Review: ‘Showing Up’ (2023), starring Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, John Magaro, André Benjamin and Judd Hirsch

April 7, 2023

by Carla Hay

Michelle Williams and Hong Chau in “Showing Up” (Photo by Allyson Riggs/A24)

“Showing Up” (2023)

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

Culture Representation: Taking place in Portland, Oregon, the comedy/drama film “Showing Up” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An introverted sculptor artist, who works for an arts college, must contend with a variety of challenges, including a difficult landlord, getting her art ready in time for an upcoming exhibit, her divorced parents and a troubled brother with mental health issues. 

Culture Audience: “Showing Up” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Michelle Williams, filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and realistic movies about neurotic people in quirky communities.

André Benjamin and Michelle Williams in “Showing Up” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Showing Up” is right in line with writer/director Kelly Reichardt’s pattern of doing low-key movies about people who are emotionally stifled in some way. The last third movie is not as good as the rest of the film, but it’s still a watchable story. Viewers who are expecting “Showing Up” to have a lot of melodrama, suspenseful action or shocking surprises will be disappointed. In keeping with Reichardt’s filmmaking style, “Showing Up” is a movie about people going about their everyday lives and facing challenges that aren’t that unusual. “Showing Up” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and also screened the 2022 New York Film Festival.

Reichardt co-wrote “Showing Up” with Jonathan Raymond after they originally wanted to do a biopic about Canadian artist Emily Carr (who died in 1945, at the age of 73), but Reichardt and Raymond abandoned the idea when they found out how famous Carr is in Canada. Instead, they made “Showing Up” a fictional film about a sculptor artist named Lizzy Carr (played by Michelle Williams), who is not famous and is living a quiet and unassuming life in Portland, Oregon.

Lizzy is a sculptor artist whose day job is working in administration at a small arts college. (The college scenes in “Showing Up” were filmed at now-defunct Oregon College of Art and Craft, which closed in 2019.) Lizzy is introverted and lives by herself. When she’s at home, she prefers to work on her art and doesn’t like being interrupted. Lizzy doesn’t get her art in gallery exhibits very often. And so, the upcoming gallery exhibit that she has is a very big deal for her.

Most of Lizzy’s sculptor pieces are the size of figurines and are often of people sculpted in ragged shapes. Lizzy wants to finish all of her art on time for this exhibit, but several things happen during the course of the story that prevent her for working on her art in the uninterrupted way that she would prefer. “Showing Up” is mostly about how she deals with these challenges, as well as what she learns about herself and her priorities.

In the beginning of the movie, Lizzy is dealing with one of those challenges: her landlord Jo (played by Hong Chau), who is also an artist. Jo has an annoying habit of ignoring or delaying Lizzy’s request to repair things in Lizzy’s rental home. (Jo lives nearby.) One of the movie’s early scenes shows Lizzy becoming irritated with Jo because Lizzy has no hot water for her shower, and Jo has once again been ignoring Lizzy’s requests to fix the shower.

Jo tells Lizzy that Lizzy can use Jo’s shower in the meantime. But that’s not the point. Lizzy is paying Jo rent to have working utilities in the home. Jo isn’t keeping her end of the deal as a landlord. Lizzy comments to Jo, “You’re not the only person with a deadline.” Jo’s replies, “I know, but I have two showers, which is in insane.”

Lizzy’s art in the movie was made in real life by Cynthia Lahti. Jo’s installation-sized art in the movie was made in real life by Michelle Segre. The sizes of art pieces are meant to reflect the different personalities of Lizzy and Jo. Lizzy is quiet and unassuming. Jo is extroverted and likes to call attention to herself.

Lizzy has some other issues in her life. Her mother Jean (played by Maryann Plunkett) is also her boss at work. Jean and Lizzy sometimes have disagreements that on the surface seem to be about work, but they’re really about unspoken resentments that Lizzy and Jean have toward each other. Jean thinks Lizzy is stubborn, while Lizzy thinks Jean is too demanding. Their conflicts aren’t major, but they’re enough to make the relationship slightly strained.

A lot of this mother-daughter friction has to do with how Lizzy has been affected by her parents’ divorce. Jean uses Lizzy as a go-between to communicate with Lizzy’s free-spirited father Bill (played by Judd Hirsch), who is very different from uptight and rigid Jean. Bill has let a random bohemian couple named Dorothy (played by Amanda Plummer) and Lee (played by Matt Malloy) live with Bill in his home, shortly after he met them. Dorothy and Lee, who are from Canada, say they’re just “visiting,” but they haven’t told Bill when they’ll be leaving.

Jean thinks that Bill is being taken advantage of by this couple, because she’s pretty sure these new housemates are not giving Bill any compensation for his hospitality. Because Jean is Bill’s ex-wife and no longer lives with him, she doesn’t have a say on how he lives his life. However, Jean is pressuring Lizzy to talk to Bill about his living arrangement with these two new housemates. Lizzy doesn’t really want to get involved, so she resents that her mother is trying to use her as a pawn.

Meanwhile, Lizzy has a younger brother named Sean (played by John Magaro), who’s been struggling with mental health issues, which have led to him being homeless at various times in his life. Jean is in deep denial about Sean’s mental health issues. Jean thinks Sean is a “genius” who doesn’t need psychiatric help, while Lizzy has a completely opposite opinion.

When Sean has a big scene in a certain part of the movie, “Showing Up” falters because it just looks like awkward slapstick comedy. “Showing Up” loses a lot of emotional resonance in this scene where the movie could have been had its strongest and most meaningful impact. And frankly, it seems like this mentally ill character is just used in the most negative, stereotypical ways, instead of treating this character as a well-rounded person.

Another wasted opportunity was in casting André Benjamin as Eric, Lizzy’s friendly co-worker who is a kiln master at the college. Benjamin shares headlining billing for this movie, but you wouldn’t know it, based it on how little screen time he has (less than 10 minutes) and how Eric ends up being a character who is completely inconsequential to any storyline in the movie. Quite frankly, Eric looks like a token character in “Showing Up,” as if the filmmakers wanted to show the audience: “Look, we gave an African American a speaking role the movie to make our cast look racially diverse.”

“Showing Up” also has a few subplots that might induce boredom with some viewers. Lizzy takes care of a wounded bird with a broken wing, after Jo finds the bird and hands off the responsibility of taking care of it to Lizzy. At least the wounded bird subplot (which is obvious symbolism for how Lizzy feels) actually has a purpose for the story—unlike a meandering and flimsy subplot about Lizzy and her co-workers having to accommodate an artist in residence named Marlene Heyman (played by Heather Lawless), who is diva-like and has many star-struck fans at the school.

“Showing Up” greatly benefits from having talented cast members (especially Williams and Chau), who make the movie’s characters believable when less-skilled cast members wouldn’t have been able to do the same thing. There have been many movies made about mopey male artists who’ve dedicated themselves so completely to their art, it’s affected their personal lives. Not many movies are made about this type of female artist, so viewers might have varying reactions to Lizzy’s less-than-charismatic personality. “Showing Up” is a well-acted story about the reality of most artists’ lives: far from glamorous, struggling in obscurity, and trying to be their definition of personal greatness.

A24 released “Showing Up” in select U.S. cinemas on April 7, 2023.

Review: ‘iMordecai,’ starring Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane, Sean Astin, Stephanie J. Block and Azia Dinea Hale

March 8, 2023

by Carla Hay

Azia Dinea Hale and Judd Hirsch in “iMordecai” (Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment)

“iMordecai”

Directed by Marvin Samel

Culture Representation: Taking place in Miami, the comedy/drama film “iMordecai” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latin people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Against the wishes of his wife, a Holocaust survivor secretly befriends an iPhone salesperson, who teaches him how to use his iPhone, while he has a tension-filled relationship with his son. 

Culture Audience: “iMordecai” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching family-oriented comedy/drama movies about real-life Holocaust survivors, even if many of the scenarios in the movie look very fake.

Stephanie J. Block and Sean Astin in “iMordecai” (Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment)

The disjointed comedy/drama “iMordecai” is based on a true story, but this dull movie looks more like fragmented segments of a very phony sitcom. Even with the talents of Judd Hirsch and Carol Kane, “iMordecai” is undone by misguided filmmaking. It’s one of those movies where a family member’s quirks are supposed to look charming and cute to people who watch the movie. But that’s where “iMordecai” has a big disconnect with authenticity, because in the real world, those quirks would be very annoying and bizarre.

Marvin Samel makes his feature-film debut as a director, co-writer and producer of “iMordecai,” a movie that he made about his family. The movie’s title character, Mordecai Samel, is played by Hirsch and is based on Marvin Samel’s real-life father. Marvin Samel co-wrote the maudlin “iMordecai” screenplay with Rudy Gaines and Dahlia Heyman. It’s a film that takes serious subjects, such as the Holocaust and dementia, and downplays them for the sake of creating some trite comedic moments in the film. Other problems experienced by the movie’s characters are resolved in very sitcom-like ways.

There’s really not much depth to the plot of “iMordecai,” which has irritating repetition of this theme: “Look at how quirky this old man is and how he and his son have problems in their relationship.” Mordecai is married to his longtime wife Fela (played by Kane), who is a harmless and passive oddball. Marvin (played by Sean Astin) is married to his devoted wife Netta (played by Stephanie J. Block), and they are the parents of infant twin daughters (played by Yosef Friedman and Ari Friedman). These wives are often sidelined in the story, just to contrive another scenario where Mordecai and Marvin clash with each other. Fela is diagnosed with having a form of dementia, but her dementia is barely addressed in the movie until it is used to set up an emotionally manipulative turning point in the story.

In “iMordecai,” which takes place in Miami, Mordecai is a retired plumber who stubbornly thinks that he can fix any plumbing problems, anywhere, at any time. Near the beginning of the movie, Marvin (who is the only child of Mordecai and Fela) goes to visit his parents at their high-rise apartment building. Marvin sees Mordecai is using a jackhammer to install a walk-in shower for Fela. The apartment looks like it was hit by a bomb, which is an indication that Mordecai doesn’t really know what he’s doing.

Later in the movie, in another sitcom-ish scenario, Marvin goes to visit Mordecai and finds Mordecai on a residential street, digging a hole in the grass on a sidewalk. The sidewalk is mostly likely the property of the city, and Mordecai most likely doesn’t have a permit to do this digging. But that doesn’t matter in this movie, because it’s all a setup to show Mordecai damaging a water main, which sends a gush of water flying into the air. Marvin predictably gets upset, and Mordecai acts like Marvin is just being uptight. And then, they have an argument that looks straight out of a low-quality sitcom.

Throughout the movie (whose pacing often drags and will test the patience of people looking for less flimsy repetition and more substance), scenarios are presented over and over where it’s obvious that the “iMordecai” filmmakers want viewers to think, “Oh, look at wacky Mordecai. There he goes again with his quirky antics. Isn’t he adorable?” But many of his antics are too irresponsible for someone of Mordecai’s age (he was born in 1933), and they aren’t very adorable at all.

Marvin isn’t exactly a responsible adult either. He owns a cigar company that is financially struggling, and he’s been lying to members of his family about it. Marvin has maxed out his credit cards to keep the company afloat. He irresponsibly doesn’t tell Netta until she sees a bill for a maxed-out credit card that she didn’t even know Marvin had. Marvin also can’t get any more bank loans.

Netta is worried because she and Marvin couldn’t pay their house’s mortgage for the previous month, but Marvin assures her that everything will work out for them. He tells Netta that he will take care of everything. Marvin sells his car, but that’s barely enough to pay off his debts, so he eventually decides to sell the cigar company.

Marvin has been hiding his money problems from his parents because he’s already borrowed $50,000 from Mordecai for the cigar company, and Marvin doesn’t want to ask Mordecai to borrow more money or for help in paying off Marvin’s debts. The movie then goes into a tangent that Marvin thinks Mordecai is a financial jinx for Marvin, ever since Mordecai interrupted a poker game that Marvin lost when Marvin was a teenager and playing poker with some of his buddies. The movie has a flashback to this poker game, and it’s not as funny as it was probably intended to be. (Simon Lee has the role of a teenage Marvin.)

Early on in the movie, Marvin brings Mordecai and Fela to a phone store at a local shopping mall to get Mordecai a new iPhone, because the flip phone that Mordecai has been using is worn down, barely functioning and hopelessly outdated. At the store, Mordecai meets a sales representative named Nina (played by Azia Dinea Hale), who is friendly and helpful. Nina has a co-worker named Jared (played by Nick Puga), who is an iPhone specialist. Jared is also an aspiring stand-up comedian, which becomes a weak subplot used as a setup for Mordecai to get on stage and interrupt Jared’s stand-up act when Jared flops in his stand-up routine.

Nina offers to give Mordecai private lessons to learn how to use an iPhone. The problem is that Fela is deeply superstitious about iPhones and other smartphones. Fela calls an iPhone a “brainwashing device” and says it’s “like Stalin.” “iMordecai” then becomes a tedious back-and-forth narrative: Nina and Mordecai have secret meetings where they get to know one another as friends, while Marvin tries to close a business deal for the sale of his cigar company to a potential buyer named Fernando Vazquez (played by Mike Benitez), who has a fateful chance encounter with Mordecai. (You can easily predict how this encounter affects the business deal.)

Eventually, Mordecai and Nina spend time together for platonic companionship that has nothing do with her giving him iPhone lessons. During a trip to the artsy Wynwood area of Miami (which has a lot of public art on display, such as murals), Mordecai tells Nina that he’s a painter artist. You can almost do a countdown to a scene where Nina inspires Mordecai to start painting again.

Mordecai (who was born in Poland) also tells Nina more details about his life, such as how the Holocaust affected his family, some of whom escaped to Russia, while others died in a concentration camp in Poland. The flashbacks to Mordecai’s childhood are shown as animation. Meanwhile, Nina has a secret that she’s afraid to tell Mordecai: Her recently deceased paternal grandfather used to be a Nazi guard at a concentration camp. You don’t have to be a genius to guess which concentration camp it was.

Although it’s possible this strange coincidence could have happened in real life, it looks very contrived and cringeworthy in “iMordecai,” which treats the Holocaust and how it affected Mordecai’s family in a glib way that’s very off-putting. And did we mention that Nina is also a volunteer at a local Jewish community center? She’s also estranged from her parents, for reasons that aren’t really made clear in the movie. However, it’s mentioned that Nina unfairly blames her parents (especially her father) for not telling her about her paternal grandfather’s Nazi past, even though Nina herself says that the grandfather kept it a secret from his American descendants. The secret was discovered only after he died, and his Nazi possessions were found.

The movie also has a weird tangent about Mordecai revealing that he when he was younger and working in Brooklyn, New York, he pretended that he had an identical twin brother named Martin, who was a building painter. Mordecai even had a separate business where he posed as Martin being a professional painter. It’s supposed to be an endearing joke in “iMordecai,” but the movie never gives a good reason for why Mordecai would go to such lengths for such an unnecessary lie. Apparently, Mordecai deceived customers for years with this fraud. It makes him look mentally ill, but the movie brushes it off, as if Mordecai’s elaborate deception is perfectly acceptable and not a sign of serious mental health issues.

There are so many ways that “iMordecai” rambles and wanders in the story, that it all becomes tiresome after a while. The movie has too many instances of people talking and acting very unrealistically, even though Hirsch puts in a commendable effort to make his character believable. The other cast members are serviceable in their roles, while Kane continues to be typecast as an eccentric who lives in her own world. The movie reaches a point where viewers will start to see “iMordecai” for what it is: a vanity project about a family that isn’t nearly as interesting or amusing as the “iMordecai” filmmakers want viewers to think the family is, while some serious issues are made trivial for the sake of trying to get cheap laughs.

Greenwich Entertainment released “iMordecai” in select U.S. cinemas on February 24, 2023. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on April 11, 2023.

Review: ‘The Fabelmans,’ starring Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Gabriel LaBelle and Judd Hirsch

November 11, 2022

by Carla Hay

Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Keeley Karsten, Julia Butters and Sophia Kopera in “The Fabelmans” (Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures)

“The Fabelmans”

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Culture Representation: Taking place from 1952 to 1965, in New Jersey, Arizona, and California, the dramatic film “The Fabelmans” (inspired by director Steven Spielberg’s own youth) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Sammy Fabelman’s parents have contrasting opinions about his childhood dream to become a movie director, and his home life becomes turbulent when he finds out an emotionally painful secret. 

Culture Audience: “The Fabelmans” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Spielberg and anyone interested in coming-of-age stories about famous filmmakers.

Gabriel LaBelle in “The Fabelmans” (Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures)

Steven Spielberg tells a very personal story of his youth in “The Fabelmans,” a drama that’s a partial biopic and a therapeutic life analysis. The movie’s overly long run time drags it down, but Michelle Williams gives a transcendent performance as the mother of the fictional version of Spielberg. “The Fabelmans” (which clocks in at 151 minutes) is yet another story about a young person who ends up going to Hollywood to pursue a dream. But in this case, the young person turned out to be the Oscar-winning Spielberg, who is frequently lauded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

Spielberg directed “The Fabelmans” and co-wrote the movie’s screenplay with Tony Kushner. Spielberg and Kushner previously collaborated on the 2021 remake of “West Side Story,” 2012’s “Lincoln” and 2005’s “Munich.” Spielberg has made a wide variety of films, but many of his movies—especially the ones having to do with outer-space creatures, such as 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” 1982’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and 2005’s “War of the Worlds” remake—have a few themes in common, such as people dealing with fractured families and/or families in conflict because one person in the family is determined to pursue a particular goal against tremendous odds. In “The Fabelmans,” there are no outer-space creatures, but protagonist Sammy Fabelman (a fictional character based on the real-life Spielberg) often feels like he’s a proverbial alien in his own family.

“The Fabelmans” begins in New Jersey, on January 10, 1952. Sammy is 5 years old (played by Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord), and his parents have taken him to the movies to see director Cecil B. DeMille’s circus drama “The Greatest Show on Earth,” starring Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame and James Stewart. Before they go into the move theater, Sammy’s mother Mitzi Fabelman (played by Williams) and Sammy’s father Burt Fabelman (played by Paul Dano) assure a fearful Sammy that the people who will look like giants on the big screen are just images from the movie. Sammy doesn’t know it yet, but seeing this movie will change his life.

This moviegoing scene in “The Fabelmans” also establishes from the beginning how Mitzi and Burt have two different parenting styles and contrasting outlooks on life. Burt, who is a computer engineer, tries to explain to Sammy the technical aspects of how a movie projector beams images on the screen and how a human brain processes those images. Mitzi, who is an on-again/off-again professional pianist for radio, explains movies to Sammy this way: “They’re like dreams.” In other words, Burt views life like a scientist, while Mitzi views life like an artist.

It’s later mentioned in the movie that young Sammy has anxiety and is prone to panic attacks. But since he’s a child in the 1950s, when people usually didn’t seek psychiatric care for this medical condition, Sammy doesn’t get therapy in his childhood for his anxiety. The person in his family who is most likely to calm him down is his mother Mitzi, who has mental health struggles of her own. She is the person in the family who is most likely to understand Sammy.

Sitting between his parents while watching “The Greatest Show on Earth,” Sammy is in awe and slightly afraid of what he’s seeing on the big screen. He is particularly impacted by the movie’s train-wreck scene. In this scene, a criminal who has just robbed a circus train, which is stopped on the tracks, drives his car onto the tracks to frantically stop another circus train traveling right behind the first train. His plan doesn’t work, and the second train plows into his car and the first train, causing death and some of the wild circus animals to escape.

After Sammy gets home, his parents notice that he’s become obsessed with trains. As a Hanukkah gift, Sammy’s father gives him a train set. The other members of the Fabelman household are Sammy’s younger sisters Reggie Fabelman (played by Birdie Borria) and Natalie Fabelman (played by Alina Brace).

It isn’t long before Sammy is recreating the train wreck that he saw in “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Burt gets angry because he thinks Sammy isn’t respecting the toy train and is trying to ruin it, so he temporarily takes the train set away from Sammy as punishment. He orders Sammy not to simulate a train wreck when he plays with the toy train.

“I need to see them crash,” Sammy tells his parents to explain why he likes making the train crash into a toy car. Mitzi understands why Sammy has a fascination with creating a train wreck and explains it to Burt that it’s because Sammy wants control over the train. Burt doesn’t care to understand and just thinks Sammy is being a spoiled brat.

One night, after Sammy has gotten his toy train back, Mitzi takes him into the room where the train set is. She tells Sammy that he can crash the train one more time, but they will secretly use Burt’s film camera to film everything, so Sammy can watch the train wreck over and over without actually crashing the train. Mitzi tells Sammy that this film will be their little secret.

Of course, this film is the start of Sammy’s lifelong passion to become a filmmaker. By the following year, in 1953, the Fabelmans have a new addition to the family: a baby named Lisa. Burt gets a job working as a manager at General Electric (GE) in Phoenix, Arizona. Mitzi is supportive of the move, as long as Burt can get his best friend/co-worker Bennie Loewy (played by Seth Rogen) a job at GE too. It’s mentioned several times in the movie that Burt is an exceptional engineer and a computer visionary, while Bennie is an average employee who owes much of his career to getting help from Burt.

The Fabelman kids often call Burt’s best friend Uncle Bennie, even though Bennie isn’t biologically related to them. During a Fabelman family dinner, observant viewers will notice other dynamics in Bennie’s relationship to the Fabelmans. Bennie is a friendly jokester who likes to play harmless pranks and make people laugh, especially Mitzi.

Burt’s outspoken, widowed mother Hadassah Fabelman (played by Jeannie Berlin), who is a frequent visitor in the household, isn’t too fond of Bennie. Hadassah notices how Bennie and Mitzi have a playful banter with each other. Mitzi’s widowed mother Tina Schildkraut (played by Robin Bartlett), who is much more laid-back than Hadassah, doesn’t talk much and only has a few scenes in the movie.

Burt is mild-mannered, nerdy and slow to pick up on body language and social cues to figure out how people are really feeling. He’s a classic introvert who is more likely to consider facts when making a decision. Mitzi is impulsive, moody and very attuned to people’s unsaid thoughts. Mitzi is a classic extrovert, who is more likely to consider feelings when making a decision. Burt prefers to avoid confrontations. Mitzi isn’t afraid of confrontations and will often cause them.

It’s also implied that Mitzi has an undiagnosed mental illness, which is presented in “The Fabelmans” as looking a lot like bipolar disorder. In a scene that takes place in 1953, before the family moves from New Jersey to Arizona, a tornado strikes the area where the Fabelmans live. Instead of wanting to stay safe in their house or a secure shelter, like most people would, Mitzi spontaneously decides to take Sammy, Natalie and Reggie with her in the family car to drive toward the tornado so that they can get a closer look at it. (Mitzi at least has the sense to leave baby Lisa behind with Burt.)

Mitzi makes this decision so quickly, Burt doesn’t have time to stop her, and his protests are ignored. The kids are too young to understand that Mitzi could be putting them in danger, because she acts like this is a fun joy ride. As they get closer to the tornado and the rain storm gets worse, Mitzi stops the car, and the reality sinks in that this isn’t an adventure trip after all. She begins to cry but still pretends to the children that everything is just fine as she dejectedly drives home. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to see that this incident looks like a manic episode from a person with bipolar disorder.

It’s no secret that in real life, Spielberg’s parents got divorced when he was a teenager. Spielberg has also been open about the reason why they got divorced. He talked about it in director Susan Lacy’s 2017 documentary “Spielberg,” as well as in some interviews that he’s given over the years. But the reason why is parents got divorced will be a surprise to many people who watch “The Fabelmans” for the first time, so those details won’t be revealed in this review.

However, it’s enough to say that by the time the family moves to Phoenix, the cracks in the marriage are already starting to show. “The Fabelmans” then fast-forwards to the family’s life in Arizona during the early-to-mid-1960s. Sammy is now a blossoming teenage filmmaker (played by Gabriel LaBelle), who makes short films (mostly Westerns) with his schoolmates and members of his Boy Scout troop. Sammy gets a lot of praise and admiration from most people around him for his filmmaking. Bennie is in Arizona too, working at GE with Burt and often accompanying the Fabelmans on family gatherings.

After some initial skepticism, Sammy’s father Burt eventually becomes impressed with Sammy’s talent for filmmaking, but Burt is not entirely convinced that filmmaking is a good career choice for Sammy. He often tells Sammy to pursue a more “practical” profession. Burt also keeps calling Sammy’s filmmaking a “hobby,” and Sammy is offended by Burt not taking Sammy’s filmmaking seriously as a future career. By contrast, Mitzi is Sammy’s first and biggest filmmaking fan, and she never wavers or has doubts in encouraging Sammy to become a filmmaker.

Reggie (played by Julia Butters), who’s about two or three years younger than Sammy, is intelligent, assertive and opinionated. She’s also the sister who has the closest emotional bond to Sammy, and he values her opinion. (Reggie is based on Spielberg’s real-sister Anne, who became a screenwriter.) For example, while Steven is editing his short films, he sometimes shows Nancy early cuts of the films and asks her what she thinks.

Natalie (played by Keeley Karsten), who’s about four years younger than Sammy, is a polite and obedient kid. She’s based on Steven Spielberg’s middle sister Sue, who’s actually seven years younger than he is. Sammy’s youngest sister Lisa (played by Sophia Kopera), who’s six years younger than Sammy, doesn’t have much of a personality in the movie at all. (Lisa is based on Steven Spielberg’s youngest sister Nancy, who’s actually 10 years younger than he is.)

With the Fabelman kids at an age where they are all now in school, Mitzi begins to take up professional piano playing for radio again. The family members (with Bennie) often gather in their living room to watch Mitzi practice. Burt is reluctant to give any criticism to Mitzi, while Bennie is more forthright and isn’t afraid to tell Mitzi what he thinks.

There’s a telling scene where Mitzi’s long fingernails cause a clacking noise when she plays the piano. Burt denies there’s anything wrong with that, but Bennie says it’s going to be a problem for radio listeners to hear this clacking noise during Mitzi’s piano playing. Mitzi takes pride in her long, well-manicured fingernails and doesn’t want to cut them. She eventually relents when Bennie and some of the kids playfully tackle her, and Bennie cuts her nails.

One of the most memorable sequences in “The Fabelmans” is a fateful camping trip that the family takes while living in Arizona. Everything is going well. Everyone seems to be happy. Sammy is filming everything that he can during this trip.

One night during a campfire, Mitzi spontaneously decides to do a ballet dance in front of Burt, Bennie, Sammy and Reggie while she’s wearing a thin-fabric nightgown. Sammy is filming it, of course. In order to get better lighting, Bennie turns on the headlights of a car parked nearby. The bright lights essentially cause Mitzi’s nightgown to become see-through, and it’s obviously she’s completely naked underneath the gown.

Reggie is mortified, and she runs up to her mother to tell her discreetly that everyone can see through Mitzi’s nightgown. Mitzi ignores her and keeps dancing, while Reggie pleads for her mother to stop. Mitzi keeps dancing, while an annoyed Reggie runs away and says that everyone there is crazy.

Mitzi’s only audience is now Bennie, Burt and Sammy, who keeps the camera focused on Mitzi. All of them are looking at Mitzi, almost as if they’re in a trance. Their fascination with her is for different reasons, which can all be seen on the expressions on their faces. Sammy being in awe isn’t incestuous, although it does come across as a little creepy that he’s staring at his mother’s nearly naked body.

This scene shows that Sammy is so enthralled with his filmmaking and what he’s getting on camera, it’s almost as if he forgot that the woman in the see-through gown in front of him is his own mother. When Mitzi ends the dance, she looks at everyone staring at her with a expression of satisfaction but also a tinge of sadness. Later, when the family looks at the footage, Mitzi praises Sammy by telling him, “You really see me.”

Another pivotal sequence in “The Fabelmans” happens when Mitzi’s uncle Boris (played by Judd Hirsch) shows up at the Fabelmans’ home in Phoenix for a surprise visit. This visit happens after Mitzi had a nightmarish dream that her mother Tina (Boris’ sister) called Mitzi to warn her that something was coming. According to Mitzi, Boris used to bully Tina when Tina was a child, and Mitzi grew up in fear of him too. And so, when Boris arrives at the home, Mitzi greets him with a lot of apprehension, but she eventually relaxes when she sees that Boris is nice to her and her family.

Boris, who is now an elderly man, spent much of his life as a lion trainer in the circus. He has a personality that is eccentric and “in your face.” He’s a raconteur who likes to tell stories about himself, and he has a voice that compels people to pay attention to him. In other words, it’s impossible to ignore Boris when he’s in a room.

When Boris finds out that Sammy is an aspiring filmmaker, he begins to give Sammy advice on what to expect in life if Sammy wants to be an artist. Sammy doesn’t see the connection between being an artist and a circus lion trainer, until Boris explains that there’s no art in putting your head in a lion, but there’s an art in keeping the lion from biting your head while in a lion’s mouth.

Boris warns Sammy that artists will have always have a tug of war between art and family. He also tells Sammy that being an artist also means often being very lonely. Sammy is both awed and intimidated by Boris, especially after Boris puts Sammy in headlock in an awkward way to show Sammy to remember that physical pain every time Sammy has to suffer as an artist.

The last third of “The Fabelmans” could have been its own movie because of all the things that happen. In this part of the film, the Fabelmans move once again—this time to California’s Santa Clara County, because Burt has gotten a major job offer to work for IBM. Mitzi and Sammy (who is in his last year of high school) are very unhappy with this move, and the family starts to crumble over various things. Unlike their life in Arizona, where they lived near several other Jewish families, the Fabelmans are the only Jewish family in their California neighborhood.

At school, Sammy is a misfit loner who gets bullied by the school’s star athletes, led by a conceited pretty boy named Logan Hall (played by Sam Rechner), who is also in his last year of high school. Logan has a weaselly sidekick named Chad Thomas (played by Oakes Fegley), who openly hates Jewish people. Sammy experiences some cruel antisemitism from Chad, Logan and other students who stand by and laugh when Sammy gets bullied for being Jewish.

Sammy also gets caught up in some drama between Logan’s girlfriend Claudia Denning (played by Isabelle Kusman) and Logan. It leads to Sammy getting to closer to Claudia and Claudia’s best friend Monica Sherwood (played by Chloe East), who is a self-described Jesus freak. Monica is fascinated by Sammy being Jewish, so her interest in him is a combination of teenage lust and a desire to turn him on to Christianity.

The last third of “The Fabelmans” is the best part of the movie, but it’s also the messiest. It mostly chronicles Sammy’s last year in high school in California, and it offers a glimpse into his life after high school. (Real-life filmmaker David Lynch has a noteworthy cameo as legendary filmmaker John Ford.) Sammy’s life after high school and during college is so truncated, it’s obvious to viewers that a significant part of the story is missing, to the detriment of the movie, which is already too long. In other words, this story should have been a miniseries, not a feature-length film.

However, there’s no denying that “The Fabelmans” does a stellar job of depicting Sammy coming to terms with the fantasies that he escapes to in filmmaking and the harsh realities of life. The movie also skillfully shows that the two most impactful relationships that Sammy had in his youth are Sammy’s relationship with filmmaking and Sammy’s relationship with his mother. The reasons for the family unraveling are heartbreaking but very realistic.

And it’s why Williams is such a standout in a very talented cast. Her portrayal of Mitzi is far from stereotypical and shows many depths and layers to this complicated person. Mitzi has wonderful qualities as well as damaging flaws. Williams makes this character a full, authentic human being, not just someone reciting lines and emoting on screen.

The other principal cast members do well in their roles. Dano is convincing in playing a character who represses a lot of emotions and denies a lot of problems until it’s too late. LaBelle also turns in an admirable performance, considering it’s not easy for any actor to know that he’s playing a young version of Steven Spielberg. Rogen is perfectly fine as family friend Bennie, but this character doesn’t have a lot of screen time, and Rogen (who’s mostly known as a comedic actor) has had better roles to show his dramatic abilities.

“The Fabelmans” is a specific story but it’s also universal to anyone who can relate to pursuing dreams, even when people doubt that certain goals can be accomplished. The movie’s tone has a middle-class American sheen to it that will get some criticism for glossing over a lot of American society problems in the 1950s and 1960s that still exist today. Antisemitism is part of the story, but racism, sexism, poverty and other social ills are completely erased in this movie.

This omission of any of society’s problems outside of Sammy’s limited world in the 1950s and 1960s speaks to how his young life had its share of turmoil, but it was still in a certain “bubble” where he was blissfully unaware or chose to ignore a lot of society’s problems that weren’t about him. It’s a blind spot that many people carry throughout their lives, but “The Fabelmans” offers no real or meaningful introspection about that blind spot.

“The Fabelmans” had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie won the People’s Choice Award, which is the festival’s top prize. Even with any accolades that this movie receives, when people look back on Steven Spielberg’s most beloved films, “The Fabelmans” won’t be at the top of the list for most people. However long-winded this movie can be, it still showcases Spielberg’s talent for telling emotionally genuine stories about families, as well as expressing why people fall in love with filmmaking.

Universal Pictures released “The Fabelmans” in select U.S. cinemas on November 11, 2022, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on November 23, 2022.

Review: ‘A Deadly Legend,’ starring Corbin Bernsen, Judd Hirsch, Lori Petty, Kristen Anne Ferraro, Dwayne Thomas, Summer Crockett Moore and Tatiana Szpur

August 3, 2020

by Carla Hay

Kristen Anne Ferraro in “A Deadly Legend” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

“A Deadly Legend” 

Directed by Pamela Moriarty

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional Pilgrim County somewhere in the United States, the horror flick “A Deadly Legend” has a predominantly white cast (with a few African Americans and Asians and one Latino) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A group of people encounter a curse that’s lasted for centuries and involves a vengeful witch.

Culture Audience: “A Deadly Legend” will appeal primarily to people who like low-budget horror films that are so bad that they’re almost hilarious.

Summer Crockett Moore and Daniella DeCaro in “A Deadly Legend” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

The horror film “A Deadly Legend” is so amateurly made that it looks like something that people from a community theater decided to do in order to get a feature film credit on their résumés. “A Deadly Legend” is the first feature film directed by Pamela Moriarty and written by Eric Wolf—and that lack of experience shows in every single minute of this sloppily made film. Kristen Anne Ferraro, who produced “A Deadly Legend,” also stars as the movie’s main protagonist, which explains why she has the lead role. It’s a lot easier to cast yourself as the star of a movie when you’re paying for the film.

And it seems like much of the budget was spent in hiring the cast’s veteran actors who have name recognition: Corbin Bernsen (of “L.A. Law” fame), Judd Hirsch (of “Taxi” fame) and Lori Petty (of “Tank Girl” and “A League of Their Own” fame), whose best career days are behind them if they’re now taking supporting roles in this type of bottom-of-the-barrel movie. Their level of experience is even more noticeable in “A Deadly Legend,” where they’re surrounded by people whose acting is so horrible, it makes Kim Kardashian in a movie look like the next Meryl Streep.

“A Deadly Legend” is a little overstuffed with characters, but the plot is fairly simple because it’s so derivative of dozens of other horror movies that have come before it: Some people uncover a longtime curse that involves a witch who’s out for revenge. And, of course, most of the horror happens when people are gathered in an isolated house. (The movie, which takes place in an unnamed state in the U.S., was actually filmed in New York state.)

The story takes place in the fictional Pilgrim County, where construction company owner Joan Huntar (played by Ferraro) and her lawyer Raj (played by Shravan Amin) are about to head into an important town council meeting. Joan and Raj want the town council to approve a major project for Huntar Construction: It’s the Pilgrim Lake Luxury Homes Project, where they plan to build homes in an undeveloped rural area. Joan and Raj are desperate for the town council’s approval for this project, since Huntar Construction is in dire financial straits and needs this project to stay in business.

At the town council meeting, one citizen is extremely vocal in expressing his disapproval of the project: Carl Turner (played by Hirsch), who owns an antiques store in town. Carl warns everyone at the meeting what will happen if construction breaks ground in the planned project area: “You’ll unleash what’s been buried for centuries!” Also at the meeting is longtime Pilgrim Lake resident Matthias Leary (played by Bernsen), who owns a crystal mineral shop in town. Despite Carl’s protest, the town council approves the project.

Joan is a widow with two teenage children: Krissy (played by Andee Buccheri) and her older brother Connor (played by John Pope). They are still grieving over the loss of Joan’s husband Bob (played by Jeffrey Doornbus), who died in a car accident. The car crash, which happened one night on a deserted road, is shown in the beginning of the movie to establish that something evil is lurking is Pilgrim County.

Bob was driving the car, and the passengers were Joan, Krissy and Krissy’s teenage cousin Amy Jones (played by Daniella DeCaro), when a young red-haired woman dressed in a white flowing dress suddenly appeared in the road. The car crashed when Bob tried to avoid hitting this mystery woman. It should come as no surprise to the audience that this woman is the ghost of a witch. The witch calls herself Luci (played by Tatiana Szpur), and she shows up again many times for the rest of the movie. (The movie reveals Luci’s backstory in a flashback scene that takes place in 1720.)

Ultimately, most of the movie’s characters end up in a remote lodge near the construction site, as construction begins for the Pilgrim Lake Luxury Homes Project. Because this is a low-budget film, the “construction” consists of one man operating a bulldozer. The lone construction worker on the site is a beer-guzzling roughneck named Mike Renfield (played by Eric Wolf), who is kept company by his kooky platonic female friend Wanda (played by Petty). Wanda brings some comic relief to the story, because it’s a running joke in the movie that Wanda keeps asking people if they have any beer.

Of course, the body count starts to pile up in this group of people who are at the lodge. In addition to Joan, Krissy, Connor and Amy, the other family members at the lodge are Bob’s sister/Joan’s sister-in-law Tina Jones (played by Summer Crockett Moore) and her husband Sam Jones (played by Dwayne A. Thomas), who are Amy’s parents. Sam works for Huntar Construction and is Mike’s no-nonsense immediate supervisor. Tina fancies herself to be a psychic—she holds a candlelit séance with the teenagers while wearing a T-shirt that says “I’m Not Weird. I’m Paranormal.”

Two other teenagers are also on the premises: quiet and mysterious Eli Leary (who is described as Matthias Leary’s grandson) and the outgoing and athletic Derek Rodriguez (played by Alan Pontes), who is Krissy’s love interest. Also at the lodge are attorney Raj and his divorced girlfriend Eva Chan (played by Jean Tree), who confides in Joan during a “girls talk” that Raj “saved” her from an abusive husband.

The pacing of “A Deadly Legend” sometimes drags, the dialogue is mostly forgettable, and the acting by most of this movie’s cast is so “train wreck” bad that it really is comical at times. Luci the witch is supposed to be terrifying, but Szpur’s sluggish portrayal makes Luci look like a Victorian Goth girl who’s taken too many opioid pills.

At least Petty brings some laughs as the somewhat unnecessary character of Wanda, because Wanda is so goofy that her personality is a welcome distraction from this often-boring film. But most of the other intentional humor in the movie falls very flat.

At one point in the story, Mike the construction worker is suspected of being up to no good, so his supervisor Sam goes to confront him. When some of the other people warn Sam that Mike could be dangerous, Sam replies, “I’m his boss. If he hasn’t killed me by now, he never will.” That’s what supposed to pass for humor in this awful movie.

And the visual effects are so messy and cheap-looking that they make the intended horror look very unconvincing. “A Deadly Legend” also makes a bizarre attempt to look “edgy” in a scene where someone has a nightmarish vision that shows an incestuous kiss between Joan and her son Connor, who exchange a large squid-like creature in their mouths during the kiss. It looks like a dumb stunt placed in the movie for “shock” effect. Ultimately, “A Deadly Legend” commits the worst sin of all for a horror movie: There is absolutely nothing scary about this terrible film.

Gravitas Ventures released “A Deadly Legend” on digital and VOD on July 24, 2020.

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