The Media Tourist

Zac Effron puts on the true-story tights of a wrestling family dynasty

The Iron Claw
Starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allan White & Lily James
Directed by Sean Durkin
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Dec. 22

There can be a lot going on inside a wrestling ring—villains and heels, good guys, tough girls, cartoonish personas, flamboyant feuds, deep grudges, bucketfuls of trash talk. But there’s a lot going on outside the ropes, too, in this muscular movie saga about one of wrestling’s most successful real-life family dynasties.

The Von Erichs, a Texas-based clan of brothers and their father, dominated the sport in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. But their triumphs on the mat were swamped by waves of tragedy at home. Many wrestling fans spoke of “the Von Erich curse,” a grim reaper that seemed to relentlessly stalk the family.  

The Iron Claw opens with the eye-opening sight of Zac Efron, bulked up to balloon-ish proportions to portray Kevin Von Erich, the first sibling to follow the pro-wrestling footsteps of his father, whose signature wrestling “move” was a one-handed clampdown on an opponent’s face he dubbed The Iron Claw. If you ever wondered what the former star of High School Musical would look like with an ornately sculpted, Herculean body like He-Man or the Hulk, and a bowl-ish ‘70s haircut to match, well, wonder no more.

Kevin’s brothers Kerry (Jeremy Allan White, above, from TV’s The Bear), David (Harris Dickenson, now starring in the FX series A Murder at the End of The World) and Mike (Stanley Simmons) also become wrestlers, working to develop their father’s Iron Claw “finishing touch,” the unbreakable grip that almost always led to a quick end to a match.

We learn that the family’s firstborn, Jack Jr., died by drowning at the age of 6; he’s absent throughout most of the movie, but we meet him briefly in an ethereal “afterlife” scene. (The movie does not portray or mention at all another brother, Chris, who took his own life with a handgun in 1991.) But by 1993, five of the six brothers were dead, succumbing to suicide, drug overdose or disease. It’s a Greek tragedy written in spandex, served with a Texas twang.  

Holt McCallany, who played FBI agent Bill Tench on TV’s Mindhunter, is terrifyingly good as the Von Erich patriarch, Fritz, who also rules with an Iron Claw at home. The Affair’s Maura Tierney is his stoic, God-fearing wife, Doris, saying goodbye to her sons one by one. Lily James loses all traces of her proper British accent as Pam, the Texas belle who becomes Kevin’s wife, trying to calm his worries that he will pass on the dreaded family “curse” to their children.

It’s a walloping tale cloaked in woe, but the performances are gripping, and the wrestling sequences have the meaty slap, slam and thud of authenticity. You may not know a piledriver from a German suplex or a gutbuster drop, but, man, they all look convincingly uncomfortable here. The movie also depicts the heightened, hyped-up showmanship of the sport, with combatants huddling before matches to go over their “choreographed” moves; one cautions his opponents, “Don’t f*ck too much with my hair.” Afterward, they all go out for drinks and split up the night’s proceeds.

Songs by Tom Petty, Rush, Eddy Money, John Denver and Blue Öyster Cult add to the movie’s spot-on look and feel as the decades unfurl.  

Was there a Von Erich curse? Or was everything that befell the family just an unfortunate cascade of accidents, combined with risky behaviors, macho toxicity, the high-impact lifestyle of wrestling, and the psychological pounding the Von Erich boys took from their tough-as-nails father? This brawny-lad, testosterone-fueled tale won’t bring you much festive holiday cheer, but it packs a powerful punch with its often touching, true-life saga of sibling wrestlers held together in another kind of unbreakable grip—brotherhood.

—Neil Pond

Timothèe Chalamet turns on the charm in the backstory of Willy Wonka

Wonka
Starring Timothèe Chalamet, Calah Lane & Hugh Grant
Directed by Paul King
PG

In theaters Friday, Dec. 15

Do you have a sweet tooth?

That’s the musical question asked early in this new candy-coated spinoff prequel from author Roald Dahl’s 1960s novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Timothèe Chalamet stars as the younger version of Willy Wonka as he begins his journey to become a famous—and famously eccentric—chocolatier, as played in later movies by Gene Wilder (1971) and Johnny Depp (2005).

Maybe you saw Chalamet as a lanky, sensitive young man yielding to a homoerotic crush in Call Me by Your Name. Or as a lean young cannibal in Bones and All. Or a lovestruck young 19^th century swain in Little Women. Or the universe-hopping heir of a cosmic dynasty in Dune. Or a swooning prep school paramour in Lady Bird. Or, on TV, as the sexy new cologne ambassador in TV spots for Chanel’s latest fragrance.

But did you know he can sing—you likely did, if you saw him hosting Saturday Night Live a few  weeks ago—and he can dance? The twice Oscar-nominated actor has a smooth, charming singing voice and some stylish prancing flourishes for the tunes he croons in the new movie, including a remake of “Pure Imagination” from the original film. Wonka proves his versatility and willingness to stretch, though he may not be Fred Astaire or Bing Cosby—yet!

He’s perfectly pitched, though, in this whimsically imaginative tale as young chocolate innovator (and magician) who arrives in London with his bag of tricks and a headful of dreams. But not so fast. First Willy has to outwit, outfox and out-chocolate the city’s comedically diabolical “chocolate cartel,” a trio of treat-making moguls who keep a crackdown on competition of any kind.    

Young Wonka may be irrepressibly optimistic, all but destitute and as nutty as a fruitcake, but man, he sure can make some amazingly delicious candy! (Ingredients for his “incredible edible” confections include giraffe milk, tears of a Russian clown and beams of sunshine, and in one particularly significant instance, little insects appropriately called hoverflies.) British director Paul King brings some of the same witty, smile-inducing snap to this tasty tale that he demonstrated in Paddington as well as its sequel, and a fine supporting cast rounds out the story with campy silliness as well as sweetness and heart.

There’s Oscar-winning Olivia Colman as the starchy proprietress of a Dickensian fleabag hotel and sweatshop laundry. And is that the British funnyman known for playing Mr. Bean, Rowland Atkisson, as a priest whose holiness has room for lots of chocolate? Yes, it is! Keegan-Michael Key is an easily corrupted chocoholic cop. Oscar-nominated Sally Hawkins plays Willy’s mum, who teaches him to make chocolate with a very special secret ingredient. You might recognize Jim Carter from his role as the butler on Downtown Abbey. And newcomer Callie Lane is Noodles, a little homeless urchin who becomes Willy’s colleague and collaborator.

But it’s Hugh Grant who nearly steals the show as the little orange-hued man, known as Oompa-Loompa, who intersects with Willy on his own quest for candy. And he provides the backstory of his “people,” who would become the Minions of the Wonka-verse.

So, have you got a sweet tooth? This holiday-movie season, forget your dentist. Instead, indulge yourself with a trip to the wildly creative, deliciously unconventional world of Wonka for fun, laughs and frolic, and the sugary spice of infectiously clever songs, all wrapped around a soft, sentimental center—and covered in rich, magical chocolate, of course!

—Neil Pond

Emma Stone puts a stridently fem-centric Franken-spin on a fabulously freaky tale

Poor Things
Starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo & Willem Dafoe
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Dec. 8

A young woman breaks free of stuffy Victorian society in this elegantly weird, delightfully far-out skewering of class, culture and carnality.

But Bella isn’t just any young woman—she’s the experimental creation of a mad-scientist surgeon that she calls “God.” Because to her, he is. Dr. Godwin Baxter gave new life to an anonymous woman he’d found after she’d committed suicide by jumping off a bridge to her death. He reanimated her lifeless body with electricity and the transplanted brain of a prenatal infant taken from her own womb. And he named her Bella, Latin for beautiful.  

Emma Stone is mesmerizing as Bella, a beautifully almost-grown adult when we meet her, just now to the point—with her developing brain—of learning how to eat, walk and talk. Willem Dafoe plays Baxter, his face a horrendous roadmap of scarry, maimed disfigurement from surgical experiments. Ramy Youssef (from the Hulu comedy series Ramy) is the earnest young med student hired to record Bella’s progress who finds himself falling in love with his endearingly odd subject. When a caddish Lothario (Mark Ruffalo) steals Bella away for his own lascivious enjoyment, it marks the beginning of her wide-ranging odyssey of self-discovery, of always wanting more and wanting better, and finding out who she is, what she wants and what makes her happy.

And that includes sex, and a lot of it. Sexual liberation, Bella learns, is just one of the freedoms of womanhood, and being whole as a woman. Be prepared: You’ll get an eyeful of body parts you might not be accustomed to seeing in movies with major, well-known actors.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for his highly stylized, deliriously bonkers provocations in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Favourite (which also starred Stone) and The Lobster. In this brilliant, black-comedy sci-fi parable—based on a 1992 satirical novel by Scottish author Alastar Grey—he creates a richly detailed wonderland for Bella to experience and explore and bring her ever-expanding mind up to speed with her body. She learns how to dance (in one of the movie’s most exhilarating scenes), develops empathy for the poor, absorbs philosophy, works in a Paris brothel (with a madam played by Kathryn Hunter, who portrayed all three witches in The Tragedy of Macbeth), and ultimately discovers her own mysterious past.

Frequently caustically funny, it’s hyper-visual and packed with marvelous detail. There are strange characters (including a man who walks like a crab, another with a claw for an arm), fabulous clothes, fantastical sights and expansive, period-piece sets, as if the movie has tapped into a brainstorm of gonzo ideas from Monty Python, Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. Seeing some of Dr. Baxter’s other “experiments,” like a chicken with the transplanted head of a dog, and watching some moments through a fish-eye lens, we know we’re in a skewed, wackadoo, off-kilter world, accentuated by an appropriately off-key, atonal soundtrack signaling that something’s…not quite right. But hey, look at that! And that!

And you can’t help looking at Bella, as her innocence, candor, guileless self-expression and effusive embrace of femininity becomes threatening to men—the real “poor things,” pitiable, sometimes pathetically needy creatures. One of them even plans to surgically remove part of her female anatomy, which he thinks has made her hyper-sexed and uncontrollable.

This fem-centic Frankenstein-y tale is a daring parable about the rights of women in a world where men try to make them, mold them, possess them, use them, lock them up and contain them. In having none of that, Bella, who ultimately learns that kindness is key to countering life’s beastly cruelties, becomes a vibrantly potent avatar for female liberation and empowerment, in all its forms.

And Emma Stone, miles away from one La La Land, finds herself dancing up a lusty storm in another.

—Neil Pond