Author: Amy Diaz

Downton Abbey: A New Era (PG)

The Crawley family (hanging on to their country house and British nobility trappings in interwar Yorkshire) deal, as ever, with the encroachment of modernity, family secrets with inheritance-related implications, potential health crises and some rather meekly drawn romantic entanglements in Downton Abbey: A New Era, a theatrically released sequel that has the feel of a double episode of the TV series.

Can you just show up at Downton Abbey having never before visited with Lord Grantham, a.k.a. Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville), and his American wife, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), and their politely sniping daughters, Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Edith (Laura Carmichael)? Maybe. There isn’t so much context needed here that you won’t get the “this moment is sad” or “this moment is shocking” melodrama that drives the story. But I think you might be a bit lost in all the below-stairs characters and random children and spouses, both seen and unseen.

The movie starts with the marriage of Tom Branson (Allen Leech) to Lucy (Tuppence Middleton), secret daughter of Maud (Imelda Staunton), who was some kind of fancy Crawley cousin we met in the last movie. (If there was a title card to tell us when we are, I missed it but Wikipedia says the year is 1928.) Tom, widower of a third Crawley daughter, learns shortly after the wedding that Sybbie (Fifi Hart), his daughter from that first marriage, has been designated as the inheritor of a villa in the south of France. Violet (Maggie Smith), Robert’s mother and the matriarch whose cutting world view has run the family until recently, has herself recently inherited the villa from a man she knew years ago (exactly when she knew him and what “knew” means becomes a bit of intrigue). Violet’s intention is to give young Sybbie a future inheritance similar to the rest of her generation of titled and monied cousins but the existence of the villa and this mysterious French man has the family in a tizzy. The man’s son, Montmirail (Jonathan Zaccai), invites Robert and Tom to France to check out the property and solidify Sybbie’s inheritance position. Ultimately, Robert brings a whole posse: Cora, Tom, Lucy, Maud, for no particular reason Edith and her husband Bertie (Harry Hadden-Paton), lady’s maid Miss Baxter (Raquel Cassidy), valet Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle) and, mostly to get him out of the hair of the Downton people, butler emeritus Mr. Carson (Jim Carter).

Their absence from Downton corresponds with the arrival of a movie crew that has offered a roof-fixing amount of money to shoot on location. Mary accepted the offer and stayed to oversee the situation. She strikes up a friendship with director Jack Barber (Hugh Dancy), who is making a silent film with stars Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock) and Guy Dexter (Dominic West) just at the moment when talkies are starting to crush the silent films at the box office. This is particularly worrisome for Myrna, who has the look of glamor and refinement but the voice of her more humble background. Goings on with this group include Downton staff Daisy (Sophie McShera) and Anna (Joanne Froggatt) being star-struck (and then disenchanted with the real-life star), Jack and Mary’s friendship (with “maybe more” flickerings as Mary deals with the disappointment of an absent husband — I guess Matthew Goode could not fit even a last-minute appearance in his schedule for this go-around), Guy Dexter’s wooing of current Downton butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier), and Mr. Molesley’s (Kevin Doyle) unexpected prowess as a screenwriter.

Looking back at this description, I can see how I’ve just listed a lot of “who cares” if you’ve never watched the TV show. Thinking “ha, good for you Molesley” or “is Thomas going to find happiness?” is probably the principal source of enjoyment for this movie. Yes, fitting in all of these little bits of story for supporting characters does at times feel scattershot, and many stories don’t seem to get the development they’d deserve. (In particular, the Thomas Barrow/Guy Dexter maybe-romance feels a little underbaked, perhaps the result of not wanting to entirely write Thomas out of any future stories?) But to some extent what we’re watching is a season run at triple speed, not necessarily a stand-alone story.

The movie does manage to craft a few quiet moments between two characters with emotional history. We get nice conversations between Violet and Isobel (Penelope Wilton), between Mary and Mr. Carson, between Robert and Cora. These moments are only meaningful if you have the context of the series to draw from, but for fans they offer a nice little treat.

This latest Downton has a lot in common with your standard Marvel movie, with its bits of fan service and Easter eggs of past plot lines. And like a middle-of-the-road Marvel entry, it does what it needs to do without necessarily doing anything new or different or exciting. Want to cheer for some favorite characters and triumphs big and small? Downton Abbey: A New Era fills the bill just fine. B

Rated PG for suggestive references, language and thematic elements (though this movie is way tamer than even the series ever was), according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Simon Curtis with a screenplay by Julian Fellows, Downton Abbey: A New Era is two hours and four minutes long and distributed by Focus Features

Featured photo: Downton Abbey: A New Era.

Firestarter (R)

Things get toasty when a young girl gets angry in Firestarter, a new adaptation of the Stephen King novel.

Based on some light Wikipedia-ing, this does seem to be an entirely new riff on the book and not some universe-continuation something with the 1984 Drew Barrymore version. There is an early 1980s vibe attached to this movie, even though the first date we see on the screen is from footage of college students Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) and Andy (Zac Efron) being interviewed on some scratchy video from way back in technologically primitive, er, 2008? Also, when we meet little girl Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), she may be pouty about not having wi-fi and smart phones but her clothes seem straight out of the E.T. wardrobe department, which adds to the movie’s overall out-of-time feel.

Vicky and Andy are technology-eschewing parents living in a small Maine town who disagree about whether their middle-school-ish daughter Charlie needs to “push it down and bury it” (Andy’s point of view) or “learn to control it” (Vicky’s preference). The “it” is the catchall for Charlie’s abilities, the most worrisome of which is her ability to start fires with her mind. Or rather, her not-quite-controllable tendency to start fires when she gets really mad. I guess she had been “pushing it down” but lately she finds that peer bullying about her weirdness is getting to her, leading to a little explosion in the school bathroom.

As Vicky and Andy had always feared, this incident puts Charlie on the radar of the government agency that had a hand in the college experiment that gave Vicky and Andy their powers (or heightened preexisting powers or something). Vicky had simply stopped using her telekinesis but Andy had used his ability to psychically “push” people to give people hypnotism-like smoking cessation treatments (but for cash only, one of his many “stay off the grid” procedures). The parents worry that Charlie’s abilities, with her since birth, will make her a test subject (and maybe worse) for the government that will hold her hostage for the rest of her life. They intend to take off, running and disappearing as they always have, but they are not quick enough to escape Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes), another person with superhuman abilities sent by the shady Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben) to bring in Charlie and her parents.

Most of the powers of the people here are activated via staring — there’s a lot of close-ups on eyes, a lot of times we see Charlie squint or glare before something explodes. If a staring-heavy movie is playing it straight (which this movie is), there isn’t going to be a lot of room for deep character insights and subtle performances. Everybody here is basically fine, giving it their mostly-all. Reuben is an entertaining villain-in-a-suit; Efron brings the slightest whiff of humanity to “dad of main character.”

“Low-fi” is the description that settled into my brain about this movie, from the score that had occasional Casio-like notes to the opening credits that gave very Halloween-movies-remake vibes to the wardrobe choices to the pacing to the, well, everything. Perhaps for that reason, the movie never felt like it was asking all that much of me nor did I find myself expecting all that much from it. Slightly above average pizza, $12 per bottle red wine and this movie all feel like they are operating on the same level — sort of comfortable and enjoyable without being in any way stand-out — and feel like they create the natural combination for how this movie is best viewed. You need to watch something/eat something/drink something effort-free after a long week and this movie needs you to be not super picky about plot or acting expectations. C+

Rated R for violent content, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Keith Thomas with a screenplay by Scott Teems, Firestarter is an hour and 34 minutes long and distributed by Universal Studios in theaters and via Peacock.

Featured photo: Firestarter.