Screen Test

                            Brad Pitt and his best friend in "Heart of the Beast." Photo via IMDb.com. The first time I saw a trailer for “Heart of the Beast,” two words came to mind: Old Yeller. (Bet you thought I was going to say, Brad Pitt, right?) You can tell from the outset that the  story of two survivors of a light plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness – one a retired Green Beret combat vet, the other a three-legged German Shepherd who served with him in the K9 corps – has a good chance of bringing tears before the final credits. Rugged and spectacularly beautiful, it’s a tale of Hemingway proportions. Ably directed by David Ayres, the intense action is as breathtaking as the landscape. Acting-wise, it’s essentially a one-man show. Well, one man and one dog. The dog, Odin, is actually played by four canines in the credits. Many of the emotional two-shots leave you wondering who’s the better actor – Brad o...

Dominic Sessa and Emilia Jones in “Tony.” Photo via IMDb.com. 'Most of us don’t know when our time will be up. Uncertainty is one of the things that keeps life interesting. But the rules don’t apply when it comes to subjects of biopics. (Bob Dylan, as usual, being the exception.) In biopics, knowing how the story ends is why the story is being told in the first place. Instead of suspense or surprise, we get a spoiler alert.  So we know going into the theater to see “Tony,” that the film’s subject is Anthony Bourdain.  More accurately, it’s an origin story of  a teen dude with attitude who would, decades later, gain international notice as a bad boy chef and bestselling author before morphing into a sardonic travel guide and hedonistic philosopher until he committed suicide. But that’s all yet to come. “Tony” takes place in the summer of 1975 when its protagonist was a 19-year-old writing student at Vassar College. Sure, a huge ego is a prerequisite for anyone aspiring to...

Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and George (Hugh Jackman) in "The Sheep Detectives."  Amazon MGM photo via IMDb.com Showing my age, I’ve become fond of British whodunnits on PBS. So the end of “Grantchester” along with summer recess of “Patience” produced a bit of a funk. Luckily a woolly posse arrived to pick up the slack. Now available on Prime Video, the peculiarly titled, family-friendly crime comedy “The Sheep Detectives” is unexpectedly touching, not to mention, great fun. Reminiscent of the groundbreaking “Babe,” most of the cast members have four legs and are computer-generated. A stellar ensemble led by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart, Bryan Cranston  and Brett Goldstein provide their voices. Hugh Jackman leads the actual humans on screen, playing shepherd George. From his oh-so-cozy caravan (that’s British for Airstream) parked in their meadow, George is utterly devoted to his flock. He turns out to be a bloomin’ genius, too, and more than a little prescient as...

Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton in “The Invite.” Photo via IMDb.com New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has me rethinking my review of “The Odyssey.” With the ink barely dry on her 2023 Columbia University master’s degree in literature, she joins the classicists taking issue with writer-director Christopher Nolan’s version. It’s not just the absence of the gods in his retelling of the Greek epic. It’s the absence of SEX. The whole horny subtext is missing, Maureen complains. All of the randy coupling among humans and deities. She’s happy to do the lit-major strut, name dropping her way through the deleted erotic scenes. She reminded me that my own experience  of “The Odyssey” and its companion “The Iliad” pretty much took place in junior high school, when I wouldn’t have gotten the sex parts anyway. Looks like I might have to check out Emily Wilson’s translation of “The Odyssey” that Nolan based his screenplay on. Actually reading a classic … what a...