in charge of a global toy-centric military-industrial complex.  

When Santa, code-named Red One, gets kidnapped, his chief of security, Callum Drift (Johnson) swings into action to find him before a beautiful witch (Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka) can sap his St. Nick life force, using it to imprison and punish everyone who’s ever been on the fabled “naughty list.” Somehow J.K. Simmons got hauled in to play Santa; I kept wishing he’d bark “Not my tempo!” to some hapless kid tapping on his Christmas drum kit. Chris Evans (Captain America in the Marvel-verse) is a mercenary hacker whose shady connections are to blame for the abduction—and who, of course, becomes essential to the Santa search, after, that is, he’s done swiping lollipops from kids, leering at bikini babes on a beach and lusting for a Wonder Woman toy that can be zapped life-size by Drift’s do-dad wrist thingy.

How awful is it all? There are toothless ogres, snarling hellhounds, unsightly elves, heaving steampunk machines, a haunted piano and a dismal Gothic castle where rowdy revelers look like grotesque, rubber-masked drunken rejects from the Star Wars cantina. A snowman’s face gets melted when it’s smushed onto a sizzling grill, like something you might expect to see in a movie like Goodfellas. There’s a smattering of swearing, including an f-bomb that gets diffused at the last millisecond. The whole movie takes place in a kind of alt universe where storybook creatures really exist, which is why the Headless Horseman is rounded up as one of the “usual suspects” after Santa goes missing. If you want to give your little one a nightmare for Christmas, here you go.

Bonnie Hunt seems like she’s in another movie entirely as Mrs. Claus. Lucy Liu practically phones it in in for her scenes as the head of mythological creatures. (So, hey, where’s Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman when you really need ‘em?) Actor/comedian Nick Kroll is a crime-syndicate middleman who gets possessed, Exorcist-style.  Ah, that cozy Christmas charm.

Red One is an Amazon production, originally intended as first of a franchise (oh, dear). Amazon, you know, where you order stuff—like Hot Wheels toy cars, a Monopoly board game and Mattel’s Rock Em Sock Em Robots, which all feature prominently in the plot. Director Jake Kasden’s previous movies include Sex Tape, Bad Teacher and a pair of Jumanji remakes. Screenwriter and producer Chris Morgan was behind the Fast & Furious franchise, Bird Box and Shazam! Fury of the Gods. It’s like they siphoned off glops of those flicks to pour into this one, slopped in a dash of expired eggnog, ran up the production price tag to a gollywhopping $250 million, and then bid all a good night.

The sentimentality is forced, the action muddled and the whole affair grim, void of mirth, bereft of comfort and joy, and with only the slightest smudgy smidge of anything you might even loosely call the spirit of Christmas.  “Haven’t you had enough?” asks one character in the middle of yet another CGI smackdown. After two hours of watching this screeching Christmas turkey flop and flounder around on an IMAX screen, I certainly had.

—Neil Pond

Hooligan kids show a small town the real meaning of Christmas in this holiday yarn with a Sunday School spin

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
Starring Judy Greer and Pete Holmes
Directed by Dallas Jenkins
Rated PG

In theaters Friday, Nov. 9

Based on a Christmas yarn first published in McCall’s magazine in the ‘70s—and later made into a novel—this holiday tale is about a group of unruly, wrong-side-of-the-tracks kids who infiltrate their small town’s nativity play, ultimately showing everyone the real reason for the season.

The ever-versatile Judy Greer is the mom who steps into the fray to direct the wobbly production; standup comedian and actor Pete Holmes plays her helpful husband. The disruptive kids are six scrappy little-rascal siblings regarded as the local bullies, troublemakers and fire-starters. They may not know all the details of Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, but they dive into the play anyway, motivated by finding out the church provides snacks.

The result: A unique spin on a familiar old story.

Director Dallas Jenkins—whose crowd-funded life-of-Jesus series, The Chosen, is in its fourth season—puts a Sunday School spin on the shenanigans, blending kid-zone humor with a more serious theme about how Christmas is for everyone, including bullies and troublemakers, and how Jesus was all about the poor, the outcast and the marginalized. The movie tells us the town’s longstanding Christmas pageant, now celebrating its 75^th year, had become overly familiar and cookie-cutter predictable, in need of a shakeup and a makeover—suggesting that even faithful churchgoers can sometimes get stuck in a rut and would benefit from a good goosing.

In a couple of scenes we see where the wayward siblings live, in a scrappy house that’s basically a shack, pretty much raising themselves. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder of the humble circumstances described the familiar story of the birth of the Christ child—away in a manger, no crib for a bed, indeed.

The film’s marketing campaign is clearly targeting traditional Christian believers…and any adolescents who might think hearing someone say “butt” or “pussy willow” is tee-hee hilarious. It’s an earnest, sermonizing B-movie that so wants to be another Christmas “classic,” specifically A Christmas Story—from which it borrows some of its retro mojo, including its narration by the now-grown-up version of one of the kids (in this case, former Gilmore Girl Lauren Graham). And maybe it’s just coincidence, but one of the li’l disruptors (Matthew Lamb) looks a lot like bespectacled, fair-haired Ralphie from A Christmas Story.

So, it’s a Christmas story that wants to be A Christmas Story. But it’s more straightforward about the meaning of Christmas—to Christians, anyway—and not Bumpis hounds, leg lamps, turkey leftovers or the risks of shooting an eye out with a BB gun. And it does prod viewers to re-think the origin story central to the Christian faith by seeing it unfold from a new perspective—with a shrieking angel, wise men lugging a cooked ham and a cigar-smoking teenage Mary back-slapping her babydoll, in case infant Jesu is a bit gassy.  

Joy (burp!) to the world, y’all!

—Neil Pond