REVIEWS. Pre-Fall Trifecta: A Spinal Tap Sequel, A 60th Anniversary Special Screening, and "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey."

From left: Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), David St. Hubbins, (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest)

It's that time of year when the leaves are waiting to turn, baseball play-offs are about to happen, and a crop of early Oscar predictions appears. I usually avoid getting too engaged in the preliminary frontrunners, as few will still be around by the time the Golden Globe nominations are announced in early December.

Remember Jennifer Aniston's anticipated nomination for 2014's Cake, a highly touted independent drama about a woman with chronic pain? No? Didn't think so.

With that in mind - and with a long list of "must-see" trips to the theater over the next three months, I decided to check out two that probably won't be around during the awards rush, but which peaked my interest for various reasons I'll explain in a moment.

What might have been an otherwise uneventful week at the movies became a triple-feature extravaganza. Well, sort of.

I split the difference between Friday and Sunday matinees last weekend in what might be a most unusual juxtaposing of the ridiculous and the sublime...or vice versa, depending on your musical tastes, pairing trips to the theater to catch This is Spinal Tap, The End Continues (a sequel forty years in the making), followed by a 60th anniversary screening of 1965's Best Picture recipient, The Sound of Music. Then I added a mid-week matinee to A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, scheduling all of these close together so I could catch all the baseball action this weekend as the Cleveland Guardians make a bid for a play-off spot. Priorities.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

Earlier this summer, I took my husband to the 41st Anniversary of then-fledgling director Rob Reiner's 1984 seminal mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, a semi-camp, largely improvised, satire about the now mythical excessiveness associated with heavy metal bands and their touring shenanigans, antics previously canonized in rock documentaries like The Last Waltz (1978) and The Song Remains the Same (1976).

He'd never seen Spinal Tap, and laughed so hard during the special theatrical screening, I knew we'd need to check on the sequel, which was teased at the end of the feature.

Sequels - especially those attempted long after the original - left me wondering if/how the sheer silliness of the original, paired with the wry humor only Christopher Guest (his screenplays include Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind and Best in Show) can deliver, would translate to rock stars now in their late seventies. Not that that's unusual. Mick Jagger is currently touring at eighty-one; eighty-three year-old Paul McCartney has embarked on a world tour, and seventy-six (later this month) year-old Bruce Springsteen has said he'll never retire.

Appropriately, Spinal Tap II zeroes in on the current, ubiquitous "farewell" tours that seem to be dominating concert arenas. In the past ten years, everyone from Cher, Cyndi Lauper, Eagles, Elton John and Foreigner have played to sold-out crowds, often multi-times as these tours have proven lucrative enough to merit encores.

In this spirit, the fictitious British heavy metal band, Spinal Tap, still consumed by petty differences and long-standing personal grudges, are lured into one more concert by a long-misplaced contract now in the posession of Hope Faith, daughter of Tap's original manager, Ian Faith. The bickering trio: David St. Hubens (Michael McKean), Nigel Tufnel (Guest) and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), begrudgingly agree to one more concert, sparking a series of personal and professional mishaps that are best appreciated by fans of the original.

Not that Spinal Tap II isn't funny. It is. But a good sense of the characters' quirks and idiosyncracies from the original would definitely enhance an appreciation of what Reiner & Co. are doing here. The scene in which Nigel, now the owner of a cheese and guitar shop (what?) in England, shows documentary director Marty DiBergi (Reiner) how the back of his guitar holds a mini-cheese board and grater, plus a small piece of cheese, is priceless...but not for those who need their humor big and loud, and definitely not for the faint-nasaled.

Coming in at a nifty 83 minutes, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues contains just enough nostalgia, balanced with clever commentary on an aging rock and roll culture, to satisfy those Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers old enough to remember the days when Van Halen's rider request to remove the brown M'n'M's from their dressing room candy bowl, was considered excessive.

The film is brightened by witty cameos from Sirs McCartney and John, plus appearances from Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood and Lars Ulrich. Come to think of it, you can watch both This is Spinal Tap and Spinal Tap II is less time than you'd invest in last year's The Brutalist or this year's forthcoming One Battle After Another.

Just sayin'.

The Sound of Music

Getting tickets to see the 60th annivesary screening of The Sound of Music was pretty much all nostalgia for me, and definitely not on my husband's radar. "Do we have to?" was followed by his alternate title for1965's Best Picture winner: "The Sound of Mucus" (a reference to co-star Christopher Plummer's snide nickname for the movie).

At any rate, we ventured to our local theater last Sunday afternoon for the matinee showing in a theater about two-thirds full. And yes, The Sound of Music is a saccharine-filled love story that ignores much of the dire world events surrounding its narrative. A few of the songs, especially "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," have not worn well after six decades, underscoring what is likely a very strong disconnect between the history, the story, and contemporary audiences.

Still, the opening sequence which pans the Alps as the camera zooms in on a melodious Julie Andrews (yes, I know the winds kept knocking her down during filming), alive with song is still one that takes my breath away. And the "Do-Ra-Me" sequence is as joyful as it is unrealistic. One of the first Broadway musicals to be filmed on location, the movie's many Austrian locations add a historic realism to the otherwise sappy story of the novitiate-turned-governess (Andrews) who falls in the love with a widower (Plummer) with seven children.

For me, going to see The Sound of Music was less about rewatching the movie itself and more about memories the first time I saw it: taking the Cleveland-Lorain Highway Coach with my mom into downtown Cleveland to a matinee at Loew's Theater. Sitting in the balcony, the silver screen seemed enormous, with the Austrian landscape beckoning me to join in. Those recollections always bring a wistful smile. How impressionable I was then: the movies of the day left indelible imprints on my mind and in my heart that remain to this day.

All in all, The Sound of Music was a relatively quick three hours that left me wondering how a movie with a story like the von Trapp's would be made today. Somehow, I suspect there would be less music, more violence, and a conclusion that is infinitely less inspirational... or something.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

The trailer for this movie had me at "hello," but so did news about its release several months ago. The idea of a modern romance with Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie, one that tapped the integration of magical realism into a contemporary love story, peaked my interest and brought the promise of a new and innovative kind of movie. Magical realism is often difficult to capture effectively in film (more on that in a minute), so I was hopeful that - with a good storyline and engaging actors - director Kogonada's romantic fantasy would prove successful.

Unfortunately, the result is more of a modest, mid-sized melancholy staycation than a fearless adventure into the human heart, though I would still recommend it with reservations. Ignore recent critics who have said the movie is a mess: it's not awful, it just requires more of what the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called "the willing suspension of disbelief," or those who have complained it's neither romantic nor a comedy. It's not a rom-com, so the amount of romance you experience probably depends on how conventional a courtship you expect to see.

Writer Seth Reiss (2022's The Menu) is gaining a reputation for genre-crossing stories, and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey takes on a lot of big philosophical issues about life, destiny, love, and self-acceptance. David (Farrell) and Sarah (Robbie) meet cute (sort of) at a wedding neither wants to attend, and wind up sharing a car on a journey that takes them back to important moments in each one's past in a kind of Freudian exploration of how we become who we are.

Symbols abound here: the metaphorical "doors" that take them back in time, and the metaphysical settings that embrace each of these moments sometimes yield little more than trivial platitudes, though I suspect repeated viewings would generate deeper discussions about the placement of various objects, camera angles, etc. There's a lot going on in each flashback, so a second or third look might well produce a more coherent sense of what Reiss and Kogonada were trying to achieve in terms of themes and takeaways.

Arguably, Reiss had better success with the mixed social commentary found in The Menu, as Journey never quite reconciles its lofty ambition with the film's too-neatly wrapped resolution. And the use of an AI-generated voice to narrate the trip sounds like cheap version of Alexa making song recommendations on Amazon.

For me, the movie was still engaging and interesting, despite some slow spots and an awkward ending. I kept thinking about another film that attempted to combine romantic drama with a kind of ethereal realism: 1995's A Walk in the Clouds, directed by Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Arau and starring Keanu Reeves. Based on 1942's Italian drama, Four Steps in the Clouds, Arau is perhaps best known for 1992's Like Water for Chocolate, based on the novel of the same name, and acclaimed for its effectual use of magical realism to tell its story.

A Walk in the Clouds did not fare as well critically, as its plot teetered on the melodramatic, but I still recall its stunning cinematography and set design, which elevated the implausible story of US Army Sergeant Paul Sutton (Reeves), returning from World War II only to find his wife uninterested in continuing their marriage.

A former candy salesman, Sutton takes his candy sales on the road and meets a beautiful graduate student, pregnant and unwed, who is fearful of returning to her family, the owners of an impressive vineyard in the Napa Valley. Sutton, himself haunted by emotional scars from the war, takes it upon himself to pose as her "husband," and the story of how these two unlikely partners become lovers is the stuff that either makes an audience swoon... or cringe.

I was probably in the former category, though mostly because I appreciated what Arau was doing visually with the story (and I've always had a crush on Keanu), and also because my aunt Helen absolutely loved the film. Hearing her gush about it afterward made watching the movie all the more worthwhile, something I've thought about every time I've returned to its gauzy sepia-toned Napa vineyards.

Farrell and Robbie aren't mismatched here, the way Reeves and co-star Aitana Sánchez-Gijón were, but there is an unevenness in their respective characters, with Robbie getting the short end having to play a one-dimensional romantic cynic. Her character's evolution is less believable than Farrell's slightly more developed character: a shy, less secure, if more hopeful romantic, but the narrative never gives them more than fleeting moments to connect before moving on to the next destination on the journey. As a result, the climax falls flat, and the denouement seems like an afterthought, rather than a satisfying resolution.

For the most part, I'd rather watch a movie like Journey that has higher aspirations as a film, than anything in the Marvel Comics universe, but I doubt that most audiences would agree. How impressionable (and romantic?) I remain. So if you are someone game for an intriguing, if not totally convincing fantasy about two unlikely lovers who come together under less than plausible circumstances, I'd recommend giving A Big Bold Beautiful Journey a look.

It's not a bad romantic road trip, just one where the GPS needed some adjusting.

*******

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey are currently playing in theaters. While no streaming plans have been announced for Spinal Tap, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey should be available on major streaming platforms later in the fall. The Sound of Music has been playing around the country in limited release to celebrate its 60th anniversary. It is also available on several streaming services, including Disney+, PrimeVideo and AppleTV+.