Nobody is going to mistake cut-rate biopic “Reagan” for a great movie. At best, it’s a pretty standard greatest-hits collection of important moments in the former President’s life. At worst, it’s a laughably underfunded production made by people who, for whatever reason, want to sell America on Ronald Reagan in 2024. But the movie is not always at its worst. It’s a subpar movie that I think some critics are mistaking for a terrible movie.

Reagan’s life story is told by former KGB agent Viktor Petrovich (Jon Voight) as he teaches a young Russian politician about the mistakes the Soviet Union made in underestimating Reagan in the 1980’s. Petrovich understands his enemy so well that he can have flashbacks to Reagan’s childhood, where the takeaway is that his faith got him through family drama. Then he became a lifeguard, where he mostly “saved” women who weren’t really drowning, and really saved others before they knew they were drowning. Petrovich observes that Reagan forever remained a lifeguard.

It’s not long before we get to Reagan as an adult, played by Dennis Quaid. Sadly we don’t see much of his acting career (this movie could have really used a monkey), but we do see him as an increasingly-frustrated commercial pitchman as his career fizzles out. We also see his marriage to Jane Wyman (Mena Suvari) fall apart. But things perk up when he becomes vice-president of the Screen Actors Guild. Not only does he meet his wife Nancy (Penelope Ann Miller) through the position, but he learns that political-type leadership might be his strong suit. After that, it’s the California governorship, a failed run at the Republican Presidential nomination in 1976, and then of course, the Presidency in 1980.

As President, Reagan bravely gets the economy back on track, survives an assassination attempt, and negotiates a near-end to the Cold War. And he does it with all the charisma that a talented actor like Dennis Quaid can bring to the role. There is barely any mention of scandals like Iron-Contra or the controversial War on Drugs or Reagan’s reluctance to address AIDS. Yes, this movie is a pro-Reagan puff piece, one whose goal is almost certainly to get Americans excited about a Republican President just a few months before an election. It’s a pretty transparent political tactic, but I’d rather get positive productions like this instead of the ugly documentaries that accompanied the 2012 and 2016 elections.

The movie doesn’t creep into “memorably, hilariously bad” territory as much as some people are saying. The makeup in most scenes is tolerable, except for one in a hospital bed where the poor makeup is clearly struggling with gravity while Quaid is lying down. At that point, his face might as well be one of those creepy puppets from the Genesis “Land of Confusion” music video. Ill-advised cameos from Pat Boone (as a preacher talking to Reagan, next to Chris Massoglia playing a young Boone) and Creed frontman Scott Stapp (as Frank Sinatra, though I thought it was just some gaudy cover artist until the credits) go by too quickly for them to register. In fact, the same can be said for many historical figures in this movie, they’re in and out before their role in the Reagan’s life or administration is clear.

This brings me to the thing I liked most about “Reagan” – the pacing. It’s not “good” pacing in that I won’t argue with critics who say the movie is too rushed and choppy. But at the same time, I’m grateful for the way that the movie skips briskly along, whether it’s appropriate or not. Reagan led an action-packed life, and an aggrandizing biopic like this could have gone three, maybe four hours. I know this is a cold compliment, but the movie will have to settle for it since I don’t have many other nice things say: I left the theater feeling like I’d gotten off easy.

Grade: C

“Reagan” is rated PG-13 for violent content and smoking. Its running time is 135 minutes.

Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.

3/5 stars

Unveiled out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, Wolfs is a comic thriller that skates along primarily thanks to the laid-back bonhomie of its two stars, George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

These two long-time buddies, who first worked together in Ocean’s Eleven, are back playing rival “cleaners” in this New York-set tale. Both dressed in blacks and greys, uttering the same gnomic phrases, as Austin Abrams’ Kid points out, “You’re, like, basically the same guy.”

Neither Pitt nor Clooney has a name in the film, perhaps because their star power is so enormous we’ll only ever know them as Brad and George.

One chilly night in the Big Apple, Clooney’s fixer is called to a penthouse in a plush hotel by a shaken District Attorney named Margaret (Amy Ryan). In the bedroom is the Kid (Austin Abrams), who she thinks is dead, after he fell and crashed into a drinks trolley. Running a campaign to get tough on crime, the DA knows that if this gets out, it could ruin her.

Then Pitt turns up, it soon emerging he’s been hired by the hotel owner to clean up this mess. With identities compromised, it means that he and Clooney will have to work together, a job that becomes increasingly complicated when a bag of drugs is found and the Kid turns out not to be dead.

As set-ups go, it’s compelling enough, and kicks into gear when Euphoria star Abrams wakes up and makes a bolt for it, in just his underwear, through the freezing cold streets of the city.

You’ll find out next to nothing about the Clooney and Pitt characters, as their shadowy, lone-wolf status dictates. But Watts mines pleasing humour from his veteran A-listers (jokes about fading eyesight), and even includes the Bill Withers classic “Just the two of us” on the soundtrack.

Weighed down by a plot that is entirely secondary – the whole backstory as to why the Kid has a stash of drugs, and who it belongs to, feels almost incidental – Wolfs is the sort of slick, empty-headed entertainment that Hollywood (or in this case Apple) does well enough.

Abrams is charming as the innocent caught up among the high rollers, while Ryan is excellent in her extended cameo. As for Pitt and Clooney, well, they bring the sizzle if not the surprises.

Wolfs will start streaming on Apple TV+ on September 27.

A subject’s charm can take a documentary a long way. That’s the case in Matt Tyrnauer’s latest project, Nobu, a glowing portrait of Nobu Matsuhisa. The Japanese chef is best known for his empire of luxury sushi restaurants (and more recently, hotels), where guests can experience his medley of dishes inspired by his Japanese roots and early foray into Peruvian cuisine. In Nobu, based on Matsuhisa’s memoir of the same name, Tyrnauer (also in Telluride this year with Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid) anchors the global phenom’s name to a personality. 

Nobu is a straightforward and admiring portrait of its subject. The film will likely appeal to fans of the chef (especially since this year marks the 30th anniversary of the first Nobu restaurant), but it may not completely satiate the culinary-curious. Less process-oriented and more wide-ranging than David Gelb’s glossy doc Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Nobu looks at Matsuhisa as a man and a brand, offering bits of biography alongside insights into the chef’s steadily growing empire. 

Tyrnaeur shapes Nobu around lengthy interviews with Matsuhisa, who generously details his early years growing up in Japan, his desire to become a sushi chef and the minor successes and major failures of his early ventures. These conversations, supplemented by interviews with Matsuhisa’s wife, Yoko, and his two daughters, Junko and Yoshiko, form a relatively candid biography and showcase Matsuhisa’s personality. His humor — characterized by Dad jokes and deadpan delivery — enlivens his storytelling and makes the early part of the doc feel more intimate. Stories about Matsuhisa’s formative years reveal a childhood marked by premature grief and a fascination with sushi-making. He likens the process of watching a chef delicately press pieces of fish onto rice and serve it to customers to seeing an actor on stage. To Matsuhisa, sushi is not just a cuisine but a performance. 

When the chef talks about the inspiration for popular dishes like black cod miso or experiments in the kitchen, Nobu nears its full potential as a documentary. Anecdotes about Matsuhisa’s early years in Peru, where he encounters cilantro for the first time, and restaurant ventures in Anchorage and later in Los Angeles affirm the creative thread that undergirds his multi-million dollar business. These moments enrich the portrait with tactical evidence of an artist at work. It’s when we can witness the genius instead of just hearing about it from the film’s various talking heads. A standout sequence comes near the end of the documentary, when Nobu, in a rare move, decides to host close friends at his home in Japan. Here, the chef’s theories about sushi-making as performance are distilled into action. While shaping bits of saltwater eel onto a plate, Matsuhisa regales his guests with jokes and stories about his early culinary days and his more recent ones as an international celebrity. 

And what a star Matsuhisa has become. Tyrnauer dedicates a significant portion of Nobu to the business of running a global conglomerate. With dozens of restaurants worldwide and a handful of hotels, Nobu is now a luxury good. Tyrnauer travels with the chef — always private, rarely commercial — to his various eateries with a special focus on Nobu Los Cabos and Nobu London. He also sits in on board meetings with Matsuhisa and his Nobu co-founders Robert De Niro and Meir Teper, where the trio negotiate expansion deals and visions of the brand’s future. The filmmaking is direct here, focused more on the transfer of information than scoring style points.

Each of Matsuhisa’s restaurants adheres to Nobu’s modus operandi — intimate luxury, quality food — while also using local ingredients to reflect cultural appetites. Tyrnauer includes interviews with writers like Ruth Reichl and chefs like Wolfgang Puck to help map the chef’s influence on the culinary world. Some of these strands are introduced and abandoned at a fast clip, contrasting with the steady pace established in the biographical section.

With so much to cover and such a flattering sheen, the documentary mostly sidesteps areas of potential tension. When the corporate culture is described as familial, questions about labor practices, including some recent-ish lawsuits, are left unaddressed. And a moment of disagreement between De Niro and Teper about the direction of the company — expand rapidly in pursuit of capital or move slowly to maintain high standards — is observed but not assessed. It’s for this reason that Nobu functions best as a primer, a tasting menu for all things Nobu — man and brand.