Category: Film Reviews

PERSUASION EDITION

Persuasion (PG)

Dakota Johnson, Cosmo Jarvis.

Also starring Richard E. Grant, Henry Golding and Nikki Amuka-Bird. The mopiest of Jane Austen’s big four novels (the others being Emma, Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice; Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park have always seemed like the Austen B-team), Persuasion is the tale of Anne Elliot (Johnson), the sensible middle daughter of a titled but indebted family, who is still mourning the loss of Frederick Wentworth (Jarvis), the Navy man she was engaged to but then broke up with at 19. He was a poor sailor, and family friend Lady Russell (Amuka-Bird), who served as Anne’s mother figure after the death of her own mom, felt the match was all wrong for Anne. Lady Russell convinced Anne to give Wentworth up but Anne never got over him and never married anyone else. Now she’s in her late twenties and, as she tells us in some direct-to-camera chatter, still self-medicating with long baths and lots of wine.

Anne is thrown back into the path of her ex when Wentworth, now wealthy and looking to marry, visits Anne’s sister Mary (Mia McKenna-Bruce, doing a lot of fun things as the whiniest Elliot sister) and her extended family, with whom Anne is staying now that her family has been forced to rent out their fancy manor house. Anne can’t figure out how Wentworth feels about her now and, despite being pretty mouthy in a way that is not exactly canon for this character, can’t seem to communicate her own feelings to him.

Acerbic chattiness and excessive drinking are two of many ways this Anne doesn’t exactly jibe with the Anne Austen fans might know from the book or earlier movie adaptations. One of the others is that she is Dakota freakin’ Johnson and an obvious knockout whereas book Anne has always felt to me like someone who thinks of herself as a wallflower who blooms according to the circumstances. I get what this movie seems to be doing, with its “what if Bridgerton plus Dickinson to the power of Fleabag” approach, but for me Anne’s character just doesn’t work. The 2020 Emma highlighted what a jerk the Emma character could be, but it did this by making that existing element of the character bolder. Here, I feel like the movie invented a new Anne (someone maybe closer to an Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice) and then shoved her in book Anne’s story, with the two elements always in opposition. It’s never clear why this Anne let herself be “persuaded” away from her bae in the first place and why she stayed that way all these years, even as she becomes a Regency-era Daria.

That said, I didn’t hate it or at least I didn’t hate this Persuasion as much as headlines suggest other reviewers hated it. It’s the first Persuasion I’ve seen that dug a little more into the Anne/Lady Russell relationship. You understand how these two women could remain close in spite of the persuasion-ing that has made Anne so unhappy.

I also liked everything to do with Mary and her in-laws, the comic-relief-y Musgrove family. They feel less goofy and more like full characters than in previous iterations. And this movie gets the tone of the William Elliot (Golding) character maybe better than any other movie I’ve seen. He is the right amount of “up to something” and charming and very open about all of it in a way that would be appealing to a brainy girl like Anne. And, for what it’s worth, the movie does a pretty good job of demonstrating how to cast actors of color in period stories that don’t include characters of color: you just do it. It works great here and allows this huffily received movie to at least get to be part of the “Henry Golding having fun on screen” film genre.

Persuasion feels like a “for Austen completists only” product but, as just such a person, I’m not mad that I watched it. B- Available on Netflix.

This newest Persuasion had me wanting to remember how other adaptations had approached the story. Here’s a look at some of the other Persuasion adaptations available for viewing. I’m not including Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, the novel of which claims a loose connection to Persuasion, for the carefully considered and scholarly reason that I don’t wanna.

Modern Persuasion (PG, 2020)

Alicia DeWitt, Bebe Neuwirth.

Also Mark Moses (a “hey it’s that guy” from like everything on TV; maybe you remember him as Duck Phillips on Mad Men) and Liza Lapira (who is fun on The Equalizer) and Shane McRae as the love interest.

Here, instead of the central family living at Kellynch Hall, Keller Keller-Lynch is the name of some kind of PR firm that has gone through hard times recently and had to downsize from offices in Manhattan to, gasp, Brooklyn. Wren Cosgrove (DeWitt), this movie’s Anne, is a loyal worker, giving her all to Keller-Lynch. Perhaps this is because she can’t get over her decision not to follow her college boyfriend Jasper Owen (I’m sure McRae is a nice person but he leaves absolutely no impression in this role) to San Francisco. Her aunt, Vanessa (Neuwirth), was insistent that Wren not give up her career for a man and while Wren agreed at the time, she has grown to wish she’d chosen differently.

Jasper, now the CEO of a company that does some app thing, interviews Keller-Lynch to run his PR, putting him and Wren back in contact. The firm’s social media girls (Tedra Millan, Daniella Pineda) stand in for the Musgrove sisters as the young women Owen flirts with, and instead of a title-protecting cousin Wren gets her flirting action from Tyler (Chris O’Shea), a guy at a rival PR firm.

This movie is incredibly lightweight and has that quickie rom-com feel of Hallmark movies and some of the more discount-y Netflix romances. It’s perfectly fine as “something that’s on”-level entertainment but it doesn’t offer much else in the way of romance or comedy or any fun twist to the original story. C- Available via Hulu and Amazon Prime and I guess you could pay money to buy or rent it but, like, I wouldn’t.

Persuasion (NR, 2007)

Sally Hawkins, Rupert Penny-Jones.

Penny-Jones, this ITV movie’s Wentworth, was apparently the mayor in the recent The Batman, IMDb informs me. Also here are Tobias Menzies (of The Crown, Outlander and Game of Thrones, among many other things), as Wentworth’s romantic rival for Anne, William Elliot. And see Watcher Giles himself, Anthony Head.

Head is pretty perfect as the vain and oblivious Walter Elliot, father of Anne (Hawkins), who believes himself to be much better than everyone despite having completely decimated his family financially. This very faithful, in story and in period, telling hits all the familiar points: Anne goes to stay with her sister Mary (Amanda Hale) and her family only to find herself reintroduced to Frederick Wentworth (Penny-Jones), the naval officer she loved but was persuaded to dump years earlier.

What this movie offers that others don’t is more of a window on Wentworth and his feelings. He’s still angry when he first sees Anne again and it’s clearer here than in other tellings that his flirtation with another woman is more about his reaction to Anne than his genuine attempts to find a non-Anne wife.

Coming in at just over 90 minutes, this adaptation is worth a watch for Austen fans — if you can find it. As far as I can tell, it’s not available for rent or purchase and only available to stream with BritBox, which I got a month’s subscription to just for this project and now excuse me while I go watch the eleventyjillion gardening-based shows that this service offices. B Available on BritBox.

Persuasion (PG, 1995)

Amanda Root, Ciarán Hinds.

This is my OG Persuasion, the one I can’t help but measure all other Persuasions against. Wikipedia says this movie appeared on TV in the U.K. and got a small theatrical release in the U.S. But I suspect it found most of its audience the way first I saw it, on VHS (ask your grandparents about ye olde video stores). Austen was having a bit of a moment in cinema — Sense and Sensibility would be released later in 1995 and the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice (or, as you may know it, “the one with Colin Firth and the wet shirt”; kids, ask your moms) aired in the U.K. in fall 1995 and on A&E in early 1996, according to Wikipedia.

Thusly, I don’t know if it’s nostalgia or some kind of imprinting or solely on the basis of the performance that Amanda Root is, for me, the just-right Anne. She isn’t a wimp but she isn’t outgoing. She’s smart and capable but she’s not some anachronistic trailblazer. Because she’s capable, she seems to get her family’s messiness plopped on her to deal with — closing up the house when the Elliots move to Bath to economize without, you know, looking like they’re economizing, and dealing with her aggrieved sister Mary (Sophie Thompson), who is always believing herself to be ill. (Is she bored with her life and illness is the only acceptable way to throw off the expected duty of a wife and mother? Or is she truly ill but society at the time sees women’s pain only as a sign of moral weakness? — Free essay ideas!)

This Wentworth (Hinds) is more of a mystery; we are definitely looking at their relationship and its effects on Anne through her eyes.

This movie might have the most malevolent-seeming group of Elliot family and associates. Whereas other Ladies Russell often seem to soften on Wentworth or at least seem to want a happy Anne more than they want to stick to their guns, this Lady Russell (Susan Fleetwood) really does not seem to budge, seeming to pressure Anne to consider the extra shady William Elliot (Samuel West). This Elizabeth (Phoebe Nicholls), Anne’s snooty older sister, is a particular sour lemon of a person.

These BBC Austens are not fast-paced laughs-a-minute but they are enjoyable adaptations, particularly if you know the books and enjoy seeing the smaller characters and details brought to life. I deeply enjoyed watching it again and, even after 27 years, I think it holds up. A Available to rent or purchase.

Rational Creatures

Kristina Pupo, Peter Giessl.

OK, technically this one isn’t a movie but a web series. The first season is available at rationalseries.wixsite.com and a second season is scheduled to drop this summer, according to the website. Here, Ana Elias (Pupo) and Fred Wentworth (Giessl) are modern twentysomethings. Ana goes to stay with her sister Marisol (Gabriela Diaz) after the travel agency owned by her father, Guillermo Elias (Armando Reyes), can no longer pay her. Ana, who seems like a sweet and gentle pleaser, isn’t sure what to do with her life now and is still thinking about her high school relationship with Fred, now a travel writer/internet personality.

Amanda Root might be the ur-Anne to me but Pupo perfectly captures the essential Anne qualities of being uncertain without being wimpy and being always predisposed to put others first without necessarily being a pushover. I found myself charmed at how the story unfolded and riffed on the source material. I am genuinely looking forward to the next season. B+ Available online.

Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (PG-13)

Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen.

Also Benedict Wong and Rachel McAdams return and Xochitl Gomez joins the gang as America Chavez, which is maybe a spoiler if that name means something to you. But since this movie has been in theaters since early May (and is now available on Disney+ and VOD), you have likely had that and the selection of fun surprise cameos spoiled. I had and really that was fine — this is definitely a movie that benefits from footnotes and the additional reading that is the various Marvel, in-the-MCU TV series. I will admit that I only partially did the homework, as I gave up on Wandavision after a few episodes.

Dr. Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) goes to Wanda/Scarlet Witch (Olsen) for advice when America shows up being chased by a giant octopus and telling stories of some evil hunting her through the multiverse to attempt to gain her multiverse-hopping powers. Because magic is somehow involved, Dr. Strange thinks Wanda may have the know-how to help him, an assumption that is correct but — well, But.

In many ways, this is another MCU movie dealing with the aftermath of the Thanos fight and the trauma of all that was lost but without the emotional punch of the two post-Endgame Spider-Man movies. In other ways, this is a Sam Raimi-directed movie with an obligatory Bruce Campbell appearance and some fun zombie business and cameos that even mostly-movie-Marvel fans can enjoy. Like, don’t worry too much or think too hard and you can just go along for the ride of sorcerer light-fights and Strange’s friendship with America, who brings some of that Peter Parker energy. B- Available on Disney+.

Spiderhead (R)

Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller.

Also starring Jurnee Smollett and Mark Paguio, in this movie based on a George Saunders short story and I might have just told you all the most interesting things about it.

Steve Abnesti (Hemsworth) is the oiliest of oily, obviously evil and broken-as-a-person tech bros. In this case, his specific brand of evil is pharmaceuticals, which he is beta testing on prisoners who agreed to be a part of his experiments in exchange for comfy modernist accommodations and eats cooked by incarcerated chef Lizzy (Smollett). There’s the concoction that makes test subjects find everything hilarious, the drug that makes them desperately afraid, the drug that improves their ability to verbalize all their feelings, the drug that makes them super horny. For example, despite Jeff’s affection for Lizzy, when Steve puts him in a room with Heather (Tess Haubrich), who is as uninterested in Jeff as he is in her, a dosing with the love drug has them making out almost instantly. The scariest drug of them all is Darkenfloxx, a drug that makes you physically sick and seems to sink you into a kind of internal horror.

Or is that the scariest drug? What is Steve’s real motivation here? And why does his assistant Mark (Paguio) look like whatever they’re doing has caused him to already put legal representation for the inevitable Congressional hearings on speed dial?

This movie’s best aspects are its atmospherics: the creepy-beautiful facility the subjects are kept in, the general sense of tech-corporate sinisterness, the American Psycho-like way 1980s pop music is used to suggest that someone is a psychopath. These elements are lightweight fun. But the movie itself sort of meanders and feels like it loses the thread of whatever it is it wants to do. I found myself thinking (as I often have with movies like this over the past two years) that this is another middling thriller that might have once gone to theaters in the lull of September before awards movies have really taken off or in early March, as sort of half-hearted counter-programming to some family fare. And while its absence from theaters is probably a bad sign for theatrical diversity, streaming might actually be where a movie like this is better received. Its mildly enjoyable elements can be appreciated on a “what should we watch” Wednesday evening and its fizzling out can be shrugged off. C+ Available on Netflix.

Fire Island(R)

Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang.

Five friends head to Fire Island for what might be their last weeklong summer visit with Erin (Margaret Cho) at her beach house with a pool. Erin has been bad with money and may have to sell this spot that has been this found-family’s retreat, so she tells the kind Howie (Yang), opinionated and spirited Noah (Booster), bookish Max (Torian Miller) and flirty and party-ready Keegan (Tomas Matos) and Luke (Matt Rogers). And if, in those descriptions, you’re getting hints of Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia Bennet, that is by design in this absolutely charming riff on Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. Howie doesn’t have much expectation for finding love — and he wants the full rom-com love, not just Noah’s emotions-free style of one-night stands — on Fire Island but he and the sweet and handsome Charlie (James Scully) become instantly smitten with each other. Charlie’s friends, on the other hand, are kind of a nightmare — snobby, vain and, in the case of Charlie’s bestie Will (Conrad Ricamora), standoffish and seemingly elitist. That’s right, Will’s the Mr. Darcy and he’s Mr. Darcy-ing with the best of them, giving Mr. Darcy gold standard Colin Firth a run for his money in being both prideful and a stone-cold hottie.

As is required, there is also a Wickham-type in the form of Dex (Zane Phillips), a man who turns Noah’s head and about whom Will has some kind of shady information.

Great performances across the board, with Ricamora and Booster bringing the electricity and Yang just a national treasure. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a lit major in possession of an Austen-appreciation is in want of a fun variation of a beloved tale. A Available on Hulu.

Cha Cha Real Smooth (R)

Cooper Raiff, Dakota Johnson.

Andrew (Raiff, who also wrote and directed this movie) has graduated from college and is ready for his next step — though what that is he isn’t yet sure. His not-quite-girlfriend has gone to Barcelona for a year and Andrew is back living with his mother (Leslie Mann), sleeping on a mattress on the floor of his 13-year-old brother David’s (Evan Assante) bedroom and exchanging passive-aggressive insults with his mom’s husband, Greg (Brad Garrett). He finds himself tasked with taking David to a friend’s bar mitzvah, one of many scheduled for the coming months. At the party, he finds himself unofficially taking over the role of party starter, getting kids out on the dance floor and having fun. He impresses the many moms in attendance, especially Domino (Johnson). They have an easy rapport, as do Andrew and Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), Domino’s daughter, who is on the autism spectrum and who finds party situations difficult.

After this first event, Andrew becomes the guy to hire for future bar and bat mitzvahs and he spends even more time with Domino and Lola, finding himself drawn into their lives.

This movie gave me serious Metropolitan and Kicking and Screaming (the Noah Baumbach movie) vibes, with its “season” of parties and its post-college uncertainty. But the tone of the movie feels fresh and modern too, with its odd (but appealing) mix of sadness and optimism and the emotional vulnerability and maturity of Andrew. These are just enjoyable people to spend time with, even when they’re struggling with their emotions or how to move forward in their life. B+ Available on Apple TV+.

Hustle

Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah.

Plus a bunch of real-life basketball players, including Juancho Hernangomez, who plays Bo Cruz.

Cruz is a super-tall guy in bad shoes, playing basketball on street courts in Spain to hustle money. Stanley Sugarman (Sandler) is sent by the Philadelphia 76ers, the basketball team for which he is a scout, to Spain to check out a different player when Stanley happens on Bo. He tracks him down and convinces him to begin the grueling process of preparing to try out for the 76ers.

What Bo doesn’t know is that Stanley’s boss, Vince (Ben Foster), the son of the man Stanley had long worked for and who recently died, leaving the team in Vince’s control, has already told Stanley he’s not interested in Bo. Vince wants Stanley to get out there and find another diamond in the rough — or, really, Vince seems to want to punish Stanley for his good relationship with his late father. But Stanley believes in Bo and is determined to get him into the NBA. Also, he’s hoping that being the man to discover such a superstar will get Stanley where he really wants to go: a coach spot.

This movie has all of the energy that Sandler brought to his performance in Uncut Gems without that anxiety-attack feeling that movie had. You get the sense that Sandler knows who Stanley is all the way down to the core of this person — his hopes, his dreams, his relationship with his wife (played by Queen Latifah) and daughter (Jordan Hull), his love of basketball. It’s a strong performance in a movie that gives you, to some extent, a classic sports story but with so much genuine, geeky love of the game that it feels loose and exciting. A Available on Netflix.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (R)

Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack.

Nancy Stokes (Thompson), not her real name, and Leo Grande (McCormack), also not exactly his name, meet when Nancy hires him to provide, er, his company for a few hours. A widow who only ever had sex with her husband, Nancy is determined not just to have sex with someone else but to recapture a bit of youthful romance by sleeping with a younger man. Hence Leo, whom she picked for his good looks but whose handsomeness she finds kind of intimidating in person. Actually, she seems to find everything about their situation intimidating — terrifying even — now that she’s actually in this hotel room with him. And that is really the movie, Thompson’s Nancy working through a lifetime of Stuff while also determined, rather unromantically so, to get the job done. Her defensiveness veers into insult on occasion and she ignores Leo’s attempts to wave her away from his boundaries about talking about his “real” life. She also makes the most amazing expressions, say, looking at herself in the mirror or trying to relax into something like a “mood,” all twitchy discomfort and weighed down by decades of negativity and shame.

I realize that might not sound like the best of times, but this movie — which is mostly just those two actors in a hotel room — is a real pleasure. Nancy reminds me a bit of Michelle Yeoh’s character in Everything Everywhere All At Once in that she is a full and complete grown person and also at times a bit of a mess. It’s nice to see older women, well, at all in movies but it’s nice when they are drawn as people with all this life happening in the present, not just as people The Notebook-ing back on some prior time. Thompson makes Nancy into someone we get to know and by the end of the movie we’re able to see her life from her perspective. B+ Available on Hulu.

Father of the Bride (PG-13)

Andy Garcia, Gloria Estefan.

Billy (Garcia) and Ingrid (Estefan) Herrara are moments away from announcing to their family that they’re getting a divorce — or, rather, Ingrid is moments away from telling her grown daughters Sofia (Adria Arjona) and Cora (Isabela Merced) and assorted abuelas and tios and other members of their large Cuban-American Miami family that she’s had it with Billy. But then Sofia announces that she’s engaged and that she wants to marry fiance Adan (Diego Boneta) before they move to Mexico, where he’s from, to work as a lawyer for an immigration-related nonprofit. Billy has several problems with all of this, including who the heck is Adan, and “non” profit? But Sofia is determined that they can pull off the intimate wedding she wants in the two months before she starts her new job. Billy, full of father-of-the-bride traditions, wants something grander; even grander still are the plans of Hernan (Pedro Damián), Adan’s father and, as it turns out, one of the richest men in Mexico.

This HBOMax version of Father of the Bride is pleasant — full of pleasant characters and the occasional light chuckle. Garcia and Estefan might be parents of the bride but they are the true leads and they’re entertaining enough together. If you can’t go to Miami but want a quick hit of light Miami-ness, you could do worse. B- Available on HBO Max.

Jerry and Marge Go Large (PG-13)

Bryan Cranston, Annette Bening.

Somewhere between the coupon-scam movie Queenpins and the townfolk-buy-a-racehorse movie Dream Horse exists this tale of a retiree who finds a mathematical path for a sure-thing lottery win. Jerry (Cranston) reluctantly retires from his job and finds himself just sort of kicking around his small Michigan town, not quite sure what to do with himself or how to connect with his wife, Marge (Bening). While drinking coffee at the local general store, he stumbles on the rules to a lottery game called Windfall. He figures out that by purchasing a large number of tickets when the jackpot hits a certain level and the rules about how many matching numbers get payouts become more player-friendly he can nearly ensure that he will win back more than the cost of the tickets.

He runs a few experiments and manages to make $15,000, but then Marge finds out. He thinks she’ll be upset but she’s sort of delighted. Not only are they making money, but it’s something for them to do together. When Michigan ends the Windfall game, they discover that the closest state with the game and the same rules is Massachusetts and Jerry realizes that they can make bigger hauls if they bet with more money. Soon he’s created a betting corporation with friends and family from his town chipping in and reaping the rewards.

Of course, a loophole like this isn’t something only Jerry can find. Harvard student/bro-villain Tyler (Uly Schlesinger) finds the mathematical quirk while working on a project about the lottery. He gathers together some students to run a similar scheme, but when he finds out about Jerry and his group, Tyler decides this small-stakes lotto isn’t big enough for the both of them.

You could also throw your old-men-bank-robbery movie Going in Style into the tank where this movie is swimming. Like all those movies, this isn’t fresh or surprising storytelling but it is, basically, affable. Just because most of the characters have a bit of a cartoon quality to them in terms of their lack of dimension doesn’t mean they aren’t still mildly enjoyable to watch on screen. Jerry and Marge Go Large is light but acceptable. B- Available on Paramount+.

Senior Year (R)

Rebel Wilson, Sam Richardson.

Also Mary Holland, Zoe Chao, Justin Hartley and Chris Parnell.

In 2002, cheer squad captain Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice) is days away from achieving her vision of the perfect life: She’ll be going to prom with her handsome boyfriend, Blaine (Tyler Barnhardt), where she fully expects to win prom queen and then they’ll get married and move into her dream house and live happily ever after.

Except at the pre-prom pep rally, Stephanie’s rival Tiffany (Ana Yi Puig) causes a stunt to go wrong and Stephanie lands with such a thud that she’s sent into a coma for 20 years. When she wakes up she’s horrified to learn that the strange 37-year-old woman looking at her is actually Stephanie’s (Wilson) own reflection in the mirror and that the world around her has moved on. Uncertain of what to do with her life, she capitalizes on the fact that her childhood friend Martha (Holland) is now the high school’s principal and she goes back to school to finish the one month left of her senior year. While Martha and Seth (Richardson), another friend from the old days, are still around (Seth is now the school’s library), so is Tiffany (Chao), now married to Stephanie’s old boyfriend Blaine (Hartley) and the mom of Bri (Jade Bender), the school’s new queen bee.

This comedy offers a blend of Big/13 Going On 30-type kid brain in adult body comedy, Strangers With Candy and its inappropriate adult in a high school setting, and the 21 Jump Street movie with its comedy about Gen X/elder millennial-types encountering modern high school culture. It is not quite as smart, funny or sharp as any of those properties, but it has its moments. What Wilson lacks in emotional range she makes up for, to some degree, in willingness to be as ridiculous as the scene requires.

Senior Year isn’t a good movie but it feels like the kind of movie that could hit you at the right moment and be a thoroughly satisfying movie, with its occasionally successful bits of silliness, multiple dance numbers, turn-of-the-millennium jokes and the affability of its cast. C+ Available on Netflix.

The Bubble (R)

Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal.

Also Peter Serafinowicz, Rob Delaney, Maria Bakalova, Leslie Mann, Iris Apatow, Keegan-Michael Key, David Duchovny, Fred Amisen, Kate McKinnon and so many more in this Judd Apatow-directed and co-written endeavor. Gillan, Mann, Duchovny, Key, Pascal and young Apatow play the central characters shooting the sixth movie of a dinosaur-based action franchise in a pandemic movie-set bubble at an English estate. Their time on the shoot begins with a 14-day quarantine wherein we watch actress Carol (Gillan) nearly lose her mind. Then the actors continue to drive each other crazy while they begin the movie itself, what with all the jockeying for a better lines, the various dramas of their personal lives and the cabin fever of being confined to a hotel.

Coming in at more than two hours, The Bubble very much feels like an extended director’s cut on a concept that was still being worked out even as the movie was being shot, with lots of flabbiness and seemingly every idea that anyone had depicted on screen. Particularly in the first half or even first two thirds, you almost feel like you’re watching a collection of sketches on a theme more than a straightforward narrative. The movie pulls itself together toward the end, finding a (relatively) tighter pacing and more laughs.

While I would be happy to never watch another pandemic-related bit of content ever again, The Bubble is more of a “movie set” movie than a “pandemic” movie and its affability builds as it goes along. And it helps that the cast is full of people who seem to understand the assignment and are having fun. It’s a perfectly serviceable bit of comedy to have on when you are looking to devote 40 to 63 percent of your attention to something. B- Available on Netflix.

The New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival kicks off Thursday, March 31, and runs through Sunday, April 10, with 16 films in all — 11 features, five shorts and four in-person screenings. Most of the movies also will be available virtually, either during the festival itself or during a bonus week, April 11 through April 24.

Tickets start at $12 for individual screenings or you can buy packages for screenings of all movies, virtual only ($118) or in-person and virtual ($130 for one person, $180 for two). See nhjewishfilmfestival.com for details and check out Meghan Siegler’s story on page 10 of the March 24 (last week’s) issue of the Hippo (which you can find at hippopress.com).

Thanks to the organizers, I got advance screenings to a few of the films.

The festival kicks off with an in-person screening of The Automat at the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St. in Manchester) on Thursday, March 31, at 7 p.m. with a post-film discussion with director Lisa Hurwitz and collector/restorer Steve Stollman. If you can’t make it to that screening, you can also watch the movie during the virtual screening bonus week.

Either way, this movie, like the coffee it so lovingly describes, is well worth the price. This is an absolute charmer of a documentary about the Horn & Hardart chain of automats, which dominated the New York and Philadelphia restaurant scene in the early and mid 20th century. Put a nickel in a slot and open the compartment to reveal the pie or sandwich or creamed spinach you’d been craving, and another nickel gets you coffee so good that Mel Brooks sings a song about it over the documentary’s closing credits. Brooks appears throughout the documentary along with Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould explaining the place of this democratizing but also stylish eatery in their youth and young adulthood. (Descriptions of the restaurants’ gleaming floors, brass fixtures and high ceilings reminded me of discussions of similar era movie palaces and suggest a real luxury-for-all approach to design in public spaces — in case anybody is looking for a senior thesis.) Also appearing here are Wilson Goode, former mayor of Philadelphia, as well as Colin Powell and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, discussing both the food (there’s a lot of pie talk, be prepared to get hungry) and the social vibe created by a space where a business exec, a member of New York’s booming (in the 1920s) female workforce and a blue-collar worker would share a table and where recent immigrants to New York could feel welcome.

You also get the business side of the restaurant — how it rose and the forces that led to its fall. It’s a delightful story told with great fondness and humor.

I had the great good fortune of watching Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen at the start of Oscar weekend and it was a perfect way to kick off a weekend of thinking about the art and craft of movies. This documentary (which will be available during the bonus week) offers a great examination of all parts of the movie-making process as it looks at how the successful Broadway musical was translated into the 1971 movie. The songs and the way director Norman Jewison wanted to block a scene influenced the production design, just as the casting of the actresses and finding their comfortable key influenced the way John Williams brought the music of the stage musical to the screen. How do you recreate the look of a turn-of-the-20th-century shtetl in Ukraine some 60-plus years later, after wars and during the Cold War? Jewison discusses finding an Anatevka-like village in the former Yugoslavia.

Jeff Goldblum narrates this documentary, which features interviews with the three actresses who played the older daughters, Topol (the actor who played Tevye), and members of the film crew as well as people, like critic Kenneth Turan, talking about the story and the movie from a cultural-relevance perspective.

The shorts program features five films and you can purchase 48-hour access to the five-film block at any time from March 31 to April 10. The films are Ganef, Beefies, The Shabbos Goy, Mazel Tov Cocktail and The Tattooed Torah and they are a diverse mix in terms of style, tone and theme.

The Tattooed Torah presents as an animated storybook, with the screen panning across pictures but with people popped out from the background to give depth and blinking eyes and other small animated details that add a liveliness to the scenes. Ed Asner narrates the story of a boy and a beloved Torah in Czechoslovakia before and during World War II. The story is based on a book of the same name written by Marvell Ginsburg and illustrated by Martin Lemelman.

As with that movie, Masel Tov Cocktail slips bits of history into its tale about a teenager named Dima (Alexander Wertmann), a post-Cold War Jewish-Russian immigrant to Germany. He wrestles with his frustration, all teenage righteousness and humor, over the way Germans — the prejudiced and the well-meaning — pull him into their views of World War II and what their ancestors did (or, as some claim, definitely weren’t a part of). The short is the fourth directing credit (all shorts) for directors Arkadij Khaet and Mickey Paatzsch, according to IMDb, and it has that entertaining, scrappy indie film energy.

Ganefwill be familiar to viewers of the 2021 Manhattan Short Film Festival. It’s a tight drama about the residual effects of trauma that features Sophie McShera (best known as Daisy from Downton Abbey) playing Lynn, the housekeeper to the Hirth family, who live in an upper-class house in England. Mrs. Hirth (Lydia Wilson) tells her young daughter Ruthie (Izabella Dzeiwanska) that people can’t take what they don’t know you have — a lesson she learned as a child in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s a smartly told story that clocks in at about 14 minutes.

Beefies is a charming tale about Josh (Adam Lebowitz-Lockard), a man trying to figure out the recipe to his late mother’s “beefies” dish. (Lebowitz-Lockard wrote and directed Beefies; on the website he describes the dish as his own mother’s “sort of beef stew/stroganoff dish of meat and veggies” which he hasn’t been able to reverse engineer since she died.). In Beefies, Josh finds clues in his mother’s papers but realizes that to get answers he’ll have to call Mark (Goran Ivanovski), the brother he’s been estranged from. The movie is a sweet family tale that gets bonus points for the rare good use of pandemic as story point.

The Shabbos Goy is my favorite of the pack. This movie stars Milana Vayntrub, perhaps still best known as the lady from the AT&T commercials. As the movie poster explains, the titular person is a non-Jewish person who performs certain tasks that religious law prohibits a Jewish person from doing on the Sabbath or, more succinctly, “a human loophole.” During a gathering with her family and her future in-laws, Hannah (Vayntrub) is desperate to keep her engagement on track but won’t break the Sabbath by turning off her, er, personal device when it is accidentally activated. She runs out to find a non-Jewish person to help her, leading her to Davian (Devere Rogers), who first tries to ignore her when she crazily tries to wave him down. The movie is written and directed by Talia Osteen, who has a director credit on the Hulu movie Sex Appeal (also a fun trailer) and it is executive produced by Paul Feig.

Oscar wrap-up

If there’s one thing you’ll remember from last Sunday’s Oscars, it’s that you need to watch CODA.

OK, one other thing.

Truly, though, if you have “meh-ed” at Oscar nominees — which isn’t an unfair response in 2021 when the movies never fully felt back — hopefully CODA’s wins will entice you to check it out. It won for best picture, best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor for Troy Kotsur, who co-starred with Marlee Matlin as the deaf parents of a hearing teen (Emilia Jones) in this truly heartwarming movie. It’s on Apple TV+.

Another winner worth seeking out is Summer of Soul (… Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the documentary that won Questlove an Oscar (which you may have missed while Googling “Chris Rock Will Smith was it a bit?”). That excellent documentary about the multi-concertHarlem Cultural Festival is on Hulu and Disney+ and is available for rent or purchase (and you can also purchase the very excellent soundtrack).

Another winner that might have gotten lost in the evening’s proceedings for a different reason (it was one of the awards cut from the broadcast and then deep-faked back in, as writer Chris V. Feil described in a tweet) was The Queen of Basketball, the winning documentary short, which is available on nytimes.com. It’s a charming profile of Lucy Harris, a star college (and Olympic) basketball player in the 1970s who was drafted by, but never played for, the New Orleans Jazz.

Then feel free to shut the book on the whole messy 2021 in the Oscar-verse, with its category strife, its lack of real surprises among the winners (though my swing-for-the-fences guesses led to my still only correctly predicting a little more than half the winners) and all-over-the-place ceremony even before the infamous slap. Or, at least, shut the book after one more watch of the beautifully staged Beyonce opener and the uneven but lively at least “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” remix.