Author: jose

In 1970, “Midnight Cowboy,” starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Two years after the beloved classic family musical “The Sound of Music” won, how does an X-rated film about a man who aspires to be a male prostitute with rich women, but ends up developing a tender relationship with another downtrodden man, suddenly become an Oscar darling? The documentary “Desperate Souls, Lost City and the Legend of the Midnight Cowboy” attempts to investigate the film’s origins and explain how and why this movie resonated with the world the way it did.

Wrapped loosely in the packaging of a documentary, “Desperate Souls, Lost City and the Legend of the Midnight Cowboy,” is written and directed by Nancy Buirski. It features Jon Voight, Bob Balaban, Brian de Palma, Charles Kaiser, Lucy Sante, Brenda Vaccaro, the voice of John Schlesinger, and many others who either were in “Midnightt Cowboy,” involved in its production, or were admirers of the film.

When the documentary opens with a closeup of Jon Voight, recalling an existential crisis by director John Schlesinger after the completion of “Midnight Cowboy,” the film almost implicitly states that it will be about the creation of that film. Yet, “Desperate Souls” only lightly touches on the creation of “Cowboy.” Instead, this film spends most of its time investigating the era during which it was made. “Midnight Cowboy” lived at the nexus of a war, the civil rights movement, and the early beginnings of the gay rights movement.

The first examination in the film is how the Vietnam War framed it. The war is cited as the major factor in turning the world from the happy-go-lucky land of movie musicals to gritty reality-based films like “Midnight Cowboy” that did not flinch from portraying the city of New York in its reality. Schlesinger began in Europe and was exposed to the work of other creatives like John Richardson, who used a certain reality in making their films, a style Schlesinger adopted.

When the film abruptly shifts gears to speaking about John’s homosexuality and the impact of the world upon him, we begin to understand the motivations that he and writer Walter Salt had in creating the relationship between the movie’s stars. Schlesinger, a closeted homosexual who flirted with communism and was nearly banned by Hollywood, was buoyed by the confidence he received with “Midnight Cowboy” would later release “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” a story that depicts what was called one of the most open and honest on-screen portrayals of homosexuality.

The documentary then shifts to a discussion of the civil rights movement, starting with the death of JFK. In one scene, Charles Kaiser notes that the gay pride movement “co-opted” the ideals and used them “unfortunately, better than the civil rights movement” in furthering their agenda.

If this review seems a little scattered and clumsy, it is because it is an intentional recreation of the tone and direction of “Desperate Souls.” The movie’s direction is not unfocused but is very non-linear in its presentation, allowing it to meander from subject to subject with loose connections. One of the interviewees, Lucy Sante, even audibly wonders how he got on a certain train of thought as he is relating a story.

The film takes only a moment to discuss the success of its source material. In fact, it is only at the end of the movie that “Desperate Souls” reveals that “Midnight Cowboy” won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Instead, the documentary spends too much time looking at the world around Schlesinger’s drama. Certainly, Schlesinger, Salt, and James Leo Herlihy (the author of the sourcebook) are the desperate souls, and New York is the lost city, and both are thoroughly investigated here. However, when you use the words “The Legend of Midnight Cowboy” in a film’s title, it only seems logical that more time should be spent on the movie itself.

Now playing in select theaters. 

The last few years have been a kind of golden age for movies and TV about middle school. High school has always gotten more attention from filmmakers, possibly because most would prefer to forget the awkward transition from childhood to adolescence. However, those awkward if not painful moments that define middle school can make for great drama and rich comedy (“Eighth Grade” and the Hulu series “Pen15” come to mind as great examples that do both). 

“World’s Best” is more of a family film than the aforementioned film and series but it is no less insightful about the ‘tween years. Set in contemporary New Jersey, it tells the story of Prem Patel (played by a charming Manny Magnus), a driven math whiz who is gearing up for the mathlympics competition. His single mom Priya (Punam Patel) is doting and supportive, but she also feels like a complete human being, not just the “mom”. 

This is expressed nicely when she takes Prem into her own memories of how she met his late father Suresh (played by Utkarsh Ambudkar who also co-wrote the screenplay), who Prem is shocked to learn was a local legend in the underground hip hop scene. This is where “World’s Best” reveals itself to be a hip-hop musical. Suresh begins visiting his son and begins passing on his evangelical passion for hip-hop. 

Much to Priya’s dismay, Prem enters himself in the talent show and his interest in performing threatens to usurp his passion for math. At this point, “World’s Best” also seems to borrow ever so slightly from the superhero film, particularly the origin story. Prem’s daddy issues are reminiscent of most of the MCU’s characters, particularly his struggle to reconcile what his parents want for him versus what he wants for himself. Along the way there are the usual bits of middle school drama, specifically the betrayal of friends who drift away from each other and into opposing cliques. 

“World’s Best” succeeds thanks to the brisk pacing at 100 minutes and Roshan Sethi’s deft handling of the ups and downs of ‘tweenhood. The emotions are earned, and the playful tone accommodates the more serious reveals and complications nicely. Ambudkar and Magnus’ chemistry go a long way toward making the film work. You believe them as father and son and their joy at making music together is infectious. 

Now on Disney+.

The R-rated studio comedy hardly makes any theatrical appearances these days, especially in the age of streaming. The only adult comedies usually come from Universal Pictures, which relish in genre-bending (“Cocaine Bear,” “Renfield“), mixing up concepts for kids but with a mature twist (the upcoming “Strays”), or banking on a comedian closely associated with Judd Apatow (“Bros“). But a solo comedic vehicle for an A-lister to show off their comedic chops (and not from Universal) sounds like a pipe dream. But Sony and Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence have made that pipe dream into a raunchy reality with the confident ’80s-styled R-rated comedy “No Hard Feelings.”

Directed by Gene Stupnitsky (“Good Boys,” co-creator of Freevee’s “Jury Duty“), the film centers on Maddie Barker (Lawrence), a Montauk-based Uber driver in her early thirties and on the verge of bankruptcy. When her car gets repossessed by her scorned tow trucker ex Gary (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the house that her late mother left her is about to foreclose, and the income from her mundane part-time bartending job at a seafood-themed bar is far from enough to suffice. Resorting to Craigslist, Maddie answers an odd job listing that offers a Buick Regal as compensation. The position: date a wealthy couple’s (Matthew Broderick and Laura Berlanti) 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) for the summer, get him out of his shell, and pop his first cherry before heading to Princeton University in the fall; all while Percy is unsuspecting of his parents’ involvement. Initially thinking the gig would be a piece of cake, Percy’s clueless, awkward anxiety-riddled vibe gives Maddie a run for her money.

Since departing from Creative Artists Agency in 2018, Jennifer Lawrence’s recent return to the big screen boasts liberation from the intensity she poured into her past few roles. Her days of prestigious Oscar bait and being a franchise star who wore exhaustion in her performances are over. Today, with each new project, her agency and freedom are prominent. In “No Hard Feelings,” Lawrence proudly lets her freak flag fly.

Through the rambunctious, hasty cynical Maddie, Lawrence returns to her comedic roots from 2007’s “The Bill Engvall Show” and aces each facet of her performance here. She has the same skillful comedic ability as Anna Faris, Charlize Theron, Emma Stone, and Regina Hall, who flip their sensuality on a dime and dive into silly behavior. Lawrence has expert comic timing, especially with Maddie’s cynical clap backs and insults. Even for a skilled talent like Lawrence, she still impresses with her commitment to outrageous feats of physical comedy. Nothing she has done as Mystique in any of the “X-Men” films will measure up to Maddie going full pro-wrestler on a bunch of teenagers in her birthday suit.

“No Hard Feelings” boasts a breakthrough standout performance by Andrew Barth Feldman, who leaps from the Broadway stage to the silver screen as a delightful foil to Maddie. His Percy is like the anthesis of Gary from Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza“; Instead of pursuing a woman of his elder, he does everything in his power to maintain abstinence at a slow and steady pace. He’s the perfect foil for Lawrence’s Maddie, garnering numerous laughs with his timid demeanor contrasting her outward confident spirit.

Lawrence’s and Feldman’s offbeat budding chemistry bolsters the film’s humor more than the mediocre material. But the best gags are all spoiled in the much better-edited trailer, which quickly cuts to the next joke, as opposed to the final product, where shots often linger on an actor’s reaction to whatever wackiness is occurring. Throughout this movie, I patiently waited for a singular laugh-out-loud moment not from the promos. That moment never arrived.

Director Stupnitsky is no stranger to combining the sincere and absurd. His previous feature endeavor, “Good Boys,” did just that and prospered thanks to its central young cast. His most recent project as a series co-creator, “Jury Duty,” followed suit using the charming non-actor subject Ronald Gladden. “No Hard Feelings” persists in trying to have its raunchy cake full of sweet sentimental frosting, but the frustrating script forces its gags and drama. The film’s comedic and dramatic facets attempt to garner a rise reaction from the audience without balancing the two.

Halfway through, “No Hard Feelings” reaches a gag high point and abruptly stops, sacrificing scenes of dating mishaps for juxtaposed stories about two lonely people of different generations and classes influencing each other to grow up. As sharp as they may seem, these elements are too familiar to “Licorice Pizza” and Lawrence’s previous lead project “Causeway,” two films that more robustly depicted these budding arcs. Around this movie’s second half, the outlandish comedy is lost in unearned character drama straight from an entirely separate script.

If it wasn’t for Lawrence and Barth Feldman’s joint comedic excellence, with their commanding charm and chemistry fueling its laughs, “No Hard Feelings” would have been a disaster. But thanks to them, it’s a serviceable summer comedy that should keep the J. Law lovers happy, even though her talents are better used elsewhere.

In theaters now.

Sullen middle school freshman Kokoro (Ami Touma), is frightened to attend school after getting bullied by her aggressive female peers. Any reminder of school leaves her with a stomachache as constant anxiety washes over, preventing her from getting out of bed. Who can blame her when the bullying is so intense? Girls at her school either tell her to drop dead or stalk her back home, where they attempt to trespass. For the growing teen, staying home is the most viable option.

Bedridden in her room, Kokoro finds a portal inside her full-length body mirror. She steps through to the other side, transporting her to a magical castle straight out of a fairy tale book. There, Kokoro meets six other teenagers around her age. They sit on a staircase, awaiting information about their random invitation.

The Wolf Queen (Mana Ashida), a tough, commanding little girl in a wolf mask, appears. She tells them they have been selected to play a game. They all have about a year to find a key lying about in the castle. Whoever finds the key is awarded a wish. But if anyone breaks a rule, that person gets eaten by a wolf as a death sentence. Throughout the year, Kokoro and her peers try living their double lives freely, taking school one day at a time and reuniting at the castle afterward.

Based on the novel of the same name by Japanese writer Mizuki Tsujimura, this animated adaptation of Lonely Castle in the Mirror wears its good intentions on its sleeve. Its fantasy and realism elements hold stable ground and offer a mature observation about teenagehood’s hardships, including the cruelty teens face at school or home and the deep loneliness that stems from such rooted trauma. 

A few months deep into visiting the lonely castle, Kokomo learns that, like her, each teenager has little to no control over their life or surroundings. But the longer time spent there, the more it looks like a peer-led recovery group offering solace and safety than it does an enchanted castle. When the film details the other issues everyone besides Kokoro holds, it wavers from plain sad to horrifying.

The decent animation by A1-Pictures (“Fairy Tail,” “Sword Art Online”) offers unique background landscapes, several 3D shots, and an attention to scale when the teens are against the massive castle halls. But despite those positives, there’s hardly any justification for its overall presentation. Compared to “Fairy Tail” and the many “Sword Art Online” features, “Lonely Castle” is a more laid-back dramatic offering than other A1-Pictures features that often bear vibrant flashiness. Regardless of the genre and tone, “Lonely Castle” desperately needed some glitz. 

In fantasy-coming-of-age stories of similar tone and maturity, like “Chronicles of Narnia” or “Bridge to Terabithia,” a refreshing gust of whimsy capturing youthful joy can balance the bleakness of the mundane. And yet director Keiichi Hara misses the potential to add an elegant factor that would give the film weight. The only convenient time the animation is astonishing is around the climax, which is already late. 

The teenage ensemble all are likable enough. But they severely lack personality and complexity beyond their traumatic backgrounds, preventing them from feeling like a natural friend group. Their shared camaraderie is weak, especially since their dialogue is basic conversations that play to the stereotypical anime archetypes—the quiet type, the confident older sibling type, the nerdy type, the mysterious type, the aggressive type, and the goofball romantic—and their only activity is working together to find a key. But as time passes, the relationship shared between Kokoro and her fellow teen outcasts barely progresses. 

What “Lonely Castle in the Mirror” lacks in character, it tries to make up for in a mystery surrounding why and how the teens wound up intertwined. While it is an intriguing plot backbone, the focus doesn’t arrive early enough to scratch any interest. The film’s reveals are easy enough to predict and enact a fatigue for a certain sci-fi trope that has recently made the rounds. 

“Lonely Castle in the Mirror” is dull and overlong, weighed down by its heavy-handed and intense discussions about teenage trauma and loneliness. This coming-of-age fantasy animated film completely undervalues its fantasy elements and animation, making for a missed opportunity. For all its well-intended purposes in spotlighting unspoken childhood subjects, the story of “Mirror” is riddled with far too many cracks to recommend.

In theaters now.

This chronicle of retired American cyclist Greg LeMond’s tiring, tumultuous return to his former glory during the 1989 Tour de France seems like something that would be right at home on ESPN’s acclaimed “30 for 30” documentary series. Unfortunately, there is already a “30 for 30” doc—2014’s “Slaying the Badger”—about an intense Tour de France race LeMond had. 

The story that “Slaying the Badger” lays out—how French cyclist/mentor Bernard Hinault began a rivalry with a young LeMond during the ‘86 Tour after LeMond helped him win the previous year’s Tour—is a brief part of “The Last Rider”’s pain-ridden first half. Although LeMond won that Tour, it’s not a victory he relished. The stone-cold betrayal by Hinault sent him into a depression that also brought back shameful memories of being sexually abused at age 13 by a family friend, yet another, alleged loved one who betrayed him. LeMond literally got hit with a bigger setback when he returned to the States. During a holiday turkey shoot, he was accidentally shot by his brother-in-law, putting him in critical condition. (His wife Kathy tells how she almost went into labor at the same hospital where LeMond fought for his life.)

WIth over 40 pellets in his body, LeMond slowly began his journey back to being a pro cyclist. He eventually became a competitor in the ‘89 Tour, when most of this documentary’s action occurs. That’s where he began a rivalry with champion French cyclist Laurent Fignon, the same man who defeated Hinault in the ‘84 Tour and made LeMond aid Hinault in winning the following year. An ego-driven, media-hating, ornery cuss of a Frenchman, Fignon almost pedaled his balls off to defeat LeMond, who was just there to see if he could still roll with the big dogs.

“The Last Rider” is an engaging, efficient race to the finish line. Director Alex Holmes takes us back to those arduous hills LeMond and Fignon rode up and rode through with help from a lot of videotaped footage and commentary from the LeMonds. There are also testimonials from Pedro Delgado (the ‘88 Tour winner whose late start at the ‘89 Tour’s prologue practically set off the LeMond-Fignon rivalry) and Cyrille Guimard, the ex-cyclist-turned-coach who trained LeMond, Fignon, and Hinault.

Although “The Last Rider” paints Fignon, who died of cancer in 2010, as the designated villain (you could say anyone who’s French in the story—and that includes Hinault and the chesty Guimard—is the antagonist), both Holmes and LeMond respectably don’t bring up the times that year when he tested positive for amphetamines. You would think LeMond—whose anti-doping stance is so notorious he made a lot of Lance Armstrong fans mad when he wondered if the champion cyclist was juicing back in the day—would be the first to posit that Fignon was on that stuff. But the closest underhanded thing LeMond accuses Fignon of is holding onto a motorcycle during the race.  

Basically, if you’re a fan of sports cinema where an all-American lad goes up against a Eurotrashy adversary (Fignon even looks like the blonde-haired dude who tried to kill Bruce Willis in “Die Hard”) on a televised world stage, “The Last Rider” gives a nice, nifty portrait of a guy who goes through one hell of an uphill battle—both figuratively and literally.

Now playing in theaters. 

Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s “The Stroll” is a riveting documentary about transgender women of color during the 1990s and early 2000s engaging in sex work in an area known as The Stroll in the Meatpacking District of lower Manhattan. It is a story of despair, sisterhood, and triumph.

From the start, this film reveals itself to be by someone from that community, reclaiming their own narrative, a fact the movie reveals as we cleverly cut back and forth to Kristen in the editing room. From both a technical and political standpoint, “The Stroll” is a tremendous achievement. Technically, the film is shot beautifully and well-paced. With only an hour and 25 minutes of runtime, it desperately makes the audience want to see more. We fall in love with this group of women and want them to win more and more.

Politically, this movie is another example of the transformative power of filmmaking. It is part of a medium traditionally gatekept by white cismen with their limited perspective, but the flood gate is opening. Lovell and Drucker do not take an “Imperial Overseer” approach to this topic. When we see Tabytha, Ceyenne, Egyptt, and our other cast of colorful and vibrant women, we see Kristen right next to them. She makes space for these women to share their stories while demonstrating empathy as a sister and participant.

As a result, the film is haunting and feels like a whole picture rather than a narrow one, like other films on similar topics. Lovell serves as our guide through the underbelly of the disenfranchised as she reveals her own story and that of her sisters. Sisterhood is a main theme within this story, as for many transgender women of color on The Stroll. Community was all they had. Many of the young girls and women in the Meatpacking District during The Stroll were runaways or kicked out of their families. With nowhere to go and employment discrimination due to their transition, the transgender women of color in this area turned to sex work to make a living.

Unfortunately, this occupation came with workplace violence. It is disheartening to hear tales of young girls, some 15 years old or younger, displaced and put into a world where they are given the cold shoulder. But despite the tyranny of former Mayor Giuliani, police brutality, abusive clients, and rampant homelessness, the love and support shared among the trans women of The Stroll kept them going. The older trans women, especially, provided the protection and guidance these young women needed. Described as Wonder Woman or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the transgender sex workers wore metaphysical armor in the face of adversity.

There was confidence in the air on 14th Street. By drawing out their confidence in themselves, these women could do it for each other. To be on The Stroll took strength and tenacity, yet these women took to the streets with beauty and grace. It’s a strength we continue to see as we watch these people relive their stories in each interview. Among the strongest is Kristen herself.

Unintentionally, Kristen becomes like the big sister in this tale. We see her as the same anchor and aid for her sisters, just like the Wonder Women of The Stroll were to many of the girls who walked the street each night. With a warm smile, an open heart, and empathic ears, Kristen lifts her sisters. Beyond The Stroll, Lovell and Drucker also carry the audience through the history of trans rights. The biggest highlight is Sylvia Rivera, a trans activist, sex worker, and major player in the Stonewall Inn uprising. Described as the Mother of the Community, Rivera—along with Marsha P. Johnson—fought for the livelihood of trans youth and adults despite their exclusion from the gay rights movement.

The film pays homage not only to Rivera’s voice and legacy but also to her humanity. We see her joy, her sadness, and her home. She was a pillar and a sister. Although Rivera, like many of her sisters, did not live to see the evolving triumph of the trans community, their compassion for those they anchored lives on. The war may not be over, but many battles have been won. “The Stroll” captures that essence beautifully. 

Debuts on HBO on June 21st at 9pm EST.