Movies

ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED: leading man in the closet

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Photo caption: Rock Hudson in ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED. Courtesy of HBO Max.

The insightful and often witty showbiz biodoc Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed has an unbeatable leading man – Rock Hudson. From Magnificent Obsession in 1954 through 1962 (Come September and Lover Come Back) Rock earned eight straight years on the list of America’s top ten most popular movie stars. The basis for his popularity was a series of melodramas and romantic comedies that showcased him as the nation’s to heterosexual sex symbol, while he was secretly gay.

Rock’s Hollywood story begins when, as a young Navy vet, he is discovered by the prominent (and sexually predatory) agent Henry Willson, who groomed over a dozen of the beefcake stars of the 50s, many of whom were also closeted gays (e.g., Tab Hunter). Willson gets Rock a contract with Universal and the studio went to to work on re-creating the raw Adonis into leading man material.

Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed unspools the story of Rock’s closeted but vibrant lifestyle, with his decades-long friendship with a Hollywood couple, George Nader (74 screen credits, including the lead in Robot Monster) and Mark Miller. We meet Lee Garlington, Rock’s companion in the early 60s. We hear from author Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City), who joined Rock’s social set in the 70s and kept urging him to come out. We also meet a smattering of Rock’s fellow actors and casual lovers. Rock’s poolside parties resembled a gay version of the Playboy Mansion.

Rock Hudson and Lee Garlington in ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED. Courtesy of HBO Max.

And then Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed takes us back to Rock’s sad finale, as he wasted away from AIDS, early in the epidemic, before there was any real hope from therapeutic medication. We cringe as we revisit Rock’s harrowing kiss of Linda Evans in Dynasty while AIDS-positive – and hear from Evans herself. And we hear of the cruel blow-off by First Lady Nancy Reagan. Isolated by his fear of the AIDS stigma, he still refused to come out of closet, while finally publicly acknowledging his AIDS diagnosis essentially on his deathbed.

While Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed is generally sympathetic to Rock and his closeted plight, it takes an unflinching look at his chain-smoking, heavy drinking, sometimes ruthless ambition and his stubborn refusal to come out.

While the arc of Rock’s life is ultimately tragic, director Stephen Kijak has made Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed very fun to watch by peppering it with clips from Rock’s films. Of course, juxtaposition with the revelations of Rock’s private lifestyle, many, many melodramatic and sexy lines have become hilarious double entendres. The effect of the snippets is poignant as Rock’s story becomes sadder.

Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed is streaming on HBO Max.

ASTEROID CITY: deadpan, witty, whimsical…and who cares?

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Scarlett Johansson in ASTEROID CITY. Courtesy of Focus Features.

With Asteroid City, Wes Anderson has made yet another remarkably clever movie without an emotional core.

The main story takes place in the Cold War 1950s, in a Southwestern desert motel/cafe/gas station built around a roadside attraction meteor crater. The spot is so remote that it also hosts atomic bomb testing. The military-scientific complex has invited some gifted teenagers, accompanied by their parents, to receive science awards in this Atomic Age setting. After a space alien landing, the military quarantines everyone, and the characters all sit and wait, and then react. They are entirely deadpan, reflecting the absurdity of the setting, the story and the era.

Two of the parents are a noted ward photographer (Jason Schwartzman) who is recently widowed and a movie star (Scarlet Johansson). He is foundering, as he suppresses his grief. She is highly functional despite an extreme case of narcissism.

Asteroid City employs the device of a play within the movie. This gives Anderson three more roles to cast with movie stars – a playwright (Edward Norton), a narrator (Brian Cranston) and a director (Adrien Brody – very funny). It also provides even more emotional detachment – these characters aren’t supposed to be real people; these are actors playing those characters. But the main story is the one set in the desert.

ASTEROID CITY. Courtesy of Focus Features.

Because of Anderson’s singular Kodachrome-in-the-desert color palette, Asteroid City looks like no other movie. And the so-called play really looks like a movie. 

Asteroid City contains some very funny bits; among the best are:

  • The brainiac teenagers, each with a photographic memory, play a name-memory game.
  • An elementary school field trip bursts into an impromptu movie musical dance number. 
  • Little girls ceremoniously bury a Tupperware with their parent’s ashes between motel cabins.
  • Jeff Goldblum is a perfect casting choice for a pivotal cameo. 
  • There’s a perky rendition of Freight Train with a dancing roadrunner in the closing credits.
  • Johansson’s actress gets the funniest line, when she inquires about a photo. 

Johansson’s contained performance as a ridiculously self-absorbed celebrity works well because Johansson doesn’t try to act ridiculous. Schwartzman is playing a Method-type actor playing an emotionally repressed neurotic, so maybe he is trying to be annoying…Along with Schwartzman, Johansson, Cranston, Norton, Brody and Goldblum, the cast includes Tom Hanks, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Matt Dillon, Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, Steve Carrell, Tilda Swinton, Hong Chau, Rupert Friend, Steven Park and Bob Balaban.

Jason Schwartzman in ASTEROID CITY. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The acclaimed Wes Anderson is undeniably an auteur, whose films are highly imaginative. The finest film actors love working with him, and studios will finance his films. Yet, I have very strongly ambivalent feelings about his work. I’ve loved his Rushmore and Moonrise Kingdom and pretty much scorned his other movies. After The Grand Budapest Hotel, I refused to even see The French Dispatch, and I only saw Asteroid City because it was extremely convenient for me.

I have friends who enjoy Wes Anderson movies, and I can understand why.  His films are breezy and a relief from all that is stupid in the culture. His backgrounds are filled with Easter Egg witticisms which are fun to scan for, and it’s fun to count off the movie stars (hey, that’s Matt Dillon!). He takes the viewer into worlds that only he can imagine.

But I’ve come to realize that Anderson often makes very clever movies whose characters don’t engage me. I really, really cared about Max Fischer in Rushmore and and Sam in Moonrise Kingdom. I never cared what happened to Steve Zissou or any of the fucking Tenenbaums. All wit and no heart doesn’t do it for me.

In Asteroid City, I really only cared about photojournalist’s son Woodrow (Jack Ryan) and the movie star’s daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards). That’s it.

Asteroid City may be a showpiece of deadpan wit and whimsy…but who cares?

EGGHEAD & TWINKIE: funny, sweet and genuine

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Photo caption: Sabrina Jie-A-Fa and Louis Tomeo in EGGHEAD & TWINKIE. Credit: Olivia Wilson, Courtesy of CanBeDone Films and Orange Cat Films.

In the funny, sweet and genuine coming of age film Egghead & Twinkie, Twinkie (Sabrina Jie-A-Fa) is finishing high school and trying to navigate her sexual awakening as aa lesbian – and it’s not easy. Her lifelong bestie is the neighbor boy Egghead (Louis Tomei), and he’s now sweet on her; (Egghead and Twinkie are their nicknames for each other), Twinkie impulsively commandeers her dad’s car and heads out on a cross country road trip to join her Internet object of desire (Tik Tok star Ayden Lee). Egghead is so loyal, smitten and cluelessly hopeful that he comes along.

Along the way, they have their share of zany road trip experiences. Twinkie meets the girl (Asahi Hirano) who REALLY is perfect for her, but Twinkie is first destined to learn a cruel lesson about being infatuated with a player. It’s a hoot, and there’s not one false note. For all their kooky antics, the kids’ feelings are remarkably authentic.

The entire cast is very good. Sabrina Jie-A-Fa is a charming force of nature as Twinkie. She’s in every scene, and she’s a real talent.

Asahi Hirano and Sabrina Jie-A-Fa in EGGHEAD & TWINKIE. Credit: Olivia Wilson, Courtesy of CanBeDone Films and Orange Cat Films.

Egghead & Twinkie is the first feature for writer-director Sarah Kambe Holland, and it’s an impressive calling card. Egghead & Twinkie is perfectly paced, and Kambe Holland sprinkles in just enough animation to help leaven the angst with the whimsical. Kambe Holland says,

“The kernel of an idea that turned into EGGHEAD & TWINKIE was
more of a question: Can I find humor in the coming out process? I
was nineteen years old at the time, and I had just come out to my
own parents a few months before. The stress of coming out was
fresh in my mind, but so was the hilarious awkwardness of it all. I
challenged myself to write a short film script about a teenage girl
who comes out to her parents, but I was adamant that it wouldn’t be
a drama. It would be a comedy, and the message would be one of
hope and friendship.“

Of course, given Kambe Holland’s inspiration for the story, Twinkie just doesn’t HAPPEN to be gay or HAPPEN to be Asian-American, but the themes are universal, and Egghead & Twinkie is one of the best coming-of-age films of the decade.

I screened Egghead & Twinkie for Cinequest’s online Cinejoy in March. After playing OutFest Los Angeles in July, it will be on-screen at the in-person Cinequest in August.

PAST LIVES: a profound and refreshing romance

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Photo caption: Greta Lee, John Magaro and Teo Yoo in PAST LIVES. Courtesy of A24

Past Lives is a profound romance, with one evolving relationship, and then a second, with the lives, loves and obsessions of three decent people swirling between two cultures over 24 years. The character-driven screenplay is a triumph for writer-director Celine Song in her first feature film.

The story of Past Lives begins 24 years ago in Korea, where a girl and a boy, 12-year-old classmates, are childhood best buddies. They have grown up as playmates, and are now each other’s first crush. The girl’s parents permanently relocate the family to Canada, and the two kids lose touch.

Twelve years later, the girl has grown into Nora (Greta Lee), a budding playwright in New York. The boy, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) is an engineering student in Korea. Hae Sung tracks down Nora through social media, and the two have a reunion on Skype. The video calls became more frequent, and they kindle a tender and genuine adult relationship. They are becoming so close that it’s frustrating to not be geographically together, but they each have committed to career plans; she is beginning a writing fellowship in New York, and he’s about to go learn Mandarin in China. Nora recognizes that they are slipping into a love that is impractical and would require a major sacrifice by one of them – and she ends the calls.

Another twelve years pass, and Nora is still living in New York, but with her husband Arthur (John Magaro). Hae Sung is visiting New York and Nora arranges to meet him. When they finally meet again face-to-face, Nora learns what she may have suspected – the sole reason for Hae Sung’s visit is to see her. This meeting, awaited for 24 years, is clearly emotionally loaded for him; is it loaded for her as well?

Photo caption: Teo Yoo and Greta Lee in PAST LIVES. Courtesy of A24.

Now Nora has two men who want her, and she’s married to one of them. To describe Past Lives as a love triangle might be technically correct but would mislead you, because Past Lives is so specific, authentic and refreshing that it defies the conventions of the form. That we are so often surprised by Song’s movie is probably a telling comment on how we have been conditioned by insipid, shallow and inauthentic movie romances.

According to the conventions of Hollywood, Nora would run off with her soulmate – but which guy is that, exactly? It’s not quite the choice between Rick Blaine or Victor Laszlo, either. Each guy can give her something the other cannot. Each guy understand aspects of her that the other cannot. Nora describes Hae Sung to Arthur with “He’s so Korean“, and it’s unclear to what extent Nora see this as a good or bad thing.

There’s nary a false note in either of Nora and Hae Sung’s reunions, and the final dialogue is PERFECT.

Greta Lee in PAST LIVES. Courtesy of A24.

The performances do justice to the superb screenplay. Greta Lee plays Nora, who is the most central character (because she must choose between the others). Lee’s Nora is usually reserved and contained with others, sometimes even a cipher, but Lee is still able to convey Nora’s thinking and feeling.

Teo Yoo’s plays Hae Sung as an obsessive who ultimately evolves the most of any character. To Hae Sung, Nora is an object of fantasy for decades, and then he must see her as a person. There’s a scene at a carousel where Nora wants Hae Sung to speak to his feelings, and heartbreakingly, his cultural upbringing just won’t let him do it.

The most extraordinary performance is by John Magaro, an actor I had seen in The Big Short, The Many Saints of Newark and 18 1/2 without any appreciation that he was capable of work like this. Who wouldn’t be threatened when your partner’s first crush shows up to woo her? And when they are next to you, speaking with each other in a language you can’t understand? Arthur knows that he has played his hand already, and can only wait for the other cards to be revealed to see if he has won or lost. If he acts out, he would only hurt his chances. As he puts on a mask of stoicism and civility, Magaro’s Arthur is practically vibrating with anxiety.

In a clever prologue, Celine Song begins her movie with unseen patrons at a New York City bar trying to figure out the back story between the three people grouped across the room – an Asian man, an Asian woman and a white guy. Indeed, the movie is about who those three people are to each other. Like her character Nora, Song was born in Korea, immigrated to Canada with her parents, and lives in New York City with her American writer husband.

Song seems to be saying that love is more than one’s own feelings of attraction and connection; love also requires knowing who the other person truly is and is not, which demands setting aside one’s own perspective to listen and observe empathetically.

Past Lives is one of the Best Movies of 2023 – So Far, and is currently the best film I’ve seen this year.

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY: just a whole lotta fun

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Photo caption: Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY. Courtesy of Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures.

What everyone wants out of the new Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is to enjoy Harrison Ford’s relatable Indiana Jones survive a series of harrowing chases, and director James Mangold’s Dial of Destiny delivers. This is pure entertainment.

The opening set piece in Raiders of the Lost Ark was breathtaking to audiences in 1981, and the opening of Dial of Destiny meets that standard. Once again, the plot has the characters, good guys, bad guys and, this time, an ambiguously-motivated woman, hunting an archaeological MacGuffin. Once again, they cover the globe, dipping from thrilling action set piece to thrilling action set piece. As in Raiders, history’s worst actual villains, the Nazis, make for the best movie villains.

Harrison Ford is 80-years-old and convincingly plays Indy at the approximate ages of 41 in 1945 and 65 in 1969. The filmmakers de-aged him by four decades with astounding computer effects. I totally suspended disbelief and never thought about Indy being decades younger than Ford now is. I will say that Harrison Ford can move his body with remarkable suppleness for an 80-year-old.

Fitting for a movie with its star playing forty years younger, the story revolves around time travel.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the creator and star of Fleabag, co-stars as Helena, the daughter of Indy’s old pal; Helena is as smart and daring as Indy, and even more obsessive. Helena’s motives, however, are in question and Waller-Bridge brings the needed edginess to the role. Future Raiders sequels starring Waller-Bridge are possible.

Mads Mikkelsen, one of my favorite screen actors, plays the villain, a guy who aspires to be more effective than Hitler. Mikkelsen, who often plays villains in big budget Hollywood thrillers, is a brilliant actor in a wide range of Scandinavian movies, having delivered some of the best performances of the past two decades in After the Wedding, The Hunt, Another Round, and Riders of Justice.

Shaunette Renée Wilson makes a compelling presence early in the film as a mysterious secret agent. As expected, Toby Jones, Antonio Banderas come through with solid performances. There are sentimental and rewarding cameos by Ford’s Raiders of the Lost Ark co-stars Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davis.

Ethann Isidore ably plays Helena’s 12-year-old partner-in-crime. Since Ke Huy Quan played Indy’s child sidekick in Temple of Doom 38 years ago and won an acting Oscar THIS YEAR, let’s not dismiss Ethann as a one-hit-wonder.

The enormous henchman is played by Dutch actor Olivier Richters, who really is a 7 foot 2 bodybuilder.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is just a whole lotta fun.

WIFE OF A SPY: espionage non-thriller

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Photo caption: Yû Aoi and Issey Takahashi in WIFE OF A SPY. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

In the espionage non-thriller Wife of a Spy, the prosperous Yusaku (Issey Takahashi) runs a business in international commerce. That is increasingly uncomfortable in 1940 Japan, where the militaristic government is whipping up xenophobia and bullying those Japanese who interact with foreigners.

Yusaku is a smooth cosmopolitan who won’t be intimidated. He keeps on the road, even to dangerous hotspots like Manchuria. That’s not okay with his loving, apparently frivolous wife Santoko (Yû Aoi), who, frustrated by his absences, is getting increasingly suspicious about what he’s really up to.

She finally stumbles upon his secret – he and his nephew Fumio (Ryôta Bandô) are outraged by the war crimes of the military government and are engaged in a secret plot to undermine it. Santoko, who was been a mere adornment, becomes herself embroiled.

Regrettably, Wife of a Spy is more of a snoozer than a thriller. It just takes director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) too long to get through the first and second acts.

Worse, I found the sudden dramatic lurches in the performances by Yû Aoi and Ryôta Bandô very off-putting. I don’t think I missed something cultural because I’ve watched a lot of Japanese cinema, and haven’t seen anything like this before. It’s like the director of a high school play says, “Now throw yourself on the floor!” Yû Aoi is a popular and lauded actress who has five nominations and two wins in the Japanese equivalent of the Oscars. I’m blaming Kurosawa.

I’m also mostly alone in my opinion. Wife of a Spy enjoys a high score of 79 on Metacritic and was a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Wife of a Spy’s advocates may be seduced by the film’s undeniable beauty. The cinematography by Tatsunosuke Sasaki, production design by Norifumi Ataka and the costumes by Haruki Koketsu are exquisite.

Here’s a novel aspect to Wife of a Spy. The hero is a traitor to his nation. Yusaku loves Japan, hates the Japanese government, and believes Japan will be better off the sooner that Japan loses the war. So, he is trying to hasten the defeat of his own nation’s military, which is the definition of traitorous. I haven’t heard that this was hugely controversial in today’s Japan.

Wife of a Spy is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and KinoNow and is included on MHz.

NO HARD FEELINGS: an amusement with Jennifer Lawrence

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Photo caption: Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman in NO HARD FEELINGS. Courtesy of Sony Pictures.

In the comedy No Hard Feelings, the summer season is beginning in Montauk, and the introverted rich kid Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) is slated to enter Princeton in the fall. His over-protective and intrusive parents worry that his social immaturity will stunt his future, so they hire a financially strapped Uber driver/bartender (Jennifer Lawrence) to date him and get him out of his shell – essentially to take his virginity for a used Buick Regal.

Of course, it’s absurd that Jennifer Lawrence would have 103 minutes of difficulty in seducing a high school senior, and part of the fun is in suspending disbelief. It all makes for good, dirty fun, and No Hard Feelings is an amusing diversion because of Jennifer Lawrence.

After her stunning dramatic debut in Winter’s Bone, Lawrence has shown a gift for comedy in Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle and Don’t Look Up, establishing that she can soar in wise-cracky role. She cracks wise here, too, and also shows off a gift for broad physical comedy in bits like climbing concrete stairs on roller skates.

Lawrence has achieved fame and fortune from eight fantasy movies as Katniss and Raven, respectively, in the Hunger Games and X-Men franchises. She has recently voiced her desire to return to human-scale stories, and No Hard Feelings is one of these, along with the much better Don’t Look Up and Causeway. Good for her.

No Hard Feelings skewers helicopter parents and the invasion of rich outsiders pricing the locals out of their hometowns. Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti are excellent as the parents, and Broderick’s rich guy haircut is priceless.

The Wife and I laughed together at some scenes; she laughed at some others and I laughed at some more. I liked the movie more than she did, but neither of us complained about wasting an hour-and-a-half of our lives. We talked about it on the way to dinner, and I haven’t thought about it since.

Co-writer and director Gene Stupitsky wrote for the American version of The Office, earning some Emmy nominations, so he is capable of better comedy than this, I’m not embedding the trailers because both the Sony red band trailers make No Hard Feelings look like a very stupid teen comedy and, although it has elements of that type, it’s much better that that overall.

Photo caption: Jennifer Lawrence in NO HARD FEELINGS. Courtesy of Sony Pictures.

TETRIS: corporate thriller amid communist collapse

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Photo caption: Taron Egerton in TETRIS. Courtesy of AppleTV.

Tetris, the story of the race for the rights to the video game, is an entertaining corporate thriller.

Taron Egerton (unrecognizable from Rocketman) plays Henk Rogers, a small-time entrepreneur who is betting everything on snaring the rights to Tetris for Nintendo. As written and as played by Egerton, Henk Rogers is an ever-earnest hustler (in the best sense), with a Ted Lasso-like moral core. Rogers is plunged into a competition where the other players, a seasoned software merchant and a British billionaire, have no compunction about cheating.

To complicate things, the video game rights are owned by the government of the USSR, which is in the throes of imminent collapse. It’s unclear who can ink the deal for the Soviet state, which always moves with cumbersome suspicion and xenophobia. Here, the Soviets don’t really appreciate the value of Tetris, but they know it’s valuable and are desperate not to be taken by Westerners.

Egerton is good, and benefits from vivid supporting performances by Robert Allam as Robert Maxwell, the blustering magnate on the precipice of financial collapse, Igor Grabuzov as a menacing wannabe oligarch and the ever-reliable Toby Jones as a crooked competitor.

It’s a fun watch. Tetris is streaming on AppleTV.

BODY PARTS: on-screen sex from the female gaze

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Photo caption: A scene from BODY PARTS. Courtesy of Shout! Studios.

The documentary Body Parts is about moviemaking and sex – and from a female point of view. That is, of course, overdue because we’ve had a century of movies greenlit, financed and made by men, operating from a male perspective and generally without accountability. Of course, movies have always reflected our society and culture. How movies have been made – and how they’re being made now – is fascinating stuff. Especially the sex part.

With Body Parts, director Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and producer Helen Hood Scheer have created an impressively comprehensive survey of history and current practices. We get unflinching looks at titillation and exploitation, the casting couch and worse (Harvey Weinstein). And there are fascinating, behind the scenes procedurals on the filming of scenes of sexual intimacy, including the new deployment of intimacy coordinators in filmmaking.

Jane Fonda leads a brigade of actress talking heads who share their experiences. Of course, Fonda is an Oscar-winning movie star and a feminist icon. But before that, she was a starlet in an age where there were essentially zero women’s voices in filmmaking. While the Production Code was still in its final days in the US, she was acting in European films that were free of those restrictions, but before the women’s liberation movement had traction. Fonda’s candor (and ruefulness) adds important perspective to Body Parts.

On IMDb’s User Reviews, one perceptive contributor has noted that “men are giving this an average rating of 5.8 while women are averaging an 8.3.” I understand why women love Body Parts, but not why some men don’t. It’s decidedly not a screed, and, as a man, I didn’t find it at all scolding, threatening or unpleasant.

I screened Body Parts for the SLO Film Fest. Body Parts is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS: two men, each finding himself

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Photo caption: Cristiano Sassella and Lupo Barbiero in THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS. Courtesy of Janus Films.

The sweeping Italian drama The Eight Mountains is a mesmerizing exploration of of male friendship and self-discovery. Pietro is the 11-year-old son of a successful engineer in bustling, industrial Turin. When his parents rent a summer apartment in a tiny village high in the Italian Alps, he meets the only local child, Bruno, also an 11-year-boy. The two become inseparable and forge the profound, lifelong bond that can only come from a friendship you are lucky enough to make in childhood.

Each summer, the two cavort together in the mountains. Pietro’s father (Filippo Timi), a force nature, revels in climbing the local mountains and brings the boys along, not afraid to challenge them with a treacherous cliff or a bottomless abyss.

In contrast to Pietro’s, Bruno ‘s family shows him neither warmth nor affection, and values him only for his manual labor. Pietro’s parents generously offer to take in the teenage Bruno so he can realize his potential, but Bruno’s ignorant and selfish father nixes the arrangement.

There’s a pause in their relationship as each man grows as a man. A family event draws Pietro (Lupo Barbiero) and Bruno (Cristiano Sassella) back together as adults. Bruno is committed to living in his mountains. Pietro has been drifting, an undisciplined wannabe writer, but he, too, is drawn to the mountains where he spent the best days of his youth with Bruno. As Neil Young sang, “All my changes were there”. Both men are sons of Pietro’s father, one literally, and both chase the father’s dream in their individualistic ways.

The Eight Mountains is a remarkably genuine portrait of a masculine friendship, between boys and then between men. It captures the way such a friendship can resume instantly after a years-long pause. And it authentically depicts how male friends can communicate without verbalizing.

This story of two men’s individual growth and common friendship over 30 years, an intimate and tightly focused human story, is juxtaposed against an epic setting. The scenes of mountaineering in the Italian Alps are stunning enough, and then part of the story moves to the Nepali Himalayas.

Directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch adapted the screenplay from a novel by Paolo Cognetti. I am getting very grumpy about movies that are too long, and I was skeptical of The Eight Mountains’ 2 1/2 hour duration (even vowing beforehand to walk out if it became a slog).  But the story really does take that long to unwind, and I’m glad that van Groeningen and Vandermeersch didn’t rush it.

The Eight Mountains is playing in select arthouse theaters. I’ll let you know when it becomes more widely accessible.