News of the World

 

Helena Zengel and Tom Hanks in “News of the World”

Universal Studios photo via IMDB

Tom Hanks has described the character he plays in “News of the World” as the Old West's answer to Twitter. His Civil War veteran, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, travels across Texas in the 1870s, reciting newspaper stories from faraway places to inform the inhabitants of the dusty frontier towns of goings-on in places they can only imagine. War heroism notwithstanding, Captain Kidd is cut from Mark Twain cloth, part storyteller, part entertainer, part wry observer of the human condition.

In his travels, he crosses paths with a 10-year-old girl (Helena Zengel), orphaned after the Kiowas murdered her parents and then raised her. She doesn't speak English and isn't keen about being rescued by Captain Kidd. 

He's not all that enthused either about having to deliver her to relatives across the state. Their journey, told with the sweep and grandeur of great bygone Hollywood Westerns, provides another opportunity for Hanks to collaborate with his “Captain Phillips” director Paul Greengrass. Their earlier effort was white-knuckle tense and excruciating.This one is an adventure saga, nuanced in the relationship that develops between the lonely man and the little girl.

As opposed to the complex and ambiguous movies usually released in this cinematic season to vie for awards, this is entertainment that hides its meticulous craft under its broad appeal. Buoyed by a stirring James Newton Howard score, it's a throwback to a time before Hollywood segmented audiences into marketing niches, when movies could be enjoyed by whole families together, everyone finding something to like. It's simple. I loved it.

“News of the World” isn't a very good title for a Western … but it's a perfect title for anything else. Tom Hanks didn't get to be everyone – except Qanon believers' – favorite movie star by accident, and among his lovable traits is a fondness for antiquated forms of communication. In real life he collects old typewriters, so Captain Kidd is a natural progenitor for him.

Director Greengrass is a surprise in the equation. After building his rep with state-of-the-art action, from all the “Bourne” chases to award contenders like “United 93” and “Captain Phillips,” he shows a softer, almost sentimental side here, accompanied by all the wide-plains cinematography. Another surprise is young German actress Helena Zengel, who needs precious few words to hold her side of the screen in two-shots with Hanks. Her performance is a gem; the Golden Globe nomination was richly deserved.

This is the third currently released film in which a girl leads a surrogate, or real, father figure to his higher self. George Clooney's solemn sci-fi actioner “The Midnight Sky” is one, and “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” – in which Maria Bakalova is as brilliant as writer-star Sacha Baron Cohen – is the other. 

Speaking of “Borat,” it was surprising and satisfying to see Cohen recognized with two of the biggest prizes at last Sunday's Golden Globes. The pandemic has been the mother of invention when it comes to telecasts over the last year, and the zoom Globes ceremony, with co-hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on opposite coasts, was a messy yet surprisingly endearing affair. 

While a lot of the presenters and eventual winners dressed to the nines for the occasion, a lot didn't – from Jodie Foster's pajamas to Jeff Daniels' flannel shirt to Jason Sudeikis' hoodie. Seeing stars in their homes – with kids, spouses and pets behaving like, well, kids, spouses and pets – was kind of wonderful, the more I think about it. It was like my granddaughter Vivienne's second-grade zoom classes, only with movie stars instead of little kids in headphones.

The Globes tried to get real this year, noting – but not doing much about – the lack of diversity in the 87-member Hollywood Foreign Press Association that awards the prizes. 

More overdue was the scrutiny given to the practices of the so-called association that not only rewards its freeloading members with never-ending junkets and elbow-rubbing with A-list beautiful people, but in some cases even subsidizes their shabby paychecks as not-quite-legitimate journalists. Hosts Fey and Poehler had some good fun at the HFPA's expense. Sacha Baron Cohen, as usual, took it several steps farther over the line.

He reported that Donald Trump was challenging “Borat's” win as best comedy, claiming dead people had cast illegal ballots. 

That was a hardly kind way to refer to HFPA members, Cohen quipped.

In fact, the former president was doing his own version of the Golden Globes at that very moment, gathering with a bunch of yahoos in Florida, concocting their own sorts of fantasy movies. They had news of the world, too. It originates from the planet they live on, which is flat …