Film Reviews: New releases for Dec. 24 – 26

Cover-Up **1/2

One should generally try to avoid the critics’ trap of “here’s the movie they should have made,” but it’s hard not to consider what a missed opportunity this documentary biography turns out to be. Certainly veteran investigative journalist Seymour M. “Sy” Hersh has had a monumental professional career—breaking stories over the course of 50 years from the My Lai massacre to torture at Abu Ghraib—of the kind that deserves praise, and the profile offered up by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus gets just enough of his grudging participation to show why his irascibility might have been one of the keys to his success. But that “grudging” part results in a film that goes heavy on archival footage about these various scandals that has to assume any give viewer knows nothing about them, resulting in a lot of throat-clearing that misses the focus on what Hersh in particular was able to uncover, and why, as a journalist committed to shoe-leather reporting and curiosity rather than credulous access-currying regurgitation of official statements. And, since it’s clear from the outset that Hersh has no interest in opening up about himself beyond bare-bones biographical details, there’s nothing here that allows for insight regarding what might have turned this guy into such a bulldog for holding power to account. In one anecdote Hersh offers about his mother, he remembers her describing him as “always going where nobody wants you.” The filmmakers here don’t seem to think that’s their job, too. Available Dec. 26 via Netflix. (NR)

Goodbye June **1/2

Family dysfunction drama tends to work best when it’s narrowly focused, so it’s not surprising that one of the main problems with this one is that it tries to juggle too many characters with too many issues all rushing towards one cathartic deadline. That moment is provided by the imminent death of June Cheshire (Helen Mirren), whose cancer returns aggressively in the two weeks before Christmas, forcing everyone else—her four children Julia (Kate Winslet), Molly (Andrea Riesborough), Helen (Toni Collette) and Connor (Johnny Flynn), and husband Bernie (Timothy Spall)—to unpack all of their baggage. Winslet also directs in her feature debut, from a script by her son Joe Anders, and there’s a lot of frisky humor around the edges, particularly in the first hour as the characters’ stresses express themselves in wildly different ways. Unfortunately, the scenes where a bunch of people swirl chaotically around June’s hospital room becomes a metaphor for the overstuffed nature of this narrative, which could have used at least one fewer Cheshire sibling—and I’d quickly nominate Collette’s broad parody of a yoga-teaching/sage-smudging/crystal toting earth mama. And considering there are years’ worth of issues being addressed here, some of them get resolved in improbably short conversations. As a holiday tear-jerker, it does effectively jerk some tears—and maybe a long the way it could have jerked a character or two out of the second-to-last draft. Available Dec. 24 via Netflix. (R)

Marty Supreme ****

The Adam Sandler “This is how I win” meme from 2019’s Uncut Gems might be the Rosetta Stone for understanding the protagonists of Josh Safdie’s movies, including those with brother Benny: hustlers and on-the-make guys convinced that they’re smarter and more destined for victory than the rest of the world sees in them. That’s certainly true of Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), a Jewish youth in early 1950s New York convinced that his skills as a table-tennis prodigy will lead him to the big time—if only he can get out of his own arrogant way. Safdie and regular Safdie brothers writing collaborator Ronald Bronstein craft another blood-pressure-raising episodic narrative out of Marty’s misadventures, particularly once he’s forced to track down a ridiculous amount of money in order to make it to the world championships in Tokyo, and it’s a magnificent mix of existential danger and absurdist hilarity. And Chalamet’s performance may be his best ever, exuding enough hyper-confident charisma to make it plausible that he could woo a retired Hollywood actress (Gwyneth Paltrow) and pull so many people into his schemes. Safdie even wrangles a great supporting performance out of Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, even if the role of an asshole millionaire isn’t much of a stretch. Topped off by a wonderfully anachronistic score of ’80s synth-pop, Marty Supreme builds to a weirdly emotional climax in which a Safdie hero finally has a different perspective on what it means to “win,” even if he probably still hasn’t. Available Dec. 25
in theaters. (R)

Song Sung Blue **1/2

Real lives are messy and not easily shapeable into narratives, which is why sometimes a fictionalized adaptation of a documentary probably should have remained a documentary. Greg Kohs’ 2008 non-fiction feature becomes writer/director Craig Brewer’s interpretation of the story of Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) and Claire Stengl (Kate Hudson), a pair of Milwaukee-area part-time musicians circa 1996 who fall in love and form a creative partnership as “Lightning and Thunder” performing a Neil Diamond “experience” tribute act. Brewer sets the stage for the challenging lives that make us want to root for these dreamers—Mike a recovering-alcoholic Vietnam veteran, Claire a single mom with a history of depression—and he certainly finds crowd-pleasing moments in the way Mike and Claire come alive while on stage interpreting Diamond’s classics, and in their biggest improbable wins intermingled with one big life-changing tragedy. Hudson also turns in a particularly wonderful performance, mastering her Wisconsin twang and both extremes in Claire’s personality. The story, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same juice when the songs aren’t playing, and oversimplifies the timeline of the main characters’ lives in order to provide a tidier, more heartstring-tugging conclusion. The many real-life threads it needs to incorporate distract from the idea of working-class folks finding purpose in their avocation—a thematic idea that might have been easier to convey if this weren’t an adaptation of a documentary. Available Dec. 25 in theaters. (PG-13)