Film Review: Timothée Chalamet Brings Life to Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown,” a Film That Focuses on the Music More Than the Man

A Complete Unknown (c) Searchlight Pictures

Film: A Complete Unknown 
In Cinemas on Christmas Day 

Premise: A young Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) hitchhikes his way from Minnesota to New York City in 1961 with a backpack and a guitar to visit his ailing hero Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), but he overshoots and has to backtrack to a New Jersey hospital, where he strikes up a friendship with Guthrie’s pal and folk icon Pete Seeger (Edward Norton). Seeger takes Dylan in after hearing him play his songs, housing him for a bit and taking him to amateur nights around Jersey and Manhattan, where he meets his girlfriend, the political activist Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning). They move in together as Dylan is starting his career at Columbia Records (the woman Russo is based on is on the cover of Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan with Dylan) and he starts to write more political songs about inequality and social issues like breakthrough song Blowin’ in the Wind and A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall about the Cuban Missile Crisis, which according to this film, while everyone else was panicking that Manhattan was about to be bombed, Dylan went to a gig in the Village and hooked up with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), who was just on the cover of Time magazine. From there, his career takes off with his song The Times They Are a-Changing particularly striking a nerve with the younger generation. But by the time of his recording his fifth album, Highway 61 Revisited in 1965, Dylan was not happy with the “voice of a generation” pigeonhole he has found himself in and had begun experimenting with an electric sound, which leads to the film to its finale: Dylan’s controversial performance at the Newport Folk Festival, run by Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz) with one rule: only acoustic instruments. 

Film Review: Pedro Almodóvar’s First English Language Feature, “The Room Next Door,” Includes Great Performances Slightly Out of Reach

The Room Next Door (c) Sony Pictures Classics

Film: The Room Next Door 
In Cinemas on December 20 

Premise: Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a successful arts writer, is promoting her new book in New York when she finds out a close friend she hasn’t kept in touch with is in the hospital, being treated for cervical cancer. She rushes to see Martha (Tilda Swinton), a former war reporter, who is told that her latest treatment was not successful. After her body has recovered, she is to begin another aggressive regimen, which Martha agrees to. But when she is alone with Ingrid, Martha tells her that she is going to die on her own terms and plans to take her own life soon and wants Ingrid to be in the room next door when she does it so she won’t die alone. Ingrid is shocked by this request, but Martha assures her that she has everything planned out: They will go to her cottage in Woodstock for a restful winter holiday and, one day, she’ll just do it. After many conversations with their mutual ex-lover and radical pessimist Damian (John Turturro) about any legal implications, and with each other, mostly involving contacting Martha’s estranged daughter and after much soul searching, Ingrid agrees. 

Film Review: Astonishing, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” Is a Family Drama in the Midst of Real-Life Iranian Protests That Devolves From Unease to Paranoia

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (c) NEON

Film: The Seed of the Sacred Fig 
In Cinemas 

Premise: Iman (Misagh Zare) has just been promoted to inspector in the Iranian government’s prosecutor’s office and, along with a raise and housing, he receives a gun for protection. So, this job is a double-edged sword, but Iman has been working 20 years for this opportunity and his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) is proud, but a little worried. The couple now has to tell their daughters, college student Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and teenager Sana (Setareh Maleki), what he does for a living. They lead with the new housing (the two girls currently share a bedroom) before imploring them to stay on the straight and narrow in order to not embarrass their father and the government. But this is 2022 and protests by women and college students erupted after the real-life death of Jina Mahsa Amini in police custody for not wearing a hijab. The unrest and police pushback comes literally through their front door when Rezvan’s friend and classmate Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) seeks refuge after being severely injured at the college. Najmeh tries to keep her daughters in line, but they witness the police brutality in real time via social media, including videos of Jina Mahsa Amini that contradict the police account that she had a stroke in custody. The daughters start to question their parents’ belief that government and religion are inseparable. Iman soon realizes his job is less of an investigator of crimes than almost a patsy for a government that just wants him to sign off on executions they deem legal. He starts to make waves of his own just to do his job, which puts a target on his back. Then, Iman discovers his gun is missing. And the main suspects are his wife and his daughters. 

Film Reviews: Catching Up on Oscar Buzzy Films Like the Heartbreaking Family Drama, “Hard Truths”; the Political Religious Drama “Conclave”; the Soap Opera Trans Drama, “Emilia Pérez”; and a Shameful Chapter in the Jim Crow South Drama, “Nickel Boys”

Hard Truths (c) Bleecker Street

Film: Hard Truths 
In Cinemas 

There is a brilliant scene in Mike Leigh’s 1996 breakthrough film Secrets & Lies in which a white working-class woman named Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) agrees to meet with the daughter she gave up at birth, but when an upper-class black woman played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, shows up. Cynthia thinks it’s a joke or a clerical mistake. But as she amiably explains the impossibility of it all, a darkness comes over her face as it dawns on her how she could be this woman’s mother, and she starts to cry hysterically with her newfound daughter helpless to console her. In Leigh’s latest film, Hard Truths, a similar scene is playing out on Mother’s Day, but this time it’s Jean-Baptiste as the mother Patsy, who, up to this point an angry, impossible, paranoid, misanthropic pill, is informed that her socially awkward son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) has done something unexpected, and she starts to laugh (the first time in the movie) until it turns into an almost primal roar of grief and sorrow. It is an amazing moment of maternal symmetry and is the most memorable moment of hard truths and pain in both films, almost 30 years apart. Jean-Baptiste is a revelation as Patsy, who is one of the most unlikeable persons ever put to screen, even if, as she explains to anyone who hadn’t already tuned her out, she has a (unnamed) medical condition as a way to gain sympathy, something she is unwilling to reciprocate to anyone who crosses her path. The only person who understands, tolerates and throws it back in her face is Patsy’s younger sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), who is as positive and fun as Patsy is negative and perpetually scowling. Their relationship is the heart of the film, and even as we await every bile-filled rant from Patsy, Leigh shows in the Mother’s Day scene that there is real pain beneath it all. Yes, it might be a chore to some to spend ninety minutes with such a character, but in Jean-Baptiste’s hands with a much-needed assist from Austin, Hard Truths is a cathartic and painful look at how just living life can really be a daunting task.