The Bricklayer (2023)

The days of the CIA treating Europe like the Wild West are over. After an assassination, to fight against supposedly dead formerly friendly foreign agent Victor Radek (Clifton Collins Jr.), junior CIA agent Kate Bannon (Nina Dobrev) and the agency’s director O’Malley (Tim Blake Nelson) decide to seek the help of a retired agent Steve Vail (Aaron Eckhart) off the books. O’Malley wants Vail to go to Greece with Kate to find Radek. Initially, Vail refuses to go on this mission. He reveals that he has moved on in his life and has become a bricklayer. But soon, a couple of shooters attack him and this makes him change his mind. Eventually, he reaches Kozani in Greece with Kate and meets his old army buddy Patricio (Oliver Trevena). With Patricio’s help, Kate and Vail put on disguises, get armed, and head to Thessaloniki where they check into a hotel. While Kate goes to take a shower, Vail sneaks out to rekindle some memories, related to Radek and his family. Later, he enters a fancy party and meets his old flame, Thessaloniki station chief Tye Delson (Ilfenesh Hadera). He tells her that O’Malley sent him to find Radek who is not dead as they thought. She warns him about Kostas. That night, Vail enters a pool party to meet Sten (Ori Pfeffer) and Crystal (Lili Rich) to know any details about Radek. Sten does not reveal anything. Instead, he threatens Vail, who takes it badly and fights Sten’s pawns. Luckily, Kate arrives there in time because she had put a tracker on him. I’m done with my country. Once in the car, she starts asking him about his history with Radek. Radek was performing assignments for them. He joined the CIA for asylum. But once his cover got blown, the Russians killed his family – so he responded with a killing rampage. As a result, the CIA asked Vail to track down Radek and neutralise him. We underestimated how vindictive the agency can be. Back in the US, the CIA receives a threat message from a person who wants to punish them for their wrongdoings. In exchange for not killing people, he expects a huge payment in Bitcoin. In Greece, Vail decides to follow Sten with Kate. They break into Sten’s house and look for any signs of his connection to Radek. Kate finds Greta Becker’s (Veronica Ferres) phone. Sten’s pawns enters the house. Vail and Kate fight back and escape after Vail kills him. Kate apologises that she froze during the fight. Vail asks her not to be so hard on herself. Patricio tells them where they can find the next target Alekos Melas (Michael Siripoloulos). They reach the location and see a peaceful political march turning into a street fight. Vail suddenly receives a call from Radek.  Now, the game is really on … I’m going to broadcast to the whole world what the CIA is doing in the shadows. Adapted from the Steve Vail novel in the series by Paul Lindsay (as Noah Boyd), this was originally intended as a Gerard Butler vehicle more than a decade ago. Now with 90s name director Renny Harlin at the helm its stars are more de nos jours in the sense that ridiculously good looking Eckhart brings a kind of Bogartian humour at least in the lines gifted him in the screenplay by Hanna Weg and Matt Johnson (and an uncredited Marc Moss). His dry worldweariness and arch sexism get turned around as you’d hope so it works well in the payoff department – a smart development in a rather hackneyed plot. However, the action really is action – down and dirty, no slomo SFX to beautify the violence. It’s bloody and horrible. Naturally our hero’s old friend is not a nice guy (not with a face like that, anyhow) but to humanise our hero not only does he have a cute little pooch he has a thing for Miles Davis and he doesn’t care who knows it: If you understood everything I said you’d be me. And when he’s asked why he chose to be a bricklayer, well, he’s away on a hack about the joys of form and function. You know where you are with a brick! Not to mention that a seasoned construction worker knows what to do with a tool. Dobrev is well positioned as the woman he has to work with and she gets some decent scenes challenging his preconceptions about women as well as a good portion of the action: they help to rescue eaach other. At the heart of this is betrayal – at every level. As a geopolitical action adventure starring the most exalted and maligned spy agency the world over this isn’t exactly breaking new ground but it’s a highly efficient genre outing. I can’t fight an enemy I don’t understand

Jerry & Marge Go Large (2022)

It’s a math problem, really. Evart, Michigan. Jerry (Bryan Cranston) and Marge Selbee (Annette Bening) live a quiet life in their small town home. Jerry, recently retired after forty-two years working in the local factory, spends his days unwillingly tinkering with the new motorboat his kids Dawn (Anna Camp) and Doug (Jake McDorman) bought him. But an accidental crash at the lake turns his attention elsewhere. One day, while at the local gas station, Jerry overhears a conversation about the WinFall lottery’s rolldown weeks. A mathematician at heart, he quickly figures out a statistical loophole. He realises that during rolldowns buying a large number of tickets almost guarantees a win. He does it in secret and hides the money all over the house but Marge wonders what’s going on. Sceptical at first, she soon gets on board with the plan: finally they have something together other than watching Jeopardy. They start small but Marge’s encouragement leads Jerry to go all in. They empty their savings, and the risk pays off – their $8,000 investment turns into $15,000. Excited by their success, they can’t keep it a secret for long. When WinFall closes in Michigan, the Selbees don’t give up. Marge organises a 10-hour road trip to Massachusetts, where the lottery is still active. They spend days at a small liquor store run by Bill (Rainn Wilson), printing ticket after ticket, doubling their money once again. They spend their nights at the Pick and Shovel Motel and eventually get their relationship back on an even keel. Back in Evart, they decide to share their secret. Their widowed accountant Steve (Larry Willmore) is the first one to get on board. They create GS Investment Strategies, allowing their friends and neighbours to invest. Daughter Dawn joins them one week but messes up the ticket checking. The investment reinvigorates the town. Old businesses reopen, and the local Jazz Fest venue is restored, all thanks to the lottery winnings. But their success attracts unwanted attention. Do you really think we’re the only ones who know? A group of Harvard students, led by Tyler Langford (Uly Schlesinger) have also discovered the loophole. They confront Jerry and Marge, arrogantly suggesting they combine forces. The Selbees refuse, standing firm in their methods and morals and Jerry points out Tyler’s shortcoming in relying on binomial distribution alone. As tensions rise, Tyler threatens Jerry, turning up in Evart and demanding he stop playing WinFall. Jerry almost gives in when he believes Tyler could hack all their bank accounts and expose them but the support of his son Doug and the community strengthens his resolve. They won’t be bullied out of their endeavour. Then Maya (Tracie Thoms) a reporter for the Spotlight section of The Boston Globe starts sniffing around when she finds out the lottery game is being gamed … Good luck happens same as bad. We’ve been fangirling over writer/director David Frankel since Miami Rhapsody (1995) so naturally we’ll beat a path to anything he makes. That sweet spot between drama and ironic comedy is where he lives. Here it’s a true story that turns on the issue of a retirement that works for both halves of a married couple. We need something for us. The process by which this is arrived at and how it is solved by becoming a project for the common good is neat and plausible – probably because it really happened. Frankel’s screenplay is adapted from the true story as written by Jason Fagone for HuffPost in 2018. We can’t win if we can’t play. The twist provided by the Harvard betting group as worthy smartass antagonists also gives grit to the otherwise wholesome plot (in a weird way we might infer that the outcome is a retrofitting of what we wish might have happened to Mark Zuckerberg, another alum). Jerry has to resort to figuring out people not math in order to get through the crisis presented when Harvard turns nasty. This may not hit all the heavily ironised story beats we’re accustomed to from this filmmaking source but it has a deal of them that it handles with care and heart. We know Cranston can do the crazy obsessive suburban entrepreneur from Breaking Bad but this plays it safe probably because it’s true albeit he has some moments where you believe he just might lose it. So the major irony is that unlike its protagonists the film doesn’t gamble at all. That aside, isn’t it nice to see a portrait of a married couple who stay together over the decades for the right reasons and end up living the dream. Beautifully performed. He finally got to use his gift to connect to people

The Russia House (1990)

You live in a free society; you have no choice. Publisher Bartholomew ‘Barley’ Scott Blair (Sean Connery) is caught in a conspiracy when he receives manuscripts from a Russian scientist, Dante (Klaus Maria Brandauer) claiming that the Russian nuclear programme is a sham. Ned (James Fox) from British intelligence and Russell (Roy Scheider) and Brady (John Mahoney) of the CIA have the book intercepted en route to Blair at his Lisbon home because they consider it to contain crucial information.  They recruit him to investigate its editor, Katya Orlova (Michelle Pfeiffer) a divorced mother of two. As Blair goes to Moscow and learns the origin of the manuscript and discovers Russian military secrets, he falls in love with Katya and fights to protect her family even as he realises that Katya may have another admirer. The two intelligence agencies have a shopping list of questions to check that Dante is for real but Ned begins to wonder where Barley’s loyalties really lie … How the fuck do you peddle an arms race when the only asshole you’ve got to race against is yourself? Adapted from John le Carre’s novel by Tom Stoppard, this elegant look at Russian-British relations at the tail end of the Glasnost Eighties may have been overtaken by real events but it’s nonetheless a wittily constructed espionage story with one of Connery’s best performances as the sax playing book publisher whose heart is stolen by Pfeiffer, an atypically stunning editor with Pfeiffer turning in a really nuanced performance as the semi-tragic Russian. Only the second major American film to be shot in the Soviet Union, it’s picturesque indeed, using so many beautiful settings in Leningrad and Moscow and enhanced by the fantastic cast among whom film director Ken Russell makes a splash as Walter, the Brit spy, in his inimitable fashion; while the tension between the British and American agencies supplies much of the suspense. A superior entertainment directed by Fred Schepisi. If there is to be a hope we must all betray our country, we have to save each other because all victims are equal and none is more equal than others. It’s everyone’s duty to start the avalanche

Play Misty for Me (1971)

You ever find yourself being completely smothered by somebody? Popular late night radio show host Dave Garver (Clint Eastwood) at jazz station KRML becomes restless in his relationship with artist girlfriend Tobie Williams (Donna Mills). Impulsively, he goes out and has a one night stand with Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter) a woman he meets at a nightclub. Afterwards he finds out she was not an anonymous hookup, but an obsessive fan who has been calling in repeatedly to request he play the Errol Garner song Misty. Garver soon discovers extricating himself from Evelyn will be no easy feat as she insinuates herself into his life, showing up everywhere and becoming increasingly deranged. He seeks help from policeman Sgt McCallum (John Larch) only realising at the eleventh hour that Tobie may be in danger... Do you know your nostrils flare out into little wings when you’re mad? It’s kinda cute. Eastwood made his directing debut with trusted mentor Don Siegel by his side and playing Murphy the bartender at a local joint in the town where he lived, Carmel-by-the-Sea in Northern California, a locale made look even more beautiful by the skilled cinematography of usual Eastwood DoP Bruce Surtees. The screenplay was written by Jo Heims, a former model and dancer, while Dean Riesner (from Dirty Harry and Coogan’s Bluff) polished it;  with the idea for a girlfriend, Tobie, coming from editor Sonia Chernus. It’s a clever and lean premise, brilliantly executed in the economic style we have come to know as Eastwood’s particular stamp. He uses his local knowledge to establish a keen sense of place, with a variety of shots giving us a good idea of the geography of this stunning town, the gorgeous sunlight steadily accreting to create a form of terror all over Monterey County. The tension is marvellously sustained with expert use of the jazz soundtrack (and the local music festival) creating more suspense with Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face used for a romantic mood. (The song’s exposure turned it into a Number One hit.) Walter was Eastwood’s first choice for Evelyn following her appearance in The Group a half dozen years earlier, and we believe her to be so much of a threat that she can do absolutely anything to impose her will; while Mills acquits herself very well as the only stable character in this unwitting love triangle. She had played opposite Burt Reynolds in an episode of his show Dan August and he recommended her to Eastwood. He looked at rushes and hired her without even meeting her. Eastwood is excellent here, completely believable as a man of a certain age who is selfish and unaware and still thinks he can hit it big in the city yet has to bide his time reading poetry late at night to a devoted small town audience. A great first film.  I did it because I LOVE YOU!

3 Generations (2017)

I’m a boy with tits. I can appropriate whatever I want. Hoping to get support from his single artist mother Maggie (Naomi Watts) and Lesbian jazz club proprietor grandmother Dolly (Susan Sarandon) (and her live-in girlfriend Frances, played by Linda Emond), 16-year old Ray born Ramona (Elle Fanning) prepares to transition from female to male. When Maggie dithers over signing her permission due to Ray’s age, she then finds out that Ray’s father Craig’s (Tate Donovan) signature is also required but he hasn’t been in the picture for a very long time. An encounter between the teen’s parents turns into a confrontation with Ray finally taking matters into her own hands …  Just because you’re the parent doesn’t mean you get to decide when we talk about this.  In an era characterised by intense identity politics perhaps there is none so troubling a topic as the idea that children can choose their own gender despite their given genitalia. This lays out the argument inside this unusual family setup – cool Lesbian grandmother plus her girlfriend, an unmarried mother, an androgynous daughter living as a boy. Then it takes a melodramatic skew that leads one to the unexpected conclusion that this situation is the result of precisely this boho unconventionality – who’s the daddy? A narrative turn that seems to upend the entire raison d’être avoiding the very premise it proposes to address. However it’s well played – very well, particularly by Sarandon who gets the lion’s share of biting dialogue; and Fanning in a very difficult and paradoxically limited role – by a seasoned cast grappling with a very millennial issue. Ultimately a film that suggests that in a world of parents who cannot make up their minds, tell the truth or act responsibly, it falls upon the unfortunate confused kids to make adult decisions, promising a reckoning in the years to come following this contemporary experiment in biology. Written by Nikole Beckwith with director Gaby Dellal. I get to stop feeling like someone else

Tormented (1960)

No one will ever have you! Jazz pianist Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) lives on the beach in Cape Cod and is preparing to marry Meg Hubbard (Lugene Sanders) when old flame Vi Mason (Juli Reding) turns up to stop him and falls to her death from the local lighthouse when he refuses to lend her a hand as the railing breaks.  Wet footprints turn up on his mat, a hand reaches out to him, Vi’s voice haunts him and he starts behaving strangely particularly in front of Meg’s little sister Sandy (Susan Gordon).  Blind landlady Mrs Ellis (Lillian Adams) explains to him that similarly supernatural stuff happened when someone else died in the area. Then the beatnik ferry captain Nick (Joe Turkel)  who took Vi to the island to see Tom appears and starts getting suspicious that she never returned particularly when wedding bells are in the air … I’m going to live my life again and stop running. With a pedigree crew – director Bert I. Gordon co-wrote with regular collaborator George Worthing Yates – who did the screenplays for some great pirate movies and sci fis including Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, which starred Hugh Marlowe, frequently mistaken for Richard Carlson – you’d be expecting a class act. And it’s a good story hampered by a minuscule budget which gives off a different kind of aroma. The effects are hilarious – particularly good is some woman’s hand entering frame when Tom is in young Sandy’s company and he hits it and runs off.  Sandy sees nothing, of course. My favourite moment is when Vi’s disembodied head appears and Tom reaches out and enjoys a tussle with a blonde wig which he then wraps in paper and throws down a step only to have it picked up by his blackmailer and opens it only to find dead flowers. Despite Carlson’s character mutating into a murderous beast and his ex spinning a Monroe-esque vibe, and the hilarious hey-daddy-o exchanges with the beatnik boatman (whom you’ll recognise as Lloyd the bartender in The Shining), by far the most complex performance comes from young Gordon (the director’s wonderfully talented daughter). The ending is satisfying indeed if you like really proper ghost stories. However if you think you’re going to hear some decent jazz, well, it’s hardly a priority in a camp outing such as this. This was Sanders’ last film in a strangely brief career.  She’s a perfume, she’s a footprint, she’s a hand, she’s a space in a picture

Here and Now (2018)

Aka Blue Night. I’m not done yet. Jazz singer/songwriter Vivienne (Sarah Jessica Parker) has just received a cancer diagnosis. She spends the day walking around New York City, meeting up with her manager Ben (Common) to discuss her upcoming tour, rehearsing with her backing band, telling her ex-husband Nick (Simon Baker) who has custody of their daughter Lucie (Gus Birney), dealing with her overbearing French-speaking mother Jeanne (Jacqueline Bisset), arguing with a taxi driver (Waleed Zuaiter), having an assignation with her drummer and romantic interest Jordan (Taylor Kinney) and reflecting on her life as she comes to terms with her mortality … First a tragedy, then a miracle. An homage to (if not a direct remake of) the late Agnès Varda’s 1962 nouvelle vague classic Cléo from  5 to 7, this is written by Laura Eason and capitalises on Parker’s association with NYC, that city which became so important televisually with Sex and the City in the same way that it has always been for cinema. Reconciling this star’s iconicity with latterday roles is proving problematic. Essentially this is about a woman in a state of perpetual avoidance (even in the course of just one day) and for a character and public persona notable for costume it will be a vast disappointment that until the very last scene she wears the same outfit throughout – save for a session in a boutique in a metaphorical attempt to alter her situation then she presents the dress as a gift to her truculent teenage daughter. This is an indication of a script that’s not altogether in tune with its somewhat dithering protagonist: Parker is not given enough to do and that is quite literally fatal considering this is a film concerning something going on in her head but despite the internalising of the dramatic performance at its centre there are some pithy lines. Vivienne (the irony extends to her name) is about to perform an anniversary gig at Birdland where 25 years earlier great things were forecast but a broken engagement last year somehow triggered a retreat. All of my albums have been triggered by all of my broken engagements, she deadpans to a noxious journalist who has never heard of Donald O’Connor. Renée Zellwegger as her friend Tessa brings a sharpness to a character which makes it more interesting than the scene that perhaps was written, while the scenes between Parker and Bisset are horribly convincing. The feature debut of commercials director Fabien Constant, this is notable for Parker’s quite odd performance of Rufus Wainwright’s marvellous song Unfollow the Rules, indicating that she’s not a jazz singer at all but a different animal entirely, a thread the narrative might have pursued (she still loves Belgian pop singer Lio), just like she should have kicked off her heels and got real, delving deeper into that fascinating hinterland where several interesting signposts are left dangling. I’d like to change the destination

Cold War (2018)

Time doesn’t matter when you’re in love.  In post-war Poland conductor and musicologist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Irena (Agata Kulesza) are holding auditions for a state-sponsored folk music ensemble. Wiktor’s attention is immediately captured by Zula (Joanna Kulig), an ambitious and captivating young woman who is faking a peasant identity and is on probation after attacking her abusive father when he attempted to rape her. They commence a sexual relationship but Wiktor doesn’t want to incorporate more Stalinist propaganda in their productions and wants to escape to the West. Zula doesn’t join him when he escapes in Berlin but a couple of years later he finds her on tour in Yugoslavia where he is quickly removed back to his current base in Paris. Then Zula shows up and leaves her marriage and becomes a recording artist with his help. She can’t stand what he has become and flees to Poland the night her album is launched and Wiktor makes a tremendous sacrifice just to see her again … As far as we’re concerned you don’t exist. It starts with people singing folk songs, performed plaintively and sonorously against a mysterious monochrome backdrop which is rural Poland yet some images take a while to reveal themselves from abstraction. That’s all of a piece with the lives of these somewhat disembodied, disenfranchised individuals whose better existence is entwined with each other yet whose life together is messy, filled with bust-ups, disagreements, partings, border crossings, cultural preservation, propaganda and politics. Their identity – colonised, travelling, in denial – presents a kind of melancholy frankly incomprehensible to people who think they should be glad to be out of the hellhole of the Eastern Bloc.  Neither protagonist is especially likable and the underage relationship is at first shocking, even if she is sexually precocious. The gleaming black and white photography seems bleak at first but paradoxically heightens the romance because this is a film that rejoices in the possibilities of cities and how people can express themselves in one international language – music. Watching Zula finally let loose in the West to Rock Around the Clock is joyous, even if it further fractures her relationship. The architecture isn’t stressed but the common culture it expresses looms over the narrative – building styles, churches, bars, clubs, concert halls, the locations where this couple can find themselves and each other, over and over again. It’s sombre but passionate. Finally they wind up at a literal crossroads, decision made. Writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski traverses these ideas like a high-wire artist, never stooping to the obvious even if some of the melodramatic curves seem inevitable. When Zula tosses her eponymous record in a fountain and then takes off back to Poland it seems unlikely they can ever meet again. But Viktor returns to his home country only to be imprisoned? Well. If it wasn’t true, would you believe it? Yet that is what Pawlikowski’s own background looks like – complex, difficult, liminal, like all stories about affiliations and borders and political ideologies and exile. It’s about his parents. And it’s true. And it took years and years for them to get together and their relationship covers a continent of musical styles and idioms. Remarkable. Let’s go to the other side.

Andre Previn 6th April 1929 – 28th February 2019

The man immortalised as André Preview by Morecambe and Wise to a generation of children who grew up with BBC TV, has died today, aged 89. A formidable and versatile wunderkind, he made his name composing and arranging film scores with MGM musicals and in partnership with filmmakers as diverse and demanding as Stanley Donen and Billy Wilder, but was equally at home on Broadway, conducting orchestras, composing concertos or playing jazz. So preternaturally gifted was he that he scored Holiday in Mexico while still at high school – a film mostly memorable for featuring Fidel Castro as an extra! He is the last of his kind. Rest in peace. And thank you for the music. I’m just very pleased to be a musician. MM#2250

Green Book (2018)

Travelling while black.  Dr Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is a world-class African-American pianist, who lives above Carnegie Hall in NYC and is about to embark on a concert tour starting in Pittsburgh and then taking a hard left to the Deep South in 1962. In need of a driver and protection, Shirley recruits Tony Vallelonga aka Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) a tough-talking bouncer from an Italian-American neighbourhood in the Bronx who needs work while the Copacabana nightclub is closed for renovations. This is the best offer of a job otherwise he’ll be cornered into working for local hoodlums. Despite the stark differences in their origins and outlook, the two men soon develop an unexpected bond while confronting danger in an era of segregation, with Don helping Tony write letters home to his wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) and Tony displaying a unique approach to the threats and racism they encounter en route … The world’s full of lonely people afraid to make the first move.  Inspired by the real-life experience of Copacabana maître’d Tony Vallelonga and renowned pianist Don Shirley and based on personal letters from Tony to his wife and the Negro Motorist Green Book a guide book for midcentury black people needing safe places to stay, this is a bullet-proof comedy drama. It isn’t just a black and white film:  it takes a half hour for the odd couple to hit the road and Shirley plays with a trio, one of whom is Russian and whom Tony repeatedly mistakes for German – not his favourite nationality after serving in WW2. The opening section principally introduces Tony and his background as a bouncer with a BS radar that irritates people and gets him fired a lot. When we first meet him he’s beating bloody a hood with Mafia connections. The point is that this also examines perceptions of Italian America too, and not just racist attitudes – his are perfectly evident when he trashes two water glasses after black workmen have fixed the kitchen sink for his wife in their rented home.  It’s about how they live and talk and do business and look after each other when they’re out of work and the pressure to take and do favours for gangsters and it’s about what they eat – because this is also a film concerned with food: an array of the stuff that will have you gnawing your hand when you see platefuls of spaghetti and clams and meatballs and pizza. This has a nice corollary when Tony introduces Shirley to the joys of fried chicken. Perhaps there’s an issue for a black audience having this dignified, gifted multi-lingual virtuoso being educated in blackness through take out KFC and music stations on the car radio (he doesn’t recognise Aretha Franklin or any black popular singer – maybe) but it’s done with such warmth and with such a magnificent payoff in the final sequence after Don has taken enough from the Southern racists that only a condescending curmudgeon could get angry. So if I’m not black enough and if I’m not white enough, then tell me, Tony, what am I?  What flips the dramatic situation is when Tony is asked about the origins of his name after they’re pulled over by the police in Alabama.  When he says he’s Italian he’s accused of being a nigger – a common epithet used against Italians – and he reacts by punching out a cop landing both men in the slammer. This is how he reacts to being accused of being black – with violence. It’s the lesson of the film because he urges Don to stand up for himself like he does, but in a nice touch (with the metaphor of their mutual imprisonment in their attitudes intact) it’s Shirley’s connection with Attorney General Bobby Kennedy that proves to be their Get Out of Jail Free card. Sometimes playing for rich white people in Park Avenue apartments and keeping schtum works.  Sometimes. When Don is caught with his pants down in the YMCA with another man, Tony pays off the cops and shrugs it off, because he’s seen it all before in his job at that showbiz mecca, the Copa:  things get complicated, he says and fuhgeddsaboutit. Indeed for a film that wears its heart on its sleeve and declaratively hits hot-button topics about representation of race, sex and class without becoming mired in anything other than common live-and-let-live humanity, it’s an unobjectionable, balanced, remarkable and rather generous piece of work, a prism into the Sixties that throws today’s experiences into relief. Being genius is not enough, it takes courage to change people’s hearts.  The two leads are note-perfect in performances of great scope from a screenplay by director Peter Farrelly, Vallelonga’s son Nick and Brian Hayes Currie. Beautifully shot by Sean Porter, this is scored by Kris Bowers and has some wonderful interpretations of work by jazz greats. Has Mortensen ever been better in this heartwarming story that’s so well told? No wonder it’s awards catnip. Geography isn’t really important