By Jake Coyle
Sentimental tales about grumpy old men and American decline have, until recently, typically been the domain of Clint Eastwood.
But in "A Man Called Otto," Marc Forster's adaptation of Fredrik Backman's bestseller and a remake of the 2016 Swedish film "A Man Called Ove," it's Tom Hanks prowling the neighborhood and irritably grumbling about how things used to be. In the original, Rolf LassgÃ¥rd richly inhabited the role of Ove, a curmudgeonly widower — a Forrest Grump —whose suicide attempts are foiled by needy neighbors and, ultimately, his grudging, sincere devotion to them.
Exasperation, whether directed at a crying ballplayer or a slobbering canine, has always been squarely in Hanks' wheelhouse. But despondency or even plain get-off-my-lawn orneriness are less obvious traits possessed by the actor sometimes called "America's Dad." Following Hanks' villainous turn as Col. Tom Parker in "Elvis," the 66-year-old has found in "A Man Called Otto" another role that interestingly, if not always entirely successfully, caters to his strengths while tweaking his familiar screen presence.
It also may rob "A Man Called Otto," which opens with Otto buying rope to hang himself with, of some of its spirit. We know there are dark roads that Hanks just isn't going to go down, and some of the early, more caustic scenes of Forster's film strike a false note. But as "A Man Called Otto" makes its way through Otto's life, cutting between his present-day squabbles and flashbacks of happier times with his wife, Sonya (Rachel Keller), Hanks movingly tailors the role to himself. How "A Man Called Otto" unfolds won't surprise anyone, but it does the trick for a little post-holidays heart-warming.
"A Man Called Otto" is set in the prefab row-house development Otto has long lived in, where he tirelessly tisk-tisks any rule breakers, re-sorts misplaced recycling and berates drivers who violate the street's regulation against through traffic.
Screenwriter David Magee ("Life of Pi," "Finding Neverland") hues closely to the Swedish film as a kind of parable of community. Up and down the street are all the people the freshly retired Otto barely tolerates: friends-turned-enemies (Peter Lawson Jones, Juanita Jennings), a friendly exerciser (a delightful Cameron Britton), a transgender paper deliverer and former student of Otto's wife (Mack Bayda). Most of all there is Marisol (a terrific Mariana Treviño), a pregnant mother of two has just moved in with her husband (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo). Various needs — a stray cat, a borrowed ladder, driving lessons — intrude on Otto's desires for a peaceful death and, in between aborted suicide attempts, gradually rekindle his will to live.
It's sometimes too broadly drawn. Mike Birbiglia plays a predatory real estate agent from a company not-so-subtly called Dye & Merica. ("Sounds like Dying America, which it is," says Otto.) But "A Man Called Otto" is less after realism than it is a modern-day fable, with shades of Scrooge and the Grinch. As a tale of a solitary man, Hanks has made it a poignant work of family. Rita Wilson, his wife, is a producer and is heard singing a song in the film. The younger Otto is played in flashbacks by their son, Truman Hanks. Even Chet Hanks' "White Boy Summer" blares from a car radio.
Another tune, though, is a more thrilling needle drop. The less said probably the better, but suffice to say, it could be a sign that the Kate Bush renaissance so hearteningly kicked up by "Stranger Things" has not yet abated. If that's not life-affirming, I don't know what is.
"A Man Called Otto," a Sony Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for mature thematic material involving suicide attempts, and language. Running time: 126 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
Jake Coyle is an AP film writer
Venice Film Fest Debuts Director Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist”–In 70mm
"The Brutalist," a post-war epic about a Holocaust survivor attempting to rebuild a life in America, is a fantasy. But filmmaker Brady Corbet wishes it weren't.
"The film is about the physical manifestation of the trauma of the 20th century," Corbet said Sunday at the Venice Film Festival. "It's dedicated to the artists that didn't get to realize their vision."
In part inspired by the late Jean-Louis Cohen's book "Architecture in Uniform," the film starring Adrien Brody as a Hungarian architect had its world premiere Sunday afternoon.
Spanning decades, "The Brutalist" tells the story of László Tóth and his attempts to pursue his art after the war in America. Brody plays Tóth, and Felicity Jones his wife, Erzsébet. He lives in near-poverty until a wealthy industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), gives him an important contract. Joe Alwyn and Alessandro Nivola also star.
Brody said it was a character and a story he felt an "immediate kinship and understanding for." His mother, photographer Sylvia Plachy, was a Hungarian immigrant who fled in 1956 during the anti-Soviet revolution to restart and attempt to build a life as an artist.
"Even though it's fiction, it feels very real and very real to me," Brody said. "That's so important for me to embody a character and make it real."
Running 215-minutes (with a 15-minute intermission) and presented in 70mm (it was shot in Vista Vision), "The Brutalist" arrived in Venice with expectations high. Reviews were mostly positive, hailing its ambition and Brody's performance.
Even the 70mm format alone seemed like a bold statement for a film without U.S. distribution left: Though a favorite of cinephiles, the expense seems to be reserved for a select few, like... Read More