Author: S. Brady Calhoun

Lydia Tár is a genius composer and orchestra conductor at the top of her field. She is also a cad.

These two things are at the heart of Todd Field’s Tár.

The movie opens with a fawning interview in front of a live audience at The New Yorker Festival. And Cate Blanchett is perfect at playing that particular kind of celebrity. She says all the right things. She is smart, yet humble and she pushes back, in a polite way, when she disagrees with the interviewer. She charms the journalist, she charms the audience and she surely charms the people listening to the podcast of this interview on their way to work.

Someone has spent quality time with their publicist and gone to interview school and is incredibly well prepared.

I was lost in the weeds in a lot of this because I know absolutely nothing about the world of composers and symphonies and New Yorker festivals. But it was exciting to get immersed in this world even if the movie declines to give you much of a foothold. The screenplay never lets you sink into the bog though and Field deftly moves on from tuning up the band and into the deep interesting notes he wants to play.

So, we learn that Tár has already committed a great crime. And, even having done so, she is incapable of accepting responsibility for her actions, and if given the chance, she will continue to use her power over the women she works with to extract … personal performances outside of the workplace.

I did not expect the first great movie about the #MeToo movement to be about a woman and the Berlin symphony but here we are. As the movie continues we see that Tár is haunted. By her past? Certainly. By the consequences of her actions? You bet. By something even more supernatural in nature? Quite possibly.

Tár hears screaming in the woods while running. She wakes multiple times in the night. She thinks someone is doing something in her office. But who and why? The movie shows her running over and over again. It’s apparent that she’s not just running for her health.

For this part of the movie remembering Edgar Allen Poe could be instructive. This is not a remake of The Tell Tale Heart but the screenplay is imprinted with its themes.

It is a funny film too. In its way.

At several points while in charge of the orchestra, Tár makes moves that she thinks can be explained as something other than for her own desires. But her co-workers are not fooled. Field gets laughs with their looks of disgust. Our protagonist doesn’t know it, but Lydia Tár is finished long before the final note plays.

In 20 years as a director, Field has only made three films. When I looked him up I was delighted to find that his first feature was In the Bedroom. I saw it when it came out that year. There is nothing showy in that picture and no flashy or extravagant actor excesses. Sissy Spacek gets one grand scene where she is allowed to explode and everything else, including much of the plot, is kept under the surface.

Field gives Blanchett a whole lot more here and she chews every scene down to the bone. Then she sucks out the marrow and comes back for more.

And Field proves himself, once again, to be at the same level as anyone else in the movie business today. I sincerely hope he can now get the financing for more than two films over the next two decades.

There is a unique industrial music drone the soundtrack does frequently in the 2022 version of All Quiet on the Western Front.

The filmmakers maybe rely on it a bit too much and every time I heard it I thought of oranges in the Godfather films.

Soundtrack: Chu chnng

My brain: Welp, this next bit won’t be good.

I kept thinking of a man being ground down by a machine. Which meant that it was the perfect selection for music in this now Oscar-nominated German film about World War 1.

I haven’t read the book. And you haven’t either so shut up. But 20 years ago in film studies class, I watched the 1930s version of All Quiet on the Western Front and was struck when watching this that I kept thinking of that final, beautiful shot of Paul reaching for a butterfly.

Today’s version has scenes of similar power and beauty and horror. If this is your first war film then I am hopeful that the message about the cost of war will move you.

If this is not your first war film then you, like I, will likely appreciate a strong story, well told with a message you have seen many, many times before.

Still, the movie finds inventive ways to make its point. This is a movie that shows you the cost of the war (and wars) in all sorts of ways. Even going so far as to follow the laundry.

Its battle scenes are appropriately graphic and gory. It examines the trenches, it examines what it’s like to watch your friends die. It examines what it is like and how terrible it is, and how hard it can be to kill a man. Even a man who is presumably your enemy.

This version adds scenes of generals and other leaders, safe in their towers, making foolish decisions that will cost the lives of hundreds, thousands, and millions of men. Those scenes make the point as effectively as the horror on the battlefield. Perhaps more so.

Nothing makes the case quite so well as the emaciated look that actor Felix Kammerer delivers at Paul. He is as competent as a man can be in these extraordinary situations but he is also starving, damaged, and suffering from mental scars that will never heal.

Those of you who served may connect with this. Those of you with family who served may know, in some small way, what war does to the men and women who see it close and try to go on.

Some of you don’t have those connections. Some of you only know war through video games or through the yammering of politicians, preachers, and others who have never set their boots on foreign soil.

I hope you will see this.

Look close.

Misery. 

Misery on top of misery, on top of misery.

That’s what we are presented with for most of this flick. Princess Diana’s time as wife to Charles is coming to an end. A Christmas court takes place in a castle.

Diana is tortured and tormented by her own mind and by the family who wants her to live her life in the very strict parameters that a princess of Wales is allowed. 

In real life, it ends with divorce and Diana dating other people, living a life free from the royals, and then tragically dying in a car accident. 

But this movie suggests that Diana came very close to dying while in the tender care of her husband’s family. The movie plays somewhere between a psychological horror flick and an actual horror flick. 

Diana is haunted and not just by her own mind. The score is oppressive, the ideas are oppressive and if you feel bad through nearly all of it then the filmmakers have what they wanted. 

I gotta say I prefer The Crown or The Queen. Those present the royals as flawed human beings. This movie suggests that they are monsters on par with a Universal Horror flick or aliens unable to exist in a world of human beings. 

Anyway, I hated this claustrophobic, gothic thing and then I really liked it. It almost became bearable when the movie relents, just a bit, and suggests that Diana and the audience will make it. 

I am reminded of an old Jerry Clower joke.

Two men go hunting and one of them climbs a tree. While high in the tree the hunter is attacked by a wildcat. 

As the man in the tree struggles to fend off the beast and stay in the tree he calls down for the other hunter to shoot. 

The second hunter says he can’t shoot into the tree cause he might hit his friend and not the wildcat. 

The man in the tree replies, “shoot up here amongst us. Cause one of us has got to have some relief!”

One the one hand the ending doesn’t seem to fit with everything else the movie did in the preceding two hours.

On the other hand, after surviving this movie that little bit of sunshine at the end at least gave us some relief.

It’s three hours and every minute is amazing.

A story about friendship that also manages to make time for the beginning of the Indian revolution, kung fu fights, amazing songs, unbelievable dance scenes and insane battles. 

I cackled with joy over and over again. 

The only close comparison I can think of in terms of this high level of movie-making is Mad Max: Fury Road. Because you watch it and you just can’t believe what you are seeing. 

Here are a couple of things that happen in this movie: 

Two men manage to save a boy in a burning river using a motorcycle, a horse, a rope, a flag, and the power of their friendship. 

A man wrestles a tiger barechested. 

Just when you forget about that tiger it returns and it is mind-blowing. 

Ray Stevenson manages to be one of the most despicable villains on-screen with like one line of dialogue. 

And as evil as he is I wanted the good guys to kill his evil wife, Alison Doody, even more. 

The movie takes like two or three musical breaks and even though I only understood it through subtitles I can confirm that the music is nothing but bangers. 

Anyway, you owe it to yourself to watch this. How many times did you cackle with joy at the movies last year?

Me right now: How could you have watched 100 movies last year and still have not seen four of the Best Picture nominees?

Anyway, I like to at least see all the nominees before the Oscar cast (if I can) and I now have homework.

The movies I need to watch just to see all the best picture nominees: All Quiet on the Western Front, Tár, Triangle of Sadness, and Women Talking. And, of course, there are flicks where an actor or actress gets nominated that I may want to check out just to be able to fairly judge the category.

I have reviewed most of the other best picture nominees:

Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans

I have seen and enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick but never had more than a sentence or two to say about it. I wrote on Letterboxd: This isn’t a movie it’s a victory lap. And yeah, I stand by that.

Of the things that got snubbed, I’m probably most upset over RRR. I don’t think it was the best movie of last year but I do think it should be in the conversation and should have been nominated in that category.

A friend and I were just going down the list and I was amused by how many of these nominations I would give to Babylon. I have real problems with several things in Babylon and I’m sick of Hollywood movies about Hollywood. But I can’t argue that the score, the cinematography, and the costume design are all deserving of Oscar nominations if not wins.

Anyway, I’m going to go do some more homework and maybe do a post picking and predicting the winners after I have seen everything. In the meantime, here’s the full list.

Best supporting actress

– Angela Bassett, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
– Hong Chau, “The Whale”
– Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
– Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
– Stephanie Hsu, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Best costume design

– “Babylon”
– “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
– “Elvis”
– “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
– “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”

Best sound

– “All Quiet on the Western Front”
– “Avatar: The Way of Water”
– “The Batman”
– “Elvis”
– “Top Gun: Maverick”

Best original score

– “All Quiet on the Western Front”
– “Babylon”
– “The Banshees of Inisherin”
– “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
– “The Fabelmans”

Best original screenplay

– “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Martin McDonagh
– “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
– “The Fabelmans,” Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg
– “Tár,” Todd Field
– “Triangle of Sadness,” Ruben Östlund

Best live action short film

– “An Irish Goodbye”
– “Ivalu”
– “Le Pupille”
– “Night Ride”
– “The Red Suitcase”

Best animated short film

– “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”
– “The Flying Sailor”
– “Ice Merchants”
– “My Year of D*cks”
– “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”

Best supporting actor

– Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
– Brian Tyree Henry, “Causeway”
– Judd Hirsch, “The Fabelmans”
– Barry Keoghan, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
– Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Best adapted screenplay

– “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell
– “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Rian Johnson
– “Living,” Kazuo Ishiguro
– “Top Gun: Maverick,” Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks
– “Women Talking,” Sarah Polley

Best original song

– “Applause” from “Tell It like a Woman”
– “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick”
– “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
– “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR”
– “This Is A Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Best documentary feature film

– “All That Breathes”
– “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”
– “Fire of Love”
– “A House Made of Splinters”
– “Navalny”

Best documentary short film

– “The Elephant Whisperers”
– “Haulout”
– “How Do You Measure a Year?”
– “The Martha Mitchell Effect”
– “Stranger at the Gate”

Best international feature film

– “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Germany)
– “Argentina, 1985” (Argentina)
– “Close” (Belgium)
– “EO” (Poland)
– “The Quiet Girl” (Ireland)

Best animated feature film

– “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”
– “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”
– “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”
– “The Sea Beast”
– “Turning Red”

Best makeup and hairstyling

– “All Quiet on the Western Front”
– “The Batman”
– “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
– “Elvis”
– “The Whale”

Best production design

– “All Quiet on the Western Front”
– “Avatar: The Way of Water”
– “Babylon”
– “Elvis”
– “The Fabelmans”

Best film editing

– “The Banshees of Inisherin”
– “Elvis”
– “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
– “Tár”
– “Top Gun: Maverick”

Best cinematography

– “All Quiet on the Western Front”
– “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”
– “Elvis”
– “Empire of Light”
– “Tár”

Best visual effects

– “All Quiet on the Western Front”
– “Avatar: The Way of Water”
– “The Batman”
– “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
– “Top Gun: Maverick”

Best actor

– Austin Butler, “Elvis”
– Colin Farrell, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
– Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”
– Paul Mescal, “Aftersun”
– Bill Nighy, “Living”

Best actress

– Cate Blanchett, “Tár”
– Ana de Armas, “Blonde”
– Andrea Riseborough, “To Leslie”
– Michelle Williams, “The Fabelmans”
– Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Best director

– Martin McDonagh, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
– Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
– Steven Spielberg, “The Fabelmans”
– Todd Field, “Tár”
– Ruben Östlund, “Triangle of Sadness”

Best picture

– “All Quiet on the Western Front”
– “Avatar: The Way of Water”
– “The Banshees of Inisherin”
– “Elvis”
– “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
– “The Fabelmans”
– “Tár”
– “Top Gun: Maverick”
– “Triangle of Sadness”
– “Women Talking”

Jack Ryan was dreamed up by an insurance agent.

I read it somewhere, and forgive me, I can’t remember where, that Jack Ryan was essentially a 1980s cubicle dad. He’s an analyst — not a field agent — for the CIA. And when confronted with a problem he has to outsmart both the villains and his bureaucratic bosses.

It’s no surprise that Tom Clancy’s hero then turned into a sensation among the reading public and spawned several successful movies.

I’ve never been able to get through the books. But I bet I would love them now, in my middle age. Clancy was my mom’s favorite author. However, I watched all the Jack Ryan movies and just finished three seasons of the Amazon Jack Ryan TV show and nothing ever quite gets to the highs of Red October.

For what it’s worth the second season of the TV show included one of my favorite Jack Ryan tropes. Ryan figures out that an American politician has sold out the country and he takes him down.

In Patriot Games, the scuzzy politician he takes down is The President. On the show he gets a senator with a tape recording.

I’m not necessarily saying these other things are bad, but it is hard to live up to Red October. Harder still when the point of Red October is that Jack Ryan is very much not an action hero.

The movie sets up three strong plots and follows them through with precision, action, and wit until it gets to a splendid action movie conclusion.

First Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) goes to Washington because he is concerned about spy images of a Russian submarine that can move quietly and deliver a nuclear payload to Washington D.C. without any warning.

Second, Capt. Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) and his officers aboard the Red October are planning to defect and deliver this high-tech submarine to America for fear that Russia really will start World War 3.

And finally, the very competent officers in an American sub are tracking the Red October after a radio officer (Courtney B. Vance) figures out that the Russians must have some new secret engine that convinced his computer that he’s hearing earthquakes instead of what he knows is a 198 meter long, 50,000-ton horseman of the apocalypse.

The best part about all of this is that for most of the movie, Jack Ryan doesn’t do much of anything that you would consider Action Hero stuff.

First, he figures out that something is up with the sub. Then he figures out that Ramius wants to defect. And then in the movie’s best scene, he convinces no-nonsense Capt. Bart Mancuso (Scott Glenn) not to destroy the Red October during a confrontation when neither side can be certain of the other’s intentions.

It’s not exactly a movie full of shoot outs at the OK Corral.

Jack Ryan one of those characters that books can do really well that usually transition terribly to film and television. The guy making the decision, whether it’s a president or a CIA analyst, or a Medieval King will almost certainly not be the guy carrying out the action.

In a book, you have plenty of pages to let others carry the action. In a movie, you must keep everything moving and usually, that means just one hero facing off against a world of bad guys.

IMDB claims that Harrison Ford turned down Jack Ryan because he would have to share half the movie with Connery. Also, Indiana Jones doesn’t get talked down to by every other character actor in his next movie. To be fair to Ford, I’m not sure audiences would have enjoyed him playing this version of Jack Ryan anyway.

There is a reason the character always skews young and is usually played by men in their late 20s and early 30s. Or at least, by men who audiences will believe are in their late 20s and early 30s.

The producers got Ford to take over the franchise when Alec Baldwin asked for more money and that version of Jack Ryan is almost always in the middle of a fight.

The Die Hard movies have similar problem. In the first one, he’s a normal human being who happens to be a cop but is both terrified and brave as he tries to survive an extraordinary and deadly situation.

They try to tamp it down in the second and third movies but by the fourth go round John McLane is Superman with a badge.

And even in Clancy’s novels it became impossible not to move the CIA analyst into bigger and wilder adventures. Clancy kept upping the stakes for Ryan and increasing his status until, with nowhere else to go, Clancy made him the president. A more realistic career would probably be that Ryan returned to his cubicle after Red October, worked for 20 more years without ever leaving that cubicle, and then drifted off into a quiet retirement.

I doubt audiences would have enjoyed doddering old Jack Ryan puttering around his garden and talking to his plants about that time he hung out with a Russian submarine captain with a Scottish accent but that’s a heck of a lot closer to reality than Jack Ryan gets targeted by the IRA for reasons and then Jack Ryan takes down the Columbian drug cartels and the American president.

Screenwriters Larry Ferguson and Donald E. Stewart and Director John McTiernan do just about everything right in this flick. Including switching over early in the film so that all of the Russians are speaking English. Now, they are not actually speaking English but in the movie shorthand, McTiernan lets us know that the Russian parts will all be in English.

And when that happens Connery just speaks in his Scottish accent. The people who enjoy a good nitpick really enjoy this particular nitpick but it never bothered me on this or any other viewing. At one point, Ryan points out that Connery’s character is not actually Russian but is from Lithuania and I think my brain just accepts that Lithuanians — when speaking English — sound Scottish.

McTiernan also picks his spots with great action beats followed by unrelenting tension in the submarine command decks as the crazy Russian captain tries to escape his countrymen who want to kill him and figure out how to connect with the Americans without getting shot by some buckaroo.

This movie is a great example of how there are no bit parts. Every character actor gets to make a meal of the one of two scenes they receive.

So you get Fred Thompson as an admiral who gets to convey to the audience how Russians evacuate their bowels and how dangerous this situation is getting and a little bit of Ryan’s backstory.

Russians don’t take a dump, son, without a plan.

Adm. Painter (Fred Thompson)

James Earl Jones is having too much fun as Ryan’s CIA boss.

I told you to speak your mind Jack, but Jesus …

Admiral James Greer

Richard Jordan is just wonderful as a man who knows his place in the world.

Listen, I’m a politician, which means I’m a cheat and a liar, and when I’m not kissing babies, I’m stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open.

Jeffrey Pelt

This movie also gets a bunch of joy from Tim Curry playing the clueless Dr. Petrov who never, ever figures out that Ramius is taking him for a ride.

 You will receive the Order of Lenin for this, Captain!

Dr. Petrov

Along with being the height of Alec Baldwin as a leading man Hunt for Red October capped off a tremendous run for Director John McTiernan. In 1987 he directed Predator, he followed that with Die Hard in 1988 and then The Hunt for Red October in 1990.

Things went south quickly after that as McTiernan directed Connery in Medicine Man and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Last Action Hero. He then made another classic in 1995 with Die Hard with a Vengeance.

And then, and then, … well IMDB states that he was the director of the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, the 13th Warrior, and Rollerball. When things go south in Hollywood it happens fast.

But man, what a run. Three stone classics and the only good sequel to Die Hard. I would have liked to see what McTiernan and Baldwin could have cooked up for the Jack Ryan sequels.

Ah well, it wasn’t to be. It will have to live on in my dreams along with the other life I want to live, somewhere in Montana.

Have you ever seen The Simpsons bit about The Fireworks Factory? 

Basically everyone on a field trip is forced to slog through the most boring factories in the world while one of the kids laments, “When are we going to get to the fireworks factory?”

Movie lovers, this whole damn flick is the fireworks factory. 

The set up (a large SWAT team is ambushed in a building full of criminals out to kill them) has just enough story to let you enjoy the action scenes and care about the handful of characters you are supposed to care about. It does this quickly and with a sharpshooter’s precision. 

Within, 10 minutes or so, everyone is introduced and the stakes are explained. And then BOOM.  

Boom, boom, boom. 

Director and writer Garett Evans sets the movie in one building and the tight script allows us focus on the things that matter (insane action scenes) without blowing the budget.

While most of this is ridiculous it’s the best kind of movie ridiculous. This is a movie that leaves realism back at the station. But you won’t stop and think about how all this is implausible because your adrenaline will be pumping and you will be gripping your chair. 

One example of ridiculous. A bad guy with a gun does a stand off with a good guy with a knife. The bad guy doesn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he brings him at gunpoint into a room and puts the gun down and gives a speech about how he prefers to kill with his bare hands. 

Real life don’t work the way. But in a great movie, that bit of business not only works but it feels like everyone involved just called their shot.

The fight, as you might imagine, is glorious and brutal. 

Anyway, I felt about this the way I felt when I discovered John Woo’s The Killers and Hard Boiled. Which is, I want to watch everything else this guy made and I can’t believe action cinema can be this good.

This is a classic bit of crime cinema that hits all its marks and makes all the right moves. I enjoyed it, at least once the plot kicked in and the stakes kept getting ever higher.

Mark Rylance plays Leonard Burling, an English tailor who has set up shop in Chicago in the 1950s. Burling calls himself a cutter (he makes suits, he doesn’t just sew buttons) and never lets us forget that he was trained on the famous Savile Row.

His clients are gangsters who he seems happy enough to serve and he has an employee, young Mable Shaun (Zoey Deutch), who he watches with just a bit too much interest.

And then, bad things begin to happen and Leonard will spend a very long night navigating and negotiating with killers who, for their own reasons, need him alive. Well, they need him alive until they no longer need him.

I thought the first 20 minutes of this was a tough road, I knew it was setting itself up and getting all the pieces on the board for its eventual game but there was a decent moment there when I thought of turning it off.

I’m glad I didn’t because the rest of the movie is a thrilling crime chess match as Leonard attempts to get everything he wants out of a group of people who are either too stupid or too trusting to see what’s really going on.

There are about five solid twists in the game and enough is left to chance that when one character states that everything was part of the master plan I scoffed. Perhaps some of this went to plan but a lot of it seemed like a coat of many colors — pieces and plots come along and they get added to the plan but there was no way to predict each move on the way.

In other words, there may have been one or two twists too many, but each was good for a jolt and the action and the tension simmering.

Crime movies come in and out of fashion. This one reminded me of three other great films, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and Miller’s Crossing. Each one has characters playing their own game for their own reasons and each pays off spectacularly.

You can add this to the canon.

At one point a character in The Outfit considers the concept of perfection.

It’s at the finishings that you must come to terms with the idea that perfection is a necessary goal, precisely because it is unattainable. If you don’t aim for perfection, you cannot make anything great. And yet true perfection is impossible.

– The Outfit

Is writer/director Graham Moore talking about his own movie here?

It’s certainly not perfect. And again, some of the twists require characters to do just the right thing for the plan to fall into place and for the audience and the protagonist to walk out satisfied. Occasionally, you can feel the screenwriter’s thumb on the proceedings.

You can also get a sense of the budget as nearly every scene is in the tailor’s shop. My guess is they’ll be teaching this one in film schools as a lesson in how to make a stylish thriller with not that much money.

Regardless, when the final hand is played, and our tailor rolls up his sleeves to get to work, you’ll see that everything really does fit.

Irwin M. Fletcher has an answer for everything and is unflappable in the face of danger.

When he comes back from a trip and finds a woman murdered in his rental he calls the police non-emergency line.

“Send the homicide guys,” he says. “They love this stuff.”

Fletch, as he prefers to be called, tells everyone that he used to be an investigative reporter of some renown. Chevy Chase made two movies playing the title character and everyone mostly seems to agree that they were Chevy Chase movies more than they were the Fletch of the Gregory Mcdonald books.

Jon Hamm plays the title character in this outing and he’s smugly perfect as a guy working very hard and looking like he’s not doing much at all.

Each little scene is a nice slice of comedy and mystery that winds its way to a satisfying, low-stakes, ending. There is also a solid running gag and a clever turn of phrase in nearly every scene.

I think the only special effects in the thing involve actual fireworks. It’s not a movie that needs special effects

It’s a fun cross between a hang-out movie and a character study. If only all the characters in your life were as fun, sexy, and witty as these folks.

Extra credit should go to Marcia Gay Harden who got laughs from me every time she said the title character’s name in her outrageously fake Italian accent: “Flessh.”

Clearly, it’s no secret of what’s on her mind.

Hamm plays Fletch with the confidence that Idris Elba once showed when he guest starred on The Office. In a line, I still quote today (it’s not true for me but I still like to say it) Elba announced, “I’m aware of my effect on women.”

The movie has several mysteries in the air at once and gives us two competent, annoyed police detectives, who try to follow Fletch around and work to solve the murder.

As someone who spent decades watching cops and courts work I can confirm that most of what happens in this movie would not happen in real life. At one point, one of the characters is arrested and charged with murder and then released on bail. Please just know that if you are ever arrested and charged with murder you will not get bail. They will keep you in jail until the trial.

But the movie couldn’t get to its ending if that little bit of reality was injected into the plot. And honestly, I was having so much fun by then that I didn’t mind.

Mysteries have made a comeback, of sorts, in the cinema. We have Kenneth Branagh playing Hercule Poirot and Writer/Director Ryan Johnson’s Benoit Blanc flicks.

I think the world could use a couple more of these snarky-yet-charming features. If any fictional character could con his way back onto the screen it’s Fletch.