“The Brutalist”

(Period Drama: 3 hours, 35 minutes)

Starring: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn and Guy Pearce

Director: Brady Corbet

Rated: R (Strong sexual content, graphic nudity, rape, drug use and strong language)

Movie Review:

“The Brutalist” is a movie that starts in 1947 and continues for about four decades. Told in three parts, it is a very well-done movie with a runtime of three hours and 35 minutes, which includes a 15-minute intermission. It is a lengthy screenplay, but you will not regret seeing it if you have a moment.

Oscar winner Adrien Brody plays László Tóth, a Jewish architect who flees post-World War II Europe. He arrives in Pittsburgh as a poor man. He designs furniture for his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola). Tóth designs a home library for the extremely wealthy Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. played by Oscar winner Guy Pearce. Van Buren initially hates the library until he realizes that Tóth is a famous architect whose architectural style has graced various media.

Tóth becomes a highlight of the community propelled by Van Buren’s connections and patronage.  Later, Van Buren asks Tóth to design a grand structure to memorialize the very wealthy man’s late mother. All is well until the project has multiple setbacks causing a rift between Tóth and Van Buren. Also, Tóth’s wife Erzsébet (Jones) arrives with information about her health unknown to Tóth. The architect reaches a maximum stress level that nearly ruins his relationships and professionalism.

“The Brutalist” has an old-style feel. If it had been shot in black and white, one may easily think this movie had the potential of being made many decades ago. This is, of course, minus some gratuitous sex scenes and language that appears out of place for these decades involving a religious community.

The cast delivers worthwhile performances, especially Adrian Brody, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce. Their characters all offer twists that are unforeseen plus plenty of drama. This keeps the movie humming in a way that keeps one’s attention for the lengthy runtime.

Director Brady Corbet, the co-author with Mona Fastvold, and cinematographer Lol Crawley also use visual aspects in this movie to convey a sense of grandness. Scenes offer nice views of buildings and background imagery to convey additional meaning to characters’ goals. They also use cinematography to express intimate moments where you see characters up close and personally vulnerable.

Their style works to deliver a very sensational piece of cinema. The ending leaves some aspects unanswered. The screenplay rushes moments in the later half where the best dramatic moments exist. This is interesting, considering the movie minus the intermission has a runtime of about three hours and 20 minutes.

Grade: B+ (A good drama delivers well-delivered performances with sincerity.)

“Nickel Boys”

(Drama: 2 hours, 20 minutes)

Starring: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson and

Director: RaMell Ross

Rated: PG-13 (Thematic material involving racism, strong language including racial slurs, violent content and smoking)

Movie Review:

“Nickel Boys” is an engaging drama based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead about the historic “Dozier School for Boys,” a reform school in Marianna, Florida. It takes place near Tallahassee, Florida, during the Jim Crow Era. The place became well known in the news through a series of reports about the multiple deaths and sexual abuse that happened there to minors. Captured in a first-person cinematography, “Nickel Boys” is well-acted and features a good story. However, artistic flairs interfere with an otherwise noteworthy screenplay.

In the 1960s, Elwood Curtis (Herisse), a high school student en route to Melvin Griggs Technical School, accepts a ride. The flashy gentleman who gave him a ride is wanted for car theft. Curtis is arrested as an accomplice and sent to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile facility for young men. He and another inmate, Turner (Wilson), are among many at the facility, a place of abuse in multiple ways, including barbaric torture techniques that lead to death.

This movie shines a candid light on the multiple abuses boys suffered in Florida juvenile facilities and several other places across the United States. The abuse went on for decades while often these facilities did not let parents and guardians see the young men that were in state custody. In a scene, a superb Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Elwood’s grandmother Hattie. When she arrives to see her grandson, she is denied visitation.

RaMell Ross, in his directorial debut for a feature film, and cinematographer Jomo Fray (“All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”) wanted audiences to see this movie through the eyes of the abused. The point-of-view (POV) shots applied in this movie make one feel they are in the place of the young men sent to the Nickel Academy. This is a good way to ingratiate visualization and empathy for these characters in a grand way. However, the style is not consistent. Sometimes you see the back of the characters’ heads in a second-person narrative portrayal and in other moments as if you peer through the characters’ eyes in first-person execution.

Also, the movie uses archival footage that often has nothing to do with the plot. These bits appear as bouts of artistic visuals to describe possible emotions or feelings often with flashy, colorful scenes. These moments distract and elongate the runtime unnecessarily.

Sometimes art can be bodacious but overdone. Abundance is rarely needed to complete an expression in moviemaking for a drama.

Otherwise, “Nickel Boys” features solid performances with actors like Ellis-Taylor, Brandon Wilson and Daveed Diggs. It is a pivotable story and worth audiences’ attention.

Grade: B (These young men are worth multitudes of nickels.)

“The Last Showgirl”

(Drama: 1 hour, 28 minutes)

Starring: Pamela Anderson, Dave Bautista and Jamie Lee Curtis

Director: Gia Coppola

Rated: R (Language and nudity)

Movie Review:

The only good reason to see this movie is Pamela Anderson. She shines, but the rest of this production by Director Gia Coppola (“Palo Alto,” 2013) and Writer Kate Gersten has a dull finish.

Anderson plays Shelley, a showgirl on the Las Vegas strip. She is part of a Cancan-type dancing group, one of the last in the city. All is well until she and the other women are told that the show’s 30-year run will end shortly. Shelley has been dancing for three decades. It is all she knows. Now in her 50s, she contemplates aging and motherhood and deals with sexism and ageism in her profession.

Gia Coppola, the granddaughter daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, is the director of “The Last Showgirl.” Her grandfather may be legendary, but one should not automatically give the family patriarch’s laurels to his descendants.

The narrative of this screenplay is not the problem. It is the execution. For one, little dancing happens. When there is, the camera only captures a small part, usually above the shoulders.

“The Last Showgirl” has second-rate cinematography. Camera operators use their equipment haphazardly; scenes appear jiggled in several scenes. Even more, the images of characters inside of buildings focus on the performances, especially that of Pamela Anderson. However, these tight medium and eye-level shots do not allow a broader concept of the grandeur of the stage and costumes of the performers when they are dancing.

The camera angles give the impression these movie makers were afraid to show shoes and feet. The one time they do, it is a misplaced Jamie Lee Curtis moment. In that scene, she plays a cocktail waitress at a casino who begins dancing at the wrong moment.

The movie also only has one hour and 20 minutes of actors performing, so this story feels, as nice as its story is, too rushed.

Characters argue with each other in one instance. Then, all is well, and these people hug while crying. There is no smooth transformation for character development. Something is lost in translation from one scene to the next. How characters resolve conflict is missing in “Showgirl.”

Again, Pamela Anderson is an attention-getter here. This movie is her second break to stardom. May “The Last Showgirl” catapult her to the center stage once more. She is award-worthy, although the rest of this photoplay does not parallel her performance.

Grade: C (Not showy enough to warrant a curtain call.)