Female Film Critics 24/375
Fulfilling Sylvia Plath’s observation: “It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s easier to be somebody else or nobody at all”…Noah Baumbach’s bittersweet buddy movie Jay Kelly explores regret and missed opportunities – on a rarefied level.
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Famous actor Jay Kelly (George Clooney) continually asks after filming a scene, “Can I go again?” That question takes on a whole new meaning by the end of Noah Baumbach’s latest dysfunctional family meets Inside the Actor’s Studio character study of an aging star having second thoughts about his choices in life.
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The spiritual and life lessons at this film’s heart are not especially nuanced, but The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – director Hettie Macdonald’s (Normal People) second feature, based on Rachel Joyce’s script from her own novel – is still a rewarding watch. Keep the Kleenex handy. Veteran actors Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton play aging British couple Harold and Maureen Fry, who have very little left to say to each other and even less to do each day. When Harold receives a note in the mail from an old colleague, Queenie, saying goodbye since she has been moved to hospice, something inside him shifts.
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The Duke amuses with a real-life theft from the British National Gallery. In the list of real life contributing a tale more fantastic than invented ones, Kempton Bunton’s sits high up there. This sixty-year-old, cantankerous, occasional taxi driver in 1960s Newcastle (northeast England) repeatedly and, it must be noted, conscientiously protested discriminatory and, in his estimation, inequitable practices. And then his piece de resistance occurred.
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When a director like James Marsh recruits veteran actors like Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone, Michael Gambon and Tom Courtenay for an infamous crime-caper, it raises viewer’s expectations. But hopes are dashed early on as the elderly, often ailing Cockney burglars quibble and complain.
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