“People make up their past, they remember what they want, they forget the rest.”

So says Timothée Chalamet, who plays Bob Dylan in the brilliant new film, A Complete Unknown, in a tense confrontation with Elle Fanning, who plays Sylvie Russo, a character based on Dylan’s on-and-off NYC girlfriend Suze Rotolo, as she prods him to share more about his mysterious past. Of course, he doesn’t, setting the stage for the enduring mystery of perhaps the greatest singer-songwriter of all time, a puzzle that continues to intrigue us.

I was fortunate to attend an advance screening of the movie over the weekend, and I can assure you, the buzz around this film is real. A Complete Unknown deserves all the accolades you’ve been hearing – including three Golden Globe nominations and Oscar talk for Chalamet, as well as for Edward Norton, who plays a perfect Pete Seeger. At the screening, the sold-out Newport audience widely applauded the film as the closing credits rolled; no one yelled “Judas” and no boos were audible.

The film, which should appeal to a wide audience given Chalamet’s youthful charm, opens Christmas Day across the country and begins an extensive run at Newport’s Jane Pickens Theatre on December 26. Advance tickets are available here.

Unlike some other great music biopics (Walk the Line, Bohemian Rhapsody, Coal Miner’s Daughter), A Complete Unknown covers a comparatively brief period in Dylan’s life, from his arrival and rise to fame in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1961, to that divisive moment when he “went electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, a cultural moment as important as Elvis on Ed Sullivan or The Beatles landing at JFK.

Chalamet is extraordinary playing the well-known singer, but still manages to build out his own character, much like Joachin Phoenix did in his Johnny Cash interpretation in I Walk the Line. And that’s not easy – Dylan is quirky and not easy to mimic. In interviews, Chalamet has said that he had several years to learn Dylan’s mannerisms, mirroring his vocals and acquiring his distinct guitar strumming patterns. He sings all the songs in the film, very close to the original recordings. And it works – Dylan himself recently approved the performance in a widely shared tweet.

Director James Mangold boldly re-creates Greenwich Village in the early 60s, with all the spirited grit and grime of the time, in street scenes and tightly packed basement nightclubs where folk music ruled the day. The story is compelling, the music is authentic, and the acting is outstanding all-around, with love interests Elle Fanning (Sylvie Russo) and Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez) brilliant in their supporting roles.

Mangold doesn’t over-mythologize Dylan, and the film doesn’t shy away from the singer’s darker side, his often rude treatment of those close to him, especially women, and his nasty eye rolls directed toward his mentor, folk legend Pete Seeger. Bob Dylan – always an enigma, kind of a bully, and occasionally “an asshole” as Barbaro, playing Baez, tells him.

Of course, the film plays fast and loose with many facts; Rolling Stone magazine spotted over two dozen places where the film veers from the known historical record, but let’s remember that this a work of historical fiction, not a documentary. It’s closer to the spirit of the truth than anything else I’ve seen about Dylan, including interviews with the bard, who is known for his reticence and occasional deception. The story closely mirrors that period in his life, and the spirit of the narrative is certainly one version of the truth. 

Meanwhile, here on Aquidneck Island, where Dylan and his like stormed the Bastille at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, he’s not so unknown. His spirit is ever present at the Festival, where he appeared from 1963-1965 and again in 2002, sporting a strange wig that still has fans guessing. The “City by the Sea,” along with Greenwich Village, serve almost as co-stars in the film, with frequent Newport references and numerous scenes from the festival grounds and the Viking Hotel. (Note: those scenes were filmed mainly in New Jersey.)

As far as getting to know Dylan’s motivations a little better through the film, that ain’t happening. Chalamet plays him close to the chest, as elusive as ever. When I interviewed longtime Festival producer George Wein in 2015, he told me that Dylan, like Miles Davis in the jazz world, intentionally curated a certain persona, centered around an air of mystery. “Both were always concerned with not doing what you expected of them … throughout their life,” said Wein. “Dylan, his last album, nobody would ever dream he would do an album of Tin Pan Alley ballads.”

The film echoes Wein’s remarks. Dylan was never afraid to take the initiative, from visiting Woody Guthrie in the hospital when he arrived in New York to choosing an electric guitar at Newport in ’65. Sure, he was influenced by the people around him, but he was always his own boss, rarely submitting to the will of others. He did things his way, and continues to do so, like it or not. Perhaps that’s part of the reason he’s such the icon he has become today. Indeed, “If you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.”

Click here for more information on A Complete Unknown.

Over a long career, and especially during his recent resurgence on “Only Murders in the Building,” Martin Short has pressured to a perfect diamond the Martin Short Thing, which is: saying very mean and petty things in a way that is both hilarious and somehow endearing. It’s his thing and maybe nobody except Don Rickles got away with it for so long.

For “Saturday Night Live,” which Short guest-hosted for the fifth time (cue Five-Timers’ cold open), it’s a perfect fit. With the comic actor’s manic energy, perfect delivery of cutting lines, and ability to still dance and sing at 74 made his monologue and sketch appearances pretty much flawless, though he was a little light in the show.

That was partly because a raft of celebrities (though not his co-stars Selena Gomez and Steve Martin, though they were mentioned, or rumored romantic partner Meryl Streep) filled up parts in lots of sketches and dominated the cold open. They included Tom Hanks, Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Emma Stone and Scarlett Johansson, who provided live reaction to jokes about her from a particularly brutal “Weekend Update” joke swap between Michael Che and her husband, Colin Jost.

Short scored as an aggressive Delta lounge employee in a sketch about a Christmas parade that takes place at an airport gate, an angry mall parking lot driver, and a demanding director of the “Charlie Brown Christmas” pageant. But he was absent in the episode’s pre-taped piece, “An Act of Kindness,” about a homeless man (Kenan Thompson) helped by a gullible woman (Heidi Gardner), and a sequel to the Nate Bargatze “Sábado Gigante” sketch — with Marcello Hernández as host Don Francisco — that featured Rudd and an appearance from Dana Carvey.

The crowded episode didn’t give Short much opportunity to bring back classic characters or to break new ground, but it didn’t matter much because the show overall had strong sketches and when Short was deployed, he nailed every moment.

Musical guest Hozier performed “Too Sweet” and a cover of The Pogues’s “Fairytale of New York.”

If you’re an “SNL” completist and faithful fan, the best piece of the entire show for you may have been the cold open, which features a huge number of past guest hosts who’ve done the task five or more times. Hanks, who will narrate NBC’s documentary series “The Americas” in February, kicked off the sketch with Rudd welcoming Short into the Five-Timers Club, who responded, “What a surprise that I’ve known about all week.” Fey, Baldwin, Stone, Melissa McCarthy, Johansson, Kristen Wiig, John Mulaney and even Jimmy Fallon all got to tell a joke or two each, the best perhaps being when each made a confession. “Ant-Man’s powers aren’t good,” Rudd admitted. “It’s me that’s flying those drones. All of them,” Fey revealed. “I never had COVID,” Hanks shared. When Short received his Five Timers’ jacket, sized women’s small, he did some physical comedy making it impossible to put the garment on properly before saying, “From the bottom of my heart: I love most of you so much.”

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Short started his monologue with some one-liners, suggesting that he’d be playing an elf in 10 sketches and joking that his Uber driver, Matt Gaetz, was waiting outside before discussing his long friendship with “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels. “We’re kind of like (President-elect) Trump and Elon Musk, without the sexual tension.” When cast member Sarah Sherman appeared onstage to ask for some holiday cheer to get her out of her funk, Short launched into a song that sent him on a journey through the studio, throwing a kid off Santa’s lap, taking shots at actor Armie Hammer and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before encountering Michaels and Fallon. “I didn’t know Jack Daniels made cologne,” Short quipped before planting a big kiss on Fallon. Once Short was gone, Fallon said, “You never kiss me like that anymore,” to a nonplussed Michaels. It was a high-energy performance not unlike Maya Rudolph’s “Mother” monologue from earlier this year.

Best sketch of the night: Like celebrity cameos? Here’s more

Returning from last year’s Thanksgiving parade sketch at Newark Liberty International, two TSA agents, Umberto and Chartreuse Hamilton (Bowen Yang and Ego Nwodim), host a TV Christmas special this time around with an array of characters. They include Rudd as himself trying to get into the Delta Lounge (Short spits water in his face), McCarthy as a gate attendant mispronouncing names such as Gina Sowdry, Wiig as a passenger riding a motorized suitcase, and Hanks reprising his role as Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the famous US Airways pilot who was the subject of a movie. The sketch overall is a scattershot assortment of jokes, but the enthusiasm and star power go a long way with this one.

Also good: Melissa McCarthy did what to your car?

Like the airport sketch, this was also a new edition of a prior sketch from last year, the traffic altercation featuring Quinta Brunson. As in the previous one, Mikey Day and Chloe Fineman play a father and daughter who get into an argument with a driver in another car that includes lots of hand signals and body language to express what they’re trying to say. In this situation, Short is a driver competing for the same parking spot as them at a mall on Christmas Eve. All three comics do a fine job physically expressing phrases such as “bull crap” and “super Christian,” but the sketch goes to a whole other level when McCarthy shows up as Short’s wife, banging on the family’s car window and threatening to eat the dad’s face with her own face. That would be a fine cap to a sketch, but McCarthy then spits coffee on the window and does something to the window with her body that may never have been shown before on broadcast television. In an episode stuffed with huge stars, leave it to McCarthy to give the show its most GIFable and potentially viral moment.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: Two men owe Scarlett Johansson a huge apology

On any other week, Bowen Yang’s portrayal of a New Jersey drone would have easily walked away as the best thing on “Update,” a comedy bit full of great jokes that concluded with a “Wicked” song parody. But this wasn’t just any week: It was time for Che and Jost’s annual joke swap, in which each writes awful, offensive jokes that the other must read out loud. Jost’s jokes for Che included jokes about awful sex, insinuations that Che supports Sean “Diddy” Combs, and a truly gross joke about Disney’s Moana. But it was Jost who was more thoroughly roasted when he was forced to deliver jokes in a “Black voice,” starting with one about white reparations and Kamala Harris, and moving on to a series of jokes about Johansson, who was shown backstage watching “Update” on a monitor. The jokes included one about Jost leaving Johansson because she just turned 40 and a truly awful joke about her genitals. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed backstage, apparently unable to believe what came out of her husband’s mouth. The high-wire act of keeping the segment going with the subject’s live reactions elevated what has become a truly offensive, yet compelling annual tradition to see how far and how low “Update” will go. The answer? There appears to be no bottom.

RED ONE (2024) directed by Jake Kasdan, stars Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, is an urban fantasy Christmas action-thriller, fitting neatly into no known genre, which will perhaps be enjoyable to anyone willing to grant the somewhat silly premise, and perhaps not to anyone unwilling.

This film enjoys a remarkably high audience score but a remarkably low score from the establishment film critics. This is usually a sign that the film is normal and enjoyable, not perverse nor woke.

But the film did not seem normal to me, by which I mean, I can think of no other urban fantasy Christmas action-thriller. As such, this film runs the risk of falling between the stools. Action film fans might well pan it for its fantastical elements, whereas fans of Christmas family films might well pan it for its untraditional, even disrespectful, handling of common elements of the Santa Claus fairy tale.

As for Christians, we have long ago ceased to expect any mention of Christ or Christmas in a Christmas movie, aside from Linus quoting scripture in a Charlie Brown telly special from two generations ago.

Regardless, this filmgoer found the film perfectly enjoyable: nor were any elements visible which might provoke the establishment film critics. I cannot explain the high audience score nor the low critic score.

In the film, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays Callum Drift, a hardboiled six-foot-five elf serving a remarkably trim and athletic Santa as his chief of North Pole security.

Drift wishes to retire, as the Naughty List grows ever longer, and his faith in mankind fails. However, even as he is preparing his resignation letter, he sees Santa’s workshop assaulted by a black ops team of kidnappers. Draft gives chase, but the evildoers elude him.

Santa’s workshop is hidden beneath a holographic forcefield, but the secret international body charged with keeping the peace between the various mythical entities, the M.O.R.A (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority) soon discovers a hacker who broke into their security and betrayed them: gambling lowlife and deadbeat dad Jack O’Malley, played with evident zest by Chris Evans.

We are treated to a scene of O’Malley picking up his juvenile-delinquent son after school, where the boy got detention for monkeying with the school computer records: the father thereupon gives him a stern talking-to, that is, by cautioning him to cover his tracks better, and trust no confederates.

This is after we see O’Malley stealing candy from a baby, just so the audience harbors no doubt that this is not Captain America.

In short order O’Malley is mugged by MORA agents and brought in for questioning: not knowing who hired him, O’Malley nonetheless planted spyware on his paymaster, hence knows his location, but nothing else. The O’Malley and Drift are forced to team up against the better judgment of both: shenanigans ensue.

The pair must battle evil snowmen, sneak into a monster-infested castle, and confront an eerie player-piano playing the Nutcracker suite perched in the middle of an empty, fog-bound highway in Germany.

In one particularly well-done scene, O’Malley and his juvenile-delinquent son are miniaturized and trapped in snow-globes meant to imprison the unrepentant. When he sees his son terrified, O’Malley’s fatherly instincts come to the fore: he confesses his mistakes, he asks forgiveness, and he vows to amend his ways. Any mainstream critic not familiar with threefold steps of traditional Christian confession might not grasp the significance.

ikewise, anyone unfamiliar with the less well known nooks and crannies of Old World Christmas lore might not recognize the figures chosen to be the heavies here: Gryla is an Icelandic ogress who eats naughty children at Christmas time, while Krampus, from Romania, is goat-horned fork-tongued helper to Saint Nicholas, who punishes naughty children by birching them with a rod, or stuffing them in to a bag for abduction or drowning.

No version of these tales ever took root in America Christmas tradition — being rather alien to the American spirit — albeit within the last ten years, as our spirit is being lost, among the anti-Christmas crowd and low-grade horror directors Krampus has gained popularity. The version of Krampus is this film is rather charming in his own dark way, which may have the unfortunate side-effect the augmenting the popularity of the anti-Christmas or low-grade horror film versions.

All three characters, Drift, O’Malley, and even Krampus have uncomplex but satisfying character arcs: Drift regains his faith in humanity after O’Malley turns over a new leaf. This character growth, as stated, is uncomplex, as befits an action movie, but satisfying, as befits a Christmas movie.

And the rule of fairy-tale was strictly followed, which is, namely, that when you are told to touch nothing, and you touch something, disaster ensues.

The tale is set in our modern world, but with certain enclaves of the mythological world scattered here and there, hidden behind mist and illusion. This conceit of a hidden world within our own is familiar and beloved trope of the genre.

The special effects deceived my eye: to me they looks smooth and seamless. And the props and settings and art direction in general seemed a blend of gothic and cyberpunk Victoriana, as befits a high-tech version of Christmasland.

The fantastical elements of the movie are well handled, by which I mean the abilities, and also the limitations, of every magical power or magical tool is briefly but succinctly made clear: the audience should be no more bewildered than Jack O’Malley. Anything not explained in dialog was clear enough in how it was used. Of note was the “reality adjustment” wristband used by Drift, which allowed him to turn rock’em-sock’em robots or matchbox cars real.

There was also a clever bit of by-play which allowed the befuddled characters to recognize each other despite being bedeviled by shapechangers.

The theme of the piece is appropriately straightforward: no rogue is beyond redemption, nor any cynic either. This is as befits as thoroughly secular version of an urban fantasy Christmas action thriller comedy, I suppose.

As part of the conceit of the film, just as jolly fat Santa is here fit and hardboiled military type (the marine version of Saint Nick, as it were) so too is his miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer here replaced by a high-tech flying behemoth pulled by monstrous deer-titans.

I have no complaint about this film in part because I was expecting it to be terrible, when, in fact, it was enjoyable good clean fun. Nothing lewd, crude or shocking was involved.

Still, it was a good, clean, fun movie, starring charming actors and actresses, with thrilling action scenes, funny comedic bits, great deadpan acting from Dwayne Johnson — who, let it be known — just plays Dwayne Johnson being himself, and wry snark from Chris Evans.

Christmas Specials involve the birth of Christ, and Xmas Specials involve Santa Claus. Here, Santa is called “Saint Nicholas of Myra” once in one line — which is the closest this otherwise entirely secular-Xmas film comes to acknowledging the meaning of Christmas.

You can watch Red One now on Amazon Prime Video here.

Originally published here.