Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) ****

If you are tired of celebrity biopics that bend the truth in various small ways, exaggerating aspects of their subjects' lives or compressing their history to make a better film, then this un-exaggerated, completely true biopic is the movie for you! “Weird: The Al Yankovic” story is the definitive history of everyone's favorite accordion-player. The film takes us from a young Al getting his first accordion, a move that obviously led to great popularity among his peers, especially the girls, through his meteoric rise to eclipse the success of such acts as The Beatles, to his steamy love affair with Madonna. The film covers his dark period struggling with alcoholism, as well as his transition from parody songs to the all-original works he is best known for, like “Eat It” and “Amish Paradise.”

“Weird” is directed by esteemed documentary filmmaker Eric Appel, who has a long list of documentaries and feature films under his belt, and has served as a mentor for Ken Burns. The movie started out as a 2010 Funny-or-Die trailer by Appel, and it took 12 years to make the full biopic due to all the extensive research and fact-checking. Also, they had to wait for Daniel Radcliffe to become muscular enough to portray Weird Al. With Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, and numerous celebrity cameos, Appel has created a film that fully captures Yankovic's profound effect on the music business and his widespread esteem. Comparisons to other classic musician biopics like “The Doors,” “Amadeus,” and “Walk the Line” are inevitable, but I think a closer comparison would be the thinly-veiled biopic of publisher William Randolph Hearst from 1941. I'm talking about a little movie called “Citizen Kane.”

4 stars out of 5

Barbarian (2022) ***

 

The horror genre has, perhaps, some of the greatest variation in quality to be found in film. Most horror flicks are trash, made for rapid consumption by teens. They feature poor writing, poor acting, and they try to make up for their faults with gore, nudity, and jump scares. At the other end of the spectrum are those rare horror films that are so great they transcend genre, films like "Deliverance" and "The Shining." In the middle are films that are reasonably serviceable, providing some genuine scares without making you embarrassed to watch. “Barbarian,” the creation of writer/director Zach Cregger, falls in this middle group.

“Barbarian” is good enough, and the twists are scary enough, that I don't want to ruin any of the surprises. Of the plot, I'll just say what all the sites say, which is that a young woman (Georgina Campbell) finds her Air-B&B already occupied by a man (Bill Skarsgard), and then discovers that the house holds some horrifying secrets.

Zach Cregger (“The Whitest Kids U' Know) is mostly known for an extensive, if undistinguished, TV acting career. “Barbarian” is his first solo film project, and he shows some promise as a director. He displays a deft hand at maintaining an exhausting level of tension, then relieving it for a while, before cranking it right back up. He coaxes excellent performances out of his stars, including Justin Long. He gets some great work out of his cinematographer, showing just enough in the darkness to be truly frightening, and then making the burned-out neighborhoods of Detroit look almost as scary in broad daylight.

As a writer, Cregger is less inspired. The plot of “Barbarian” requires too many dumb, unrealistic decisions on the part of the characters. I'm talking about your typical, horror-movie, going-down-to-the-basement kinds of decisions. (In a bad movie, there would be no story without these actions, which no person in their right mind would do in real life. With better writing, circumstances force the characters into a bad situation despite their making reasonable choices along the way.)

“Barbarian” was inspired by The Gift of Fear, a non-fiction book that encourages women to trust their instincts to avoid dangerous situations with men. This is ultimately a story about men using women to feed their appetites, and it flips the script on that theme in some clever ways. Someone will probably write a graduate thesis on how this film shows men what it would be like to have someone force their base urges on you. The movie may take the man-bashing too far, but you mostly won't notice. This being a horror movie, it all just blends into the expected level of violence and abuse. It's a good example of how you can use genre fiction to send a message that would be heavy-handed and preachy in a straight drama.

“Barbarian” is not particularly well-written, and it relies more than it should on jump-scares, but it's a serviceable film that is sometimes funny and definitely scary. It is not on par with some of the best modern horror films, like "Parasite" or "It Follows," but if you want an adrenaline rush, this will get the job done.

3 stars out of 5

Force Majeure (2014) **

 

What is it that makes a man a man? What do our instinctive reactions to danger say about who we really are? How can a relationship survive a betrayal? These are the questions explored in “Force Majeure,” written and directed by Swedish filmmaker Ruben Ostlund.

Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and his family are skiing in the Alps. When an avalanche narrowly misses them, Tomas runs to save his own skin, leaving his wife, Ebba (Lis Loven Kongsli) to protect the children. The event eats at everyone involved, and they have to work out their feelings about it over the rest of the vacation.

I really wanted to like “Force Majeure.” It's an excellent concept, and Lis Loven Kongsli does some great acting. The movie also features Kristofer Hivju, who played Tormund Giantsbane on “Game of Thrones.” Unfortunately, the thing is just a drag. Tomas is too unlikable a character to identify with, so it's very hard to root for his transformation. The film does feature some humor, as when a girl approaches Tomas and Mats (Kristofer Hivju) at an outdoor bar to tell them that her friend said they are the hottest guys there, only to return a minute later to say that she had it wrong; her friend was pointing at two other guys. There are a lot of scenes here that had real potential, such as Ebba's conversation with a woman who is in an open marriage, or Mats's all-night fight with his girlfriend. The problem is that all the scenes drag on much longer than necessary, and many of them don't really propel the story. Even the ending seemed out of place, like a completely separate story tacked onto the end, not illuminating, much less resolving, the story.

2 stars out of 5

Fisherman's Friends (2019) ***

 

If the name of this film seems familiar, it's because it is the name of a cough drop, and also a Cornish singing group. Fisherman's Friends is a group of fisherman from Cornwall, England who sing traditional sea-shanties. They were an unlikely sensation back in 2010, when their album debuted and posted a Top 10 hit in the U.K. The story of how they got “discovered” by a BBC Radio presenter is the stuff of legend, and this film tells a hugely fictionalized version of the tale.

In the film, Danny (Daniel Mays), a music agent, is on a bachelor party weekend with some mates from work, in a small, Cornish, fishing village. The callow city-slickers are bored in the quaint, little town, but when they hear an a cappella singing performance from a group of local fisherman, Danny's boss orders him to sign the group. The order is a joke, but Danny takes it seriously, signing the group and wooing the daughter (Tuppence Middleton) of the group's craggy-faced leader (James Purefoy). Along the way, Danny learns to appreciate the small village, and their small-town ways make him a better person.

Like semaphore signals across the water, every plot point in “Fisherman's Friends” is visible from miles away. Despite being based on a true story, it looks as if almost the entire film is fictional, and yet there is nothing original here. Fortunately, the singing is enjoyable, and the cast was charming enough to mostly keep me engaged through the 2-hour film. Character actor David Hayman is particularly good, and you cannot look away from James Purefoy's wind-carved face. (Someday scientists will invent a microscope powerful enough to distinguish between James Purefoy and Tom Jane. Until then, I'll have to read the credits.)

For a film of such limited aspirations, “Fisherman's Friends” is slightly longer than it should be, but it's a fun, charming, little bit of entertainment, and if you have run out of ideas for what to do with a drunken sailor, this is the film for you!

3 stars out of 5