San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Top international, indie films feature big names from both sides of the Atlantic
One or two of the following will be among the best movies of the summer.
We haven’t seen them, so we don’t know for sure, but often the best movies of any season are the independent films that sneak up under the radar and make a lasting impression. On the schedule we find the latest from an esteemed veteran director (Terence Davies), a Spanish film featuring two superstars (Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz) and a French film with two superstars ( Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon). In addition, there’s what looks to be a breakthrough comedy from comedian Jo Koy.
Here are some releases to remind you that summer is not just about sci-fi and blockbusters:
“Benediction”:
Any new film by Terence Davies (“The Deep Blue Sea”) is worth our attention, and his latest, about the life of author Siegfried Sassoon, looks particularly interesting. Sassoon was a British soldier in World War I who protested the war while still in the service. Following the war, he became a writer and had a number of affairs with men. Jack Lowden stars.
“The Janes”:
First premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival, this is an HBO Max documentary about a group of women in Chicago who devised a complicated network of support for women seeking abortions before abortion was made legal everywhere in 1973. The film’s release couldn’t be more ironic or more timely following the leak of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. Directed by Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes.
“Hustle”:
In a dramatic role, Adam Sandler plays a basketball scout just getting by who discovers a novice player with enormous natural talent and potential during a trip to Spain. Boban Marjanovic (of the Dallas Mavericks) plays the basketball player, and the story seems to be about their shared struggle to get him into the NBA.
“Official Competition”:
This Spanish comedy stars Antonio Banderas as a movie star and Oscar Martinez as a director who team up — despite being temperamental opposites — to make a film at the behest of a wealthy patron. Penélope Cruz co-stars. If the trailer is anything to go by, this one looks to be genuinely funny.
“The Forgiven”:
In a case of ice-andfire casting, Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain play a married couple who get into an accident on their way to a party
in Morocco. They try to cover it up, but things don’t stay uncovered, leading to a conflict between the Westerners having the house party and the enraged surrounding community.
“Fire”:
tic. Some people whistle or chew gum, and I just kind of find myself casually soft-shoeing. It’s more of just a casual thing that sometimes my feet do without even thinking.
Q: Can you envision a franchise of Lightyear movies? They made four “Toy Story” films.
A:
I would hope so. If there are talks, it’s nothing that I’ve heard yet. But Pixar is incredibly precious with their intellectual properties. They’re not like other studios who just try and go for the cash grab. Only if there’s a story to tell and if there’s something worth diving into. So if there is another story, I’m sure it will be something just as special and meaningful as this one.
I’m obviously hopeful. But again, I trust their judgment completely.
Q: You turned 40 last year. What acting challenges would you like take up in the next few years, aside from Gene Kelly?
A:
As an actor, that’s tough. I’m slightly mercurial by nature, and I have a lot of different creative appetites. So as much as I love acting, some days I wake up and my creative appetite is in a completely different field. So I’m not quite sure. I think if anything, it would probably be certain filmmakers that I would love to work with. But I don’t know. I try not to look too far ahead. I try to let the wind take me because the business is so unpredictable and certain things kind of come along out of nowhere.
I find that I have an easier time diving into something and not letting my analytical mind take over when I just kind of stay present.
Q: Well, here’s a pitch: You’ve said you’re done playing Captain America, but hear me out. Buzz Lightyear teams with Captain America; you play both roles.
A:
(Laughs). Now that’s a good one.
the pitch. I’d be in 100%. How could you not?
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For more of The Chronicle movie critic’s past reviews of Tom Cruise films, go to date book.sfchronicle.com.
and then “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989), establishing himself as an actor of real stature. For director Ron Howard, Cruise co-starred opposite his then-wife, Nicole Kidman, in the story of an Irish couple in the 1800s who come to the United States, where the husband finds he can only make a living by boxing.
“Tom Cruise demonstrates genuine star voltage in ‘Far and Away.’ I’m thinking of a moment near the end of the movie, in which he looks at his co-star Nicole Kidman, smiles warmly and says, ‘You’re a corker, Shannon Christie. Yes, you’re a corker.’
“‘ you might ask. But that’s just the difference between reading about something and seeing it onscreen. I had goose bumps.”
Cruise was on a roll, working with top directors such as Rob Reiner for “A Few Good Men” (1992). In Sydney Pollack’s “The Firm,” Cruise played a young, ambitious law school graduate who takes a job with a prestigious firm, only to find that his folksy bosses are actually a bunch of murderers.
“Cruise plays something of a Hitchcockian hero who is in over his head and has to think hard and overcome his terror in order to survive from one minute to the next. At times, the tension becomes almost too much to take, though I expect most people will take it and like it.”
“The Firm” (1993) “Mission: Impossible” (1996)
In this Brian De Palma film, Cruise plays agent Ethan
Hunt, whose entire team gets killed, leading the CIA to suspect he was the one responsible.
At the time, the film was expected to be a one-off, not the beginning of an enduring series.
“The opening scenes try to convey the sense of a seasoned team of happy agents, working together in an atmosphere of mutual respect and affection. Young agent Hunt teases pouty agent Claire (Emmanuelle Beart) about her coffee. Right there you know the picture is in trouble. Coffee banter is the first refuge of the uninspired.”
“Mission: Impossible II” (2000)
A running theme of Cruise’s career is strong directors. Between 1996 and 1999, he made films for Cameron Crowe (“Jerry Maguire”), Stanley Kubrick (“Eyes Wide Shut”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (“Magnolia”). I caught up with him again in 2000, when he starred in this John Woo-directed sequel. In this installment, he has to ward off terrorists as he tries to prevent the dissemination of a deadly virus.
“Ethan Hunt has become a much more interesting fellow in the past few years. For one thing, his idea of a vacation is to climb up the side of a cliff. Cruise did his own climbing (though precautions were taken), most of his stunts and almost all of his fights. In several instances, after an elaborate stunt, Woo uses an unbroken take, moving in tight from a long shot to show us that that really was Cruise leaping and kicking or hanging, one-handed, from a cliff. He has never looked better.”
“Minority Report” (2002)
Working with yet another major director, Steven Spielberg, Cruise plays a cop living in a future time when murders are preventable — because psychics are able to predict them minutes in advance.
“Cruise doesn’t do much smiling here, except in flashback, most notably in the scene in which Anderton (Cruise) and his son cavort at a public swimming pool. That scene has the sharp, slightly brownish tint of a Rockwell painting, an evocative, nostalgic look. In this film, Cruise plays it straight and gets by more on acting than charm.”
“War of the Worlds” (2005)
This second Spielberg collaboration, about an alien invasion, was condescended to by critics — and even by audiences — but it was a lot of fun and a box office monster, making over $600 million worldwide.
“His introspective scenes, in which he tries to process the horrors he has witnessed, are not convincing. Fortunately, this is not an introspective role. It’s a role that calls for a face that stands out in the crowd, a body that’s capable and an energy that says, ‘Let’s do something.’ Max von Sydow is a superior actor, but I couldn’t care less what he would do in an alien invasion.
For an alien invasion, I want Cruise.”
“Mission: Impossible III” (2006)
In 2005, Cruise appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and jumped on her couch several times professing his love for then-girlfriend Katie Holmes. The incident got bad press, bad enough that when this film came out — where Ethan Hunt goes up against a diabolical mastermind (Philip Seymour Hoffman) — people wondered if Cruise’s career was in trouble.
“All the awful couch-jumping, placenta-eating publicity that Cruise has received in recent months has the inevitable effect of forcing viewers to see him with fresh eyes. On a second look, what a curious spectacle we’ve been taking for granted all these years: a taut bundle of calculation, eternally boyish, always aware of what his face is doing, always insisting that we like him, prodding us with smiles and frowns and a sincerity that almost looks real, the ultimate screen creature. Cruise acts as though a performance were a physical act of will, something he can accomplish by muscling his face and emotions into the proper configuration. It’s precision work done by bulldozer, and somehow he does it.”
“Lions for Lambs” (2007)
Working with director Robert Redford, Cruise played a conservative Republican senator who never met a Middle East war he didn’t like. It was a co-starring role, but a gem of a part.
“Tom Cruise as a senator? Isn’t he like, 28 or something? Actually, he’s 45, the same age Jack Kennedy was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Cruise’s basic screen personality provides him with the perfect aura to play a political up-and-comer: He’s charismatic, gloriously self-satisfied, absolutely convinced, smiling and persuasive, and relentless. Cruise is like that in every movie, and he’d act like that if he were playing Hamlet, too, so you have to cast him right. Redford does.”
“Valkyrie” (2008)
This is the closest Cruise has ever come to being ridiculous. He is utterly miscast as the one-handed Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, who
succeeded in assassinating Adolf Hitler in July 1944. The film still made $200 million worldwide.
“Cruise’s can-do determination rubs some people the wrong way. Not me. I like it. It’s his own thing, and it belongs in movies. But importing the Cruise persona into von Stauffenberg makes no sense. Nothing in Cruise’s performance suggests a handsome aristocrat who has recently had his hand blown off and an eye blown out in battle.”
“Jack Reacher” (2012)
Fans of the Lee Child novels couldn’t see how the 5-foot-7 Cruise could play the massive Reacher character. And this violent movie was released in the immediate aftermath of the murders of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook. The story was about a former military police officer hired to go undercover in a case that gets darker and darker.
“Like Paul McCartney’s music, Cruise’s acting is easy to dismiss when you haven’t experienced it in a while. But when you encounter it — not the idea of it, but the genuine article — you know the man has something. A routine thriller automatically gets a lift. It can’t really be garbage if it’s a Tom Cruise movie.”
Cruise starred in this postapocalyptic sci-fi film, set in 2077, in which the few remaining Earthlings are trying to make a stand against alien invaders.
“Put him on Oprah’s couch, and he just seems nuts. But put him in an Imax close-up, in a threatening situation, and he makes you believe humanity is worth saving . ... If there’s one thing you learn after years of watching every single film this guy makes, it’s that, despite whatever anyone wants to say about him, Cruise will never bore you to death.”
“Oblivion” (2013)
Midway through the 1997 Harrison Ford action film “Air Force One,” an archetypal blue backdrop and podium appear. A nameless balding white guy in a suit and tie is stationed below a sign that reads, “The White House.” As cameras click and flash, he tries to keep reporters at bay but fails — the president’s plane has been hijacked, after all.
“Listen, listen,” he says, raising both hands, palms facing front, in a “stop” gesture.
Then, the main event, the vice president (Glenn Close), strides in. The assistant press secretary (Michael Monks) shuffles off. Instantly cowed into silence, the reporters take their seats and ready their tape recorders. After she gives a brief update, she turns away, and the assistant press secretary resumes his post, palms front again. We can’t hear him now, but we don’t need to. He’s just as ineffectual and irrelevant as he was before.
Watching this movie as a kid imprinted on my brain its first image of the job of White House press secretary, a post assumed this month by Karine Jean-Pierre, the first Black person, the first known LGBTQ person and the first immigrant in the role. From that long-ago film, I gathered that the press secretary is the ultimate stand-in. Substanceless and impotent in his own right, he — obviously, he’s a he — is the puppet spouting someone else’s words, the vamping warm-up act we all have to live with until the headliner takes over.
There’s a theatricality to this whole setup, and not just in the set itself: the podium and the microphones. The press secretary is playing a part — representing someone else, telling a story. And the media isn’t just an audience, but representatives for the rest of us who must watch, listen or read from afar. The White House’s Press Briefing Room is the theater that mediates a dialogue between a leader and his people. Larry Speakes, a spokesman for Ronald Reagan, once called his job “the second most visible person in the country.”
Jean-Pierre’s historic appointment offers an opportunity to think about the role and its connection to performance.
Early presidents had no press secretaries, preferring to enlist sympathetic editors or publications as their de facto mouthpieces, according to W. Dale Nelson in “Who Speaks for the President? The White House Press Secretary from Cleveland to Clinton.” George Bruce Cortelyou, serving under Grover Cleveland, is often regarded as the first, or at least a precursor; his first title was “confidential stenographer.”
By whatever title, in whatever era, press secretaries can complement or soften the man they represent. Private secretary Joseph Patrick Tumulty was the amiable, could-have-abeer-with counterpart to the professorial, reproving Woodrow Wilson. But they can also amplify a president’s failings. The erudite Charlie Ross would stand silently by with “sad spaniel eyes” whenever Harry S. Truman misspoke, Nelson reports.
In a 1997 issue of the academic journal Presidential Studies
Quarterly, scholar Michael J. Towle identifies metrics by which to judge a press secretary, noting that James C. Hagerty under Eisenhower is widely regarded as the most successful. One measure is whether the press secretary is allowed to “interpret, elaborate and expound on the president’s thoughts” or only parrot exactly what the president says. Here, too, theatricality comes in: Is the press secretary allowed to make an art of his or her work, to let their own mind and persona color and flesh out and clarify another’s words, as an actor does?
Our own era has seen extraordinary displays of personality among White House press secretaries: the aggrieved, barking discombobulation and exaggeration of Sean Spicer, magnificently captured by Melissa McCarthy on “Saturday Night Live”; the flat, contemptuous mien of Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
In Jean-Pierre’s first briefing, on May 16, her manner was solemn and sincere. “I am obviously acutely aware that my presence at this podium represents a few firsts,” she said. Then: “Representation does matter. You hear us say this often in this administration.” “Us” — not a word that press secretaries always felt empowered to use. Hagerty is credited with normalizing the use of the first-person plural, signaling that the press secretary truly could speak for the president.
In her speech, Jean-Pierre went on to tout the diversity in President Biden’s appointments, from the vice president to the Supreme Court to the Cabinet. Yet she, perhaps more than any of those others, will be telling his story and buffing his image to the world — a man she little resembles demographically.
Marlin Fitzwater, who served as press secretary to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, likened his job to “trying to serve two masters,” the president and the press. As Jean-Pierre’s tenure progresses, she might find herself in the even more difficult position of balancing multiple competing interests. It’s not hard to imagine her having to take tough questions about race, LGBTQ issues or immigration from the press, many of whom hail from predominantly white institutions, while representing a man whose actions leave much to be desired by progressives, also while trying to be true to her own identity, however she chooses to and is permitted to publicly interpret it.
By Rachel Howard
Since its founding in 2008, Embodiment Project has become one of the most enthralling hip-hop companies in the Bay Area, bringing street dance and Black social dance to the concert stage while honoring the qualities of improvisation and individuality at the core of hip-hop culture.
The company is led by Nicole Klaymoon, who grew up around dance forms like waacking, popping and house and studied under Rennie Harris, one of the great innovators in bridging hip-hop and concert dance. Under her leadership, Embodiment Project and fellow San Francisco performance arts nonprofit Dance Mission Theater are partnering to present Get Free, a free festival FridaySunday, June 3-5, featuring an opening showcase, dance workshops and, at the heart of everything, an “experimental battle” featuring artists from the region and beyond.
To learn more about the festival and the nature of an “experimental battle,” The Chronicle spoke with Klaymoon and Embodiment Project member and co-producer Rama Mahesh Hall, who grew up in a meditation community in Iowa and began dancing with Klaymoon 13 years ago.
Q: It’s the third time you’ve done one of these festivals and the second time at Dance Mission. How did
Get Free begin? Klaymoon: We first did the festival in 2015 because Rennie (Harris) was going through a loss and couldn’t produce his festival, Illadelph, in Philadelphia. So we were like, “Why don’t we hold it down for you and bring you out to San Francisco and be together, you know, and give this offering to our Bay Area community?”
We had a lot of talent from New York, people that created the dance styles that spread around the world, and keepers of Bay Area history like PopTart (Lonnie “PopTart” Green, famed San Francisco Strutter). We had Tyrone the Bone Proctor, and Junius Brickhouse from D.C., who’s also really holding it down on the East Coast in terms of that urban artistry. It was a very ambitious gathering that made us see, wow, producing a festival relies on family and community.
Hall:
Two years later, we did an iteration of the Get Free festival at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, and the next year at Dance Mission. And both those years we were doing a battle at the Oakland Museum. That was historical, for the museum to hold a street dance battle. One of Embodiment Project’s core members, George “WuKong” Cheng, initiated that battle and originally called it “Art Has No Rules.”
Q: That became the model for the “Experimental Battle.” What’s special about this kind of dance battle? Hall:
Within street dance, you have more established styles, main styles such as house, dance, hip-hop, freestyle, locking, popping and voguing. These are all styles that people train in, and they’re a foundation for creativity. But a lot of times people can also get in a box where they’re like, “I’m this type of dancer, I’m a house dancer, I’m a popper,” and if they go outside of that they get uncomfortable. So an experimental battle is for dancers that don’t identify with a certain style, or dancers that want to tell more, want to lead with storytelling rather than a style. Experimental battles are still extremely rare. That’s why we’re bringing it back this year. With this one, we wanted to bridge the gap between concert dance and street dance.
Q: In a normal battle, all the dancers compete, a top 16 or eight are chosen, and then it’s a tournament. But for the experimental battle, the dancers have already been chosen?
Hall:
We have five dancers
By Adrian Spinelli
NEW ALBUMS Liam Gallagher, “C’mon You Know” (Warner)
Once at the helm of Oasis with his brother Noel, Liam Gallagher recently said that he hasn’t seen his older brother in 10 years. That did not stop the younger Gallagher’s creative inspiration from flowing, and it has yielded his fourth solo album, “C’mon You Know.”
Produced mainly by Miike Snow’s Andrew Wyatt, Gallagher brought in a slew of outside talent to help craft these songs. Co-written by Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and producer Greg Kurstin, “Everything’s Electric” features a distinct bass line that stands up to Gallagher’s signature growl. The singer reconstructs his mid-’90s Manchester rock ’n’ roll sound on the title track, which features Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig on saxophone.
Gallagher is as sharptongued as ever in the public eye, trolling Damon Albarn, disparaging Coldplay and asserting himself as one of the last remaining rock stars. But he walks the walk on this album, a welcome treat for longtime fans.
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Emile Mosseri, “I Could Be Your Moon” (Ghostly)
One of the foremost musical innovators to use the Buchla modular synthesizer (created by Berkeley’s Don Buchla),
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is a leader of the progressive modern ambient music movement. The composer and producer’s latest release is a collaboration with pianist and singer Emile Mosseri, who composed the Academy Award-nominated score for “Minari” as well as the music for the local standout indie film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.” Together, the pair create uniquely transportive music that levitates the listener into a dreamlike state. “I Could Be Your Moon” represents the completion of a two-album foray that included 2021’s “I Could Be Your Dog.” There’s a symbiotic quality to how Smith and Mosseri complement each other, building lush soundscapes and altered mind states.
Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Mohammed, “Jean Carne JID 012” (Jazz Is Dead)
The comprehensive and well-executed “Jazz Is Dead” series is a vessel for discovering jazz greats through new music that they make with Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The Chronicle has highlighted numerous “Jazz Is Dead” albums in this column, including JID 006 with the Oakland saxophonist Gary Bartz, which was among The Chronicle’s standout Bay Area albums of 2021, and now JID is back for a second block of releases.
In the latest installment, spiritual jazz and R&B vocalist Jean Carne is the focal point. Her divine, ranging vocals are front and center on tracks like “The Summertime,” a joyous ode to spirited, sunshinesoaked neighborhoods, and “Black Rainbows,” where Muhammad’s electric bass and Younge’s Fender Rhodes piano and synths set a meditative canvas for Carne’s shape-shifting voice to shine on.
Wilco, “Cruel Country” (dBpm Records):
For a band that’s often been referred to as alt-country, singer Jeff Tweedy says that Wilco didn’t fully embrace its sonic and conceptual affiliation with country music until now.
“Having been around the block a few times, we’re finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we’re making country,” he said in a statement.
Now the tireless band is back with “Cruel Country,” an ambitious album filled with mostly live tracks recorded at its Chicago studio, the Loft. Singles “Falling Apart (Right Now)” and “Tired of Taking It Out on You” slot into an overarching narrative about the history of America, a nation that is at times both cruel and beautiful.
SONG OF THE MOMENT
Zach Bryan, “Something in the Orange” (Warner) More than just a country artist, the 26-year-old Oklahoman embodies a deep sense of Americana with his soaring voice. The songs from Bryan’s newly released 34-track album, “American Heartbreak,” were written in his downtime while serving in the Navy, and they
Online extra
For The Chronicle’s playlist of this week’s picks, and to watch music videos of select songs, go to datebook.sfchron icle.com
capture love, pain, longing and the beauty found at the intersection of these emotions. “Something in the Orange” sees the singer recalling the memory of a lover he’s not ready to let go of. He packs gravity into understated lyrics like “To you, I’m just a man, to me you’re all I am,” supercharging them into vivid tales driven by his acoustic guitar and the power of love.